“Can we meet again?” she asked.
“I’ll try to come back.” He gathered his courage to ask his question, but she swam ahead of him.
“I found your friend!” she said. “I should have told you to start with, but I was afraid you would leave without talking to me if I did.”
“You know where Annaïg is? She’s alive?”
“I’m sorry—were you hoping she was dead?”
“No, I—where is she?”
“I didn’t mention you, when I was asking,” she assured him. “She’s very famous in the kitchens, especially after the slaughter.”
“Slaughter?”
“She was in one kitchen, but then another kitchen invaded it to capture her. Like your story about your people invading Morrowind, I guess. And now she’s in a much higher kitchen.”
“Do you know which one?”
She concentrated for a moment. Then her face brightened again. “Toel,” she said. “Toel Kitchen.”
“And do you know where it is?”
Her face fell. “I don’t. I don’t know my way around outside of the Fringe Gyre. I could ask Kalmo or someone else who makes deliveries, but then they might want to know why I’m asking.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “Don’t ask, for now. I don’t want to get you in trouble. It’s enough to know she’s alive.”
“I’m glad I was helpful,” Fhena said.
“You’ve no idea,” Mere-Glim told her. He hesitated, and then touched his muzzle to her cheek. She jerked away in surprise.
“Why did you do that?” she asked.
“It’s called a kiss,” he said, feeling stupid. “Humans and mer do it to express—”
“I know what a kiss is,” she replied. “We do it during procreation. Not like that, though. Are you asking me to procreate?”
“No,” Mere-Glim said. “No. That was a different kind of kiss—it just expresses thanks. I’m not trying … No.”
“I wonder if we even could?” she wondered.
“I’m going now,” Glim said, and hurried away.
Mere-Glim woke from nightmares of emptiness and pain and it was a moment before he understood someone was whispering his name. He sat up, grunting, and made out Wert’s features in the dim light.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Come with me,” Wert replied. “We want to talk to you.”
He groggily followed Wert through the skraw passages and then out of them, into a place that had a stale sort of smell to it, as if it wasn’t used very often. Light wands had been placed in a little pile, and around it stood eight other skraws.
“What is this?” Glim asked.
Wert cleared his voice. “You stood up to the overseer,” he said.
“I was angry,” Glim replied. “And I’m not used to being treated like that.”
“He’d never felt the pain before,” another of the skraws said. “I’ll bet he wouldn’t do it again.”
“Well?” Wert said.
“Well, what?”
“Would you stand up to him again?”
“I don’t know. If I had reason to. It’s only pain.”
“He might have killed you. Probably the only reason he didn’t is that there’s only one of you, and you’re so valuable. But that’ll change soon.”
“Why are you asking me this?” Glim snapped. “Why do you care?”
“You said it yourself,” Wert said. “Why should we have to take the vapors? I didn’t really understand you when you started talking that way. It’s hard to think like that. But you’ve been most of your life without overseers. Things occur to you that don’t to us.”
“It’s never occurred to you that your lives could be better?”
“No. But now you’ve brought it up, see? Now it’s hard to make the thought go away.”
“And you’ve spread it around.”
“Right.”
“So what do you want with me?”
“Let’s say we want free of the vapors—just that one thing. How do we go about that?”
Glim almost felt like laughing. Here was Annaïg’s resistance, such as it was.
“Well,” he said slowly, “I haven’t thought about it. I’m not sure I want to.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean this isn’t my sort of thing,” Glim replied. “I’m not interested in leading a revolution.”
“But that’s not right,” Wert blurted. “If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”