Above them police wearing what were probably noise- canceling headphones had begun physically carrying people off the bridge. But for every one they removed it seemed like some other human would manage to sneak on and take their place. The crowd hadn’t thinned at all, and now the shores were packed with listeners as well. The base of the Golden Gate Bridge began to resemble a jostling auditorium.
Luce sang through her shift from late afternoon until midnight then swam back to their hidden encampment to get a few hours’ sleep. She was bleary with exhaustion, and with Yuan handling so much of the work—and so much happier than Luce had ever seen her before—Luce felt more like just another weary soldier than like a general.
At least she felt that way until she looked up and saw three younger mermaids watching her with a kind of disbelieving admiration. Luce smiled at them, but she still felt a little shy under the pressure of their eyes. She knew she might fail them horribly, and she almost wished they understood that. They should be more skeptical, Luce thought as she fell asleep, and not so innocently ready to entrust their lives to her.
Before she knew it, a gentle hand came and shook her awake for her next shift. It was lucky, Luce realized, that their new way of singing together was so thrilling or the effort of continuing it for so many hours at a time would have proved overwhelming very quickly. Even with the exaltation of that music coursing through them, how long would the Twice Lost be able to keep going with such intensity?
There were more helicopters today. And a lot of them weren’t from the TV news.
Then it was noon, and she had six hours to rest and eat. But there was something else that she needed to do, Luce realized, before she let herself collapse into her hammock again.
A soft arm wrapped around her shoulders. Imani was there beside her, and in a moment Cala joined them too. “Luce? How are you holding up?”
“I’m doing okay,” Luce murmured. The truth was that, the longer she floated in the bay gazing up at that sparkling translucent barricade under the bridge, the more anxious she became. She couldn’t escape the feeling that she was asking too much from the Twice Lost mermaids. Something had to change and soon . . . and she’d promised the humans that there would be a letter stating the mermaids’ demands. “I think I have to go see Seb. If you want to, you could come with me.”
Imani shrugged. “I’ll come meet him, sure. What did you want to see him about?”
“There’s something I need to ask him to do for us,” Luce said. “He might be a little . . . I don’t know . . . unreliable? But we don’t know anyone else.”
Twenty minutes later they set off for the collapsing pier where Seb passed so much of his time. A day or two before, of course, Luce would have made a visit like this in the strictest secrecy, and she still had a sense that going to see a human friend was slightly disgraceful. There was a tinge of the forbidden to it, even now that she wasn’t going alone.
She was going with a whole mermaid delegation. Imani and Cala were with her, but also Graciela, Jo, and two other mermaids Luce had just met. It only seemed right that she include some of the others. After all, this was official business.
Luce had asked the other mermaids to keep out of sight, at least at first. When they reached the pier she surfaced alone, the others waiting below the water. Luce hadn’t been there in broad daylight before, and the shattered holes in the factory windows formed constellations of black vacancy against the shining glass.
Seb was there, sitting bolt upright and obviously expect- ing her.
“Hiya, General.” He grinned as she appeared. “Hey. Didn’t know my little fishy friend was so danged important. You’ve sure thrown a whole bunch of big shots for one hell of a loop! ‘Little Lucy just goosed the president,’ was what I said!”
Luce winced a little at the thought that the other mermaids were listening to this. She hadn’t considered the possibility that Seb would embarrass her—but apparently she should have. Was he drunk again?
“Seb,” Luce tried. “This is serious.”
“Serious is right, girl. For right now you’ve got them in such a knot that they don’t know what to do, but you’d better expect that pretty soon they’re going to hit you back, hard. Kablooey!”
“Seb, listen! I’m here to offer you a job.”
That helped. Seb was startled out of his giddiness. “A job, Miss Luce?”
“I mean,” Luce said, suddenly shy, “we couldn’t pay you or anything. But—”
“With all the sunken treasure and rubies and pearls you all are hoarding, you say you can’t pay me? You’ll pay me, girl, and plenty!”
Luce reeled back, her face flushing hot and her stomach tight. This was obviously a huge mistake—and it was humiliating that her friends were hearing a human speak to her with such impudence. But the fact was that they still needed help from someone on land. “I guess if we ever find anything like that, you could have it. We wouldn’t need it.”
Suddenly Seb’s manner changed completely. “I was just joking with you, General Luce. Don’t look at me like that!”
“But—” Luce started.
“I’d do anything you asked me, General. Tout de suite. I thought you knew that! Sure didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“We could offer you a title, Seb.”
Seb’s eyes widened as he gazed at the water just behind Luce, and he jerked back a little. Luce glanced over her shoulder and saw that the rest of the mermaid delegation had broken through the surface—and, with their crossed arms and annoyed expressions, they looked more than a little intimidating. Luce was especially surprised to notice Imani’s severe glare.
After a few moments Seb partly recovered. “Uh, what’s my title? I mean, general, I hope you understand, I didn’t intend any kind of disrespect . . .”
“Twice Lost Ambassador,” Luce informed him.
A flurry of expressions passed over Seb’s worn face: first shock, then wonder, and then tears came into his eyes. “Ambassador, Miss Luce? I got to say, I’m really . . . really honored.” After a moment, though, his customary impish smirk twisted his mouth again. “But I do feel obliged to inform you of something. I’ve been lost a whole lot more than just twice!”
Luce considered that. She recalled events that hadn’t occurred to her much during all the recent upheavaclass="underline" watching her mother die when she was four, then her father’s disappearance. The awful loss of Nausicaa, Dana’s fury at her, Dorian’s shocking cruelty, and the massacre of her former tribe. “So have I. That doesn’t change anything. I’m still the Twice Lost General.”
Seb was nodding now, but he kept glancing nervously at the other mermaids. “So what’s my first assignment?”
Luce meant to smile at him, but she couldn’t. Their situation was already overwhelming, even desperate, and Luce knew that what she was planning to do was going to make it even harder for the mermaids to eke out any kind of victory. “We’ll come back late tonight. Can you get me a pen and paper by then?”
There was a brief pause. “Sure, Miss Luce,” Seb said gravely. “I can do that for you.”
When Luce flopped heavily into the hammock under the old factory, Catarina was already there. Luce flinched. She felt too drained to deal with a confrontation, but those moon gray eyes were watching her, steady and assessing. There didn’t seem to be much choice.
“Cat,” Luce started, “I’m sorry. I know I should have already told you—that I found my dad alive. And I know I owe you an apology for . . . for thinking you probably killed him . . .” Cat was still staring at her, and her expression didn’t change at all. Luce sighed. “I am really sorry. I know I wasn’t fair. I was completely sure he’d drowned, and since his boat vanished somewhere near your territory, it seemed like you must—”