A mermaid and a corsair. Natalie Yacobson

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 to burn his chest. It burned like a miniature sun pressed against his skin. Cassandra probably recognized that her ward corsair was in trouble. Sea sorceresses have various ways of getting the latest news from the sea bottom. Cassandra claimed she could hear the whispers of the waves. Allegedly, the waves brought her gossip from the sea palace.

      Desmond did not believe in this nonsense, but since he had fallen into the claws of a mermaid, he had become more reasonable. The Underwater Kingdom is indeed full of all sorts of wonders. Living algae braid the network of people’s bodies and tear them apart, multicolored eyes of jellyfish sparkle from the wall like a scattering of precious stones. Can a wall of jellyfish be called a hedge?

      Instead of the corn tortillas given to slaves on land, bowls of seaweed were distributed underwater. Desmond realized it was best not to eat them. Those slaves who ate seaweed had eyes as blank as a zombie’s. Apparently, the food is not meant to fill the stomach, but to enslave the mind.

      Desmond hadn’t felt hunger since being at the bottom. Tiel also gave his portion of food to the other slaves.

      “You can go as long as you want without food in the Underworld,” he explained. “Only those who have tasted the local food and become addicted to it begin to feel hungry.”

      “And I don’t think anyone in the Underwater Kingdom is thirsty at all. There’s water everywhere.”

      “It is wrong! Princesses drink nectar from water lilies and lotuses. And in the royal palace they serve exquisite magical wines, I don’t know what they are made of, obviously not from grapes.”

      “I wish I could be in the palace of the sea king,” Desmond sighed dreamily. Surely Merediana lived there.