Whatever half a tide was, it felt too long. I fidgeted in the luxurious quarters for I had no idea how long (long enough to feel my hair growing, I think) until I decided that screw it, I wasn't Ormiss' pet. I was his consort, and well... I wasn't just going to sit around like some trinket on a shelf.
I stepped out of the quarters. No guards at my door. Already better than expected.
"Which way..." I murmured. My choices were left and right, and the hallways were endless and snaking. My quarters overlooked a walled garden and gave me no view of anything useful on the other side. So I had no idea where I was or where I wanted to go.
I did know I didn't want to bump into Her Majesty the Queen again. That was high on my list of priorities. I also didn't want to go too far just in case Korr took a sudden turn for the worse or Itek tried to peck out someone's eyeballs.
I chose left for the sake of variety and worried a fingernail with my teeth. How badly had I messed up fucking Ormiss? Probably pretty badly. I just hadn't been thinking clearly the night before. If I'd been thinking clearly I just would have humped a sponge and told Ormiss to take care of himself.
"Damn," I whispered. A few hippocamp moved around the corridors and gave me looks ranging from polite looks of inquiry to outright *what are you doing here* hostility. From how they were dressed, they looked like other nobles or courtiers, although I did see what looked like servants and pages bustling about. They did not look at me except a passing glance before hurrying on their way in the *I am too busy and important to bother with you* way that servants had.
Upper house servants. Snobs.
Every corridor mostly looked the same and I promptly got lost. There was also a lack of doors to poke my head in, just snaking corridors that branched and twisted and snaked without ever seeming to go up or down. Where the heck were all the stairs in this place? The palace had multiple levels, so how did I get down? Or up? Did I have to jump out a window?
I felt like jumping out of a window.
"Lady-Consort Theia," a voice said behind me. A female voice.
I half-turned. "Yes?"
A female hippocamp came over to me. Where the hell had she come from? I was in a long curling corridor with only two doors and no windows, and she had just sort of... appeared.
She looked a bit older, maybe the Queen's age or thereabouts, with deep green-blue hair of a rich shade, ornately arranged on top of her head so it curled down around her breasts in cascades like waves. It was adorned with pearls and pins topped in an ornate white substance that looked like clusters of bubbles, giving her hair the impression of crashing waves on the shore. She had deep purple eyes shot through with cracks of black, similar to Ormiss, and was bedecked in necklaces and rings that had chains that looped back to ornate bands on her wrists. She was taller than I was, and the way she stood made me feel even smaller and grubbier than usual.
There wasn't anything mean or nasty in her expression, it was just the usual guarded expression of a noblewoman. If anything, she seemed to smile a bit, a warmth in her dark eyes.
I resisted the urge to fidget and duck my head and shove my hands behind my back and mumble something, expecting a sharp word or cuff behind the skull.
Ormiss' mother, perhaps?
She paced closer to me, her dress swishing about her hips. Like mine, it was in many layers of sea-silk gossamer, hers in muted shades of peach and storm gray.
"Are you looking for something?" she inquired.
"Just looking," I replied. "Ormiss is occupied, so I thought I'd occupy myself."
That sounded so stupid. So, so stupid. If she smacked me, I deserved it.
Her face doesn't move, but her brows twitch. "I see. Well, if Ormiss has left you to your own devices, I can't fault you if you find your way into trouble."
"Is there trouble this way?" I asked.
A compressed smile. "It's a palace."
Right. Stupid me. I should have just smacked myself.
"I am Lady Piama. Why don't I show you the way out of the palace? I was just going to go down to the market."
She added that last sentence a bit quickly, before I could take offense at the second sentence. I tried to figure out if I should trust her—Tynne's mother had taught me to never trust a high-bred in their own home. My maids back in haven had spotted me for a low-bred right away. Piama didn't offer me any clues, not that high-breds usually did, and I resisted the urge to fidget. I'd never been very good at reading people, and making a mistake now could be deadly.
