“Is that good?”
“It’s not far from the hospital, but we’ll have to be careful.”
Desiderio swam out of the tunnel and joined her.
“We’re lucky it’s nighttime. Usually, the hall’s packed,” Astrid explained. “We just need to find the passageway that leads us to the—”
Her words were cut off by a rumbling noise. It was the sound of voices singing, mer and Fryst—all so low and somber, they sounded as if they were coming from the center of the earth.
“It’s a dirge,” Desiderio said. “Somebody died. Somebody major, judging from the number of lamenters.”
Astrid knew that dirges for heads of state were sung by hundreds. Her whole body went cold. With a terrible dread, she listened for the name of the one being lamented.
The time and tide of life has ceased
A stalwart soul now begs release
A warrior prince both brave and true
Returns now to the vast deep blue
Wind and waves, his body take
While we our lamentations make
Horok, come at our behest
Take brave Kolfinn to his rest
“No!” Astrid cried out. “Oh, gods…no.”
She was too late. Rylka had gotten to her father before she could. She’d given him a lethal dose of poison.
Astrid tried to swim down the hall, swim away from the tearing pain, but she faltered and caught herself against the wall.
A strong pair of hands lifted her up. “Lean on me,” Desiderio said.
But Astrid pushed him away. She bent double, her chest heaving. The pain was going to overwhelm her if she didn’t find a way to stop it. And she had to stop it. Desiderio’s life—and her own—depended on it. Closing her eyes, she pictured the blue arctic water of Ondalina flowing into her, swirling all around her heart—and hardening into ice. That was the way she always stopped pain.
But this time it didn’t work.
She straightened. The emotion was too much. Grief and rage tore through her like a hurricane.
“I’m going after Rylka,” she said. “She killed my father and she’s going to pay.”
“Astrid, no. That’s suicide.”
But Astrid didn’t listen. She swam up to a pair of crossed sabers on the wall and yanked one free.
Des swam up to her, holding his hands out. “Astrid, put the sword down,” he said.
“You need to get out of my way, Desiderio,” she said menacingly.
But he didn’t budge. “Earlier tonight, Rylka accused you of poisoning your father. He just died. If she finds you, you’ll be charged with murder.”
His words pierced through the hurricane howl inside her. If that were to happen, she realized, even Ragnar couldn’t help her. The law was the law.
“She’ll lock you up in a dungeon cell. Like she did to me,” Desiderio continued. “She’ll turn everyone against you. We can’t stay here. Neither of us.”
“What are you saying? That I should just turn tail and leave? Abandon Ondalina? Do nothing about my father’s death?” she asked, her voice shaking.
Slowly, carefully, Des pushed the tip of Astrid’s sword down. Then he took it from her. Her hands dropped to her sides.
“What I’m saying is this: Your father was a warrior. Your brother is. You are. And a good warrior knows when to lose a battle so she can live to fight the war.
Astrid clenched her hands. Her mind started to clear. She remembered the terrible pain Desiderio had been in only hours ago when she told him what had happened to his parents. He’d managed to put it aside, and she had to do the same.
“We’re going to get out of here now, okay?” he said. “We’re going to go to the Kargjord.”
“The Kargjord? Why?” Astrid asked, alarmed. Everything was happening so fast. Part of her wanted to join the others, but part of her was still scared.
“Because that’s where Sera is. I need to be with her. To help her fight. And so do you. Didn’t you tell me that the witch—Vrăja—wanted you all together? Didn’t she say you were stronger that way?”
“Yes, but…”
“But what?”
Astrid couldn’t tell him the truth. He wasn’t Becca. He wouldn’t understand.
“Okay,” she said softly.
“Good. We’re going. So you need to focus now, Astrid. Because I don’t know my way around the Citadel and you do.
“Yes. Right. Focus,” Astrid said. “We’ve got to swim out of here. As fast as we can.
Desiderio shook his head. “You’re not focusing. We can’t just swim out of here. We have no food. No animals. No weapons. Except this old saber. Rylka’s troops would catch us in no time.”
