Tides of Tranquility Read online

  Naclana sent Trevain a knowing look, shaking his head in misery.

  Trevain reached out and physically guided his wife into the waiting limousine as she anxiously scrolled through the list of obligations. “Nothing’s wrong, Zuri. The empress probably wants to come and visit for a vacation from all the stress in Japan. Also, from what I hear, little Kaito misses his friends.”

  Aazuria sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose between her fingers.

  Varia climbed into the car beside her and glanced at the tablet. “You’re getting a massage, Mother?”

  Aazuria frowned. “What? No. Why is there a massage scheduled here, Naclana?”

  “Because you need to take care of yourself, my queen.”

  “Cancel it. I’m fine. You shouldn’t take liberties with mollycoddling me just because I’m family!” she accused. “Speaking of which, I haven’t seen my sister in a while—is there room to arrange a visit in here?”

  “I’m not sure,” Naclana said as he entered the car and signaled the driver to take them away. He studied the tablet he was holding. “I guess I could try to free you up at noon…”

  “I want to go too,” Varia said.

  Trevain interrupted, pulling the tablet out of Naclana’s hands. “How about scheduling me in here somewhere? How about we have dinner together for once, instead of Zuri eating dinner with… the Chilean ambassador? What the hell does Chile want?”

  “The same thing they all want,” Aazuria said. “Water.”

  “Father, the Sumpall sea-dwellers off the coast of South America are having territorial disputes with the Chilean government,” Varia explained. “They’re only a few small cities there, but when Mother united all the sea dweller nations under the flag of Oceanus, she promised them protection. The land-dwellers are going to try to negotiate, but Mother must stand firm and hint at the threat of violence against Chile unless they leave the Sumpall people alone.”

  “That’s right, darling,” Aazuria said, looking at her daughter with admiration. “Someday I’ll need to ask you for help with this sort of thing.”

  “I’m ready anytime, Mother. I’m ready right now, if you want. I can terrify that Chilean ambassador just as well as you or grandma could.”

  “I know you could, Varia. I just don’t want to get you involved until you’re a bit older—until you’ve finished your studies.”

  “I will never be finished my studies,” Varia argued. “I want to help. Give me a real job, an important job. Let me travel with you to distant nations, and my teachers can tag along and give me lessons on the planes.”

  “She can have my job,” Naclana offered.

  “No, I want a challenging job,” Varia corrected, causing everyone in the moving limousine to laugh. “I’m sick of feeling like Father is babysitting me.”

  “Hey!” Trevain said. “That’s not very nice.”

  “I will consider your request,” Aazuria told her daughter, taking the tablet back into her hands. “Naclana, what’s this? I’m meeting with the CIA?”

  “Yes, my queen. They have recently reopened their files on the misconduct of Marshal Landou.”

  “Fine, fine. What a waste of time.”

  “There might also be an investigation into… war crimes.”

  “War crimes?” Aazuria said sharply, looking at her cousin with fear.

  “Under the Geneva Protocol. They suspect that one of ours might have been responsible for the outbreak of Legionnaires and waterborne viruses in Asia five years ago. They think that the timing was too coincidental with our attack.”

  Aazuria chewed her lip. “Is that so?”

  “Crimes against humanity. Use of chemical and biological weapons in massacre of civilians.”

  “Oh,” she said softly. “Well, I’m sure it will all be fine. Ultimately, we weren’t even part of the Geneva Conventions, and neither was the nation we attacked.”

  “It’s more about the nations that were affected; India and all of Asia. People are talking,” Naclana said. “Sea-dwellers are spreading rumors and pointing fingers at Vachlan.”

  “Is Grandpa in trouble?” Varia asked with concern.

  “No,” Aazuria said firmly. “I’m not worried about him. Of course the man is a war criminal. He was breaking the rules of war long before there were any. He doesn’t play fair, and he has convinced me that when it comes to war there is no such thing as playing fair. He’s a mercenary, but he’s our mercenary, and we’re going to protect him.”

  “Of course, my queen.”

