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“Do you know you’ve been prepared as a sacrifice?” The diva moved all her long octopus limbs, but she dared not touch Desdemona. “If you are opened and refreshed during the ritual, with your death the canal will close for us for another nineteen years, and the country will not sink. But a new ruler has come. Darunon has the right not to sacrifice you, but to perform another ritual. Then everything will sink, but you will survive and become the favorite priestess of the sea god.”
“Go away!”
Desdemona didn’t believe her anymore. It sounded too much like nonsense.
“If you don’t get to the temple on time and stay alive, the whole country will sink before the new moon. If you find a lover instead of becoming a priestess, the country will sink too. No choice!”
It doesn’t make sense. Desdemona was about to say so, but the diva’s silhouette began to fade, as if the paint had been wiped away with a rag.
The diva vanished as if the damp air had absorbed her, but a large muddy puddle remained on the floor, just where the guest had been standing. So it wasn’t a dream.
“What are you doing here?”
The sudden appearance of the stepmother behind her back was even more unpleasant than the visit of the swamp creature. Desdemona was suddenly enraged at her arrogance and disdain. How could you abandon her in the square in the middle of a storm!
“Actually, I live where my family does, which is, for the moment, you alone.”
Brothers at sea can be left out for now. As soon as they return, Candida will send them somewhere else. She usually chooses them to go where it’s more dangerous. Stepchildren are a burden to a young stepmother. A stepdaughter is a double burden.
“How did you get in?”
“The door was unlocked.”
“Was it?”
“Do you lock yourself out from me?”
No answer to the rhetorical question. Candida grumbled unhappily.
“Why is there a puddle on the floor? Didn’t you dry your dresses after you got caught in the rain?”
“I almost drowned. It was a mess in the square when you left me there.”
“It’s a shame you came back alive,” Candida said sincerely. “This house is cramped without you.”
There was no reason to resent her stepmother! At least she speaks sincerely. Lies – that’s what offends.
Candida was always short of money. This time, although it was enough to rent a cottage, it wasn’t enough for a maid.
“Come on! You can help me unbuckle my corset now that you’re here.”
Desdemona brushed her wavy blond hair with a brush and grudgingly recognized her stepmother as a beauty. Although it was hard not to be pampered and luxurious, sitting idle at home.
Candida seemed to have read her mind.
“Rumor has it that the young king is very handsome. He’s looking for a worthy bride right now. Do you think he might like me?”
“Don’t forget you’re already married.”
“Yes, to your sickly father,” Candida said with a bored look. “He may not last long, but the trouble is that kings are only suited to innocent maidens. It would be good to pretend that you are my stepmother, not the other way around.”
Desdemona almost dropped her brush in surprise.
“We’re almost the same age. And you have such a lean look, as if you were almost a widow.”
How like Candida to sin and be hypocritical, even though she doesn’t realize she’s doing wrong.
“The King is no petty aristocrat from the provinces. If the deception is discovered, you will be executed for such an adventure,” Desdemona informed her in a mentor-like tone. Usually it is the heads of families who teach their children and stepdaughters wisdom, but it is the other way around. The stepmother’s head is as naughty as a five-year-old girl.
Candida shivered as if she was cold.
“I’ve heard that execution in Aquilania is a gruesome process where the criminal is tied up and left by the water, from which something crawls out… Well, not even a corpse is left on the shore.”
“You will probably be dragged away as a traitor by the sea king and put on the throne instead of execution, breaking the treaty with the Earthlings and not drowning you. Legends say it’s happened before.”
“Do you think it exists?”
“Is it a sentence where a traitor is handed over to the sea creatures for execution?”
“No, you are fool! Is it a sea king?”
Candida polished her already polished fingernails.
“I don’t know him, so I can’t guarantee it,” Desdemona cut her off.”
“You’re so boring.”
“And you, having a stepdaughter of the same age, wanted to get a girlfriend?”
“Well, at least an interesting companion. You’re a mess. You’re good enough to sacrifice to the sea god.”
“Are you sure they sacrifice priestesses?”
“Only a few, I think.”
Desdemona’s heart sank.
“Have they done something wrong?”
“Probably,” Candida shrugged her lily-like shoulders. “I do not know exactly, I am not particularly religious.”
Surprising! Only an immoral person could cling to a wealthy old man. Faith and dignity aren’t always the same thing. Isn’t it immoral to sacrifice human beings to the sea? That’s what believers do, isn’t it?
There was a knock at the door. The brass ring was jingling.
“Come down and see who’s there,” the stepmother commanded her, as if she were a servant. “But first look out of the window, and don’t unlock the door at once, or you’ll let in a gang of robbers.”
“Robbers don’t usually knock on doors. We don’t have anything to steal, except outfits.”
Candida just hummed something. The sight of sea creatures crawling through windows and doors didn’t bother her. Desdemona, on the other hand, dreaded the reappearance of the divas.
But this time it was someone in menial livery. He stood at the door. A triangle with armorial patches made him look like a royal ambassador. Well, well! He had come from the palace, and his fist had dented the door as if a sea monster had knocked on it.