Astrid nodded. Desiderio was right. They had nothing. Even her sword was gone. Tauno had knocked it out of her hands and she’d forgotten to take her dagger back from the guard in the dungeons.
“We need hippokamps,” she said. “That’s the most important thing. And I think I know how to get them.”
“How?”
“Your uncle Ludo,” Astrid said. “I was with him earlier today. He was desperate to see you. I know he’d help us.”
“Do you know the way to his house?”
“I do, but it’s a good distance from here.”
“It would be safer if we camoed, then,” said Desiderio. “We need to make ourselves white, blue, and gray. Like the ice.”
“A camo?” Astrid echoed, panicking. “I can’t….I—I…”
“I know. You’re too upset to cast. You’d probably turn yourself orange,” he said. “I’ll do it.”
He took the other saber down from the wall and handed it to her. “It’s better than nothing,” he said. Then he sang a quick canta prax spell and seconds later, they both blended in perfectly with the walls.
“Ready?” he asked.
Astrid nodded. She set off out of the Hall of Justice for the network of tunnels that would get them to Ludo’s house. Des followed her.
As they swam, she was haunted by images of her father. She remembered how wasted he’d looked in his hospital bed, and she remembered his last words to her.
What we do, we do for Ondalina.
They were different in many ways, she and Kolfinn. But in their love for their realm, they were united. Her father had fought for Ondalina his entire life. He had never stopped. Now, she would carry on that fight.
Kolfinn was dead. His ways, the old ways, were over.
Astrid was about to set off on a new current, the current that Vrăja had ordained.
She knew it would be hard.
She knew it would be frightening.
And only the gods knew where it would lead.
“ATTENTION!” A HARSH voice bellowed.
Ling was out of her bunk before her eyes were even open. She’d only been at the camp for a week, but already she knew to move fast at Selection. Anyone who didn’t was docked an entire day’s rations.
She took her place with the other prisoners who lived in Barracks Five. Thin and sickly, they all floated in a single line in front of their bunks—hands at their sides, eyes straight ahead. Ling was near the far end.
Two death riders flanked the open barracks door. Their commanding officer—Sergeant Feng—came through it now, a crop in his hand. Tall and brisk, with hard eyes, he swam down the line of prisoners, looking them over as if he were inspecting sea cows.
He prodded one merman with his crop. Lifted the chin of another. “You,” he said to a third.
Fear filled the eyes of each prisoner as Feng approached. It turned to relief if he passed them by, horror if he didn’t. All were quiet as he moved down the line. Except for one mermaid who dared speak after she was selected.
“Please, sir…I have a child here. Her father’s dead. There’s no one—”
The sergeant swung his crop so quickly the mermaid never saw the blow coming. The pain silenced her. Tears in her eyes, a crimson welt rising across her cheek, she took her place with the other Selec
ts outside the barracks.
Three more mermaids were chosen. Five mermen. The sergeant had almost finished the Selection when he stopped in front of Ling. He eyed her grubby cast, then moved on.
Ling’s wrist had been broken when she was captured in a net lowered by one of Rafe Mfeme’s trawlers. The cast was the only thing keeping her alive. Without it, she would already have been selected.
The sergeant picked two more mermen, then turned and addressed the remaining prisoners. “The rest of you, work hard, and you, too, may soon be selected!” he said. Then he and his soldiers swam through the doorway and disappeared.
Ling heard mer exhaling all around her. A few were crying, upset at the loss of a friend or bunkmate. The death riders said it was an honor to be among the Selects, that only the strongest and bravest qualified. But Ling—and everyone else in the barracks—knew differently.
“Guess we live to see another day at Happy Hills,” whispered Ling’s bunkmate, Tung-Mei. She’d arrived at the camp three days ago.
Ling smiled sourly at the nickname the prisoners had given the labor camp located in a shallow valley near the Great Abyss.
“I’ll see you later, Ling…if neither of us gets beaten to death today. Gotta go, before they dock my breakfast,” Tung-Mei said.