  “I need a breath of fresh air,” Aazuria said pressing the button on the door to lower the tinted glass pane. She rested her arms on the door and placed her chin on her folded wrists. They were approaching the docks where they would board a speedboat and travel home to Romanova. Briefly closing her eyes, Aazuria thought of her sister with true jealousy. She wished she could be submerged in the warm waters of Gypsum Cavern, living an unhurried, monastic lifestyle. She wished that mermaids had never become public knowledge; she wished she was not one of the founding members of a giant, international governmental organization. She was so tired of traveling. She felt a comforting hand on her thigh, and jumped a little when she saw that it was Trevain. She shifted away from him, moving closer to the window.

  He cleared his throat at the discomfort between them. “Naclana, don’t forget to schedule our therapy sessions with the psychiatrist.”

  Aazuria snapped back to look at him. She glanced at her daughter, exchanging an awkward look of displeasure. “Please, Trevain—I know I promised I would try some counseling, but is this really the time? I have a nation to run. I also have a commonwealth of over a dozen other nations to protect. Please.”

  “You will always have those duties. If you don’t make time for therapy now, you’ll keep shoving our problems to the back burner until there’s nothing less left to fix.”

  She hesitated. “I really have a lot on my plate. Actually, I have a lot of plates—and pots, and pans, with many meals brewing. Some of them need to remain on the back burner to stay warm.”

  “Goddamit, Aazuria! We spent more time together in the war than we do in times of peace,” Trevain said angrily. “I’m so sick of this. I know you have huge priorities, but you won’t let any of us help you—I feel like I don’t even make the bottom of your priority list. Are you willing to put in some effort to fix our problems—to fix this family—or not? Because I just don’t know what to do anymore.”

  “Just divorce her and run away with Aunt Elandria,” Varia recommended.

  “Varia!” Trevain and Aazuria said in unison.

  “Of course, you’d have to make divorce legal first,” Varia grumbled.

  “Do you see what she thinks of us?” Trevain asked. “This isn’t healthy for her.”

  Varia reached over her shoulders to scratch her back where the skin was still tender beneath her sweater. “Honestly, I can think of more unhealthy things: vodka, cigarettes, cocaine, recklessly driving a submarine, eating bad sashimi, and being gang raped.”

  “Did I mention that we need to talk about the books you’re letting her read?” Trevain asked sharply. “It seems like the only way I’m going to get anywhere is to threaten you. So if you don’t agree to a counseling session with me, I’m going to show up to your dinner tonight and shoot the Chilean ambassador. Then I’m going to push his dead body aside and finish his dinner while having a quality conversation with my wife. Most of that conversation will have to be about planning a war with Chile, but then we can get down to the important ‘how was your day’ stuff.”

  Aazuria’s face remained expressionless, but she felt a small tug at the corner of her mouth. “Fine,” she conceded. “I’ll go to the damn shrink with you.”

  “Naclana?” Trevain demanded.

  “Already on it. I’ve got you guys marked down for Sunday at 4:00 PM.”

  Aazuria was happy to be back in the water.

  With a small escort of armed guards, she and Varia had made their way th
rough the center of Limestone City—the area which had been known as Lower Adlivun before the war. That name had accumulated too many negative connotations. It was considered a generic and derogatory reminder of a time when the citizens had been reduced to mere slave-like lower classes—a time everyone wanted to forget. Names were important. Under its new appellation, Limestone had flourished and rapidly expanded over the last five years, sprawling outward to encompass a metropolitan area of at least triple its previous size. Interest in immigration still showed no sign of slowing. Even more small towns and cities had popped up throughout the network of tunnels beneath the Aleutian Islands. Many of the more traditional residents had migrated away to distant villages, unaccustomed to the shiny new transport tunnels, bullet trains, and crowded marble shopping malls that were perpetually lit by lamplight.

