Justinian and Lok-i-xan had turned and walked away when she came from the sea, whether from politeness or some less pleasant feeling, so only Abasio, still rigid as stone, widened his eyes as he saw her dress herself. Her eyes passed over him blindly, as though he were not there. He shivered. Apparently he didn’t exist; she had forgotten the entire world in which he existed.
When she turned toward the sea once again, the Sea King had moved a good way offshore. “Come to the edge of the sea and call my name if you need me,” he said.
“What is your name?”
“Just say you want to talk to your father,” he called, disappearing below the surface of the sea. “Or call for the Sea King.”
“Your father?” Abasio breathed from close behind her. He had had to force himself to approach, even though most of his fear had vanished when she had become Xulai once more. He put aside any contemplation of how he would feel about, how he would deal with, whatever other form she might choose or keep in the future. Let it alone. Don’t think of it. Deal with it, if at all, later on.
Xulai sighed, aware of him. This was Abasio. Yes. Abasio. He was there, steady, calm . . . like her other half. Had he been afraid? She could hear his heart beating, too quickly. He had been afraid. For her, or for himself? For both of them, probably. Of course he had. So had she. She reached behind her to take his hand. She leaned against him.
“All my fathers, Abasio, just think of all my fathers. Justinian is my father. Clan Do-Lok is my father. The Sea King is my father. I probably have a dozen mothers. Generations of them. Hundreds of years of them. Are you frightened, Abasio? I am quite definitely terrified, but I’m so stunned, I can’t feel it yet. I’m afraid I’ll be afraid, dreadfully afraid, when I do.”
He made a shivering sound, a fragile, brittle exclamation that was not quite laughter and not quite a shriek of terror. He made himself put his arms around her and draw her even closer. “Yes, I was . . . am frightened.”
“Do you know why?”
He could not answer immediately. At last he took a deep breath and said, “I decided it was because I thought you might not come back at all, or that you might come back as something else entirely. Which is what you may have done.”
She thought about it. “I worried about that, too, but no. I’m me. I was me even when I wasn’t. It was like getting out of bed and stretching and finding all my bones weren’t necessary, and dealing with that perfectly well while at the same time something inside me was screaming that there was something terribly wrong. It was like one of those dreams where you’re flying, and you know very well if you fall, you’re dead, but the flying is nice, so it’s half terror and half exaltation. You know? Part of me was scared to death, but meantime, the rest of me was just enjoying it. I imagine your frightened part was doing the same thing mine was, but you didn’t feel the other part. Assuming we both have the same parts.”
“Can I do that? Change like that?”
“If I understand what he was saying, evidently all it takes is a sea egg. I gave you one a long time ago. In Merhaven. What did you do with it?”
“I swallowed it. When I was with you in the princess’s bedroom, that first night, I got the very strong feeling your mother wanted me to do what you were doing, so when you gave it to me, I did it on faith, I guess. But I haven’t felt like changing!”
“Well, neither did I feel like changing. Not until I had to. I dreamed it at least twice before I actually did it; then I did it to save my life, there in the Vulture Tower, but I couldn’t remember doing it. Did you get what the Sea King said about Ghastain’s amulet?”
“It was an invitation to join the party.”
“And Huold did! The amulet wouldn’t have done anything for the duchess, even if she’d found it. Before Huold went to Tingawa, though, he left descendants we know nothing about. Some of them, obviously, were in the part of the world where you were raised. One or more of them were your ancestors.”
Abasio considered his mother and his father, the Drowned Woman and the Gang Leader. At least one of them had been a great-great-great-how-many-greats-grandchild of Huold the Heroic? How utterly unlikely that was! “And our part in all this is . . . ?”
“Our part came about because Xu-i-lok was the first woman, the only woman, who would be able to lay the sea eggs after she mated with . . . with someone who had the right genetics. Well, so . . . after she and my father . . . got together, she became pregnant with me and laid the first sea egg. She did it about the same time that . . . creature at Altamont sent her killing cloud! My mother hid it. She hid it and kept it hidden until I was old enough . . . or you were strong enough to help me find it. If she’d had time to create other sea eggs, all this wouldn’t have been necessary!”
He nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “But, since there was only one egg, you were her only hope. Precious Hope. Your mother wouldn’t have chosen all those years of pain if there had been another way.”
“But it was still only a hope, because then they had to find you! They needed to find a mate for me with the right genetics, just as my mother had needed to find my father.
