Was she imagining it, or were people looking sideways at her? Were they trying to take her in without seeming to stare? Did they notice her? Was she just being paranoid?
She didn’t have a plan if someone stopped her. She had nothing more to go on than sneak into the castle and find her father. Either she had enough confidence as queen that she felt she could deal with whatever was thrown at her, or she literally had no way to plan for the unexpected and so didn’t. Probably the latter, she thought with a sigh. Still the same old Ariel, swimming in where sharks feared to paddle.
On the other hand, I could always return to the other plan—calling up the waves to more forcibly rescue Father…
She held her breath at the main gate, but none of the guards looked at her twice.
None of the guards.
She looked around, suddenly realizing what should have been obvious if she hadn’t been so nervous: there were many, many more guards than when she had last been there. Here, in the castle, not at the beach where they once were. And not just guards, either; there were real soldiers patrolling the halls. Men and boys in keen military dress, shined boots, shined buttons, sabers hanging from their sides and caps cockily perched on their heads.
There were other people, too. Richly clad men and women walked in slow, carefully paced pairs and trios, talking in low voices, checking fancy pocket watches, smiling to other pairs and trios they passed with smiles that disappeared immediately after. Men in poufy shirts with questionable expressions, dour and shifty. Women in bustles and long-flowing gowns that trailed behind them like jellyfish tendrils, looking at each other shyly from behind fans or boldly from under giant hats.
Someone almost crashed into Ariel, pushing a small wagon with an open trunk loaded up on it. Laid carefully over sawdust and packing on the top were—guns. She remembered seeing the castle guards carry them, present them, occasionally shoot them. Muskets with cruel bayonets, shining and black and freshly oiled.
While she was staring, Ariel was knocked from behind by a self-important man with florid cheeks and weak eyes. He strode past her without apologizing and was followed by a servant carrying what looked very much like a small chest of gold.
What is going on here?
Tirulia was a sleepy little kingdom, and this seaside castle was the unofficial capital of its most carefree, bucolic quarter. Eric had no real duties. His parents were still alive and actively ruling—at least they had been the last time she was here. He had no particular desire to take over as king. He had a real desire to sail. He was young, he was enthusiastic, he loved music and the sea and wind in his hair. Everything that she loved, too, but flipped to its Dry World version.
This castle no longer felt like him. It felt…foreign.
Confused, Ariel tried to reorient herself and keep walking, undistracted by what was apparently the new normal.
When a washerwoman walked by, unable to see directly in front of her because of the pile of freshly dried linens blossoming like an anemone out of the basket she carried, Ariel swiped a couple from the top. She carried them in front of her as importantly as if they were a chest of gold, and no one even glanced at her.
I’m becoming as tricky as a human. So quickly! She thought with light irony as she marched into the next room…
…and then immediately hid behind a cabinet.
Standing there stiffly, giving a footman the sort of quiet, gentle-but-severe dressing down that could be done only by the Bretlanders, was Grimsby—Eric’s manservant and closest confidant.
Much like a mermaid, he hadn’t aged at all since the last time she had seen him. But perhaps that was because he had already been old when they first met and didn’t have that many more changes to make before his final transmogrification. His light blue eyes did seem a little wearier—also like her own.
He finished with the footman, sending him off red-faced and chagrined, then headed with slow, solid steps down the hall. The energy of this new castle swirled around him; servants, visiting nobles’ servants, the visiting nobles themselves, the men and women with the money…and though he was a true Bretlandian butler who rarely let his feelings show, Ariel watched him trying not to disapprove of it all with his clear and tired eyes. He moved like a shepherd of comb jellies, trying to urge them through a foreign school of quick-swimming minnows, neither affected nor scared by them, only vaguely concerned.
Ariel found herself holding the skirts of her dress tightly, almost like a timid girl.
She wished she could go to him. In his own way, Grimsby had been extraordinarily kind to her in her short time on land. Gently guiding when she did the wrong thing, leading silently by example rather than chastising aloud.