There were few comforts to be had at camp, but suddenly that didn’t seem to matter. Her brother was here. Her two friends were, too. Vrăja said they were more powerful when they were together. Sera had sensed that back in the Iele’s caves. She sensed it again now. She felt stronger and more hopeful now than she had in many months.
Maybe the tide was finally beginning to turn.
SERA HAD FORGOTTEN what an excellent waterfire caster Becca was.
She had conjured some crackling flames in the center of the command cave and they were all sitting around them now—Sera, Astrid, Becca, Yazeed, Des, Sophia, and Neela.
Sera smiled as she passed around a bowl of reef olives, remembering Neela’s reaction when Des, Astrid, and Becca had swum into the cave. She’d screamed at the top of her lungs, hugged all three of them until they could barely breathe, and turned the most bright, beautiful shade of blue. She was still glowing now, an hour later.
While Becca had cast the waterfire, everyone else helped scrape together a meal. The goblins were still arguing over the best way to prepare conger eel and Sera predicted it would be quite some time before the issue was settled. All Sera, Neela, and Yaz had to contribute were reef olives and walrus cheese, but Becca had water apples, a marsh melon, and whelk eggs, and Astrid and Des had salted tube worms and silt cherries.
To Sera, it felt like a feast. As they ate, Astrid, Des, and Becca told their stories, and Sera and Neela recounted theirs.
Becca described her trip to Cape Horn, and how she found her talisman and tried to escape the Williwaw—only to have it toss her into some rocks. She said that she had the new duca di Venezia and his sister to thank for saving her.
Sera asked what Marco was like. Her heart still hurt when she thought about Armando, Marco’s father, and how he’d been killed by Rafe Mfeme.
“He and Elisabetta are very kind. And very brave,” Becca said, with gratitude in her voice—and something else. Something Sera couldn’t name at first, but then recognized—love.
It was an odd emotion to feel for a terragogg, but Sera understood. She herself had loved the old duca for his kindness and bravery. Becca, she reasoned, probably had similar feelings for the new duca and his sister.
Then Becca gave her Pyrrha’s gold coin. Sera held it in her hand, feeling its power, and then passed it around. When it was handed back to her, she rose and put it in a strongbox together with Merrow’s blue diamond and Navi’s moonstone. She placed the strongbox in a niche in the command cave’s wall, then cast a camo songspell that made it look as if there was no niche, only smooth cave wall.
As Sera sat down again, Astrid informed them about the death of her father and Commodora Rylka’s treachery. Desiderio described his imprisonment and how Ludo had helped him and Astrid escape on an orca named Elskan.
Astrid actually sounded a little sad when she described how she’d had to command Elskan to go back home once they’d hit the east Atlantic. The waters there were too warm for the orca, but Elskan hadn’t wanted to go. She’d nosed Astrid and cried in her whale language.
Des said, “Elskan wasn’t the only one who cried.”
Astrid scowled. “You’re so wrong; I just had something in my eye.”
Then Astrid and Des related their trip to the maelstrom and how a Viking chieftain named Feimor Fa Eaemor had come to possess the pearl. Sera leaned forward as they spoke, eager to hear every word.
When they finished, she asked, “What happened to the black pearl after Feimor died?”
“The maelstrom didn’t say,” Astrid said. “It was too busy trying to kill us.”
Sera nodded thoughtfully, remembering how Vallerio and Portia had spoken of the shadowy he who, they claimed, had the pearl. “If only we could find out for certain. Maybe someone knows who became chieftain after Feimor, and if he inherited the pearl,” she said.
“Um, Sera,” Astrid began, “I know you’re Little Miss Optimistic, but this whole thing has gone from pretty impossible to totally impossible. Feimor was a Viking. He would’ve been buried with the pearl. And even if he wasn’t, even if he passed it down to a relative, that relative was human. Humans live on land. And we don’t have feet.”
A silence descended in the cave. Becca broke it. “Lots of things are impossible,” she said softly. “Until they’re not.”
“That’s true,” Neela said. “We’re not human—but Marco and Elisabetta are. They might be able to find out if the pearl was passed down and if a living human now has it.”
“How, Neela?” Astrid asked. “Marco and Elisabetta…they can only cover so much ground. The pearl could be anywhere on land. With any human. There are hundreds of millions of them.”
