Chapter 11: The Envoy

Her skin was the blue of winter ice.

Her hair was white and braided tight against her skull, and her eyes were gold, flat and bright as coins.

She wore a shell-grey vest and moved like cloth.

She hung in the middle of the pool, her tail stirring the water below.

I did not move.

I was naked on a stone ledge under a heat lamp with a merman asleep under my cheek.

"You are the surface woman," she said.

Her voice was the one from the relay, cool and slow.

"Sorcha," I said. "MacAuliffe."

"I am Sethra."

"The cousin."

"The envoy."

Velun stirred under me.

His eyes opened, and he saw her.

He didn't startle.

He went very still.

"Sethra," he said.

"Cousin."

"You're early."

"You were warned. The relay said six days."

"It's five."

"It is five," she agreed. "I came to look at you first."

I sat up, dragging the blanket over my chest.

"You came to look at him?" I said.

"I came to see if the reports were true."

"What reports?"

Sethra's gaze moved over my shoulder to the dock, the cottage, the line of lamps along the harbor.

"That the pilot of the trench station is not waiting for rescue," she said.

"That he has been at a shallow inlet on a surface shore, talking to a woman."

"I told you," I said. "He's been stranded."

"Has he?"

I turned.

Velun had not looked away from his cousin.

His jaw was tight.

"Sethra," he said. "Let me tell her."

"You've had fourteen months."

"Fourteen months?" I said.

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