Of Sea and Stone (Secrets of Itlantis) (19 page)

“It doesn’t matter. We’ve got to get out of here!” Nol had to shout to be heard above the noise.

“Look,” he gasped, squeezing my arm, and pointed at the sea beyond the glass.

Another torpedo.

It sped toward us, passing beneath the Verdus sphere, leaving a stream of bubbles behind it. The Primus garden sphere beneath us shattered, and water rushed in as I made a sound of horror.

“This way!” Nol yanked me after him as he ran toward the paths that led up the side of the Verdus sphere. “We have to get higher!”

A crescendo of waves crashed into the passage behind us and rushed into the Verdus garden. Churning black water swirled around our feet.

“Higher,” Nol yelled. He pulled me after him.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw one lonely blast come from the city itself, a plume of white, and a single torpedo that streaked through the gray water and buried itself in the belly of one of the attacking ships.

The explosion rocked the garden sphere—a slow seep of black rushed from the hull of the ship, punctuated by fiery bits of brightness.

The ship tipped downward and fell toward us, streaming destruction behind it. My breath snagged in my throat.

“Nol, the ship!”

He looked up and swore, then yanked me into his arms, shielding me with his body as he threw us both against the wall.

The ship slammed against the glass of the Verdus sphere on its way down. The whole sphere shuddered. Metal screamed against glass. The pathways trembled. The ship slipped from the glass and fell past us, dead in the water. I caught a glimpse of metal, a gaping hole in the underside of the ship, a painted emblem of skull and bones flickering through the carnage. Then the ship was gone, one enemy slain, vanishing into the darkness of the water below.

Cracks appeared in the Verdus sphere. Water sprayed in, drenching us. I threw up my arm to shield my face.

Nol stepped back and gripped my arms with his hands. “We’re going to have to swim in a minute.”

“Nol—”

“We can do this. You can do this. You’re the best swimmer from our village.”

I stared at him as the water poured down around us and lapped up to our knees from below. We were beset on both sides. It would not be long.

His eyes bored into mine. His fingers knotted with mine. His pulse thundered against mine as we stood, palms clasped, nose to nose.

“Deep breaths,” he said softly. “Swim as slow as possible, otherwise you’ll get air bubbles in your veins.”

“Are you telling me you learned something from all our lessons?” I said, meaning to laugh one last time and crying instead.

The glass splintered and gave way above us.

He crushed me to him in a hug as a wall of water rushed in. We pressed back against the smooth side of the sphere that was still intact.

“Wait until it fills completely, and then we can swim out!” Nol had to shout to be heard above the roar. His hair was plastered to his face. Tendrils stuck to his eyelashes, his lips.

I nodded.

Water swirled around our shoulders and lapped at our chins. I let it lift me, floating with it as we rose toward the top of the sphere. Nol gripped my hand in his. I squeezed his fingers. He squeezed back, and opened his mouth as if to speak again.

There was no more time to say anything. We needed air. We braced ourselves against the glass at the top, sucking in the last bits of breath, scrambling to angle our bodies against the curve of the sphere, and then the water closed over my face, and all around me was cold, and everything was blurry, muffled, and churning with bubbles.

I heard the creaking and breaking of the city below me. Nol kicked toward the break in the glass, and I swam after him with sure strokes. Below us, the lights of the garden winked out one by one as the power failed.

The water was dark, the cold paralyzing. My lungs burned for a breath as I swam upward. There was too much darkness above me. Where was the surface? Were we even swimming in the right direction?

Panic crushed me. I sobbed, the bubble of precious air exploding from my lips and shooting up into the blackness above.

Lights streamed up from the dying city below us, illuminating our bodies. More explosions echoed as if far, far away, the sounds distorted by the water. My heartbeat thudded in my ears. My throat ached. My head spun. My head hurt, hurt, HURT and my veins were on fire.

We were too far below. We weren’t going to make it in time.

I thrashed my arms to signal Nol. My eyes met his. I shook my head.

He swam closer to me, his hair floating around his face, his eyes wide. Little bubbles escaped his mouth and nose and floated upward as his eyebrows drew together with determination. He took my face in his hands. I caught his wrists and held them, his warmth rushing into me as I shut my eyes to die.

