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“I am.”
“And who is your companion?”
“I’m Ana
“And how do you know Naji of the Jadorr’a?”
I didn’t want to talk again, cause of the way the water rushing through my head made me dizzy. But everybody was staring at me, especially the King with his flat black shark eyes.
“I saved his life,” I said
The King smiled, showing rows of teeth. Exactly like the manticore.
“Well, I am grateful for that, Ana
“Yes,” said Naji. “Your Grace.”
The King of Salt and Foam stopped a foot away from us. I kept picturing his teeth sinking into my arm, into my belly – but no. He was like the manticore, right? He wouldn’t hurt us. His shark-sentries hadn’t hurt us–
“You created this,” the King said to Naji. His manta-ray fins swooped in and out, like they were trying to gather the city up in his arms. “All of this.”
Naji stared at him.
“It was your magic, the soothsayer told me.” The King nodded. “You cast wave after wave of magic into the sea, and from that magic we were born.”
“That’s impossible,” Naji whispered.
“But it isn’t,” the King said. “Look at all this. Our city, our people. We can feast you in our hall, we can entertain you in our gardens…”
I wondered how an underwater city could have gardens.
“All of this came about because of you,” the King said. “The soothsayer saw it.”
Over in the corner, Armand bowed.
Naji shook his head. “No, no… My magic… it doesn’t create, it destroys…” His voice trailed off. He was shaking, I realized, the water bubbling around him. And his skin had gone pale and sickly-looking, even in the soft glow of the algae. I pushed over toward him, wound my arm around his, touched his scars.
“You told me blood-magic can do whatever you will it to do,” I whispered, cause he was wrong, his magic had saved me from a gunshot wound.
Naji shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, I never willed–” He stopped and looked at me. His eyes widened. “Your blood,” he said.
“What?” Water swooshed through my head. I did my best to ignore it. “What about–”
“Your blood mixed with my blood…” His hands were on my face, his touch muted by the water. “We did this. Together. And I think…”
Lightness passed over his face like sunlight. He drifted away from me and floated up toward the ceiling, his mouth hanging open in something like surprise. Tiny white bubbles spun around him.
“Naji of the Jadorr’a?” The king flicked his fins at the courtiers and the school of fish flashed forward and swarmed around Naji, brought him back down to the floor. “Is he hurt?” the King asked me. “I don’t understand what he’s saying.”
I looked at Naji out of the corner of my eye, caught up in all those flashes of light and silver. “I helped him,” I finally said. “Whatever he did to make all you…”
And then I understood too. The battle with the Hariris. The magic we created. That violence, it all spilled into the ocean. This was all the magic-sickness. This was clams growing out of the side of the Tanarau, this was blood staining the walls of the Ayel’s Revenge, this was Queen Saida’s garden house collapsing into jungle plants in the middle of her garden. All that left over magic sank to the floor and brought forth this city, this whole civilization, with a king and a court, with soldiers and soothsayers. Life.
The third piece of the puzzle.
Once I understood what had happened, I felt the curse dissolve away. There was a sharp and sudden crack, like what I felt when I kissed Naji back on the Isles of the Sky, and then there was only a lightness, an absence of weight. This was northern magic, after all, unknowable and strange – we might have created life during the battle, but the curse had stayed in place until this moment, when Naji learned, when we both learned, that the third task wasn’t impossible. Completing the task wasn’t what broke the curse, it was learning that the impossible wasn’t really impossible at all.
Naji burst out of the school of fish, his clothes and hair fluttering around him. “Thank you,” he said to the King. “Your hospitality is most kind.” He seemed back to himself. My head was reeling from what I’d just figured out. It’s gone, his curse is gone.
The King looked confused. “No,” he said. “I am thanking you.”
He lowered himself to the ocean floor, and then so did all the rest of the courtiers, until everyone, every fish and clam and eel in the Court of the Waves, was bowing to me and Naji.
Naji’s face was full of light. He wasn’t smiling, but he was happy, and his eyes were gleaming, and his hand looped in mine and squeezed tight as we kicked our feet there in the water. I pressed against him and held his hand as tight as I could. Music was pouring through the hall – not like the music up on land, but this soft creeping echo, like the reedy melody of a flute.
“Is it true?” I murmured to him, wanting to feel his body close to mine, wanting to hear him say it even though I already knew for certain, even though I could feel that the weight of the curse had drained away from him. “Is it broken?”
“It’s broken.” His hand squeezed mine. The King rose back up, solemn-faced and grateful, and the rest of the courtiers followed. The water churned from their movement.
“You’re free,” I said.
“Yes,” Naji said. His hand gripped mine so tightly my fingers ached. “Free of the curse.”
The King was smiling at us. Water rushed into my head and out through the gills in my neck.
“We broke it,” Naji said. “I didn’t know until I understood, but we broke it.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The King of Salt and Foam gave us gifts: sacks of pearls, vials of Armand’s potion that granted breath underwater, hard pink shells lashed together into strange clattering sculptures. They were brought in by a school of fish, all those tiny silvery bodies buoying up the gifts as they swam beside the King.
“The art of our society,” the King told us. We were in his garden – turned out it was all seaweed and coral and glowing algae, beautiful and haunting. “We shall erect statues of your faces, Naji of the Jadorr’a and Ana
“I thank you deeply,” Naji said, bowing his head low, all serious and respectful. When I tried to do the same thing I almost turned a cartwheel in the water.
“Come,” the King said, “swim with me.” And then he began to slice through the water in his graceful, fluttering way, bubbles forming at the tips of his fins.
Naji and me paddled along beside him.
“I would like to know the story,” the King said.
“The story?” I asked. Naji kicked me, hard and on purpose.
“Yes. The story of how this all came to be.” The King stopped and floated in place, his seaweed hair drifting up away from his shoulders. “I know it was your magic–”
“And Ana
The King gave him a polite smile. “Armand saw you,” he said firmly. “He saw the spells you cast into the sea. You were trying to defend your vessel, I know.” The King fluttered his fins. “Armand saw that as well. But what we know of magic – it is all intention, yes?”
“Technically,” Naji said. “But when a great deal of magic is cast, the way it was when I – when Ana
The King gazed at him with flat black eyes. “Our life,” he said. “Our lives.”
“Yes.” Naji bowed.
“So we really are creatures of magic.”
“Magic and the sea,” Naji said. “And yourselves, given the time.”