The Underwater Ballroom Society

Mermaids, Singing

The hound with the scarred snout knew there was something different about him, and this could be ascribed partially to the fact that when he looked up at the old show posters lining the train car walls, he could comprehend them.

All with dates and places that were smears in his memory.

The spiked iron hoops of the show routine spun in his mind; he dreamed constantly of leaping through them when he twitched in his cage at night.

The show this evening had been particularly cruel. The Wolf Queen, or Switchblade Sally, as the Ringmaster affectionately called her, had driven the hounds relentlessly through their paces with her whip, sending them through rings of fire, forcing them to dance on their hind legs until their hearts nearly burst. At the end, as was customary, the lights were dimmed and modesty screens brought to the center of the ring where he had collapsed in exhaustion.

The hound had seen her do this many times to his comrades, but this was a first for him. She advanced, her crystal-blue eyes gloating over his powerlessness. From the ruffles at her bosom, she withdrew a phial of glimmering green dust. He knew the name of it, though he did not know how he knew.

Myth.

“Behold!” the Ringmaster called from the darkness. “The true form of the Wolf Queen’s servant!”

She flicked the dust with gloved fingers and the sparkling net settled over him, digging into his fur like tiny shards of glass. His howl of agony ripped and stretched into a gasp as he rose, naked and shivering, on human legs. None could see his nakedness save her; only his silhouette was visible to the audience through the modesty screens.

She smirked at how he tried to hide himself, and memory knifed him—of sitting above this woman, as on a throne, watching her perform an acrobatic routine for him. How her final bow had been accompanied by this selfsame smirk and how, even then, though he had struggled not to show it, he’d been vastly discomfited by her.

In that moment he realized several things:

• He was not entirely a hound.

• He was also not entirely human.

• He and his comrades were being held against their will.

• He was from another world.

• He had known the Ringmaster and Switchblade Sally in that other world, and they were dangerous.

Then he’d crashed to the dirt again amid shouts and fainting in the stands.

The show was over now, and he was a hound again, bound by the rough magic the Ringmaster and Switchblade Sally used to keep all their mythical acts under control. The other hounds were busy licking savaged flanks or seared paws, some whining at the pain.

The scarred hound alone was silent. He did not know who he was or how he’d come here, but he knew two things: he had to escape. And he needed to help the others escape as well.

His opportunity came sooner than he expected. When the train rolled to a stop and the doors were thrown open, Switchblade Sally entered. Her spiked collar fanned about her like the predatory frill of some ancient lizard, and her black hair was piled in an elaborate tower from which people and animals leaped on tiny golden chains.

“The parade commences in five minutes,” she said. “You will surround me and walk with me as loyal subjects should. Anyone who defies me will live to regret it.”

She carried jeweled collars in her hands which probably looked unremarkable to the circus crowds, but the green jewels inset in the collars glowed in the dim train car, promising pain if any of the hounds attempted to break ranks in the parade.

The scarred hound growled softly as she approached him, but when her icy gaze fell on him, he went silent. His muzzle bore the lash of her whip, and he knew she would not hesitate to use it again. She hurried through getting the collar on him, barely fastening the buckle. He smelled fear and apprehension on her. Something was wrong.

When the last hound was collared, she turned toward the platform, waiting for the signal from the goons for them all to disembark.

As he walked stiffly down the gangplank, the scarred hound looked beyond his mistress’s shoulder to the plaque on the wall.

London: Paddington Station, the sign said.

London. London. The name echoed in his skull and brought with it images of himself and an auburn-haired girl and… a tiny sprite running through gloomy streets like these. Only they were not quite these streets, were they?

He followed the grand parade as it circled off the platform, through the station, and out onto the street. Bobbies used their billy clubs with aplomb, cursing as they were forced to stop carriages and carts and hold back the crowd that formed quickly along either side of the thoroughfare.

The hound was used to the shouts and pointing, the wild waving of children in awe of the elephants lumbering through the damp chill of their city streets. None of this frightened or agitated him now as it once had. But the feel of the loose collar, knowing it would easily come apart if he could just dig it off with a paw, was maddening. He wondered what Switchblade Sally feared so much that she had been this careless—surely not him.

Clowns and acrobats leaped and pirouetted up and down the parade line, handing out cards and posters and sometimes sweets to the little hands that reached eagerly for them.

He wondered what the children would think if they knew what those performers actually were, and what many of the veiled circus carts truly contained. He wondered what the parents would think if they knew the sweets were laced with myth, compelling those who ate them to follow the circus wherever it went.

In most circuses, the fantastic was portrayed only through sleights of hand; it was all illusion work. But in this circus, there were no illusions. The mermaids who stared lifelessly out of the lumbering aquatic carts were real. A team of bedraggled unicorns pulled a yawning manticore through the streets. A sullen harpy glared from her perch. The only limit to the show was the beholder’s ability to believe their own eyes.

One of the great aquatic carts got stuck as it passed from the cobbled street to the bridge over the great, stinking river that wound through the city’s heart.

The entire procession shuddered to a halt. To keep the crowd from becoming focused on the stuck cart, the clowns performed an impromptu acrobatics display, and sticky-faced children screamed with delight.

The hound sat and pulled at the collar first with one paw, then with the other. When he realized everyone was watching the acrobats, he lay on the ground and inserted both paws while the others watched him listlessly.

The buckle loosened and then fell away. He went to his nearest companion and began worrying at his collar. Then another and another, until at last, exposure to the magic in the collars stung him with the force of a hundred bees. He yelped, and the final hound looked at him mournfully.

Go.

The scarred hound bowed his head, lowering his ears in sorrow. I will return for you. I swear it.

His companion bowed to him and turned away.

The other hounds had already disappeared into the crowd. The scarred hound ran next to the unicorns, gnawing through their traces until they could pull free. The harpy begged him for help from her wheeled cage, but he had no key.

I will return for you, he repeated.

For that, he knew, was his mission. To free his companions from slavery, and perhaps return magic to a world that had once known it.

He nipped at the jesses of a molting phoenix who huddled on a goon’s fist, and though he could scarcely feel his mouth, he chewed through the muzzle of the golden sphinx.

He did not stop to watch as they took flight. He ran through the ensuing chaos, making straight for the bridge.

As he came alongside the stuck cart, one of the mermaids saw her chance. The glorious arc of her tail curved over him as she leaped from the caravan. She did not quite make the railing, though, and crashed to the cobblestones in front of him.

