Waterfire Saga, Book Four: Sea Spell: Deep Blue Novel, A (16 page)

“Of course, after the wagons are built, we need to fill them,” Becca said with a sigh. “We’re still low on ammo, even with the shipment from the Näkki. I’m worried about that, Sera.”

Sera saw the opening she needed. She plunged in. “Becca, I’m worried about
you
.”

Becca laughed. She looked startled, and a little self-conscious. “
Me?
Why? I’m totally fine.”

“No, you’re not. You’re not yourself. Something’s bothering you. I wish you’d tell me what it is.”

“Really, Sera, there’s nothing to tell. Sure, I’ve got stress, but who doesn’t?” She smiled as she spoke, but the smile was forced, even desperate. “I mean, we’re getting the entire resistance ready to swim to the Southern Sea. There’s a lot to do, and—”

The two mermaids were still swimming. They were almost at the work site now. Sera stopped. She took her friend’s hand and looked her in the eye. “Becca,” she said gently, “whatever it is, you can tell me. You know that, don’t you?”

Becca turned away. She looked desperate, like a creature who’d been cornered. Sera could see that she was struggling with herself. She wanted to talk but couldn’t. Something was holding her back.

Finally, she spoke, but the words were not what Sera wanted to hear.

“Hey. Wow. Would you look at that? I can’t
believe
those guys,” she exclaimed, pulling her hand free of Sera’s. “I swear, sometimes I feel like I have to do
everything
myself.” She darted off to the work site.

Sera, heaving a sigh of frustration, followed her. She soon saw that the goblins who were supposed to be building wagons weren’t sawing or hammering or doing much of anything. Instead they were standing in a semicircle, staring at the shallow pit they’d dug. It would be used to contain the waterfire needed to heat scrap metal, but it clearly wasn’t deep enough. Some of the goblins had their hands on their hips. Others were rubbing their chins or scratching their heads. By the time Sera caught up with her friend, Becca had picked up a shovel.

“Standing around won’t get any wagons built,” Becca fumed.

A goblin named Styg, seeing what Becca was doing, cautioned her in his language. Sera didn’t catch all of what he said, but she did hear the words
Don’t!
and
Wait!

Becca flapped a hand at him. She raised the shovel, ready to plunge it into the seabed. The goblin’s eyes widened in alarm. He lunged at her, knocking the shovel out of her hands.

“Are you
kidding
me?” Becca exclaimed. “Why did you do that?” She started toward the shovel, but Styg held up a hand. He shook his head.

Becca, angry now, was ready to launch into an argument with him, but Sera stopped her. “Wait,” she said. “He’s trying to explain. Hear him out.” Her eyes were not on Becca anymore, but on the pit.

Styg stepped forward. Switching to mer, he said, “We found a lava seam just below the surface.” As he spoke, he bent down and used another shovel to carefully scrape away about half a foot of the seabed, allowing Sera and Becca to clearly see the orangey glow under the silt.

“We have to proceed very carefully,” he explained. “If she”—he nodded at Becca—“had hit the seam with her shovel, it would’ve gushed, and none of us would have survived to tell the tale.”

Becca winced. “I—I didn’t know. I didn’t see…” Her words trailed away. She looked down at her tail fins.

“The bad news is that we can’t work here,” Styg said. “The good news is—”

“You found a lava seam!” Sera exclaimed. “Well done, all of you!”

“I have a bubbler,” said Styg. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

“What’s a bubbler?” Sera asked.

“It’s a tool for releasing a tiny bit of lava. There are different grades of molten rock.
Glimrende
is the finest, but it’s only good for lighting.
Sterkur
is heating grade—the strong stuff. It’s what we need.”

Styg pulled a sharkskin case out of his pocket. Inside was coiled a thin flexible tube with holes in it. One end had a hollow steel point; the other had a valve attached to it. Working slowly, Styg nudged the pointed end down into the lava. Then he shooed everyone back and opened the valve. A few seconds later, lava shot up into the hose and oozed out of the holes.

Styg bent down to examine it, then smiled. “Sterkur,” he said happily, looking up at Sera. “Grade A-1.”

