FOUR

HENRY HAD BARELY learned enough English to get by before the red man—Allard, Henry eventually gathered, was his name—began telling him stories. These stories made little sense to Henry at first; the names of people and places rattled off were too different from his native tongue to be easily remembered. Allard’s tales had no shape to them, no echoes of sound or regular beats, and he tended to say them only once—and if Henry needed a repetition, would tell the story again, but in entirely different words. Used to rhythm and rote, Henry found his attention bent in new, uncomfortable directions. What he did learn quickly was that there were more than four of these red people, these “landsmen,” as Allard called them. More than there had been members of his tribe, of “deepsmen.” More, if he understood right, than there were fish in a shoal. Places tended not to have names in Henry’s language; he understood the concepts of current and surface and rock, of places with good food and empty stretches to be travelled at speed, of summer route and winter route and the migrations his people made as the seasons turned. For a place to have a name like a person, though, was a difficult concept. How would you name a stretch of ocean, when the water flooded to and fro and moved endlessly from one place to another, when things changed and shifted and the miles stretched before you on all sides with nothing to stop you swimming through? A name was something you used to call someone, only useful for getting a person’s attention, and when Allard sat in his room and said words like “England” and “France” and “Spain,” nothing replied.

What Henry did understand was that these stories told of conflicts, of other peoples. Given the fact that these people were enemies, Henry supposed that the landsmen of France were entirely different from the landsmen of England like Allard. Allard showed him pictures, though, flat images that Henry had to struggle to perceive as anything other than lines on a page, and when he could get his eyes focused for long enough to work out what the lines meant, he could see no signs of difference: two legs, webless hands, red-pink skin, white-rimmed eyes. Henry had seen other tribes in the sea, which must be what Allard was talking about—other tribes, rather than other creatures—but the idea of long-running battles with them seemed bizarre. Some tribes stayed near shallow coasts where the fish were rich and plentiful, others followed the currents, tracing the same paths every year, and one tribe trying to encroach on the hunting waters of another would find itself in a fight fairly quickly—but once those fights were settled, the losers retreated, went back to seeking their food elsewhere. Long-running clashes, when there seemed to be enough to eat in all the countries involved, were a crazy waste of energy. These stories failed to capture his imagination; Henry sat on the floor, tossing his crown from hand to hand and blinking.

Personality was something that Henry understood; he had learned, faster than other children of the tribe, which members—which deepsmen—could be trusted to spot a dolphin and which would start at the click of a harmless fish, which would always steal his food and which might leave him alone if he stayed unobtrusive. Allard was difficult for him to understand, though. Sometimes restless, pacing and staring, at other times he would seat himself with a long feather in his hand, dipping and scratching at a thin, tan leaf of something, as if levering at the flesh of an invisible crab. Sometimes he appeared with objects in his hands—book was the word he repeated, pointing to them and trying to persuade Henry to pick them up, but their square shape and meaty smell were too nasty for Henry to want any contact with them. These books hinged open and closed neatly like joints, and their insides, which all looked similar to Henry, seemed to puzzle Allard; he would look from Henry to book and back again, and shake his head, scratching at the leaves with his dark-tipped feather. This action irritated Henry, but nothing he did seemed to prevent it; whether he rocked and refused to meet anyone’s eye, or obediently sat up for his fish, straining his voice around the syllables of “thank you,” whether he cricked his back tottering around on the sticks Allard seemed so insistent on or lay curled on the floor stroking his rags and refusing to move, Allard’s feather scratched and scratched. Most gestures meant something in the sea; posture and motion emphasised or softened words or expressed relationship, but Allard was a mess of gestures, all apparently meaning nothing. Had a deepsman spent so long fiddling with a shell or stick, Henry would have assumed he was deranged with nerves, but Allard was quick to pull Henry’s limbs into line, to grab him before he could scratch his nurse, and the nurse and the man with her obeyed Allard quickly and without protest, which made the idea that he was nervous all but impossible: such open anxiety would sit ill on a leader. It would be an invitation to any who wished to depose him.

