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not be happy was the one subject she refused to consider right now. She pushed herself up and strode for the door. “Have the crew of Peggy’s Dream ready her for sea. I’ll leave the day after tomorrow. Oh, and ask Ghelfan if he wants to come along. I’m sure the Keelsons want to see him, and he had some minor changes to the design he wanted them to implement. I’ll see you tonight. I’ve got to talk to the mer before I leave.”
    ≈
    Cynthia stood on the warm sand of Skull Beach, staring at the lagoon. She’d been standing here for so long, obsessing about the upcoming confrontation, that Mouse had fallen asleep on her shoulder. During the walk over the ridge and down the well-groomed trail to the beach she had considered how to broach the subject, but to no avail. The mer would not be happy with her taking this trip, especially with the arrival of “The Heir” so near, but they were not happy about anything she did that wasn’t their idea.
    She didn’t like that term — “The Heir” —  and wondered who among the mer had coined it. Heir to what, she wanted to know. She hadn’t done anything yet that warranted an heir. Their insistence could simply have been to ensure that they would have a sympathetic and powerful voice to argue their desires to the air-breathing world. They had gone without a seamage for fifteen years after Orin Flaxal, Cynthia’s father, had died. Of course, it could also be a power-play with her, personally. Everything the mer did was for their own benefit. She loved them for what they had taught her and for the friendships she had developed, but she knew that they held no love for most landwalkers, as they referred to all the terrestrial races. She often thought that, on the whole, the mer would be happiest if life on land simply ceased to exist.
    That thought kept her awake through many lonely nights.
    Maybe Camilla was right: maybe it was time she reminded people that she was the Seamage of the Shattered Isles. She was going to ask — no, she was going to tell them that she was going on a trip for her own benefit. “It’s my decision,” she told herself once again. “They don’t control my life. If I want to take a trip to Southaven, it’s none of their business.”
    With new resolve, she propped her snoring sprite into the crook of a nearby tree and strode into the bath-warm water of the lagoon.
    As always, being enveloped by the sea was a sensual experience. The barrier between her skin and the water seemed to blur, as if she could spread out in all directions and become the sea itself. It was a sensation she could easily lose herself in if she didn’t concentrate on who she was and what she was doing.
    As she submerged completely, the simple incantation she’d learned from her father’s log flushed her skin with blood, creating a thin layer of tissue — a second skin — that provided her with the ability to breathe in water. Well, she didn’t actually breathe, but she didn’t need to. What she needed, the sea gave her; what she did not, the sea took away.
    She created a pressure wave and rode it through the gap in the reef. Her surroundings shifted from bright turquoise to deep blue as the bottom plunged toward the depths. She took a moment here to look around and enjoy the view of the looming wall of the outer reef and all its denizens. In a riot of color, an innumerable variety of fish, corals, anemones and other creatures swam and swayed in the surging waves, a symphony of life that overwhelmed her with its complexity and beauty.
    Far too easy to be distracted by all this , she thought as she returned to her task. Concentrating, she sent out a pulse of sound that would call her finned friends. She knew better than to venture into their territory unescorted, seamage or no. One wouldn’t just barge into a friend’s home without an invitation, and the mer were particular about protocol. It was not long before she felt the powerful pulses of