In the fifth year of the Jiajing reign, moonlight spilled across Broken Hope Pool, red as freshly shed blood.
Thirty bodies of Tanka people washed ashore. Iron shackles had carved deep grooves into their ankles, blood scabs clung to the bluestone slabs, tin rings bit into their necks, and shattered shells were wedged beneath their fingernails. The night before, they had dived ten fathoms to harvest pearls, only to return with a boat full of bloody foam.
Chen Haisheng crouched on the deck, mending a net. The needle pierced his fingertip, and a bead of blood dripped into a hole in the torn mesh. Behind him, lanterns on the government boat swayed blindingly. Wei Jin stood at the bow in his flying-fish uniform, the dragon-head-and-pearl design seeming to devour the light of the flames. His jadeite thumb ring ground against a pearl diver’s severed finger. “Three days to find the luminous pearl. Come up short by even a fraction, and I’ll wipe out your clan and blow up the pool!” His shrill voice scraped at their eardrums.
The old Tanka elder came hobbling over, leaning on a blade. His single eye fixed on the sea, and his empty sleeve billowed like a broken wing. “In the first year, fifty brothers sank to the bottom of the pool, and still we barely gathered enough fragments for the empress’s hairpin. Now you want a luminous pearl. You’re grinding our Tanka bones to fill the sea!” He took out a piece of mermaid silk, its silvery fabric gleaming coldly. “The merfolk and the Tanka share the same origins, but a curse drove us apart. This cloth can ward off blades and keep out water. It was given to us by the merfolk.”
As he spoke, black waves surged across the sea, and blue light burst from beneath the surface. A string of blood-veined pearls rolled ashore. A Zhu went to pick them up, but the moment her fingertips touched them, a song rose from the seabed and wound through the waves, sounding like weeping and lamentation, wrenching at the heart.
“Catch the merfolk alive and refine them into pearls!” Wei Jin laughed maniacally, sweeping his sleeve as an iron net flew toward the water. The blue light suddenly blazed brighter. A giant wave overturned the fishing boats, the iron net shattered into scraps, and the officials screamed as they slammed into the reefs.
Haisheng clutched the mermaid silk, its chill piercing to the bone. When his father’s rope was snapped by a shark three years ago, the sea had turned red just like this. Within the blue light, a figure with a fish’s tail flashed past. A tear fell into the sea and congealed into a blood pearl, twining with the bloodstains on the shore to seal their fates.
