A mermaid and a corsair. Natalie Yacobson

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СКАЧАТЬ how sacrifices are made. Desmond was interested. He wondered what rituals the sea queens participate in.

      “How do you like your new estate?” Merediana sneered, looking down at Desmond arrogantly. He was standing just below her crab carriage, which floated in the water just above the seaweed and his head. The Sea Princess was showing with all her appearance that her rank was superior to both overseers and slaves. It’s not even clear without a show!

      “Is it a new estate?” Desmond grimaced.

      “Well, it is a place of work,” the Princess corrected herself. “Or what do you humans call a physical work site?”

      “Pirates like me don’t work, but take what others have earned.”

      “Well, then, I’ve made an honest laborer out of a pirate. Are you grateful to me? Who else but me could set you on the righteous path?”

      “No one’s ever tried. I’ve been dead for a long time. You overdid it, pulling me out of sin.”

      “But I got you out and made you work honestly on the sea plantations instead of robbing them. Of all the Sea King’s daughters, I am the only one unique. My sisters should bow to me.”

      She and her sisters seem to have a strained relationship, Desmond realized. Apparently, Merediana wanted to be the sole heir to the sea throne. Maybe she would offer him a deal to kidnap and sell all her sisters to King of Opal. Then she could be befriended as a customer. Desmond tensed, but Merediana was in no hurry to make a deal with him.

      “So you like it here? Do you know what this area is?”

      “It’s a seaside plantation! They rot the workers alive!”

      “You think you’d be better off in the Earth penal colony?”

      “I wasn’t planning on going there.”

      “The only way for a pirate to go is to hard labor.”

      Merediana clutched her seaweed whip warily.

      – There’s also the scaffold,” Desmond said helpfully.

      “And which path would you choose?”

      “It is a free sea.”

      “It’s not forever, unless you make a new contract with the sea king, offering him something mutually beneficial. Not many people would interest him.”

      “I’ve already made a contract with you.”

      “You fell into my claws and became my slave,” Merediana clarified, sipping the sea-grass tea the helpful jellyfish had served her. “Making a contract is something else.”

      “So let’s make a contract. Let’s become partners.”

      “It’s too late for that. I need you more as a slave.”

      “So you do need me!”

      She looks at him too indifferently. Only the occasional flicker of cunning was in her eyes.

      What’s she up to? It’s hard being a mermaid’s slave. It is better a scourge on land than to be a captive at sea.

      Unless the mermaid loves you, whispered the voice of dreams, but how can you expect her to love you? Mermaids are emotionless. They themselves are delightful and in love, but their heart is colder than a fish. He wondered if Merediana had a dead fish in her chest. It was an obvious assumption. Why else would the scaly beauty be so cold? The earthly princesses were the ones who wouldn’t let him pass. He was the most enviable groom in the Mediterranean until the morgens ravaged his kingdom with floods. He must hide who he is from Merediana, or she will surely bring an army of morgens to his native shores and bring him to the flooded country to mock him. Look what your homeland has become.

      She is a beautiful pest!

      Good thing Merediana didn’t try to find out who he was or where he came from. She wasn’t interested. To a sea princess, he’s just a corsair.

      “Are you happy to be in the claws of a mermaid, pirate?” Merediana played with her whip. The algae were opening up outgrowths as if they were fans.

      “I didn’t think the mermaid would turn out to be a planter!”

      “You thought the mermaid would turn out to be a valuable cargo that could be sold profitably to the royal collection.”

      Here she shamed him. Desmond frowned guiltily.

      “Someday your work on the sea plantations will break you, and you will stop being so proud.”

      Merediana made the crabs turn around and dragged her luxurious carriage toward the sea temple. What on earth was she doing in that temple?

      Desmond had heard all sorts of tales of creepy sea gods who were best never to be awakened or called from the depths. They could help, but the cost would be enormous.

      Merediana swam away. For Desmond it was as if the sun had set. To look at her was the only pleasure in his hopeless life of slavery. In an hour on the sea plantations, he was as tired as if he’d worked years in the mines. Perhaps even hauling boulders in the quarry was not as hard as fighting the living and predatory algae.

      The hot tropical sun did not scorch the sea plantations, but the water itself suffocated the slaves, making them unable to breathe. Desmond wondered how he hadn’t been suffocated underwater. The slaves must be fed some magical herb that kept them from drowning in the Underworld. Cassandra said that the miracle herb could be dug under the sand at the edge of the sea. The portion of the herb you eat determines how long you can breathe underwater. But the herb is so bitter that not everyone can chew it. The elite prefer to buy elixirs that allow them to breathe in the water. Cassandra’s customers were not only pirates, but also coastal aristocrats who needed to make the occasional trip to the sea realm for some reason.

      Desmond was pondering that he wouldn’t be able to live long in the underwater plantations when he noticed living skeletons working under the blows of an algae whip. The skeletons had scraps of clothing with galloons hanging from them. Apparently they were former seafarers.

      “If the princess needs it, she will make her slaves immortal so that their labor on the plantations will last forever,” Tiel explained. “Immortality is not a gift, but a punishment. Your body rots, your bones crumble to dust, and you still have to work.”

      Desmond’s heart sank into his heels. He’d rather die. But Merediana won’t let him die. She wants him to suffer.

      Promenade

      There was no escape from the barracks. The walls of the barracks were made up of eyeballed, living jellyfish clutched together by long tentacles.

      The multicolored eyes glared brazenly, not allowing the slaves to be left alone for a second. You feel like you’re in a circle of sleepy spies.

      “Those bastards snitch on everything, so it’s best not to talk in the barracks,” Tiel confirmed, and went to sleep.

      Desmond couldn’t sleep a wink. The amulet began СКАЧАТЬ