When the stories Allard told were accompanied by a book, Henry quickly took against them. Even as his understanding of English grew, the words Allard used were difficult, and the stories themselves were wearisome and complex, and hard to see the point of. Allard produced a book he kept referring to as a “Bible;” the word was easy to say, two puffs of air that could be made under water without filling a mouth with brine, but with it came a horrible object, two straight lines crisscrossed over each other, an interlocking nest of corners that upset Henry just to look at it. The fact that there was a figure on it, what appeared to be the shape of a tiny landsman with corded muscles like a half-picked corpse, did nothing to improve his liking for it. Allard seemed to take this object seriously, more seriously than the crown he had let Henry grab: when Henry tried to take it away and break it up, Allard lifted it up out of his reach, looking almost alarmed; his grip was light and cautious, as if holding a clam that might be prised open for a meal but would clamp its shell shut at a tap. Allard used words like “Christ” and “cross” and “crucifix” and “Jesus,” but Henry had difficulty telling them apart, and the tangle of S-sounds struck awkwardly on his ear. There were stories attached to this object as well, about places that weren’t France or England or Spain. When Henry asked about these places, Allard could explain little, except that they were hot and had landsmen ruling them, because they had no sea except a great body called the Mediterranean, which had deepsmen in it but not ones the landsmen cared about, because the landsmen needed deepsmen to fight their enemies, and these landsmen’s enemies weren’t on the other side of the sea but on land. This Henry could follow, but when Allard tried to explain what this ugly cross had to do with it, he grew confused. Allard said that the figure on it was a king, but he didn’t seem to rule anything that Allard could make clear, and as the man looked nothing like Henry it was hard to see the connection. There were words like “sin” too, but that was a difficult idea as well. Henry knew that deepsmen children received a twist on the ear if they strayed off in a dangerous direction or provoked another tribe member, but it was a simple business: they either learned not to repeat such mistakes, or they stayed stupid and generally drowned or fell prey to a shark or a dolphin. Having done his best not to be stupid for as long as he could remember, Henry could not see any reason why a dead landsman who looked nothing like him should be accusing him of doing bad things. The notion obscurely hurt his feelings. He was aware that tribesmen too old for a twisted ear would become unpopular if they regularly snatched food or refused to help in a crisis, and he supposed this might be the kind of bad things Allard meant. But nobody seemed to like Henry, and nobody ever had. He assumed it was because of his queer legs, but those weren’t his fault. Try as he might, he could think of no clearer reason why he should be so isolated. A two-legged landsman who looked like so many others, starfished out on an ugly criss-cross, could have little to do with such problems. Henry kept his eyes off the object as much as he could, and shook his head; eventually, he took to curling up whenever Allard brought it into the room. For some reason, Allard was less willing to wrestle him upright when he had the cross around, so Henry grew stubborn, and eventually Allard stopped bringing it in.

The one thing Allard had not done since the first few days was point to the painting up in Henry’s room. Henry remembered the word “Angelica” associated with it, so he assumed that was what it was, an angelica. When left alone, Henry still tore blankets, but more for comfort than anything else; the room remained square and straight however he attacked it, and it was too hard to keep bruising himself on the walls for so little reward. But with the loss of tantrums came boredom, worse than before, pressing him down as oppressively as the room itself. With nothing else to do, Henry took to exploring the room, examining its every inch, even occasionally reaching a cautious finger into a corner to touch it at its tightest point, before snatching his hand back quickly, out of harm’s way. But aside from scaring himself with corners, there was almost no other occupation: his ruined pallet and fraying rags, his two staffs and the chair Allard sat upon were the only distractions. Apart from the angelica, hanging low enough on the wall that Henry could scrunch up his short-sighted eyes and make out its shape.

It was reddish, like so many things in this world, with swirls of colour and arching lines all over it; within its disagreeably straight edges, it was more like water than anything else he could find. As the image was flat, he could not suppose it served any purpose except, like his clothes, to be a colourful nuisance, but once he had accustomed himself to it, he found its variety pleasant and spent hours of solitude rocking quietly with his eyes on its soothing curves.

