Milo Deepcrest's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Milo Deepcrest had asked three questions about her parents' death, and the woman in her stolen seat had counted every one. Milo saw it in the stranger's stillness across the bazaar, the way she tracked Milo's teal hair through the crowd of shoppers. Milo had taken the council seat from her grandmother. Her parents, the king and queen, had died before that, and no one had ever named who killed them. Milo meant to. But the thief in her seat was watching, and one wrong question would warn the killer before Milo had proof. So Milo stopped asking. She drifted between the coral stalls instead, pretending to shop. She bought a basket of silver-scaled fish she did not want. The whole time, the watcher stayed six stalls back, never closer, never gone. Milo needed the eyes off her. She could not hunt a killer while she was hunted. A voice cut through the market noise. "You've got a shadow." Milo turned. A woman leaned against a stone pillar, barefoot, in a torn skirt bleached pale by the sun. Cowrie shells dotted her dark hair. She was no mermaid. She breathed the water like it owed her nothing. Milo had heard the name whispered at the docks. Cleo. The pirate some called a legend. The one who was chasing a wreck nobody could reach. "I don't know you," Milo said. Her fin edges flexed, sharp enough to split coral. "You know what I want." Cleo did not move from the pillar. "My family ship. It's sunk in your deep water. You know what put it there." Milo's throat tightened. She did know. She had kept that fact close, waiting to spend it well. "The one behind you," Cleo said. "Watching. You want her gone a while." "How do you know that?" "You keep buying fish you won't eat." Milo looked at the basket in her hands. She had not noticed Cleo noticing. "I can pull her off you," Cleo said. "Loud trouble at the far stalls. She'll follow the noise. You get an hour clean." She tilted her head toward the watcher. "You give me what you know about the wreck." It was a fair trade and a dangerous one. Cleo would hold a piece of Milo after. But an hour unwatched was an hour to find who killed her parents. "Do it," Milo said. Cleo pushed off the pillar. She walked into the crowd and, three stalls down, shoved a cart of stacked shells. It crashed across the market floor. Shoppers scattered. Vendors shouted. The watcher turned toward the noise, pulled by it, and swam after the mess. Milo was alone. She dropped the basket and moved the other way, fast, toward the quiet record stalls where the old death rolls were kept. For the first time since her parents died, no one was counting her questions. But Cleo now knew Milo's secret was worth trading. And she would come to collect.