More long post WIP original story, directly continuing off of this post. Stopped at a point so the post would be shorter than the first snippet (five pages is not a snippet, I know).

…

“I enter the dry hall of the king, my shell dress still dripping wet, which is a faux pas, and I could not describe to you my hair. All my journey I fret that I must make a good impression, and here is how I arrive. The dry hall is wood, semi-open to the elements, unlike other portions of the palace complex which are of coral and stone. Had I been escorted to one of those rooms, my anxiety would have overpowered me. But I was tired from swimming and determined to have this position at court, to learn under Queen Gara, so the magnitude of what surrounds me is deadened. So dark is it, I cannot not see the details of wealth around me. There are curtains of sea-wool, like gold made into mist, hanging from the ceiling. Just enough of that cloth to make a pair of lady’s gloves is worth a lord’s ransom in your land. Metal objects, which are more rare and precious in the islands, decorate the room, and the hinges and furnishings on the doors are made of brass. The first time I saw one of your temples with doors of solid bronze, every carving cast in metal and not carved, I sat on the steps and just stared for hours in sheer wonder. But the palace of Iro was the first wonderful and wealthy place that I came to. What else can I say to describe it that morning? Flowers are grown around the outer walls to provide a sweet scent to combat the scent of salt. The winds bring it in through the open panels. I have found only a few perfumes that come close to matching those flowers. And how strongly a smell is, or its qualities, is highly dependent on my current form. Scent memory is therefore strange for me. Alas, it would have been nice to stand there for while and dry, but I am immediately shuffled onward.

“The king himself, not any master of servants, is the one to collect me from the guard escort. He wears no crown; King Isore rarely did, but he did not need to, for how recognizable he is.” Amabel paused. “The man that Great Lady Manon spoke to in Stonegift, her banker with the stupid feathered hat, you recall him?”

“I liked his hat,” Gislin said.

“You have terrible taste in colors,” Amabel snapped. “Well, not him, but the bodyguard accompanying him. You remember how tall and broad that man was, with the scar on his eyebrow and the pale eyes and short beard. Man who looked as if he could bend steel without a taint-gift to give him strength- that is the picture of a man who looks like King Isore when he walks on two legs. Under the waves, my king is green with bands of brass and gold, sometimes dulled, and somethings the colors so vibrant as to be garish to the senses. His tail as long and powerful as a pilot whale, with a row of short spikes down his back.”

“Is that big?” Rohese whispered to Great Lady Manon. The old lady riding beside her shrugged her shoulders.

“Child, I have never seen the ocean. Ask the priest.”

Amabel continued to describe her first meeting with her king, offering the token and name-dropping an institution that Gislin thought might be the name of a school. “Now what I did not know at the time was that Iro was anticipating an attack soon from one of its enemies. Not Seal Rocks, one of the corrupted men. They aren’t the plague that they are in the farthest reaches of the Rim, but if they reach the inner currents of the Navel, then the forest-taint is strong indeed and their allies terrible. And one does not tempt to call anything connected to ghosts that close to the Doors of the Rat Queen. May mites eat through your skin!” Amabel swore, then turned in her seat to holler at their driver. “Foul enough that you ventured into the Shadow Forest, Urwin. Fool priests, thinking your songs will keep you safe from the iron rats, and that you would not stir up something to follow you back into the living lands.” Urwin silently accepted her abuse, playing dumb and mute. Her reprimands were nothing new to him. “Never for me, that place. Too akin to the abyssal depths of the ocean, where no sunlight can reach. The void-taint is strong down there, stronger than the furthest ends of the earth, for the same reason, and only evil stirs it up to the surface waters.

“King Isore was expecting reports of their movements from spies sent earlier that week, including the premier students of Queen Gara. Sweet boys, the pair of them. There was a time when they were both enamoured with me, and I may have married one of them, had I stayed in Iro. An odd thought, nowadays.

“The King looks me over, mistakes my token for the pyrite shells in which we embed sound to send messages instead of writing letters, and shouts that I follow him to give my report. “You’re early!” he shouts. I think nothing of it until he asks for status updates from the Queen’s prized student, Gawne, or if Claren thinks his errant human father, a notorious pirate, is involved in this. As of yet I did not know these young men. We confuse each other, for the king brings up spells that the queen will teach me, ones that I would have known had I been whom he thought I was, ones I thought that I was here to learn.

“Queen Gara is on the neighboring island. I do not meet her this day or their son, Prince Ias. Had she been the one to greet me, no confusion would have arisen. Though I do meet everyone else. Yes, you could say I get an introduction to the majority of the royal family that morning. Quite an introduction.” Amabel giggled. “Meeting the royal family. Yes.” Amabel giggled some more.

“So, King Isore bids me follow him, and I can discern that he is irate, though not with me, which is the sole reason I followed and didn’t try to escape. He was very genial in person. Oddly mercurial of moods, in that unlike the rest of his family his temper was not hot and quick to rise, at least not since the days of his youth, and when he wished, he could be boisterous company, enough that you would forget that there was a shrewd mind behind that smile. But then prone to fits of solemn melancholy and self-isolation. Still, my story is not solely of him.

“King Isore starts bellowing for his brother, Prince Res. This is early in the morning, only the second chime, the sun has barely begun to lighten the horizon. He marches to a separate wing of the palace, low tide rooms, shouting for his brother to wake and explain my presence. I continue to stammer that I was from Blue Island, sent to be a student to his wife, Queen Gara, for the talent I promised. Not a similarly named operation that their scouts were tracking for a reason that was never fully explained to me even long after it happened, but that’s life. One mixup in communications and for some reason that morning King Isore mistook me for one of his brother’s war spies. And I was a skinny girl child, no muscle tone, a shell dress of cheap cockle, weaponless, but he must have mistaken the veneer of courage on top of my fear for the mettle of a warrior.”

“Oh how ever could anyone mistake you for a secretly vicious sneak?” Gislin teased, and Amabel raised her shifted talons in mock outrage.

“These teeth have killed far more men than you could ever dream to, little wolf child. Hush and listen.” Amabel continued her story as if without interruption, and Gislin was starting to wonder if she had imbued wine earlier, for there was a quality of drunken ramble to her animated storytelling. “Thankfully, King Isore stops to listen to me, realises his error, and takes it with good humor. “Oh, you’re that girl,” he says to me. “This is fine. I need to take you to see my brother anyway. Part of your new tasks.” Waves his hand airly and keeps charging down the hallway, and I’m stumbling after him getting my heels wet until we get to the proper half-submerged part of the palace and swim through the final set of doors. He flings open the doors to what is obviously a private bedchamber with a splash -I would try to explain to you proper architecture another time- and shouts for Prince Res to wake.”