“And Regina Isabella?”
Neela saw her friend’s eyes darken with pain at the mention of her mother.
“I’m hoping she’s still alive, but I don’t know for sure. We’re on our own, I’m afraid. We’re traveling to seek help against the evil in our waters,” Sera replied.
Konstantin nodded, trying to hide his disappointment. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a single cowrie, and gave it to Serafina.
“I can’t take that,” she protested.
Konstantin didn’t listen to her. Neither did the others. They gave her what they had. A few keel worms bundled up in a kelp frond—someone’s only meal for the day. A precious silver drupe. Three small water apples hidden from the death riders. A handful of sand nuts.
Serafina looked at the gifts pressed into her hands, from mermen who had nothing, and swallowed hard. Neela knew she was swallowing her tears. She also knew that Sera didn’t want to take their last few coins or scraps of food, but to refuse would wound them.
“Thank you,” Serafina said, her voice quavering. “Thank you all. I promise, I swear to you, that I will do everything I can to help you. If my mother is still alive, and my uncle, I’ll find them and tell them what’s happened to you. They’ll find your people, I know they will.”
Cheers went up. Serafina thanked the farmers again, said good-bye, and then she, Neela, and Ling resumed their journey. As they swam, Neela noticed that Serafina was strangely quiet.
“What’s wrong?” she asked her.
“They bowed to me. They hugged me and kissed me. And I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve any of it.”
“You gave them something they needed,” Neela said. “You gave them hope.”
Serafina shook her head. “I gave them empty promises, that’s all.”
Ling turned to her. “Hey, Serafina?” she said, an edge to her voice. “Those mermen back there? They weren’t cheering for your uncle. Or your mother. They were cheering for you.”
“It’s a sign of respect for the crown, that’s all,” Serafina said.
A large shoal of shad passed overhead, blotting out the sun. The sudden darkness seemed ominous to Neela. It added to the tension building between Sera and Ling.
Ling took a deep breath, then said, “It’s all wishful thinking, Serafina. You know that, right? What people are saying about your uncle being in the north, I mean. He was in the palace when it fell. Your mother, too. That much we know. The rest is only hearsay. Another thing we know is that your mother was very badly wounded. You told me so yourself. She might not have survived—”
“Don’t,” Serafina said brokenly.
“I have to,” Ling said. “Omnivoxas speak all languages. My grandfather was one too, and he told me that with the gift of language comes a responsibility to speak not only words, but truth. Right now, we’ve only got one goal—to get to the Iele. But what happens afterward? When the witches tell us whatever it is they want to tell us? Are you going to hide out with them forever? Everywhere we go in this realm, your realm, people are suffering. They need hope. They need a leader.”
“They have a leader,” Serafina said angrily.
“Serafina, you have to face the—”
“You’re wrong. She’s alive. I know she is!” Serafina shouted.
An uncomfortable silence fell over the group. Serafina was the one who broke it. “I’m sorry. It’s been a rough few days,” she said. “There’s a shoal above us. I’m going to join it. See you in a few.”
“You’re going shoaling? You? That’s so stupid only Yazeed would do it!” Neela said. “We’re near the mouth of a major river. There’s a harbor. With boats. And goggs. This is not a good idea.”
But it was too late. Serafina was already swimming away.
“Cerulea has fallen. Villages are being gutted. If she doesn’t lead Miromara, all of Miromara will fall,” Ling said. “Once that happens, what’s to stop Traho from taking Qin? Matali? The other waters?”
“Ling, being leader, at least in Miromara, means being regina. The one and only. There aren’t two,” Neela said, with an edge to her voice. “Do you understand?”
Ling nodded.
“Serafina can’t accept being the leader of her realm, because it means accepting that her mother is dead. It’s only been a few days. She’s lost everything. Everything, Ling. She needs time.”
“I can see that, Neela. But the thing is…we don’t have any.”
SLEEK, QUICKSILVER BODIES flashed by her. Smooth, cool scales brushed against her skin. There were bright looks and laughter. Serafina was in the shoal.