She lay still for one moment, her kelp-colored hair streaming, her mouth forming bubbles of terror. Her scaled arms reached for him, the poison-tipped fins at her wrists opening and closing like deep-sea fans. The gold-edged gills on her sides gasped for air. She was being slowly crushed by the weight of air and the want of water.

Help me.

He heard Sally’s screams and the hobnailed boots of the goons as they pounded toward him. He looked up at the Ringmaster running toward him, drawing a revolver from his waistcoat.

As delicately as possible, he gripped the mermaid’s shoulder with his teeth. Then he pulled her hard toward the river, while her sisters sang a sea-dirge for her in the cart behind them.

Terror striped her scales a dull, muddy red. Her watery eyes met his.

Please.

The hound felt something slide across his flanks—a net, perhaps—and through the melee, he heard the click of a mechanism sliding home.

He looked over his shoulder. The Ringmaster loaded the revolver with bullets glowing green with myth and pointed it straight at the mermaid. The hound pushed with all his might. The mermaid wrapped her arms around the rough banisters and pulled herself through, scraping scales onto the stone. For one moment, she hung off the bridge, and then she wriggled through the air and into the roiling river below.

As the bullet left the chamber, the hound dove off the bridge and into the brown stench of the Thames after the mermaid. The screams of bobbies and goons chased him into the water, and two more bullets followed him. One grazed his shoulder, unwinding a thin ribbon of blood into the water. Yelping, he struggled to stay afloat before the strong current pulled him under.

Kelp-green arms surrounded him. I could take you down into the depths, she said softly above the choke and tumble of the waves. We could live happily there, you and me.

He shook his head against her. It was all he could do.

Then be free, little king, she said. But know you will have my gratitude forever. Call on my father’s name, and my people will aid you.

She whispered the name in his ear before the water took him.

Abigail Chen was not who you’d call an ordinary London girl. At a glance, she could pass for full British, with her mother’s brunette curls and lush mouth, but her upswept phoenix eyes and pert nose harkened back to her father’s home in Guangdong. Here in Shadwell, though, her mother held sway as proprietress of the Oriental Quarters, taking in lascars and other refugees who reminded her of her dearly departed husband, Abigail’s father Ah Chen. Canton Kitty, as her mother was called, was indefatigable, a lifeline for those who often struggled in London’s harsh dockyards to make a living. No one would dare speak unkindly to her daughter.

Canton Kitty was not to be crossed, it was true, but Abigail did so regularly. Today, for instance, against her mother’s express orders, she was mudlarking. It seemed fair sport; the Thames was always turning up something interesting. Perhaps she’d find something unusual or valuable on the mudflats that would allow her to finance the more expensive tastes her mother denied her. Maybe a few coins, a silver spoon, something she could take to the rag-and-bone shop in trade. She’d had her eye on a stylish bonnet at the milliner’s stall for quite some time, but her mother had dismissed the need for such frippery out of hand. “You don’t need to be catchin’ no one’s eye with that, Abby-girl,” she said. “When your old bonnet is wore out, we’ll find you something practical. We’re not fancy folk, after all.”

Since her fiancé Edward’s death, with Abby facing the prospect of spinsterhood, her mother saw no point in anything but practicality. Hence, Abby found herself here, holding her skirts as high as she could with one hand and clutching her boots and stockings in the other.

She was near to a bridge—her toes increasingly cold, the stench of the mud beginning to overpower even her normally stolid senses—when she saw the pale lump near one of the pilings. She couldn’t quite figure out what it could be. A dog or a pig, maybe, until she saw the long, narrow foot.

A person.

Every hair on the back of her neck stood up and warned her not to go closer. Since she seldom heeded any warning, she moved closer, cold mud squelching between her toes. The person was a young man, with the fine features of one who shared her heritage. His long black hair was clotted with mud. A silver scar slashed across his nose and ended just under his right eye. A fresh scrape along one bicep was beginning to scab over. She took in the rest of him in one blushing breath because he was quite naked—the broad, hairless chest; the sculpted abdomen…

He was breathing.

Her boots thudded in the mud near his shoulder.

His eyes opened. Rich and deep, like polished amber.

He coughed and sat up, expelling dirty water from his lungs.

She backed up several steps, ready to take flight, boots be damned. But then her bolder nature got hold of her again, and she said, “Reckon I didn’t expect to find this sort of thing today!”

At first, the way he looked at her, she wondered if perhaps she should have tried her father’s native tongue, but she had no sense of whether he was from Canton or farther north.

He saved her the trouble when he said, “Mudlarks seldom prosper.” He half-smiled, and then coughed again.

He sounded like her mother.

Abigail removed her shawl. She handed it to him and said, “I’m Abby Chen, sir. Pleased to make your acquaintance. And you are?”

He covered himself as best he could with the shawl, hiding the faint blush in his cheeks behind the tangle of his hair.

“Syrus Reed,” he mumbled. He paused, uncertain. “Syrus Reed,” he said again, more loudly, as if he’d just remembered his own name.

His face shifted, his lips twisting as he struggled to contain some emotion she could not guess. Perhaps for the first time in her life, cold logic poured down her spine and begged the question of what she thought she was doing helping this stranger, but she brushed it aside and gave him her hand instead.

“Come with me,” she said. Like her mother, she had a softness for strays.

She picked up her boots and led him back to the stairs, cursing softly when she discovered that even her new stockings inside the boots were splattered with mud. “Reckon they’re not the only thing I’m going to have to answer for,” she muttered to herself.

Mr. Reed said nothing, but climbed carefully after her, avoiding the stares and rude gestures of everyone who mocked him and his escort on the way to the Oriental Quarters. They had a long go of it across the rough cobbles, their feet bruised and covered in filth by the time they reached the alley and took the back stairs up to the kitchen.

Abby brought Mr. Reed in through the back door. Cook took such fright that she nearly dropped the entire tureen of soup she was carrying into the dining hall.

“Fetch Mother, please,” Abby said. Cook set down the tureen, threw her apron over her head, and ran from the room.

Abby winced as she searched for something to wipe their feet with, but the stranger stood stock-still by the hearth, as though he feared the kitchen would dissolve if he moved.

A few moments later, Canton Kitty arrived. She was a stout matriarch, dressed in sedate homespun buttoned almost to her chin. Though her mouth was hard, her eyes were kind, and she wore her widow’s cap with grace and a sad pride. She took one look at Syrus and said, “Let’s get him upstairs.”

They helped him up the servant’s stairs, for his legs trembled and did not seem to want to work by the time they reached the narrow little door to the first level of upstairs chambers where Kitty and Abigail lived.

“Where?” Abby breathed.

