“I hope Coralline returns with the elixir,” Trochid said. He was sitting on a chair to the other side of Naiadum’s bed, wearing a mourning-black waistcoat. “I wish she’d taken my dagger.”
“I’m glad she didn’t,” Abalone rejoined. “Well-mannered mermaids don’t wield daggers.”
“Manners will not help her on her elixir quest.”
“Well, they will help her get married. And goodness knows she could use help in that department. I can’t even sleep anymore—that’s how worried I am that Ecklon will cancel his wedding to her. Did you know, Rosette has been spreading rumors that Coralline left Urchin Grove for a lover?”
“We can’t pay attention to rumors, Abalone.”
“Well, everyone else does—Ecklon’s mother, Epaulette, in particular. She’s never liked us to begin with, and now she’s adamant that Ecklon should cancel his wedding to Coralline. Sepia told me that our neighbors are laying bets on whether or not Ecklon will ditch Coralline. Most are betting that he will.”
Abalone knew and followed gossip with the same passion and precision with which Trochid knew and followed science. She had not been surprised at Rosette’s rumors; she had spread similar rumors herself twenty-five years ago, in order to ensure that it was she who married Trochid. There was a particular art and subtlety to the propagation of rumors; they were like the loose hair buns she often wore, appearing effortless and natural from outside but tightly pinned underneath, so as not to unravel.
“Don’t worry,” Trochid said. “Ecklon loves Coralline, and she loves him. It’s as simple as that.”
But it was never as simple as that, Abalone knew. Trochid did not know the lengths to which mermaids such as Rosette, and Abalone herself, went to secure good marriages.
Abalone found herself wishing, as she had repeatedly over the years, that Coralline were more like her. She wished Coralline had inherited her golden locks rather than having infernally black hair—hair that looked just like Rhodomela’s. She wished Coralline paid more attention to edible algae than remedial—on feeding a merman’s stomach rather than healing it. She wished Coralline took an interest in corsets, hair arrangements, homemaking. She wished Coralline were clever rather than intelligent, wily rather than kind.
Ever since Coralline was a young mergirl, Abalone had tried to influence and change her, and she would continue to try until the day she died, but she sometimes fretted that it was hopeless. After all, it was not easy to change people. If her marriage had taught her anything, it was that.
Glancing at Trochid, Abalone asked herself: After twenty-five years of marriage, how could it be that she and he felt differently about everything under the sun, including their children? (Everything that she considered to be a vice in Coralline, he considered a virtue.) Were they a happy couple? Would Trochid have been happier with the mermaid he was supposed to have married, twenty-five years ago? Had Abalone done the wrong thing by stealing him away, as Rosette was now trying to steal Ecklon away?
Coralline peeked out from around the wall of the Telescope Tower, a solitary structure that stuck straight out of the sand like a pen. She and Izar had found it easily—it was precisely southwest of Blue Bottle, as Venant had said.
“Where is Pavonis?” she whispered. “We’ve been here awhile, and he should have arrived here soon after us. Do you think Limpet and the two other constables injured him so much that he can’t swim?”
“I hope not,” Izar said.
If anything happened to Pavonis, she would never forgive herself. Life without him greeting her at the window and making sarcastic jokes was a life she could not bear to imagine. Could it be that he wasn’t here because he was dead—just as his best friend, Mako, was dead? Coralline collapsed against the wall, limp as a starfish at the thought.
“Look, Coralline!” Izar cried.
She jerked her head up. She held her luciferin lantern over her head, but in the darkness of night, she could see close to nothing. She could feel, though, what Izar must also be feeling—a rising swell of water. It was a swell she knew, but it did not shove her away by its power, as it usually did—instead, it nudged her weakly. It was Pavonis, but Pavonis debilitated.
No sooner had Pavonis’s snout come to a stop than Coralline threw herself at him, wrapping herself around him as tightly as a bandage of pyropia. “I’m so glad you’re alive, Pavonis!”
There was a stiffness to his flesh. Coralline recognized it as surely as she would recognize a change in a mattress upon which she’d lain all her life. “How are you?” she whispered.
“Fine.”
“He’s not fine!” said a low, tremulous voice. Coralline held her luciferin lantern toward the line of Pavonis’s mouth. Altair was slipping out from within, a flame of orange. “I’m shaking myself, and I was safe and sheltered in his mouth throughout the altercation. He stayed there blocking the door for long, very long, to ensure you got a head start, Coralline. When he eventually removed himself from the door, the constables followed him, but he swam fast enough to lose them.”
“The Ogre is a hero!” Nacre said, her twittering tentacles creating shifting shadows over Pavonis’s head, “and I am a heroine, for having orchestrated the escape. The Pole Dancer may wear a coronet, but I’m a Queen. While he was shuddering in the Ogre’s mouth, I was riding atop the Ogre’s head—”
“Stop calling Pavonis an Ogre and Altair a Pole Dancer!” Coralline snapped. “And this is not the right time to be drowning yourself in praise.”
“In her defense,” Altair said with a sigh, “much as I hate to admit it, Nacre did play a crucial role in the escape tonight. If not for her skillful snooping, you would be at the Wrongdoers’ Refinery at this moment, Coralline, awaiting trial for the murder of Tang Tarpon.”
“Yes indeed!” Nacre huffed. “The least you can do is give me a little credit, Coralline, and learn how I did it all. I was lounging in the Laminaria guest bedroom and was just about to do my second-favorite thing in the world, snoozing, when I was called upon by fate to do my first-favorite thing, snooping. I heard Limpet return home and tell Linatella that he’d come to learn you were wanted for murder, Coralline, according to a scroll the Constables Department of Blue Bottle had just received from the Constables Department of Hog’s Bristle. Limpet and his fellow constables decided to await you at the door and to arrest you upon your return from the Ball of Blue Bottle. When the Ogre—Pavonis, I mean—returned from his day-long excursion around the city, I attracted his attention by waggling my tentacles from the guest bedroom’s windowsill. He approached me, I clambered onto his head, and we swooped down to the rocks to gather the Pole Dancer—Altair, I mean. Like the three constables, the three of us awaited the two of you.”
“Thank you, Nacre,” Coralline said, feeling guilty for how she’d spoken to her. “And thank you also, Altair.” Turning back to Pavonis, Coralline stroked his side and asked, “Where exactly are you hurting?”
“In my inner ear.”
“What?”
“I’m hurting from this conversation.”
“This is not a time for jokes, Pavonis. You should not have taken a beating for me. Oh, how I wish I were an animal apothecary, so I could help you!”
“You can help me by going inside the Telescope Tower. I think we lost the constables, but it’s possible they’re still out and about, searching. I don’t want my efforts to have been in vain.”
Nodding, patting him once more, Coralline turned to the door of the Telescope Tower. Drawing a deep breath, feeling quite beggarly, she knocked on the door.