Saturday rolled his eyes to show how little he cared for the objections of octopi. “She can’t get tattooed without the cuttlefish’s approval, you soft-headed bully. We’ve only just wed. In the Autumn Provinces, in the Worsted Wood. I put a wreath of kelp round her neck, and she painted her name upon my eyelids. She wore green; I wore blue. We danced for three days, my wife and I—along with a Wyverary, a wombat, a Dodo, a family of trolls, a matchstick girl, a gramophone, a whole gang of shadows, a Yeti and his dog, a talking lamp, Winds of every color, a wairwulf and both his wives. Seventeen versions of me were there, along with her parents and mine and a pooka and Ajax Oddson, the greatest Racemaster who ever lived. We told each other our true names and fell asleep among our friends, covered in moonlight and the silver comfort of the right ending. She is my wife and I am her own and you were not invited. Leave us alone.”
September’s heart shook within her. The way he spoke sounded strange to her. It did not sound like a lie. It did not sound like a clever trick played with sly glee. It did not have his circus grin peeking out on one side. It sounded just the way it did when her father told someone how he had married her mother. It sounded like a memory. But it had never happened. Of course it had never happened! They’d never even met a troll before Hawthorn came galumphing into the Redrum Cellar. She would remember painting her name on anyone’s eyelids, let alone Saturday’s delicate blue lashes. But she knew his voice like her own, and somehow, she knew he wasn’t lying to the furious eight-armed assassins. And September remembered the little girl they’d seen that long-ago night on the Gears of the World, the girl with pale blue skin and a mole on her left cheek. Saturday had called her their daughter, come to visit them in the past as Marid children always do. September could hardly speak.
“Did you truly marry a saber-toothed tiger?” the Octopus Assassin asked Saturday incredulously.
“I’m not a saber-toothed tiger,” said September through gritted, non-saber teeth.
“Close enough!” snapped Hugger-Muggery. “If you’re hitched, she won’t mind letting the cuttlefish ink her properly.”
“That’s why we came,” Saturday lied boldly.
“Only take us quickly,” September said. “We haven’t much time.”
Hugger-Muggery narrowed her watery eyes. “What’s the hurry, hm?”
The Cantankerous Derby, September thought. My crown running away from me. The thought surprised her. She touched the circlet of jeweled keys on her head. If it is my crown. Maybe there is someone better, in all that crowd in the Plaited Plaza. Hawthorn and Tamburlaine, or Sadie Spleenwort, or the Green Wind. Oh, I wish I were back in the Redrum Cellar! I couldn’t leave, but I knew what was right and what was wrong!
But she lied along with Saturday: “No hurry! I’m just … eager to meet a real live cuttlefish!”
The Octopus Assassin snorted bubbles. “Dryhairs. We will escort you, obviously. I never trust anyone with greater or fewer limbs than myself. How can I? I see the world in eights—eight directions, eight seasons, eight virtues, and eight deadly sins. Eight is holy! Eight is supreme! Who knows how a bear like you sees? In twos, for your weak arms? In fours, for arms and skinny legs together? Your ugly hard head makes five extremities, but then you have ten fingers and ten toes. In your murky mind, are there ten seasons? Twenty directions on a compass rose? There can never be peace between us! The best we can hope for is … curiosity. I have only felt curiosity for one dryhair in my life—Woofwarp, the Spider-Monk of the Torii Orchards. He was the boiling hot green of an emperor tetra fish and his venom could lay waste to a thousand fugu! I taught him our ways and he taught me the devastating Flying Snowstorm Spinneret Strangler. We saw the eights of the universe eye to eye to eye to eye. But I had to abandon him. He would not leave his rickety orange gates for the excitement of Ys or even the mysteries of Mumkeep. So what? I don’t cry about it! Only dryhairs cry. When they feel hurt, they stop fooling themselves that anyone can truly survive on land and the Sea pours out of them. It’s beautiful, but they forget quickly. Dryhairs come and go like punches in the wind! Only the Sea lasts!”
Hugger-Muggery shot forward through the water like an eight-armed orange bullet. When she drew up her tentacles, she looked like a flower. When she snapped them back again, she became a spear. The other Octopus Assassins dragged the Bathysphere along behind, even though September kept trying to explain that Fizzwilliam would be more than happy to provide his own propulsion. They ignored her with the kind of brute force only an octopus can muster.
September could see a hundred things she wanted to investigate pass by on the ocean floor below. How could so many ships have wrecked in the whole history of the world? After half so many, September thought people might have considered giving up the naval life. Strange fish moved between safes and lockers and sunken chests of drawers. Their snouts and gills glowed in brilliant shades of purple or yellow or electric blue, but they wore robes spun from rough brown kelp, belted with ropes from the riggings of all those dead ships. Fizzwilliam gave up on convincing the Pieces of Eight to let him drive his own self. He told her that the creatures in robes were monkfish. They tended the vast loot of Mumkeep Reef, kept an accurate count, and formed a number of societies to discuss the best pieces and what they might mean, as well as to drink a great deal of brine brandy and tell jokes about squid.