“Edward’s old room,” Kitty said.

Abby could feel the young man trying to help them, trying not to become deadweight between them, but he was fading fast.

When they got him into her fiancé’s old room, Syrus Reed collapsed onto the bed. No one had been in here since Edward had passed six months ago. No one except Abby. She’d made sure the bedclothes and counterpane were straight, that Edward’s coat still hung in the wardrobe and that his shoes were still neatly arranged at the bottom of it. Even the dresser still held all her fiancé’s things—his worn pocket watch, his straight razor and strop, a carnelian pinkie ring Abby had given him against her mother’s admonitions.

The oddity of having a man in Edward’s bed again made Abby cross her arms over herself, as if warding off a blow. She didn’t want to remember the last time she’d lain here with Edward, having sneaked out of her room down the hall because she could not bear the fire in her body any longer. Nor the final time Edward had lain here—his normally ruddy skin so unearthly pale—before Doctor Ah Yue had closed his staring eyes and declared him gone.

But Syrus… he was as different from Edward as could be, she thought. Dark where Edward had been fair. Mysterious where Edward had been so plainspoken and earnest. By the look of him, she doubted he’d stay long. But then, Edward had intended to stay forever, and now he was six feet under.

“I imagine this one will be shipping out as soon as he’s better,” her mother said, as if to confirm her thoughts. “Good luck to him, poor boy.”

Abby crossed her arms over herself, trying to banish the thought that she’d hoped he might stay.

Her mother turned to her. “Not a word he’s here, understand? I don’t want to run afoul of whatever landed him on the riverbank.”

Abby nodded. “I’m afraid more than a few saw us making our way here. A man wrapped in naught but a shawl is hard to miss.”

“Be that as it may, anyone asks, we don’t know nothin’. Worse comes to worst, we can stow him in the Mousehole.” The Mousehole was what her mother called a suite of hidden apartments her father had built for those who needed even deeper sanctuary. Of course, people who wouldn’t hesitate to blacken Ah Chen’s name had gossiped that he smuggled more than just refugees into London, but the rumors were baseless.

Like her husband, Kitty used the Mousehole to help people in need.

“Have Myrtle get the fire going in here so we can have some hot water. He wants bathing.”

“I can help—” Abby began.

Her mother raised a brow at her. “I think not, young lady. Now do as I ask, and then be about your chores. And no more mudlarking, do you hear? Lord knows what trouble you’ve brought on us now.”

Abby complied, but she couldn’t help smiling sadly at her mother’s attempts to keep her from glimpsing Mr. Reed in his natural state. She’d already seen everything she needed to see.

Syrus surfaced from dreams of mermaids singing and caressing him as they swam past. Their mockery and the depths at which he’d been entrapped by them left him cold and feeling half drowned again. Memory broke over Syrus, sharp as a wave of standing alone on a battlement above the sea, listening to the mermaids singing.

He had no idea how long he’d been asleep—a day perhaps? He looked around at the plain room, the little fire and kettle swung away from the hob, a tray of food sitting close to the hearth but not close enough to burn. Syrus had the distinct feeling this had been someone’s room—a man’s, perhaps—the impression made stronger by the items carefully placed on the dresser.

His head spun as he stood. He took a breath, running his hands along the unfamiliar shirt that scratched his ribs, the even-scratchier trousers that hugged his legs. His lungs still felt waterlogged. He considered looking in the wardrobe but thought better of it. Instead, he squatted on the floor and reached for the tray.

Syrus picked up bread with trembling fingers and crumbled it in his mouth, then pushed the kettle closer to the little fire.

With food, the weakness abated somewhat, though he found himself longing for an extremely rare bit of meat and hating that longing. He couldn’t say when he’d last eaten. The Ringmaster had always been stingy with rations for his charges.

He stared into the flames, thankful to be clean and ostensibly safe for the time being, though he knew such safety was an illusion. Memory floated up, a leaf on a still pond. He had escaped once before, he knew. They had caught him; that was when Sally had whipped him.

Syrus’s fingers drifted over the scar. He sighed, wondering how he appeared now in human form. What did it matter, anyway? In all of Scientia, no one had dared befriend him. But he doubted anyone could have overcome the yearning and bitterness he felt for Olivia.

Scientia. Olivia. These were new names to him. He turned them over in his mind like jewels. He had a dim memory of the city of Scientia, with its aerial streets and deep tombs. He recalled a throne room, and Olivia taking her place by the dais.

Once the queen he had served and loved, Olivia’s true nature as a warrior automaton had been revealed by Nikola Tesla. She had become a general in the battle that had ensued.

Syrus could not now remember why the battle had been fought—there was a sense of creeping horror, a dark shadow over his memory. But he knew that the girl he’d loved was lost to him forever, little more than a living statue.

Pan ruo yun ni, he whispered. As different as Heaven and Earth. So he and the clockwork general would always be.

He heard again the mermaids’ taunt: “…who will you take for your bride?”

He shredded the rest of the bread on the plate into tiny pieces. No one, he thought.

Meat. He needed meat. More to the point, he needed to hunt to forget the sharp ache that Olivia left inside. He could smell mice in the walls, a cat who hunted them curled in the kitchen. He could smell the grease Cook used sizzling in the pan, and the half-rancid bit of beef the hungry serving boy kept sawing bits off when no one was looking.

He sighed.

The door opened and he smelled the girl. He had never hungered after human meat until his enslavement in the circus, and then his hunger had been mostly born of rage and revenge. People smelled differently in the place he came from. Here, they smelled like food.

But this girl… it seemed impossible that she could smell of good things in a place like this, but he caught a whiff of scent that reminded him of the wild roses in the Forest of his birth. A whiff that made him think she might be like him. Had that been why she’d found him and brought him here, rather than leaving him to lie in the muck? Might there be others like him stuck in this world?

Before he knew it, he was up and had hold of Abby’s wrist. “Are you also a werechild?” he asked, peering into her hazel eyes.

Her pupils widened. She hesitated, but then pulled herself out of his still-weak grip.

“Begging your pardon, Mr. Reed, but I have no idea what you’re going on about!” she said. Her accent was thick and rollicking, like the river itself. He was at pains to understand her; it was like being caught between the different halves of himself, wavering in and out of form. Of both worlds and yet none.

“My mistake,” he said. “Humblest apologies.” He sat down dejectedly on the edge of the bed. There was only one place where there were others like him. A place he dared not go if he valued his freedom, and yet the only place he could go if he wanted to ensure the freedom of those he’d left behind.

