...you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting... -- Daniel 5:27, ESV

Within hours of their arrival in Vakaryan, Hariye found himself whisked off to a gloomy castle in the middle of nowhere. All right, so it wasn't exactly gloomy. It was large and well-lit, not to mention full of people, but it was surrounded by fortifications and had such heavy doors that it was clearly still used as a defensive structure. And it wasn't exactly in the middle of nowhere; it was built on a hill overlooking the sea, and in the distance he could just about make out a town by the shore. But it wasn't the sort of place he expected to go on this adventure, especially when Ketevan made it clear she wanted him to stay here and not help her catch the pirates.

"But I can help!" he protested. "I beat two of my brothers at archery last year!"

Ketevan brushed him off, to his annoyance. So he went down to the armoury, found a bow and arrows, borrowed a bracer from one of the soldiers, then fired every arrow in the quiver at the targets. Most of them hit the target dead in the centre. The ones that didn't still land close to the red circle.

Hariye looked back to see Ketevan's reaction. She stood at the top of the stairs leading down to the training yard. From this distance it was hard to see clearly, but Hariye could have sworn there was something dark and ugly in her expression. Then she turned sharply and walked away without a word.

That evening Hariye found himself summoned to the room Ketevan was using as her office. He went warily. Although he was naïve he wasn't stupid. This was reminiscent of when his father and grandfather had summoned various relatives to their studies to be thoroughly reprimanded, but he couldn't think of what he'd done to deserve it.

He opened the door and stepped in. Ketevan stood at the table, staring down at something in a box.

"Close the door," she said -- unnecessarily, because he'd already closed it. "Look at this. Do you recognise it?"

At first Hariye thought she meant the box. Then he got close enough to see what was inside it. His eyes widened. It was a necklace made of multi-coloured jewels that glittered when the light caught them.

"Did you know that removing a pearl from an oyster's shell kills the oyster?" Ketevan asked.

Hariye nodded. "Are those pearls?"

"No, but they have similarities. This necklace is over four hundred years old and made entirely of mer scales." She gave him an odd, searching look. "What do you know about merfolk?"

Hariye searched his memory before finally landing on something his history tutor had said once. "They were a sort of fish that was hunted to extinction for their scales."

Ketevan seemed to be waiting for him to say something else. When he didn't she said, "Do you really not know anything else about them?"

He shook his head.

"Not that your grandfather's palace and my mother's crown are decorated with their scales? Not what they looked like?"

"I suppose they just looked like fish," Hariye said dubiously. "What's this about?"

Ketevan opened a drawer in the table and lifted out a book. She flipped to a page and pointed to it. "That's a mer."

It was a drawing of a strange creature like something out of Hariye's fairy-tales. From the waist up it was a human, but it had a fish's tail covered with painstakingly-drawn scales. Hariye stared at it. A sudden queasy feeling formed in his stomach. Maybe he was misremembering, but when he was in the river-- He glanced down to make sure he still had legs.

"For years it was believed the merfolk went extinct," Ketevan said quietly. "If a living one was discovered he would be locked up and his scales would be ripped out one at a time. He'd die in agony and no one would care." She gave him that searching look again. "I believe some of the merfolk intermarried with humans. Their descendants wouldn't know what they truly were unless they went into the sea."

The world was spinning around Hariye. The ground no longer felt solid beneath his feet and his stomach seemed to have tied itself in knots. The only thing that remained steady and clear in the room was the necklace. It seemed to laugh at him when it glittered.

Without thinking he lunged forward and grabbed the necklace. It was cold. He could almost imagine it was wet with blood. He flung it at the wall with all his might. Then his stomach twisted and he fell to the ground retching.

When he came back to himself he felt Ketevan's fingers combing through his hair. Her nails scraped lightly against his scalp. He knew she meant it kindly but it made his skin crawl.

"It's a good thing I met you," she murmured. "If anyone else knew what you are they'd..." She trailed off and continued stroking his hair. "So you see, you must stay here. You'll be safe as long as you don't go near water. I'll make sure no one finds out. You just have to stay in the fortress."

Something nagged at the back of Hariye's mind, something that told him this wasn't right. But he felt sick, and tired, and his whole world had just been turned upside down. He nodded and allowed Ketevan to lead him to his room.

For the next few days Hariye barely dared to venture out of his room. He hunted through the history books for references to the merfolk. Everything he found confirmed what Ketevan had said.

His final wild hope was that they were both wrong. He wasn't a mer. He hadn't gained a tail when he went swimming. It was all just a misunderstanding.

Ketevan gave him a bedroom with an adjoining bathroom and left him with strict instructions to keep the door locked and only open it for her. Hariye, thinking of that necklace and his grandfather's palace, agreed to everything she said. When he was younger he'd thought his grandfather's palace was the most beautiful place he'd ever seen. Now he felt physically sick when he remembered the way it glittered in the sun.