She darted through the doorway and disappeared into the crowd of prisoners hurrying to their jobs. The waters weren’t even light yet, but prisoners were made to work for two hours before rations were handed out. No one wanted to be late. They got little enough food as it was, and being deprived of breakfast meant gnawing hunger until noon.
Ling wasn’t far behind her friend. She swam out of the barracks and joined the surge of prisoners. They all wore the same uniforms—a baggy gray tunic and an iron collar. They worked in them and slept in them.
She saw the Selects being herded toward the Edge. Some were dull-eyed and resigned. Others called out desperately to friends, asking them to tell a husband, a wife, a parent or child, that they loved them. Others resisted and were beaten.
Ling’s heart would have broken if it were not already in pieces from witnessing the same scene morning after morning.
She tore her eyes away and hurried to the munitions warehouse. She wasn’t Select material, not with her damaged wrist, but she could count out arrows and spears with her good hand and load them into crates. That was the job she’d been given. The crates were shipped out daily. Ling didn’t know where they went, or why, but she was sure their purpose wasn’t good. She’d overheard two guards saying that the elder, Qin’s ruler, was too busy dealing with the plastic the goggs had dumped into his waters—and the suffering it was causing the ocean creatures—to notice the movements of some wooden crates through his realm.
Tung-Mei worked in the infirmary. She’d seen the Selects who made it back. Sometimes they could still talk. A few had told her what had been done to them, and she’d told Ling.
They were taken to the edge of the Abyss. Each Select’s collar was fastened to an iron chain attached to an individual lava globe. Also attached to the globe was a flexible metal filament line. The lines were very long and were wound on giant spools. Once a Select was leashed in this way, he or she was ordered to swim down into the Abyss, to the very end of the filament’s length, and then give three sharp tugs on the iron chain. To discourage a Select from simply gathering the filament in her hands and swimming only a short distance into the Abyss, electric eels were twined around the filament back at the top. They sent a current down the line, shocking anyone who touched it. The glass lava globe acted both as a source of light and a current breaker, preventing the mermaid or merman attached to it from being electrocuted.
At the end of twelve hours, the electric eels were removed and the soldiers stationed at the edge of the Abyss wound the filament back onto the spools. The prisoners came up with it.
Half were usually dead from depth sickness by then, and the rest wished they were. Survivors came up disoriented and trembling, with excruciating headaches. Their faces and hands were blue, and they were usually coughing up blood. The extreme depth—with its higher pressure and lower levels of oxygen—destroyed lungs and caused brain swelling. The living were hauled off to the infirmary, where they lasted for an hour or two.
Tung-Mei had asked one survivor why they’d been sent down into the Abyss. He’d said they were to look for a white ball.
“So much suffering, so many deaths…for a white ball?” she’d said.
But Ling knew it was no ordinary white ball. It was Sycorax’s talisman—the puzzle ball. Orfeo had told her about it. He wanted it found and didn’t care how many were sacrificed for his mad quest.
Ling knew that she would be sacrificed soon, too. She would die here. Her body would be thrown into the cart that came into the camp every evening to collect the dead. Then it would be dumped into a mass grave.
Ling was strong and not afraid to die. She knew that a death from depth sickness was not an easy one, but she would face it bravely. What tortured her, though, was the thought of dying before she could tell Sera what she’d learned aboard Rafe Mfeme’s ship.
Ling was an omnivoxa, a mermaid who could speak all creatures’ tongues. For her, the most awful part of her imprisonment—worse than the beatings and the hunger and the fear—was being unable to communicate. Her friends had no idea who they were dealing with, no idea of the danger they were in.
When she’d first arrived at the camp, Ling had hoped she’d be able to escape, but it was surrounded by a living fence of sea wasps—giant, bioluminescent jellyfish with long, lethal tentacles. They opened only enough to allow in cages containing new prisoners, food and munitions deliveries, and the death cart.
