The sildroher went to shore to taste human language, to sample the decadence of their world, but also to sample them. It was a means of easing their longing, controlling their temptations. Always, the sea folk have been drawn to mortals, to their solid bodies and brief lives, the way they strive and toil and quiver with endeavor. So why did Ulla feel no desire? Why could she not be like Signy swaying slowly, clasped in mortal arms, or Roffe plucking kisses from each eager human mouth? Was she doomed to sit at the edge of the world here as she had below the waves?
It was only then that she saw the black-clad boy crossing the room toward her. The shadows seemed to shift as he passed, pulled along by him like a tide. Ulla took in the familiar angles of his face, the slash of his dark brows, and felt fear coil in her stomach. She touched her tongue to her teeth, already imagining the song she would raise to defend herself. Such music would doom her—sildroher magic was not for mortal eyes. But the thought reassured her nonetheless.
“I remember you,” he said when at last he reached her. His eyes were gray agate.
That isn’t possible, she thought to say, but instead asked, “Who are you?”
“The seer’s apprentice.”
“And can he really tell the future?” she asked, her curiosity getting the best of her.
“He can tell the king what he wants to hear, and that’s more important than knowing the future.”
Ulla knew she should say her good nights, put distance between herself and this odd creature, but she’d had too much wine to heed caution. “Why do you say you remember me? And why do you watch me like a black-backed gull seeking prey?”
He leaned forward slightly, and Ulla could not help drawing back.
“Come to the Prophetic’s Tower tomorrow,” he said, voice cool as glass. “Come, and I’ll tell you all you wish to know.”
“To the library?” She could not read. Only the sildroher royal family could, trained in the ways of diplomacy and treaties.
“I do not expect you to read,” he said as he slipped past her without a sound. “Any more than you expect me to breathe underwater.”
Ulla slept badly that night. When the sun had set, the cold had crept into her bones, and she shivered beneath the covers. She could not get warm or purge the scent of sweat and tallow and roasting meat from her nose. She couldn’t get used to the feeling of the bed beneath her, the sense that her heavy body might sink right through the sheets. Then there was the painful pressure that had pushed at her abdomen until at last she remembered the chamber pot and what she was meant to do with it. When at last she dozed, she dreamed of her parents, of her father’s cold eyes and her mother’s sorrowful hands tugging at her hair as if, were she only able to pull hard enough, she might change its color.
Ulla woke early, filled the basin nearly to the brim, and plunged her face into the cold water, letting the silence fill her ears, trying to remember herself. Her few belongings had already been placed in her dressing room, and she quickly checked the contents of her locked trunk, making sure the sykurn blade was safely bundled in the folds of her scales.
She could not quite settle. Her skin smelled sour, wrapped tight and stiff around her frame. Her stomach growled. She ran her hand over the bed’s embroidered coverlet, drew off her slippers, and felt the cool stone floors through the soles of her feet. She plunged her toes into the soft furs that had been laid before a vast hearth. Though the summer air was warm, the palace was all cold rock and high ceilings, and the remnants of a fire smoldered in the grate. She had been too tired to realize it was there the previous night. But now Ulla knelt before it, felt the heat radiating from it against her palms, and had to keep herself from reaching for those glowing embers. She had studied the songs and artifacts. She knew the idea of fire. She’d been taught about it, sung the word. But seeing it—so close and so alive … It was like having a little sun to keep all for herself.
The chamber had tall, pointed windows that looked out over the royal gardens and the forest beyond, and on the table set before them was a gray glass ewer full of what Ulla thought might be roses, heavy-headed things, their smell sweet and strange, their pale, dawn-pink petals slightly darker at the center. She touched her fingers to the place on her neck where her gills had been before the song of transformation, then inhaled deeply, the scent of the flowers filling her nose and lungs and making her dizzy. She plucked a petal and laid it thoughtfully on her tongue. When she chewed, the taste was disappointingly bitter.
She was grateful when a maid arrived bearing a tray of tea and salt fish, followed by servants carrying pails of steaming water. Though Ulla had been told about bathing, she’d never been properly dirty before, and she was shocked at the dust that washed from her body in a gritty cloud, the slip of sweet oils that coated her. But nothing was more startling than the sight of her funny little toes curled over the tub’s edge, the tender bones of her ankles, the smooth incrustations of her claws—nails. The water felt too slick on her skin, flat and saltless as the rivers she had explored with Signy and Roffe on cloudy afternoons.
Once Ulla was clean and dry and patted with powder, the maid helped her into a gown and laced her tight, then vanished out the door with a nervous glance over her shoulder. Only then, in the silence of her room, did Ulla finally see herself in the mirror that hung above her dressing table. Only then did she realize why she’d drawn so many stares from the sildroher—and from the humans as well. Away from the blue depths of the sea, the sallow gray-green tinge of her skin was gone and she glowed burnished bronze as if she had tucked sunlight beneath her tongue. Her hair was black as it had always been, but here in the bright light of the human world, it shone like polished glass. Her eyes were still dark and strange, but dark like a midnight path that might lead somewhere wonderful, strange like the sound of a new language.
She left her room, the palace silent around her, as servants went quietly about their business, careful not to wake the revelers who had stumbled to their beds only hours before. Ulla realized there were mirrors everywhere—as if humans were afraid they might forget what they looked like—and in them she saw her new self reflected, tall and lithe, floating in gray lace like sea foam, the pearls of her bodice gleaming softly, stars through fog.
The apprentice was waiting at the base of the tower stairs.
Without a word, they began to climb, Ulla clinging to the banister as they rose higher, the air thick with dust that glittered in beams of early morning sun.