“Is your dad at work, little Merman?” he asks Zale as they dart through the dim streets of Aquaticus, his nephew’s arms clasped tightly around his neck.

“That’s where he went this morning, but he wasn’t at the net shop when I went to look for him,” Zale says. There is a pause before he adds, with a slight quiver in his childish voice, “Uncle Darin, I’m scared for Mama. She was looking really bad.”

“It’s hard work bringing life into the world,” he replies, reaching behind his back to give Zale a reassuring squeeze. “She’ll be alright. She had you and Ren and Fisk, didn’t she?”

“But I can remember her having Fisk,” Zale says. “And she didn’t look like this.”

“And how is that?”

“White as foam with her teeth clenched together. And before I knocked on her door to see how she was doing, I heard this awful moan. It scared me, Uncle Darin.”

Pace quickening, he veers down a side street. “Don’t worry, buddy. We’ll fetch your great-aunt Chantara and send her to keep your mom company while we go and get your dad. Chantara’s delivered hundreds of babies. Your mom will be in good hands.” He gives his nephew a poke. “Want to know what I saw while out hunting today?”

“What?” Zale asks, his voice slightly more animated.

“A line of silver glinting from the sand next to a big rock.”

“And what was it?”

“Let me tell my story, boy!” Zale giggles. “Where was I? Oh, yes, I saw a line of silver next to a big rock. So, I began to dig. First, a long silver paddle with curved edges emerged, but it was attached to something, so I kept digging. Turns out the paddle was attached to a collar made from the same metal, and when I pulled on the collar, out came two more blades. It was a submarine propeller.”

“What’s a submarine?” Zale asks breathlessly.

“Some sort of metal ship. They make them in Atlantis.”

“Why don’t we make them here?”

“There you have me,” he replies. “It would sure be nice not to have to wait to catch a ride on a blue whale to get places. But we’re here.” He hammers on the wooden door of Chantara’s small stone hut, and it flies open in a moment. Chantara hovers in the doorway, her deep purple hair pulled up into an ivory-colored scarf. He recognizes the scarf. It was his gift to her from the first wreck he ever harvested.

Crinkles appear at the corners of her dark eyes as she surveys Darin and Zale. “It’s Amaya’s time, isn’t it?” Darin nods and she darts back into the house, returning with a basket full of supplies balanced on her hip.

“We haven’t been able to find Beck,” Darin tells her as they turn toward Amaya’s house. “Can Zale go back with you while I go look for him?”

“Of course,” Chantara says briskly, shifting her basket to the other hip and holding a hand out toward Zale. “Come, my Z.”

Zale glances up at Darin as he takes her hand, his pale little face pinched with anxiety. “Don’t worry,” Darin assures him. “I’ll find your dad soon. Just keep Ren and Fisk out of trouble so your mom can focus on having that baby, alright?”

Zale manages a small smile before setting off down the street with Chantara. Darin turns the other way, heading toward the net shop where his brother works. Zale said he already checked there, but Beck might have been out on a delivery so they missed each other.

When he reaches the shop, it is dark and shuttered. With a muttered oath, he pauses, tail churning against the water. It is quite late by now, and it seems unlikely that Beck is still out making deliveries. After a moment’s hesitation, he turns in the direction of Amaya’s house. Perhaps Beck has returned home. Even if he hasn’t, Locklyn should be there by now.

When he pushes the door to Amaya and Beck’s cottage open, his heart leaps at the sound of his brother’s voice coming from the bedroom at the end of the hall. But, just as quickly, it plummets again. Beck’s voice is frantic and accompanied by a horrible keening. Chantara says something, her calm voice much sharper than usual.

Heart hammering, he taps lightly on the door of the small bedroom to his right and pushes it open. His nephews are huddled on Zale’s bed. Ren has his eyes shut tight and his fingers in his ears. Zale is cradling little Fisk in his arms, mumbling comfort in a shaking voice.

“Little buddies!” he says with forced heartiness. Ren’s eyes fly open, and he bounds from the bed, catapulting himself into Darin’s arms, Zale and Fisk right behind him. “But where is Aunt Wyn?” he says, using the name Zale gave to Locklyn when he was a toddler.

“She hasn’t come yet,” Ren says with a shrug.

“What?” he responds so sharply that all three boys stare up at him with wide eyes. “Sorry,” he says quickly, thoughts tumbling.

She should be here by now.

“You boys stay here.” He gently detaches his nephews’ arms from around his midsection. “I’ll go look for her.”

“Stay, Uncle Darin!” wails little Fisk, trying to glom onto him again, but Zale grabs him and holds him back. Fisk bursts into tears and begins to beat Zale’s chest with his tiny fists. “I want Mama! Let me go to Mama!”

“You can’t, Fisky,” Zale says, his voice gentle as the surf in the early morning, stroking its way up a gray, cold beach. “But I’ll let you play with the new sea snail shells Dad brought me. That’ll be fun, won’t it?”

Fisk’s wails subside into whimpers, and he blinks up at his older brother. “The orange ones?”

“I’ll be back,” Darin says softly to Zale over Fisk’s head, and the boy nods as he turns and whisks out of the room.