“Forget that,” said a voice from behind them.
The mermaid leaning on Garstig’s arm, in the cave’s mouth, was frighteningly thin. She had dark circles under her weary eyes and a pale, haggard face.
“I know who has the pearl,” she said. “And he’s definitely not human.”
“LING!” SERAFINA CRIED.
She swam to her friend and embraced her. It was like hugging a bundle of reeds. Ling started to cough as Sera released her, and couldn’t stop. Her face took on a bluish cast. Just as Sera started to panic, the cough stopped and Ling inhaled a lungful of water.
“Depth sickness,” she said. “And sea wasp poisoning.”
Neela, Becca, and Astrid had swum over, too.
“Some of my fighters found her on the south side of the camp,” said Garstig. “She collapsed there. They brought her to me. Is she a spy?” he asked hopefully.
“No, Garstig, she’s not. Thank you for bringing her here,” Sera said.
Disappointed, the goblin stalked off. Astrid and Becca got Ling to the waterfire and eased her down. Neela brought her a cup of hot sargasso tea. Ling took it gratefully.
“Let me find you some food,” Neela said.
Ling held up a hand, stopping her. “Thank you, Neela, but I need to talk to you all first. Just in case I start coughing again and can’t stop.”
Ling’s eyes, wary and untrusting, took in the unfamiliar faces in the cave. Sera saw her doubt. “They know everything, Ling,” she said. “I trust them completely.”
Ling nodded. She slipped off her backpack, dug inside it, and pulled out the puzzle ball. “Here you go,” she said, handing it to Sera. “Sycorax’s talisman.”
Sera gasped, astonished. She couldn’t believe she was holding yet another of the precious objects. As she’d done with Pyrrha’s coin, she passed it to the others, then put it safely away in her strongbox.
“How did you get it?” she asked, sitting down again.
“I’ll tell you, but before I do, you need to know something.”
Another bout of coughing shook her emaciated frame. She had to sit for a moment after it was over to gather strength before she could continue.
“Ling, do you need to lie down?” Sera asked, scared for her friend.
“No, Sera, I need to speak,” Ling insisted. “What I’ve got to tell you is very important. Rafe Mfeme has the black pearl.”
The brutal terragogg flashed into Sera’s mind. She saw him aboard his ship, the Bedrieër, trying to haul Ling up in a net.
“Great Neria, he has Morsa’s pearl?” she said.
“Wait, Ling,” Astrid cut in. “I thought you said that the one who has the black pearl isn’t human.”
Ling laughed wearily. “I did.”
“But how can that be?” Astrid asked. “Rafe Mfeme’s definitely a terragogg.”
Ling shook her head. “We had no idea who we were dealing with. Duca Armando didn’t know. Even Vrăja didn’t.”
Sera’s fins prickled. “Ling, what exactly are you saying?” she asked.
Ling looked at them all in turn. “Rafe Mfeme isn’t human. He’s not even Rafe Mfeme. He’s the most powerful mage who ever lived. Orfeo.”
A SHOCKED SILENCE DESCENDED.
Sera was reeling. From the looks on her companions’ faces, they were
, too.
“Orfeo’s here. And he’s very much alive,” Ling said. “He’s the man Sera and I saw in the mirror in Atlantis.”
Sera remembered that horrible face. “I saw him in my room, too, in the palace,” she said quietly.
“He’s the one who wants to free Abbadon,” Ling added. “He’s trying to find the talismans before we do.”
Astrid sat forward. “How do you know this?” she asked, an intensity to her voice that Sera hadn’t heard before. She wondered at it.
Ling smiled bitterly. “Because I had the not-so-great pleasure of being a guest aboard his trawler.”
“What happened?” Neela asked.
Ling told them everything, starting with the interrogation aboard the Bedrieër. She recounted how Mfeme spelled out his full name, RAFE IAORO MFEME, with her letter tiles, then used magic to rearrange them into I AM ORFEO FEAR ME. She described the prison camp, and informed them about the weapons shipments. They were riveted by her reunion with her father, her search for the talisman, and her journey to the Kargjord.
