The Lost Heir (13 page)

Surrounded by Council members, for once Tsunami was able to sweep by without a whole lot of staring and pointing. For a little while, at least, nobody knew who she was.

They swam through the wide front entrance into a coral cavern sparkling with emeralds and sapphires. A statue of Queen Coral loomed in the center, her talons outstretched benevolently.

SeaWing servants hurried in from all directions, their luminescent stripes flashing at the queen. Coral swept past them all and charged down a tunnel at the back of the hall. Some of the Council broke away to swim to other parts of the palace, but Moray and Whirlpool stayed with the queen, and so did Tsunami.

The tunnel curved down and around in a spiral, getting warmer and warmer as they descended. Tsunami felt warm jets of water bubbling up through the coral under her talons. At the bottom was a stone door, and in front of the door a skinny seaweed-green dragon crouched, gobbling something hungrily in her claws.

Her eyes went wide when she saw the queen, and she dropped her octopus with a shriek. The remains floated up to the ceiling as she flapped her talons in a panic, flashing her stripes so fast she looked like a lightning storm gone mad.

Queen Coral roared and threw the door open, smacking the green dragon back against the wall. The queen shot inside, towing Anemone behind her.

This is where I should have hatched,
Tsunami thought with a rush of confused excitement. She swam through the doorway and gazed around.
The Royal Hatchery.

The warm jets bubbled along every wall, heating the room, which was shaped like the inside of a large, pale egg. A SeaWing dragon carved from dark green marble stood in the center of the room; garlands of blue and purple underwater plants were woven through her horns and along her wings. The base of the statue said
ORCA
. She looked tough and beautiful at the same time. Tsunami wondered if Queen Coral’s first daughter had carved her own self-portrait, and if she’d known it would be a memorial one day.

She glanced around and caught the hateful look Moray shot at the statue.
Maybe all her fawning over the queen is for real,
Tsunami realized.
Maybe she actually means it when she goes on and on about how wonderful Queen Coral is.

Maybe she would even do anything to protect Coral from her daughters.

Nests made of seaweed were tucked into niches in the floor, with wide pathways stretching between them. Dragon eggs took a year to hatch, so there should have been clutches at different stages, from newly laid to nearly hatched. But there were no new eggs to be seen.
Because Gill has been gone,
Tsunami thought with a stab of guilt.
And he’s not coming back.

One clutch of three eggs was tucked against a wall, and in the nest farthest from the door, there were two eggs . . .

Queen Coral hurried to the far nest and roared again, a howl of fury and despair that reverberated through the water. She sank down beside the nest and picked up a piece of broken eggshell.

Oh, no.
Tsunami started forward, but Moray pushed past her and knelt beside the queen, leaning against her side. Anemone glanced back at Tsunami, looking sick.

One of the eggs was still intact, but the other was smashed. The little blue dragonet inside had been strangled to death. Her neck was twisted in a horrible way, and her head flopped sadly as Queen Coral gently picked her up.

Tsunami stared at the body in shock. It —
she
— was so tiny. Who would do this to a baby dragonet? How could anyone?

TO MY SISTER.

She felt Anemone’s cold talons slip into hers, and she squeezed them tightly. Whoever it was wanted to do this to Anemone as well. This was why the queen insisted on the harness and protected her daughter in such an extreme way. Seeing the broken body of the hatchling, Tsunami felt nearly crazy enough to do the same.

No one would ever, ever hurt Anemone, not while Tsunami was around. And whatever she had to do to protect that other egg, she would.

Queen Coral rose to her feet, knocking Moray aside. She shot back across the cave to the door, but the skinny green dragon was gone. Anemone yelped a stream of bubbles as the queen blasted up the tunnel with her in tow.

Tsunami started after them, then turned and looked down at the last egg. Moray had already followed Coral. Whirlpool was hovering uselessly in the doorway. If Tsunami went after Coral as well, who would be left to guard the egg?

But no one can get in except through that door,
she thought, staring around.
That door from that tunnel. So how did someone get past Tortoise?

She turned in a circle, staring at the smooth walls.
Come to think of it . . . how did Webs get in here to steal my egg?
Surely there had been guards back then, too. Surely the queen had tried to protect her eggs, even six years ago. Webs couldn’t have fought past them alone. So how did he get in?