Abby looked at the tray. “You’ve not eaten much for someone who’s slept for two days in a row! Is there something else you fancy? Warm porridge, perhaps? Or congee?”

Syrus didn’t know the congee she spoke of, though she looked hopefully at him as though he should. He shook his head. Then, because he wanted to be honest with this girl, he said, “Meat. If you could bring me meat, somewhat rare, I would appreciate it.”

She smiled as she picked up the tray. “I think I can find something as will satisfy you. My Edward, he also…” Then she shifted the tray to her hip and put one hand over her mouth. Blushing, she said through her fingers, “I’m chattering on again, aren’t I?”

He smiled briefly. “Chatter often drives away dark thoughts. I’m in sore need of their banishment.”

“Well, I’ll fetch your meat and then chatter at you as much as you like,” she said. “That’s one thing Mum says I’m good for, at least!”

Abby whisked the tray away and, it seemed, all the light in the room. He sighed again. He knew he should not wait for her. He should leave now and trouble these kind people no more. He had promises to keep.

But when she returned, he was still sitting there, gazing at the fire, unable to bring himself to leave. It had been so long since he had lived without fear. So long since he had lived as himself.

The odor of meat roused him, and he turned gratefully to the tray and the pile of nearly rare mutton he found lying there. It was to his specifications, and thankfully fresher than the rancid roast from below.

He could not help salivating, and he wished Abby would not watch him so intently as he tucked in.

“You like mutton, then?” She laughed.

He nodded, resisting the urge to wipe his mouth on the cuff of the unfamiliar shirt he wore and using the napkin on the tray instead.

“Why do you stay?” he asked, when he was sated. “Do you not fear the talk that will come from your dawdling in a strange man’s room?”

“You as good as said you wanted company. And my chores are done, leastways all that I know about,” Abby said. She backed closer to the wall, hugging herself as if his words wounded her.

“I am sorry for my sharpness,” he said. “I just do not want to cause more trouble than I already have.”

“It’s no trouble. Taking care of people in situations like yours is what we do, Mum and me.”

“Oh?”

And she was off. She told him of her father Ah Chen, how he and her mother had founded the Oriental Quarters so that men like Syrus could find meaningful work. Eventually he drew himself up against the headboard, arms clasping knees over his baggy trousers, the tray discarded beside him. Eventually, she came closer and sat tentatively against the footboard as she talked, waving her hands around her head as if she juggled a flock of bright birds.

He liked the sound of her voice. The rise and fall of it reminded him of his Nainai telling stories in the clan train car to keep the little ones from noticing the cold…

Nainai. The memory of his grandmother pierced him to the core, deeper even than Olivia. He saw again her death, the Raven Guard slitting her in half as they meted out their retribution on his clan for his foolishness. He gasped, gutted anew. He pressed his forehead to his knees and wept.

“Have I said something wrong again?” she asked.

When he didn’t answer, she moved closer and took him in her arms. He folded into her like a child. He felt no shame over being grown and weeping—it was the mark of a grown man to weep for those lost—but a distant part of his mind worried that she might find reason to fear him mad if he kept up such strange behavior. Still, resting his head against her shoulder, at last having someone warm and alive to hold, burying his face in the wild rose scent of her… it eased him even more than the meat that filled his belly.

When he could speak again, he took the handkerchief she offered him. “Forgive me if I frightened you.”

He felt her reluctance as she released him. “No trouble. Sure as sure, you’ve been through more than most. What happened, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I fear to tell you, Miss Abby. I don’t want to put you in unnecessary danger. I promise to leave as soon as I’m well.”

The light dimmed in her eyes a bit; he watched her struggle to hide her feelings.

“I also fear you might not believe me,” he admitted.

“Try me.”

It was his turn, then, to tell her of a land she’d scarcely heard of except in the wildest tales, a land where their common ancestors had been welcomed long ago, only to be cast out by marauding Londoners; a land where magical beasts held sway and kept the world in balance, where sylphs served as advisors and automatons as generals. He told her of the Winedark Sea and the song of mermaids under a full moon, and the Kraken that haunted the deeps. There were still gaps in his memory, but he told her what he knew of the present—that he’d been enslaved as a sideshow freak in this world for at least a year, that he’d tried to escape before, but this was the first time he’d succeeded.

And now he was here, and all he knew was that he had to free the rest of those who were being held captive.

“And after that?” she said.

Syrus chuckled bitterly. “I didn’t imagine I’d survive long enough to find out.”

“Well, you’ve made it this far with a little help. Think what you could do with a little more.”

The way she just accepted everything he’d told her stunned him. He’d hardly believe it himself if it hadn’t happened to him. But he knew he could not let Abby help him more than she already had. Taking her to where he knew the Ringmaster and Switchblade Sally would wreak their vengeance on him would not be fair to her.

“I wish I could say yes, but your mother would surely not take kindly to your offer.”

“She’s got nothing to do with it!” She glared at him, and he couldn’t help but smile at her passion. “I’m a woman grown. I—”

The door creaked open and Abby abruptly stood. She glanced at her mother, who glared at her, and Ah Yue, the Chinese doctor, whose gray changshan swished around his black cloth shoes as he entered.

Ah Yue took one look at Syrus. To the women he said, “Please leave.”

He escorted them out and shut the door behind them.

“Abby,” her mother said in a warning tone as they descended the stairs.

“I know, Mum.”

“Then why do you never listen? I told you to be careful. You’re still in mourning, girl! People will talk! The last thing I need is for people to think I’m running a brothel. They already think I’m running an opium den! Think of our reputation, if nothing else.”

Cook called, and her mother hurried down the stairs.

Abby knew it was useless to argue with her mum. The facts were incontrovertible. Still, she was tired of facts. Facts had led her to this endless round of chores, marketing, and, more likely than not, spinsterhood.

She wanted something different. Something as wild and unpredictable as her heart had apparently become.

That afternoon, she volunteered to go to the market. She needed what passed for fresh air to clear her head. She was angry at herself for being in such a tizzy over a man she barely knew, a man who’d been through far more than seemed possible. She was angry at him for refusing her help. He’d had the look of a wild animal about to flee, and it was likely he would be gone by morning. The thought made her heart pace in her ribs like a caged wolf.

Her mother was right: This attraction made no sense. She’d known Edward for a few years, first seeing him at the ostler’s in the market square, then every day as he’d started working for himself making deliveries. He’d rented the room from her mother when things were at a pinch for many, and it’d been all Abby had ever dreamed. And then six months ago, all those dreams had ended in a matter of days when he’d contracted a strange, incurable disease and died.