Allard waited until he caught Henry staring at it before he tried to interest the boy in its contents. When he finally managed to come upon Henry with his eyes on the picture—by dint of opening the door faster than usual and putting his head in before the boy could retreat to his usual rocking and blank expression—he smiled and patted his charge. Henry retreated from the smile, bared teeth being a threatening sight, but Allard sat down on the floor beside him, dust and threads from Henry’s rags covering his fine clothing, and offered the boy some fish.

Henry took it. He was becoming accustomed to the bland, saltless taste of the food, and as the season grew chillier, he knew he should eat as much as possible, laying down fat to keep out the cold—although the supply of fish was not increasing as the days grew darker and the temperature dropped, and the lack of food was worrying him. Allard passed him another piece, and said, “Good boy, Henry. See that?” He pointed. “That is Angelica.”

“Angelica,” Henry said, and reached out his hand; Allard generally gave him a small bit of fish when he repeated words.

“Good.” The fish was produced, and Henry stuffed it into his mouth. “Queen Angelica.”

“Queen Angelica.” Henry held out an expectant hand, but no fish came.

“Queen, Henry?” Allard gave him a stern look. “What is a queen?”

Henry said nothing; there was no reason to expect him to know what a queen was.

“Do you want to know what a queen is?”

“Fish,” Henry said; the sentence was a complicated one.

“Later. A queen has a crown.”

“Crown.” Henry patted his lap; the crown was his only other plaything, a cheering bright circle in this bleak room.

“A queen is married to a king.”

“Fish.”

“Talk to me and I will give you fish,” Allard said.

“Not know ‘married,’” Henry said, frowning with concentration. He needed more food if he was to avoid freezing.

“King and queen are together. Man and woman,” Allard said. This made little sense to Henry, but he said nothing. “King is the son of a king and queen.”

Henry nodded; he had seen children born in the sea, and the spawning that preceded it; sometimes a deepsman and woman grew attached to each other and stayed together, breeding season after season, if the man wasn’t too weak to defend himself. King and queen must mean a breeding couple.

“You have queen?” Henry said.

“No.” Allard tapped the ground impatiently. “Only one king and queen in one country.”

Henry lowered his head; “country” was another difficult concept. “Fish?”

“Very well.” Allard passed him another piece. “King and queen are leaders. King and queen rule. They tell all the subjects—the people who are not king and queen—what they must do. Subjects obey king and queen. Loyal to …” He stopped. The glance he gave out of the window made Henry start up in alarm; sudden looks usually meant an approaching predator.

Allard showed no sign of flight, though, so Henry repeated, “Subjet-ss obey king an queen.” The consonants were difficult, but the idea was not. He had been used to having a single leader in the tribe.

Then he frowned. “King have crown. Henry have crown.” He looked at Allard in consternation. Henry knew only too well how the leader changed: another leader challenged them. The battle would be bloody and frantic. He had only ever seen two such, but he had never forgotten them, the rocks clenched in hard fists, the rising plumes of white bubbles and the cloudy trails of dark blood as the loser sank out of sight, arms limp and adrift on the current.

“Angelica was not born a queen, Henry. Listen.”

The story of Angelica began in Venice. Henry struggled with the ideas for weeks, but Allard was patient. He repeated the tale over and over, passing the boy titbits, giving him unwelcome pats, seeing no sign in the child’s still expression of the idea that possessed him: a ravaged body, head cracked with a rock, falling through the air, not even with the slow inevitability of a slain deepsman, but with a swift crash to the shattering ground below. A vague notion occupied Henry that someone might take his crown away, though, and he was determined not to have that happen. He had lost too many things in his life to relinquish it.

In the ninth century of our Lord, hundreds of years ago, Allard explained, the great city of Venice was finding its strength. “Century” and “our Lord” were lost on Henry, but he gathered that the story happened a long time ago, before living memory, many generations back. “City” meant little either, but Allard described a place of land and sea both, of islands and waterways, where the solid ground was parted and split by the flowing ocean.

“Go there,” Henry said at once. He could get around in such a place much better; he could break his sticks and swim.