His mouth closed over mine.

The kiss was electric. I pressed into him, turning my head as his hair floated around my face and brushed my cheeks. We clung together for one moment of eternity, of everything and nothing, dreams and hopes and wishes and regrets all expressed in one single kiss. Then he was exhaling into me, filling my lungs with his air, giving me life to keep going. His thumb stroked my cheek, his lips broke away, and he shoved me upward with every ounce of strength left in his arms.

I reached for him, but our fingers slipped apart. My survival instincts took over. Blackness danced before my vision, and I was burning and burning and burning with the need to breathe.

My head broke the surface. I dragged in a gasping lungful of air, the sound a ragged shout, my mouth pulling in precious air the only noise in the silence.

Then the cacophony of sound rushed over me—the thunder of waves, the howl of the wind, the shriek of gulls. Waves slapped my face, and I inhaled a mouthful of seawater. I thrashed and coughed.

Something bumped my leg. I recoiled, expecting a shark. In the near-blackness of the water, a sharp line jutted from the waves, a seam against the otherwise seamless world of wet and sky.

Wreckage from below.

I swam toward it, fighting the waves, struggling to keep above water as every inch of me begged to stop moving. My hair stuck to my neck. My clothing was so heavy. I remembered the jumpsuit I wore beneath my robe and wrestled out of the heavier fabric. I let it drop away into the sea below. A piece of wall, maybe, light enough to float.

I reached the wreckage and pulled myself up onto the slick surface. Tears ran down my face and dripped off my nose soundlessly as I worked to climb onto this bit of the city that was dying below me. My fingers scraped the smooth metal. I rolled onto it, and half of the wreckage dipped into the water. I pressed my cheek to it as trembles overtook me. My limbs were numb. My lungs didn’t want to breathe.

I was in shock.

The sea around me bubbled and frothed. Something else floated a few yards away. After a moment, I realized it was a body. Horror clenched hard inside me. I leaned over and vomited into the water, and then I blacked out.

~ ~ ~

“Aemi,” a voice whispered. It was familiar, but at first I couldn’t figure out why, because everything hurt. A headache seared through my skull, the pain pulsing down my spine to my legs. The world was bright and my skin felt shrunken, burned. My lungs and throat felt coated in rust. My tongue tasted like death. I turned my head, feeling like a blind kitten. I was warm and dry and wrapped in something soft. I made a sound that was something between a moan and a sigh.

“Aemi,” the voice said again, and I struggled to push through the fog of pain.

Lyssia?

A hand gripped mine. I squeezed back weakly.

“I think she’s waking up!”

Thirst made my head swim. All my joints groaned.

“Water,” I whispered.

Something wet touched my lips. I drank, and the water was like nectar. Tears of relief seeped from beneath my eyelids.

After I’d drank my fill, hands helped me into a sitting position. I sucked air into my aching lungs and opened my eyes.

I lay on a padded bench. Merelus crouched before me, a flask of water in his hands. Lyssia perched on the bench beside me, holding my hand.

“Where are we?” I croaked.

“On the ship we commissioned to take us to Primus,” Merelus explained. “When the explosions started, we evacuated the house.”

“The door to the dock jammed, but I picked the lock of the maintenance door and let us out,” Lyssia said.

Merelus put his arm around his daughter. “She did.”

I turned my head to look around. Servants sat on the bench and the floor. I saw Tob, the cook, even Dahn among them. I looked for Mella, but I didn’t see her.

Maybe she was in one of the sleeping rooms upstairs, my mind insisted. She must be.

But a pit was already opening in my stomach, and I was teetering on the edge of it. I dragged in a breath through my burning nose and mouth. Merelus was still speaking. Dully, I focused on his words.

“We came above to look for survivors, and that’s when we found you,” he was saying.

“Nol?” The word tore itself from me.

Merelus shook his head.

Pain. Blinding, shooting pain radiating from my chest. I shut my eyes as the memory of him sinking away from me into the darkness flashed through my head, and a sob wrenched out of me. I pressed both hands over my eyes. My eyes hurt, but I had no tears. Not anymore. I was wrung out. I didn’t hear what they said after that. Mouths moved, but the world had blurred around me, and I was alone in a circle of silence and shock.

