Waterfire Saga, Book One: Deep Blue (A Waterfire Saga Novel) (13 page)

F
ACES LOOMED OUT
of the gray murk of the Lagoon. Voices, broken and desperate, begged for help.

“Please, can you spare some currensea?”

“My son is injured. He needs a doctor!”

“My husband is missing. His name is Livio. He’s tall with black hair. Have you seen him?”

The Lagoon was only four leagues north of Cerulea, just over ten nautical miles. Refugees from the city, wounded and dazed, swam through its narrow currents. They huddled in doorways and slept in alleys.

“My children are hungry, do you have any food?” a mermaid begged. She had two little ones clutching her tail and a baby in her arms.

Serafina stopped. She had no food and no money to give. She turned to Blu.

“We need to keep moving,” he said. “The waters are lightening. It’ll be dawn in another hour.”

“You must have something on you…a drupe or a cowrie,” said Serafina. “Give her something, or I won’t budge.”

“Keep moving!”
Verde hissed.

Blu pulled off his earring—a gold hoop—and handed it to the mermaid.

“Sell it,” Serafina told her. “It should bring you a few trocii.”

The mermaid hugged Blu. She took Serafina’s hand and kissed it. “You’re the principessa, I know you are! I saw you in the Kolisseo. Thank you! Oh, thank you, Principessa!” she said.

A merman, overhearing her, turned around. “It’s her! The principessa!” he said.

“Take back Cerulea!” a mermaid shouted. “Avenge us!”

An oily-looking merman who’d been watching them from a doorway turned and swam off.

Verde yanked Serafina away. “Word’s traveling,” he said. “And that’s not good. There are Lagoonas, plenty of them, who would sell you to Traho for two cowries.”

“Are you going to sell us for more?” Serafina asked archly.

Verde didn’t bother to answer her.

Serafina still wanted to trust him, to trust all of them. Thalassa had trusted them, it seemed. But they were Praedatori. Outlaws. Why would they help two princesses?

The group swam on, though ancient archways, down dimly lit currents. Serafina looked around, wondered where Kharkarias’s lair was. She had never been to the Lagoon, but had heard many stories. It bordered the human city of Venice, and was part of Miromara, but belonged only to itself. Home to criminals, sirens, con artists, and spies, it was also a favorite haunt of swashbucklers—young mer who flipped a fin at society by dressing like pirates.

As they approached the heart of the Lagoon, the dingy currents gave way to squares lined with cafés and clubs. Lava bubbled in garishly colored globes outside of them. Loud music spilled into the streets through their open doors. Serafina saw shops where one could buy anything—songspell pearls, shipwreck silver, rare sea creatures, posidonia wine.

Then the narrow currents of the Lagoon led to human-made canals, and the clubs and cafés to Venetian palazzos. Her uncle had told her that wealthy terragogg nobles and merchants had built these grand dwellings centuries ago upon wooden piles driven deep into the Lagoon’s hard clay, and that equally wealthy mer had built their palazzos underneath them. These merfolk, exquisite in dress and elusive in manner, swam in and out of their dwellings now. Many wore masks. Serafina saw white faces with red lips. Golden faces with delicate black tracery. The face of a water bird, with a curved, cruel beak. A harlequin. A crescent moon. The face of death.

She found the effect unnerving. The masks themselves were still and impassive, but the eyes behind them were lively and appraising. It was said that these palazzo-dwellers had gained their riches by giving secret concerts for humans. Consorting with terragoggs was illegal. In the Lagoon, however, the only crime was being stupid enough to get caught at it.

“That’s the Grand Canal,” Verde said, pointing ahead. “The palazzo isn’t far.”

“It smells bad here,” Neela said, making a face.

“It’s the goggs,” Grigio said.

A quarter league up the Grand Canal, Verde turned off into a smaller canal, or rio. “This is it,” he said. “Calliope’s Way.” He swam a few yards down the rio, then stopped in front of a white marble building with a soaring gothic doorway. Lava torches glowed brightly at either side of it. Below them were carved stone faces with blind eyes and open mouths. An image of the sea goddess Neria, flanked by lesser gods, was carved in relief above the door. Above that was a loggia of pointed arches, decorated with a delicate frieze of sea flowers, fish, and shells.

Blu lifted a heavy iron knocker and let it drop.

“Qui vadit ibi?”

It was the stone faces. They’d spoken in unison.

