She says, “I’ll be all right. I have traveled widely. I am strong.” She sounds unsure, but she stretches with determination, as if it’s a job that needs her focus. “A bit more, and I can begin.”

At last, a choice

Every night, the prince of the serpents returned to his chambers in a foul mood. Ulín pleaded with him not to hit her, and sometimes it worked; sometimes he told her he had never hit her, that she was lying, that he had always been gentle and loving. After all, he had taken Ulín in after her father kept her drugged and bedridden, useless to him as a daughter unless her deepnames came back. But Laufkariar did not need her deepnames. In fact, he preferred her this way.

And he still gave her gifts—not any less lavish than before—strings of pearl and garments of sewn silver scales embroidered with minute flying fish. He gifted Ulín caskets in which to keep her new treasures, and bracelets—even though she tried to refuse—bracelets that jangled and distracted her when she tried to write in her notebook.

When Laufkariar left for the hunt or for council, Ulín would go out and talk to his people, her language skills building for her a bridge. Most of the people who talked to her were other women, of high rank and yet not as powerful as Ulín thought they should be. They showed her the libraries and the gardens in the palace underwater, the vast rows of pearls cultivated in their shells, and the sea vegetables which had to be harvested in the water outside. These women exchanged words with Ulín, and she listened eagerly to their stories, and was careful with what she wrote down.

She made friends—none too close. They all were afraid of Laufkariar.

Through whispered stories, Ulín learned that her brother had fought Laufkariar not once, but twice. That first time, when three of Laufkariar’s companions perished at her brother’s hand, the prince of the serpents came back home wounded. This was just before Ulín’s nameloss, she realized. She thought that her brother had been in a fight.

But she dared not ask Laufkariar what happened. She never did find out.

When Laufkariar made love to Ulín, he was gentle, but she no longer had deepnames, and so could no longer control her fertility; and there were no herbs and potions here that she knew.

So Ulín begged her women friends for such herbs, and gave her treasures away pearl by pearl to pay for these remedies. She was careful, but he found out in the end.

Laufkariar did not hit her that time. It was his words which wounded her more.

His voice was hot and scalding, but his eyes were cold. “Your vermin of a brother might have locked off the dreaming wilds above your land, and we have made a truce, but you are the thing I have bargained for, and you are the thing I will have. I have not forced you—be grateful—but we made an agreement. My child in your womb. You are nothing otherwise. Who will want you? Your father? Your brother? Don’t make me laugh. You are alone—magicless—here, in my power, under the wave—you have nothing except for my favor. Nobody else cares about you. Nobody.”

Ulín wished he’d killed her, right then and there, but he did not. And she was not allowed to leave the room anymore.

Why does she hesitate about this target? I do not understand. “I can swim underwater,” I tell her. “I bet I swim as well as this prince of yours, if not better. He might have his serpentshape, but I have gills and my training, and if the Ra—if your brother could fight him off at barely fourteen, I can kill him.”

Deep in her story and her pain, Ulín does not notice that I have almost misspoken. I cannot keep this up much longer.

Ulín shakes her head. “I am unsure.”

“I, too, am unsure—unsure why you hesitate.”

“Maybe if you hear more,” she says, but she herself does not sound convinced.

Laufkariar’s sister visited Ulín one day, when he was out. When she rattled the door with her key and stepped in, Ulín thought the other woman was alone, but others came at her heels. Laufkariar’s sister looked older than her age and weighed down with sorrow, but Ulín knew the language well now, and they could talk freely.

“This is not right,” she said to Ulín, and the others echoed her. “He is my brother, and the First Dreamer of my people, but this is not right. The war has ended. You should not be a prisoner.”

Ulín turned to her, beyond tears, beyond hope. “In my room in my father’s house I was barely awake for the drugs. Here I’m awake and aware, but alone with myself, not allowed to go out or to choose my future. Neither is what I want.”

“What do you want?” another woman asked, a librarian Ulín had come to regard as a friend.

The words fell from Ulín’s mouth like hot coals. “I want to be free.”

“And you do not want to remain here among us?” the librarian said.

A different woman said, “We may not be able to protect you from Laufkariar’s anger, but you should have freedom of movement.”

Laufkariar’s sister said, “He does love you, you know.”

Ulín looked between them all. Six women were here with her, younger and middle-aged, thin and stout, beautiful and plain. Their seaweed hair was elaborately braided and bejeweled, and their garments shone with ornaments made of nacre. They were all noblewomen. Ulín wondered how many were magicless, and how many could take serpentshape.

One said, “He will be calmer once you give birth.”

“I am not planning to give birth,” Ulín said, but an older woman, a gardener, looked her up and down.

“As you say.”

The gardener’s daughter, a young woman close to Ulín in age, looked at her mother in surprise, then gave a small nod.

The others did not notice, but Ulín’s hand stole to her stomach.

“You will have to give birth if you stay here,” said the gardener quietly.

A child. Ulín never wanted a child. She especially did not want to have a child when she was held prisoner, not allowed to even leave her room. And if she were to leave the room and roam, a child in tow, what future would that be? Ulín had wanted to travel. To learn new words and discover how languages grew among people for generations. She always wanted to go to university. Ulín did not want a child at all, and she certainly did not want a child who would be born against her will, tying her to a place she could not leave.

“I want to leave,” she said.

The women talked between themselves and argued, their tones rising and falling, but nothing was decided that night. It was another week, and another day with Laufkariar once he returned, and another evening of pain, before the other women came to a decision.

Three of them came to Ulín’s room when Laufkariar was out. He was with another woman, Ulín was told, a woman of the serpent people, but this mattered little to her. On the Coast, her people had their freedom of lovers and lives; such customs were deemed scandalous among the people of the serpents, as was Ulín’s indifference to his straying. But now Laufkariar’s affair was in her favor—he was not in the dreaming wilds, and he was occupied. The three friendly women—the librarian, the gardener, and the gardener’s daughter—took Ulín by the hand. “It is now or never,” they said, and she said, “Please, now.”