She sped up, stopped, then turned. She dove down into the dark, cool depths of the sea, then spiraled back up to its warm, sparkling surface. One with the shoal, she forgot everything and everyone. She forgot her losses and her grief. Forgot Mahdi and all that he wasn’t; Blu and all that he was. For a few precious moments, she forgot who she was.
The evening was soft and beautiful. The lengthening rays of the sun were playing over the water. Shad had moved up from the cool depths to feed on moon jellies floating on the warmer surface layers. Their movements exerted a powerful pull on Serafina—one that she, like most young mer, found hard to resist. It was magical, swimming with a shoal. It was wild and joyous, but dangerous, too. Predators followed shoals. A mermaid could be diving with thousands of sardines one minute only to find herself nose-to-nose with a shark the next. Mer parents repeatedly warned their children never to go shoaling.
But how could she resist? The shad called to her. Thousands of musical voices, like rain on water, beckoned. It was said that the goggs thought fish made no sound. Serafina wondered if it was because they listened only with their ears. She knew that those who truly loved the sea’s creatures listened to them with their hearts.
Sister, they called her. Seaswift. Come, coppertail. Come, beauty. Swim with us.
Serafina swam faster and faster, her sleek body arching and turning, cutting through the water like a knife. There was only the shoal. Only the sea. Nothing else.
And then, “Serafina!”
A voice from far away. Pulling at her. Dragging her back to a thousand questions she didn’t know how to answer. A thousand demands she couldn’t meet. Back to the fear and despair. To the broken voices asking her why, asking her for help, asking her to be something she could not.
“Serafina, come on!” It was Neela. She was close now.
“No,” she said, moving deeper into the shoal. “No, Neela. I can’t.”
A hand closed on her arm. It was Ling. “We’ve got to go! Now!” she said, alarm in her voice. Serafina shook her off.
“Sera!” Neela shouted. “There’s a fishing net! Get out of there! Hurry!”
Like a merl emerging from a trance, Serafina slowly stopped. She looked around and her eyes widened in terror. A web of filament surrounded her. It was being hauled up by a winch and cinched around the top like a sack. The shad were no longer laughing and calling. They were frantically yelling to one another to swim clear.
Serafina shot to the top of the net. With a snap of her tail, she tried to propel herself through what was left of the opening. She didn’t make it. The net closed around her hips and tightened painfully. She grasped the edges with her hands and pushed them down. At the same time, she thrashed her powerful tail with every bit of strength she had and managed to wriggle out just before the net broke the surface. Its edges had scraped off some of her scales. She was bleeding, but she was free.
“Neela!” she called out.
“Over here!” Neela shouted, swimming to her. “Where’s Ling?”
The net continued to rise through the water. The screams of the shad were deafening.
“I can’t see her!” Serafina shouted. “Ling! Ling!” she called, circling the net.
And then she saw it—a hand thrust through the net, reaching for her. A face pressed against the mesh, eyes wild with terror, mouth open in a scream.
It was Ling.
“NE
ELA, GRAB THE NET!” Serafina shouted.
The two mermaids hooked their fingers in the bottom of the heavy net as it broke the surface, hoping the weight of their bodies would pull it back down into the water. The winch made a grinding noise. It slowed, but didn’t stop. The net was out of the water and rising. The filament was cutting into their fingers, but still they hung on. It pulled them farther out of the water until only the tips of their tails were submerged.
“It’s no use! Let go!” Neela shouted.
“We have to help her!” Serafina cried.
“Sera, let go before they get us, too!” Neela shouted again.
Serafina shook her head, but the net rose even higher, toward the deck of the fishing ship, a small trawler named Bedrieër. The shad gasped agonizingly for water. Ling’s screams ripped through the air.
“No!” Serafina shouted. But her fingers couldn’t hold her weight any longer. She dropped back into the water. Neela did too. The net rose even higher. Serafina and Neela stayed in its shadow, out of sight of the trawler’s crew.
“What’s going to happen to her?” Neela asked fearfully.
Serafina heard voices, the sound of goggs shouting to each other. There was a sudden silence, and then, “What the hell? Mr. Mfeme! Quick! Over here!”