Coming to the point of wanting to be with Edward had taken years. Why, then, did she find her affections rising so suddenly for a man she’d only just met?

It was bleeding stupid, as Cook would say.

And yet, she thought, pulling her shawl tighter against the chill—the shawl that still smelled of him despite a thorough washing—here she was, still thinking of him. Here she was, worrying over him because he had spoken of danger but would not allow her to help him.

Afternoon fog was rolling in, and the lamplighter was already making his rounds when she arrived at the market. Sellers were packing up their wares, so she hurried first to buy the vegetables Cook had requested, and then onward to the Chinese apothecary to purchase a list of herbs Ah Yue had sent down before she left.

Some of them she knew—she could read a little Chinese, courtesy of her dearly departed father—but others she questioned. The scales of a dried gecko? A shark’s tooth? They sounded more like components of a magic spell to her than medicine, but Ah Yue was renowned for his healing skills; she’d seen him heal many men left for dead.

Except Edward, of course. Ah Yue had taken one look at him, shaken his head, and, over Kitty’s protests, given his patient an opium pipe.

“He may as well spend his last days in peace,” Ah Yue had said. And that had been that.

The laden basket dragged at her arm, and who knew whether the shop would close early in such dense fog, so she cut through an alley to shave off some time.

As she approached the thoroughfare again, something dark and slick nearby caught her attention. Fascinating green light sparkled around its edges. Her inner mudlark could not resist.

She stepped toward it. The thing tittered and sidled away from her feet, inviting her to follow.

One more step and she could reach it, she thought. As her bootheel clicked on the cobble next to it, the thing erupted. Sticky black vines looped out of it, reaching like tentacles up the walls and wrapping firmly around her ankles. A pulsing black stalk pushed up from the center of the writhing mass while the vines whipped up Abby’s thighs and torso, closing her mouth before she could scream.

As she watched, helpless, a bloated flower the poisonous color of night pushed out from the stalk. It spread over her, its petals yawning wide as she looked into the green-toothed depths of its blossom.

Then, in one gulp, it swallowed her whole and collapsed again into an innocuous bit of shale.

A harlequin in a domino cloak, dressed as if for a costume party or an engagement with Death Himself, entered the alley. He scooped up the deadly nightshade and banished it into his sleeve.

That night, Syrus woke as the fire burned low on the hearth. Something had changed. A darkness deeper than night had crept in with the fog.

The medicines Ah Yue had made for him grounded him; he felt less like he was trapped underwater. Though Ah Yue had insisted what Abby would bring from the market would make him feel even better, the powder he’d drunk made him feel more himself than he had in ages. The dream-songs of the mermaids had all but vanished. His sharper senses and clearer thoughts made him realize that when he heard the rapping against the window, he should not open it.

The wise doctor, recognizing him for what he was, had also spread a circle of protection around him, including hanging ba gua mirrors in the windows to ward off bad energy.

Still, Syrus drew back the curtain. He did not flinch when he saw what hung there—a slack-jawed circus goon hanging upside down by its feet, joints all twisted and sticking out at impossible angles.

“I will not let you in,” he said, as the goon attempted to dig out the windowpanes with its elongated, hooked fingers. It could get no purchase on the edges, and they seemed to burn it, for the goon drew back, hissing. From the glimmer reflecting off the mirror down the panes, Syrus knew the doctor’s magic was protecting him.

When the goon realized it would not succeed that way, it worked its jaw and serrated tongue frantically, trying to make words. At last, it growled, so low that Syrus could just decipher the words: “The girl. We have. You want she lives, you come.”

He grimaced. “Where?”

The goon sighed, working its slavering jaws again. “Lea Park. Godalming.” The thing twisted its head to look at him; he realized the gruesome expression it made was meant to be a smile. “Special show. I take you there.” It spread the wings from its twisted forearms to show it was capable of flight.

Syrus sighed. Slowly, he took down the ba gua mirrors and opened the window.

The flight was painful, damp, and uncomfortable. The goon’s talons dug deeply into the old waistcoat Syrus had taken from the wardrobe, and by the end, it struggled to keep them both aloft.

But at last, it began descending into the drifting mist. Syrus glimpsed a sprawling manse hard by a lake. From that lake rose the still form of a god who had once ruled the Winedark Sea—but he had disappeared before Syrus’s birth, and since then the seas had been lawless and filled with Umbrals who had escaped their confines in the deep.

Syrus peered at the god as he passed over. It was a sculpture, nothing more. The mirrors in this world—of the London which was not the London he knew, of a culture that was rooted in the same as his and yet was not his—confused him. Magic worked here, yet it did not quite work the same, and the use of dark magic seemed to have no effect on the world in the way it had in his own.

The goon set him down in a wood. Its wings folded into its back and its gnarled legs lengthened, the talons shrinking into things approximating feet. It gestured with a knobby finger. This way.

It kept one talon firmly lodged in Syrus’s bicep in case he tried to escape. He smelled the others faintly and yet nearby, as if they were being held somewhere beneath the earth. And there was also food, much food—the smells of a feast. He frowned.

They came to a strange tree in the wood. The tree was vast and ancient, but it looked as though it had been struck long ago by lightning, for it was hollow at its core. The hollow was faced by an oaken door. The goon inserted a talon in the lock, shivering at the pain caused by the iron.

As the door swung open, Syrus caught another scent—wild rose mixed with fear.

Abby.

The goon hurried him down the iron staircase, for it stung both of them in equal measure. The goons had always hung from the wooden rafters of the train cars to keep as far from the iron wheels as possible. No one cared if the iron caused any other being pain.

At the bottom of the staircase, the moldy throat of tunnel disgorged into a soaring underwater ballroom. From the cracks and brown runnels of water along the walls, Syrus realized they had somehow gone under the lake, and now he stared up through a dome that ascended through the lake’s murky depths.

His breath caught at what transpired before him. Around one side of the dome, a lavish banquet had been laid amidst towering sprays of hothouse flowers. The smells of frangipani and freesia, of roast suckling pig and pheasant, nearly drowned the thread of wild rose he’d smelled earlier. At various places around the dome, certain circus acts were chained on pedestals or in iron cages—the harpy bent her head at him. A unicorn he’d been unable to save knelt on its pedestal, its head twisted downward by iron shackles so that its horn could be safely touched by circus-goers.

It rolled an eye at him in terror. My king.

King. He heard again the mermaid song: Little king, little king…

And then he knew.

