Fortune's Fool by Mercedes Lackey Read Free Book Online Page A

a moment. She didn’t even flinch; definitely another test. “Such a thing would make me attractive to the females. I am looking to start a pod soon. A strong swimmer, a good hunter. Hmm.” He rolled back to the other side. “And you…you are a warrior.”
    “Of sorts,” she agreed.
    “You do not show fear, only proper deference.” He blew a blast of bubbles. “You would be a good companion. We will go.”
    “My thanks. May I know your name?” she asked, going over to the side of the enclosure, which really served only to keep the visitors from drifting off on the currents as they slept, and as a place to hang the various sizes of traveling harness and the weapons one needed when traveling.
    “Sharptooth. You would be the one called Tsunami.”
    That pulled her up sharply. She had never heard her Orcan name before. “Tsunami? Why am I called that?” she asked, as she fitted the harness over his nose.
    He blew a string of laugh bubbles. “Because nothing at all of you shows on the surface, and only at the last moment do you reveal yourself. And those who see you are swept away.”
    She had to admit, that was a fairly good encapsulation of her style. “I trust you approve and agree with such a name,” she said dryly, slowly working the traveling harness over his tall dorsal fin.
    He blew another string of laugh bubbles. “I am of the People. You need to ask?”
     
    Orcas were the fastest swimmers in the sea. Sharptooth was probably one of the fastest orcas in the Kingdom. Katya held to his harness, flattened herself down along his back to reduce resistance, and let him go. As for giving him directions—this was an orca. He had access to the best guides in the world. Other orcas, and the only great whales that could rival an orca for fierce nature, the sperm whales. He simply set out in the right general direction and began calling out his destination. Soon, someone replied. “This way.” He oriented himself on the call without slackening his pace.
    Once out of the shelter of the magic around the Palace, the water had turned cold and the magic that allowed anyone to breathe water vanished as they crossed the invisible barrier, and her body had reacted by changing, just as the Sirens’ bodies did. There was one moment of icy cold, and a moment when it felt as if she was choking.
    Then she was warm again, and she could breathe.
    They paused to chase down, catch, and eat some salmon. She spread a purse net vertically in the water; he chased the school toward it. The school hit the net and she pulled the cord that turned it into a bag, catching enough for him with one left over for her meal.
    As she sliced raw bits off and ate them, he eyed her. “There were seals,” he offered. “I did not chase them.”
    She eyed him back. “If it is a choice between seal and starving…”
    He blew bubbles. “Good, you are practical. I doubt you would let me take porpoise under any circumstances though….”
    “I’d rather you didn’t eat my allies.” She suspected, from the tone of his voice, that he was teasing her. “It makes for bad feelings all around if you eat allies.”
    “True. And we should be gone.”
    “So we should.” She sliced off the fillets and stowed them in a fish-skin pouch on the harness. She was set for food now; all they had to worry about was keeping him fed. She secured herself to his harness, tucked herself down again, and they were off.
    A journey like this had a curious timelessness about it. They stopped to rest when they were tired, hanging together in the featureless, empty blue that was the midocean far from any shore. When he was hungry, he would query the surrounding water until he got an answer about where the food was, and they would make a slight detour. The sun rose and set above the water; once they waited as it touched the horizon to see if they could catch the “green flash” that supposedly came as it passed beneath the waves, but neither of them saw anything. So