Nol was dead.

“You should drink some more water,” Lyssia said gently.

I accepted the flask and sipped. Every movement was mechanical.

Tob sat on the ground with his head in his arms. When I was strong enough to stand, I pushed myself off the bench and crept to his side.

“Mella?” I asked. The word was just a half-breathed hope.

Tob lifted his head. His eyes were red-rimmed. He said nothing, just grabbed me in a hug. I clung to him as he sobbed into my neck, crying for both of us, for our friends who were lost.

~ ~ ~

We had fourteen survivors among us from Merelus’s household, and three more that they’d fished from the surface waters when they’d rescued me. Including the captain and me, our total number was nineteen. The ship was designed to carry six.

Merelus addressed us all. “It’s going to be uncomfortable for a few days until we reach Primus,” he said. “Try to stay calm and remain in one place as much as you can. This ship was not made to hold so many. We have limited food, water, and air. We’ll have to surface to acquire more air.”

“We’ll die,” someone said.

“No.” Merelus looked at me. “Aemi is from the surface. It is not as toxic as we’ve been led to believe.”

Everyone stared at me. I didn’t care. Every emotion in my body felt dead, drowned below with Celestrus.

Then I remembered. The word carved in the gardens.

Perilous.

The only clue to my mother’s true home had been destroyed with the rest of Celestrus.

I was too tired and broken to feel anything more. I had lost everything.

I leaned my head against the wall and tried to sleep while the rest of the survivors whispered around me.

WE ATE OUR dinner cold, straight out of the storage tins. The ship had a galley, but it was filled with sleeping survivors, and nobody seemed to notice or care that the food was unprepared anyway.

The tin of pickled seaweed chilled my skin as I dug out green tendrils with my fingers and stuffed them into my mouth. Survival seemed utterly automatic at this point. I did not think. I just did. I lifted my hand to my mouth, chewed, and swallowed. Around me, everyone was doing the same. Some cried silently. Some stared at nothing. One woman muttered to herself brokenly as she ate.

Pain throbbed inside me, mixed with the icy numbness of shock.

Nol.

Mella.

Both gone.

And what about Cal? Lyssia’s eyes were red, but we had no reason to believe he hadn’t escaped on another ship.

I had to believe that he had.

The memory of Nol helping me escape flashed through my mind. The kiss, passing precious air from his lungs to mine.

He’d saved my life, just as I’d once saved his.

My chest was a gaping hole of pain. I bent over and wrapped both arms around my ribs, struggling to breathe through it.

Tob sat beside me on the bench, his shoulder pressed against mine. He stuffed his mouth with food as if he could drown his sorrows with it.

Merelus spoke quietly with Dahn in the doorway between the main room and the control room. “It’s a terrible tragedy on multiple accounts,” he said. “Who knows how many are dead now, or how many will die in the future because of this. All the documents that we needed to negotiate peace—the records of Dron sightings and accounts of reduced aggression, the research we’ve done on any contact with them, the histories of the surface and the theories about the safety of returning there again—it was all destroyed along with Celestrus and its libraries. Most of the information had no copies. It’s almost as if they were trying to destroy the libraries—the very thing that would have secured peace for them. It’s the worst of ironies.”

“As if anyone could convince the senate to seek peace after such an action,” Dahn said.

Merelus sighed heavily.

Despair wrapped around my throat like the tentacles of some murderous sea monster. Nol was gone, the possibility of peace was gone, and any hope of finding my mother’s home, my mother’s people, was gone. My whole identity was gone, ripped apart, changed. My mother had been Itlantean. Everything I’d known and believed had been a lie.

Something else scratched at the edge of my mind, something I should be remembering but wasn’t.

I was too tired to chase it.

~ ~ ~

The journey to Primus was long, and made longer by our grief. The hours dripped by, barely registering in my mind. I clung to Tob and Lyssia, not caring that they were not my people by birth. We were all citizens of grief, bonded by tragedy, and I craved their comfort, their presence, their touch.