“I planned to go to Miromara,” she said. “But I knew I didn’t have the energy to swim the entire way. So I decided to go through the mirror realm.”
“That was very risky,” Sera scolded.
“It was also very lucky,” Ling said. “Rorrim was busy upsetting a terragogg so I was able to slip down the Hall of Sighs without his seeing me. I found a mirror that led to a room in Cerulea’s palace. A vitrina lived in it. I knew you wouldn’t be in the palace, Sera, but I thought the vitrina might’ve overheard something about where you’d gone.”
“Good thinking,” Becca said.
“I had to flatter her like mad,” Ling continued, “but she finally told me some gossip about Lucia Volnero—I gather she thinks she’s the new regina?”
“Thinks being the operative word,” said Sera, her fins flaring.
Ling nodded. “The vitrina overheard a very unpleasant man named Baco Goga tell Lucia and her mother about your activities. He said he has a spy in your midst.”
Sera looked at Yazeed. “You were right,” she said.
“As soon as I learned that you were in the Karg, I started searching for a mirror that would get me close to it. The vitrina—”
Here Ling started coughing again. Sera told her to take a break and just listen to the others for a while. Ling was happy to hear that Neela had indeed recovered Navi’s moonstone and that Pyrrha’s gold coin had been found, but she was puzzled when Sera told her that they had Merrow’s diamond, too.
“Orfeo told me he has it,” Ling whispered hoarsely.
“He only thinks he does,” said Sera. “The infanta wore a fake in case it was ever stolen from her. That’s what Orfeo has.”
Ling sat back, a smile spreading across her face.
“I still can’t believe he’s alive. How?” Neela asked. “Orfeo died four thousand years ago! How did he just—poof!—reappear?”
Ling shook her head. She took another sip of tea before speaking. “I don’t think he just reappeared. After hearing your stories, I think he’s been around for a very long time.”
“What do you mean?” Sera asked.
“Remember how I told you that Mfeme’s full name—Rafe Iaoro Mfeme—is an anagram for I AM ORFEO FEAR ME?” Ling asked.
There were nods all around.
“So is Feimor Fa Eaemor,” Ling said.
Sera’s heart lurched. “Oh, my gods,” she said in a hushed voice. “Amarrefe Mei Foo…”
“Who’s that?” Becca asked.
“He’s the pirate who tried to get Merrow’s blue diamond from Maria Theresa, the infanta of Spain. His name’s an anagram, too.”
“Holy silt,” Becca said. “So’s Maffeio Aermore. The sea captain who tried to sail into the Williwaw’s cave.”
“There were probably others. Way before Feimor,” Astrid said. “Names that are lost to time.”
“Orfeo never died. He’s been here ever since Atlantis fell, hunting for the talismans,” Sera said, chilled to her very soul.
“But all the histories, all the accounts—they all say he did die. Merrow and the other mages saw him die. They killed him themselves! I’m asking you again, merl…how?” Neela demanded.
“He used the black pearl somehow, together with the secrets of immortality Morsa gleaned from her necromancing,” Ling offered.
“But that still doesn’t answer Neela’s question,” Desiderio said. “It still doesn’t tell us how.”
“The black pearl was the container. It had to be,” Astrid said.
“Container? What do you mean?” Desiderio asked.
“What remains when the body dies?” Astrid asked.
“The soul,” Yazeed said. “Horok carries it to the underworld.”
Astrid nodded. “In what?”
Desiderio snapped his fingers. “A pearl!”
“Exactly,” said Astrid. “Morsa knew how to capture a soul, too, in her black pearl. Isn’t that what Thalia said?”
“That’s correct,” Sera said.
“Orfeo used the goddess’s pearl to hold a soul, too—his own,” Astrid said.
“I think I see where you’re going with this,” Sera said excitedly, impressed that Astrid had put it all together.
“Merrow and the other mages killed Orfeo,” Astrid ventured. “Or so they thought. But as the life ebbed from his body, his soul entered the black pearl. He probably wore it around his neck then, just as he does now.”
“And Merrow had no idea,” Sera said.
