Page 121 of The Eye of the Fifth
‘We are in mer territory now. They will know we are here,’ Naal murmured in a low voice, and though there was no one but them to be seen for miles, Kyra had the feeling it wouldn’t be so for long. ‘Do not speak unless spoken to. Do not look them in the eye unless they look at you first. They will see our sudden appearance as a threat. No sudden movements, nor any displays of magic. Do not draw your weapons. Do you both understand?’
Kyra nodded, feeling Kawai do the same at her side.
Below them, the water stirred, creating ripples that swayed the boat from side to side.
A hundred black haired heads broke the surface of the water, forming a perfect, impenetrable circle around them. In the low moonlight, angular, inhuman features on grey-tinged skin glared at them, their pit-like eyes as black as the night above.
Kyra averted her gaze instantly to the water, and watched their sleek, powerful tails swish underneath.
One of them spoke in a tongue that didn’t sound like a language at all. Clicking and hissing, serpentine yet abrasive and clipped.
Naal faced him, apparently understanding every word he’d uttered, and said, ‘It is I, Naal Westerra, who seeks an audience with merking Cyraneous.’
The same mer who had spoken broke his place in the circle as he swam forward, speaking now in the common tongue, ‘What authority do you have to request such a thing, Naal Westerra?’
‘I am the Air Warden,’ Naal said, her voice strong, not a hint of fear seeping through. ‘And I have come to talk to your king about his ward. The boy under his wing. Kano Astaveron.’
The emissary blinked at her. Then, as if they all shared a thought, every single matted head disappeared back under the water. The only trace they had been there at all were the telling ripples they’d left behind.
‘What now?’ Kyra murmured a moment later, not ashamed to admit her heart was hammering. The mer were quite a menacing sight to behold.
Their sudden absence was somehow even more frightening.
‘We wait,’ Naal said calmly.
Kyra glanced at Kawai, but his eyes were faraway, lost in thought. Not scared, but solemn. Apprehensive in a way that was not at all in keeping with his usual assured self.
Her anger was ebbing away with that look on his face. Kawai was about to see his brother for the first time in three years after believing he would never see him again.
She wanted to reach for him.
But she didn’t.
In patient silence, they waited.
The circle of mer returned, and in the centre, just a few feet from the boat and flanked by two more mer, was without a doubt, the merking of Nevatis.
He was black haired, grey-skinned and beady-eyed like the rest of them, and yet physically bigger than them all, with muscles so large it was a wonder he could swim without sinking. Kyra was willing to bet his tail matched his hulking physique.
Perhaps the mer based their leadership on whose appearance was the most ferocious. His hands alone looked as though they could snap her arms like mere twigs.
Another broke the water’s surface, directly in front of the merking.
There was not a black, seaweed like hair on the boy’s head. Instead, a cascade of shoulder length, dark brown locks clung to his tanned skin. His blue, human eyes flitted between the three of them with deep distrust and confusion.
Goddess… he was so much like Kawai. His face, though younger and softer, was an almost exact image of the waterling man next to her.
The merking hissed at the boy as he swam forward.
Kawai stood quickly, sending the boat rocking. He knelt at the bow, as close as he could get without toppling into the water, and scanned his lost brother’s face. ‘Kano. I told you you’d be alright.’
Kano did not smile back. His gaze flickered again to Kyra and Naal, and eventually back to his brother.
Then he said the words that had Kawai’s face falling, ‘Who are you?’
Chapter Thirty Four
The Merking’s Piety
