A/N: Welcome back, readers! I'm posting a short chapter because it looks like the blip in fanfiction . net's internet availability shifted a few stories around. Hopefully this brings it back into view for everyone. A longer, more advanced chapter is soon to come.
As always, please let me know what you think in the reviews! I read/respond to all of them. Cheers!
Chapter 21 AdinAdin couldn't sleep. He'd been such an idiot. An idiot, a fool, and a cod! And not even the kind that could own an inn! The only royalty he could ever hope to approach after this was being a royal loach.
Adin's self-abasing grew worse as he lay on the floor, hearing Ariel's obvious signs of discomfort on the bed just above his head in the dubious, cramped room. She whimpered in her sleep as her natural tuning cycles were thwarted by the bands holding her to the mattress. If Joe was to be believed—and he is! Something in him whispered urgently—then this would be Ariel's last day like this.
Or, it could be forever, because of you, added that horrible, sinister voice.
His tail twitched uncomfortably on the hard, driftwood-plank floor, and he fought to keep his breathing even in case Joe was still awake, although by all accounts, Joe's own even breathing, and the steady stream of bubbles from his nose pointed to his being dead asleep. Joe was used to hard work and long travel, and Adin certainly wasn't used to the travel bit. He doubted he could sleep even if he wanted to.
But that's not the reason…
Three days ago, he would have scoffed at himself for even thinking the words, but as he lay staring at the leering skull display decorating an erratically placed shelf, Adin realized that Joe had been right. All of the evidence had pointed to it. He simply hadn't been able to think—hadn't wanted to think—that someone of Prince Ellian's position would do anything serious to Ariel. And yet, when comparing the Eel's attitudes toward Ariel with Joe's careful care, and then with what he might be willing to sacrifice to that devil should this plan fail, it simply couldn't be anything else. Oh, he'd been such a shellfish!
He should have stayed with Ariel in the ballroom, even if he had some stupid post to stand at. What did it matter, anyway? The guards at balls were practically decorative in function. Ariel had needed him.
Then, there were the markers he'd left for anyone following them. What had he been thinking? That the palace physicians could help Ariel? That the sea-witches in Atlantis could, when Joe couldn't? If it would take nothing short of a deal with a devil to help Ariel, it would be a miracle if Joe managed today.
Having thought that it was Joe who had Ariel under some sort of spell, Adin had been leaving markers at each of the monoliths, including the one outside the gate. These would have been trackable by magic or by scent, he knew. He's even scrawled some of the passwords on some, including the key to the gate. If someone from the palace had been following them, then it wouldn't take them as long, and something, he knew he'd seen something at the last of the monoliths. A feeling in his gut told him that known or unknown, someone would certainly use those markers. What if he'd led the eel straight here? Even if it was only the guards he'd intended to find them, what if it had worked? Would Joe and Ariel have enough time?
Ugh, the other guards. He could only imagine what would happen if they were found prematurely, and Triton's men saw their princess like this. No amount of explanation, or even the words of Ariel herself would keep them from execution.
Despite the fatigue from the travel, and days with poor sleep, Adin couldn't close his eyes. No, he wouldn't close his eyes.
Risking Joe's light sleeping, and Ariel's potential thrashing if either of them saw him, Adin pushed himself up, and left the room.
It took longer for Adin to reach the gate than it had for them to find the inn early that morning. In the bustle of day, the streets were full of mer who looked at him, and especially Triton's insignia on the chest of his uniform, as though he were dragging a sack full of fertilizer through the streets—even though there were actually muckfish who were dragging stinking sacks in his wake.
Once he reached the gate, it was a simple lever to exit, and there was none of the fanfare and musical welcome that their entrance had precluded. A smaller trap door opened just long enough for him to swim through, snapping closed uncomfortably close to his tail when he wriggled out.
Adin heaved a sigh of relief when he saw that his marker (and the instructions he'd marked to get in) lay undisturbed where he'd tucked them. Diving to the base of the knobbled steps before the gate where he'd fastened a strip of his uniform tunic to what remained of the rocky banister, he'd almost gotten the fabric untied from its place when a loud, familiar sucking sound caught his attention from overhead.
Adin's fingers froze on the fabric for a heart beat. Then two.
