Chapter 4

AYA

Aya hardly registered either Adin’s worry, or Marlin’s apologetic glances. According to her father, Prince Ellian’s entourage arrived tomorrow. She needed a plan.

As the pearlescent doors to her quarters closed behind her, she fought the currents designed to pull her to her sponge-bed at this hour, and began pacing aggressively in the space between her underused vanity and wardrobe.

She would have to get rid of the Aegeans, and she would have to do it right under her father’s nose. She could act aloof and empty-headed, but that only seemed to endear some of her sisters’ suitors. She could be too scientific, but according to her father, that would make her more desirable as well. She could talk to him outright of her preferences and try to persuade the prince openly. By the depths, perhaps this prince wasn’t so different from herself? Did he even want to marry a stranger?

She sighed. None of those options were a guarantee of success. The problem was, she didn’t know her target.

Short of arriving with mud on her face and kelp-sludge on her tail, nothing was sounding convincing, even to her.

A knock at the door interrupted her thoughts, and she froze mid-swim.

“Hello?” she asked. Marlin had gone, and it was too late for visitors out of the palace.

“A word, Princess Ayalina.”

It was Ezra’s voice.

Aya froze. She hadn’t spoken to Ezra since his last visit, and even then, only with Adriatta present. She couldn’t imagine why he was here. Ezra had been, well, almost close to her when she was very young, but as the rumors of dissension in the Cecaelian kingdom flourished, so too did their visits dwindle, until she hardly saw her sister, and brother-in-law at all. Still, she’d already answered him, so she couldn’t pretend she had already gone to bed. Hesitantly, she opened the door.

“As I expected. Still awake,” Ezra said. In the hallway lamplight, she could see that he was wearing fewer chains, and had swapped his usual showy regalia with a more comfortable vest to match his black coloring. The span of his tentacles filled the entire view from the doorway, old scars reflecting off the moonlight that filtered in from her window.

“King Ezra, if this isn’t urgent—” Aya started to say.

“Follow me, Princess. We both know you won’t be sleeping a while yet.”

It wasn’t so much an invitation as an order, and he didn’t give her time to refuse, turning to swim down the hallway before she could argue properly.

She was tempted to slam the door and let him rouse the guards if he wanted her to follow his orders so badly, but as usual, her curiosity got the better of her, and she found herself trailing down the corridor after him. Afterall, it wasn’t as if scheming alone in her room was doing any good.

“After you,” Ezra said after a few moments’ swim.

He indicated one of the many palace reception rooms that Marlin kept ready for tea-services, games, and social visits. A circle of plush sponge sofas circled a small dessert table, where three or four game boards sat unused. These rooms were usually bustling with merfolk and fish going in and out, but at this hour, it was completely quiet.

“Ah, how apt,” said Ezra, examining the table. He casually selected a game, and with the use of his tentacles, had it set up in seconds. “Hnefatafl. It sank into my kingdom some centuries ago aboard one of the Norse ships.” He gestured to the sea across from himself as he soared over to one of the overstuffed sponge cushions. “Have a seat, princess. I find a game often helps me think when issues get…complicated.”

“Alright,” she agreed hesitantly.

She was meant to be planning her escape, not learning a new board game, and she found herself wishing that she’d stayed in her room.

Moonlight filtering through the drifting drapes on the room’s wide windows provided some light, but not enough to see the board. She was reminded again that cecaelia had better vision. Around Kai, that had always been a boon. He would warn her of things that she couldn’t see, and tell her the position of stars that were too faint to track without a new moon. Sitting next to Ezra, however, that disadvantage was singularly unnerving.

“I’ve never played. I don’t usually play these games,” she said, still wondering what he was trying to accomplish. Everyone was acting strange today, it seemed.

“Then I suggest you pay attention,” said Ezra, waving at the board with a flourish. “Hnefatafl has two sides. A king in the center of the board, and an army surrounding him. The object of the game is either for the king to make it to the board’s edge, or for the army to make it impossible—ah, but you’ll need light to see the pieces.”

She hadn’t had to say anything before he realized her discomfort. With a reach far longer than her own, he reached over and tapped a bioluminescent lamp on one of the room’s many tables to wake up the creatures living inside their glass vessel. Ezra was used to caring for a mermaid in that way, at least. Perhaps he’d paid some attention to Adriatta after all. She bit her tongue at the temptation to ask him more about her sister’s life so far from the palace as he demonstrated how the game pieces moved.

“You will play the surrounded noble trying to escape the board. For… obvious reasons,” Ezra said, when he’d finished explaining the rules. “I will be the overwhelming odds you must break through. You’ll humor me, of course, it’s not often I get to play with fortuitous odds.”

Aya almost laughed. “Is this supposed to help me practice running away?”

