THIRTY-NINE

WHISTLE COULD REMEMBER the arms of his mother, holding him up for his first lungful of air. The arms of his wife, around him in the cold, were soft, gentle, the kind arms of a woman who had never pushed him out. As the sea lapped around them, he clutched her to him, the pliable body of this strange girl who had, in the end, not forced him to act against himself. She had saved his life, and as for what she called his soul, she had left it alone.

Whistle was happy for that. He would miss her when he was away. But he knew, now, how to come back.

The coronation was behind them, a dull ceremony that Whistle had sat through, knowing that this time, this final time, really was the last time he would have to sit in some grim cave of a building, bored by words he knew nothing about and cared for even less. John had been beside him. As the instruments had creaked out their weird music, Whistle had turned and whispered to him what they really meant, Good eating, don’t trifle with me, and John had laughed behind his hand. But John was a client king now, a nominated regent, and had cleared his face quickly. John could understand the politicking, and he seemed to get on well with Anne. Whistle would just have to trust in their fidelity to him. But then, there would be deepsmen girls in the sea, the long months when he was away from his wife, and he was prepared to stay away from them; he had no desire for quarter-blood children. It was not a family arrangement, this deal between the three of them, but it would hold if they held to it. Whistle was determined to find that people could be trusted.

King in the water—that was what they were calling him now. Visiting his wife when the tides were right, speaking to passing ships, hailing sailors and courtiers who went out to fish, swimming out with his family. Perhaps he would not be king over the deepsmen, not in body: he was still small, always would be, for the sea. The deepsmen had no word for negotiator; they were, however, developing a verb: whistle-talking. Who would have thought it, Whistle reflected, finally amused. He had ended up a diplomat after all.

Anne embraced him a last time, and swam back to her people. For an instant, hanging empty-armed in the water, Whistle was lonely. He felt a catch of sorrow in his throat as the girl disappeared into the gloom. But she would be back.

Whistle drew a deep lungful of air and drove down, out to the sea where his own people were waiting for him. As the water stroked over his body, he felt it all shed away: words, books, straight-angled rooms and crosses of wood, of stone, of glass, the textures and weights and tastes of the land. He was coming clean, returning to the life he had lost.

It would not be safe in the sea. Nothing was safe. But if the sea was a life of movement and hunger, starvation and flight, so was life on the land, in its way. Whistle had lived skin-to-skin with danger all his life. It was nothing new. Nothing, in itself, he was afraid of. He would save his fear for real things, for sharks and poison fish and rocks in storms. He was going home.

He could hear the calls of his people, out in the dark water: Come on. Welcome. We are waiting. Whistle broke the surface one last time in an English bay, took a great breath of cold, sweet air, and dived.