“Filii maris,”
Blu said.

Ancient words. Spoken when the palazzo was built
, Serafina thought. She understood the Latin.
Who goes there?
was the question.
Sons of the sea
, the answer.

The doors opened outward.

“This way,” Verde said. “He’s expecting you.”

Serafina and the others followed him inside. The doors closed behind them with an ominous boom. The lock’s tumblers turned. A bolt slid home. She looked up and saw light spilling over the water. Verde swam toward it. Serafina and Neela looked at each other, then did the same. When they surfaced, they found themselves in a large rectangular pool that took up most of a cavernous room—a room that also contained furniture, a fireplace, electric lights, and air.

A room for a terragogg.

“I—I don’t understand,” Serafina said. “I thought this was a mer dwelling.”

“You’ll be all right,” Blu told her. “We’ve got to go.”

“My gods, Blu,” Serafina said, realizing what the Praedatori had done. “You sold us to
human
s
?”

“
What?
No! You can’t do this!” Neela said, her voice shrill with fear.

Blu was already under the water. All the Praedatori were.

“Blu,
wait
!” Serafina shouted.

It was too late. The mermaids were all alone.

“W
HAT
IS
THIS PLACE?”
Serafina asked, looking around warily.

“A seriously huge mistake,” Neela said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

“We can’t. We’re locked in,” Sera said.

Fins prickling, she swam to the far side of the pool. These wide, flat steps angled into the pool’s wall led out of the water into the terragogg room. Using her tail, she pushed herself to the top of them, then peered into the room. The air, so rich in oxygen, made her feel momentarily light-headed.

The room’s walls were covered in ornate mosaics. Logs were burning in a huge stone fireplace. Thick wool rugs covered the stone floor. On the mantel, on stands and on tables, were artifacts—amphorae, statuary, tablets with carvings, chunks of terra-cotta. Leather-bound tomes filled the tall shelves on the far wall.

“It’s a terragogg ostrokon,” Neela said. “Look at all the blooks.”

“I think they’re called books,” Serafina said.

Old oil paintings hung on the walls—portraits of long-dead gogg nobility. One captured Serafina’s attention. It was a picture of a young woman, not much older than she was. She was wearing a jeweled crown and dressed in an embroidered silk gown with a stiff lace collar. Around her neck she wore ropes of flawless pearls, a ruby choker, and a magnificent, teardrop-shaped blue diamond.

“Maria Theresa, an infanta of Spain, and an ancestor on my mother’s side,” a voice said.

In a heartbeat, Serafina and Neela were back under the water. When they surfaced—well in the center of the pool—they saw a man sitting at its edge. He was of a slight build, with thick gray hair that he wore swept back from his forehead. His blue eyes were shrewd and penetrating behind his spectacles. A tweed jacket, vest, and silk cravat gave him an old-fashioned elegance. His trousers were rolled, and his feet were in the water.

“Her jewels are exquisite, no?” he said, looking at the painting. “They were handed down through many generations, from Spanish queens to their daughters. Alas, they were lost when the infanta was, in 1582. She was sailing to France in a ship called the
Demeter
to marry a prince. Pirates attacked the vessel and sank it.”

Serafina, alarmed, began to sing a confuto—a canta prax spell that made the goggs sound insane when they talked about merpeople. It was the first thing any mermaid did upon finding herself face to face with a human—but Sera’s voice sounded tinny as she sang it, and her notes were flat.

“Please do not tax yourself unnecessarily, Your Grace,” the man said, turning back to her. “Confutos don’t work on me.” His Mermish was flawless.

“Who are you?” Serafina demanded. “Why did you buy us?”

“My name is Armando Contorini, duca di Venezia, leader of the Praedatori. This is the Praesidio, my home. And I haven’t
bought
you. Good gods! What on earth gave you that idea? You are my honored guests and are most welcome to stay or go.”

“You’re the leader of the Praedatori?” Neela said. “But that means you’re Karkharias, the shark.”

The duca chuckled. “I’m afraid so. A very silly nickname, no?”

“You don’t look like an outlaw,” Serafina said.

“Or a shark,” Neela said.

