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Dry Land. It allowed him the luxury of being the artistic sort of Fool, the dreamy kind, whose wit was admired as well as just barbed enough to serve as a correction. Fabi was a poet, and a good one. He was, Katya thought, entirely in love with words. In a way, she pitied the girls who yearned after him; they could never, ever compete with poetry to claim his heart.
    There was no analogous position to Wise Fool for a seventh daughter, for which Katya was very grateful. Like the rest of her siblings who were not “destined” for a particular life, she had been able to choose, with her father’s guidance, what it was that she wanted to do.
    It had not been the most obvious choice and, in fact, had she not been blessed with a very particular sort of magical ability, it probably would not have been possible.
    “Your magic is still as strong as ever?” the King asked his daughter. “You still have no difficulty?”
    “Stronger and easier to wield, Father,” she said with confidence. There were, of course, always doubts when one first came into a magic. It could leave, or change, or fade instead of strengthening. But once one passed the magically significant milestone of the twenty-first birthday, as Katya finally had, it was generally stabilized for good and all.
    This was important, since Katya’s form of water-magic, though not nearly as powerful as her Sorceress-sister’s and virtually identical to it in such things as “calling water” or forcing water creatures to obey her at need, did one thing that none of the rest could do.
    She could walk on the Drylands without precautions or a second thought. That was the gift that touch of Siren’s blood gave to her. Beneath the waves, she breathed the water, while above it, she breathed the air. Transitions were effortless and instantaneous.
    That, combined with her appearance—tiny, white-blond, like an exquisite and fragile doll—made her the ideal secret agent for the Sea King in the Drylands as well as within his own Court.
    He had been the first to suggest such a thing, when she’d brought some of her uncannily accurate observations to him when she was only nine, though he had not proposed anything of the sort at the time. “Keep watching, my cunning little vixen,” he had said. “Keep watching and come to me and we will talk about what you have seen.” She had nodded, pleased that she had pleased him. On her thirteenth birthday, he had told her what she was actually doing. On her sixteenth, he asked if she wanted to continue. On her seventeenth, he’d had sent her to the Drylands for the first time. No one else had known what she was doing. Not even her mother. She had returned with the information that wreckers were taking ships and blaming the Sea King. With that, her father had stopped a war before it started.
    Now she had passed the last hurdle. Now that they both knew that she could go anywhere, any time, the King would be free to send her anywhere he needed her.
    “Well this should be interesting for you,” the Sea King said, nodding with satisfaction. “The seabirds tell me that something dreadful is arising on the island Kingdom of Nippon.”
    Katya felt her eyebrows rising, as she looked into her father’s handsome face. “I have never been to Nippon.” This was definitely promising! She tried to recall what she knew about that Kingdom. Nothing really. It was a chain of many small islands and one very large one; she could not really think of anything else. This island Kingdom was as far from the Palace as it was possible to be and still be touching their borders.
    “Nor I, actually. I know only what is in the library. But if the seabirds are noticing something bad, it is likely to be very bad indeed.” He grimaced. “Since normally all one ever hears out of a seabird is ‘Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!’ this does not bode well. I tend to leave Nippon alone, as they are very touchy, but—”
    “They are an island and touch the Sea on all sides,