Ketevan and a contingent of soldiers set out from the fortress one day in search of the pirates. Hariye locked his bedroom door, hauled a chest of drawers in front of it to make sure, then locked the bathroom door too just to be absolutely certain. Then he filled the bathtub. He didn't know if it would work or not -- he'd never turned into a mer when he had a bath before -- but it was the only way he could think of to find out. He certainly wasn't going to go down to the sea.

In spite of the locked and barricaded doors Hariye still felt far too vulnerable as he filled the bath and undressed. He kept looking back over his shoulder to make absolutely sure no one could get in. When the bath was full almost to overflowing he climbed in.

At first nothing happened. Hariye hardly dared to breathe. His mind kept flying back to the drawing of the mer in that book. It danced before his eyes until he couldn't tell if he had a tail or if he was just seeing things.

He squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself to breathe slowly. Gradually his heart stopped battering against his ribcage. When he felt calm enough he opened his eyes. Somehow he both was and wasn't surprised to see his legs had disappeared and been replaced with a long tail covered in blue scales.

Hariye felt bizarrely distant, as if he was a spectator at a play, as he considered what this meant and how it would affect the rest of his life. Acting more on a vague wish to make his life go back to normal than on any conscious thought, he began to claw and tear at his scales. They wouldn't move. They were anchored too deeply into his skin for that. He'd have to get a pair of pliers or peel his skin off like a snake to remove them. But he continued trying until his hands were scratched and raw.

He lay in the bath until the water was icy cold. Out in the courtyard he heard the clatter of horse-hooves approaching. Ketevan was back. Hariye clambered out of the bath. As soon as he landed on the floor his tail turned back into legs. His shins were covered with tiny cuts from his nails. His fingers were bloody. But he hardly noticed any of that as he pulled his clothes back on without bothering to use a towel first.

All in all the expedition had been a resounding success. Ketevan had discovered the hiding place of the pirates and had already sent word to the military garrison in Rahatka to come and provide support. Now she just had to plan how and when to attack.

"How is my guest?" she asked the seneschal.

He shrugged helplessly. "He's locked himself in his room and refuses to come out. I've ordered food to be left outside his door, but when the trays are collected it looks like he hasn't eaten anything."

Ketevan pursed her lips. If Hariye thought she intended to let him starve himself, he had another think coming.

She went up to his room and tried the door. It was locked, but she had spare keys for every room in the fortress. She unlocked it and found it still wouldn't open.

"Hariye, open this door!"

There was a shuffling sound and then the noise of something heavy being pushed back. Hariye opened the door. Ketevan was promptly taken aback by how haggard he looked. His skin was even paler than normal, his eyes seemed positively enormous in his face, and his hands were bruised and bloody. There were red dots on his trouser legs that looked ominously like blood.

Ketevan stared at him. "...What happened?"

Hariye shrugged. "I tried an experiment. It confirmed what you said."

A wave of horror and rage combined swept over her. She stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. "Did you tell anyone else what you are?"

"Of course not!" he snapped. It was the first time she'd ever heard him sound angry. "I'm not suicidal. I filled the bathtub."

Ketevan looked at his fingers, then at the blood on his trousers. An inkling of what he'd done dawned on her. She glared at him. "Never harm yourself again. I forbid it."

Hariye's eyes had gone eerily distant after he finished speaking. Now he seemed to snap back to reality and he looked at her in shock.

"Who do you think you are?" he demanded, for the first time sounding like the prince he was. "You have no right to forbid me to do anything."

"I have every right," Ketevan said, only just restraining herself from shouting. "You're in my land, in my fortress, under my protection. You saved my life so I am repaying you by saving yours. Don't you understand that you're in extreme danger? I'm the only one who can protect you."

Hariye took a deep breath. His whole body seemed to shake like a leaf. "I want to go home."

That idea sent a surge of possessive rage through Ketevan. "Didn't you know before we left Çarisar? Didn't you hear? Your father is offering a reward to anyone who finds you. But never in the entire reward poster does he ever say you're his son. He calls you a runaway slave who's stolen valuable jewellery. Don't you see? He knows you're a mer and he sees you as just a source of money. I've no doubt he plans to steal your scales some day."

Hariye collapsed onto the bed. His hair fell over his face so she couldn't see his expression, but she could tell from his voice that he was fighting back tears. "It's not true. My father... He always treated me well. He'd never..."

"Then go home," Ketevan said. "Go home and see for yourself how he reacts. Think of all the mer scales in your grandfather's palace."

Hariye gave a choked sob. His body shook with the effort of holding back tears. Ketevan sat down next to him and wrapped her arms around him.

"I know this is a terrible shock," she said in her most reassuring voice. "But don't worry. I'm here and I won't let anyone harm you. I'll take you far away so no one can find you."