“Venice is far away, Henry.”

“Go there.”

“Venice is not in England. We cannot live there, we would not be welcome.”

“Far?”

“Many miles. Many weeks to travel.”

This did not sound so bad to Henry; the entrapment in a single place worried him as much as the coming winter. How could they continue to eat if they did not move on? Existence in the sea had been an endless search, and weeks of swimming were part of life.

“Go,” Henry said. He did not really expect Allard to take him to Venice—unless Henry was asking for food, Allard never granted a request—but he was tired to death of his room.

“Some day, perhaps, Henry. When you are ready.”

Henry felt ready; if he could only have had more to eat and knowledge of the way, he would have set out for Venice that moment. Allard was staring at him, though, not giving anything, not troubled by the cold or the confinement, so Henry gave up and asked for another piece of fish.

People had come to Venice, Allard explained, because they were unhappy in other lands. They wanted to rule themselves. But they were still subject to Constantinople, a place Henry could not understand any descriptions of. Venice a strong city, living on fish, harvesting salt, selling it to people who came to buy it. The word “salt” Henry did not recognise, until Allard produced some for him, a little pile of sand, startlingly white in a bowl. Henry made nothing of it until he tasted it, but when he did, he stopped dead, rocking himself to avoid speaking to Allard, his mouth filled with taste of home. The boy refused to listen to any more of Allard’s story until he had finished the bowl, licking out its curves with a dark, tough tongue before turning to Allard and saying, “Salt an fish.”

“You want salt with your fish?”

“Yes.” Henry spoke imperiously; salt was too important to be denied.

“Very well, if you are a good boy, you shall have salt.” Allard had added another bribe to Henry’s attention, but a punishment too: on the days when Henry did not listen, when he rocked too much or tugged between his legs or showed his teeth to the nurse, fish would arrive without salt, dull grey and tasteless.

The people of Venice were happy there, Allard said. They lived well, even though Constantinople ruled them. Then one day, the people of the sea came.

Down the canals they swam, around the islands, turning and diving in the brown water. The Venetians had never seen such a sight. Some had seen deepsmen before, yes, riding the waves as the prows of ships cleft the water, but for most of the landsmen, the deepsmen were entirely unfamiliar.

“Ship?” said Henry.

“Yes,” Allard said, and produced a model. He waved it before the boy’s eyes, making it dance as if bobbing on a wave. Seeing the boy’s blank face, Allard stopped and handed him the toy. Henry sniffed at it, tasted the edges, but it was still puzzling. Allard had moved it to and fro, but when Henry turned it over in his hands, something tugged at his memory. He lay down on the floor and held the model above his head. There it was, a sight only seen from fathoms below: a dark fin-shape that meant a strong hand on his wrist, the sight of the tribe swimming up to greet it while he remained below, chastened and guarded by his mother.

“Ship,” Henry said. “What do ship?”

“Ships are how people travel the seas, Henry. How landsmen go across the water.”

Henry frowned; it was difficult to see why they didn’t swim, but already he was learning that landsmen had a passion for things, for fabrics and chairs and doors and windows, that they stayed to guard these things and tied your hands if you damaged them. Now it seemed that they wanted a thing if they were to go through the water as well. It was no clearer than before why these ships had been forbidden him. He frowned again, and asked Allard for some fish to cover his disappointment.

The people of the sea came to Venice, Allard said. The Venetians were bewitched by these strange newcomers, by the sound of the voices that rang out across the canals. Pale faces flashed through the brown water, dark tails churned foam from the depths, and the deepsmen’s song echoed off the clean, damp walls. For a while, all the music of Venice was composed around it, flutes trying to imitate the sonorous groans that the deepsmen called across the waters. Then the Venetians sent people out, ambassadors, in flat-bottomed boats, flutes playing this new sound.

Hearing the weighty notes called across the canals, the deepsmen united in groups of three and five, strongest at the head, in the phalanx formation that was to become familiar over the years. They swam out to greet the ambassadors, and as the flautists strove to imitate the sounds they made, powerful hands reached out and overturned the boats.