He had been sitting on a throne watching the Ringmaster and Switchblade Sally perform. He had done that because he was King, chosen by the ancient Tinker King Blackwolf to renew the kingdom that had been stolen from their people.

The two had presented themselves to him as performers, and they had woven an intricate spell around him in his sorrow. They had caused him to dismiss Olivia from the throne room, for he could not bear the sight of her. He had not seen the trap until it was too late. They had swallowed him with the deadly nightshade and brought him to this world as part of their evil act. They had made him forget everything he had ever known, as they had with all the others they’d captured.

But now their power was diminishing. The prisoners were remembering.

He was not entirely human; he was not entirely wolf. But he was King.

For as much as he had shied from, even despised, the notion of royalty once upon a time, now he knew that the Elementals here were not just his fellow prisoners, but also his people. They depended upon him for their protection and safety. He had always felt that he must free them but realizing his true responsibility to them made his situation all the more desperate.

The three rings of the circus were represented in miniature at the center of the dome. Seats on risers surrounded the rings. In the middle of the rings rose a dais with two thrones. One of the thrones was outfitted with shackles. The other was not.

Syrus knew for whom the shackled throne was meant. His wolf hackles rose, and he shook himself. Though every tendon and muscle screamed for him to take houndshape and run, he knew he had to play the Ringmaster’s game just a bit longer.

Red velvet curtains hung over the other tunnel mouth entrances, and he scanned them, searching for a familiar face amongst the growing crowd of servants, circus goons, and the few remaining Elementals as he was pulled relentlessly forward.

One of the curtains was thrown back, and the Ringmaster emerged with Switchblade Sally on his arm. Behind them, a couple of goons dragged Abby, who was close to twisting out of their grip.

“SYRUS!” she shouted when she saw him.

Her shout echoed through the dome. Everyone stopped to look at him.

Switchblade Sally turned and lifted a finger. “Quiet,” she said, the menace of her voice echoing around the dome. One of the goons turned itself inside out, becoming a fleshy gag that stuffed itself around Abby’s head and into her mouth. At the terror in Abby’s eyes, Syrus moved to throw off the goon that held him, but when he saw the slow smile on Sally’s face, he stilled.

“I’ve come,” Syrus said. “Let Miss Chen go.”

The Ringmaster moved forward. Sally slid behind him, dismissing the goon and taking Abby firmly in hand.

“Not so fast,” the Ringmaster said in his oily voice. “It’s not so simple, you see?”

Syrus frowned.

“We need your help with something,” the Ringmaster said. “We are hosting a Very Important Person here tonight. Queen Victoria herself will be here to negotiate with us. A treaty of sorts. And we thought it would be best if the two heads of state spoke about it, as it were.”

Syrus was not sure what he hated more—the obsequious falsity of the man’s tone or the twitching calumny of his fingers. “You want me to swear fealty to this queen? Is that it?”

“Well,” the Ringmaster said, avoiding his gaze and spreading his hands, “after a fashion.”

“Is it not enough that I am here? That I give you myself in exchange for Miss Chen’s freedom?”

Switchblade Sally laughed before the Ringmaster could speak. “No,” she said. “You cost us dearly with that stunt on the bridge. You must therefore give more.”

Syrus knew there was some trick. There always was. But he was out of options, and he knew he would die many deaths to keep the fear in Abby’s eyes at bay.

“Very well, then,” he said.

The goon slipped off Abby’s mouth, rolling and squishing along the floor as it reshaped itself to join the goon holding Syrus’s arm. Together, they took Syrus up to the throne, while Abby sobbed and gasped as Switchblade Sally held her still.

The goons shackled Syrus to his throne, hissing with pain at the iron. Then at Sally’s signal, they took Abby by the arms and led her away. Syrus tried not to watch her go; he didn’t want to give Sally the satisfaction.

Trumpets sounded from one of the tunnels.

The Ringmaster turned and gestured to the gallery of terrified musicians near the banquet table. They struck up an entrance march as the herald pushed through the velvet curtain.

“Victoria Regina!” he announced.

A stout, middle-aged woman stepped under the dome, garbed all in mourning save for the royal sash she wore. Her train was held up by two maidservants, and they were accompanied by a servingman who looked as if he could take down more than a few goons with the cane hooked over his arm.

The Ringmaster swept his top hat from his head and greeted the queen with an unctuous bow. Switchblade Sally sank next to him in a deep curtsey.

“So, this is the mythical menagerie we were promised?” she said. She looked with cold, uninterested eyes at the bedraggled and sullen animals in the room.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” the Ringmaster said.

“Where is the phoenix? The sphinx?”

“I am afraid to say they’ve escaped, Your Majesty.” If the Ringmaster could have twisted his hat in his hands without revealing his anxiety, Syrus was fairly certain he would have done so. “But we have more entertainment devised for you. You will see, Your Majesty.”

“We had better,” she said.

The Queen was seated with all ceremony on the dais opposite Syrus. He bowed his head with the respect of one monarch to another, but her glance indicated she was unimpressed.

“Who is this person who sits enthroned opposite us?” she demanded of the Ringmaster.

“As I explained a bit to Your Majesty in my earlier correspondence, we will negotiate not just the sale of a menagerie to you, but the possible exploration and subjugation of an entirely new world. This one here is a king in his country. He can transfer to you riches and power beyond your wildest dreams, Majesty.”

The Queen took in all of Syrus with a dour glance. “Hmph.”

“Perhaps,” Switchblade Sally interjected, “Your Majesty would prefer a little refreshment and entertainment before we continue? You have journeyed a long way to be with us tonight.”

The Queen nodded to her maids and servingman. “Yes, that would suit. Bring us something. And let us see this entertainment you speak of.”

The goons led Abby down the tunnel toward the iron staircase, releasing her at its foot. They didn’t bother trying to speak to her, just gestured up the stairs with their twisted fingers. One of them tossed the iron keys it held back and forth, hissing to itself.

Abby wondered why it didn’t wear gloves to protect itself, but she figured no glove would ever quite fit in the goon’s present shape.

Abby put one foot on the stairs. Click. She looked toward the entrance above, where a shadow leaned briefly through the door. Realization dawned. They weren’t really going to free her. Something waited up there—perhaps another goon or something even more dreadful that would make sure she never breathed a word of what she knew.

But that knowledge wasn’t what made her remove her foot and turn toward the retreating backs of her erstwhile captors.

No, it was his words ringing in her ears. I’ve come. Let Miss Chen go.

It was seeing him chained to the throne, seeing all the other things he’d said that she’d scarcely believed come true. It was knowing magic was real when she’d not even been looking for it. It was knowing that, for better or worse now, she was entangled.

