“Sorry,” Aurelius mumbled and turned to walk around.
The man caught him by his arm and almost lifted him bodily from the floor. “You will be,” he hissed, and let Aurelius go with a shove, just as one of the guards standing watch around the room moved to intervene.
Aurelius scrambled to rejoin his companions at the table where he’d been cleaning fish before. Cardale looked up at him with a knowing grin. “So? Guess you didn’t need to hold out any longer, huh? She’s as good as any you’ll find here. Congratulations, mate! Or should I say,
mer
-mate,” Cardale said with a chuckle and a wink.
Aurelius frowned. “Nothing happened.”
“What? You were gone for over an hour.”
“We were interrupted.”
“Ah, well that’s a shame. Perhaps another time, then. Won’t be long, I’m sure. Only thing more certain than a mermaid’s beauty is her appetite. Lucky for you, the two go together just lovely.”
“Yeah . . .” Aurelius’s brow furrowed. “I don’t doubt it.”
“Be careful, elder,” Gabrian said, sending him an acid look. “The princess is not some dalliance to be used and then discarded. If you mate with her, you will be stuck, and I will not be able to help you. There are some things even magic cannot defeat.”
“Oh?” Aurelius arched an eyebrow. “Such as?”
Gabrian smiled thinly back. “A mermaid’s scorn.”
Lashyla sat on a glowing blue and golden reef, fuming in the cool, liquid darkness of the coral gardens. She toyed with a long strand of phosphorescent green seaweed and watched as another maiden stood naked at the edge of the pool, about to dive in. She dove in a perfect arch over the water and disappeared beneath the shimmering surface with barely a splash. There was a flicker of a blue-green tailfin breaching the surface and then the mermaid’s head broke the surface a few dozen feet from where she’d entered the water. A moment later she disappeared beneath the surface again, and this time she didn’t reappear, leaving Lashyla alone with her thoughts. The coral gardens in the sunken lower levels of Meria were extensive, and it was easy to find solitude there. Somewhere a droplet of water fell from the ceiling with a loud
plop.
How could Aurelius resist her? Was she not pretty enough for him? No, she’d felt his response; he was definitely attracted to her. So what was his problem? Why did he resist? Did he somehow think he might find better amongst the other maidens? Who could offer him more than she, heir to the throne of Meria?
Lashyla flicked her tail out of the water in frustration, bringing it back down with a loud
slap
. She slowly let her lower body sink below the water once more. Perhaps he did fancy men as her mother had initially suggested.
No, that couldn’t be it. Had that fool of a guard not interrupted them, she knew she would have had Aurelius right then and there. She should have the guard thrown into the ring for his insolence, but it would be better not to make more enemies than she had to.
Lashyla pursed her ruby lips and returned to the matter at hand. It was offensive and more than mildly irritating that any man could say no to her. Of course, Aurelius wasn’t just any man. He was the most handsome man in all Meria, and possibly an elder, too. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps the Elders had more self-control, or possessed some immunity to her charms. Aurelius might need a little coaxing. She would have to take a more subtle approach with him.
But how could she seduce him if she didn’t know what he was looking for? If she didn’t know why he was resisting? She needed to be a mind-reader, or an empath at the very least, and despite the old one’s warnings, she was no witch.
Lashyla slapped the water again with her tail. She’d thought men were simple creatures, easily pleased and easily led. Not Aurelius. He was unlike any man she’d ever met.
And it only made her want him more.
She felt a rising heat swelling to constrict her breathing, but she shook her head to clear away that surge of desire. Not now. She needed to focus on the problem at hand. There was a way to get inside Aurelius’s head without magic. It was dangerous, but perhaps worth it—and if he were an elder, it would certainly be worth it.
Red Estheria. No one grew it as far as she knew. It had long been illegal, but a few queens had been rumored to take it for the insight it gave them into their rival’s plots. It was highly addictive, but with Aurelius by her side, she felt sure she could break the habit. She’d merely replace one addiction with another.
A slow smile spread across her lips, and Lashyla kicked off from the reef. A minute later she dove beneath the surface and swam through the glowing corridors to find an exit from the city. Once she found her way out through a shattered viewport, she swam furiously for the deep, paying no attention to the mermaids who were watching her leave.
Let them wonder,
she thought.
There’s nothing wrong with my taking a swim before dinner. Perhaps I’d like to catch my own meal for a change?
She need answer to no one—save for her mother, the queen.
* * *
The dining area for the vestals was a large hall filled with old, wobbly tables and chairs that were arranged into long rows. Around the edges of the hall were the faded remains of various restaurants, some of them Aurelius recognized as familiar franchises from his time. It was an old food court.
Aurelius sat near the middle of one table with Gabrian and Reven to either side, and Cardale seated across from them. The tables were already crowded with platters of food: strange dishes of fish and colorful seaweed. Aurelius eyed a fish platter speculatively. It was piled high with mollusks that might have been oysters. Another dish was deep and contained whole fillets swimming in some type of clear green sauce and garnished with blue sprigs of seaweed. It didn't look very appetizing.
Cardale followed his gaze and nodded to that dish. “As soon as the blessing has been read you better grab some of those fast or you’ll miss out. The Marinated Seagrass Fillets are very popular.”
Aurelius frowned and raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
“They’ll be gone before you can blink.”
He shook his head and his gaze travelled down to a number of other seafood platters. None of the food radiated the warmth or the delicious smells he’d expected. “How is this food cooked?” he asked.
