Pretty in Pearls Page 6

  As if she can totally hear my internal monologue, Coral nods sagely. “Okay, then. Well, let me know if you need anything.”

  She winks at me—just like her brother. Then, with a flick of her tail fin, she’s sailing across the stall to greet another customer.

  “Come on,” Lom says, pulling me toward a display of exotic black pearls. “Help me choose.”

  I float over to the barrel and study the contents. I need to tell Lom this will be our only date, but he seems to be having such a good time. Maybe I should wait until it’s over. That’s probably the nice thing to do.

  The pearls in this barrel are so dark and shiny and beautiful that I can’t help digging my hand into them.

  “Do you have pierced ears?” Lom asks. “I was thinking a pair for you and one for me.”

  He chooses a large pearl and holds it up to his left earlobe.

  “I’m going to get it pierced as soon as my internship is over.”

  I giggle at the thought of Lom with a black pearl stud in his ear. It’s so different than his clean-cut, nerdy merboy look. Thick, black glasses and a black pearl stud. On some guys the stud would look tough. If Riatus had one it would give him even more of an edge, like he’s daring anyone to say something about the girly pearl in his ear.

  On Lom it just looks adorable.

  “I think it’s a great idea,” I say, reaching forward to nudge the pearl down his ear to a better position. “You definitely should.”

  A shadow passes over us, blocking out some of the light from behind. Lom looks over my shoulder and smiles.

  He holds up the pearl. “How much is this one?”

  I expect Coral to answer.

  When the voice is male, my spine stiffens.

  “Fifty.”

  I sense movement and a second later Riatus is floating next to us. At first I’m frozen, stunned to see him after thinking he wasn’t here. But then I see the intimidating look on his face. He’s scowling at Lom, like he wants to take him out behind the market and beat the carp out of him.

  Where does he get off?

  I float closer to Lom’s side and paste a thrilled smile on my face.

  Grabbing a pair of black pearls from the bin, I hold them up to my lobes. “How much for a pair?”

  Riatus’s eyes narrow.

  “For those?” His mouth kicks up to one side. “Eighty-five.”

  “That’s not bad,” Lom says.

  Riatus adds, “Each.”

  Lom’s face falls. “Oh.”

  I drop the pearls back into the barrel. “That’s okay,” I say, my eyes focused on Riatus. “I’m kind of over pearls anyway.”

  “Yeah,” Lom says, adding his to the pile. “Me too.”

  He seems completely oblivious to the tension hanging in the water between me and Riatus. He’s a sweet guy, but definitely clueless.

  Riatus floats closer to me. “Oh really?”

  “Yes.” I lift my chin. “Pearls are just too . . . complicated for me.”

  His pale gaze dips to my collarbone and then back up. “Are they?”

  The urge to reach up and cover the copper pearl pendant hanging beneath my throat is almost overwhelming. But I resist. I won’t give him the satisfaction.

  I want to turn the tables.

  Reaching up behind my neck, I start to unhook the chain. Riatus’s hand is around my wrist before I can even locate the clasp.

  “Don’t.” His voice is low and urgent.

  I suck in a breath. His jaw muscles twitch and his eyes spear into mine. A moment passes between us, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what it is.

  Like I said, complicated.

  “Do you two know each other?” Lom asks.

  “No,” I say.

  At the same time, Riatus says, “Yes.”

  I wrench my wrist out of his grip. “I’ve been buying pearls here for years.”

  The tension in the water snaps, like the spark of an electric eel. Lom drifts backward a little. Riatus’s demeanor shifts and warning bells chime in my mind.

  “Caught her stealing once,” he says with a smirk. “Would have turned her over to the police if she hadn’t begged so prettily.”

  I slap him. Hard. My hand just lashes out without a second thought.

  Lom gasps.

  Riatus doesn’t jerk back or reach for his cheek. His eyes don’t even waver from mine. It takes me a moment to realize he wanted to get a rise out of me. He was goading me and I stepped right into his trap. Maybe he didn’t expect me to hit him, but he was trying to make me mad.