Even if they let her walk away, how could she?

She’d left the room when the man she loved was dying because she knew she couldn’t save him. If there was a chance she could save this man, she had to try.

The iron keys sailed from hand to hand as the goons gibbered amongst themselves. Their jangle filled Abby with certainty.

She slipped off her boots, then ran down the tunnel, driving hard with her shoulder into the goon with the keys. As the keys sailed through the air, she dove for them, ignoring the knotted fingers tearing at her dress, becoming talons and hooking into her flesh.

Her fingers curled around the keys just before they hit the moldy floor. She came up kicking and lunging toward her attackers rather than away. Her father had always told her that if she could not get away, go for the eyes and the shins of anyone who might try to molest her in the markets. She thrust one iron key deep into the eye socket of the nearest goon. It wailed and collapsed in on itself, melting off the iron into a puddle of moaning goo.

She waited the other goon out, brandishing the key at it. That one thought better of attacking and decided to flee, not into the tunnel, but up the staircase, its arms becoming wings, its feet vanishing into its body.

Abby turned and ran barefoot back into the ballroom, leaving her boots by the stairs. She skirted the mostly-empty risers, glad for the distraction of the sideshow since it allowed her to wend her way closer to the dais.

Syrus looked away from the spectacle, and the suffering in his eyes arrested her.

His gaze wandered over her torn skirts, the blood drying along her ankle where the goon had tried to seize her. His fear for her tore at her heart harder than her own terror.

Go home, he mouthed.

She shook her head. She would not be forced away this time.

“And now, Your Majesty,” the Ringmaster was saying, “for the main event—a glimpse into your new domain.”

The lights in the ballroom were dimmed even further.

Abby tried the key in the locks that held the unicorn and found that the shackles loosened. The unicorn whispered a benediction before it slipped away in the darkness. She crept closer to the iron throne, freeing those she could as she went.

Switchblade Sally withdrew a tiny hand mirror from the bosom of her corset, a motion which made the Queen snort in disgust. Sally’s hands glowed faintly green as the object grew until it became too unwieldy for her to hold. She set it down, and it continued to grow until it became a heavy cheval glass, a full-length mirror nearly twice her height and as wide as the dais.

Within the dark mirror, a pinprick of green light winked on, like a firefly or a will-o’-the-wisp. Abby’s chest tightened with foreboding.

Light rippled across the mirror in waves of green fire. A distorted image wavered and shifted until it resolved into a scene that Abby recognized only because of what Syrus had told her. The domes and towers of Scientia, the aerial lift cables running their cars up the hill and toward the temple in the mountains. The Winedark Sea pounded at the sea wall; its mesmeric tide pulled her up onto the dais.

The air in the room became dense and heavy, and Abby moved as though through water. Her very bones yearned toward the image in the mirror as if the image were a magnet calling her to a home she’d never known. The smell of the sea blew out of the mirror, and she breathed it in sharply.

Pop. The image winked out. The mirror went dim and folded into itself. The lights came up, with Abby red-handed next to the throne. Sally’s eyes threw daggers at her, and in two seconds, she stalked over and took Abby by the arm, her pincerlike grip promising true pain should Abby speak.

The agitated, sweating Queen glanced at the women, opened her fan, and tried to rid herself of the magic-laden air. She signaled to her maid, who helped her stand, and said to the Ringmaster, “A pretty parlor trick, sir, but we’ve seen enough.”

The Ringmaster’s jaw dropped. Syrus snickered, and Sally glared down at him.

It was clear by the Ringmaster’s expression that he had expected the Queen to believe him. He, the greatest of all liars, had banked everything upon someone else’s belief in him. And a powerful someone at that.

“Joseph,” the Queen said, “have them ready our carriage above. Tell Wright we won’t be staying tonight; this fiasco has quite taken up enough of our time as it is.”

The Ringmaster’s face went ashen. “Just a moment, please, Your Majesty,” he said. “I’m offering you the world, can’t you see? And power beyond your wildest dreams! How can you say no to that?”

Queen Victoria did not answer but took hold of her skirts and made to move past him.

The Ringmaster put on his best, most unctuous smile. He laid his hand on the Queen’s sleeve. “You cannot leave, Your Majesty, not now! There is still so much to discuss!”

“Don’t listen, Your Majesty!” The words were out of Abby’s mouth before she could stop them. Sally shook her until her teeth rattled as hard as the keys in her hand.

The Queen didn’t need her advice, though. She glared at the man touching her. “Unhand us at once.”

All went still. The Queen stood arrested, imperious, incensed. The Ringmaster stood, likewise arrested, pleading, restraining, leaning toward harm but also filled with fear.

Then his hand closed around her forearm, and his lip rose in a sneer. “I have taken one monarch captive; I can surely take another.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” the Queen said.

“Watch me,” the Ringmaster said.

Before Abby could draw another breath, the old Queen laughed. “Watch us,” she said. She jammed the heel of her little boot precisely into the top of his shoe.

The Ringmaster howled.

The room erupted.

The Queen’s servingman, Joseph, drew a sword from the Queen’s walking stick and set about defending her from all comers.

Switchblade Sally turned to Abby, pulling the very weapon for which she was named from a clever sheath in her wicked boots. Abby brandished the iron keys at her, but the woman was taller than she was, and far more agile than her goons.

Abby and Syrus desperately locked eyes as Sally bent her toward him over the blade of the knife. Abby tried to insert the keys in the first shackle, but Syrus whispered as low as he could, “Get the mirror.”

Abby turned her head and saw the mirror quite unattended and at the mercy of both the Queen’s boots and Joseph’s dueling feet.

She dove for the mirror, dragging Sally with her, knocking the knife from Sally’s hand against the throne.

Sally dug her fingers into Abby’s brunette curls until she cried out in pain, but Abby wouldn’t let go of the mirror.

Joseph had chased the Ringmaster down the dais and was forging a way for the Queen and her servants to exit through one of the tunnels, but goons leaped on him almost faster than he could fight them off. Animals, servants, and musicians ran about in terror.

As Abby looked into Sally’s eyes, she saw the black pupils twisting into tentacles that reached out from the blue depths. Abby clutched the mirror in terror as Sally’s arms tightened about her.

Syrus lifted his face to the ceiling, as if help would somehow magically come from above.

