Page 44 of Surfaces
“Perhaps you just need some hair dye from a merchant ship to cover up that awful grey. I hear that Lored has been testing some magnificent new dye on their silks. Arsenic. It’s supposed to make the most luminescent green…”
Gorgono pursed his thin lips as he considered the offer.
Meanwhile, I used my “courtier” face to remain pleasantly unaffected while I reeled inside. The mayor here associated with a pirate?
All of the amazing recycled shipwreck items suddenly became suspect. Pirates captured ships, took what they wanted…did they sink them too?
My unease only doubled as the crowd filled in around the square and then the show began. Gorgono’s festivities seemed to confirm my worst fears.
A group of mer children swam up from one of the nearby glass topped buildings, and then swooped down toward the open space in the middle of the square. Their silver tails gleamed and they giggled as they swam—adorable and energetic, bouncing and happy. The little ones tried to swim in synchronization. They put their hands together, tails out, to make a spinning flower. But a few of the little ones were slower than the others, so the flower always had gaps as if it were missing a few petals. Then they tried to dance together, and did a half decent job until one accidentally elbowed another, leading to a bit of squabbling that set off titters in the crowd.
“They’re adorable, aren’t they?” Valdez whispered.
“Quite. I want to squeeze one in a hug.”
“I volunteer as a substitute.”
I merely rolled my eyes, enjoying the kids’ attempts to swim in three darting lines, zig-zagging simultaneously. Their performance was sweet and endearing in its heartfelt simplicity, and at first it caught me off guard because it wasn’t the pretentious sort of thing that Sahar had told me to expect from Gorgono. But I was naive to think that the children were the entirety of the show. They were just part one.
A shadow appeared above the square and I craned my neck up to see a ship sailing beneath the water. Only…it was upside down. The ship was drawn by two dozen burly mermen, with harnesses strapped to their chests. They pulled the wooden boat down through the water in one of the greatest demonstrations of brute strength I’d ever seen. The shadow grew.
Valdez leaned over and whispered in my ear. “You might want to close your jaw. Not to dull your adoration, but I’ve heard that mer have the tiniest cocks.”
“Really? I swear I thought that’s what people said about dolphin shifters,” I replied without turning my head to see him, too fascinated by the upside down ship as it grew closer.
The white sails were unfurled and billowed in the current while on deck, ten absolutely gorgeous siren men danced upside down.
They were dressed as sailors in pure white as they stomped their feet on the deck in unison. Stomp, stomp, clap. Stomp, stomp, clap-clap.
They repeated the pattern, somehow speeding it up and keeping it uniform even as some of them did flips across the deck. I tilted my head to the side as I watched them, wondering if all the blood was flowing to their brains, if they were dizzy. The crowd that had spilled into the square didn’t seem to have my inhibitions. They started to stomp and clap along.
That’s when the men on the deck began to sing.
What more could we crave
Got the life of a knave
Dancing on a pretty wave
With a dilly dilly ho
No mistress nagging
Just friends all a’ragging
Each one lying and bragging
With a dilly dilly ho
One scrambled down a mast until his head was nearest to the crowd. He put his hand up dramatically to shade his eyes as if he was peering out into the distance.
I watched as the children who’d been dancing for us just moments before, swam upward, directly in the path of the ship, zooming past and above it so that they floated around near its base.
The scout on the mast gave a whoop, which made all the singing and dancing men on deck spin and flip their way over to a compartment. They dragged out a huge net and made a dramatic show of unfurling it before they flung it over the side of the ship, where it was caught by the children, who immediately pretended they were trapped and crying.
“Bastards!” Someone in the crowd shouted.
“Stupid sky breathers!” Another anonymous voice broke through the din.