  Being underwater, the residents and visitors often lost track of night and day. The megalopolis was quickly becoming one of those cities that never slept, even boasting a nightclub district that never closed. Tourists and revelers could party until they dropped in the Celestine borough, and then enjoy rest and hospitality in one of the 5-star hotels on fancy Malachite Avenue; an area that was becoming famous for shopping. Real estate prices had been soaring, and although many cynics spoke of the market in terms of a bubble they expected to burst, it remained strong. The financial district on Jasper Street was home to several banks, including Undersea International Trust and the Royal Bank of Adlivun. Although the official Adlivun Stock Exchange was located in Diomede City, much business took place in Romanova and Limestone.

  Although she had traveled the world many times over in recent years, Aazuria could honestly say that there was no place like home. The pride she felt at watching the development of her childhood home almost brought her to tears. It seemed that each time she returned, new construction projects had been completed in record time. It was almost as poignant as watching her very own child grow up into a brave and capable young woman; and looking to her side to observe Varia as the girl gazed out at the city with similar wonder in her expression, Aazuria could finally attest to knowing how that felt.

  It was easy to navigate to Gypsum Cavern, a holy area that had been largely protected from the damaging effects of urbanization. Once she reached a certain point in the tunnels, however, a woman appeared, blocking their path. It was the blindfolded Mother Melusina herself, her green dress billowing out around her with an unusual ferocity.

  “Do you recognize how thin the ice is where you skate?” she signed. “Queen Aazuria, our beloved Sapphire. You have come to visit your sister, but I must forbid you from doing so.”

  “I’m sorry? I haven’t seen Elandria in months,” Aazuria protested with a frown. “You said she mustn’t have any contact with men, but I am not a man.”

  “Yet you bring these male armed guards here! Weapons have no place in a holy temple, and neither do men. Begone, foul warriors!”

  The men looked to Aazuria with confusion, hesitant to abandon their queen. She gave them a signal, indicating that they might leave.

  “We will only be as far as edge of the city,” one of the men signed.

  Aazuria nodded to confirm this before turning back to Mother Melusina. “The guards have left. Might I please be permitted to see my sister?”

  “The silent one is training intensively and can afford no distractions. You defied my orders and brought her letters from the king! You must not see her this annum or the next. She belongs to me.”

  “Was that part of the initial arrangement when you took her from us?” Aazuria asked in frustration. She turned to her daughter and sent her a confused and impatient look. The young girl was chewing on her lip thoughtfully.

  “The initial arrangement was that I would give you your life back!” Mother Melusina said in a series of furious hand gestures. “Are you not grateful? Now that you are queen of the world, do you forget who returned the sacred breath to your lifeless body?”

  Aazuria lowered herself into a deep curtsey. “I am eternally grateful for your mystic powers, Mother Melusina. The Sisters of Sedna are truly divine in a way I cannot understand. It is far beyond me to question your methods; but I am not the queen of the world. I was merely a girl unlucky enough to be born to the tyrant Kyrosed Vellamo—much like my dear sister was. She has no living family other than me. I worry for her health and well-being considering what she has suffered in the past.”

  “These are tender pleas, my child, but you cannot ruin my teachings. The silent one must follow a strictly ascetic and abstinent regime if she is to become a thunderbird. There is much I would do to make you happy, but I will not interfere and compromise her studies.”

  “Fine. I understand,” Aazuria responded, lowering her hands to her sides in angry submission. She was not used to not getting her way—she knew that if she tried, there was a way she could make this happen. But was it worth offending the High Priestess of Sedna? She had been a powerful ally in the past. Aazuria was contemplating her options when she noticed that Varia was gone. She was startled for a moment, but then a smile crept onto her lips. Somehow, Varia had managed to slip past the priestess, unnoticed to both of them. She would surely be on her way to see Elandria.

  “I will not interfere in your instruction,” Aazuria signed respectfully. “I will return to Romanova.”

  “Please, Queen Aazuria. Stay the night in Gypsum Cavern. It is a long journey back to the capital of our growing nation. Though you may not visit your sister, we will provide you with the warmest hospitality. Actually, there is much I wish to discuss with you, including the upbringing of my young nephew, Glais.”

  “I wish I could stay the night, but I have a meeting with the CIA in a few hours.”