“It’s supposed to help you think, little princess,” Ezra said, taking the first piece from the board. “I must say…that was quite the display in the throne room.”

She sighed, and reached out to move a piece half-heartedly. The curtains drifted peacefully around the room, and the sleepy glow of the lamplight underscored Ezra’s shadowy expression.

“At least you’re to the point. I think Marlin would have danced around the issue another twenty minutes before saying something like that.”

“Turtles are notoriously slow,” Ezra nodded“...Especially that one.”

“I do happen to like Marlin,” she snapped, shoving her next piece down on the board a little harder than necessary.

Ezra only smirked, and took that piece as well.

“You’re letting yourself get emotional. When you let your emotions play a part in your strategy, you get careless. And when you get careless, you’re going to make mistakes, Princess Ayalina.”

She looked down at the board. Ezra wasn’t winning yet, but neither was she. It was only the first few moves.

“How do you know I’m not just playing a longer game?”

“Are you?” Ezra folded his arms, and spread his tentacles in a way that was probably supposed to be a show of comfort…or condescension. She wasn’t as good at reading him yet.

She made a conscious effort to pull her focus back to herself. All cecaelia were snarky. Except maybe Krill. Ezra had a point; she was letting his comments go to her gills. She moved another piece, more deliberately this time.

“A bold move if I’ve ever seen one,” Ezra approved. “It’s not every day someone tries to wriggle out of a direct order from the High King of Atlantis. I was privileged to see it. Although if I may say, Princess Ayalina, revealing all of your cards to a full throne room at once… does not seem to me like playing a long game.”

It wasn’t very ladylike, but she huffed, blowing a short burst of bubbles over the game board.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“I know it was a mistake. What I don’t see is how it could have been different,” she admitted.

Ezra chuckled, not a pleasant sound.

“And that is precisely the problem, Princess. You need to start looking one or two moves ahead, if you’re going to rule.”

She looked up. Ezra was looking smug, but not unfriendly.

“You were there. You saw my petition. So you know that I don’t want to rule.”

“Oh but you do,” said Ezra. “What you don’t want is to rule in the way your sisters and father do.”

Aya shook her head, all thoughts of the game abandoned for the moment.

“I don’t see how—”

Ezra leaned back in his cushion. He moved another piece with a tentacle without even looking at the board, eyeing her with a calculating sneer.

“No, Princess. You don’t see, and yet it seems that you are able to see a great many other things. Such a puzzle. After your petition, as you call it, I took a moment to ask around. I’d wondered at the upturn of healthy magic in your father’s kingdom. In fact—” there he barked a short laugh, “—I’d even begun to be quite jealous. I’m almost fortunate your father won’t see the advantage he’s gained in you…”

“I take it you’re not offering to vouch for the difference I’ve made,” she said sullenly, toying with another piece distractedly. “And if I may say so, you don’t exactly sound like you’re playing a long game, either.”

“By your own word, I do not have the luxury of time for a long game,” said Ezra. “Perhaps you can tell me more about this ‘White Eclipse.’ Will it really cancel all of the kingdom’s magic?”

She shook her head. “Yes and no. Astrology is a fame of predictions, but astronomy is hard science. The old spells, like the ones that keep fertilizer balanced, and roads clear, and temperature in the currents balances, anything made by a sea witch will be undone. But, I gave at least one of the sea-witches forewarning, and she promised to tell the rest—” she wouldn’t admit, even to Ezra who that sea witch had been. “—her apprentices have already come up with a way to make spells last through the eclipse, and anything from a stronger power, like the bident will be fully intact.”

Ezra traced the outline of the black pendant hanging at his waist with an unreadable expression, but it was gone as soon as it came.

“How impressive,” he said. “And do you believe this eclipse would affect….other sources of magic?

Aya blinked. “There are other sources of magic?”

“You don’t know, then,” Ezra stated, without offering any other information. “Are there any other events pending?”

“No…none this year.” Aya pressed her lips together.“At least none that big. There are lots of things that might affect prophecies, or luck at cards, or the squid season, but nothing that—”

“Prophecies?” Ezra wasn’t looking at her, back to examining the board, but she could see by the way his tentacles twitched her direction, that this piece of news caught his attention. “Surely such a thing is out of the bounds of proper science. You yourself just scoffed at astrology, princess.”

Aya paused before she answered. It was her turn in the game, and she couldn’t tell whether she was winning or losing. She had more pieces, but Ezra hesitated far less in his turns. He clearly had a plan, and she didn’t. She wondered where this conversation was going. If he was just trying to distract her, it was working. No one in the palace really cared for her studies. Without a palace mage, there wasn’t much need for a palace astronomer, and there hadn’t been a need for one since the Cecaelian war….a war which Ezra remembered.

She placed her next piece directly in front of one of Ezra’s.

