“Yes, all right,” said Elliot. “I understand. Thank you for your wisdom. Please, please do not get any more literal.”
“You’re welcome for my wisdom. Which reminds me of a small favour I’d like you to do me. We’re all very concerned about young Luke,” said Gregory. “And a little birdie might have told me something about someone called Dale Wavechaser. Could you be a darling and point him out for me, or should I ask Luke which one he is?”
Elliot groaned and hid his face in his hands. “You Sunborns are not subtle. And if you go on being unsubtle, Luke is going to find out, and he is going to kill me!”
“Interesting, Little Red,” said Gregory Sunborn. “So which one is—”
“That one,” said Elliot, gesturing dramatically.
Dale waved innocently back as he danced past.
“Oh, quite pretty,” said Gregory, eyeing Dale with the air of a connoisseur.
Elliot put his head back in his hands and thumped his forehead against his palm. “I’m so dead.”
The party was not cheering, in the end, but good news came in the morning. Apparently the small slice of bandit territory they had managed to reclaim—and Elliot noticed, immediately resettle with humans—was being assailed by murderous mermaids.
Elliot was overjoyed.
“I promised I would never come on a military foray without your express permission,” Elliot said virtuously. “And I never will. Can I have your permission to go see the mermaids, please and thank you?”
“I don’t think you understand what the words ‘direct order’ or ‘ask permission’ mean,” said Commander Woodsinger as she readied her own pack for the expedition. “Or ‘military protocol’ or ‘chain of command.’ Some of your tutors say you’re rather bright, so I’m not sure what the problem is.”
“You’re so right,” said Elliot, sidling into the commander’s tent. “I have to give you a reason why I would be a valuable asset on the mission! I think I can speak to mermaids.”
Commander Woodsinger looked around her bare room for patience. “And if you thought you could speak to the little bluebells by the side of the road, should I take you on every forest mission?”
“I mean I’ve been researching mermaids in depth, and due to that research, I am sixty-eight percent certain I can converse with mermaids, and thus perhaps resolve this matter without bloodshed!” Elliot looked at the commander’s expression. “Seventy-two percent certain.”
“Cadet Schafer, how would you describe your conversational style?”
“Er . . .,” said Elliot, and grinned. “Drive it like I stole it.”
“I am simply wondering where your misplaced confidence in your own ability to have charming and all-resolving discussions comes from.”
“Fair point,” said Elliot. “But is there anyone else with an even forty percent certainty they can talk with mermaids in the Border camp?”
Commander Woodsinger paused. Elliot was ninety-five percent certain she was counting in her head, or possibly praying.
“Fine,” the commander said at length. “But this is going to be under controlled circumstances, with an entire array of armed forces at your back.”
“Thank you so much for your permission, Commander, you know I would never leave camp without it,” said Elliot.
All that other stuff seemed like more of a suggestion to him. He was sure the mermaids would not feel like chatting when faced by hostile forces.
He kept that to himself until they sailed—the first time Elliot had ever been on the sea—to the village in the nearby bay. They were welcomed by the villagers, who seemed settled into their new home already and who seemed to be under the impression they had come to slaughter all the mermaids.
The villagers held a mermaid-slaughtering party, of which Elliot approved very much. It gave him the chance to work under the cover of darkness and noise.
He made his way over to Luke, who was explaining to several raptly disappointed young ladies that he did not not dance.
“Hi, loser, I want you,” said Elliot.
“Oh no, what now?” said Luke, and Elliot beamed.
“I’m going to do something very dangerous,” said Elliot. “And I need you to hold the rope.”
The lake by the village was vast, so big Elliot wondered if he should think of it as a lagoon. There were three large named rivers that fed into it: Scimiar, the largest, the one that ran out to sea, was so wide and calm it looked like a road. Elliot could see the shine of tiny rivers running beneath the undergrowth all around, like the faintest threads of silver embroidery running through swathes of dark fabric, all of them feeding it. There were woods all around, trees so thick and tall that harpies could have nested in their boughs, and yet the trees only seemed like a midnight-black fringe on the edge of all that water. The moon was full, shining so bright it seemed to have suffused the whole sky with a faint silver glow.
Under the full moon, between silver and dark, the mermaids’ lagoon waited. The water was shockingly cold as Elliot waded in, so cold that the first touch of lake water around his ankles made his teeth clench. He kept walking, and ripples chased each other before and after him, one ripple silver and one dark.
Silver and dark, silver and dark, moon bright and night black, the rings in the water formed around him. He felt stones and earth and slime beneath his feet, weeds tangling around his legs, as he walked. He was up past his chest and standing in a dark ring when the soft brush of another weed, gently unfurling against his leg, clutched instead and formed a grip cold and hard as steel.
Elliot was only able to get out one shout before he disappeared beneath the surface, and he knew the mermaid did not intend for him to break the surface and give another.
The scream had lost him his air: he felt another gasp escape him and saw it rise, a bright silver bubble among green weeds. Below the surface the water still looked silver, but it was a shadowed silver, almost pewter, and in the dull silver world Elliot glimpsed among the weeds a white face and sharp teeth.
Then she was on him, fast as a shark, terrible and defying all stories like the unicorn. She had him pinned to the stones at the bottom of the lake, her hands stone-cold and twining-strong. Elliot fought the urge to struggle and lash out: he used his last moments of strength and air to gesture to her. He made the gesture so many of the mermaids were making in so many of Maximilian Wavechaser’s sketches.
The mermaid hesitated. He thought, he was almost sure she did, and then the rope around his waist tautened and dragged him inexorably across the stones and out of her reach.
Elliot broke the surface of the water gasping and choking, but he called out in a breaking water-logged voice to both Luke and the mermaid: “Stop. Wait.”