“Were there any witnesses this time?” Serafina asked. “Do you know who did it?”
Isabella, composed now, turned back to her. “We don’t. I wish to the gods we did. Your brother thinks it’s the terragoggs.”
“The humans? It can’t be. We have protective songspells against them. We’ve had them since the mer were created, four thousand years ago. They can’t touch us. They’ve never been able to touch us,” Serafina said.
She shuddered to think of the consequences if humans ever learned how to break songspells. The mer would be hauled out of the oceans by the thousands in brutal nets. They’d be bought and sold. Confined in small tanks for the goggs’ amusement. Their numbers would be decimated like the tunas’ and the cods’. No creature, from land or sea, was greedier than the treacherous terragoggs. Even the vicious Opafago only took what they could eat. The goggs took everything.
“I don’t think it’s the humans,” Isabella said. “I told your brother so. But a large trawler was spotted in waters close to Acqua Bella, and he’s convinced it’s involved. Your uncle believes Ondalina’s behind the raids, and that they’re planning to attack Cerulea as well. So he sent the regiments as a show of strength on our western border.”
This was sobering news. Ondalina, the realm of the arctic mer, was an old enemy. It had waged war against Miromara—and lost—a century ago, and had simmered under the terms of the peace ever since.
“As you know, the Ondalinians broke the permutavi three months ago,” Isabella said. “Your uncle thinks Admiral Kolfinn did it because he wished to derail your betrothal to the Matalin crown prince and offer his daughter, Astrid, to the Matalis instead. An alliance with Matali is every bit as valuable to them as it is to us.”
Serafina was worried to hear of Ondalina’s scheming, and she was surprised—and flattered—that her mother was discussing it with her.
“Maybe we should postpone the Dokimí,” she said. “You could call a Council of the Six Waters instead, to caution Ondalina. Emperor Bilaal is already here. You’d only have to summon the president of Atlantica, the elder of Qin, and the queen of the Freshwaters.”
Isabella’s troubled expression changed to one of impatience, and Serafina knew she’d said the wrong thing.
“The Dokimí can’t be postponed. The stability of our realm depends upon it. The moon is full and the tides are high. All preparations have been made. A delay could play right into Kolfinn’s hands,” Isabella said.
Serafina, desperate to see approval in her mother’s eyes, tried again. “What if we sent another regiment to the western border?” she asked. “I listened to this conch last night…” She quickly sorted through the shells on her floor. “Here it is—Discourses on Defense. It says that a show of force alone can be enough to deter an enemy, and that—”
Isabella cut her off. “You can’t learn to rule a realm by listening to conchs!”
“But, Mom, a show of force worked with the Opafago in the Barrens. You said so yourself five minutes ago!”
“Yes, it did, but that was an entirely different situation. Cerulea was not under the threat of raids then, so Merrow could afford to move her guerrieri out of the city to the Barrens. As I hope you know by now, Sera, six regiments are currently garrisoned here in the capital. We’ve already sent four to the western border with Desiderio. If we send another, we leave ourselves with only one.”
“Yes, but—”
“What if the raiders who’ve been attacking our villages attack Cerulea instead and we have only one regiment of guerrieri left here to defend ourselves and the Matalis?”
“But we have your personal guard, too—the Janiçari,” Serafina said, her voice—like her hopes of impressing her mother—growing fainter.
Isabella flapped a hand at her. “Another thousand soldiers at most. Not enough to mount an effective defense. Think, Serafina, think. Ruling is like playing chess. Danger comes from many directions, from a pawn as well as a queen. You must play the board, not the piece. You’re only hours away from being declared heiress to the Miromaran throne. You must learn to think!”
“I am thinking! Gods, Mom! Why are you always so hard on me?” Serafina shouted.
“Because your enemies will be a thousand times harder!” Isabella shouted back.
Another painful silence fell between mother and daughter. It was broken by a frantic pounding.
“Enter!” Isabella barked.
The doors to Serafina’s room swung open. A page, one of Vallerio’s, swam inside. He bowed to both mermaids, then addressed Isabella. “My lord Vallerio sent me to fetch you to your staterooms, Your Grace.”
