Glacielle Frostweave's Arc

Chapter 12 of 15

Low tide came gray and thin. Glacielle waited by the dead coral door with her chisel gone and her rings gone. Coralina would bring the three families soon. They wanted to see finished fish pens. Glacielle had raised only two walls. She had run out of hours. A promise with half a wall behind it was still a broken promise. Kai Deepcurrent arrived first, ahead of the families. He was the young merman who had scouted her canyon with a bound seal and sealed the gaps in her outer wall. His blue tail flicked as he studied her poor pens. He wore his coral crown crooked, the way he always did when he was thinking fast. "Two walls," Kai said. "They'll turn around and tell everyone you're a fraud." "I know how it looks." Glacielle pressed her cold palm to the unfinished joint. Her freeze-magic needed time she did not have. "Then don't show them the pens." Kai grinned. "Show them the pens working." He swam off before she could ask. He came back towing a small merdragon by a coral tether. Its scales were pale blue, its fins mint green and thin as leaves. The creature circled the half-built pen, herding a scattered school of fish through the open wall and into the corner Glacielle had already sealed. "My family raises these," Kai said. "It drives fish. Your two walls plus my merdragon equals one working pen. Today." Glacielle understood. She dropped into the joint and froze faster than she ever had. She sealed the third wall while Kai kept the fish penned. Her hands ached. The ice held. Coralina came through the dead coral door with the three families behind her. One woman clutched a child. All of them looked hungry and hard. They stared at the pen. Fish turned inside it, trapped and alive. "You said finished pens," the woman with the child said to Coralina. "One is finished," Glacielle said. She kept her voice level. "I'll build the rest by the next moon, with my own hands, in living reef away from the veil. You keep the goods you chose. You keep this pen now." Kai released his merdragon back to open water. The fish stayed inside the frozen walls. That was the proof. The families swam close and touched the pen. The woman put her hand through the gate and felt the fish brush her fingers. "It holds," the woman said. "It holds," Glacielle agreed. Coralina watched, silent. When the families gathered their goods, she came to Glacielle's side. "They trust you now," Coralina said. "For the pens. Not for the veil." She looked at Kai. "And now three grieving strangers have swum through your reef and seen your walls shine. You paid your debt with new witnesses." Glacielle looked at the families memorizing the way in. The reef debt was closed. But four more people now knew the road to her secret city.