Allard explained this with sign language, with words, with sounds and grimaces and gestures. Explaining music took a while, and Henry responded poorly to Allard’s awkward attempts to play a flute; singing he understood, but the flute was just sounds without meaning. Just occasionally Allard managed to pipe out a note that sounded a little like a word—the echo of one, blurred and imprecise—which attracted Henry’s attention a little more, but either Allard’s musicianship or the boy’s willingness was too faulty to make much headway. This was all difficult for him to explain, but Allard took a great interest in Henry’s wavering enthusiasm for the flute, scratching note after note before carrying on with his explanation. Henry learned how the deepsmen had challenged the flautists, toppling them into the water to fight. Landsmen fare ill in underwater battles, and the deepsmen fought by their own traditions. Water cushions the blow of a striking tail a little, but the great muscles and flexing joints of a sea man’s tail are always better able to clash and wrestle than the fragile limbs of an unseated musician. Several of Venice’s most promising composers suffered broken legs before the boating attempts were abandoned.

Unfortunately for the city, once the musicians had been subdued, the deepsmen took to refusing entry to the canals where such ambushes had taken place. They swam up and down, rolling over in the water, wide-eyed and thoughtful, tolling out a sweet-voiced chant very similar to the tunes the well-meaning ambassadors had relayed to them. The translation was becoming increasingly obvious to the philosophers of the city: Ours.

Venice, independent and strong, found itself with enemies on its banks. The sea people attacked boats, pulled down bridges, until it was all but impossible to travel. Attempts were made to block the canals: the deepsmen broke the dams. Arrows were fired into the water and some casualties followed, but it was hard to take aim on a quarry that could disappear into the opaque depths within a moment. Nets were of little use: the deepsmen spent little time in the Grand Canal, only flashing across it fast enough to do damage. Instead, they prowled the narrower waters, where no boat large enough to haul up the full weight of a deepsman could travel. Citizens waited on the banks grasping harpoons; the deepsmen swam silently under the water, concealed in the cloudy brown tide, only flashing up for long enough to cast rocks, toppling the huntsmen, dragging their bleeding bodies into the canals, never to surface again.

The city fell under siege. But as the Venetians struggled to make it past the deepsmen’s barricade into the harbour, Constantinople did nothing to help. Venice was weakening, and the setbacks of a subject people were no hardship to a city with a whole world of cities to command. Let Venice struggle, Constantinople decided. If Venice broke, they would be more obedient to their liege city; the Venetians had struggled hard for self-rule, but if their new-minted independence was no help against the enemy within, so much the better for Constantinople’s hold on them.

Venice turned from the East to Charlemagne, Emperor of the West. In the year of our Lord 805, Allard explained, on Christmas Day—a term foreign to Henry, to whom birthdays were a mystery and days were reckoned by season, not by month, even if the story had not involved more of that disagreeable crossed statue—the Venetians did homage to Charlemagne, Charles the Great, newly crowned and formidable. The Doge of Venice, Oberlerio, took to wife a Frankish bride, a woman from across the seas, a woman of the Western race, who became something entirely new: a Dogaressa, queen of Venice.

This, Allard told Henry, was not an easy question for the Venetians. They argued about it, he explained, for five years—an unbelievable lifetime to carry on a quarrel, Henry considered, especially as the quarrel, complicated though Allard made it sound, seemed like a simple one: they had a choice of leaders, there were greater tribes in the world who wanted to rule them and the Venetians didn’t want any of them. Allard used words like “strong” and “proud,” spoke of freedom to govern oneself, independence from a greater power. The boy flinched a little as Allard’s gestures grew larger, wondering why these ideas seemed to drive the man so. But it was clear that Allard did not approve when he spoke of how the Doges, desperate to free themselves from the tyranny of the blockading deepsmen, managed to smuggle a message to the King of Italy: Pepin, son of Charlemagne. The message was clear: come to Venice. The offer was not alliance. It was submission. Pepin was invited to conquer Venice, hold the city against Constantinople, to settle internal divisions and, most importantly, to drive the deepsmen from the canals. The Venetian people might have wanted independence, but with the deepsmen in their canals, their leaders had decided otherwise. They would follow Constantinople, if Constantinople would help them.

