Waterfire Saga, Book Four: Sea Spell: Deep Blue Novel, A (22 page)

“Why would she leave camp at night?” Neela asked. “She’s knows it’s dangerous in the open water.”

Just then, a breathless groom arrived at the HQ cave. He was holding Sera’s note. Minutes later, Desiderio and the others, plus twenty armed goblins, were speeding toward the Shallows on hippokamps.

Along the way, Ling had stopped to ask other sea creatures if they’d seen Sera. Shoals of cod and mackerel confirmed that a mermaid with short copper-colored hair had been spotted heading away from the camp. When the group arrived at the Shallows, two pipefish said that they’d glimpsed a mermaid riding toward a place called Cuttlefish Hollow. The search party had hurried there, and ever since they’d been peering into every cave and thicket.

“Hey! Abbie found something!” Coco called out now.

The others sped to the merl’s side. She was lifting something from the silty seabed—a dagger. They all recognized it as Sera’s. Next to it was her old Black Fin jacket.

“What’s that doing here?” Yazeed asked.

“Maybe someone used it to track her,” Ling suggested.

Becca’s heart sank. Her eyes swept over the seafloor, hoping for another clue that could tell them who had taken Sera, and where. They fastened on an object near where the dagger had lain. She stooped to pick it up.

“It’s a conch. They’re not native to these waters,” she said. She held it up to her ear and listened to it. Her face was pale by the time she lowered her hand again.

Desiderio took the conch from her. He cast an amplio spell so they could all hear it.

“That’s not Mahdi,” Ling said when the message ended. “It only sounds like him. He
never
would have asked Sera to meet him alone in a place like this. It’s a trick.”

“I wonder if Lucia’s behind this,” Neela said.

Desiderio shook his head. “No way. She’s too busy looking in every mirror she swims past. Vallerio’s responsible, I just know it. He wanted Sera dead. He found a way to do it without risking his troops—or Guldemar’s anger. And Sera fell for it. How could she be so
stupid
?” Des shouted, slapping his tail fins against a rock.

Neela, glowing bright blue with emotion, leapt to Sera’s defense. “Because the message made her think Mahdi was in danger,” she said. “That’s why she came here. Out of love. And whoever sent the conch knew she would. Because that’s who she is.”

“Love’s nothing but a loaded weapon. It got Sera killed,” Des said bitterly.

“Don’t say that!” Neela shouted. “Don’t even think it! Sera’s
not
dead. We’d feel it if she was, Ling and Becca and me. We’re bloodbound. If she was gone, a piece of us would be gone, too!”

Becca, who’d been quiet all this time, finally spoke. She’d thought through everything that had happened, sifting it for meaning, just like her ancestor Pyrrha, a brilliant strategist, would have. “I think Neela’s right,” she said. “Sera’s not dead.”

“How do you know that? You
don’t
!” Des yelled. “You’re just going to give everyone false hope!”

“Stop it, Des. Right now,” Ling ordered. “I know you’re upset; Sera’s your sister. We’re all upset, but we can’t come apart. We have to work together to figure out the next step, okay?” She looked at the others, each in turn. They all nodded. “Good. Let’s hear Becca out.”

“If Vallerio did this,” Becca ventured, “it’s because Sera’s more valuable to him alive than dead.”

“No, she’s
not
,” Des countered. “He wants her dead. She’s a threat to Lucia. Portia was about to order Sophia to kill her.”

“Then where’s the body?” Becca asked. “Why isn’t it here?”

Desiderio didn’t have an answer.

“Why would Vallerio have an assassin kill Sera here, then drag the body back to Cerulea and risk discovery?” Becca continued. “He’s always said he placed his daughter on the throne only because Sera was killed during the invasion of Cerulea. If the Miromarans were to find out differently, there would be protests, maybe uprisings. He doesn’t want that.”

“Okay, say Vallerio
didn’t
kill Sera,” Yazeed allowed. “Why did he take her?”

“Because our fake-out worked too well,” Becca said ruefully. “Vallerio believes we’re going to attack Cerulea. He wants to stop us.”

“He’s using her as a shield,” Yazeed said.

Becca nodded. “I think so,” she said. “I bet he contacts us soon to tell us he’s got Sera and he’ll kill her if we attack.”

“How do we get her back?” Neela asked.

“By attacking Cerulea,” Becca declared.

“What?”
Neela exclaimed. “You just said Vallerio would kill Sera if we did that!”

“Only if he sees us coming. What if we launched a surprise attack?” said Becca.

“Becca, dude, have you, like, lost your
mind
?” Yazeed asked. “There’s no
way
to spring a surprise attack on Cerulea. The city’s high up, and we’d be moving thousands of soldiers toward it. Vallerio’s scouts will see us coming days before we get there, and—”

Becca cut him off. “What if the scouts
couldn’t
see us? Until it’s too late. It happened once before. At the invasion of Cerulea.”

Becca’s words hung in the water. She knew her idea was bold and daring, and almost impossible to pull off. What would the others think? The friends all looked at one another, their eyes asking the same question: Can we actually
do
this?

“It’s
genius
, Becs,” Ling said decisively. “We’ll use Vallerio’s own move on him.”

“We could surprise him the same way he surprised my mother—by using terragogg ships,” added Des, his voice eager now, instead of angry.

“Our troops are ready to go to Cerulea,” Ling said, with a mirthless smile. “Sera planned to tell them it was all a fake-out. Guess it’s not anymore.”

“Wait! What about Mahdi?” Neela asked. “If we attack while he’s there, he could get hurt in the fighting.”

“We could get word to him of our plans,” Ling said.

“Can we get a courier there in time?” asked Neela.

