“Ha, that, Lace, is where you are wrong," David told her, Orion nodding in agreement. “I only thought about it when you told me how they lowered the requirements. I was curious when you started talking about how much different animals lived at sea, and I wondered, how long do I live at sea? Turns out I am on, over or in the ocean an average of 72% in a year. I didn’t go to decimals since I was well over the limit. So, I can vote. And of course I am going to vote for the party the supports better human-ocean relations! And, well, how could I not see if my fellows would want to vote too? My crew is on every voyage I’m on. We didn’t let Aaron vote, he hasn’t been here long enough, but all of the rest of us, we were in without a problem. And turns out, so were the crews of Captain Formov and Captain Ivory, who I bumped into in port, and we got talking, and, well, then it kind of grew from there.”

Lace drop back down to floating, just her head above the water. Behind her, a small family unit of arctic terns dropped a pebble each into the circle. They managed to miss the boat. The mermaid’s eyes were nearly squinted shut as she thought hard.

David still couldn’t seem to get a response out of Lace. “So, umm… Are we winning?”

“How many votes did you bring?”

“I don’t remember. Orion, do you remember?” The old man shook his head. David yelled up to the ship’s deck. “Oy! Clerk!”

A clerk’s bare head appeared above the rail? “Sir?”

“Have Spenser yell me down the vote total, will you?”

“Yes Sir. I mean, Aye Sir. Aye Captain. Highness. Umm.” The head disappeared.

David rolled his eyes.

Orion leaned down to Lace, who had drifted closer to the dingy again. “So nice to meet you, Highness. You look just like your mother. So lovely. So nice to meet you!”

Lace put on a polite smile. “Thank you, Ambassador. I wonder what she will think of this whole affair.”

Orion chuckled. “Oh, I imagine she would find it a great lark!”

The Captain gave Lace a curious look with a smile. She wrinkled her nose, but gave in, because she knew he would get the whole story from the old man anyway. “My mother is Princess Sirena. I’m sure the Ambassador has met her on official occasions before." If she expected David to make a big deal out of it though, she was disappointed.

He just shrugged and gave a quirky half smile, as if to say he understood completely. “Family, right? What can you do?”

The head clerk, presumably Spenser, coughed from above. “My Lord, you asked for total numbers? Again?”

“Yes, Spenser, again. Lady Lace’s loveliness drove them right out of my mind.” He ignored her indignant sputter.

“My Lord, you were able to convince 453 sailors, boatmen and fishermen in Gillik to cast their votes.”

Lace ceased making faces at David and perked up. “Hmm, that would about equal the polar bears, who never did commit. Not much compared to the penguins, but we weren’t that far behind."

Spenser coughed again and continued. “The Sailors’ Guild of Floberg sent votes by special messenger for 370. The guild of Freeport…” and he went on to list almost every port and seaside nation that Lace had ever heard of. And he kept reading numbers!

Her eyes grew bigger and bigger with each one, even as another bucket splashed into the voting ring. “You did all this in a week?”

David shrugged. “I had to pull rank a couple of times. Dad’s special messengers don’t come cheap, but I figured it was worth it. Even if it wasn’t enough to tip the balance to a win, at least we’d say to the Parliament, “Hey, you can’t ignore us. We live here too. Maybe it’s by choice, but we love the sea too and are willing to take some of the responsibility for it. And we certainly don’t like being seen as nothing more than pawns, for sinking and stealing from.”

Lace added up the number in her head. “Oh gosh. I’ll be right back.”