His heart is beating a tattoo of panic by the time he emerges into the dark streets again, a glowing length of seaweed he snatched from the entryway closet wrapped around his wrist. Curfew was over an hour ago. Where is Locklyn?

Could she have misunderstood and thought she was supposed to go for the midwife? He streaks back toward Chantara’s house through the dark streets. He has to go down a side street one time to get away from a patrol of night guards, and to avoid explaining why he is out so late. When he reaches Chantara’s, he grabs the door handle and wrenches, but it is impossible to open. She must have locked it behind her.

Whipping around in the water, he starts back toward Amaya and Beck’s, his golden tail casting a bubble-encrusted path through the water. When he pushes open the front door, Amaya’s continuing wails strike him again.

Wave Master, help her.

For a moment, he considers knocking on the door to see if they need anything, but decides Chantara would have sent Beck for anything desperately needed. Silently cracking open the door to his nephews’ room, he sees the three of them sprawled on the floor, playing with a pile of vibrant orange sea snail shells. Zale glances up and meets his eyes, but he puts a finger to his lips and doesn’t say anything as his uncle eases the door closed.

Darin bursts into the streets again. Locklyn wouldn’t have willingly let anything keep her from being with Amaya at a moment like this. Can something have happened to her? Did the gates shut before she had a chance to come through? But she was right behind him. She should have been on time.

For an instant, he considers going to the gates, but then he dismisses the idea as useless. If the gates were shut by the time Locklyn reached them, she would just have gone home.

As he begins to swim at random, eyes skimming for a sight of Locklyn’s familiar slender white shape and dark blue hair, worst-case scenarios chase each other through his mind.

Locklyn lying unconscious in the coral reef with a bleeding lump on the side of her head after swimming into a coral spur.

Locklyn dragged off to the palace jail by the night watchmen for being a Crura out in the streets so late.

Locklyn jerked into the dark doorway of a building by a faceless Merman.

His mind spins, remembering the look on her face in the reef today when he said he wanted to tell her something. For a fleeting instant, the mad impulse to blurt how he felt about her had crossed his mind. But he’d hesitated and the moment had slipped away. She had listened to his problems and then given him wise advice—advice he’d needed to hear. After he’d given in, they had laughed and were back to being friends.

Friends.

Cursing inwardly, he turns onto the next street, catching sight of a watchman swimming slowly toward the far end of it. “Hi!” he shouts, and the watchman turns. Drawing closer, he recognizes him as one of the palace guards he regularly delivers treasure to.

“Aalto,” the guard says in surprise. “You’re out late.”

“Clyde,” he says without preamble, “have you seen Locklyn Adair in your rounds tonight? The dugong shepherdess who supplies the castle kitchens?”

Clyde’s lips twist into a sneer. “The Crura?”

Anger flares inside Darin—so hot he can almost taste it. “My brother’s wife’s sister,” he says levelly, staring into Clyde’s eyes. “My sister-in-law is in labor, and she was supposed to be coming.”

Clyde’s gaze flickers before Darin’s glare and he looks away. “I—I haven’t seen her,” he mumbles. Something moves at the end of the street. “But Blackwell was guarding the gate,” Clyde adds, motioning toward the dark figure swimming into view. “You should ask him. Oy, Blackwell!”

The figure turns and swims slowly toward them. As it draws level, the seaweed’s ghostly light illuminates a pale face surrounded by greasy black hair and throws the ugly scar on the Merman’s left cheek into sharp relief.

“Blackwell, Aalto here is looking for the Cr—I mean, the young shepherdess who sells dugongs to the palace kitchens. We were wondering if she came through the gates.”

Blackwell looks up at Darin. Something about his face breeds dislike within him, though he has never seen the scarred Merman before. “The little blue-haired spindle-shanks?” Blackwell says in a sneering voice.

Darin’s hand snakes out, closing around Blackwell’s upper arm. The Merman gives a yelp of surprise and pain as Darin’s fingers dig into his skin.

“I’d prefer you didn’t use that word in front of me.” His voice is sharp.

Blackwell glares malevolently up at him through his greasy bangs. There is a pause before he snarls, “I let her in just before the gates closed, alright? Happy?”

Locklyn is somewhere in the city?

“I need to go,” he says abruptly, releasing Blackwell’s arm. Without another word, he turns and darts away.

Hours pass as he scours the streets of Aquaticus, checking every place he can possibly think of that Locklyn has ever mentioned going. But the market square is empty and deserted. The palace guard hasn’t seen her. She isn’t at his house waiting for him. The bartender of the Shark’s Fin shakes his head silently when questioned, then resumes wiping empty glasses.

As he swims slowly back toward Amaya and Beck’s house just as a clanging bell announces the morning opening of the gates, exhaustion dulls the edges of his panic. There is no point in continuing to search without getting some rest. Unexpected, irrational anger flashes across his consciousness and his jaw clamps in frustration.

If Locklyn doesn’t have a good excuse for putting me through the most harrowing night of my life, she is going to wish she was still lost whenever I manage to find her.