“Not a clue,” Astrid said. “She took the pearl from his body, never knowing his soul was inside it, and chucked it into the Qaanikaaq. Then the tuna swam into the maelstrom and ate the pearl. The fisherman caught it, found the pearl, and sold it to the Viking warrior, who wore it on his body. As he did, Orfeo’s soul flowed into him, possessing him. That’s why he changed his name. And how he became so formidable so quickly.”
“Because he wasn’t a simple warrior anymore, he was the most powerful mage who’d ever lived,” Becca said.
“And when his body wore out, Orfeo’s soul flowed back into the pearl, only to be worn by a different host, and so on,” said Ling.
“He would’ve had to know when his host body was dying, and make sure he had another host in place,” Neela said.
“Which isn’t impossible,” Ling added. “I’ve seen Orfeo’s tactics. He’d think nothing of having his thugs string the pearl around a new victim’s neck.”
It was perfectly quiet in the cave as the mer digested this.
Sera was the first to speak. “If we’re right, it explains everything,” she said. “It explains how Traho was always one stroke ahead of us. How he knew what the talismans were when even the Iele didn’t. Because Orfeo told him. It explains who the mysterious he is that Vallerio and Portia talked about after Lucia’s Dokimí, the he who helped fund Vallerio’s army, who wanted the talismans.”
“We are right, Sera,” said Astrid. “Orfeo said he would do it, didn’t he?”
Sera nodded. “He did. Thalia said he vowed to take Alma back from the underworld if it took him a thousand lifetimes.”
Sophia, who’d been quietly listening this whole time, spoke up now. “We’ve got to get the black pearl.”
Becca raised an eyebrow. “And how will we do that? Just ask Orfeo politely? Astrid’s right. This is impossible. There’s no way to get it.”
Astrid stared into the waterfire, as if gazing at something only she could see. “No, I was wrong. There is a way,” she said solemnly.
“What is it?”
“We kill Orfeo for real this time.”
“How, Astrid?” Ling asked.
She didn’t answer.
Ling turned away, sighing with frustration. Neela made a plate of food for her, and as she ate, the others’ conversation became even more animated.
But Astrid, Sera noticed, didn’t join in. She just kept staring into the waterfire, wearing a grim, and determined, expressio
n.
“REGINA SERAFINA!” a harsh voice shouted. “Wake up! There’s trouble.”
Astrid’s eyes flew open. In a heartbeat, she was up off the cave floor and reaching for her sword. Sera, one stroke ahead of her, was already rushing to the cave’s entrance.
Three goblins stood there, illuminated by lava torches. As Astrid’s eyes adjusted, she realized she knew two of them: Dreck and Totschläger. They were supporting another goblin between them—a young female. She had a ragged bandage on one leg, another on her head. Blood stained her uniform.
“This is Mulmig,” Totschläger explained to Sera. “She was part of the force you sent to the Mississippi to look for the mermaid Ava.”
Astrid joined Sera, the better to hear the goblins. Neela, Ling, and Becca did the same. The five mermaids had only bedded down for the night about an hour ago. They’d stayed up so late talking, they’d decided it was easier to just sleep in the cave where they were, on patches of seaweed. The other Black Fins had left for their barracks, with Des joining Yazeed in his.
“We made it into the swamps,” Mulmig said wearily. “We picked up Ava’s trail.”
“You found her? Is she okay?” Sera asked urgently.
Mulmig shook her head. “We didn’t find her. The death riders found us. It—” Her voice broke. She tried again. “It was a bloodbath. We fought hard, but they outnumbered us four to one. I took a spear to my leg. And then I got knocked out. When I came to, it was like I was lying in a cemetery. Everyone in my unit was dead. And the death riders were gone.”
Sera looked as if she’d been gutted. “How did you get back here?” she asked.
“A bull shark, a dolphin, and a basking shark,” Mulmig replied. “Each carried me part of the way. I owe them my life.”
“Thank you for what you’ve done,” Sera said, taking the goblin’s hands in hers. “I count myself lucky to have you fighting with us.” She turned to Dreck and Totschläger. “Take her to the infirmary.”
As the goblins left the cave, Becca cast some fresh waterfire. Sera turned to the others, the heels of her hands against her forehead. “An entire unit wiped out, death riders in the swamps, and no Ava,” she said. She took a deep breath and lowered her hands. “We’ve got to convoca her. Now. Ling, do you feel up to it?”