“He’s ill,” Coralline said, “and contagious.” It was true, at least, she consoled herself, but the real reason she did not want Ecklon to meet Venant was that Venant had assumed she and Izar were a couple. He would be surprised to see her in Ecklon’s arms and may ask where Izar was. “I know you’d like to meet Venant, but he’s . . . napping.” Venant was likely napping, she thought, for he would otherwise have emerged from his bedroom at the commotion outside his home. One of the three algae in the Virus Vanquisher solution she’d prepared for him this morning had happened to be sleep inducing. Coralline had never before been so grateful for someone’s sleep. “We should speak softly for the sake of his recovery,” she suggested, in a voice just above a whisper. “How did you know to find me here?”
“It was a hunch. I thought that if you were in the Blue Bottle area, you might try to meet our favorite author before leaving. And I already knew his address, because I’d gotten it from the Under-Ministry of Residential Affairs before your birthday, in order to send him a copy of The Universe Demystified to autograph for you.”
It hadn’t been quite how Coralline had come across Venant, but it could just as well have been. Touched by Ecklon’s explanation, she tousled his hair, finding the strands to be just as sleek as she remembered. “How did you know I was in the Blue Bottle area?” she asked.
“I’ve been following your movements. I’m the detective on Tang Tarpon’s murder case.”
“What? How?”
“I took the case to clear your name, of course.”
To clear her name . . . Ecklon was clearing her name. . . . His boss, Sinistrum Scomber, would not have wanted him to take the case, because the personal nature of it would raise questions of credibility. But Ecklon had taken the case regardless in order to defend her. Here he was, far from home, fighting for her freedom, while she was cavorting with someone else—the enemy, no less.
“Is there anything you wish to tell me?” Ecklon asked.
It was a question he’d never asked her before, and in a way he’d never asked her before. Could it be that he’d learned about Izar over the course of following her movements to this Telescope Tower? Could he have spoken with Limpet and Linatella Laminaria, perchance?
No. If he had learned about Izar, Ecklon would not be here.
“There’s nothing I wish to tell you,” Coralline said.
This is the merman she will wed—Ecklon, Osmundea had said. The sentence looped through Izar’s mind in circles, such that even though he was swimming straight, hurtling toward the Telescope Tower at the highest speed he was capable of, he had the impression he was chasing his own tail.
He should give her the benefit of the doubt, he told himself, for he was also guilty of keeping secrets from her. Perhaps she was planning to leave Ecklon for him, just as Izar was planning to leave Ocean Dominion for her. And perhaps she was planning to tell him about Ecklon after ending her relationship with Ecklon, just as Izar was planning to tell her about Ocean Dominion after ending his relationship with Ocean Dominion.
Finally, there it was, farther ahead, the Telescope Tower, looking like a drowned lighthouse on the seabed. A small kelp forest sprouted between Izar and the Tower, and Izar started to cross the long flaps of bright-green leaves, but he stopped suddenly at the sight in front of the Tower.
Her bronze scales shimmering, her long black hair glistening down her back, Coralline hovered in the arms of a merman. Turning her neck up as gracefully as a swan, she kissed him.
Coralline’s fist thudded on the door to the snail-shaped house.
“Use your head, and use the window to the side of the door!” barked a shrill voice.
Coralline burst in through the window and bolted to Sage Dahlia, who was sitting plumply on the settee. With her hands on her hips, she stared down at the sage. Coralline had a murder charge to her name; she might as well earn it. Just as there were multiple ways to save someone, there were multiple ways to murder someone. She could wrap her hands around the sage’s gills, but the thickness of the neck would make it difficult for the sage to suffocate. She could stab the sage in the heart with a dagger, but the dagger was in Coralline’s satchel, and she had given her satchel to Ecklon to hold.
He was waiting for her in the shadow of a building around the bend, accompanied by Pavonis, Altair, Nacre, and Menziesii. It was risky for Coralline to be in Blue Bottle, Ecklon had repeatedly warned her on the way here—a whole squad of constables must be searching for her—but Coralline’s desire to kill Sage Dahlia had overpowered her sense of reason.
“How may I help you?” Sage Dahlia asked in a polite, placid voice.
Coralline had treated the sage’s statement as a prophecy, but this orange clown did not even remember her. “You were wrong!” Coralline bellowed.
“Was I, now?” she said, in the over-calm tone of addressing a child having a tantrum.
“You told me I was being betrayed by my love!”
Now Sage Dahlia sat up straight, her eyes blinking with recognition.
“I am not being betrayed by my love,” Coralline said hotly. “Far from betraying me, my love is waiting for me outside.”
“Show me.”
The voluminous form pushed past Coralline at surprising speed. Trailing Sage Dahlia to the window, Coralline gestured toward Ecklon with her hand.
“Oh, him,” Sage Dahlia said, turning back to Coralline. Pity reigned in her watery eyes, reminding Coralline of Rhodomela’s gaze whenever Rhodomela was about to impart a tragic diagnosis to a patient. “He is not your love.”
Coralline reeled back. If Ecklon was not her love, it meant Izar was her love. And so the sage’s statement—You are being betrayed by your love—was true after all, for Izar had been betraying her every moment, belonging as he did to Ocean Dominion.
White dots flashed before Coralline’s eyes, and she fainted.
ZONE III
Midnight
24
Home
Throughout the Elixir Expedition, Coralline had wondered how it would feel to return home. Which of her parents would open the door, and what would she say to them after having left in the middle of the night?
But now that she stood outside the door, there was no time to feel anything, nor even to knock. She swept in through the tall, arched living room window and darted past the settees toward Naiadum’s bedroom. Hovering silently in the doorway, she peered in.
Had she not known he would be in bed, she would have thought the bed empty—previously pudgy, Naiadum formed a skeleton under the blanket now, his cheeks concave and yellow. Abalone and Trochid sat on chairs to either side of his bed.
Trochid spotted Coralline in the doorway first. He looked in her direction, but she had the sense he was looking not at her but through her—in his grief, he seemed to have lost the power to perceive. Following his gaze, Abalone turned her head to the door. Her lips pressed together at Coralline’s sight.
Swimming in slowly, Coralline perched on the precise place on Naiadum’s bed where she’d sat every night, reading him a story. During story-time, he’d often been breathless with anticipation as she’d cackled and giggled while playing characters. Now, the gills along the sides of his neck lay still—he was barely even breathing. Coralline considered pressing two fingers to his wrist to measure his pulse, she considered opening his eyes to check their whites, but she would be pretending—from one look at him, she knew he would be dead before the end of the night.