“Why?”
“There are reports of a another raid.”
Isabella’s hands clenched into fists. “Tell your lord I’ll be there momentarily.”
The page bowed and left the room.
Serafina started toward her mother. “I’ll go with you,” she said.
Isabella shook her head. “Ready yourself for tonight,” she said tersely. “It must go well. We desperately need this alliance with Matali. Now more than ever.”
“Mom, please….”
But it was too late. Isabella had already swum out of Sera’s bedchamber.
She was gone.
TEARS THREATENED as the doors closed behind Isabella, but Serafina held them back.
Nearly every conversation with her mother ended in an awkward silence or heated words. She was used to it. But still, it hurt.
A slender tentacle brushed Sera’s shoulder. Another curled around her neck. A third wound around her arm. Sylvestre, finely tuned to his mistress’s every mood, had turned blue with worry. She leaned her head against his.
“I’m so nervous about the Dokimí, Sylvestre,” she said. “My mother doesn’t want to hear about it, but maybe Neela will. I’ve got to talk to somebody. What if Alítheia tears my head off? What if I mess up my songspell? What if Mahdi doesn’t…”
Serafina couldn’t bear to voice that last thought. It scared her even more than the ordeal that lay ahead.
“Serafina! Child, where are you? Your hairdresser is here!”
It was Tavia, her nurse, calling from her antechamber. Sylvestre shot off at the sound of her voice. There was no more time to fret. Sera had to go. She was expected—by Tavia, by the canta magus, by her entire court.
“Coming!” she called back.
She started toward the doors, then halted. As soon as she opened them, she was no longer Serafina. She was Your Grace, or Your Majesty, or Most Serene Principessa. She was theirs.
She hated the hot-spring atmosphere of her court. She hated the whispers, the glances, the toadying smiles. At court, she must dress just so. Always swim gracefully. Never raise her voice. Smile and nod and talk about the tides, when she’d much rather be riding Clio or exploring the ruins of the reggia, Merrow’s ancient palace. She hated the suffocating weight of expectation, the constant pressure to be perfect—and the pointed looks and barbed comments when she was not.
“Two minutes,” she whispered.
With a flick of her tail, she rushed to the opposite end of her bedroom. She pushed open a pair of glass doors and swam onto her balcony, startling two small sea robins resting on its rail. Beyond the balcony was the royal city.
Cerulea, broad and sprawling, had grown through the centuries from the first mer settlement into the center of mer culture that it was today. Ancient and magnificent, it had been built from blue quartz mined deep under the seabed. At this time of day, the sun’s rays penetrated the Devil’s Tail, a protective thorn thicket that floated above it, and struck the rooftops, making them sparkle.
The original palace had been built in the center of Cerulea. Its roof had collapsed several centuries ago and a new palace had been built high on a seamount—a baroque construction of coral, quartz, and mother-of-pearl—for the royal family and its court. The ruins of the reggia still lay preserved within the city, a reminder of the past.
Serafina’s eyes travele
d over Cerulea’s winding streets to the spires of the Kolegio—with its black-robed professors and enormous Ostrokon, to the Golden Fathom—where tall town houses, fashionable restaurants, and expensive shops were located. And then farther still, out past the city walls to the Kolisseo, where the royal flag of Miromara—a branch of red coral against a white background, and that of Matali—a dragon rampant holding a silver-blue egg were flying. The Kolisseo was where, in just a few hours, Sera would undergo her Dokimí in front of the court, the Matali royals, the mer of Miromara…
…and Mahdi.
Two years had passed since she’d last seen him. She closed her eyes now and pictured his face: his dark eyes, his shy smile, his serious expression. When they were older, they would marry each other. Tonight, they would be betrothed. It was a ridiculous custom, but Serafina was glad he’d be the one. She could still hear the last words he’d spoken to her, right before he’d returned to Matali.
“My choice,” he’d whispered, taking her hand. “Mine. Not theirs.”