I'd been screwing up (and around...) a lot lately. And when I haven't been screwing up, I'd been generally dead weight on everything.
But what was I going to tell her? No, I'd rather just randomly wander this infernal palace until I die of starvation?
"I'd enjoy seeing the market," I said, trying to smile. My lips just stretched over my teeth. I probably looked ghoulish.
"This way," she gestured with one finger and went back the opposite way.
Riiight. I'd been going the completely wrong direction.
She glanced at me as I made an effort to remember to walk beside her, and not behind her. Her eyes trailed over my face and down my arms, to the exposed scars over my back. She didn't ask about them. Instead, she said, "So I was one of Ormiss' teachers."
"For magery, you mean?" I asked.
"Mostly magery."
"Do all hippocamp have magic?"
She laughed like I had said something hilarious. "Do all wolf-shifters have magic?"
"They all have magic, but none are mages," I said dryly. Wolf-shifters weren't mages. Their magic was in their third form that was excellent for ripping things in two, their keen sense of smell and hearing, their physical endurance, and their ability to heal. But not a single one was a mage. They didn't even bother to have their own clergy or oracles for the Churn. Even humans had those.
A scowl flits across her face. "Point taken. No, not all hippocamp have magic. It is a rather rare ability. Tends to run in bloodlines."
"So are you related to Ormiss?"
"Quite distantly. He and I can both trace our bloodlines back to founding sea serpents and unicorns."
Well, every hippocamp could do that, because that's where hippocamp came from: sea serpents mated with unicorns. Maybe not every hippocamp was a purebred, but every hippocamp somewhere wayyyy far back had a sea serpent and a unicorn progenitor. I didn't say so, though, because she preened a bit. Maybe she just meant they actually knew their lineage all the way back.
"How long have the unicorns and sea serpents been gone?" I asked.
"A long time," she said. "The sea serpents disappeared into the deep... a long time ago. And unicorns were around longer but... they've been gone hundreds of years as well. No one knows what happened to them. The sea-serpents wanted to explore the depth. There weren't many of them, you see, never were, and they liked treasure and secrets and when there was no more treasure nor secrets they got bored and..."
I nodded.
"The unicorns, though, they were always gentle-hearted, the stories say. Well, they had a reputation as fearsome warriors in the early days, then gentled, I suppose, it's a bit murky. They loved to play in the sea shallows, and you see, unicorns oozed magic. Everything about them was magical, especially their hooves and horns. When they played in the surf, they purified the water and poured magic into it and turned it and the beaches sparkling, so of course, that magic lured the sea serpents to the shallows."
Lady Piama was clearly very proud of her connection to her progenitors. I let her spin the family story.
"...and that mutual love of magic resulted in the hippocamp. The sea serpents were fascinated by the unicorns' magic, and the unicorns loved the sea serpent's collection of secrets. There were some land wars and conflicts. The unicorns pulled back to their homes in the north, the sea-serpents, having no reason to stay in the shallows, pulled into the deep in pursuit of mysteries, and before anyone realized, they were gone."
"You mean everyone thought the unicorns were keeping to themselves but then they realized they were all dead?" I asked.
"Eventually everyone realized that the unicorns hadn't taken part in the Churn or Seat in a very long time. The sea-serpents that remained had not seen them, and now the serpents are gone too. There are claims that sea serpents have been spotted by sailors, but no one has seen a unicorn in a very, very long time, despite looking and searching. Even the dragons have not seen one."
How sad to just fade away like that.
"They would not be the first old races to fade away," she said. "The phoenixes are gone as well."
"Yes," I nodded. "Everyone expects them to come back, though. They are phoenixes. Isn't the story if you can find the ashes you can ignite them and bring a phoenix back?"
She chuckled and nodded. "Yes, that's why no one says the phoenixes are actually dead. Just gone."
We stepped through a grand hallway lined with decorative floors overlaid on shifting water, and then into a courtyard, and through that, we emerged onto the street.
