Crown of Coral and Pearl

“Maybe I can help,” I said. “I’ll be in Ilara, Sami. I’ll be able to talk to the king. The prince will be my husband. Once I tell them how bad things are here, they’ll have to do something.”

He snorted. “Why? They don’t care about us. They’ve made that perfectly clear. That emissary, Talin? He wasn’t just here to check up on Zadie.”

I felt my cheeks heat at the mere mention of his name. “What are you talking about?” I asked.

Sami dropped the anchor to keep us from drifting within earshot of the merchants. “After you left that night, he asked my father all kinds of questions. He wanted to see my mother’s collection of pearls, which she assured him didn’t exist. She had me sell off most of her jewelry at the market ages ago so she could help take care of the poorest families. He said the king insisted Talin visit an ‘average citizen’s house,’ so he could see how everyone else lived.”

“Thalos, why?”

He raised one eyebrow. “I don’t know. He asked to see yours, but Father took him to one of my aunts’ houses instead.”

I felt a small pang of disappointment. I’d been so busy the past few days I hadn’t thought about Talin much, though his sea glass eyes had showed up more than once in my dreams. I wondered if I would see him again, then chided myself for my foolishness. Talin was the one person who might see through my disguise, the one person I should pray to never see again.

“What do you think he wanted?” I asked Sami.

“I think the king sent him because he doesn’t trust us. He believes we’re keeping the pearls for ourselves, that we’re lying when we say there aren’t as many pearls as there were a decade ago. And I think that’s why he keeps lowering the value.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, confused. “The market decides the value of the pearls. Not the king.”

“I was trading a few weeks ago with a Galethian north of the port, and he told me that Ilarean smugglers are getting the same price for the pearls they always have.”

I leaned closer. “So what are you saying? That the value of the pearls hasn’t dropped, and we’re getting paid less for them anyway?”

He nodded. “The king thinks if he pushes us hard enough, more pearls will suddenly appear. He doesn’t believe that there are no more. Or at least, he doesn’t want to believe it. Even if the emissary tells the king the truth of what he saw here, the king might not listen.”

Was it possible that Talin had only come to spy on us? I thought of the way he’d looked at me, how his gaze made my belly flutter. Was I so naive that I had misread Talin’s suspicion as curiosity or—even more humiliating—interest?

Sami continued, “Don’t you see? We work harder than ever, and our economy never grows. We’re worse off now than our great-great-grandparents ever were. And why? Why should we not be allowed to trade the pearls on the free market like everyone else?”

I sighed, exasperated. “Because of the lost princess.”

“That was hundreds of years ago, if it ever happened at all. It has nothing to do with any of the Varenians who are alive today. They’ve deliberately kept us poor and powerless, Nor.”

“I know, Sami.”

He was speaking so fast I could hardly keep up. “And not only are we controlled by the Ilareans, but we send the most beautiful women to be their queens. If we’re so beneath them, why do their princes want Varenian brides?”

“I don’t know!” I shouted.

We sat in silence for a moment, the boat rocking gently from side to side. I’d been asking myself the same questions for years, and I was no closer to the answers now.

“What if I can find out?” I asked suddenly.

Sami glanced up. “What?”

“I’ll be in the castle with the king and all his advisors. I’ll be able to see what the Ilareans are doing with the pearls and why they need them so badly. I’ll have the answers to all of our questions at my fingertips.”

“You want to spy on the king?”

I shrugged. “Is it spying if I live there? If I happen to overhear people talking?”

He started to shake his head. “No, Nor. That’s not what I meant.”

“So, what? We wait until you’re governor? What makes you think you’ll be able to stand up to the king when your father can’t?”

Sami’s clenched his jaw. “And you think you can? You’ve spent your whole life worrying about being beautiful, not learning how to govern.”

I felt my anger start to rise, but fear tamped it back down. My mother’s words echoed in my head. Beauty is power. Maybe that was true here in Varenia, but who knew how things worked in Ilara? “I don’t know if the king will listen,” I admitted. “But I have to at least try.”