  Well, I don’t like being manipulated.

  Scowling, I grab Lom’s wrist and swim away. I won’t even dignify Riatus’s behavior with a response. And I ignore the feel of his eyes on me until we’re out of sight.

  7

  Usually King Whelk presides over all royal affairs. But when he’s out of the kingdom—like this week, when he’s attending a pan-kingdom summit in the South Pacific—Lily takes over his role in overseeing audiences with the crown. She spends the whole day—at least until there are no more citizens seeking an audience—listening to complaints and mitigating minor disputes.

  Thalassinia doesn’t have a court system like they do on the mainland. The crown hears grievances, confers with advisors and other experts if necessary, and makes the final rulings. Only the largest disputes require the entire royal council to get involved. For most things, arbitration by the king or crown princess satisfies all parties involved.

  Lily is getting better with every session.

  As her emissary, it’s my job to have information about any relevant laws or statutes on hand to help her make her decisions.

  Since most of the audiences are about minor squabbles, I’m usually on standby. It gets pretty boring—for both of us—and by the end we’ve often deteriorated into silliness.

  Not today.

  Our first hearing is a dispute between a pair of sea-slug famers about the upcoming races at the Sea Harvest Festival.

  “Every year!” Mr. Moorella shouts. “Every year, he cheats and wins the sea-slug race.”

  Mr. Phidian scoffs. “I do not cheat.”

  “Then explain it to me,” Mr. Moorella barks. “How do your slugs come in first at the festival every year?”

  “My slugs are obviously faster,” Mr. Phidian replies coolly.

  Mr. Moorella dives for Mr. Phidian, and soon they’re swinging and swishing, sending waves of water across the room. Mangrove, the king’s royal secretary who coordinates and documents all court proceedings, dashes between them and pushes them apart.

  “Gentlemen,” he exclaims.

  “Please,” Lily says, swimming off the throne and down to the meet the farmers at ground level. “I’m sure we can find an agreeable solution.”

  She glances back over her shoulder at me and I nod. I grab the binder that contains all the relevant rules and regulations about the Sea Harvest Festival and start flipping through. When I get to the section about the slug races, I quickly skim over the official rules.

  In the third paragraph down, I find something that might help.

  “Are your slugs the same breed?” I ask, looking up from the binder.

  “No,” Mr. Phidian replies, smoothing down his jacket after the scuffle. “I raise dorids and Moorella breeds aeolids.”

  Aha! Two different branches of the sea-slug family.

  “Well, according to the official race rules,” I say, reading from the relevant code, “if there are sufficient entrants so as to require more than one race, the races may be divided by nudibranch infraorder.”

  Lily blinks at me. “Say what?”

  “It means,” I say, slamming the binder shut, “we can run two races. One for dorids, and one for aeolids.”

  The two farmers glare at each other warily. Lily beams.

  “Does that solve your dispute, gentlemen?” she asks.

  Grumbling, they both agree. Moments later, Mangrove is escorting them from the room, soon to retu
rn with the next unhappy citizen.

  Thinking about the festival makes me think about Riatus. Pretty much everything makes me think about him, but this relates to my current concerns.

  “I am so seriously confused,” I say. “Riatus is acting so weird.”

  “What happened?” she asks. “I thought you were giving up on him. How was your date with Lom?”

  I twist in my seat—a small chair next to the throne—so that my tail fin drapes over the arm. “You want to know where he took me?” I hang my head back over the other arm. “To the market.”

  “No,” Lily gasps.

  I nod, sending my dark hair swirling around me. “And guess where in the market.”

  “No!”

  “Yes,” I exclaim. “He wanted to buy me pearls.”

  “No!”

  There is something less-than-surprised about her tone.

  “Did you have something to do with that?” I demand. “Did you tell him to take me to Paru’s stall in some misguided—against-my-wishes—attempt to make Riatus jealous?”

