They hadn’t counted on being lost, though, which Coralline now had to admit to herself that they were. The swim to the Mansion should have taken half an hour, but they’d already been out at least two hours by her estimation. Pavonis, an unerring navigator by day, was a poor navigator by night. It was not his vision—he could see at night, even if not as well as during the day, and he could see better than merpeople—but it was the fact that he, unlike most sharks, liked to navigate in part based on the sun, as it traveled from east to west, and he got confused about direction once that compass was gone. Yes, like other sharks, he relied on a whole slew of other data as well—currents, temperatures, smells, mental maps, magnetic fields—but the sun was his favorite navigational tool.
From a shuffle in the sands below, Coralline thought she discerned a brown-striped octopus scuttling over the sediment. Then she saw something glowing directly ahead of her and Pavonis. It was a spotted lanternfish the size of her hand, its iridescent head flashing with blue-green light. Spots of bioluminescence sparked suddenly and intermittently throughout the waters, momentarily cracking the blackness. They were manifestations of nocturnal creatures lighting their paths through the night—eels, octopuses, crabs. The biological mechanism of their light matched that of the bacteria in her lantern: light created through the reaction of the compound luciferin with oxygen. Coralline liked seeing the sparks—they made her feel like she was traveling through the night sky.
She looked around her, at the homes she passed, the gardens, the shops. She must have seen them countless times before, but she could recognize not one of them in the dark. Her own village felt foreign to her; she could just as well have been in any other part of the Atlantic Ocean. She didn’t like the feeling of unfamiliarity in a place that should have felt familiar.
Suddenly, Altair lurched out of her satchel. “Something’s moving in there!” he cried.
Pavonis whipped around, his massive head appearing where his tailfin had been. “You’re just a spineless Minion,” he scoffed, “spooked by everything.”
But Coralline felt it, too—a minor movement against her hip. And Pavonis heard it—a jangle from within her satchel, as though something was traveling over her pouch of shells.
“Open it,” Pavonis commanded.
“But what if there’s a snake inside?” Coralline said, trembling.
All sea snakes were venomous. They were never muses, in part because of their venom and in part because of their proclivity for the surface—as marine reptiles, they breathed air rather than water.
“We have to find out,” Pavonis insisted.
Holding the satchel away from her, Coralline unzipped it quickly. Tentacles came waggling out above a red-and-white scotch bonnet carapace. It was her mother’s muse, Nacre. Coralline would have preferred a snake, for Nacre’s tongue was more venomous still. “How did you get inside my satchel?” Coralline asked.
“My last recollection is of having been curled up in one of your corsets.”
Coralline had tossed a handful of corsets into her satchel and must have neglected to notice Nacre among them. “Why were you in my bedroom to begin with?” she demanded.
“I was snooping, of course.”
“That’s unacceptable—”
“Why are we out in the middle of the night like hooligans—even the Pole Dancer?” Nacre interrupted, in the imperious tone of addressing a servant.
Altair stiffened.
“We’re on our way to find the elixir to save Naiadum,” Pavonis said.
“I’m not in favor of the idea myself,” Altair added.
“For the first time, the Pole Dancer and I are in agreement,” Nacre said. “Now, Coralline, return me home and place me on your mother’s shoulder!”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Coralline said apologetically.
“We’re not returning home until we find the elixir,” Pavonis growled. “Now, get back in the bag, Minion, or we will leave you on the seabed here!”
“You’re just a big, mean Ogre!” Nacre retorted. “As for you, Coralline, you’re in big trouble. When I do eventually return home, you’ll see all the things I tell your mother!”
Nacre vanished inside her shell. Sighing, Coralline zipped her satchel most of the way to try to create a separation between herself and the snail.
“Things are starting to implode,” Altair remarked, in a voice directed at everyone and no one, “as often happens in irrational and ill-considered situations.”
The Elixir Expedition had barely begun, but Coralline was already anticipating the struggle to her sanity that would be wrought by the three muses together.
Izar stood at the bow of the trawler. A wave shot over the rails, like saliva out of the mouth of a rabid hound. Its froth soaked him freshly from head to toe, plastering his clothes to his skin. He shivered, teeth rattling.
Alshain Ankaa’s trawler was ill equipped for depth, and great beasts were lapping at it hungrily from all directions—big, black-bodied waves with white heads. The storm was rousing them to ever-greater heights like a snake charmer. The sky and sea together formed a single, wet, tumultuous layer; there was no horizon but only a great swath of empty darkness.
It had been a mistake to venture out onto the ocean this night.
The trawler started to slow. Izar heard footsteps as heavy as a bull’s and turned his head slowly, his hands continuing to grip the rails for balance. Alshain, who’d emerged from the cockpit, came to stand beside a small table nailed to the center of the platform. Alshain’s gun lay diagonally over it; he had placed it there when they’d set out two hours ago. The giant crossed his log-like arms over his chest, his feet spaced apart, his stance making Izar think of an undertaker posing over a grave.
Izar staggered over to him on legs that felt as pathetically wobbly as a fawn’s.
“There was a third man with me and Antares that night, twenty-five years ago,” Alshain said.
“Who?”
“A man with a limp.” Izar’s blood congealed in his veins, for there was only one man he knew with a limp. His heart raced—he could hear it even through the downpour. “Zaurak Alphard,” Alshain continued.
Izar placed his hand on the small table for support. “I remember nothing before that night,” he said, “but I remember that night. How come I don’t remember Zaurak in it?”
“Because Zaurak went belowdecks.”
Izar found himself believing Alshain, because when Izar had first met Zaurak at Ocean Dominion and they’d shaken hands, Zaurak had looked at him like he knew him. But why had Zaurak been there that night, twenty-five years ago? And why had no one ever told Izar?
“Everything ya know about yerself is a lie,” Alshain said. He gripped the handle of his gun and pointed it at Izar’s forehead.
Not again. Izar’s feet remained under him, but he had the sense he was floating in the air even while standing. His original thinking had been right—Alshain was the Third Man. In alliance with Zaurak, he had brought Izar here to kill him. This would be the third murder attempt on Izar’s life, a successful one. Upon shooting Izar, Alshain would dump Izar’s body overboard, where no one would ever find it. People would think he’d simply disappeared.
The barrel of the gun came to rest on Izar’s forehead, its steel cold. Izar closed his eyes.
The Elnath Mansion’s black-shale walls loomed before Coralline like great boulders. After hours of searching in the dark, it was a relief to have finally arrived at her destination. She rapped on the shutters of Ecklon’s golden-framed window. She knocked again, then again, before the shutters turned to slits and silver-gray eyes peered out at her. Ecklon pulled the pane open, and Coralline flew into his arms.