King Of The Seven Seas

The Great Altar of Atlantis is the oldest structure in the oldest city in the world.

It stands at the center of the palace grounds, carved from a single piece of volcanic obsidian that was here before any building, before any street, before any of the coral towers that now rise around it like the fingers of an enormous upturned hand. The altar is black and smooth and absolutely still, and on the morning of the coronation it was lit by the bioluminescent lanterns of every kingdom — the deep blue of Xebel, the gold-green of the Brine, the pale white of the Trench — arranged in rows that extended out from the altar in every direction until they blurred into the blue-dark distance.

Representatives from seven kingdoms had come.

This was, by itself, extraordinary. The seven kingdoms had not been in the same place at the same time in living memory — not in peace, not in ceremony. They had their rivalries and their grievances and their long histories of not cooperating. They had their different customs and their different depths and their different understandings of what the ocean meant and who should govern it.

Arthur had spent three years bringing them to this moment. Not by force — the Trident could not compel cooperation, and even if it could, he would not have used it that way. He had done it the hard way: by showing up, kingdom by kingdom, in each one's own water, and asking for the audience to make the argument, and then making it. He had listened first, always — listened to the Xebel grievances about the trade route taxation, listened to the Brine's concerns about territorial mapping, listened to the Trench scholars' requests regarding research access. He had addressed as many of them as he could and been honest about the ones he couldn't address yet.

And slowly — slowly and skeptically and with many conditions attached — the seven kingdoms had agreed to come.

The coronation ceremony was in the old language, which Veris had coached him through for two months. He repeated the words in the order they were supposed to come. He held the Trident in both hands at the moment the ceremony required. He placed his hand on the Altar and felt something move through the obsidian — some deep, old affirmation, the stone recognizing what it had been waiting for.

The crown settled on his head. The lanterns of seven kingdoms pulsed simultaneously, their colors mixing in the water into something none of them were separately: a warm, complex, layered light.

He stood straight. He looked at the assembled kingdoms — at their representatives watching him with expressions ranging from genuine hope to cautious skepticism to the particular unreadability of the Trench scholars, who expressed nothing on their strange ancient faces.

"The sea does not belong to the King," he said, in the old language and then in the modern one, because he wanted everyone to understand. "The King belongs to the sea."

He saw something shift in the assembly.

He gave his declarations: new laws protecting the reef ecosystems, with enforcement mechanisms that the seven kingdoms had all agreed to in principle. Treaties with the surface nations — laboriously negotiated with the assistance of Wonder Woman, who had a talent for international agreements, and the grudging support of Batman, who had contacts in seventeen governments. A multi-national response force for deep-sea threats, with representatives from each kingdom. Research partnerships with the Trench scholars, who had things to teach that no other civilization had access to.

One by one, the representatives placed their hands in the water above the Altar. The old gesture of compact. The old meaning: I am here, I consent, this is real.

Orm was the last. He stood for a long moment with his purple cape settling in the current around him, his jaw set, his eyes on Arthur. Then he placed his hand in the water.

Arthur met his gaze. He did not smile — this was not the moment for smiling. He nodded: steadily, one time, with the full weight of acknowledgment. We are here. This happened.

Orm nodded back.

After the ceremony, when the formal proceedings had dissolved into the complicated and beautiful noise of seven kingdoms' worth of delegates talking to each other — which was, in itself, a miracle — Arthur swam out of the palace grounds alone, just for a few minutes. Past the kelp forests. Past the trade routes.

He hung in the open water and looked at the city.

The towers glowing. The streets busy with the movement of people who had no idea what had been decided today on their behalf, who were just living — trading, swimming, playing in the fronds, going about the business of a city that had existed for ten thousand years and would, if he did his job, continue for ten thousand more.

The sea was enormous and ordinary and full of ordinary life, and he was responsible for all of it.

Not because it was glory. Not because the throne was valuable or the crown was shining or the old language sounded important when he spoke it.

Because it needed someone. Because the ocean — the great, breathing, living, complex, dark and beautiful ocean that covered seventy percent of this world — needed someone to say: I am here. I am listening. I will not let you be forgotten.

Arthur Curry, King of the Seven Seas, son of a lighthouse keeper and a queen from the deep, turned and swam home.

The sea moved around him, as it always had, as it always would: patient and enormous and full of life, all of it connected, all of it alive, all of it his to tend.

He was ready.

He had always been ready.

He just had to cross the edge.