Tsunami narrowed her eyes at the nests and the stone dragon.
A secret entrance. There must be.

Well, one thing was for sure. She wasn’t leaving this egg alone in here.

She crouched beside the nest and gently lifted up the last intact egg. It was surprisingly heavy — or perhaps not that surprising, considering a baby dragonet was supposed to pop out of it in a day or two. Cradling the egg to her chest, Tsunami swam out the door of the cave.

Whirlpool flashed a whole lot of stripes at her, waving his talons indignantly and pointing at the egg.

Tsunami gave him a wide-eyed, puzzled expression.
Maybe you should have taught me some real Aquatic, sea slug. Then you could yell at me all you want,
she thought.

He lit up his scales again. With a friendly smile, Tsunami lit up the same patterns back at him, then added
squid-brain
with her tail stripes, like Riptide had taught her. She swam away up the tunnel, leaving him gaping in surprise behind her.

As she swam up and around, she started to hear shrieks of pain echoing through the water. She hesitated, then beat her wings faster.

In the main entrance hall, Queen Coral had Tortoise pinned under her talons. A crowd of SeaWings had gathered, watching in silence.

The skinny green dragon was shrieking in one long, high-pitched scream. Tsunami stopped and pressed herself back against the wall, horrified. Queen Coral had already yanked out each of Tortoise’s teeth one by one. They rose through the water, tiny and white, toward the roof. Now Coral had her claws stabbed into Tortoise’s exposed underbelly. Clouds of blood filled the water, nearly hiding the queen and Tortoise in a red haze.

Would I have to do that, if I were queen?

Could I ever, ever do that?

Anemone had rolled herself into a ball, floating in the water above her mother with her eyes tightly shut and her talons over her ears.

Queen Coral’s scales lit up in a slow, menacing way. Tsunami didn’t understand most of it, but she guessed Tortoise was hearing about how she’d failed the queen.

Tortoise’s stripes flashed weakly.

The queen snarled and twisted her claws harder into Tortoise’s underbelly. Tortoise gurgled up a bubble of blood. Her stripes flashed again, and then, as her head began to loll sideways, she spotted someone in the crowd around them. She clutched at the queen’s talons and pointed, her stripes flashing frantically.

She was pointing straight at Shark.

He stared back, unblinking as always.

Queen Coral leaned down, pressing Tortoise into the floor. One more message flared through her scales, and then she seized Tortoise’s head in her talons and smashed it against the rough coral floor.

Tsunami turned away just in time, huddling around the egg with her eyes closed. She didn’t care if she looked like a one-year-old dragonet, hiding her face. She did not want that image in her head for the rest of her life.

What was Tortoise saying about Shark?

Whatever it was hadn’t convinced Queen Coral, anyhow.

Tsunami kept her eyes closed until she felt the eddies from other dragons swimming away. She peeked around and saw Moray busily cleaning up the blood and bone fragments that were floating around the main hall.

GROOOOOOOSS,
Tsunami thought.
Moray must really adore Coral to be willing to do that.

Tortoise’s body was hooked on an outcropping of coral by the front door, like a used-up deer carcass waiting to be taken to the trash heap after dinner. Queen Coral loomed over Shark, clutching Anemone to her chest and exchanging a heated luminescent conversation with her brother. All the other SeaWings had scattered to faraway parts of the palace.

Tsunami started toward her mother, but stopped as a strange shape flashed by one of the windows.
What the — that wasn’t a dragon.
She swam a bit closer and peered out.

Sharks — actual, dead-eyed sharks with enormous jagged teeth — were swarming around the front entrance, sniffing at the blood that still leaked from Tortoise’s body. They were bigger than Tsunami had expected — big enough to eat a dragonet the size of Anemone, she guessed — but even as she watched, two SeaWing guards darted down and killed five of them with a few blows of their tails.

She turned back and saw Whirlpool swimming up to Queen Coral. He interrupted her conversation, waving his talons furiously and pointing at Tsunami.

Uh-oh.
Tsunami took a deep breath and held the eggshell closer.
Well, I’m not giving this up.

Queen Coral swam over with a half frown on her face. She pointed to the egg and gestured commandingly for Tsunami to give it to her.

Tsunami flashed her stripes in one of the few patterns she knew.
I will protect.
She wasn’t sure how to say
it
. She pointed at the egg.
I will protect.