Serafina opened her eyes. Their green depths were clouded with worry. She’d had private conchs from him when he first returned home, carried by a trusted messenger. Every time one arrived, she would rush to her room and hold the shell to her ear, hungry for the sound of his voice. But after a year had passed, the private conchs had stopped coming and official ones arrived instead. In them, Mahdi’s voice sounded stilted and formal.
At about the same time, Serafina started to hear things about him. He’d become a party boy, some said. He stayed out shoaling until all hours. Swam with a fast crowd. Spent a fortune on mounts for caballabong, a game much like the goggs’ polo. She wasn’t sure she should believe the stories, but what if they were true? What if he’d changed?
“Serafina, you must come out now! Thalassa is due at any moment and you know she doesn’t like to be kept waiting!” Tavia shouted.
“Coming, Tavia!” Serafina called, swimming back into her bedroom.
Serafina….
“Great Goddess Neria, I said I’m coming!”
Daughter of Merrow, chosen one…
Serafina stopped dead. That wasn’t Tavia’s voice. It wasn’t coming from the other side of the doors.
It was right behind her.
“Who’s there?” she cried, whirling around.
The end begins, your time has come….
“Giovanna, is that you? Donatella?”
But no one answered her. Because no one was there.
A sudden, darting movement to her left caught her eye. She gasped, then laughed with relief. It was only her looking glass. A vitrina was walking around inside it.
Her mirror was tall and very old. Worms had eaten holes into its gilt frame and its glass was pocked with black spots. It had been salvaged from a terragogg shipwreck. Ghosts lived inside it—vitrina—souls of the beautiful, vain humans who’d spent too much time gazing into it. The mirror had captured them. Their bodies had withered and died, but their spirits lived on, trapped behind the glass forever.
A countess lived inside Serafina’s mirror, as did a handsome young duke, three courtesans, an actor, and an archbishop. They often spoke to her. It was the countess whom she’d just seen moving about.
Serafina rapped on the frame. The countess lifted her voluminous skirts and ran to her, stopping only inches from the glass. She wore a tall, elaborately styled white wig. Her face was powdered, her lips rouged. She looked frightened.
“Someone is in here with us, Principessa,” she whispered, looking over her shoulder. “Someone who doesn’t belong.”
They saw it at the same time—a figure in the distance, still and dark. Serafina had heard that mirrors were doorways in the water and that one could open them if one knew how. Only the most powerful mages could move through their liquid-silver world, though. Serafina didn’t know anyone who ever had. Not even Thalassa. As she and the countess watched, the figure started moving toward them.
“That is no vitrina,” the countess hissed. “If it got in, it can get out. Get away from the glass! Hurry!”
As the figure drew closer, Serfina saw that it was a river mermaid, her tail mottled in shades of brown and gray. She wore a cloak of black osprey feathers. Its collar, made of twining deer antlers, rose high at the back of her head. Her hair was gray, her eyes piercing. She was chanting.
The sands run out, our spell unwinds,
Inch by inch, our chant unbinds….
Serafina knew the voice. She’d heard it in her nightmare. It belonged to the river witch, Baba Vrăja.
The countess had warned Serafina to move away, but she couldn’t. It was as if she was frozen in place, her face only inches from the glass.
Vrăja beckoned to her. “Come, child,” she said.
Serafina raised her hand slowly, as if in a trance. She was about to touch the mirror when Vrăja suddenly stopped chanting. She turned to look at something—something Serafina couldn’t see. Her eyes filled with fear. “No!” she cried. Her body twisted, then shattered. A hundred eels writhed where she had been, then they dove into the liquid silver.
Seconds later, a terragogg walked into the frame, sending ripples through the silver. He was dressed in a black suit. His hair, so blond it was almost white, was cut close to his head. He stood sideways, gazing at the last of the eels as they disappeared. One was slower than the rest. The man snatched it up and bit into it. The creature writhed in agony. Its blood dripped down his chin. He swallowed the eel, then turned to face the glass.
Serafina’s hands came to her mouth. The man’s eyes were completely black. There was no iris, no white, just darkness.
He walked up to the glass and thrust a hand through it. Sera screamed. She swam backward, crashed into a chair, and fell to the floor. The man’s arm emerged, then his shoulder. His head was pushing through when Tavia’s voice piped up.