The sucking sound came again as not only his contingent were spat out from the magical current, but what looked like two more, some foot guards, several eel-mer hunters, and at last, Prince Ellian himself.
"Seize him!" Ellian snapped eelishly as soon as he saw there was life on the other end of the current.
Two of the eels, not Triton's men, shot away from the magical current's exit and had him by the arms before
"Well, well, well, if it isn't the young tail-scrubber who helped kidnap the princess," Prince Ellian said, descending so that he loomed just above Adin's eyeline.
Young? It wasn't even a good insult. He'd heard bottom feeders come up with better and had half a mind to tell him so. Now Adin knew how Joe felt whenever he was dealing with royalty. The prince wasn't much older than he was, and looking at his current-swept form, Adin wondered how he had ever seen anything impressive in this imbecillic fop. (Now there was a good insult.) And so, Adin did something he'd never done in his life. He talked back to royalty.
"I was nowhere near the princess when she was taken!" he scoffed as confidently as though he were being flanked by the eels, and not within lethal jugular-biting distance. "I'm the one who's been risking his neck swimming with that terrifying cecaelia."
He got into the lie a bit more, throwing in a head tilt and an eye-roll where appropriate.
"Oh, the groveling and serving and keeping her safe from that thing! And if you'd take a second look at my shirt, you'd know I'm also the one who's been leaving you the clues and passwords to follow us! You think anyone but a cecaelia could have made it this far? He knew all of the codes!"
To his surprise, Ellian looked unsure.
"Passwords…" he mumbled to himself. Then, he kept mumbling. His eyes went slightly out of focus, and he had a faraway expression, as though the very idea of passwords was foreign to him.
"For the monoliths, my prince," one of the eels holding him grunted, seeming as though he were fighting to keep back saying several other things. Interesting.
"Of course, I didn't write all of them down. He didn't give me the chance! I thought you'd never find us!" Adin continued dramatically.
"Yes…quite…" the prince muttered under his breath. "Yes! Well, a good sport, then. I shall show you mercy, then! I hereby pardon you of your traitorous image, if of course you can prove that what you are saying is true."
"His tunic is certainly torn up, Prince Ellian," said one of Triton's men that Adin recognized from another contingent.
"That it is," Adin nodded encouragingly.
"And he wasn't with the princess when she was taken," said another.
"As I said," Adin affirmed.
"Right…right…then…" Ellian seemed to be floundering.
"The princess, my prince?" one of the eels prompted, managing to look simultaneously concerned and murderous as he regarded his prince.
Adin realized he'd never heard the Eel's men speak before. Perhaps they were trained not to address their prince? They certainly all seemed uncomfortable.
"The princess you have taken!" the prince announced.
"I believed you pardoned me?" Adin said, in an imitation of Joe's bland tone.
"That I did!" said Ellian, seeming to remember. "On the condition…condition…"
"The perpetrator," prompted the eel to Adin's side again.
"On the condition that you lead us to the perpetrator! Where is he? Where is my princess? I swear you foul traitor that if she is harmed that you will lose your fins!"
"Right," said Adin, a plan circulating in his head. "Of course, you'll need to get into the city first, and this one is certainly a harder obstacle than the other stones."
"Have you not already written the instructions on that scrap of fabric?" One of the eels to his side had of course seen the marker he'd tried to remove.
Adin did roll his eyes at that. "Very badly," he tried to stall, hoping it would work on his eelish captors. "You could always try it of course, but since you have me here, you might as well…"
Adin's clumsy attempts at stalling the irritable bunch at the city gate didn't buy more than an hour. After several long false combinations and his own set of 'hm, I was so sure that was it. Perhaps he was hiding something from me the dirty cur!'s the group was past him and through the gate before the day was over, and Ariel was surely still at the inn. He had to get them to avoid the tiny place, and anyone who had seen newcomers in the city who might inform the guards where they'd gone.
It appeared after another long, tense hour, that noone would do any such thing.
"What a cecaelia?" said one knubbly gran-grouper who was more warts than fish. "You're going to have to be more specific, young man. We have all sorts of cecaelia in this part. Why? He owe you money, sweet thing?"
"I am a prince of the Aegean!" Ellian snapped for what Adin felt like was the thousandth time that very hour. "You will tell me where he's gone!"
"What, a prince with no manners?" the gran-grouper said, so blandly, her words could have been made into rice-gruel. "Nice try, youngie. Good luck!"