“I’m a lawyer, actually, the worst kind of shark,” the duca said, laughing. “My apologies, dear merls. Courtroom humor. Allow me to explain. The duchy was created by Merrow. For four millennia, the duchi de Venezia have carried out the duty she entrusted to us—to protect the sea, and its creatures, from our fellow terragoggs. I control a cadre of fighters on land and in the water. On land, we call ourselves the Wave Warriors and—”

“Um, Duca Armando? Are you actually saying you have terragoggs fighting other terragoggs on behalf of the seas?” Neela asked, a dubious look on her face.

“Oh, yes. Many humans cherish the seas as much as you do—and fight hard to protect them. The Wave Warriors collect evidence against pillagers and polluters, and then I go to court to stop them. In the water, our fighters are known as the Praedatori, and we are a bit…” He paused. “Well, let’s just say we don’t do things the usual way.”

Neela narrowed her eyes. “Excuse me very much, but in Matali, you’re called
āparādhika
. Criminals. A few weeks ago—and don’t even
think
about denying it—the Praedatori stole Foreign Secretary Tajdar’s collection of shipwreck silver. It’s worth nearly three hundred thousand trocii.”

The duca snorted. “Deny it? I’m proud of it! It was a brilliant heist. Tajdar’s collection
wasn’t
salvaged from shipwrecks. It was given to him over the course of several years by a captain of a super trawler in exchange for information on the movements of yellowfin tuna. My spies saw the goods passing between the two on several occasions. Need I remind you of the yellowfins’ precarious state? Their numbers have been devastated by overfishing. Your foreign secretary is as crooked as a fishhook, my dear. The Praedatori merely robbed a robber.”

“Are you
serious
?” Neela said.

“Usually.”

“What did you do with the swag?”

“I sold it to fund covert operations. We cut nets and long-line hooks. We set up field hospitals for the turtles, dugongs, sea lions, and dolphins injured by them. We jam propellers, tangle anchors, puncture pontoons—whatever we need to do to preserve aquatic life. It takes a great deal of currensea to fund it all.”

“But Duca Armando, robbery is robbery,” Serafina said, still mistrustful of this man. “It’s a crime no matter who’s doing the stealing. Or why.”

“Tell me, Principessa, if you were poor and had a child, and that child was starving, would you steal a bowl of keel worms to save her life? What is the greater crime—stealing food, or allowing an innocent to die?”

Serafina didn’t answer right away. She couldn’t argue with his reasoning, or the rightness of his cause, but she didn’t want to admit it. Not before she understood exactly why she and Neela were here.

Neela answered for her. “She’d
totally
steal the worms. Anyone would. What’s your point?”

“That sometimes we must fight a greater evil with a lesser one. The waters of the world are in the greatest peril. We have had some success in the courts of the terragoggs against the worst offenders, but not enough. So we rob robbers to further our cause. I am more than happy to relieve Tajdar, and all like him, of their ill-gotten gains if it saves one species from being fished to extinction, one more garbage lake from materializing in the Pacific Ocean, or one magnificent shark from being murdered for its fins.”

“Who are the Praedatori?” Neela asked.

“That I cannot tell you. Their identities are kept secret to protect them. Faces, bodies, voices—they’re all disguised by powerful songspells. They come from all swims of life and they pledge themselves to the defense of the earth’s waters.” His expression grew solemn. “It is not a pledge to be taken lightly. The risks they face are enormous. Many are killed in the line of duty. In this day and age, friends of the water have many enemies. Just last week, two of my soldiers died sabotaging a seal cull. I grieved for them as I would my own children.” Sorrow filled his eyes and anger filled his voice. “We have not yet recovered from that loss, and now we face this…this
butchery
in Miromara.”

At the mention of her realm, Serafina’s fins prickled again.

“Duca Armando, why are we here?” she asked, unable to contain her fears any longer. “You say the Praedatori exist to fight the terragoggs, but the attack in Miromara was made by mer, so why are you involving yourself? This is not the Praedatori’s fight.”

“Oh, but it is,” the duca said.

“But it was Ondalina who attacked us. The arrow that wounded my mother was tipped with poison from an Arctic sculpin. The uniforms the attackers wore were black—Admiral Kolfinn’s color. They were
mermen
, Duca Armando, not humans,” Serafina said.

“You saw what Kolfinn wanted you to see,” the duca said. “He had help.”

“From whom?” Serafina asked, frightened by the thought of another mer realm aligning with Ondalina. “Atlantica? Qin?”

“No, my child. From a terragogg. The very worst of his kind. Rafe Iaoro Mfeme.”