“Does a sage live inside?” Nacre asked Coralline in an awed voice.
“How would I know?”
“Read the placard!”
Following the direction of Nacre’s tentacles, whose tips had joined and were pointing as one, Coralline saw a small placard tucked in the garden surrounding the snail. “For one carapace, let Sage Dahlia Delaisi tell you about yourself!” Coralline read out loud. “How did you know, Nacre?”
“Call it my sixth sense. Now, we must go in!”
“Don’t be silly. How can a sage tell me anything about me, without ever having met me before? The more accurate term for a sage is fortune teller, and fortune tellers are all shams.”
“I’ve accompanied you all over Meristem during your Elixir Expedition,” Nacre said in a hurt voice. “Visiting with this sage is the one thing I ask of you, for your own good. Is it so much to ask?”
“I guess not.” Coralline sighed, thinking that Nacre’s emotional manipulation was similar to Abalone’s. “If you’re so interested in hearing the sage tell me about myself, who am I to stop you?”
Coralline rapped her knuckles on the door.
“Use your head, and use the window to the side of the door!” barked a shrill voice.
Coralline shifted to the window and looked in.
Sitting upon a settee, Sage Dahlia Delaisi was as orange as a clown anemonefish. Everything about her was orange, from her thick lips to her low-cut corset revealing plump, wrinkled cleavage. Each of her fingers was studded with a ring, such that they were splayed by necessity. Coralline wished she’d had the foresight to peek through the window before knocking—Sage Dahlia’s sight would surely have dissuaded her.
A large true tulip snail perched on Sage Dahlia’s shoulder—her right shoulder. His brown-and-white shell was twice the size of Nacre’s but half as pretty. “Well, hello,” he said, waggling his tentacles in Nacre’s direction.
Nacre waggled back enthusiastically. “Not only does Sage Dahlia live in a house shaped like a snail,” she whispered to Coralline, “but she also has a snail for a muse. I’m sensing excellent judgment and gratuitous wisdom here.”
Coralline rolled her eyes at Nacre, then extracted from her satchel a one-carapace moon snail shell (which she’d borrowed from Izar), and added it to the carapace crock on the windowsill. She then swam into the living room.
“Get in there,” the sage ordered, pointing an index finger at a large ampoule with a narrow neck and wide base, filled one-quarter of the way with pearl-white sand. “Swish your tailfin around in the ampoule.”
Coralline did as she was told, feeling rather idiotic.
“That’s enough!” Sage Dahlia called eventually.
“No more!” screeched Nacre, as though Coralline might not have heard the sage.
Coralline slipped out of the ampoule.
In all her clownfish-like glory, Sage Dahlia approached the ampoule and surveyed the sands at its bottom. There were now some streaks in the sands—a pattern of jagged lines not more sophisticated than Naiadum’s drawings.
“You don’t trust me,” Sage Dahlia pronounced. She was frowning at the sands as though she’d gleaned this particular tidbit there rather than in Coralline’s expression. “Very well. I shall tell you a few things about you, in order to get you to trust me.”
“Go ahead.”
“You’re an apothecary.”
Coralline looked down at herself—her satchel, her honeydew corset, Nacre; nothing about her appearance should have indicated her profession.
“You’re no longer an apothecary,” Sage Dahlia continued. “At least not in terms of official employment.”
Coralline swallowed hard. How could the sage have known?
“You’re searching for the elixir for your brother,” Sage Dahlia persisted, her gaze unveering from the sands. “Your brother is young in age . . . eight, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Yes,” Coralline sputtered. Nacre gave her an I-told-you-so look.
“Am I right about everything?” Sage Dahlia said, now looking up from the sands to Coralline. Her eyes were squinted and tired, as though deciphering the sands had been draining.
“Yes, but how did you know—”
“Never mind that. Do you trust me now? Do you trust me wholly, with both your heart and mind?”
“I guess so,” Coralline replied quietly.
“Do you want me to tell you something the streaks in the sands are telling me about you, something that you don’t already know?”
“Yes,” Coralline said, curious now despite herself.
“Fine. You are being betrayed by your love.”
The words struck Coralline in slow motion, like repeated clobbers to her head. She slid away numbly from the ampoule, feeling as though the walls were closing in on her. The back of her tail bumped into the sage’s settee, and she fell upon it in a daze, her blood pumping thinly through her veins.
Ecklon was betraying her. While Coralline was away on a mission to save her brother’s life, Ecklon was betraying her. Coralline imagined Rosette’s long red hair draping his chest, their scales shimmering together, silver and crimson. Perhaps at this very moment, they were lying together in the Mansion.
You’ve loved Ecklon six months, Rosette had said to Coralline. I’ve loved him since I was six years old. I’ll steal him away from you before your wedding, mark my words! And I promise I’ll ruin you.
Could Sage Dahlia be wrong? Coralline wondered. No, she couldn’t; she’d been right about everything else.
Ecklon was betraying her.
20
Immoral and Immortal
"Wow!” Coralline gasped.
The Ball was in an auditorium-like building called The Cupola. It had a dome-shaped ceiling and windows in the shape of half-moons, each half-moon facing its counterpart to form a full. Hundreds of luciferin orbs traversed the ceiling, like constellations in a bustling galaxy, and they dangled also in threaded clusters over pillars, making Izar think of bunches of grapes. Most mermaids wore sequined corsets that reflected and amplified the light of the luciferin orbs, creating a kaleidoscopic effect throughout The Cupola. Izar had the sense of having swum into a swirling disco ball.
From the corner of his eye, he admired Coralline in profile: Her corset shimmered with silver sequins like droplets of starlight. At breakfast, when Coralline had told Linatella she had nothing to wear to the Ball, Izar had decided to get her a corset. The one he’d chosen for her fit like a glove, its single strap emphasizing the slender line of her shoulders and the hourglass curve of her waist. He had purchased it at a little shop called Bravura and had presented it to Coralline just before the Ball. He had never given a woman, let alone a mermaid, clothing before, and had been nervous at the gift, but Coralline’s eyes had sparkled, and she’d beamed and hugged him, appearing more pleased by the thirty-carapace corset than Ascella had been by the thirty-thousand-dollar bracelet he’d given her on her birthday. But as soon as Coralline had clutched the fabric in her hands, Izar had regretted his choice—in both its silver color and single strap, the bodice very much resembled the gown Ascella had worn during his last dinner with her at Yacht.