As it turned out, the messenger brought news from the king’s castle. His hand was indeed ugly and overpowered. Blunt black claws pierced the glove. Desdemona took the letter with distaste. There was a dirty mark on the parchment. But the seal at the bottom was definitely royal. It was an invitation to an event that looked suspiciously like a viewing! She was taken aback.
“Put on your evening dress!” commanded the messenger in an unpleasant, husky voice.
“Is it right now?” Candida, who had come downstairs, yawned with the urge to sleep.
The creature grinned at the sight of her. The stepmother herself also had a frightened look. She wasn’t used to lackeys that looked more like the underwater race.
“Such ambassadors would be delivering letters now? It’s immoral. I will complain.”
“To whom do you complain? They say the King is like them.”
“It is slander!”
“It is as you wish!” Desdemona shrugged her shoulders.
She herself had always felt like a servant. They told her to pack, so she had to choose the best dress and hurry to the palace.
The royal council
The king’s tentacles braided the table. They were his tentacles, not the monster that had supposedly been there when the young king had crushed the foreign armada. Theon looked at the new king with distaste. The handsome face resembled a mask that had been placed over the slimy body of a morgen. Moran could tame with a single glance, not to mention long, strong tentacles that had knocked the weapons from all the conspirators who were unhappy that the king had crawled in from the sea. All those who had something against him instantly shut up and pretended not to be familiar with their own bodyguards, who were just preparing to use swords and sabers. The corpses of several assassins sent to kill the king were found disheveled under a balcony on the coast.
Theon was merely the keeper of the royal seal, not a minister. He had no claim to coup or power, but a ruler with an angel’s head, a monster’s body, and superhuman cruelty immediately became deeply distasteful to him.
It was as if the sea itself had been let into the council chamber. The round table, covered with the arms of Aquilania, was entangled in a net of tentacles that crawled out from beneath the floor of the royal robe. Moran’s face would have resembled a frescoed angel, were it not for the penetrating gaze of blue eyes beneath heavy eyelids. It looked as if the head of a living statue had been sewn onto the body of a monster, hastily covered with a purple silk robe.
Theon didn’t want to give him the royal seal, but the king’s hand was incredibly strong, even stronger than all his tentacles.
“This is now mine!” He unceremoniously took the seal away.
It was just a toy to him, like a rod and scepter. They must have different symbols of power in the sea.
Theon wouldn’t be surprised if his honorable position as seal keeper was abolished right now, but Moran was in no hurry to introduce the brutal mores of the Undersea Kingdom to the court.
Strangely, he breathed air just like everyone else and was in no hurry to take a dip in the water. There were no water tanks in the council chamber, by the way. So water creatures are capable of living on land like humans. Curious, how long could they go without water? Theon glanced at the clock above the entrance to the hall. It had stopped, and the hands were covered in tarnish. The same thing had happened to the chimes on the castle’s main tower. Had time stopped? Or did creatures crawl inside the clock, braiding the gears with algae? Moran brought with him an unholy entourage. Creatures had appeared in the palace, weaving webs of algae, turning dry halls into pools of slime, dousing passersby with a torrent of water just by opening their mouths. Theon himself had stumbled upon one such creature, its needle-like back slithered back like a hedgehog, right in his bedroom. How many of those things had crawled out of the sea after Moran? So far, it was impossible to count.
The new ruler was viewed with fear and suspicion. On the one hand he could single-handedly sink a whole armada of enemies. On the other hand he brought fear. Many mutilated corpses began to be found in the palace.
Lancier, the fiancé of the maid of honor, who had recently been found dead in the throne room, looked at the king with hatred. He could not accept the rumors of Elisandre’s murder by a man from the sea. The corpse had rotted away with tarnish, and something like coral had sprouted in it. In fact, the corpse itself disappeared very quickly.
Nevertheless, Lancier raised a scandal with the king himself and found himself pinned to the floor by a tangle of black tentacles, which drew wet from pus wounds on his face and chest. The defeated and disfigured young man had to shut up, but he held a grudge.
On the solemn occasion of the first gathering of counselors, Moran was supposed to make a speech, but given the situation, he refrained. Those who were just about to overthrow him would hardly be interested in his speeches. They were much more impressed by his strength.
“Words are for the weak, I prefer action,” his cold gaze communicated as his omnipresent octopus tentacles strangled the conspirators. He did not, however, choke them to the end. The terrified advisors surrendered and recognized him as ruler before they died of suffocation. Politics is the main thing. Sometimes you have to be humble, even if you’re unhappy about something. Everyone was dissatisfied with the monster king, except a few unpromising lazy people from noble families, who saw their positions at court as a burden, so they were happy with any ruler who would not bother them much. If the king alone can sink the enemy fleet, then he is a hero to them, because they themselves will not have to call the defense. And it did not matter that the enemy would not have attacked at all, if they had not learned that the king of Aquilania was a native of the abyss.
The people under the windows shouted with joy, because they were allowed to collect the expensive things left from the broken armada, which the waves had miraculously thrown ashore.