The guards nodded to both of us.
"This way," she bade me with a crooked finger. Then she said, "You weren't our princess, but Ormiss is going to try to make you one."
So was that a compliment or not? She was so slippery and just... flat. "Ormiss is the Regent. He would be very happy if his cousin was found."
She barely acknowledged my statement except with one of her own. "Ormiss usually gets what he wants."
She reminded me too much of Tynn's mother. My instincts said I needed to not be with her. They yelled at me like back when I'd found myself unfortunate enough to be in Tynne's mother's line of sight: drawing a noblewoman's attention was not a good idea. I followed her lead down the path towards a bustling market that lined each side of the wide waterway that Ormiss had brought us all through.
"You have three other consorts, don't you?" she asked.
"Four." We moved closer to the market. Everyone that passed gave her a wide berth, and gave me a sideways look before hustling away as fast as they could. Some little hippocamp children pointed at me.
She pulled a little knit bag out one of the folds of her gown and shook it out, not seeming to care about my answer or the hippocamp kids ( Foals? Colts? Pups? Tadpoles? Spawn?) pointing at me. Instead, she headed out towards a vendor that had some strange-looking circular pillow-like things stacked in small pyramids. The gaggle of children followed along like geese.
Piama picked one of the little pillow things and put it into her knit bag. The stall vendor nodded to her and didn't ask for payment. Piama also didn't speak to me or look at me. I drifted behind her while she moved about the market, everyone giving her a wide berth.
I didn't recognize most of what was in the market, and I tried not to gawk. Piama lingered for a while over a wagon full of strange bristly things, so I wandered across a bridge to the other side of the canal, which had vendors sporting woven baskets full of creatures with hard outer bodies and claws and various strange fish and long, thin slimy creatures laid out for perusal. The clacky-claw things were still alive and squirming in their baskets and nets, while most of the fish were dead.The gaggle of children followed me, snickering and teasing me from a safe distance about being a land-dweller and not knowing what anything was.
There were also tanks made of reeds so tightly woven they didn't leak, and still-living fish and such squirmed around in them. A few were set up high and had labels on them (I couldn't read) and I watched one vendor fish out a long, thin creature and place it into a customer's waiting basket. The creature flipped and flopped. Another vendor scooped up ugly looking shells and put those into baskets.
I wandered a few more stalls down, keeping pace with Piama, who was on the other side of the channel, and there was a stall that didn't have anyone on either side. There were an assortment of fish and such, and sponges on ropes drying out and waiting for customers to buy them, and the strange wood-rock that the hippocamp seemed to make into hair decorations. The vendor didn't greet me, just watched, while I admired some purple wood-rock brambles hanging on a woven reed rope next to the sponges.
"What is this?" I risked asking. It wasn't like nobody knew I was the land-dweller in residence.
"It's called coral," he said.
Coral. I'd never heard of coral. But now I knew what it was.
He also had a few tanks, and in one something sloshed about, and a tentacle peeked over the edge, just a strange little gelatinous tip in dark red-purple.
One of the little boys from the group got braved, darted up to me, and teased, "You don't know what coral is? You're wearing it!"
"Now I know what coral is," I told him as I admired some yellow corals.
He puffed up, then burst out, "Stupid land-dweller!"
His buddies ooo'd and ahh'd.
I rolled my eyes and ignored him. Street kids. Been one myself.
"Stupid land-dweller!" he shouted again, dancing around me.
"Yep, guess so," I said as I tried to step around him to look at another rope-length of coral, these in a bright pink-orange shade. The tentacle of whatever was in the tank peeked over the edge a few more inches, like it was testing the breeze. The kid ducked around me and stuck his tongue out. I sighed at him. "Really? Move."
"Stupid land-dweller, stupid land-dweller!" he chanted, jumping back and forth, his voice climbing into a little kid screech of delight while his friends urged him on.
Two tentacles shot out of the tank and latched onto the kid.
