“Because they’ve never seen people before.”
“I wish they’d leave us alone. What kinds of animals are they?”
“I’m not sure. Even if I could see them, I wouldn’t recognize them, because I’ve never seen them before. The deep sea is almost as different from the open ocean as the open ocean is from land.”
Izar shuddered as a creature several times his length, with the silhouette of a squid—could it be a giant squid?—grazed past his shoulder. “Venant told us to seek the light,” he said, trying to focus. “What do you think he meant by that?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“You said you’re the detective investigating the murder of Tang Tarpon?” Limpet clarified.
“Yes,” Ecklon replied. “As you know, Coralline Costaria is, at this stage, the principal suspect in Tang Tarpon’s murder.”
“Yes, but how did you come to find us?” Limpet asked suspiciously.
“The Constables Department of Hog’s Bristle informed me. They received a memo from the Constables Department of Blue Bottle stating that Coralline Costaria was last sighted here, in your home.”
Limpet nodded, his brows scrunching over his bulbous nose. Ecklon imagined it didn’t bode well for Limpet’s career that a murder suspect had slipped out through his fingers.
“We felt sorry for Coralline and her companion Izar,” Linatella said, toying with her white-gold hair, “and invited them to stay in our home. They accepted.”
“I see,” Ecklon said, trying to keep the drowsiness out of his eyes, the sleeplessness out of his voice. He had swum straight through the night in order to arrive in Blue Bottle this morning. His head was pounding, and he longed to press his thumbs to his temples, but in an effort to be professional, he continued to sit straight on the settee and look at Limpet and Linatella evenly.
“What did the relationship between Coralline and Izar appear to be?” Ecklon asked in a deliberately nonchalant voice. As a detective, he was trained to pose questions casually, in order to ensnare others into betraying information casually, but now, his sole goal was to try to not betray his personal stake in the case. If the Laminarias learned he was Coralline’s fiancé, it would affect what they shared with him.
“Coralline and Izar were a couple, of course,” Linatella replied.
“What leads you to say so?” Ecklon inquired, more sharply than he’d intended.
“It was obvious,” Linatella said, “in the way Coralline cared for him when he was ill, in the way Izar looked at her during breakfast, in the rose petal tellin shell at her throat, in the beautiful corset he got her for the Ball.”
Forgetting himself, Ecklon dropped his head into his hands and massaged his temples. He had planned to get Coralline plenty of corsets when they were married, but he had never gotten her one before. It was such a personal present, something ordinary but intimate, worn directly on the skin.
“Coralline and Izar shared that guest bedroom there behind you,” Limpet said.
Swiveling from the waist, Ecklon stared into the guest bedroom through its open door. Limpet and Linatella would assume he was trying to memorize the details of the room, but all he noticed was its bed—the narrowness of it. The loiterer Wentle Varice in Hog’s Bristle had mentioned that he had seen Coralline with a merman in Tang’s home. Ecklon had not thought much of it then, but he could not avoid thinking of it now. He also could not avoid thinking of the rumor he’d heard in Urchin Grove—that Coralline had left home not to save her brother but for a lover.
Now that he was turned away from the Laminarias, he permitted his face to crumble, his eyes to fall half closed, his cheeks to sag. But when he turned back to Limpet and Linatella, his face was again a closed mask.
“Do you think Coralline will get caught?” Limpet asked.
“If she’s guilty, yes.”
A rumble sounded. Coralline could not tell whether it had issued from her stomach or Izar’s.
“Are you hungry?” Izar asked.
“Famished. And you?”
“Same. How long do you think we’ve been in the deep sea?”
“I’m very sleepy,” Coralline said, “which leads me to think we’ve been here at least a day, and likely closer to two days.”
Time and space were anchors of life, but in the deep sea, Coralline had no measure of either. The loss of both anchors was, for her mind, equivalent to what the loss of her arms would be for her body. She was flailing, drifting, unmoored, unbalanced. As she looked about her into the impenetrable darkness, she had the sense of wandering through a black hole in space.
She, of all merpeople, was particularly unaccustomed to darkness, being among the few adults she knew who kept all her luciferin orbs bright all through the night. If ordinary darkness could be compared to a scratch on the skin—causing temporary discomfort—the darkness of the deep sea could be compared to a malignant tumor, fast spreading through the organs, she saw now. Last night, her challenge had been to lose the constables; this eternal night, her challenge was to not lose herself. People died in the deep sea not of the darkness outside but of the darkness within.
Izar tugged at her hand. Her eyes opened; only then did she realize that they had closed. Her eyes were redundant in the deep sea—it did not matter whether they were open or closed, for she could not see regardless. Izar also could not see, but he must have sensed her semiconscious state in the looseness of her hand. “Stay with me, Coralline,” he said gently. “Let’s seek the light, as Venant instructed.”
Her eyes closed again, as heavily as though stones had settled upon the lids. There was a strain on her shoulder socket, and she had the sensation of lying upon a mattress of shifting ripples; it meant that Izar was dragging her along by a hand.
“What’s that, Coralline?” he said, juddering her arm.
Her eyes opened lethargically, then widened. In the distance stood what looked to be an immense luciferin orb, blindingly bright, many times larger than The Cupola.
“This has to be the light Venant was referring to!” Izar cried.
Tails swinging, they swam to the light—then entered the light itself. Coralline reached out a hand; the particles of light danced away from her, as though they had a life of their own.
The seabed below the particles looked like a fragmented plate of rocks; through the cracks, she could discern more light below, as though a slice of the sun were hiding there, at the bottom of the ocean.
A rock-face flew open. A column of light erupted—magnetic, irresistible. The light yanked Coralline and Izar down through the rock-face like a rope to the navel.
Izar found himself in a vast bottomless cavern, shimmering with thousands of silver particles like stars in the night sky. The particles’ energy filtered through his muscles, replacing sleep and sustenance. Previously exhausted, though he’d tried to hide it from Coralline, he suddenly felt exhilarated.
“Many have tried to find me but failed. You succeeded.”
It was a voice that could not be detected by the ears, a voice that went straight to the heart. It did not belong to the ocean; it did not belong to earth. Izar and Coralline cast a glance about the cavern to discover its source, then turned back to each other, puzzled.
“I am everywhere, and I am nowhere.”
The voice seemed to be coming from each silver particle, and yet no particle.
“One must experience true darkness in order to know true light. You did, and so I let you into my universe.”
“Who are you?” Izar asked.