Page 66 of A Magic Deep & Drowning

Thade looked up from the scroll in his hands.

She tried again before she lost her nerve. “I’ve come to offer myself as penance. To fulfill the terms of the bargain so that there will be no need for a flood.”

He looked at her as if he had forgotten who she was. “What? What makes you think that is how it works?”

She had no time to form a response, for an advisor was immediately in Thade’s ear again.

He gave an irritated wave. “Yes, yes,” he told the merman. “Have the spear division ready for fortifying the palace.”

The advisor gave a short bow and left. Thade shifted his tail to legs, strode to the throne, and sat heavily in it. Behind him, Maurits’s voice hovered in its bubble. Thade looked about the room for a moment, before finally setting his gaze on Clara again. He gave a weary sigh. “Do you know what he has done? Do you know how—howfuckingstupid your lover is?”

Heat rushed to Clara’s cheeks, and she shook her head, both desperate and afraid to know.

“He enlisted the help of a dire whale to escape,” the king said, in a tone that told her that whatever a dire whale was, it was not good, not good at all. “The very same whale that I had guarding him—the mercenary creature! And then if that was not enough, he bargained away his life in exchange for the toppling of the whole fucking kingdom.”

The room went fuzzy at the edges. Green algae pulsed and flickered, alive. No, he wouldn’t have done that. Maurits might have been impulsive and cocky, but he wouldn’t have sacrificed himself. Not without telling her first. Not without sayinggoodbye. All the times he had deceived her, and this cut her the hardest. She struggled to make sense of it. How could the kingdom topple? What did that mean? She supposed if there was no Water Kingdom then there was no need for the bargain to be fulfilled; there was no flood. Would Maurits have truly allowed the entire kingdom to crumble, just to spare her life?

A low, piercing wail echoed through the hall, and everyone went still, from the frenzied servants and advisors, to Thade who had been slumped in his seat. The hair along the back of Clara’s neck lifted, and suddenly, being in this room with Thade seemed like the safest place she could be. For whatever was outthere, was not something that she could explain. The cry came again. None of Helma’s stories could have prepared Clara for the deep sense of wonder and sadness that ran through her. It was mournful and terrible and achingly beautiful all at once.

“Five centuries the dire whales have haunted the darkest depths, and left us to our own devices,” Thade said to seemingly no one in particular. “And with one reckless bargain, he has undone it all. Do you know what that means?” he asked, pinning Clara with his steely gaze. Her mouth too dry to answer, she just shook her head. “It means that there will be no more Water Kingdom. The throne will be destroyed, and chaos will reign. There will be no one to keep the humans in check. It is what the dire whales have always wanted. Free reign of the waters. Chaos.”

Clara thought of the gentle whale that had escorted her and Neese to the queen. She thought of the dead whale on the beach. Could a dire whale truly be so very different from the creatures she had encountered? But it didn’t matter. Maurits had charted a course for destruction of his world, all so that she would not be beholden to the terms of the bargain.

“I can see from your face that you did not know he was planning this. After all the lies and deceptions, I wonder if youcan ever forgive him for this final betrayal? Although I suppose he will be dead, so it matters little.”

“He is your brother,” she forced herself to say, shocked at the indifferent cruelty of his words. “How can you bear to speak of his death?”

“Because the Water Kingdom is bigger than him, bigger than either of us or our mother!” Thade said, exploding off his seat. “Long after we have succumbed to the tide, the kingdom will remain. If I can speak about his death without shedding a tear, it is because we were born to serve a cause greater than ourselves. That is what you humans fail to understand. You think only of your worldly pleasure, and dress it up in the name of Church and God so that when you die you are absolved of your responsibilities. But you leave behind a world rotting with disease, crumbling from greed. Is it any wonder that the wealthy burghers gambled away the futures of their children? What did they care for what comes after them?Theybear no effects of their actions. They have their worldly spoils, and then they are dust.”

At some point in Thade’s speech, all the advisors and guards and other creatures had disappeared, leaving the throne room in echoing silence. The whale called again, closer this time, vibrating the ground and shaking loose pearls from the pillars.

Thade lifted a heavy head. His gray eyes had gone dull. “I would leave now, if I was you. It will be here soon, and it is ravenous.”

“Where would I go?”

The corner of Thade’s mouth kicked up in a weary smile. “Isn’t that the grand question of our time? Where to go, where to go. Go back to land, and pray that the dikes hold, that the dire whales do not send a flood of their own. Or stay in the water, adapt as we did, until eventually there is nothing left. It hardly seems to matter.”

The shaking grew closer, more rocks and coral coming loose and scattering into the water. Had Maurits really died for this? It seemed a poor trade, his life for more destruction. Perhaps he thought it bought both worlds more time. Perhaps he had only been thinking of her, blinded by a love that she was only now beginning to grasp. Now she knew how he had felt watching her agree to go to her death; rage, helpless rage.

There was an explosive crash, and then the whole facade of the throne room was caving in. Clara dropped to her knees, covering her head. A few small rocks grazed her, one slicing down her arm and drawing blood. So this was how it would end. She braced herself for everything to go black, to be smothered and crushed, her breath stolen in the end not by water, but by the crumbling palace.

But no blackness came, and the stones settled, miraculously avoiding her. All went deathly still.

“So,” came Thade’s quiet voice, “you found a bargain better to your liking from my brother.”

He was not speaking to her. Just an inch, Clara lifted her arm so that she could see the recipient of these words.

In her mind, she had pictured a whale, bigger and more fearsome than anything she had ever seen before. Large, gnashing teeth, and serpent eyes. But the creature that had come through the wall and was now floating amidst the destruction had none of those things. It was large, but so had been the whale that had escorted Clara and Neese before. Continents of barnacles clung to its back and its fins, tendrils of seaweed crowning its head. Its eyes were cloudy, its flesh cross-hatched with healed scars. It was old, so old. Clara felt as if she should prostrate herself before this ancient being, beg its forgiveness for trespassing in its domain. But she was frozen to the floor, too awed to do anything other than watch this final moment play out.

Yes, came a voice, echoing both inside Clara’s head andthe crumbling hall.A kingdom falls and a people rises. It is a good trade. A fair trade.

Thade’s knuckles whitened as he gripped the arms of the throne, but he did not shrink back, and Clara could not help but admire him for his conviction. Had she been in his place, she did not think she could have suffered being the sole object of the dire whale’s attention. “I was born to sacrifice my life for this kingdom.” He rose, his jaw locking. “Get it over with.”

The dire whale said nothing, its cloudy eyes tracking Thade’s every movement. Then it opened its creaking jaw. The groan was low and long, and Clara felt it in her teeth, her hair. Closing her eyes, she put her hands over her ears, but it did nothing to stop the sound from crashing around her, through her, like a wave.

When at last the terrible roar had died away, Clara chanced to open her eyes again. The whale was still where it had been, but Thade was gone. His crown lay at the foot of the crumbling throne.

There will be balance. There will be peace,came the dire whale’s disembodied voice.

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