“It won’t be anything new. Maybe something older finally coming around. Nothing exciting,” she assured.

“You’re sure?” he asked, a bit too quickly.

She tucked her chin and changed the side of the cushion that her tail rested.

“I am. Not that it’s going to save me.”

At last, Ezra looked up. “Save you? Whatever do you mean?”

“Did you not just remind me that I was trying to escape my fate?”

“Escape your Destiny. The two are… very different personalities,” he said cryptically.

“Destiny, then,” she said. “Then you can’t do anything to help my predicament. And, forgive me, King Ezra, but you haven’t exactly suggested any ways out, either.”

She was frustrated, to say the least. It looked like Ezra was only pretending to offer help. And if so, then what were they both doing here, playing a game in the middle of the night?

“Caution, Princess. Emotion will always get in the way of your clarity,” Ezra warned. “As for help… it is a pity nothing too important is coming sooner. It seems you really did present all of your cards, then….Your move, Princess.”

Scowling, she moved her attention back to the board. It was a waste of time, but for some prickly reason, she didn’t want to lose to Ezra. He’d left a pawn unguarded. With a nip of vindictive pleasure, she took it…only to immediately have her capture another of hers. Bait. It had been bait.

“The king is nothing without his pawns. Don’t make sacrifices lightly…..like that one,” he said with a long exhale. “Your problem, Princess, is that you keep blundering into situations believing that if you only work hard enough, you can accomplish your desires on your own.”

Her tail twitched under her in annoyance.

“I can—”

“No. You can’t. No one can. Haven’t you ever wondered why fish travel in shoals? Why kingdoms are built in the first place? Why even solitary creatures like cecaelia manage to coalesce once in a decade?”

She opened her mouth to argue, and closed it again. Ezra smirked.

“I thought not. Rulers are not those who work hardest, or break themselves soonest in the name of some honorable duty to their people, Princess.”

Rich words from a king whose kingdom is dissolving as we speak, she thought.

“And who would you say the best rulers are?” she said aloud.

“I would say that they are those who know how to best exploit the options they have, and who manage to bring in enough flesh that those feeding below them never have a reason to rise back up.

“Flattering,” she bit out, watching him take yet another of her pieces.

“You are out of pawns, princess. And when you are out of pawns, you will lose.”

“Was there a point to this?” It was unlike her, but there was something about Ezra that simply brought out the worst in her. Aya was tired, frustrated, and the weight of her future hung in the water around her, and not on her own terms. Although, Ezra seemed to understand that at least.

“Emotions, Princess Ayalina. You are on the precipice of a great change. It is full of opportunity for both your greatest success, and your greatest misery. I want to make sure that you come out for the better. For my kingdom’s sake. For your sister’s sake.”

Her breath caught. Was that what this was about for him? Suddenly she understood why he used that argument to such effect on her father.

“What does this have to do with Adriatta?” she asked bluntly.

“Did it ever occur to you that in the event of Titus’ decision to marry off the remainder of his daughters, that having you as close to my kingdom as possible may have been a special request? One that Adriatta would have exacted great risk in making?

“You will be living in the kingdom bordering my own. Close to your sister. Close to a kingdom on the verge of stability, or collapse. The cecaelia have the most sea-witches of any race in the oceans. Put your skills to use in rebuilding something with them, and your skills will be far more lauded—even appreciated, among them.”

Ezra leaned forward, speaking deliberately as he addressed her. It was the same way he had explained the rules to the game.

Because, she realized, he was still explaining the rules of a game. One that she had no desire and no choice in playing.

“Princess Ayalina, you are on the horizon of a new beginning. You might see this as your entrapment, but in truth, it is your way out.”

“I don’t….I don’t even know the eel prince,” she said weakly.

Ezra clearly didn’t see the concern in that.

“Then you need to take a look at your circles, and know who your pawns are. You have the opportunity to build something. So build it to look like how you want—before someone else decides the design before you. Don’t waste it.”

“Is that what you did?”

He huffed a cloud of bubbles, and for the first time, she got the feeling he wasn’t concealing anything at all when he said:

“Clearly not. Your move, Princess.”

A quick glance at the board told her that the game was falling apart. Her pieces were nearly all taken, and her king was at knife-point to several of Ezra’s.”

With a deceive flick, she pushed her king over, and yielded.

“I think I could do it, if we have another round,” she offered.

Ezra pushed the board away with one tentacle, and blew a string of bubbles out before his face.

“That’s the thing, young princess. In life, we only have one chance to make the right decisions. So don’t hesitate.” He even sounded as if he meant it.

She carefully bit back the desire to call him something truly unflattering.

“Then this is good night,” she huffed. Once more failing to hold back her annoyance, she allowed Ezra to escort her back to her room, head swimming even moreso than when she’d left it.