Page 13 of A Kingdom Restored

Merletta and Andre took her advice, swimming swiftly across the boundary and into Tilssted. Merletta couldn’t help letting out a little gasp at the debris that surrounded them. The familiar stretch had once been lined with a row of multi-story buildings, almost as high as Tish’s shellsmith tower, all packed in together and crowded with more merpeople than could comfortably fit. All those structures were gone, with building having commenced on several spacious, single-story homes. The forcible expansion of Skulssted into Tilssted had already progressed so much further than the last time she’d been into the city. And where the residents of the demolished buildings were supposed to go, Merletta couldn’t imagine.

When they neared the city’s central square, Merletta forgot the expansion tension in her horror at the sight before her eyes. Ileana hadn’t been exaggerating when she called it armed conflict. Everywhere Merletta looked, squads of guards were steadily patrolling the streets, with regular scuffles breaking out as they encountered groups of merpeople armed with crude weapons.

“What are the residents trying to do?” Andre asked. “I mean, what are the guards trying to stop them from doing?”

“Merletta!” The hiss made them both turn, to see Ileana approaching in evident anger. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to see for myself,” Merletta told her. “What’s going on? What do the guards think they’re doing? Why was the border manned?”

“Why do you think?” Ileana said impatiently. “Residents from Tilssted aren’t supposed to leave without legitimate reason. They’ve given too much cause to suggest they’re going to make trouble in the other cities. It’s stretching us thin, too. What with having to permanently man the Tilssted section of the barrier as well.”

“But that’s criminal!” Merletta protested. “They’re being trapped inside the city? It sounds like they’re being rounded up for a massacre.”

“There’s the overblown drama you’re addicted to,” Ileana said, rolling her eyes.

“But is it overblown?” Andre interjected. “My father’s been a guard for twenty-five years, and he’s never had to patrol another city like this.”

“Center guards is one thing,” Merletta agreed. “If there really was unrest, they would be the obvious choice to help manage it. But sending guards from other cities—the very cities that are expanding into Tilssted—is only going to agitate the conflict! It’s just like when they sent teams from the other cities to clear the farms, when Tilssted workers could just as easily have done the work.”

“Haven’t you figured it out by now?” Ileana said pityingly. “That’s the Center’s way. The whole point is to create division, to encourage everyone to think in terms of us and them.”

“And Tilssted isthem,” Andre said grimly.

“Of course it is,” Merletta growled.

“I have to get back to my patrol,” said Ileana. “You shouldn’t be here. You can’t overturn the Center if you’re dead because you wandered through a war zone alone.”

“Overturn it?” Merletta repeated. “Listen to yourself, Ileana. You can’t claim to want some kind of revolution, and then do the Center’s dirty work against so-called rabble-rousers whose only crime is not to take the Center’s words as absolute truth.”

She turned to Andre, jerking her head back toward the Center.

“Come on.” Throwing a last glance over her shoulder, she added, “You have to decide, Ileana. Which side are you on?”

She didn’t wait for an answer.

* * *

The days passed at a painfully slow pace as Merletta waited for August and Eloise to return from Valoria. She had no doubt their absence had been noted by those in charge, but it seemed they’d managed to at least make it out of the triple kingdoms without detection.

On her rest day, Merletta attended breakfast with no great enthusiasm for the day. From the moment she’d left the trainees’ barracks, she’d felt the phantom sensation of eyes on her back. It wasn’t the first time since her return, either. She couldn’t identify who was watching her—it was possible she was just imagining it, although it wouldn’t exactly be surprising to learn she was being scrutinized.

But even without the reminder, she’d already decided it was too risky to try to go to Vazula. And since she’d been given no substantial course work to occupy her, that left her at a loose end. She swirled a chunk of salted cod around her basin. A day of inactivity wasn’t likely to do her any good.

“Merletta.”

Emil’s quiet voice startled her from her thoughts. Record holders shared a rest day with trainees. Sage—still estranged from her mother—was probably still sleeping in her little room. But Andre had gone home to his family—taking a rare break from his grueling training for his upcoming second year test—and she’d assumed Emil had done the same.

“Is everything all right?” she asked.

He nodded. “I’ve been waiting for a chance to speak with you privately,” he said. “And for things to settle down.”

He slid into the empty place beside her—alone of the trainees she had no family to spend rest days with.

“Have you found information about our origins already?” Merletta asked, impressed.

He shook his head. “I’ve only made the most discreet of inquiries, and so far they’ve yielded nothing. I’m here about something else. I’m sure you remember the research you asked me to do on your behalf last Founders’ Day.”

Merletta straightened in her seat. She certainly did remember. She wasn’t likely to forget asking Emil to search for information about her parents, according to the names on the scroll she’d accessed at the end of her second year test. Although more dramatic events since had driven the search from her priorities.

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