“It’s too dangerous, Nor. And if you were found out...it could have terrible consequences for all of us here.”

I reached for his hands. “I know it’s risky to spy on the king. I know I could take the easy way, abandon our customs and adopt the Ilarean ways. And I could pretend that everything is fine here in Varenia, that my family has enough to eat, that Zadie can heal instead of being forced to dive. But I will know the truth. That with every sunrise, Varenia comes closer to the day when there isn’t a single oyster left. And what will you do then? When the King of Ilara refuses to give you water and firewood, when there are no more fish to catch? It’s not enough to try anymore. If we don’t do something, now, you’re all going to die.”

Sami pretended to look up at the clouds, but I saw the tears he was trying to keep from falling. “All right,” he said. “Find out what you can.” Then he frowned. “But how will you get information to me even if you do manage it? No Varenian bride has ever returned to our village.”

“You’ll have to come to me.”

“Nor—” He followed my gaze to the floating market.

Every face in Varenia was familiar to me, but from here, with everyone milling about, they all looked the same. If Sami could get somewhere he could blend in, perhaps...

“The port,” we said simultaneously.

He took a deep breath. “It could work. Their next market isn’t for more than three weeks. That may be enough time for you to arrange things.”

“But how would I find you? You told me the port market is enormous.”

“There’s a man who sells kites. He’s easy to find because he ties several of his kites to the stand. We could meet there, at midday.”

I settled back into the boat, exhilarated and overwhelmed. “I might not make it the first time.”

“I know.”

“But keep coming, every month. I’ll do everything in my power to get there.”

“So will I.”

We bought what we needed at the floating market quickly, neither one of us wanting to waste any more of the time I had left. As Sami began to row us home, a family passed us, their faces grim. If they recognized me as the village outcast, they didn’t say anything.

Then I noticed the dark cloth in the bottom of their boat, covering a lumpy object about five feet long.

A body.

The family was going to bury their dead. Sami and I dropped our heads at the same time, touching our hearts in a gesture of sympathy. The father nodded at us when we lifted our heads again, and they continued on in silence.

Varenian funerals were private, solemn rituals. Only the immediate family attended. That way no one else needed to feel as though they had to avoid certain places out of respect for the dead. I had attended one funeral as a child, that of my father’s father. He’d been killed by a windwhale, a predatory white whale with a giant dorsal fin that acted like a sail, making it one of the fastest creatures in the ocean. My grandmother had been left a widow. Fortunately, most of her children were grown then, and she went to live with one of my aunts.

I didn’t remember the words my father spoke, only the way the cloth had clung to the body as it hit the water, briefly revealing my grandfather’s features. He was weighted down with rocks and sank quickly, though we’d all known it wouldn’t be long before the sharks gathered.

Why don’t we burn the bodies? I’d asked my father, thinking anything would be better than being eaten, even if you were already dead.

Because, child, as we take from the sea, so must we give. Through Thalos, the ocean provides us with our food, with the pearls we harvest. It makes us strong and healthy. And when we die, we must return to the ocean, so that it, too, can have nourishment. So that the blood coral may grow from our hearts, and begin the cycle anew.

I touched my scar as the memory faded. “Everyone thinks I tried to hurt her, Sami—maybe even kill her.” I looked down, my eyes burning with unshed tears. “I think my own mother started the rumor.”

“Maybe, but it’s Alys’s mother who spread it. She’s furious that you were chosen in Alys’s place.”

“Not because I’m more beautiful than her. Only because they had no choice.”

He reached over and squeezed my hand. “Listen to me, Nor. You’re not a second-rate girl. You never have been.”

I chuckled wryly, but he didn’t join me.

“I mean it. I can’t think of any other girl who would be willing to spy on the king, not even Zadie. Your mother taught you to believe your scar made you ugly, but it has made you brave.”