As she swam away, Ellian seemed to be having some sort of fit.
"Enough of this!" he finally cried.
Adin watched with curiosity, and his men with wariness as the prince produced a pearly orb and began to bark orders at it.
"Show me where she is!" he ordered.
Adin didn't see anything, but after a few moments, the eel nodded, and turned down an alley marked Pebble Way.
"This way, men! We'll catch our beast soon enough! She's hidden away at a place called the Cozy Cod! Don't let the name fool you. It's full of undesirables to claim for the crown!"
The men looked as though the eel prince had made countless promises such as this one, as the modicum of enthusiasm summoned by the group was meager at best. Still, at the promise of action, they followed the eel tails down a street, and then another. Adin could only count on the winding pathways to get them lost before sunset—which was impossible to monitor while they were down here.
Adin didn't think he'd ever been more displeased to see anyone than Mr. Cod. He also wished that the dubious inn's policies extended beyond 'no questions asked' to 'no questions answered.'
"No guards here," Cod was saying adamantly, trying to shoo Ellian and his men back out the door with all the effectivity of a sea sponge trying to fight a giant squid. "Especially not Triton's."
"We'll go as quickly as you tell us where the cecaelia and the princess went," Ellian was saying pleasantly, for once seeming focused on his task. Adin wondered where his focus had come from, and how he could possibly get it to go away again. Unfortunately, the only thing that seemed to help him concentrate was the idea of Ariel, and that was the one thing he needed to forget.
"I've already told you you're going to need ot be far more specific. The types of guests I get. The variety. There was a manta few weeks back who said she was princess of the Atlantic. That's probably the one." The cod asked no questions as per policy, although he really could have stood to in this sort of situation, Adin thought.
"What I'm looking for is…" the prince snarled, before seeming to come back into himself for the many-eth time. "You!" he pointed at Adin. "Peon! This is beneath me. Describe the targets!"
Adin took as long as he dared shuffling up to Mr. Cod.
"Hey, I recognize you!" Mr. Cod said immediately. "Never forget a face!"
"Right…" Adin said. "Pity I don't really remember you. Are you sure you're the owner?"
Cod regarded him with a squint so narrow it could have cut seaweed. "Beg your pardon. Forget my face faster than a day, I suppose. Could have been the missus you're recalling, but I don't recommend telling her you mistook her for me."
"Peon!" Ellian said warningly.
He sighed inwardly. So much for that.
"We're looking for a black-tentacled cecaelia, and a mermaid with darkish hair. Well, his tentacles are more gray in a certain light. Pretty average-looking. Not very memorable." Adin tried to focus on Joe more than Ariel. A mermaid with a red and blue tail would be unmistakable, but what was one more cecaelia? Like everyone kept telling them, there were lots in the city.
"Black, you say." Coraline Cod appeared as though by magic from the back room brandishing no less than six brooms. "Of course we'd remember something like that, wouldn't we Coddie? No black-tentacled one has reached these depths since Queen Incirrata. Quite the stir he caused when he came through the gates. Everyone leaving to tell everyone. I bet there wasn't a fish left in the streets when he finally reached us."
"What in the lily-livered pate are you blathering on about, mermaid?" Ellian demanded rudely.
"Mer-matron, youngie," Coraline Cod snapped, equally rudely.
"I beg your—"
"Then beg," she said. "I'm waiting."
Ellian grew so orange in the face Adin thought he would bust a vessel, although Coraline continued.
"I'll of course answer his question," she said blithely, indicating himself. "Anything for a paying customer."
"Hm." Cod nodded in the affirmative.
"Ah. Right," Adin said, not wanting to cause more trouble, and simultaneously grateful for the distraction. "Black is rare?"
"Oh, very," Coraline said. "Haven't seen it since the original royal family. The hero the city's fortune-witches keep telling us one will come and hero us out of this dive, but of course most don't believe them. He might cause quite a stir though, if he weren't so scrawny."
Adin was confused. Joe, scrawny? Perhaps they were thinking of two different mer.
"And where might we find this special hero?" Ellian asked. "Purely for congratulatory purposes, of course."
Coraline waited until Adin gave the nod to answer.
"Dutchman's observatory. Can't say when they left. Might still be there. Might."