The kid shrieked. The tentacles yanked and dragged the kid towards the tank. A third tentacle shot out towards me and wrapped around my wrist.
A thousand little things sucked it onto my hand and the thing in the tank heaved itself up, sloshing water over the edge and the boubous top of it hefted over the edge of the tank and it yanked, more tentacles shooting out over the edge and lashing into the kid and I. Little suckers gripped my arm with terrifying strength and stinging prickles burned on my skin. The kid, however, had purple spots forming around where the tentacles had him.
I hooked one arm around his chest and hauled backwards with all my strength. The tentacles stretched and the suckers tried to rip my skin up off the bones, but the tentacles released the kid and lashed themselves around me instead.
"Get out of here!" I told the kid as another tentacle shot out of the tank and the thing heaved itself up and a huge eye made contact with mine.
My diaphanous dress tore as tentacles tried to get a grip on it. I relaxed into its grip for a second. The suckers attached with violent force and a hundred little pricks stabbed into my skin like meadow nettles. It shifted its grip, thinking it had caught its prey, and with a deep breath, I threw myself back against the tentacles.
Half of them lost their grip. Pop pop pop pop!
I threw myself back again, scrambled across the road on my ass, and got the rest of the tentacles off me.
The thing waved its tentacles around in fury, then slid back into its tank.
The hell was that thing? I turned towards the kid, who was on his butt and crying, and covered in purple splotches and little red dots. I rolled to my knees and pulled him the rest of the way out of reach of the creature, and scrambled backwards on my ass before I got up.
"What the—" I said under my breath. Blood trickled out of dozens of little prick-bites where the suckers had gotten him, and his neck was swelling up and purple. There were too many to try to squeeze any of them to get the venom out. What did I do? Nobody seemed to be moving.
Nobody cared about street kids, and this one was the usual urchin. The same kind of urchin I'd been.
"My name is Theia," I told him, just to tell him something while my heart pounded. I touched the swellings on his neck. They were squishy and bloody. He sniffled and looked at his swelling hands in sheer terror. I looked over my shoulder at Piama for some kind of clue what to do, even though if the hippocamp were anything like land-dwellers, nobody would do a thing for this kid.
Piama looked at me in a strange way. Nobody was moving. The vendor that had the thing in the tank was staring at me like he'd seen his own death.
I gripped the kid's swelling hands in mine, rubbed his arm.
"Lady-Consort!" a male voice shouted. Two hippocamp males dressed like lantern-bearaers (but minus the lanterns) ran towards us. Another one ran in the other direction after some shouting.
They descended upon us, and one jabbed a spear towards the tank where the creature waved a few tentacles like it was going to try again. Another one took stock of my skin, and the kid in one moment, his skin washing clammy and gray.
"I'm fine," I told him, "what about the boy?"
He seemed confused, then realized the kid was still there. He grappled with this for a second, then shouted, "Who knows the pup's parents? Come forward!"
Nobody moved.
"Come on, someone has to know who his parents are!" I shouted at the frozen crowd.
The other hippocamp warrior smacked a questing tentacle with his spear. "What is this thing doing unrestrained, shop-keeper!"
"Come forward!" the hippocamp next to me bellowed.
Finally, a female wove her way through the crowd, and said, "I know his parents."
"Then take him to them quickly," the warrior said, pushing the boy towards him.
"But—" she started to say.
"It will be okay," I told the boy, who was still staring at his puffy hands and weeping. I smoothed my hands over his cheeks. At least he had a family. That was good. And he didn't seem to be getting any puffier, even if the wounds were still bleeding and his neck was scary swollen. I touched the swelling marks on his neck. "They aren't getting any worse. In fact, I think they're getting better. I bet they just hurt, right?"
"Lady-Consort—" the hippocamp next to me said under his breath, then he caught himself and snapped at the female, "Take him. Now."
She scurried forward, choked down a sob as she looked at the kid, then said, "Follow me."