To the canals of Venice came Pepin, hastily prepared, unaware of the anger of the Venetians who awaited him. In defiance of their leaders, the citizens gathered, ready to battle the invaders. But as Pepin’s ships sailed into the bay, a sight met their eyes that struck them like a wonder. The deepsmen had gathered to fight.

The sea people did not share the landsmen’s view of nationhood. More land people arriving in great ships were simply more people making claim on their canals. The sea people massed, called to each other across the miles of water and swam out to meet the fleet. With sharp rocks and strong hands, they breached hulls within minutes. The massive galleons of the enemy went down. The canals of Venice filled with floating spars, and the air filled with the crash of splitting wood and the shrieks of drowning men. And through the noise, the resonant song of the deepsmen sounded, a deep bass undertow: Ours.

Pepin’s surviving ships ploughed through. He had come too far to retreat in disgrace. The blood of the deepsmen darkened the waters as sailors lowered themselves on ropes to slash with swords at the lithe figures battering their hulls; as webbed fingers washed up upon the shores and shrieks rang through the water and echoed up the canals, Chioggia fell, then Pellestrina. The lagoon, Venice’s safeguard against the world, was giving way.

The Venetians had no love for the deepsmen patrolling their rivers, but they had less love for French princes called in to conquer by their treacherous leaders. And as the sailors’ swords flashed and the heads of deepsmen bobbed in the bay, black of eye and slack-jawed, tumbling over and over in the current, the people of Venice united.

It was one man who turned the battle around. Agnello Participazio was a long-established settler, a fierce Venetian who had organised men to block the channels, removing markers and leaving Venice an impassable maze for the invaders to founder in. The citizens followed him, damming their rivers as best they could, preparing to face Pepin with all their strength.

Then a naked woman walked out of the sea. Her legs were supple like a sea woman’s, jointed with vertebrae rather than shin bone and thigh bone, and her webbed feet spread like fans on the ground. Men crossed themselves and murmured of Venus, and she stared at them, lifted her head, and spoke to them in their own tongue, saying: “Give me something to wear.” Her teeth chattered in the cold wind, and drying salt sparkled on her rough skin.

Agnello looked up from his dam, laid down the spear in his hands, and stepped forward to offer her his cloak. She took it with a swift gesture, and cast it around herself like a queen.

“We must turn back these ships,” she said.

And Agnello bowed to her, and she reached out and took him by the hand.

The cloak he had lent her barely covered her body, her twisting unnatural legs and beautiful breasts like a girl’s, her whiter than white skin with veins that darkened as the air of the land warmed her water-chilled flesh. But she would not give it up for a dress, not while Pepin was at the shore. She covered herself as she spoke to Agnello, then leaned down into the water, dipping her ragged head and releasing from her slim throat such heavy calls, louder and deeper than a bull’s bellow, that the landsmen stared at her, speechless.

At her call, a phalanx of deepsmen swam into view, twenty deep.

The woman turned to Agnello and said, “Where should they go to block them?”

Agnello was a level-headed, strong-willed man. He hesitated only a moment before remembering his plan. His instructions were clear and direct: block the Malamocco channel. And the woman lowered her head again, chattered and clicked and moaned into the water.

The deepsmen turned on the instant; their huge tails raised such a fountain that Agnello’s men found themselves soaked to the skin. The woman addressed herself to Agnello: “I will go with them. You must meet me there.” She stripped the cloak from her shoulders, standing naked as a fish on half-steady legs before his gaze. “Have this ready for me again,” she said, and passed it to him. Then she was gone, lost in the water.

Deepsmen and landsmen worked together. Mighty stakes barricaded the Malamocco channel, impassable to Pepin’s fleet, and between them the deepsmen slipped, silent as wolves, under the water. Within Venice, the canals were passable again; only to outsiders was the deepsmen’s fury turned. And everywhere, between land and sea, swam the two-tailed, bent-legged woman, white-faced and clear-spoken, turning from Agnello to the deepsmen and back again.