Ling saw a merman try to escape on her second day in the camp. He’d just been selected. Desperate, he tried to swim between two of the venomous sea wasps. In the blink of an eye, one of the wasps wound a thick, fleshy tentacle around his body. He was dead within seconds.
When she realized that she couldn’t escape, Ling looked everywhere for a courier—a small fish, a tiny octopus, or even a young hawksbill turtle—that she could send to Serafina with a message. But the sea wasps kept sea creatures out as effectively as they kept prisoners in.
As Ling approached the munitions warehouse now, a mermaid ahead of her faltered in the water and fell to the mud. The guard prodded the emaciated woman with his spear. She winced, tried to push herself up with her arms, and collapsed again.
Ling felt a hand on her back. It shoved her forward.
“You!” a death rider behind her barked. “Take her to the infirmary!”
Ling bent down to help the fallen mermaid. “Can you swim?” she whispered.
The woman shook her head.
“You’ve got to. I’ll help you.
“Leave me. Let me die. I don’t have any strength left.”
“No,” Ling said firmly. “Put your arm around my neck. I’ve got enough strength for both of us.”
The mermaid did so and Ling lifted her.
“There we go….That’s it, one stroke at a time….It’s not much farther,” Ling coaxed.
The infirmary was only about thirty yards away. If she could just get the mermaid there and hand her off to one of the workers, she might still be able to make it to the munitions warehouse in time for her morning rations. She was so hungry, it hurt.
Flimsy and spare, the infirmary was run by prisoners who had been doctors and nurses before they were taken. Medical knowledge was valuable. Prisoners who had it were sometimes permanently exempted from Selection. Ling hoped Tung-Mei would be. She’d been studying medicine at the University of Qin and was stolen from her village while on break visiting her parents. Through the infirmary’s open double doors Ling spotted her bunkmate rushing from patient to patient.
The survivors from the night shift had just arrived. Ling saw mermaids and mermen bleeding and thrashing as they struggled to pull oxygen into their lungs. She knew they didn’t have long. All Tung-Mei could
do was ease their suffering, not stop it.
“What happened?” she asked, as Ling approached her with the sickly mermaid.
“She collapsed.”
“Anything broken or bleeding?” Tung-Mei asked briskly.
Ling shook her head.
“Take her to the back. Find her a cot. This area’s for critical patients only,” Tung-Mei ordered.
Ling nodded and swam to where her friend had pointed. The mermaid’s head was lolling now. She was only half-conscious. There were no empty cots.
A merman was bent over another patient, taking her pulse. Ling waited until he was finished, then said, “This mermaid’s sick and I can’t find a cot. Where should I put her?”
“You’ll have to lay her on the floor,” the merman said.
He rose and turned to her, and as he did, Ling gasped. For a few seconds she felt as if she might collapse herself.
She was looking at a face she knew so well, but never expected to see again. The face of a dead man. A ghost.
The face of Shan Lu Chi.
Her father.
THE MERMAN WENT pale. His eyes widened. “Ling?” he whispered.
Speechless, Ling nodded.
Her father enveloped her in a fierce embrace. And for a moment, in his arms, Ling was no longer in the hellish labor camp, she was in a place of love and light. She was home.
All too soon, however, he released her. And the love that had lit up his face was immediately replaced by other emotions: fear and sorrow. Ling understood. She was so happy to see him, so amazed that he was alive, but she was devastated, too, to know he was in this horrible place.
“How long have you been here?” he asked. “Your brothers…your mother…are they—”
Ling shook her head. “They’re not here. I wasn’t taken from our village. I was picked up in the waters of East Matali. On my way home. Three weeks ago.”
“East Matali? What were you doing there?”
“It’s a long story, Dad. What are you doing here?” asked Ling. “We thought you were dead!”
“You two!” a voice shouted. “Why are you talking instead of working?” He narrowed his eyes. “And you”—he pointed at Ling—“you don’t belong here.”
Waterfire Saga, Book Three: Dark Tide: A Deep Blue Novel Page 15
