“If I cannot prove Coralline’s innocence, I will resign from my tenured post at Urchin Interrogations.”
“No!” Coralline protested. Her own career was over; she couldn’t bear the thought of ruining his as well.
“That is my guarantee,” Ecklon insisted, giving her a sharp look before turning back to Pericarp.
“I accept your guarantee on behalf of the Constables Department of Urchin Grove,” Pericarp said. “I only hope you don’t come to regret it.”
Izar looked out the window of Saiph’s office. Ocean Dominion ships stood anchored to shore far below. Even from the thirtieth floor, Izar could recognize each and every vessel—its make, manufacture, age, purpose. They were his stable of stallions, ready to gallop upon the waters at his orders, and he knew them better than he knew his men, for he had led their design and acquisition.
Izar turned to Saiph’s desk, littered with papers and folders. He knew he shouldn’t pry, but he was co-president, and browsing the papers would help him catch up on what he’d missed in the only week he’d ever been away from Ocean Dominion. He opened a thick folder on the corner of the desk. Each page in it featured a map with a dot, along with a time, date, and coordinates of latitude and longitude. The most recent of them was from five days ago. But who was Saiph tracking? Izar wondered.
His eye caught on a glint of red underneath a stack of papers. Shuffling the papers aside, he discovered a crimson-covered notebook. It was the journal recording his Castor experiments—the journal that made Castor replicable. The numbers and formulae on its yellowed pages were more personal to Izar than the contents of any diary he could have kept, for he had written each after painstaking trial and error. To discover his Castor journal so casually on Saiph’s desk made him nervous.
The door opened.
Saiph entered, trailed by three men clad in black. One of them had earlobes pierced by spears and was grinning through a shaggy red beard—Serpens. The other two had over-muscled arms and large, shaved heads—they were the men who’d accompanied Serpens on the waters, during Serpens’s attempts to kill Izar.
The journal slipped from Izar’s fingers.
“Hold him!” Saiph commanded.
Serpens and the two lackeys approached Izar as one, while Saiph remained back, a small smile on his face. Drawing his fist back, Izar landed a punch on the ribs of one of the two bulldozers—it was like hitting a wall. Serpens’s arm darted forward, his fist landing on Izar’s stomach with the force of a sledgehammer. Izar gasped; each of the two lackeys clasped one of his arms. Something cold pressed between his eyebrows—he looked up to discover it was a pistol. Saiph cocked the trigger.
“You know,” Saiph said, smiling, “I’ve been waiting to kill you ever since that first day Father brought you home, twenty-five years ago. I detested you from that very first day. I resented your presence in my home. I hated sharing Father with you. But you were brilliant, and Father felt convinced that you, and you alone, could invent underwater fire—and thus mine gold and diamonds from the bottom of the ocean—a breakthrough that would make us wealthy beyond measure. So, patiently, day after day, year after year, I waited until you invented your Castor. And then, just two weeks ago, you did.”
Cold trails of sweat ran down Izar’s back.
“Immediately, I commenced on my plan to kill you, working with Serpens. It was he who loosened the tower on your drillship. It fell during the drillship check precisely where you were standing, because the platinum chip in your wrist made such precision possible. Had you been crushed that day, as I’d planned, it would simply have been treated as an accident. But you survived. The very next day, I orchestrated my second murder attempt: Serpens switched out a blowout preventer, in order to sink your drillship. But even that you managed to survive.”
“You were willing to kill innocent men in order to kill me,” Izar said quietly. “And you were willing to kill Ocean Dominion’s reputation as well, through the oil spill.”
“I wouldn’t hesitate to kill the whole world in order to kill you,” Saiph said cheerfully, his eyes glinting like burnt grass. “But anyhow, after the two failed murder attempts, I knew I would have to be careful, so that no one should suspect me of anything. I decided to make you co-president, in order to show the world that we were aligned both personally and professionally.”
How readily Izar had believed everything when he and Saiph had last spoken in this very office—Saiph’s apology for never having accepted Izar, for having made his life miserable, Saiph’s claims to want to be a true brother. Izar had even asked Saiph to serve as his best man at his wedding to Ascella.
“If you had managed to kill me,” Izar said, “people might still have suspected you, in the form of Castor. They might have deduced that you did not want to share with me the wealth that I created.”
“No one would have suspected me of anything. The patent for Castor is under my name, not yours. The world would simply have believed I invented him, not you.”
Dazed, Izar looked down at the crimson-covered journal at his feet. The patent was the only area of Castor’s life in which Izar had played no role, because Antares had assigned the matter to Saiph from the beginning. Izar had always assumed the patent would be under his own name, for he was the inventor.
“For my third murder attempt, I decided you should be killed in the water. That way, everyone in Menkar would think you’d simply disappeared. These two buffoons holding you placed that tin on your desk, leading you to the trawler of Alshain Ankaa. I paid that giant to hurl you overboard, which he did, but instead of drowning, you transformed.”
The maps Izar had just seen on Saiph’s desk—it was Izar whom Saiph had been tracking.
“Only later did I learn that Alshain was not only a contract-hire murderer,” Saiph continued, “but also a magician of sorts. He creates potions that enable human-merpeople transformations, as well as potions that create memory lapses during these transformations. For whatever reason, he must have decided to save you instead of killing you. He must have assumed the ocean would offer you refuge from your enemies on land, and he must have given you a potion to transform you.”
“He didn’t give me a potion.”
“If you insist.” Saiph shrugged. “Nevertheless, Alshain did not know about your platinum chip. I knew you hadn’t drowned because I was tracking the chip in your wrist, and I could see its movement. I decided I would simply kill you in your merman form. It should have been straightforward enough, but it wasn’t, because of your mermaid companion—Coralline, isn’t that the name you just told me?”
Izar swallowed hard.
“The first time Serpens caught you, Coralline cut you out of the fishnet. The second time, when Serpens pulled you out over the waves, she actually leapt out of the water to slice you out of the net. But you’d already died by then, Serpens was certain. Evidence seemed to indicate it as well—for your platinum chip fell still. But, it seems now, you figured out that you were being tracked, and you managed to find a way to extract the chip without killing yourself in the process. I wouldn’t be surprised if Coralline helped you with that as well.”
Coralline. Ever since Izar had seen her in the arms of her fiancé outside the Telescope Tower, it was as though a sheet of mist had fallen before his eyes, blinding him. It evaporated now at Saiph’s words, as under the glare of headlights. At risk to her own life, Coralline had repeatedly saved him. Izar should not have left Meristem without speaking to her—there must be an explanation for the scene he’d witnessed outside the Telescope Tower. He would return to her, he decided now—if he lived. He would fight for her; he would cast aside his pride and beg her to choose him over Ecklon.