“Yes!”
Sera said, high-fiving him. “Do you know what this means?”

“That we can forge all the weapons and ammo we need,” Styg said.

“And make tools,” said Rök.

“We can light the entire camp,” chimed in Mulmig.

“And stew our enemies,” added Garstig.

Mulmig held her hands out to the bubbling lava and smiled with pleasure. “It’s been
sooo
long since I felt the heat of a lava pool,” she said. “Holy Kupfernickel, I missed it.”

“I miss glasses of nice, thick
räkä
,” Rök said wistfully.

Sera knew räkä was a drink made from fermented snail slime. Goblins were partial to it.

“And
snask
,” Mulmig added. “What I wouldn’t give for some right now.”

“Snask?”
Sera asked. She hadn’t heard that term before.

“Pickled squid eyes,” Mulmig explained. “
Soooo
good!”

Garstig, grinning, pulled a little cloth bag out of his breast pocket. “My wife sent these by manta ray,” he said, opening the bag and passing it to Mulmig. “Have some.”

Mulmig’s eyes widened as she looked in the bag.
“Snask!”
she said excitedly. “Garstig, thank you!” She popped one in her mouth and chewed it, rolling her eyes with pleasure.

“Why don’t we sit down by the lava for a minute?” Styg suggested. “We need to figure out how best to channel the seam, and we might as well be warm while we’re doing it.”

“Hang on a minute….” Becca said, as the goblins moved toward the lava.

Oh, no,
Sera thought.
She’s going to scold them, or tell them to get back to work.

Her heart sank. As a leader, Sera knew that these small moments cemented the bonds between soldiers. They might cost a few minutes, but they repaid that investment tenfold by bolstering morale. Becca undoubtedly thought they were a waste of time.

But Becca surprised her.

“Before you sit down, I need to apologize,” she said.

Eyebrows shot up. The goblins looked amazed. Sera did, too.

“I didn’t trust you to do your jobs, and I should have. You found the lava seam we desperately needed. And,” she said sheepishly, “you stopped me from killing us all. I’m sorry. And thank you.”

The goblins nodded in acceptance and appreciation. Sera smiled at Becca. Becca smiled back, then turned and started to swim away. Sera swam after her.

“Hey,” Sera said, as she caught up to her friend. “I’m going to sit with the goblins for a minute. Why don’t you join us?”

“Sorry, I can’t,” Becca said. “I have so many things to do.”

“Sure, okay,” Sera said, disappointed. She’d been so certain that she’d be able to get Becca to confide in her. “I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah, later,” Becca said.

But then, as Sera was about to return to the goblins, Becca reached out and touched her arm. “Listen, Sera…there’s something else I need to apologize for. My, um, bossiness. I know it’s been over-the-top. I’ll try to take it down a notch.”

Sera decided to try one last time. “Becca, whatever’s going on with you, it’s about more than bossiness.
Talk
to me. Please.”

Becca backed away. “I—I can’t, Sera. I just
can’t
,” she said helplessly. “And you don’t want me to, trust me. Because it’s bad. Really bad.”

A cold dread seized Sera. For an instant, she wondered if Ling was right. Could Becca be the spy? But she quickly pushed that thought from her mind.

“Becca, we’re dealing with a spy, food shortages, and a coming war,” she said. “Oh, and an unstoppable monster, too. Almost forgot about him. Is your thing
really
worse than all of that?”

Becca hesitated. In her eyes, Sera could see fear warring with trust. She hoped with all her heart that trust would win.

Becca clenched her fists. All in a rush, she said, “I’m in love with Marco. And he’s in love with me.”

Sera blinked, barely able to believe what she’d just heard. “Is
that
what all this is about?” she asked. “Marco from the infirmary? The cute doctor? Why would that upset you so much? He’s wonderful!”

Becca pressed her palms to her eyes. “Um, no, Sera. Not
that
Marco.”

“Hmm,” Sera said, puzzled. “I don’t know any other Marco.”

“Actually, you do.”

