Part of Your World (Twisted Tales)(7)

And so Ariel signed, and the interpreters interpreted, and various parts of the crowds listened to different voices trying to speak for her, and their attention was on the interpreters, and their questions were directed to them, and it was all a mess.

“Which Annio? The elder?”

“Was my child in the running, my darling Ferestia?”

“But at what hour?”

Her only recourse when everyone started talking at once was to blow loudly on the golden conch she wore around her neck as a symbol of office. She felt more like a silly ship’s captain than a queen.

I will send out tablets with the details, posted in the usual public locations, she signed wearily. That is all.

After her helpers spoke and everyone thought about it for a moment—it was like waiting for the thunder after lightning, watching the meaning of her words sink in seconds later—the crowd made murmurs both negative and positive, and began to disperse.

Ariel sat back in her throne, leaning tiredly on one elbow, unconsciously assuming the exact position her father always had at the end of an exhausting day. Threll darted from one lingering mer to the next, making sure everyone understood and felt like she or he had been heard. He was a good little messenger, and had proven surprisingly useful in his new role. Flounder was in the back, having a low conversation with a fish she didn’t recognize.

Sebastian came scuttling over to her, kicking himself up through the water to sit on her armrest.

“Ah, the Saga at the end of the Rites will be outstanding this year,” he declared, parading back and forth in front of Ariel, claws gesticulating in the air. “So much talent. So much enthusiasm! Nothing could make it better. The sardines are in sync, the trumpet fish are terrific. Everything is perfect. Well, there is one thing that could make it better, of course…if only you had your lovely voice.”

Ariel raised an eyebrow at Sebastian. Even if she had her voice, she doubted very much if she could have said anything that would have successfully interrupted his monologue. She shifted uncomfortably in her throne. The little crab didn’t notice. Although he could expertly interpret her signs, read her lips, and decipher her moods—it was only when he was paying strict attention.

“Ahh, what a loss that was for de world….” He put a claw on her shoulder and finally noticed her scowl. “Er, of course, in return, we received the best, most excellent queen in de world.”

The best, most excellent queen in the world tapped her trident, idly considering turning him into a sea cucumber for a few minutes to think about what he had said.

But he was only echoing something Ariel thought about all the time, herself: whether or not she was any sort of decent queen. Since she never should have been queen to begin with.

When she had returned to her sisters five years before, voiceless and deep in despair over what had happened to her, she’d fully expected banishment, punishment—at the very least, severe chastisement. Instead her family did something utterly unexpected: they made her ruler over all of Atlantica. There was no precedent for this; as the youngest child of the mer-king it would normally have taken the deaths of all six older sisters before the crown came to her.

“You’re responsible for the murder of our father,” they had said. “It’s only right that you take on his burdens.”

Privately Ariel wondered if it was less punishment for her than a relief for them. None of her sisters wanted the job. As royal princesses they could sing and play all day, dress up in fancy shells, wear crowns, oversee dances and parades and balls…and never actually have to do any real work. These days she often watched her sisters laughing and singing and wondered at the gulf that had grown between them. Here she was, the youngest, some would say the prettiest—at one time perhaps most thoughtless of the lot—and now she sat on a throne, envying them.

The merfolk adored their queen despite her silence and melancholic air. Or perhaps because of it. Mer poets and musicians wrote odes and epics to the tragedy of her existence, the romance that had almost caused a kingdom’s downfall.

She did not enjoy these.

She did not enjoy the attention of the mermen, either. Once upon a time, as a younger, more innocent thing, she had never even noticed boys. Mer boys, at least.

Now she was forced to notice them, to keep an eye on them, to be aware of what ulterior motives they had: to wed the queen, maybe to become king.

Ha, she thought bitterly. If only they knew what a pain it is to rule.

She hadn’t been even a tide-cycle into her new office before she had begun to understand her father’s temper and moods. He had been a firm leader who rarely smiled, presenting the perfect image of an old god: stony-faced, bearded, permanent. Prone to glowering and frowning. She and her sisters always teased him, trying to win smiles from him, trying to get him to steal an hour from his duties to play with them. Mostly they had to content themselves with his presence at official functions, banquets, and performances like the one Ariel had skipped—the one that had started the whole thing.

She wished she could tell him she understood. Being a ruler was hard. It made one frown, turn pensive, grumpy.

It should have been an easy job; the merfolk and their allies were the happiest, most carefree peoples in the world.

Well, until a tribe of branzinos moved a little too close to the viewing garden of a royal cousin.

Or the shark-magister insisted on expanding his people’s hunting rights all the way to Greydeep Canyon.