“I heard Siren Voice so far out, I had to come investigate, Bet-tah,” Leviathan chuckled to itself. “And here I find you hiding a Kraken child. Who’s do you have? Cuttle? Lineolata, Mestus? Typica’s, mayhaps?”
“The problem remains, though, even in accepting your dowry, that I don’t speak Antumnos, and I can’t use my gills. What is there for us if I have an aversion to the water?” I motioned to the horizon behind Saeesar.
The solution, for the moment, was a long abandoned dock a few miles from the bay. It had belonged to a private property. From the water edge, appearances were that the roof of the mansion had collapsed years ago. The beach receded into a cobbled-together mass of sandstone boulder and shrub brush before the boards…
I woke where I had been left. The shore trees, backlit, cast long afternoon shadows. The water had receded to my feet, leaving me covered in mud and leaves.
Jarl wasn’t joking about the don’t drown bit. At the front steps of the boarding house, a floor down, I encountered a world turned on its head. The water level lapped three steps up. Murk and gunk drifted in the high water.
Saeesar was going to be pissed. That’s if Taigre ever saw him again. Or his father. Or the nesting ground. Mostly though, he was concerned with the part that his father’s top gladiator was going to be pissed.