At Katya’s words, I turned around to look back at the cargo platform. The mermaid waved at me from her perch inside a wheelbarrow, rising to the top of the wall as the counterweight descended to the quay. Her smiling face beamed at me, teeth gleaming like pearls in the sunlight and tail wiggling. There was a thin line made out of burnt orange light wrapped a dozen times around the narrowest part of her tail, passing through the solid bottom of the wheelbarrow, draping slack along the stone pathway that ran along the top of the wall, and vanishing into the sleeve of the nameless master’s robe.
Blinking away the sudden scent of rotten fish from my eyes, I thought about the small river mermaid that I had never seen alive but knew had been recently dissected, and also about the last remains of the first mermaid brought here by the Butcher of Belz. The nameless master was able to preserve flesh and bones readily; the combination of his exceptional curiosity about mermaids and the fact that only a square scrap of skin remained from the first subject of his studies pointed to the rest of her body having been put to a dark purpose.
And I had just given this man a fresh-caught mermaid. A living, breathing, beautiful, innocent being, one who had done nothing wrong at all, merely been abandoned by her lovestruck sister and followed me out of a hope for some kind of human connection. (Perhaps I should say personal connection; it could be said that a mermaid is but halfway human. But then again, it was the more human half of the mermaid that spoke to me; Katya is hardly less human for missing one leg, so perhaps a mermaid is wholly human with no legs. Other than, of course, the obvious differences of having blubber rather than subcutaneous fat, the additional pair of transparent eyelids, et cetera.)
A terrible and unspeakable understanding gripped my entrails as my intuition and imagination supplied the details of her fate at the hands of the nameless master. After I had finished voiding my stomach, I ran to the counterweight, determined to avoid future sleepless nights by exercising my prerogative as a fisherman to determine the disposition of my catch, which by then was being wheeled off of the now-firmly-anchored cargo platform. While the cargo platform would need to be winched back down to carry up another load, I took the obvious shortcut: Grasping the cable that held the counterweight, I ran up the side of the dark stone wall that rimmed the outbuildings of Xarakel, pulling hand over hand along the cable to keep my balance as I did so.
“Excuse me,” I said as I crested the top of the wall, a ready excuse for a greedy wizard interested in dark magic tripping off my tongue. “This is my mermaid—it was I who cast the line.”
The object of my claim crossed her arms over her chest. “I belong to me. And I want to go to Mermaid House.”
Meanwhile, the nameless master had his own objection. “Magnificat, please, none of this nonsense; it was my bait,” he said, speaking at the same time as the mermaid.
“Look, you have to understand—” I began to interrupt, but then at the mention of bait, the mermaid cut in with a shrill cry to interrupt both of us, holding out both her hands with her fingers spread, a gesture I found distracting for a matched pair of additional reasons beyond the volume of her cry.
“There was no bait in the box,” she said once her interrupting shriek subsided, her slightly distended belly jiggling less than her more prominent features as she waved her hands urgently. “I need you to understand that I didn’t eat any—urk!”
Grasping her by both wrists had silenced her as decisively as if I had clasped my hand over her mouth; perhaps this was because she was a Venetian mermaid, and like many human Venetians I had interacted with, she had been talking with her hands as much as her voice. Keeping my grip firm, I spun in place, stepping out onto the cargo platform and leaning at a steep angle to balance my lesser weight against her greater weight. Fortunately, the cargo platform’s surface was made of wood studded with nails for traction in slippery wet weather, but even so, I could not help but lose my footing when I released her. A thin burnt-orange string of light followed like the tail of a kite, and then, suddenly, it winked out. At roughly the same time, the nameless master flew over my head.
“Magnificaaaaaat!” The nameless master’s voice dropped in pitch as his flight path shifted from passing over me to a direction that pointed away from me.
For the first two syllables, as his voice fell and he did not, I wondered what sort of spell he had used to take flight; then, as his altitude began to rapidly decrease in a parabolic arc and he shouted out a rapid-fire allegation that I had fornicated with a fish, I realized that I knew the only magical technique involved. It had been a simple slipknot snare made out of a line of magical force, much as I had once employed against a white-cloaked wizard who rode a three-headed serpent. His had securely attached the mermaid’s tail to his wrist, or perhaps waist. The force of the line had held in both directions to strain against the action and reaction; as the mermaid’s mass was considerably greater than his, the reactive force of his inertia had only slowed her motion by a small fraction.
Fortunately, both still landed near the center of the river rather than falling short upon the stone quay. Less fortunately, they sank out of sight immediately, for after splashing into the river behind the mermaid, the nameless master was engulfed by a great black cloud that burst from one pocket of his robe, his spare inkpot having opened in the moment of impact with the water. Short seconds later, it was joined by plumes of mud stirred up from the river bottom. I did see a trail of bubbles that traced his path at a delay beneath the surface; he first turned in a circle, then moved away at high speed in a straight line that either took place at a considerable speed or involved an ascent.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
Then Katya finished climbing up the cable, an event that demanded the immediate redirection of my attention. I bent my whole being to explaining that, contrary to the accusation she had doubtless just heard, I had never engaged in carnal relations with any other woman, or half-woman if one preferred to count mermaids as such, that I greatly preferred her presence over that of a mermaid, and that mermaids were vastly jealous of legs and would therefore be jealous of her on that account, as having one leg is surely far superior to having none. I will confess that my focus on her lower body was strategic; given that her upper body was both less generously proportioned than the mermaid’s and covered with a metal plate that anchored her artificial arm, I was far better able to make the case with both words and affectionate gestures that she would notice.