“We don’t need to,” Des said. “We’ll attack the day of his wedding. That’s the day he’s supposed to escape from Cerulea. The plan is for him to have a big bull shark party the night before, for all his merman friends. He’s going to pretend to overdo it, and then say he’s really sick the following morning. While everyone thinks he’s sleeping it off, he’ll cast his transparensea pearl and haul tail. We attack later that day, while everyone else is in the palace getting ready for the wedding, and capture the whole rotten bunch.”

“Mer? You’re forgetting one pretty major thing,” Yazeed said. “We don’t have Rafe Mfeme, or Orfeo, or whatever he calls himself, helping us. We don’t have his access to gogg ships.”

Becca had been quiet while the others deliberated her idea. She’d been arguing, too—with herself. She looked at her fellow Black Fins now and said, “Maybe we do.”

“W
AKE UP,” a voice commanded.

It was cold, the voice. As cold as a blizzard wind.

Sera forced her eyelids open, groaning in pain. The heat of the sea scorpion’s venom still burned inside her. It was agony to move, to breathe.

She remembered things…Mahdi’s voice, his face…a long journey…the scorpion forcing her to eat…

Little by little, her vision cleared. She realized she was sitting in a chair. In a room.
Her
room. She recognized the mica panels, the furniture, the anemones on the walls.

I’m hallucinating,
she thought.
It’s the venom.
She closed her eyes again.

“I
said
, wake up!”

This time the command was followed by a hard, stinging slap.

Sera gasped. Her eyes flew open. Her hand rose tremblingly to her cheek.

Lucia Volnero was right in front of her, leaning on the arms of the chair. Her hair, long and loose, plumed around her head. Her face was only inches away. Sera could see her sapphire eyes gleaming with malice.

Lucia smiled. “That’s better,” she said, straightening. “So, you met my maligno,” she added, pointing at the creature floating motionlessly in a corner. “Isn’t he a perfect likeness? It took him quite a long time to do his job. I was worried you’d die on the way back and spoil my fun, so I cast a velo to speed his return.”

“Why…why are you—” Sera struggled to speak.

Lucia cut her off. “Because you enchanted Mahdi, and I plan to break that enchantment.”

“I didn’t…cast an enchantment…” Sera murmured. It was so hard to make words come. But it didn’t even matter. Lucia wasn’t listening.

“You tricked him. And then forced him to spy for you and your shabby little resistance. But I’m going to free him by killing you. It’s the only way to truly make him mine.”

“Lucia,
no
…” The mermaid was as evil as her parents. She was going to murder her in cold blood. “Please…don’t do this…”

“
I
won’t. I’d just plunge a knife through your heart, and that would be too easy a death. I want you to suffer. A friend of mine’s going to see that you do. Give her my best.”

Sera made one last desperate attempt to escape. She rose from the chair and took a few, faltering strokes, but then, overcome by pain, she collapsed to the floor. As she rolled onto her back, the room started to swirl. She could see the chandelier above her. It seemed to come alive before her eyes. Its bronze arms, green with corrosion, became as fluid as an octopus’s tentacles.

Now Sera knew she was hallucinating.

“It’s over, Serafina,” Lucia said triumphantly. “
I
win, you lose.”

She barked an order at the maligno, and seconds later, Serafina felt it take hold of her arms and yank her up off the floor. She fought it, clawing at it. Her fingers gouged its cheek. Instead of blood flowing from the wound, silt poured out.

Sera screamed.

“Sicario, do your work,” Lucia said.

The sea scorpion scuttled out from under a table and cruelly stung Serafina again.

There was pain, white and blinding, and then Sera dimly felt the maligno throw her over his shoulder, as if she were nothing more than a sack of garbage. The pain grew. The paralysis took over.

The last thing Sera saw was Lucia’s cruel, mocking smile. The last thing she felt was Lucia tugging at her hand.

And then there was nothing. Nothing at all.

B
ECCA, A HOOD PULLED up over her red hair, swam up to the door of the ancient palazzo. With a wary glance around, she lifted the heavy iron knocker and let it drop.

Tiny sand smelt, spooked by the sound, darted for cover, their bodies flashes of silver in the murk. Slender pipefish hid in clumps of seaweed. A squid vanished in a cloud of ink. The noise echoed loudly down the current. Becca winced, worried that she’d alerted an enemy to her presence. She waited, nervously flipping her tail fins, but no one answered.

“This
must
be the place,” she said to herself. Though it was well past midnight, lights from the human city above penetrated the dark water of the Lagoon deeply enough that Becca could see the whole of the palazzo’s ornate front. It matched Neela’s description.

Built of white marble, with a tall, Gothic doorway, the palazzo’s facade also boasted a carved relief of the goddess Neria, and a frieze of sea flowers, fish, and shells.

On either side of the heavy doors were stone faces with blind eyes and open mouths. Neela said the faces had spoken when she and Sera had been taken to the palazzo by the Praedatori. They were silent now.

Had she come all this way for nothing?

Her friends’ voices echoed in her head. They’d tried to talk her out of this.

“It’s too much of a long shot,” Neela had said.

“It’s way too dangerous,” Yazeed added.

“What if you get caught?” Desiderio asked.

And then Ling had spoken. “They’re right, Becs. It’s a pretty desperate plan, but it’s also all we’ve got.”

Becca had left the Darktide Shallows, and her friends, and had swum for days until she reached a goblin village. She’d found a mirror in the vacant home of a wealthy goblin family, and she’d swum through it into Vadus.

Rorrim Drol had spotted her there, but not before she’d gotten directions to a mirror in the Lagoon from one of his vitrina. She managed to escape Rorrim, and only moments ago, she’d swum out of that mirror and into a nearby mer dwelling. Luckily the mirror’s owner was not in the room at the time, and she was able to hurry out of an open window before she was discovered.