Marina Delmare's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Marina stood at the old wooden gate that marked the edge of her property. Beyond it, the forest hushed. Behind it, her club waited, the only neutral ground where surface envoys and ocean delegates would sit at the same table. She traced a knot in the wood and thought about the tide pools she still needed to study. Saving the reef species meant first saving the room where the talks happened. A wagon clattered into the clearing next door. Workers unloaded long iron posts tipped like spears. By dusk, a dark fence rose along the neighboring lot, sharp and elegant and final. A painted sign went up beside it: a warm, broad-windowed tavern, soon to open. Marina recognized the buyer's mark. A rival with deep pockets meant to court her delegates with better wine and softer chairs. She walked back through her gate and locked it. Her monopoly on neutral ground had ended in a single afternoon. Tomorrow she would have to fight for every envoy, every signature, every fish she had not yet learned to name.