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I decided to be honest, rather than tempt her to pry. “I have been better. But—now I am here, and willing to talk.”
She made a face. “Are you sure, Ceph?”
I didn’t know what she was basing her hesitation on—if she’d read my mind already, in her siren-way, or if she knew more about my upcoming job than me.
“The king has given me a job and I shall do it,” I said with resignation.
Omara nodded. “All right—hold on,” she said, blinking a thin white membrane over her eyes and briefly frowning.
“What do you get out of interacting with humans?” I wondered aloud, curious if contact with the two-legged also dismayed her. “What do they trade for your time?”
I knew what the Monster Security Agency did for me—they promised to keep my kind abreast of any unauthorized two-legged incursions into kraken territory with the satellites they flew in the sky.
“Shhh,” Omara thought in my direction, and then Royce came on the ’qa at the same time as I saw his hairless white head peeking out over the side of the boat above.
“Cepharius of the Krakenkind!”
It was all I could do not to groan. His mind was way too loud. All humans were loud. It was their awful, horrible way.
“Is it really you?” he asked, when I was quiet.
“What happened to the sad, short tentacles on your face?” I asked him, knowing full well that human men had face-hair.
He laughed, and reached up for his chin. “I decided to shave—that was a few years ago. We weren’t sure you were going to show?—”
His thoughts tumbled out of his head, plinking onto the miniature ’qa Omara was providing us both with like hard drops of rain.
No melody, no beauty, and no subterfuge—yet.
“Look, I know neither of you enjoy this, so I’ll cut to the chase: we need you to guard a scientist at the Aquatic Life Research Installation that’s been placed at the bottom of the Georgiana Trench.”
Of course the two-legged had a different name for Kalish—and hadn’t bothered to ask my kind ours. It wasn’t worth correcting him.
“They’re putting her into the compression chamber tomorrow, and they’ll have her installed down at ALRI shortly thereafter?—”
“Her?” Both Omara and I thought at once, and I was glad I wasn’t the only one surprised.
“Yeah, noted historical xenologist Elle Kepzler. She studies ancient monster civilizations, and she’s got enough letters after her name to fill a dictionary,” he said. “Not that you, uh, have those down there,” he added, after a second thought.
He was right, we didn’t, but I could intuit enough of what he meant through our siren-aided bond.
But letters were not floatation devices, nor were they oxygen. “The deep seafloor is barely a place for us much less a female human,” I said, at the same time as Omara chimed in.
“We don’t go that deep.”
I knew all that she was implying. If the deep sea was too inhospitable for a siren, a half-human, half-oceanic-magical-creature, then what was an entirely human woman doing down there?
“I’m feeling some resistance from the two of you—and honestly it’s making me queasy.” Royce said. Humans weren’t good with the ’qa either. I think it made them uncomfortable, being so open to others. “But this is the job, Cepharius. I explained everything to your brother, and he said he’d call you back personally to take it.”
Which was not what my brother had told me. I gritted my beak together. Perhaps Balesur’s exposure to humans as the king of “krakenkind” as Royce had put it, had made him better able to hide his thoughts than I had given him credit for.
“He informed us this morning that he’d send a replacement to your post,” Royce went on, “so we’ll honor our prior arrangement with your people. But if you’re not the right man—er, kraken—for the job, then?—”
“I am,” I said at once.
Taking this assignment was the only way I’d ever truly be free.
I felt his relief wash over the ’qa like a wave. “Phew—well, that’s good then—great—thanks, Ceph, we’ll give Omara here the coordinates, and I’ll let you both go for now—Omara?—can you hang us up?—”