And there, peering through one of the panes of glass, was a pale face, one of the mermaid sisters who hadn’t tried to escape. The Ringmaster and Switchblade Sally had forced the mermaids to swim in the lake since they could not fit the aquatic cart down here. Sad, watery eyes met Syrus’s, and he remembered the mermaids singing, their young sister telling him her powerful father’s name and promising to aid him if ever he needed it. He remembered the statue above them.

Little king, the mermaid whispered against the glass, say the name given thee. The best is yet to be.

“Triton,” he whispered. “Triton, Triton, TRITON,” he said, his voice gradually growing into a full shout. “AWAKE!”

There was a great cracking from above, a groaning as of metal twisting and ripping free. Everyone beneath the dome stopped and looked up as a sheet of water poured from the ceiling.

Switchblade Sally stared up, open-mouthed, releasing her hold. Abby stuffed the mirror deep into her generous bosom with a triumphant grin. She ran to Syrus and unlocked the irons that held him as the dome shattered in a spray of glass and dark water above them.

He embraced her, shouting, “Take a deep breath and hold fast to me!”

It was all he had time to say before the waters closed in.

The force of the falling dome ripped Abby from Syrus’s arms. He lunged toward her, but she spun away, and he lost her in the murk and splintered glass.

Then he saw Queen Victoria sinking toward the lake bottom like a stone. As he fought his way toward her, something whipped around his ankle and tightened. He looked back and saw Sally grinning, the beak of her jaws opened wide as her tentacles pulled him toward her.

Kraken. He should have known. But then, he had never seen a Kraken walk the world in human form.

Behind her, lightning flashed from the trident, electrifying Sally even as she transformed. Triton nodded to Syrus before turning to deal with the Ringmaster. Syrus gripped the unconscious Queen as she floated past and did his best to tear the heavy mourning clothes from her. He was running out of air, but she was so weighted down by her mourning, he feared he could not get her to the surface.

At last he gained purchase, and yards of the black fabric disappeared into the murk. He took hold of her collar and kicked with his last burning breaths up through the darkness. He pulled her up on shore to the great consternation of her manservant Joseph, who had just hauled himself up from the water and was frantically calling for her.

Syrus bowed to Joseph as he rushed to his Queen’s aid, then dove back into the water, seeking Abby.

He found a few of his fellow performers and dragged them to safety. But Abby was nowhere to be seen.

At last, exhaustion took him, and he sat shivering at the edge of the lake. He had lost her. He put his head in his hands, cursing himself for not being able to hold her, cursing himself for putting her in danger in the first place.

The barest green glimmer shimmered along the rippling tarn. Syrus looked up, half-expecting the Ringmaster or Sally to rise up and drag him into the shattered depths.

Then the glow resolved into the tines of a trident, and the Lord of the Near Shore, Triton, rose from the lake. His daughters swam near him, carrying Abby in their arms. Syrus rushed out into the water to help them get her to land. He worked feverishly over her while the mermaids and their father watched impassively; they could not aid him, for water was their very breath.

But perhaps Triton helped a little, for he lowered his trident and sent a glimmer of gold through the water, which snaked up the shale to Abby’s exposed foot. In that moment, she drew a gasping breath and coughed water all over Syrus’s face.

He wiped it away with his sleeve and helped her sit.

Abby apologized profusely when she could speak, but Syrus put two fingers against her lips.

“No need,” he said. “I recall doing the same to you not long ago; it’s only fair you return the gift.”

He smiled at her, and she chuckled.

Then he turned to Triton and bowed to him. “Thank you, Lord,” he said.

Triton bowed his head. “All the thanks belong to you, little king. You saved my daughters and our kin. And you saved me. I was brought here long ago, slowly turning to stone the farther I was from my sea until I became a decoration for this man’s estate. Chance may have brought us together, but still I thank you for it.”

One of the mermaid sisters swam close to her father, and he embraced her with his free arm. “May we go home now, Father?” she asked.

She held up the mirror, which had slipped from Abby’s corset.

Triton looked to Syrus and Abby. “Will you come home, Sire?”

Syrus thought of the long vistas of Scientia, from her ring of mountains to the plunging seas. The loneliness there had been almost as crushing as his captivity. Almost.

Then he looked at Abby and wondered if he needed to be alone anymore.

Triton held up the mirror, and it grew until again they could see the Known Lands within them, Scientia’s many domes and towers, the airships navigating the dangerous sea winds to land before her wall.

Abby’s eyes widened as she beheld the land looming toward them again, as she smelled the salt and spice of the Winedark Sea for the second time that night.

“Will you come?” Syrus asked softly. “First-rate mudlarking, I hear.”

She threw a clot of mud at him, laughing.

“Is that how they say yes in this country?”

Abby laughed again, then hesitated, her eyes clouding with worry. “What about Mum? I can’t just leave without her knowing what happened to me. Can we send a message to her?”

Again the trident flashed, this time toward a heron statue that stood nearby. It flapped its wings and looked down its beak at them.

“Whisper your message into the heron’s ear, and it shall be delivered as if it were written on the finest parchment. Herons are brilliant scribes, you know.”

Abby did so, and the heron took wing, flying off toward London.

Triton said, “With this mirror, Sire, I believe our visits between the worlds may become more frequent. We will leave it in your hands to keep safe once we arrive. As you saw, its magic is too unsafe for just anyone to possess.”

Syrus held out a hand to Abby. “You are free to do what you will. All doors are open to you.”

She stood and took his hand. The warmth in her fingers still surprised him. He realized he had expected the eternal chill of Olivia’s clockwork hand. “I just want to see that red sea, and hear these mermaids singing.”

Triton smiled. “That can be arranged, my lady.”

“Whatever you wish,” Syrus said. The glimmer in her eyes made him hope that her wish was the same as his.

Abby took a deep breath and tightened her grip. “Well, then. Off we go.”

They stepped forward until they disappeared like shafts of sun shimmering in water, into the Scientian day.

A Note from Tiffany Trent

Author’s Note: At one time in London, with the rise of the British Empire and its resulting shipping companies, Chinese sailors found safe haven in places like the Oriental Quarters, which was the name of a famous boarding-house for Chinese men. Many of them were run by British women who were or had been married to Chinese men, and they were often given nicknames like Canton Kitty, Lascar Sally, etc. Abby’s mother is based on those brave women.

About Tiffany Trent

Tiffany Trent is the author of award-winning young adult science fiction and fantasy novels, including the Hallowmere series and the Unnaturalists duology. She has published many short stories and previously co-edited a charity anthology for Gulf coast oil spill relief. When not writing or reading, she can be found in her garden covered in bees. Visit her at her website at www.tiffanytrent.com or on Twitter as @tiffanytrent.