  Mother Melusina moved forward sharply, crossing the distance between them. She ripped her blindfold off, exposing her terrifying white irises in the dim lamplight of the tunnel. “You must not go to this meeting!” she spoke, her lips moving with haste and fury. “Heed my words, Aazuria! You are on thin ice. As the sea rises to swallow the land, so does the land tremble. Those who dwell on the topside treasure their dominion over us; they shall not relinquish the waters so easily. The continents are closing in on us—can you feel it? We are being crushed in this narrow alley! The continents are coming! They are squeezing every drop out of Adlivun. America bangs into Russia and China—can you feel it? Can you feel the pressure of being squashed like bugs between the land masses?”

  Aazuria did not know how to respond verbally. Her shoulders involuntarily quaked with a shiver.

  “Long ago, all the lands were one,” Mother Melusina leered through sightless eyes. “Do you remember? Oh, how many millions of years ago. They called it Pangaea. That one land was surrounded by our one ocean—the perfect, boundless sea. Panthalassa was her name. Before that, different names of different lands—Rodinia. Do you know this? Continents together, supercontinents, landmasses the way they should be. Another ocean blanketed Rodinia—her name was Mirovia. Oceans together, superoceans, the way they should be. Now it will be this way again.”

  Mother Melusina reached out and poked Aazuria in the shoulder with a long, spindly finger. “You have made the oceans one! You called it Oceanus, a new empire. You have dangled peacock feathers and arrogantly jutted out your chin! You have threatened them all!”

  Aazuria found herself swallowing a mouthful of salt water by accident. “What are you saying, Mother Melusina? What are you trying to tell me?”

  “She revealed us to them!” the priestess spat, with a force of speech that caused water to swirl around Aazuria’s face. She pointed toward Gypsum Cavern where Elandria was studying. “The silent one sealed all of our fates on the day that she parted her lips! When that woman opens her mouth, doom tumbles from her tongue. So I must teach her to doom others and not to doom us.”

  It sounded like a load of hogwash to Aazuria, but the priestess had been right before. “Why shouldn’t I go to the meeting with the CIA?” she asked warily. She was sta
rtled when the holy woman grabbed both of her shoulders, letting her long fingernails dig into Aazuria’s flesh.

  “Do not dare! Thin ice—the ice is paper thin!”

  Aazuria tried to pry the woman’s hands from her body, but her grip was bizarrely, almost preternaturally strong. “Mother Melusina, I don’t—”

  “The tides of tranquility rise and fall. They ebb and flow with the gravity of the powers that be. Oh, the seas are high and mighty now! How full of bounty and splendor. But if you do not heed my words, Queen Aazuria, the tides will subside—and when they recede, they will uncover a graveyard of bodies. This, we have in common: the dead lie on the land, and the dead lie in the water until their bodies become part of their world. Do not lead us to this end. Do not force your people to become part of your world today.”

  Aazuria stared blankly, trying to make sense of this cryptic prophecy.

  “Oceanus will soon be a graveyard of bodies. If the Sapphire forsakes her people, the seas will run black with blood.”

  Chapter 4: The Uncomfortable Unknown

  As Varia snaked her way through the caverns of Gypsum Cave, she hoped that Elandria would be nearby. The last time she had visited her aunt, the small woman had mentioned that she would be sent away to the far reaches of the Aleutian Islands for several weeks of training. Would she have returned yet? It did not matter; Varia knew she needed to try to see her. She hated the way Mother Melusina used Elandria’s guilt as a tool to manipulate the tenderhearted woman. The priestess was ruthless in trying to further the interests of her sisterhood.

  When Varia turned a corner, she was startled to see a masculine figure drunkenly floating in the center of the tunnel. She took in his long, unkempt beard and wrinkled skin, and a few bottles of whiskey floating nearby. What was an old drunkard doing so close to the headquarters of the Sisters of Sedna? Part of her wished to confront him and aggressively demand that he explain his trespassing; but another part of her remembered that she was also trespassing, and that she should continue unnoticed.