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I wasn't sure why Myles thought he would fight them, they had lived together in harmony for centuries, but I sensed that there were things he hadn't told me about them yet.
"They will go for the air supply lines and masks," I warned Myles when we were on our way back to Aecor.
His hand brushed through his salt encrusted hair, "I've been thinking about that," he admitted.
He held one of the hoses out to me, "Is there any way to make these from metal?"
I took hold of it and twisted it this way and that, "They won't be flexible."
"Ney," he agreed.
I saw his point though, these hoses were made from a hollow seaweed, easily cut, and at the depths we were diving, it would mean someone's death if the line was severed.
"Let me talk with your smith, we might be able to come up with something."
"They'll also try to rip our mouth pieces off," Myles added.
The image of having a mouthpiece fitted so that it would rip skin if the sirens pulled on it made me sick to my stomach, and I explained my misgivings to Myles.
"Better having cut lips then being dead," he retorted dryly.
"I’ll also talk this over with the smith," I agreed heavy hearted.
"What else do you think our weaknesses will be?" He asked.
"Other than dragging you down so deep your eardrums will shatter and you lungs will compress, or holding you until you run out of oxygen?" I countered.
He grinned slightly, "Zyn, other than that."
"Your goggles are at once a protection and a weakness," I said after mulling it over.
"We can fight on without goggles," he boasted just as I had expected.
"The sirens' tails," I finally said, thinking they could wrap around a man's chest or stomach and squeeze them to death.
"Easily cut," Myles argued.
"As long as you have a knife." I cautioned.
"I will make sure we will have plenty." He tilted his head, "How's your exploring going?"
It wasn't a subtle change in topic, but I wasn't a warrior and I was sure he had the same conversations with his dragoons before approaching me.
He didn’t have to prod me twice though, my exploring was the most exciting thing I had ever done. I stayed in the ruins for hours, without realizing how fast time flowed by. I loved talking about it nearly as much. So I filled him in about the mosaics buried underneath the sand, how painstakingly and lovingly they had been put together, how amazing they still looked even underwater and after all this time, because they had been made from different colored rocks. Often the mosaics told stories of heroic deeds, which I committed to memory and entered into my palmtop as soon as I was back on the boat. I didn't know though if they retold actual events or legends.
Some were of hunting parties going after some long forgotten kind of large animal. The same animals of which I had seen small and large statues, so I assumed, that it was one of the things that had actually happened and I mourned the fact that people who had been this advanced and intellectual probably had written many books which were now long lost.
I found many treasures and Myles had given me a sack in which I could collect anything I thought of interest to bring it up to the surface for later study.
"It is the most exciting thing I have ever done," I finally answered Myles question. "Thank you for allowing me to do this."
His hand took one of the trinkets I had brought up just today and inspected it from all angles. "My motives are not entirely selfless. I too would like to know about these people who lived here before us."
As before, whenever he said something like this, that bound our interests a flutter moved through my stomach. I had always assumed the vissigroths to be these hardened battle commanders, barbarians who killed just for the fun of it. But that wasn't true at all. Yes, Myles had taken me hostage, but he could have had Nathan and me killed on the spot.
The idea that he still might do so, once Nathan had fulfilled his mission, had entered my mind, but I had dismissed that thought. Oh I was sure Myles would still punish Nathan and me, but I didn't believe he would have us executed.
"Who do you think held this cup last?" Myles asked, wiping carefully at the cup with a piece of cloth he dipped beforehand into a special cleaning solution I had brewed up a few days ago.
