She didn’t need to worry, Luce decided. Even if they were impressed by what she could do, they’d definitely change their minds once they found out what her rules would be. Like J’aime, they’d be furious that she didn’t want to use her voice as a weapon. But what if they did agree to follow her, even when her ideas went against everything mermaids had always believed?
They wouldn’t, of course. But if they did?
Remembered voices brushed through Luce’s head. That’s going to be a lot of dead mermaids who you did nothing for! J’aime snarled, and the words interwove with Nausicaa’s murmurs: Maybe someday someone will change our story. Maybe you will, Luce. Then the story will be new, even for me . . . Would Nausicaa want her to do this? Her father called her name just as Dana laughed in sudden delight, her laughter dancing with the midnight water.
Luce swished her head to clear it and swam on, coils of Catarina’s hair flickering in the corner of her vision. If they agreed, well—Luce glanced around again, and Imani smiled over at her — then with so many of them working together, maybe she could think of something? Maybe she didn’t have to fail these unknown mermaids in the way that she’d failed her old tribe.
They slipped below the bridge. Container ships piled high with stained metal boxes were still passing out to sea, even this late at night. The mermaids kept far below the surface, their bodies twisting against the sharply roughening water as they left the bay’s shelter. Then they kept on in silence, and Luce felt a brooding sense of ceremony as well as a growing tightness in her stomach. What if those black boats were prowling nearby; what if Luce had inadvertently led all these girls to their deaths?
Imani caught her wrist and tugged gently upward.
They came up in a surging sea, bright faces scattered like floating lanterns on the waves. On this side of the bridge the rising hills looked dark and wild, scrawled over by the pale writhing trunks of cypresses. Luce got the impression that there were even more mermaids now than there had been down under that warehouse. Two hundred? More?
No matter what she did it was probably just a matter of time before the divers discovered them and their refuge in the bay became a trap. After all, the Golden Gate was the bay’s only exit, and it was quite narrow: could the humans close it off somehow and take their time tracking down all the mermaids stuck behind it?
“Cat thinks you’re a big deal, but you have to understand—this isn’t how we do things here. It’s going to take a lot to convince us —” Yuan broke off. Luce was already humming very quietly. She closed her eyes to concentrate, to feel the smooth flow of her voice as it began dividing into multiple notes like a stream parting into a dozen bright rivulets. Her body rose and dipped with the waves, and Luce poured herself into the music. Each note became a half-forgotten dream from years before, or the memory of a beloved hand stroking back her hair. She was all alone inside a hundred weaving strands of song, each one free and sweet and liquid, each one calling to the water. Then she let the notes rise, twisting skyward. They mounted toward the clouds, leaped, wrapped themselves around spiral curves like the innards of a seashell . . .
Luce’s reverie was faintly disturbed by the cries of the mermaids around her. She half opened her eyes, still holding her song in the same complex, swirling suspense. She’d had a fair idea of the form the water would take in response to her song, but the reality was beyond anything she’d expected. Seeing it almost made her break off in astonishment.
The ocean around them had become a fountain. The crowd of mermaids was surrounded by rising streams, but the streams didn’t shoot straight up like the jets of a fountain in a park. Instead the water wrapped the midnight air in gleaming ribbons at least twenty feet tall, winding and writhing. Mermaids rotated to see, bright arms stretched like wings. Some laughed giddily or cried out; some were silent with wonder. Water rose in helixes that curled around one another high over their heads and then turned into looping archways or into sinuous, lethargically falling leaves.
It was too much for Luce to sustain for long. Her song collapsed, and the water jets abruptly crashed down. The sea rocked faster with the impact. Splashes radiated in all directions, and the assembled faces were licked by flying blots of foam. Luce felt herself flushing under the heat of hundreds of stares. She’d hurt Catarina so terribly once before by showing off like this, and now she’d made an even bigger display of herself. She wouldn’t have blamed anyone there for thinking she was nothing but an embarrassing egomaniac.
Now the clatter of falling water was fading. The silence seemed so dense and pressing that Luce half imagined it would be impossible to move until someone spoke.
“Luce?” The voice was Catarina’s, very soft. “How did you . . . I know your gift, but that was . . .”
“It’s not a gift, Cat,” Luce murmured defensively. “It’s just something I taught myself how to do, and—and other mermaids can learn it, too.”
“That’s why the divers want to kill you even more than the rest of us?” Imani whispered. Her eyes were wide and starry, staring around at the drifting whorls of foam.
“They want to kill me because I smashed their boat,” Luce said. She barely registered her own voice. “After they murdered everyone in my old tribe, I called a wave that threw their boat into a cliff.”
There was another lull. Luce shifted uncomfortably, wishing she could leave.
“Well . . .” Catarina was pulling herself together now. “I don’t see how anyone could, but . . . is there anyone here who doesn’t agree? Luce has to be our queen from now on. Even if she did break the timahk.”
Something in Luce hardened; her chest knotted with the urge to resist. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she was sure that what Cat was saying was wrong somehow.
“A twice lost queen for the twice lost mermaids,” Yuan mused morosely. “And at least she can fight. I guess I agree . . .”
That is no one’s queen, Dana had once said of Luce. Dana’d been in a rage at the time, but hadn’t she been right anyway?
“Cat?” Luce said suddenly. “I don’t agree.”
“LUCE!” Cat’s voice whiplashed through the cool night.
“No—I mean—I never wanted to be queen, Cat! I always told you that. We’ve had queens for thousands of years, and—and everything has to be different now! But if everyone really wants me to, I’ll be something else.”
Luce was quiet for a moment. She was thinking of her father, remembering something he’d said to her years before. Then she’d really been the person Catarina imagined: clean and innocent and honorable—all those things she couldn’t possibly be any longer. But still . . .
Catarina moaned impatiently. “Then what are you, Luce?”
He’d said, You’re my secret weapon, honey. You’ve got the mind of a great—
“General,” Luce announced, looking up. Her mouth suddenly curved into an irrepressible smile, and she didn’t feel nearly as embarrassed anymore. “I am the mermaids’ general.”
Murmuring spread like a wave through the assembled mermaids. Imani looked dismayed, but Yuan’s tail flicked with excitement. “Because this is war!”