Fathoms of Forgiveness (Sacred Breath, Book 2) (12 page)

“Visola is a protector by nature. In the past, she has thrown her body in front of me like a meat-shield. She would happily die for Sionna without thinking twice. I trust Visola with everything, and everyone, except for herself. She just thinks of herself as… as just a tool,” Aazuria said.

“That is correct, my dear. General Ramaris did tell me that she considered her body to little more than a weapon,” Queen Amabie affirmed. “When a friend is in such a self-destructive despair, it becomes our duty to restrain them.”

“If she had any self-respect then she would not have married Vachlan in the first place,” Aazuria said venomously. She looked up at her cousin who was still holding the note he had never gotten a chance to read. “Naclana, see to it that Visola is imprisoned in comfortable quarters.”

“Yes, Princess Aazuria.”

Trevain rubbed circles into his aching temples. This meeting was not going well.

Aliens. He was sitting around a table with Aazuria and Queen Amabie and the heads of their military, and he felt a bit like he had been abducted by aliens. Superior, honorable female aliens who expected him to learn their language in record time, and lead an attack on another alien race. They expected him to be their hero; their knight in shining armor. He felt like he was melting under the heat of the pressure, which felt like several thousand degrees kelvin.

One of Adlivun’s high-ranking officials, a woman named
Mardöll was speaking about the pros and cons of the different types of terrain from which they could launch their attack. Trevain was having difficulty keeping up with her fast moving fingers. Although the meeting was being held in a dry room, the universal sign language was necessary to bridge the language barrier with the Japanese. He was trying to focus, but he kept getting distracted, his thoughts spiraling off into every possible direction other than the one in which they needed to travel.

“Can you explain that last part again, Major Mardöll?”
he asked. When she nodded and began to sign, he tried to focus. Greek might have been easier to understand at the moment. He wished he could be like his brother, who was also present at the meeting for some strange reason. Callder had dozed off beside him discreetly—he was one of those strange people who could sleep with their eyes open. Trevain had given up on hitting his brother to keep him awake.

“I see,”
Trevain signed when Mardöll had finished explaining. He did not see. He could not stop thinking about his grandmother. He wished that Visola was here to make her lewd and inappropriate jokes, to smile and wink at him in her good-natured way, and to put everyone at utter ease about the situation with her carefree charm, yet serious, intense comportment. When she said she was going to accomplish something—even if it was ridiculous-sounding, and she said it with a giggle and a glimmer of mirth in her eye, he had no doubt whatsoever that she would somehow succeed.

How could someone be so happy-go-lucky and yet so stern and resolute at the same time?

Trevain had never felt so trusting toward anyone else he had ever known; he had never been so compelled to depend on the expertise of someone other than himself. He knew that he was beyond fortunate to have met Visola. Not many men got a chance to meet their grandmother for the first time at the age of fifty, and no man
anywhere
had a grandmother like his. She was outrageous, yet so noble.

She did not deserve to be in prison.

“You are complicating things, Major Mardöll,”
said a woman named Geira who was another respected army official. Trevain could not remember her rank. 
“The decision is not a difficult one. We train our warriors in the water, and so do the Ningyo. We must approach them from the north, directly through the channel.”

“And where do you think the Clan of Zalcan trains their warriors?”
a Japanese warrior named Chikasui asked, raising his eyebrows and wiggling them at Geira.

It bothered Trevain enormously that everyone at the meeting was ignoring the fact that Sionna had been captured. They were writing her off as dead. He wanted to hold on to some small hope that his great-aunt would survive, but all of these experienced aquatic-military-professionals seemed to believe that hope was counterproductive. He realized that Chikasui-with-the-annoying-eyebrows was still speaking.

 
“They are famous for wrestling with sharks as children, are they not? They wear countless strands of necklaces with shark-tooth-beads to boast of their battles. They consider themselves the kings of the oceans. I say that we approach from land. It puts us closer to the precise location where they are stationed, and it may garner us the element of surprise.”

“It also places us in immediate danger, with an exhausted army. I do not think attacking over land is a good strategy,”
signed Mizugiwa, a younger and slightly more timid Ningyo official.  

“That is because you are afraid of the land. Incompetent child. It is your fault we lost Yonaguni!”
an older man named Kishibe responded spitefully. Trevain began to rub his temples again. It had been hours. They were not getting anywhere. Visola could have correctly figured out in thirty minutes what it was taking two nations days to agree upon—he was fairly certain that the leaders of both nations would have agreed upon this, if not anything else.

“Boys, boys, be calm,”
Queen Amabie signed, before raising a hand to quiet them.
“Do not blame one another for that which was beyond our control. We may have lost Yonaguni, but we did not lose our lives.”

“Indeed. We must look to the past without emotion to remember our mistakes and learn from them,”
Chikasui signed.
“We cannot allow the Clan of Zalcan to win again. Because of them, we were forced to abandon our home and flee like frightened animals. We cannot let them cause further harm to our allies. The warriors of Adlivun came to us in our time of need, and this is how we repay them? Let us work together and focus.”

“I lost my son at Yonaguni.”
Kishibe scowled at the other men
. “I am more dedicated to this than any of you! For me this is a personal mission of vengeance. What greater cause is there than vengeance? I say we march over land to attack.”