Then Yuri finished climbing up the stairs. He had not looked up to see the mermaid fly by overhead and only had heard the voice of the nameless master. He emerged onto the top of the wall barking furiously to inform me that he was ready to join in the fight, in which he would help me tear the vicious mermaid limb from limb. I do not know exactly why the dog felt so confident that the mermaid was a hostile and dangerous creature; dogs are frequently good judges of character, but on some occasions they take an irrational dislike to a perfectly harmless person or creature. Cats are famously likely to provoke such a dislike, though I cannot think of any noteworthy similarities between a mermaid and a cat.
Then again, perhaps Yuri thought that the nameless master had been thrown off the wall by the mermaid; I didn’t ask, simply reassured him that all was well by patting him on the head as I explained to Katya that all was not well and that our visit to the academy within the black walls of Xarakel would need to be cut short, as I had just either grievously offended and inconvenienced or murdered the nameless master. Neither possibility seemed conducive to continued study.
I told Johann he would have to decide quickly if he wanted to remain Minificat the student or resume his duties as banneret; it was Banneret Johann that ran off to the tower proper to inform Teushpa of our imminent departure. Whether he would inform Lieutenant Teushpa, the military officer, or Master Teushpa, new denizen of the dark tower, I did not know. As far as Yuri was concerned—I did not want a dog underfoot at Mermaid House, so he received orders to guard the little rowboat Katya had used to cross the river.
Next, I took possession of the empty wheelbarrow and made my way down the cargo lift on the inner side of the wall, having noticed that it was suitable for transporting one large mermaid and deducing that it ought to do well for the two small ones who were in need of rescue before the nameless master returned from his unplanned swim in the river. At best, what awaited the two small mermaids in the basement of the nameless master’s house was further captivity of an indefinite duration; in the worst case, well, I preferred not to think about that too deeply lest I lose the previous day’s lunch, and I will spare the reader my speculations.
The trip back to Mermaid House brought me past Griffin House. The first Xarakel student I had seen, Heorhiy Honchar, was sitting in the courtyard along with the redheaded Laskov twins and a frizzy-haired fourth student named Mercuria Zernoshovich, huddled around a large piece of parchment covered with moving ink—perhaps some kind of elaborately encrypted secret scroll. Unfortunately, I felt that pausing to satisfy my curiosity would be a moot point, so I briskly walked by.
When I reached the outer threshold of Mermaid House, I gestured vigorously in an imitation of the nameless master’s gestures, and the glow of magic winked out, the wards vanishing. Katya followed me hesitantly across the boundary line. I left the wheelbarrow behind the glass case with its stuffed and mounted false mermaid and stepped inside.
The house was dark, lit only by the sunlight through the windows that had been opened to let in the fresh morning breeze, bringing needed fresh air into a house that carried a persistent scent like rotten fish. Strange, the mage-lights had been on before. I turned to Katya to issue my precious captain the first orders I had given her in more than a week.
“Pack up my things from the guest bedroom on the third floor. Also pack up the books on the left side of the desk in that room as well, then meet me at the front door by the house’s signature specimen,” I said in a whisper, not wanting to be overheard by the quartet of young students whose murmured conversation in a courtyard several houses away was still audible to me through the open windows. “They are borrowed books and not rightly mine, but I have lost respect for the owner’s property rights.”
Katya went up the stairs; I grabbed one of the mage-lanterns kept by the door, activated it, and went down into the basement. Once in the basement, I set the lantern on the shelf, the faceted topaz at its core providing a yellow light that was about a hundredth as bright as the unfortunately inactive mage-lights built into the ceiling of the basement laboratory.
The two little river mermaids were attempting to hide underneath the water of their tub, holding still and watching me carefully from the shadowed bottom of the tub as I whispered my plan to return them to the river. I felt fairly certain they understood Slavonic based on their reactions to the nameless master’s previous statements, but they stayed huddled on the shadowed bottom of the tank with unchanging expressions.
I was reminded of how children sometimes stubbornly pretend they have not heard their mother calling them in for supper. It is true that the surface of the water limits the passage of sound in both directions, but my whispering was not quieter than the rumble within the belly of the mermaid on the left, and I could hear that clearly enough. Whether through fear or fickleness, it was clear that my appearing alone had put them on edge, their pupils dilating and their heartbeats racing.
While I felt certain I could shout loudly enough for their pretense of not hearing to be put to an end, I preferred not to attract the attention of everyone in the town or the tower proper, so I took a more direct route. I pulled off my shirt, went to the edge of the tub, and pushed my face beneath the water in order to make conversation with them.
As swiftly as striking snakes, the river mermaids lunged forward, each grabbing onto one of my outstretched arms. Also like striking snakes, they retracted almost immediately, their weight and the backwards curl of their tails jerking my arms down with the greatest force they could provide.
