The Tail of Emily Windsnap - Liz Kessler [52]
Chandeliers made from glasslike crystals hung from the ceiling, splashing mini rainbows around the walls. In the center of the room, a tiny volcano shot out clouds of bright green light — an underwater fountain. The light flowed over the top of the rocky cauldron, bubbling and frothing and turning blue as it melted onto the floor.
“Don’t you know anything?” the guard grunted. “This is Neptune’s palace.” He pushed me forward.
Neptune’s palace! What were we doing here? I thought about all the things Shona had told me about him. What was he going to do to me? Would he turn me to stone?
We swam across the lobby. Two mermen with long black tails passed us, talking hurriedly as they swam. A mermaid looked up from behind a gold pillar as we came to the back of the lobby. Reaching into his tail, the guard pulled out a card. The mermaid nodded briskly and moved aside. There was a hole in the wall behind her.
“Up there.” The guard swam into the hole, pulling me along. Around and around, spiraling upward through tubes, we climbed the upside-down super-slide till we came to a trapdoor. The guard opened it with one push and nudged me through.
We came out into a rectangular room with glass walls. A giant fish tank — except the fish were on the outside! All brightly colored yellows and blues, darting around, looking in as the guard led me to a line of rocks along one edge and told me to sit down. A notice in front of my row had a word written in capital letters: ACCUSED.
Accused? What had I done?
In front of me, there were rows of coral seats. Merpeople were loitering here and there, dressed in suits.
One wore a jacket made of gold reeds with a trident on his chest. I watched him flick through files, talking all the time to a mermaid by his side. A merman on the row behind them in a black suit was whispering frantically to a mermaid next to him as he, too, shuffled through files.
At the front, a mermaid facing the court sat at a coral desk examining her nails. Behind her was a low crystal table — and behind that, the most amazing throne: all in gold, the back of the seat tapered upward into three prongs filled with pearls and coral, downward into a solid gold block. The round seat was marble, with blue ripples carved outward from the center to the edges. A golden sea horse stood on either side of the throne: each arm a sea horse body, each leg its tail, stretching downward and curling into a mass of diamonds at its base.
The throne towered over the court — powerful and scary, even when it was empty!
Every now and then, the mermaid in front of the throne rearranged the items on her desk. She had a row of reeds in a line across the top edge, with some plastic papers beside them. On top of these was a sign saying CLERK. A huge pile of files was balanced in one corner. In the other, a grumpy-looking squid sat with its tentacles folded into a complicated knot.
The mermaid kept glancing backward at a gateway behind the throne, which was gold and arched and covered with jewels, like the palace entrance. The gates within it were closed.
A splashing noise opposite me drew my eyes away from the front of the court. Two guards were opening a door in the ceiling; they had someone in between them.
Mom! The guards unhooked a mask from the ceiling, like the ones she and Millie had when we were captured. Mom clumsily strapped it over her face, a tube leading from her mouth up through the top of the box.
She looked around the court with frightened eyes. Then she noticed me and her face brightened a tiny bit. She tried to smile through her mask, and I tried to smile back.
Outside the fish tank, a row of assorted merpeople were taking their seats. A portly mermaid undid a velvety eel from around her neck as she sat down. She made the others all move up so she could make a seat for an enormous jewel-encrusted crab.
Another huddle of merpeople with notebooks and tape recorders chatted to each other as they sat down. Reporters, I guessed. Along the back of the court,