  “Of course not,” she insists. “That was all his idea.”

  I glare at her.

  Mangrove returns to the throne room and announces the next audience.

  Lily waves them forward. She doesn’t need me for this one, so I stare at the ceiling and don’t think about Riatus. The throne-room ceiling is a wonder—intricately carved designs that include all sorts of elements of sea life from beautiful butterflyfish to slimy squid, coral to sea fans, and everything in between. It’s as if someone took all the ocean’s life and wove it together in picturesque, breathtaking relief. There are even a few jellyfish, but I try to ignore them.

  Just like I’m ignoring thoughts of Riatus.

  Lily processes the complaint quickly and a few minutes later she’s turning back to me.

  “Was Riatus there?”

  I sit up. “Yes.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  Boy did he. “He was kind of a jerk.”

  Lily leans over the arm of the throne, her blond hair surrounding her like a halo. “Like, how?”

  “Like . . . I don’t know.” I grab my own hair and start weaving it into a braid. “Just a jerk.”

  Mangrove announces another citizen, and this time Lily needs to know the relevant zoning laws about building above the city—as in floating above the city. Needless to say that it’s pretty much forbidden, except in cases of temporary structures. No one wants some new building blocking out what little sun we get down here.

  As soon as that discussion is settled, Lily swims out of her seat and spins in a circle. When she whirls back to face me, she has that up-to-something smile on her face.

  “So I take it you won’t be seeing Lom again?” Lily asks.

  I roll my eyes. “He couldn’t say good night fast enough after we left the market. Who can blame him after Riatus told him he caught me stealing pearls once?”

  Lily’s eyes narrow. “Did you tell him it wasn’t true?”

  “Yes.” I fidget with the hem of my top.

  “I thought Lom would be more understanding.” She studies me. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  I swear, Lily can smell gossip from a mile away.

  “Okay, maybe it was because I hit Riatus.”

  “You hit him?” Lily gasps.

  “I slapped him. Hard.” I shrug. “He deserved it.”

  “I’m sure he did.”

  Lily falls silent for a moment, and I’m not sure if I should be relieved or worried. At the same time, the memory of Riatus’s attitude, of how he was trying—and succeeding—to make me mad, just makes me mad all over again.

  “Riatis was jealous!” she blurts. Then, almost to herself, “I knew he would be.”

  “What? No.” I shake my head. “He practically told me to take a swim.”

  Lily’s smile only gets bigger. “Of course he was jealous. He couldn’t just say so. He’s a guy.”

  “I know, but . . . ”

  But what?

  I’m saved from trying to examine the answer to that question by Mangrove announcing another visitor. We’re swamped for the rest of the day with no time to argue about whether Riatus was or was not jealous—for the record: was not. By the time we’re through, I’m exhausted and just ready to go home and crash.

  Lily swims me to the front door. As I head out across the palace grounds, she shouts, “He was jealous!”

  I shake my head. I don’t have the energy to answer. With a quick wave back over my shoulder, I hurry for home.

  I’m halfway there when I remember that we ran out of plumaria pudding last night. Plumaria pudding is my pity-party indulgence of choice and I try to make sure we’re never out of stock.

  I veer left and head for the nearest grocery store, which is only a few blocks from my house. I may not have the entire store layout memorized, but I know exactly where to find the plumaria pudding.

  When my shopping basket is loaded with double my normal amount—it’s been a crazy couple of weeks and I’ve been going through it faster than usual—I turn and head for the checkout.

  Only I don’t check behind me first, and I end up swimming into another body. My basket goes sailing, and tubs of pudding swirl off into the aisle.

  “I’m so sorry,” I blurt, diving for the nearest tub. “I was in a hurry and I—”

  The guy I just crashed into looks up and I freeze. It’s the military-jacket merman I saw in Paru’s stall the first day Riatus was back. What was his name?

  “Oh,” I say brilliantly. “You’re Riatus’s friend.”

  He smiles as he hands me a pair of the float-away tubs. “Prax.”

