Page 45 of Depths
Ugo snorted again, unable to contain himself. “They weren’t ‘big’ enough for him, so he went back—”
My guard darted backward as Felipe reached for him.
I pressed my lips together and suppressed my own laugh. “Well, after all, if you’re paying for a spell …”
“Exactly.” Felipe’s hand shot out in agreement as he sent a disapproving look to Ugo. “He can’t take anything seriously if it sounds the least bit dirty.”
“I have a brother-in-law who’s like that,” I murmured. “And it’s even worse because he speaks through thoughts and can plant images in your mind. Did you know he made my sister imagine all the courtiers naked once?”
Both the guards swooped closer, interest piqued. I told them about Quinn as we swam past the fan coral and into the city.
Our entrance wasn’t filled with fanfare and a parade, because Sahar, in her wisdom, had realized we’d be travel weary. She might not have calculated exactly how much, given the surprise attack from the rebels, but I still felt grateful that I didn’t have to keep a constant smile on my face. The parade to open the first competition of the tournament would happen this evening. And while we weren’t exactly anonymous—I saw little mermaids and schools of bright magenta fish stop short at the sight of us—there still wasn’t the pressure of a parade. I was free to look around and let a bit of awe slip over my face at the completely magical nature of Reef City.
The town of Palati and the castle hadn’t been that different from home. With the number of sirens there, I almost imagined I was walking amongst humans. Golden-skinned, half-naked, incredibly beautiful humans. But it allowed me a degree of comfort and familiarity.
Reef City was a different story. The buildings weren’t … well, they weren’t actual buildings. They were rocks, piled and arranged along twisting paths. The rocks themselves weren’t the smooth walls of houses and shops like I’d come to expect from the glass-blown capital city, but this dull, colorless rock was simply a base for corals of all shapes and sizes arranged in wild patterns.
There were yellow corals that looked like mums covering every rock wall in bright puffs of color. Sometimes, the yellow was broken by small three-dimensional fan corals in bright orange arranged into spirals that wove through the yellow. Other times, Antipathes, corals that looked like soft ferns, bloomed on the roofs in stunning shades of green, orange, and red. Roof lines were non-existent. The entire city was otherworldly. It very much felt like entering a field of flowers, only the flowers were larger than I was, and instead of plucking them, our troop ducked underneath their petals.
Purple corals that looked like hyacinth flowers to my sky breather eyes, were planted in containers that resembled flower boxes, set underneath what I assumed were windows, which were merely the gaps between rocks. I assumed that until I saw several fish swim in and out of these windows and realized that there were, in fact, no doors. No one walked. The paths between buildings were for swimming; even the roads had their own set of rough tan corals growing at their base, where colorful fish no larger than my finger darted in and out constantly, a miniature town right beneath our feet, a microcosm of the bustling marketplace we entered.
As we came to it, Sahar swam back until she was at my side—to play guide, I assumed, as she so often did. I nodded gratefully at her as I took in the heart of the town.
The market was a hollowed-out circle in the middle of all this chaotic color. It had evenly spaced patches of sand surrounding its edges, and I realized those bits of sand served as market stalls. Fishwives rested baskets of goods in the dirt as they held up samples of their wares and plied customers with tempting sales pitches like, “Get over here! If you wanna find a mate, you’ll need this cream! Guaranteed genuine pheromones from an alpha shark shifter, magically collected.”
I watched the highly attractive mermaid flip her pale pink hair and flutter her fin suggestively. It only took seconds before she had two or three male customers surrounding her, asking questions that seemed as much about flirting as they were about the product.
“Where do you put it?”
“Can you put it on for me?”
“You have a sample I can try?”
My eyes flitted away as that merwoman smartly answered or deflected each question, and I realized, to my surprise, that the entire marketplace was filled with female salespersons. I leaned toward Sahar and asked, “Why are they all women?”
She arched a brow. “What better way to get men to drop sand dollars? Not only do women run the markets here, but I’ve heard they try to send out fishwives during their fertile time of the month.” She raised a brow, and I couldn’t quite tell if she was skeptical or impressed. I was a bit of both.
I glanced around again, realizing that a good number of the shoppers were male. I hadn’t noticed that before because the ratio of males to females was always off. There were always far more men. But it was fascinating, and a bit shocking, how different Reef City was from Evaness. There, women ran their households, and while men did most of the shopping, men also did most of the selling. The women were too busy with items like bookkeeping or trade deals, planning the next harvest … My eyes made the rounds again but got caught on Radford’s. For some reason, the redheaded hermit crab shifter was staring at me instead of the scenery.
I needed to thank him for calming the whale and thereby all the people still stuck on the creature, so I gestured for him to swim over.
Unlike a lot of sirens, who swam with quick flicks of their entire legs, Radford preferred a breaststroke. I wondered briefly if that was part of his hermit crab heritage or if it was a regionalization. I tucked that question away for some other time and doubled my smile. “Thank you for all you did with that whale.”
A blush painted his cheeks a dull pink, and he reached back, clearing his throat as he fiddled with the shell strapped to his back.
“It’s not a big deal,” he replied.
Sahar tutted her disagreement from where she floated nearby, showing me exactly how private our conversation was.
I narrowed my eyes in her direction. “This is a private thanking.”
“I’m sorry, did you say spanking?” a gregarious voice asked from the side. I turned. Of course, Keelan floated there. He turned his head sideways, gesturing at the streak in his hair, changing the subject before my shocked face could slip back to normal. “Like it? I made it black and white in honor of Humberto.”
“It’s very nice,” I complimented the siren.
“Not as nice as a spanking. So, what were you two talking about again over here?”
I shook my head fondly and stared at Radford. “You’ll have to excuse him; I think his mother might have popped his head above the surface a few too many times when he was a child. Addled his wits.”