“You are a hero to the poor people, but not to us,” the Chancellor rubbed the marks on his neck left by Moran’s tentacles. Moran himself looked on indifferently, as if he’d never touched the venerable old man.
“I have protected my shores. That’s all. No thanks necessary,” he said icily.
“If it hadn’t been for you, we wouldn’t have been attacked at all,” Lancier interjected.
“Well, now they know it’s dangerous to attack,” Moran stood up and straightened to his full height. All his tentacles slid off the table and laced the hem of his robe. If you don’t remember what he’s wearing underneath, he’s as handsome as a deity.
“In case another armada arrives, call me,” he said as he left.
His new advisor, hunched at the entrance to the hall, looked like a creature of the sea himself. Apparently, all officials would soon be replaced by such creatures. What else can one expect when the country is ruled by an assembr? Or what else do they call the children of marriages between sea-dwellers and earth princesses?
Theon stared after him with only one thought. He must be overthrown before he floods the place.
The Union of Nineteen
She dreamed she was already in the temple of the sea god. The priestess’s outfit was like a robe, and for some reason she was wearing a crown with sharp prongs and large pearls on her head. The pendants of the crown rest on her forehead.
The place is empty, except for the statues. There are nineteen of them. She didn’t count, but she knew the exact number from somewhere, as if someone had whispered it to her. The sea god himself was nowhere to be found. There was on the mosaic walls, only a ligature of symbols. The interior of the temple is circular, surrounded by powerful columns. Statues are nestled between them, each in its own niche on an elevation. They all depict slender girls with scales and fins sprouting from their bodies, like mermaids. Or are they statues of mermaids standing with their tails on pedestals? Desdemona squinted, trying to see. All the statues are half-fish, half-woman. Their faces are all beautiful. Marble lips rounded as if in a whisper, marble fingers making some sign. The statues seem to be trying to tell her something.
In the middle of the hall is a large deep pool, also round. Something is moving in it. The water inside it is murky and greenish, and suddenly a voice calls out from it.
Desdemona wants to move towards the water. The voice urges obedience. It is indeed the voice of a deity. She rushes to the call and suddenly discovers that instead of legs she has a scaly mermaid’s tail. It’s impossible to stand on it. She falls, tries to crawl forward to the pool, but for some reason her fins are bleeding. A bright trail of blood is left on the floor of the temple. It folds into some kind of symbol. And someone in a scarlet cloak and carrying a sickle appears nearby. The sickle is swung in an attempt to kill the only living mermaid in the temple, and the statues watch.
Desdemona wakes up from her nap. She must have dozed off in the luxurious royal carriage that had been sent for them. Somehow its body resembled a giant shell. It was probably hence the dreams, inspired by associations with the sea.
On the way Candida was talking non-stop about the new king’s love for all things related to the sea and the depths of the sea: shells, coral, even dried jellyfish. Where had she heard such nonsense? Desdemona could not imagine how one could be fond of collecting dried jellyfish or starfish. One old man-neighbor was into it, and it ended in tragedy. His corpse was found covered, not with dried, but with live jellyfish.
The sea is not to be trifled with. And it is especially with the natives of the deep. The dream of the mermaid’s tail wouldn’t go away. Desdemona even lifted her skirts to check if her legs were not fused and not covered with scales.
“Have some decorum!” The stepmother was indignant.
Who would have heard such a thing from a woman who goes to all sorts of lengths to arrange a lucrative marriage?!
The carriage stopped at the front entrance to the palace. Desdemona was glad she was wearing her best dress, green with yellow trim and puffed sleeves. Of jewelry she had only enamel medallion with a portrait of her mother and a simple diadem with a pendant-pearl, falling on the forehead. Candida was covered in jewelry, but she could not outshine the other guests arriving at the palace.
It was difficult to get out of the shell carriage. The footman sent to fetch them had to put his arm around Desdemona’s waist. His hands turned out to be sharp and cold. They even scratched the corset slightly. It felt like he had blades under his gloves.
Among the guests, Desdemona noticed several of her friends, who had also come from the province. They didn’t even nod to her.
“It is competition,” the experienced Candida explained to her. “All the girls of your age are vying to be the young king’s bride. If he doesn’t choose one, there will be a fight over him.”
“I don’t see why he shouldn’t properly marry a princess from another state to gain the support of some neighboring power. Aren’t dynastic marriages in fashion anymore?”
“What support does he need, simpleton? He just defeated an enemy fleet himself! With such skill, he’ll conquer all the neighboring states and take their princesses as concubines. But to establish himself here in Aquilania, where he has not lived for many years, he needs to marry a local noblewoman.”
And Candida, it turns out, was well versed in politics. Apparently this was required to catch the next husband at court. Her husband hadn’t died yet, but Candida liked to say that in his condition he didn’t live long anyway, which was true. The healer warned that it was dangerous to go near her father. There is a great risk of contracting a deadly marine contagion. Desdemona had to avoid visiting him. At the last visit to the bedroom of her father, she was able to notice the puffy, like a toad, eyelids, puffiness of the limbs, as if drowned and scales on the skin.
