Listen to the Water | FULL SERIES | Wattys 2022 Shortlist | ✔

(17) Ande: Murder

For a moment, I can't breathe.

The last time I felt a Kel scream underwater was during the raid with the Sandsingers. Before that, it was when Taiki's tribe was attacked just outside of Roshaska. The shrill, grating buzz cuts across my tail like the rasp of seaside grasses that are soft is you stroke them one way, but cut you until you bleed in the other. Someone just died.

Taiki grabs my wrist and drags me upslope. We stumble over ourselves as we navigate dark, ancient reef remains, devoid of dens within sight of the palace below. I find an intact shelf of what must once have been coral like the rest. Taiki and I dive under it and huddle down side by side. I can still see the palace. The light in the dome moves frantically, like it's carried by someone darting around the space inside. We're too far away to see anything through the scattered entrances, but I do spot the first Kels gathering outside. Ashianti Kels.

The guards keep coming. They enter the dome and circle outside of it, speaking rapidly to one another. The creeping tentacles of dread crawl over my shoulders and around my chest. Then an order ripples through the assembled Ashianti, and the guards scatter. They dive into other entrances and fan out across the palace, and my heart almost stops as several swim up the hill where Taiki and I are hiding. They stop before reaching us. Bone weapons glint in the moonlight as they begin to patrol back and forth along the palace edge, movements stiff, alert, and frighteningly fast. I find Taiki's hand and grip it in the darkness. It's cold. His eyes are locked on the dome of the palace where I know the scream must have come from, but his face is expressionless, and he's not shaking.

He doesn't care.

There's tension in his body, but it's not fear. It's not worry. It's the coiled-tight stiffness of cold apathy, as he watches whatever is going on in the palace with a look that tells me he wouldn't lift a finger to stop the death of an Ashianti royal. I want to light a hand to ask him what he thinks just happened, but we're too exposed here, and I already know. Either my warning didn't make it, or it didn't make it in time.

Or an attempt was made, but failed. I force that possibility across my mind, but it's not strong enough. I'm shaking. A guard glances up the slope, like they can feel my fear. I tug Taiki's hand. We roll out from under the coral and flatten ourselves as we half-crawl, half-swim up the jagged slope as though we're moving through hostile Karu territory. Like we're back on Alliance-controlled Kuna, or approaching the island whose village the Sandsingers sang down. Rapal isn't safe anymore. If we're caught hiding so close to the palace, we could become part of the hunt for whoever the guards are now hunting for.

We've hardly gone five arm-spans when the first Kel passes us in the other direction. I glance back, then pull Taiki to a halt. Regular Rapal Kels are flocking to the palace. They gather at its fringes and speak urgently to the guards holding them off. More glide overhead.

"What?" signs Taiki, hands lit to just a shadow in the night.

"We look suspicious."

Now he sees the gathering people, too. I know his plan just from the way he sits up. When the next Kel passes overhead, we launch from our places and follow, blending into the crowd that streams in from all over the city. I think I'm going to be sick. Nobody around us knows what just happened, or who's behind it. And there's nothing I can do about it. My heart is beating out of my chest. When we reach the crowd around the palace, Taiki pulls me through it, closer to the drop-off. We need to be able to make our escape if anything happens, though if Arcas is as smart as the Sandsingers say, nothing will. Not tonight.

We stop in a group of other Shalda, their hands all lit low and flashing as they whisper back and forth. I strain my eyes. There's still brighter light in the palace dome, but I can't see anyone who might be Arcas. What is she doing right now? Faking her grief? Ordering the search? Is she here at all?