Pepin held out for six months, trying starvation and patience, force and endurance, to no avail. Venice had become something new: a city that could not be taken by sea. Pepin struggled on, but in the end, he turned away.

After he had gone, and the banks of Venice were clear, the city turned within itself, united. Agnello, the hero of the city, was elected, the only possible Doge. And by his side was something utterly new, even to the name given her by the Venetians: Angelica. Dogaressa, lady of Venice, queen of the land and sea.

It was common to speak of a woman’s gentleness, but no one said that of Angelica. When an assassin tried to suffocate her in the night, Angelica lasted easily without air under the smothering pillow, wrapped her flexing legs around his hips and broke his spine with a single jerk of her strong, mobile back.

Venice thrived in her salty grip. Icons of the Virgin took on her features when artists decorated the churches. But it was more than that. Angelica and her children spread their tendrils through the royal houses, until the houses of Europe all grew intermixed, the dark-tinged blood of the sea people safely mingled in the veins of its rulers. For what nation with a vulnerable coastline could call itself strong if it could not defend itself from attacks by sea? The first time Angelica’s deepsmen struck at the Spanish navy, out on open water, miles away from Venice, not even plundering but dragging the boat down and its sailors with it, was the beginning of the end of landsmen kings. Let the Switzers be ruled by landsmen, let nations with no sea borders keep their old ways if they wished, but there were navies to maintain, and the deepsmen of the sea were no longer neutral, no longer sailors’ yarns, but an engaged force with loyalties of their own. Venice had a sword against the throat of the world. For against the wolves of the ocean—that implacable army Angelica could command without warning—there was no defence. Unless there were other deepsmen on other shores.

Angelica’s children by Agnello were strong and healthy, fast-growing, cloven infants that could chirrup and shrill their mother’s language, reproducing the deepsmen’s sounds as no landlocked throat ever could. For years, Venice grew in strength: a great empire, unchallengeable ruler of the waves, the deepsmen riding the trade routes and salvaging lost sailors, protecting their nation, mauling unauthorised ships. The world took notice of the small city, even far-distant continents, Chinese and Arab merchants bartering their wealth for safe passage, Europe in thrall. Venice was growing to a second Rome.

Before Angelica’s first daughter was old enough to talk, she was being offered the hands of princes. That first generation, Angelica refused; instead, she favoured noblemen of her choosing, sending them out into the bay to find themselves brides in the water to bear husbands and wives of mixed-blood for her children. Before Angelica was an old woman, the spread across the courts of Europe had begun.

A monument was raised by the Doge’s palace after Angelica’s death, housing a golden reliquary containing only her right hand. The remains of her corpse were buried at sea, but the hand rested in its glass-fronted, pearl-studded tomb, its webs shrivelling and pulling the fingers tight, until all that could be seen was a corrugated mass, small as an egg, brown and pitted like a bundle of seaweed. Angelica had never acquired the habit of piety, but the Virgin in stone adorned her tomb, and gilt letters announced the sacred legend: Stella Maris. Star of the Sea.

This, Allard explained to his charge. The boy sat, black eyes wide open, his mind filled with the drifting corpses of deposed leaders, the jawless bodies of conquered dolphins and the broken limbs, crooked against the dark, vibrant emptiness of the deep that followed after a struggle for authority; of bodies falling through the empty, unresisting air. That was the lesson Allard had to teach. The words were hard for Henry to understand, but the images were not. There were others like him on the land. Not many, but others like him. Only they were not like his nurse, not like the men who obeyed Allard, nor even like Allard himself. They were kings.

“Henry king?” he asked Allard.

“Not yet, Henry,” Allard said.

“Kill king?” Henry said.

Allard looked at him again, fish hanging limp in his stilled hand. His brow wrinkled, narrowing his white-rimmed eyes, as he stared at his charge. Henry leaned forward out and took the fish out of Allard’s grip. His chest was tighter than it had ever been, but his face was immobile. He said nothing as he filled his mouth with meat, readying himself for winter.