Chapter Twenty Seven

Blue Husband

Favel was waiting for Jenna in the pool of the Crescent Bell Palace when she arrived. He eyed her up and down a few times before his eyes locked on the thing Jenna was carrying in her hand. As coolly as possible, he said, “So, it’s true. Fallcet was unable to keep his crown on.”

Jenna crossed the room and showed Favel the underside of the crown. “I don’t understand what I’m looking at. What is inside Fallcet’s crown? Is this normal or was it a fake?”

Favel looked at the underside. “I don’t think it’s a fake. Though that looks strange, it’s not completely abnormal from what I know. I can have it checked if you’d like.” He reached for the crown.

Jenna pulled it out of his grasp. “What’s inside our crowns? I never questioned it before, but I also never saw any of this stuff. Please explain.”

Jenna was not losing her temper. She was not stamping her foot. She hadn’t even raised her voice. Still, she looked at Favel with an uncompromising eye.

He turned from blue to a little purple in places. “Ah, Jenna. You are such an excellent diplomat.”

“I don’t need praise. I need you to explain what I’m looking at.”

He nodded and went back to being very blue. “Do you remember the hipposyphis who went berserk on land and you needed to calm it when you first arrived?”

Jenna nodded.

“It’s creepy, so we don’t really talk about it,” he explained, “but the crowns are made from the beaks of dead hipposyphis fry. ‘Fry’is what we call our offspring.”

Jenna’s face twisted at this revelation. “Yeah, that is a little gross.”

Favel put his tentacles together in an arch and continued his explanation. “Hipposyphis babies have powerful mind-reading capabilities. A baby hipposyphis will not stay attached to a hostile life form when it’s maturing. They try to preserve themselves. With synthetic body augmentation, a beak can do it even after the baby hipposyphis is dead. With that information, someone had the brilliant idea to use the beak as a crown in order to test the eligibility of other life forms for diplomatic positions. It tells us who to trust when we don't know other cultures, languages, and more. It’s what we’ve done for thousands of years. However, this makes the hipposyphis population crazy. They don’t think their dead children’s bodies should be used this way even when some other sea creature ate their baby. They can forgive the eating, but not the use of the only remaining body part. We haven’t made any new crowns in hundreds of years, which is why your box of crowns is the only collection left.”

“That does explain why the hipposyphis went crazy the day I arrived. They don’t want the remaining crowns to be misused,” Jenna said quietly.

“They certainly do not,” Favel agreed.

“So tell me,” Jenna questioned. “What is the green circuit board inside?”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“It’s part of ancient hipposyphis body augmentation. It was a barbaric practice that expanded the use of their gray matter.”

“So it made them super smart?”

“Something like that. I’ve had body augmentation too. My species of Octavian can breathe above water and talk, but not the way I can. Temptic has had the same procedure. Artificial lungs and superior vocal cords have been installed. If I wasn’t a little different, none of this would be possible.”

Favel looked unhappy making that concession. He seemed like he felt like less of an Octavian for having done it.

Jenna remembered what Fallcet had told her about the body augmentations humans were having done to make it easier for them to breathe water instead of air. At some point, would she have to have something like that done? Her hand found the place on her side where her lungs were. She hoped not.

She did not voice her concerns. “Did all the baby hipposyphis have this body augmentation? Does my crown have something similar inside it?”

Favel looked at her hesitantly. “The barcode on your crown suggests that yours is older. I don’t know if Letty chose it on purpose, but it’s not very much like the other crowns that were given to her. It may not have belonged to a hipposyphis.”

“What does that mean?”

Favel didn’t have a throat to clear, but he made a similar sound. “It means it might have been the beak of a reliovenix.”

When Favel did not continue, Jenna suffered, wondering if she should ask him another question or wait.

He didn’t say anything further, even though she waited.

“Well, moving on in life,” Favel said cheerfully, swimming away from her.

Jenna was about to jump into the water after him when Ixy chimed in her ear. “You don’t need to chase him. I have the information right here.”

“Okay,” Jenna chirped. “What does that mean?”

“The reliovenix subspecies of Octavian is extinct. They were like the hipposyphis in that they had psychic powers, but more advanced.”

“How did they die out? Did other Octavians kill them?” Jenna asked quietly, hoping Favel’s hearing was bad enough that he couldn’t hear her side of her conversation with Ixy.

“Uh… sort of. They killed themselves down to the last octopus. Apparently, knowing what your enemy is thinking is very bad. Hipposyphis grow out of their psychic powers. They only possess them until they are six months old. After that, they wane until they have disappeared completely when the octopus hits maturity. Apparently, it didn’t work that way with the reliovenix.”

Jenna glanced out at Favel. He was under the water and he matched so well with his surroundings that he may as well have been made of water.

“What’s he so worried about? Why couldn’t he have told me that?” Jenna wondered noisily.

“There has to be more to it,” Ixy concluded with a snap of her fingers.

“Like what?”

“Have you had a scan of your head lately, Jenna?” Ixy asked in a weird oscillating voice. “How far into your head does your crown go?”

Jenna rolled her eyes. Ixy was just trying to freak her out for her own entertainment.

“Look,” Jenna said, leaving those questions behind and thinking about Fallcet’s crown removal. “Ixy, tell Favel to stop being awkward and to come up here. I have something I need to discuss with him.”

Jenna waited, but Favel didn’t rise to the surface.

“What’s going on?” Jenna asked Ixy.

“He’s fighting with me. He says he needs some time to work out what to say to you. He’s the color of humiliation and he’s asked me to turn off the underwater cameras because he’s having trouble getting a grip on himself.”

“I guess he regrets telling me that stuff about the reliovenix crown on my head. Well, it’s been on my head since I was a baby and it’s been fine, so I think whatever he’s worrying about is probably moot. Can you tell him I’ve moved on from that and I want to arrange for a hipposyphis to come to the Mercury Palace to test my diplomats? I want to see if any of their crowns come off. We should use the hipposyphis gifts to their fullest.”

Favel peeked his mantle above the water. “That is a very interesting idea,” he said with a mouth full of bubbles.