“Serafina! What’s wrong?” she called through the doors. “I’m coming in!”
The man glared hatefully in her direction. A second later, he was gone.
“What happened, child? Are you all right?” Tavia asked.
Serafina, shaking, got up off the floor. “I—I saw something in the mirror. It frightened me and I fell,” she said.
Tavia, who had the legs and torso of a blue crab, scuttled over to the mirror. Serafina could see that it was empty now. There was no river witch inside it. No terragogg in black. All she saw was her nurse’s reflection.
“Pesky vitrina. You probably haven’t been paying them enough attention. They get peevish if you don’t fawn over them enough,” Tavia said.
“But these were different. They were…”
Tavia turned to her. “Yes, child?”
A scary witch from a nightmare and a terragogg with freaky black eyes, she was about to say. Until she realized it sounded insane.
“…um, different. I’ve never seen them before.”
“That happens sometimes. Most vitrina are right in your face, but occasionally you come across a shy one,” Tavia said. She rapped loudly on the glass. “You quiet down in there, you hear? Or I’ll put this glass in a closet!” She pulled a sea-silk throw off a chair and draped it over the mirror. “That will scare them. Vitrina hate closets. There’s no one in there to tell them how pretty they are.”
Tavia righted the chair Serafina had knocked over, then chided her for taking so long to join her court.
“Your breakfast is here. So is the dressmaker. You must come along now!” she said.
Serafina cast a last glance at her mirror, questioning herself already. Vrăja wasn’t real. She was of the Iele, and the Iele lived only in stories. And that hand coming through the glass? That was simply a trick of the light, a hallucination caused by lack of sleep and nerves over her Dokimí. Hadn’t her mother said that nerves were her foe?
“Serafina, I am not calling you again!” Tavia scolded.
The princess lifted her head, swam through the doors to her antechamber, and joined her court.
“NO, NO, NO! Not the ruby hair combs, you tube worm, the emerald combs! Go get the right ones!” the hairdresser scolded. Her assistant scuttled off.
“I’m sorry, but you’re quite mistaken. Etiquette demands that the Duchessa di Tsarno precede the Contessa di Cerulea to the Kolisseo.” That was Lady Giovanna, chatelaine of the chamber, talking to Lady Ottavia, keeper of the wardrobe.
“These sea roses just arrived for the principessa from Principe Bastiaan. Where should I put them?” a maid asked.
A dozen voices could be heard, all talking at once. They spoke Mermish, the common language of the sea people.
Serafina tried to ignore the voices and concentrate on her songspell. “All those octave leaps,” she whispered to herself. “Five high Cs, the trills and arpeggios….Why did Merrow make it so hard?”
The songspell for the Dokimí had been composed specifically to test a future ruler’s mastery of magic. It was cast entirely in canta mirus, or special song. Canta mirus was a demanding type of magic that called for a powerful voice and a great deal of ability. It required long hours of practice to master, and Serafina had worked tirelessly to excel at it. Mirus casters could bid light, wind, water, and sound. The best could embellish existing songspells or create new ones.
Most mermaids of Serafina’s age could only cast canta prax—or plainsong—spells. Prax was a practical magic that helped the mer survive. There were camouflage spells to fool predators. Echolocation spells to navigate dark waters. Spells to improve speed or darken an ink cloud. Prax spells were the first kind taught to mer children, and even those with little magical ability could cast them.
Serafina took a deep breath now and started to sing. She sang softly, so no one could hear her, watching herself in a decorative mica panel. She couldn’t rehearse the entire spell—she’d destroy the room—but she could work on bits of it.
“Alítheia? You’ve never seen her? I’ve seen her twice now, my dear, and let me tell you, she’s absolutely terrifying!”
That was the elderly Baronessa Agneta talking to young Lady Cosima. They were sitting in a corner. The gray-haired baronessa was wearing a gown in an alarming shade of purple. Cosima had on a blue tunic; a thick blond braid trailed down her back. Serafina faltered, unnerved by their talk.