The queen blinked. She lit up a few of her stripes, including one pattern on her snout that Tsunami recognized as
how
.

Tsunami shook her head. She didn’t have enough Aquatic to answer that.
I will protect,
she said again.

She spotted the eyes of several SeaWings peering around doorways at her. Most of them looked shocked and disbelieving. She saw her sister glance from Tsunami to the crumpled remains of Tortoise, then back again. Anemone’s face was pale and anxious.

Oh.

Tsunami realized what they were seeing. She was putting herself in Tortoise’s place. She was taking the job nobody wanted. She hadn’t even thought of it that way.

Which meant, if she failed . . . she might be punished the same way, too.

Queen Coral tried flashing some more questions at Tsunami, but finally she flapped her wings and pointed to the surface. Tsunami pressed the egg to her chest and followed her mother, up and up and up through winding tunnels and cavernous palace rooms, through emerald-studded coral and pearl-laced curtains of golden sea grass. They swam to the top of the palace, where a guard stood watch over a view for miles underwater.

He saluted to the queen, and she swam up past him toward the gray light overhead, where raindrops pelted the surface of the water. Anemone paddled in her wake, glowing like a pale blue pearl in the dark sea.

They emerged into a storm so fierce, it almost felt like they hadn’t left the water at all. Tsunami faltered in the air as wind and rain tried to sweep her back into the ocean. The egg was slippery in her talons.
Don’t you dare drop it,
she hissed to herself.

“This way,” shouted the queen, banking toward the nearest island. A large cave yawned open onto the beach. Rough, dirty, and muddy, it was still the driest spot they could see. The three of them huddled into its shelter.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the queen demanded as soon as Tsunami’s claws touched the ground.

“Someone has to protect this egg,” Tsunami said. “It’s not safe in the hatchery.”

“It’ll be safe in the hatchery if I put all my guards on it,” Queen Coral fumed.

Tsunami shook her head. “Haven’t you tried that before? Has it ever worked?” She paused and glanced at her sister. “What did you do for Anemone?”

The queen shook out her wings. “I slept by the egg myself, for the entire year,” she said.

“You
did
?” Anemone said. Rain dripped off her tiny pale wings into puddles around her feet.

“I barely left the hatchery. I let Gill run the war for me, but — that’s how I lost him.” Coral’s voice caught and she frowned. “I can’t ne glect my duties as queen, now that he’s gone.”

“So let me do this,” Tsunami said. “Let me protect this egg.”

“But you have to stay in the hatchery,” the queen insisted. “It must be kept warm, especially right before hatching.”

Tsunami glanced down at the egg. She didn’t trust the hatchery. Anyone could sneak in to attack both Tsunami and the egg, especially if there was a secret entrance. Besides, she couldn’t stay in the Deep Palace; she had to go back and check on her friends. “I have a better idea,” she said. “Trust me. I’ll take it back to the Summer Palace.”

“The Summer Palace!” The queen flared her wings. “No, you don’t want to do that in this weather. It gets terribly flooded there during a storm. Better to wait out the rain here at the Deep Palace, where you’ll hardly notice it’s happening.”

“Flooded?” Tsunami echoed. “Do you mean — the caves? And the beaches?
Where my friends are?
”

“Oh.” Queen Coral waved her claws dismissively. “I’m sure they’ll be all right. Can’t they swim?”

“Not like we can,” Tsunami said. “I’m going back to check on them.”

“With my egg?” Coral growled.

“You’ve tried trusting everyone else,” Tsunami said, taking a step back toward the pounding rain outside. “Now trust me. I promise this dragonet will hatch safely.”

Her heart beat like the thunder in the clouds. Was this, finally, the right thing to do? Was she doing it for the right reasons? Or was she being impulsive again — trying to prove something instead of thinking it through?

I’m doing this for my father. I’m doing this to make up for all my mistakes.

And I’m doing this to save my little sister. How can that be wrong?

“If anything happens to that egg,” Queen Coral hissed, “I’ll lose two daughters that day.”

So much for being a special princess. “I need a harness for it,” Tsunami said, looking her mother in the eye.
See. I’m not afraid of you. Maybe you should think about how your next queen will come to power before you start threatening me.

“The harnesses they were making for the dragonets,” Anemone piped up. “One of those should work.”