Cardale raised his eyebrows. “It isn’t. It’s all raw.”
“Oh.” In an environment with limited oxygen, Aurelius supposed it made sense. No one would risk open flames in enclosed spaces; and even without cooking to use up their air, it was a mystery as to how they hadn’t all run out of oxygen a long time ago. With so many people crowded into an underwater city, and the old air regulators likely long since worn out, the city had to have an alternate means of recycling the air.
The noise in the hall was surprisingly muted even though there were several hundred men seated at the tables. Noting how full the hall was, Aurelius began to wonder about population control in a city with such limited space. How had they not all run out of room long ago? Especially since the mermaids were apparently constantly capturing and bringing new men into the city.
Then Aurelius remembered the practice of sending the elderly and the ugly into the ring, and he thought he understood how that practice had developed. It was a way of culling their population, although if only men were subject to being culled, it begged the question of how there weren’t more mermaids than men, rather than the other way around as he’d seen.
Aurelius turned to Cardale. “How much of the city is occupied?”
Cardale shrugged. “Half of it is flooded—the coral gardens. The mermaids spend a lot of time there.”
“And the other half?”
“We use maybe half of what isn’t flooded.”
Aurelius blinked in astonishment. “That little?”
Cardale shrugged. “It’s a big city.”
“How long have the mermaids been here?”
“I don’t know. As long as anyone can remember.”
“Then how—” Aurelius was interrupted as a deep rumbling horn sounded from one side of the hall. All eyes turned to the sound and the muted noise in the room dropped to a stifled silence.
There, standing beside a tall man with a trident and a glittering, shell-shaped horn, was a curvy maiden with fire-red hair and fainty-glowing copper eyes. Aurelius felt a chill just to look at her. She was attractive like all the others, but her eyes and hair were an unsettling color. She began speaking, and a deep, boyish voice rose to fill the room. “May we be thankful for this food—” The men in the hall repeated after her in one voice, their heads bowing. “Delivered to us by the maidens.” Again they repeated her, and this time Aurelius joined them. “Without whose unfailing generosity and care, we would all perish of hunger.” Aurelius’s brow furrowed. “May we never forget how indebted we are. In the name of our beauteous queen, may she live long and forever be as beautiful as she is now, we say thanks.” With that, the mermaid turned and strode from the room. The hall made up for its previously muted noise by erupting in chaos as dishes were lifted from the table and passed around.
“Who was she?” Aurelius asked of Cardale as he waited for Gabrian to pass down a platter full of glazed shrimp.
Cardale shrugged. He was absorbed with dishing up some of the Seagrass Fillets he’d been remarking on earlier. “Some maiden, who knows? They always send the less desirable ones to do the drudge work that vestals can’t do.”
“I see. I didn’t know there
were
less desirable maidens.”
“Not many. The uglier ones are typically cast away from the city by the time they turn two. They don’t last long on their own in the misty sea.”
That got Aurelius’s attention and he looked up sharply from eyeing the platters of food coming his way. “What? They send their children away to die?”
Cardale gave him a quizzical look. “You didn’t know?” Then he nodded as if having answered his own question. “Well, you’re still new here, but it's not exactly like that. Mermaids aren’t like men; they grow to maturity very quickly. At just two weeks they look like an eight-year old girl. After one year they’re fully grown and already talking like an adult.”
“That’s incredible.”
“One year old marks the celestal birthday, or coming-out party for a maiden. In the following year she must succeed in stealing a mate from another mermaid or be condemned to exile.”
“You mean she can’t just find a mate from the men on land?”
Cardale shook his head. “That wouldn’t prove anything. An easier test of their relative beauty, and thus their relative worth, is whether or not they can steal another maiden’s mate.”
“That’s despicable.”
Cardale shrugged once more. “It may be, but it beats being sent into the ring to die if you’re an undesirable male. At least the maidens have a chance out on their own in the sea. We have to fight in the ring until we die. If by some chance we win, we must fight again, and again, until they’re finally rid of us.”
“What about the mermen?” Aurelius asked, accepting a dish from Gabrian and spooning out ladles full of small tentacled creatures onto his plate. He grimaced and stopped with three. None of the food looked or smelled particularly appetizing, but he hoped it tasted okay.
“Mermen?” Cardale asked.
“Well, the males born to human and mermaid parents.”
Cardale shook his head. “There are no mermen. The boys born to mermaid and human parents are completely human as far as anyone can tell.”
“You mean the mermaids only pass on their genes to their female offspring?”
Cardale shot him another quizzical look as he took a bite out of a bright green shrimp. “Genes?”
“Ah, never mind. . . . What I meant is, do the boys age more rapidly, too?”
“No.”
“Well, if males
and
females are born, then where do the boys go when they’re of age?”
“The vestal quarters, of course. They’re usually the ones whom no maiden will choose. The others were all captured and brought here
because
a mermaid wanted them. No one chose us, we were just born. Half of the men here are
mermen
, as you call them.”
“
Us
? Your mother is a mermaid?”
Cardale’s eyes skipped away and he diverted his attention to a dish of sardines, garnished with black caviar and bright red seaweed which was being passed down to him. Aurelius waited for Cardale’s reply, but it never came.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to ask such a personal question.”
Cardale shrugged, but didn’t meet his gaze. “It’s not exactly a secret. My mother is indeed a mermaid. Not just any mermaid. . . .” Aurelius found himself waiting for Cardale to continue. When he finally did, the man’s answer shocked Aurelius to the core. “She’s the queen.”