Behind him swam a shadow, and at his nod, the shadow flipped backward and disappeared under a dark arch. When it returned, it solidified into the shape of a fishman holding a thick seaweed rope who tugged three bound figures after him. With a sinking feeling, I recognized the fishwife who’d given us the accounts. She did not look at me; none of the three did. None of them struggled. They let the official drag them by their bindings through a door in our cage and into the courtyard’s desolate center.
“These are the citizens who broke the law and consorted with an unfit citizen from Above,” the duke Below said. “We gathered evidence, and I tried them by my own hand. Now I present their execution to you as a gift.”
A gift of execution. The concept curdled my stomach. But I looked at his flashing teeth and nodded.
“We have come to tensions in recent times,” the duke said. “It is something for which we blame your father, not you. And it has turned some of our citizens desperate. Desperation is no excuse for lawbreaking. We still hope for good relations between Above and Below. On that faith, do you wish to speak with them before their sentence is exacted?”
I wrapped my fingers around the wire mesh that separated us. “Who? And why?”
The citizen on the right flashed their crest, fanning it out in bravery or defiance. “One man can halt the trade that built us? It is not right.”
“One man can make us weak and defenseless without paying a price? It is not right,” said the second one. They’d clearly rehearsed.
“Who helped you?” I said again. This time, their jailer jabbed at the fishwife with his spear. The dull, rotting tip scraped against her scales, denting them. I flinched.
She looked at me, and her eyes seemed sorrowful. “We met them at the top of the ice. Not at the moat, where many might be watching. While they kept guard, I traded. Iron and wax and electrum, spears to hunt the deep things. The pale king did not come into the water. But his servant did.”
“What did the servant look like?”
Another silence, this one longer. At last, the middle one answered. He had a red-and-orange pattern on his scales, a sunset of color. It broke my heart a little. I’d spent my life wanting to observe these people, their culture, their customs. Not their executions.
“He said he was a powerful man.” Eirhan. “He said he spoke with all foreign nations.” Yannush. “He said he cared for the plight of all people.” Reko.
“What was his name?”
“He sits on your council,” the fishwife said. “He is pale of skin, and his hair is dark on his head and on his chin.”
Rafyet. But that was laughable. Why would Rafyet brag about knowing foreign nations?
He wouldn’t. Yannush had a beard, too. Yannush, my foreign minister. Yannush, who had argued with Sigis last night and tried to depose me this morning.
Something uneasy touched at the back of my mind. “Wait. You can see my council room?”
The duke Below nodded to the jailer, who jabbed the fishwife in a clean, brutal move. This time, the pitted iron dug through her flesh and tore a hole in her shoulder. With two powerful kicks, the jailer swam out through the opening of the cage, dragging his spear behind him. Red billowed from the fishwife. The duke Below latched the cage again.
The fishwife began to twist against her bonds. The gills along the side of her jaw fluttered frantically. Her coconspirators trembled, and muscles bulged in their scaly arms as they pulled against the seaweed rope with no success.
I didn’t notice the first shark until the fishwife’s head hung by a thread, mouth opening and closing uselessly. Her knife-sharp teeth had done nothing for her in the end. Another little shape darted back and fastened its teeth around her shoulder until something made a popping sound.
Farhod’s autopsy report of the citizen Below had contained cross sections and technical drawings. I’d seen intestines on paper, the muscles of the arms and legs. But it was so terribly different to see these parts spilling out into the water. The other two prisoners threw back their heads and began a keen that boiled through the water; the keening turned to screaming as the sharks set upon them, ripping a leg free at its knee, pushing their snouts into the hole of a belly.
And then the screams stopped, and that was somehow worse.
I looked down, watching the hair on my legs rise as the sounds of ripping things faded. The sharks moved silently, cutting through the water and the ropes and the meat, shaking the pieces of their prey.
Meire took my hand. “You are disturbed.”
“You aren’t?”
“This is the reality of our world.” A shadow passed over Meire’s face. The scent of blood had drawn larger predators, sharks that made the duke Below look slim and small. So many things here. Suddenly, our cage seemed scant protection.
“It is done, and we have seen it.” The duke Below offered me his arm, and I released Meire’s hand to take it. “We do not take pleasure in it, but this is how we rule. It is how we keep our rule.” He gave me a calculating look. “I sympathize with my people, and I feel grief and shame with their families. We fight and control the things of the deep, and we cannot do that without your assistance. People have become desperate now.”
He led me to the edge of the palace compound, and we bowed to each other. When Meire tugged on me to go, I resisted. “I have to ask,” I said, but words failed me. Despite the whole world being made of water, my mouth was dry.
The duke Below brought his head forward, listening.
“My family. Can they be cured with magic?”
The duke tilted his head. “That is not a question I can answer, Your Grace.”
“It is a magical curse,” I pointed out.
If I was hoping to make him feel guilty enough to give up the secret of magical dominance, I was disappointed. “A magical cure could be attempted. But citizens Below cannot travel Above, and no citizen Above can use magic as the citizens Below can.”
“My father can.”
“The grand duke is given special dispensation.” The duke Below turned his staff around in his long, thin fingers. “It is only natural that you would wish for it.”
“Ah.” I was hoping to get around to that part a little more diplomatically.
“I relish the sharing of this knowledge. But you are not grand duke yet.” His fins flipped. “You must win the coronation trials.”
The way things were going, Sigis would become the arbiter of all magic and use it to obliterate everything.
“We could give you the secret,” the duke said. “We could help you win the trials. In exchange.”
“You’ll cheat.” Even Below was up to its neck in our politics. The duke inclined his head, dark eyes unblinking. Don’t ask. Just say no. “In exchange for what?”
“Reexamine your father’s declarations. Widen trade. Make our countries equally prosperous again.”
Why not just do it? Make the deal, do the trade. Get the power. “I can’t,” I said, sounding less like a grand duke than ever. “I—I swore I would give the throne back to my father the way he left it. If I were grand duke, I wouldn’t hesitate, but…”
“I see,” the duke Below said. “We do, naturally, wish for his recovery.” His dark eyes were impossible to read. “And we hope you will tell him how we assisted his daughter.” He bowed again. “May I give you some advice?”