The crowd pushed apart to let them pass. Piama watched with a cool expression from the other side of the channel.
"This way," the hippocamp told me, "we have to go quickly now."
"Why?" I asked. What the hell was going on?
"This way," the hippocamp said.
"But—" I said, wanting to go after the kid to make sure he made it to his parents. The other street kids had disappeared. That was the most normal thing about this.
"Please," the hippocamp warrior said as his cohort jabbed his spear at another questing tentacle. "The Healers will meet us."
"I'm fine," I said. But then I said, "Fine."
My dress was torn and ripped anyway.
I followed the warriors back towards the palace, where we were met halfway by a harried and panicked looking Healer Eaon, who yanked up short in the courtyard as he looked at me. But before he could say anything, a furious Ormiss, covered in stormy magic and crackling purple lightening, emerged from some other alcove and stormed up to me.
"I'm fine!" I told them all as they descended upon me, each one demanding to know what the hell had happened, and Ormiss snarling at Eaon that I better not die.
Ormiss fell back to pace nervously, crackling like a storm, snapping orders at warriors who came and went and demanding that the vendor that had brought the creature into the market without proper restraint be thrown in jail until he could deal with him, as Eason checked me over. The suckers had left little pink and purple bruises with a center pin-prick. My arms were covered, and my dress was torn and shredded, but I wasn't hurt at all.
"And kill that damn thing!" Ormiss was shouting, "I want that thing out of the market and that vendor punished for this! The fool should burn for his stupidity!"
"Are you sure you feel well?" Eaon was asking, ignoring Ormiss' drama.
"I mean, they itch a bit," I said, scratching one idly. Bug bites had never really bothered me unless I had gotten really bitten up. "It's nothing. I feel fine. What about the kid?"
The hippocamp warriors that had retrieved me explained there'd been a child that had been badly bitten, especially around the neck.
"Already swelling, but still standing," one said grimly, hanging his head.
"Children can linger a bit longer, unfortunately," Eaon said sadly. "Poor child. It got him around the neck?"
"Yes. She pulled it free."
Eaon sighed.
"What's going to happen to the kid?" I demanded. "What do you mean linger?"
"The venom is very toxic," Eaon told me.
"Well, shouldn't you be looking after him?"
"There's nothing I can do," Eaon told me. "There's no anti-venom. His survival is not up to me."
"Don't say that!"
Ormiss snarled, magic still crackling over his arms and hair once all his warriors had been sent on their way. He pushed himself over and stared at me. "My love, are you—"
"She appears to be fine," Eaon told him under his breath. "But you should take her and let her rest."
"Of course, of course," Ormiss said quickly. He hugged me tight, squishing me against his many charms, and the prick of the Trinket's pointed arms stabbed into my breast. "My love, I should never have left you alone. This place—"
"I'm fine," I pushed back. "Do you see? I'm barely bitten up. What about the kid?"
He smoothed his hands over my face, pale and stricken-looking. "I should—"
"Will you knock it off? That kid might die and—"
"I am dealing with the matter," he said, "now I must worry after you."
/*******
Peeps----
It has not been the best time here at Chateau Derp.
Lettuce died suddenly. She was medically frail (as you all know), but her death came as a shock. She was fine and demanding dinner and running after us, and a few hours later, she quietly died.
At the same time, we were going down the diagnostic rabbit hole with our other cat, the news was progressively more grim, and now we have confirmation she has stomach cancer. Not just that, she has a very rare and aggressive form. She has weeks, maybe a few months. It's almost impossible to process because right now she doesn't seem to be very sick. She vomits once every few days and plays with her mouth like they do when they've got some hair stuck on their tongue from grooming. We were expecting ulcers and acid reflux. Nope. Cancer. BAD cancer.
California, if you haven't been paying attention, is on fire. I posted a picture in my FB group of what Weds looked like when it was basically end of days here. It's so bad.
2020. Sigh.
~ Merry
******/