  “I’m Peri.” I stuff the tubs back into my basket.

  Prax nods. “You must be the mysterious mergirl who has my friend so distracted lately.”

  “I am?” I blurt before I can control my reaction. “I mean, I’m not. We’re . . . not even friends or anything.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.” Lines crinkle at the corners of his eyes and mouth as he smiles, like he’s really happy to learn that Riatus and I aren’t . . . anything.

  He chases after the last three tubs of pudding.

  I hold out my basket so he can place them inside. “Why is that?”

  “Because that means I can ask you out,” he says with a wink.

  I almost drop my basket again.

  “You can?” Lord love a lobster, I sound like a moron. “I mean, you can. If you want to.”

  He drifts a little closer. “Oh, I want to.”

  The question is, do I want to?

  That same odd feeling that tickled the back of my neck when I first saw him tickles my neck now. Something about him bothers me, but I can’t put my tail fin on exactly what. Maybe I’m just being paranoid.

  Plus, there’s the part where he’s Riatus’s friend. Lily’s insistence that Riatus was jealous over my date with Lom makes me wonder . . . Would he be actually—or, if Lily is right, even more—jealous if I went out with his friend? I guess there is only one way to find out.

  “I would love to,” I say before he even officially asks.

  “Great.” He floats a little closer. “How about tomorrow night? Sunken Treasure Pizza?”

  I can already picture Riatus’s face.

  “Sounds perfect.” I smile in anticipation. “It’s a date.”

  Sunken Treasure has the best pizza in all of Thalassinia. Sal, the owner, originally hails from the Mediterranean kingdom of Posidonia, which stretches from the west coast of Italy to the gates of Gibraltar. And those merfolk know how to make an amazing pizza.

  They are always swamped, even on an ordinary Tuesday night, so when I get there before Prax I have to wait a few minutes for a table. While I’m floating in the little alcove next to the hostess podium, the door opens. I look up, hoping it’s Prax.

  Instead, I see Riatus holding the door open for Coral. Oh no.

  Luckily, he’s facing the other way and I’m hidden in shado
ws. I drift back and watch as they swim up to the hostess.

  “Welcome back, Riatus. Your regular table is all set,” she says with a huge smile on her face. “Follow me.”

  Riatus lets Coral go first and then they disappear into the restaurant.

  His regular table? He must come here a lot. Did Prax know that when he suggested we eat here? This was the worst idea ever—I’m just full of those lately. Why did I think that I wanted to make him jealous? I’m going to throw up.

  “There she is,” Prax says as he swims through the door.

  I try not to look wild-eyed as I tell him, “This was a bad idea. We should go.”

  He scowls. “Why?”

  “Riatus is here,” I say. “This is going to be awkward. It already is.”

  “I thought you weren’t even friends.”

  “We’re not, it’s just—” I have to get out of here. “It’s complicated.”

  Prax’s smile gentles and he swims to my side. “This isn’t,” he insists. “It’s dinner. Nothing more. You’re allowed to go to dinner, aren’t you?”

  “Of course I’m—” I stop short, smiling as I realize he was trying to talk me into a corner. “Oh, I see what you did there.”

  The hostess returns to the podium. “Your table is ready.”

  Prax holds out his arm. “Come on. I’ve been dying to try their calamari-and-kombu deep dish.”

  He’s right. This is just dinner. And Riatus doesn’t have a say in who I have dinner with. If he has a problem with this, then it’s his problem. Not mine.

  I take Prax’s offered arm and we follow the hostess to our table. In my wildest fantasy, there would be a huge scene. I picture Riatus turning over tables and sending pizzas spinning through the water. A fight or an argument or at least an exchange of words.

  Nothing like that happens.

  So underwhelming.

  He sees us. I know he sees us because the water temperature changes and, well, every time I look over at their table he’s glaring at us. But he doesn’t do or say anything. He finishes his meal with Coral and when they’re done they leave, swimming right past our table on the way to the door.