“No. It can’t be,” Serafina said. She only knew a smattering of the gogg language called English, but she knew that name. She swam as close to the edge of the shadow as she dared and looked up.
A shirtless, sunburned man caught hold of the net with a grappling hook and pulled it toward the ship. Another man joined him. He wore jeans, a faded black T-shirt, a baseball cap, and sunglasses.
Serafina gasped. “Neela, that’s him,” she said. “The man who broke into the duca’s palazzo. The one who attacked us. He’s Rafe Mfeme!”
“Bring her aboard!” Mfeme shouted.
Ling’s screams carried over the water.
“I’m going to try a vortex,” said Sera, desperate to save her friend.
She started to songcast, but struggled to project her voice. In the air, her spell sounded thin and strained. She managed to conjure a water vortex, though, about twelve feet tall. She aimed it at the trawler, hoping to hit it hard broadside and knock the net loose from the winch.
“A waterspout, Mr. Mfeme!” one of the crew shouted, just as the vortex got within a foot of the ship.
As the man’s words rang out, the vortex stopped violently, as if it had hit a wall. The whirling water flattened, then sheeted back into the sea.
“Let me try,” Neela said.
She cast a fragor lux spell using sunrays and threw it at the trawler, hoping to put a hole in it, but the frag exploded uselessly a foot away from the ship.
“A waterspout, and now a sun dog,” Mfeme said. “What very strange weather we’re having.”
As he spoke, he looked over the ship’s railing, into the water, as if he knew they were there. Sera grabbed Neela and pulled her farther into the net’s shadow.
“What’s going on? Why aren’t our songspells working?” Neela whispered.
“I don’t know,” said Sera. “It makes no sense. Terragoggs can’t do or undo magic.” Then the answer hit her. “I bet it’s the ship’s hull! I bet it’s made of iron.”
“What are we going to do? How are we going to free Ling if we can’t use magic?” Neela asked.
Sera had no time to reply.
“RAFE MFEME!” a voice suddenly boomed. The mermaids turned and saw that it had come from another ship, a fast, sleek cigarette boat that had just arrived off the trawler’s starboard bow.
“Rafe Mfeme, this is Captain William Bowen of the vessel Sprite. The Bedrieër is in direct violation of the Black Sea Treaty. You are not permitted to fish in these waters. The Romanian Coast Guard is en route.”
“It’s the Wave Warriors,” Mfeme growled. “Start the engines.”
“Mr. Mfeme, sir, the Warriors can’t board us, but the coast guard can. We can’t outrun them. Their vessel is lighter and quicker. If they come aboard…if they see what’s in the hold…”
Mfeme cursed the air blue. “I didn’t even want the damned shad! I wanted jellyfish!” He strode over to the winch’s control box and hit a lever. There was a loud, grinding sound as the winch released the net. It fell into the water and disappeared below the surface.
Mfeme faced the Sprite. “What net?” he shouted at Captain Bowen. “You have nothing on me!”
“We got it on tape, Mfeme!” Captain Bowen shouted, holding up a video camera. “You’re headed to court!”
Serafina didn’t stay to hear any more. Neela was already underwater. Sera dove and joined her. Together, they pulled the net open, freeing Ling and the shad. The fish, coughing and gasping, quickly swam away. Ling sank to the seafloor, bruised and bleeding. Her wrist was bent at a sickening angle.
“I’m sorry, Ling,” Serafina said tearfully. “It’s all my fault. It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t gone shoaling. I’m so, so sorry.”
“The gogg’s the one who should be sorry,” Ling said. “He nearly killed me.”
“He’s Rafe Mfeme,” Neela said. “He nearly killed us, too. At the duca’s.”
Serafina remembered what Duca Armando had told them about Mfeme: he was in league with Ondalina, and in his trawlers he’d transported the very troops that had invaded Cerulea.
“Stay with her, Neela. I’ll be right back,” she suddenly said.
“Where are you going?” Neela asked.
“To see what I can learn about Mfeme.”