“I agree,”
Aazuria signed,
“about vengeance, but not about the land. We cannot expect to surprise the enemy since we know that they might have a spy among us. What we can do is position our forces correctly, where they will be strongest and most comfortable: in the water.”

“Thank you, Princess Aazuria
,” said Mizugiwa.
“Do you see this Kishibe? Women have more sense than you.”

“Gentlemen! Are you karo or are you bickering schoolboys?”
Queen Amabie shook her head disapprovingly.
“Do you really enjoy disgracing an old woman in a foreign kingdom? In the home of our friends?”

“My deepest apologies, Queen Amabie,”
Chikasui began, bowing until his forehead touched the table’s surface.

“Please excuse me,”
Trevain signed, as he abruptly stood up. He turned to leave the table and exit the room, ignoring all the correct etiquette of paying respects to the two queens. He was sick of it all. Aazuria looked after him curiously, and also excused herself to follow him.

“Are you alright?” she asked him when they were outside of the room and in a dry area. “Why did you leave?”

“It’s useless. We can’t decide on anything,” he complained. “This is a mess.”

 “I know,” she whispered. “Worst of all is that someone in that room could be leaking information to Vachlan. How can we plan an attack when there might be a traitor among us?”

“We need my grandma.”

Aazuria sighed. “She is not emotionally ready for this.”

Trevain suddenly reached out to grasp her shoulders. “Come back to land with me, Zuri. Just until this blows over. We’ll bring our family along—Elandria and Callder, my mother and grandmother. We can live in peace. We don’t have to fight this senseless war. These are your father’s leftovers. You don’t have to die because of this.”

Aazuria reached up and removed his hands from her shoulders and slowly backed away from him. “If you want to go back to land, then so be it. If you want to take your family, or my sister, then ask them. If they agree, then so be it. I belong here.”

“Aazuria, look…”

“No, you look! When Atargatis first began attacking us, I was scared and confused. I did not know who was terrorizing these waters or why. My first instinct was to run. I ran away to land, and that is how I met you.” She bit her lip. “I have spent my entire life blaming my father for everything. After he was gone, when Adlivun needed me to step up and take the reins, I could not do it. I was petrified. I did not want to fully accept my new responsibilities. That is why I was going around having everyone call me ‘Princess’ for months after my father’s death; I was just so paralyzed with fear and unable to move forward.” She paused in her ranting to take a moment to compose herself.

“Trevain, the moment that I saw my little sister’s arm in that box, this became personal. Something changed in me. Before that moment, the Clan of Zalcan had been attacking King Kyrosed Vellamo’s daughter. A six-hundred-year-old child! Now, they’re about to
be
attacked by Queen Aazuria Vellamo, and I am not going to fail. I will not allow myself to slumber peacefully until I have carved some symbols of my own into Vachlan’s flesh.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I understand that this is not your world, and if you wish to leave and return to safety, so be it. We are not married yet and nothing holds you here. You should go, and you should go now.”

“I don’t want to leave you, Zuri. I just wanted to offer another option. The same way you worried about my grandmother, I worry about you. Don’t you think I can see how stressed you are?” Trevain asked. He moved closer to her and lowered his voice. “I’m getting a little jealous of how closely you cling to that rifle all the time. I think you snuggle with it more than you do with me at night.”

Aazuria could not resist a small smile. She reached out and touched his elbow. “Thank you for being such a trooper. Having you is making this impossible situation slightly more bearable. I would be losing my mind without your support.”

“You’re way stronger than I am,” he told her seriously. “I
did
lose my mind when I thought Callder was dead, and there weren’t even any body parts involved. It wasn’t like Callder was any great loss to the world, either.” 

“Do not say that,” Aazuria scolded him softly.

“It’s true. Corallyn was a bright, curious girl. She was a good kid.”

Aazuria bit her lip, nodding slowly. “We must go back to the meeting.”

Trevain took his fiancée’s hand, and was leaning in to give her a light kiss when they were both startled by a noise. When they saw who was approaching them, they both gripped each other’s hands a bit more tightly.

“I do not think I can handle more bad news, Naclana,” Aazuria said with a frown. “Please, tell me something good.”

“Princess Aazuria,” he said, saluting. “I am just a messenger. Guards have captured a suspicious looking figure creeping around the eastern shore of the glacier. She could be one of Vachlan’s scouts or spies.”

“That might be good news,” Aazuria said, releasing her death grip on Trevain’s metacarpals. “Excellent work. Bring her to us.”

“I’m not sure if I can. She is wearing some kind of strange armor, with a large apparatus hooked up to her body,” Naclana explained. “I didn’t want to bring her into Adlivun in case they were explosives. It might be some kind of kamikaze attack.”

“What did the apparatus look like?” Trevain asked.

“There were two massive cylinders on her back,” Naclana described, with gestures. “There were tubes going into her helmet, and a pipe here, by her mouth. There were giant things on her feet, like fins.”

“It’s a scuba-diving suit,” Trevain said, nodding. “It’s fine. Bring her into the room where the meeting is being held.”

“Yes, Captain Murphy,” said Naclana, turning to fulfill this command. As he took his first step, he hesitated for a moment, feeling a bit awkward about taking orders from someone other than Aazuria. His hesitation was only momentary, however, and in the next moment he had disappeared.