“How will you get back to the Summer Palace?” Coral demanded. “You don’t know the way, and my court is staying here with me.”

“I’ll find it,” Tsunami said, but a ner vous shiver went through her wings. She did not want to be wandering the ocean alone during a storm — especially when her friends needed her.

If Riptide is still out there . . . Please let Riptide still be out there.

“Wait,” she said as the queen started for the entrance. “I have a question. Tortoise pointed at Shark while she was dying. Was she saying he attacked the egg?”

Coral flared her wings, looking shocked. “Certainly not!” she said. “My own brother! He wouldn’t dare!”

“She wasn’t saying he killed the egg,” Anemone agreed. “She said he’d given her permission to leave her post. He brought her an octopus to eat.”

“The fool.” Coral gnashed her teeth. “I’ve told Shark a million times that vigilance is the only way to protect the eggs. If that means going days without eating, then that is what my trusted councillor must do. He’s too soft with them.”

Right,
Tsunami thought. “Soft”
is definitely how I’d describe Shark.

“Well, Tortoise didn’t think anything could happen,” Anemone said. “Not while she was right outside the door and only away from the egg for a few moments.”

“Why didn’t she stay with the egg to eat?” Tsunami asked.

“
Nobody
eats inside the Royal Hatchery,” Anemone said primly. “It’s a pristine hatching place designed for royal dragonets. And if you get blood in the water, sharks will try to find their way in. Regular sharks who eat dragonets and eggs, that is. Hatcheries other than the Royal Hatchery get attacked by them all the time.”

Tsunami shook her head. She couldn’t help feeling like following all these rules was only helping the assassin. And it was pretty convenient that Shark had set Tortoise up like that — not to mention giving himself a chance to sneak in and kill the dragonet.

She shook out her wings. “Take me to the harness,” she said.

Queen Coral reached toward the egg, then stopped herself. She gave Tsunami another hard look and led the way out into the storm.

This time they swam down through the murky, churning water and around to the back entrance to the palace. The queen burst into a room that seemed to be a workshop where small SeaWings crouched over sea grass weavings and marble carvings. Tsunami paused as her mother thundered to the far end of the room. She lifted one of the weavings in her claws and realized it was made of the same material as the harness — rubbery, stretchy, and waterproof — only these were woven in colors, not clear like the harness.

Queen Coral flared her stripes angrily at a dragon who had frozen over a marble carving. He hurried into a back room and returned with a tiny harness flopping in his talons. Coral pointed at Tsunami, and he took it over to her.

This dragon was old, she noticed, and shaking with fear as he tried to fit straps around Tsunami’s neck and shoulders. They flapped loosely; it was meant for Coral and was too big for her. And of course the smaller harness was supposed to fit a little dragonet with limbs and a tail, not a smooth round egg.

The old dragon gestured helplessly at the harness, and Queen Coral poked it, growling a stream of bubbles. The queen yanked Anemone closer and pointed at the harness, flashing some of the royal stripes in her wings.

Anemone hesitated, then reached out unhappily and touched the harness. To Tsunami’s astonishment, the straps around her shoulders suddenly shrank until they fit perfectly. The other webs snaked and wove closer until the egg was securely bound to her chest.

She grabbed Anemone’s talon. Her sister felt cold and weirdly hard to the touch, and her eyes were out of focus. Tsunami shook her, and Anemone blinked until she was looking at Tsunami.

What?
Tsunami flashed the stripes on her snout.

Anemone shook her head and made the circular gesture:
Not right now, we’ll finish later
.

Tsunami wanted to know more, but the gesture reminded her of Shark and her friends. She had to get back to them. Protecting this egg was important, but watching out for the other four dragonets had been her first duty her whole life.

She bowed politely at the queen and the old harness-maker, then swam out of the palace and back through the gardens she’d seen on their way in. She wasn’t going unnoticed now. Everywhere she passed, SeaWings stopped to stare, then lit up their wings in hurried conversations after she went by. She could sense them pointing at the egg. She wasn’t sure if they knew she was the missing princess, or if they only knew she’d volunteered for the suicide mission of saving the queen’s last female dragonet.

She remembered swimming into the canyon, so she climbed out and swam around the bend in the coral reef. The Deep Palace disappeared behind her, and the wide dark ocean yawned in front of her.

All right, you asked for this.

Now what?