Serafina sped to the surface and cautiously poked her head up, wary of being seen. But no one was watching the water. Mfeme’s crew had brought the Bedrieër alongside the Sprite, and Mfeme himself had boarded her. Serafina heard shouts and threats, and then Mfeme ripped the video camera out of the captain’s hands and tossed it overboard. A young man rushed at him. Mfeme threw him overboard, too. As two of the young man’s shipmates tried to haul him back into the boat, Mfeme advanced on a woman, grabbed a cell phone out of her hands, and pitched it into the water.
“You want to follow it?” he shouted at her. Frightened, she backed away from him.
A fast, powerful man, he seemed to be everywhere, all at once. Serafina quickly swam aft and saw him bring a heavy wrench down on the ship-to-shore radio. “I’m warning you, all of you! Stay the hell away from me!” he yelled. He threw the wrench aside, reboarded his ship, and barked orders to depart.
As his crew made ready, Mfeme rested his hands on his ship’s gunwale. “She’s headed for the Dunărea, Nils,” he said to a crew member. “I want her. Now. Before she gets to the Olt. There are others with her. I want them all.”
Serafina dove. The waters of the harbor were shallow. Neela and Ling were sitting on the seafloor about thirty feet below the ship.
“We’re out of here,” she said, when she reached them.
“Ling can’t swim. Her wrist is broken.”
Serafina looked at Ling. She was cradling her arm to her chest. Her face was gray with pain.
“You’re going to have to,” she said to her. “Mfeme wants you. Us, too. He knows we’re heading to the Olt.”
“How?” Ling asked.
“I don’t know. We’ve. Got. To. Go.”
“We need to help her, Sera. She’s in a lot of pain,” Neela said.
Serafina looked around. Her eyes fell on the fishing net. “We could lay her on the net and drag it behind us,” she said.
“Oh, I’m sure she’d love that, considering it almost killed her. And besides, it’s hard to swim dragging a net! We won’t be able to propel ourselves fast enough to—”
“Wait a minute, Neela…that’s it!”
“What’s it?”
“We can jam the propeller! That’ll stop him. And give us a head start.”
“With what? Our magic doesn’t work against this ship.”
“With the net. Ling, sit tight. Neela, give me a hand.” The two mermaids picked up the net,
dragged it to the ship, and began to wind it around the propeller’s fearsome blades.
“Hurry, Sera. If this starts up, we’re chum,” Neela said.
As they worked, Sera thought she heard voices. Was it mer? They sounded strange—nearby, yet muffled. She stopped and looked around warily. There was no one else in the water.
“Neela, did you hear that?” she asked.
“I didn’t hear any—”
And then they both heard it.
A wail, high-pitched and desperate. Coming from inside the Bedrieër.
Sera swam to the ship and pressed her ear against its hull. Neela did the same. But neither mermaid heard anything further.
“Maybe it’s shad,” Serafina said uneasily. “One of Mfeme’s crew said they couldn’t have the coast guard board them because of what they had in the hold. An illegal catch, probably.”
“Sera…oh, my gods. Oh, Sera.”
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
Neela couldn’t speak anymore. Her hands were pressed to her mouth. Serafina followed her gaze. On the seabed below, maybe twenty feet off the ship’s port side, were bodies. At least a dozen of them.
Serafina uttered a strangled cry. She swam down to them, hoping that what her eyes were telling her wasn’t true. But it was. They were dead. Some were lying on their backs, others facedown. Some had the kind of open, gaping wounds that were made by a speargun. Others had bruises on their faces. Many had their wrists tied behind their backs. Almost all the women had braids in their hair, and all the men wore seaflax tunics—styles favored by rural mer in these waters.
“No,” she moaned. “Oh, great Neria, no.”
They were Miromarans. Her people. They weren’t soldiers; they were civilians. And they’d been slaughtered. She felt a deep, tearing sorrow inside, and a white-hot fury.
“I think Mfeme’s trying to capture us for Kolfinn. Because he wants the talismans and thinks we know where they are. But why would he kill innocent people? Why?”
Neela found her voice again. “For information. He must’ve thought they knew something about the talismans. Or about us.”
Above them, a humming noise started. It grew louder, and then there was an enormous whoosh as the blades of the huge propeller started to spin.