“No, I really don’t, Becs. I mean, there’s Marco the duca’s son….” She laughed. Marco was a human. One of the good ones. He’d saved Becca from the Williwaw. “But of course it’s not him,” she added. “Because you wouldn’t…he wouldn’t…” She stopped talking. Her smile faded. “Oh,
no.
Holy silt, Becca.”

“Exactly,” Becca said miserably. “It’s a total disaster. He’s the most wonderful boy I’ve ever met. He’s good and decent and kind, and it’s all wrong. No one in
my
world would accept him, and no one in
his
world is even supposed to know I exist.”

“Hold on a minute,” Sera said. “It’s not wrong to love someone who’s good and decent and kind just because someone else disapproves.”

Becca raised an eyebrow. “Really? Then why did you say ‘Oh, no’?”

“Because it’s also not easy. If you and Marco are serious about each other, you’re both going to face some pretty rough waters.” Sera put an arm around her. “But you don’t have to face them alone. You have me and the others. We’ll help you figure it out. That’s what friends are for.”

“Really?” Becca asked. The look on her face was heartbreakingly vulnerable.

“Really,” Sera replied. “Talk to them. You’ll see.”

Becca nodded tentatively. Sera could tell she was still worried. “I hope they understand, Sera. Compared to me, everyone else has normal relationships.”

Sera laughed. “Right. Especially me. I’m the queen of normal relationships. The merman I love is about to marry someone else. We have to pretend to hate each other. And his future wife is trying to kill me.
Totally
normal.”

Becca burst out laughing. For the first time since she’d arrived in the camp, the worry lines that constantly creased her forehead disappeared.

“Hey, Serafina, Becca…want some
snask
?” Garstig shouted. “You better hurry up if you do, before Mulmig scarfs it all.” He waved them over. The goblins made space for them around the lava.

“Come on,” Sera said, “let’s join them. I’m developing quite a taste for goblin treats.”

As Sera and Becca sat down, plans for building a forge and melting down shipwreck hulls were being eagerly discussed. The bag of snask was passed around, and Sera helped herself to a piece. She heard Vrăja’s voice in her head, and in her heart.
Help Becca see that the warmest fire is the one that’s shared
, the river witch had said.

As Sera watched Becca gamely pop a pickled eyeball into her mouth, she silently thanked Vrăja, then she watched the warmth of friendship work its own magic.

M
ANON LAVEAU’S black eyes glittered. From within the roots of the giant cypress where she was hiding, in the waters off Robichaux’s Swamp, she could spy the death riders’ camp. At its edge was a cage with iron bars. In that cage was a mermaid, lying motionless, her face turned away.

“I see two guards,” Manon said quietly. “Louis, Antoine, you take the one in the front. Rene, Gervais, you’ve got the back. Quick and quiet now, and
don’t
swallow the keys. You hear me?”

Four enormous bull alligators nodded in unison; then, with thrusts of their powerful tails, they swam off.

As Manon watched them go, a shiver ran through her. She pulled her shawl up around her neck. “I hope those boys listened. Gods help us if they make a racket.”

“The gods help those who help themselves,” Esmé said primly, waving away silt that the alligators had raised.

Manon snorted. “Says who? The gods, that’s who. I do all the work, and they take all the credit. Laziest bunch of good-for-nothings I ever came across.”

“This’ll never work,” said Jean Lafitte, wringing his hands. “The guards will shout for help. We’ll be caught and thrown in a cage ourselves. And then they’ll hang us from the gallows.”

Manon rolled her eyes. “What do you care if you hang? You’re a ghost!”

“Why’d we come here? This is
such
a bad idea!” Lafitte fretted.

“You want to leave that poor mermaid to the tender mercies of Captain Traho?” Manon asked.

“Yes, I do. Absolutely,” said Lafitte.

“Shh!” Sally scolded. “They’re almost at the cage.”

Manon and the three ghosts watched as the alligators moved into place. Louis crawled up to the guard in front and growled. The guard, who’d been dozing, jerked awake. His eyes grew as round as moon jellies.

“Holy silt! Vincenzo, there’s a giant gator here!” he whisper-shouted. “How the—”

“There’s one here, too!” the other guard whispered back, as Rene advanced. “Don’t make it mad. Just reach for your speargun…nice and slow, then—”