Ice Crypt (Mermaids of Eriana Kwai Book 2) (9 page)

I fell asleep with one thought in my mind: Adaro was going down, and our new training master was going down with him.

CHAPTER SIX
The King’s Plan

The army assembled near the grotto entrance, moving with stiff discipline. The commander and Officer Strymon left to join them.

Spio crashed around at the back of the cavern, throwing stuff into a rawhide bag. Most soldiers had some kind of bag with them. I had nothing but the Iron Hook of Doom.

Coho moved to join the rest.

I remained where I was.

“Can I travel with Spio?”

Not that I didn’t like Coho—I was grateful he’d come to my rescue—but I wanted to stick close to the only guy in the unit who I knew wouldn’t throw me to a shark.

Coho hesitated, but seemed to find nothing wrong with that.

“See you out there, soldier.”

He disappeared into the crowd.

Soldier. Once again, I found myself in Adaro’s army. I might die at the hands of a merman instead of a human in these battles, but my overall mission was no different. I was still fighting for a cause I didn’t believe in: the expansion of Adaro’s empire.

I waited for Spio while everyone gathered at the grotto entrance. The cavern gurgled, muffling the hum of the crowd. I rubbed my burning eyes. My body wilted from exhaustion, and my growling stomach sent shooting pains into my ribcage.

“Snack?”

Spio appeared beside me, his bag jammed full, the contents of which I could only guess. He offered me a dead cod. It was a testament to how hungry I was that I accepted it. Spio’s food generally tasted like it was found on a beach, mangled by pollution and regurgitated by a seagull, and then skinned and stored in his armpit for several days.

“Thanks,” I said. “I haven’t eaten in … What are you wearing?”

Spio lifted a hand to the leather cap on his head. It had flaps on the side, which stuck out awkwardly over his bulbous ears. He pulled down a front piece, two plastic holes that made his eyes protrude like a goldfish. Algae had turned the plastic an opaque green.

“It’s style,” he said, pulling the piece back up to his forehead. “I found it on a dead guy.”

We stuffed our Iron Hooks of Doom inside his bag. I would have carried my weapon in hand, but I was afraid of mindlessly hitting myself with the iron end while we swam.

Besides, carrying iron so close to my scar made it sting—like opening a fresh burn all over again.

Spio pulled the bag across his back and we joined the crowd. The rumour that a girl had arrived was spreading. Heads turned—and then, blissfully, their gazes fell to Spio with his ridiculous hat and overstuffed bag.

We left the grotto. Spio and I became two insignificant bodies in a line of soldiers stretching further than I could see.

To our right, a rocky cliff dropped into nothingness. We followed this, sticking near the surface for easy breaching.

The city sprawled out to our left, its limits spanning much further south than I’d expected. The population must have been tens of thousands.

I travelled close to Spio, constantly feeling for threats in all directions.

Being this far south didn’t change the reality that I needed to get back to Eriana Kwai. I wondered if Spio would help me. That was a big favour to ask. Too big. I’d be asking him to risk imprisonment, if not death, for helping me commit such a crime as desertion.

But would he want to leave, too? I hadn’t been able to gauge his feelings about the army. He seemed too excited to be given permission to destroy things.

Vibrations brushed my skin from the city beside us. I wondered if the merpeople inside felt us passing, as we felt them. They must have. Were they hiding, or ignoring us? Did they even support Adaro’s army?

I wondered what it was like inside the Moonless City. Given that my life had been limited to the young kingdom in the North Pacific, it must have been more beautiful than I could imagine.

“Makes home feel like the Great Pacific garbage patch, doesn’t it?” said Spio.

He must have noticed my attention on the city.

“Have you been inside?” I said.

“Nah. The officers are jerks if you try and leave the military base.”

He pulled back an earflap to show me a partly healed gash on his neck.

I grimaced. Yes, my escape would need to be planned carefully.

“Is the city all right with the army setting up camp here?” I said.

Spio didn’t answer right away. He studied the empty depths below.

With a slight change in tone, he said, “The Moonless City is part of Adaro’s kingdom now.”

I frowned. “What about his pact with Queen Evagore?”

“From what I’ve heard, the queen stepped down years ago. Hey, a devil ray!”

It was. We watched it flap below us for a moment.

Spio didn’t elaborate. I tried to read his mood, but he revealed nothing. Was that a practiced skill?

The city ended to our left. Coral, greenery, and chattering fish thinned as the floor deepened. We dove, following the cliff.

I wondered why the queen stepped down. Was she too old to keep ruling? Had she and Adaro come to some kind of agreement?

Overhead, daylight faded. The setting sun cast an orange glow across the surface. Activity picked up beneath us as the deep-sea fish, jellies, and squid rose for the night.

“Where are we going?”

Spio rolled onto his side to face me. “They not teach you anything about the army up there?”

“My mission was above-surface. Did they teach you about that?”

He paused for a long moment. “I assumed your mission was
lure, kill, and eat
.”

At a basic level, he wasn’t wrong. I wrinkled my nose and fixed my gaze ahead. “We had strategies.”

Spio flipped back over. “I heard a rumour.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“I heard you fought women.”

I relaxed. Someone this far south wouldn’t know that I had saved Meela’s life in front of everyone. Still, word spread like algae.

“It’s true,” I said. “Eriana Kwai is training girls.”

“That must have sucked.”

“It was easier when we just lured the warriors.”
And when one of them wasn’t Meela.

“How’d you get ‘em in the water?”

“Careening their ship. But the girls had their own strategies. We had to take them down in combat.”

“Awesome.”

“Not awesome! If you’d seen the way it was up there—”

“All right, all right,” he said. “I was picturing a bunch of girls wrestling around together, but if you want to take that away from me …”

I shoved him.

The army broke the current to catch a stronger one pushing southeast. It helped pick up our pace, but we moved slower than when we’d started. The surrounding chatter had grown quieter.

“Why are we moving south?” I said, steering the conversation back to my question.

“Part of the king’s plan,” said Spio. “He has three army divisions below the surface. One’s stationed at the Ice Channel, where they probably spend most of their time beating away polar bears. The biggest army’s moving west. Those poor cods have to poke their way around all those human-infested islands and the Mariana Trench. Then there’s us, heading down to the sea of crazy fish and tropical babes.”

I envisioned Adaro’s plan on a map. The first army trickled through the cracked ice across the top of North America. The second swelled across the Pacific into Asia, where my brother was stationed. The third pushed towards South America.

“They’re all closing on the Atlantic,” I said.

Spio grinned. “Sharp, Lysi.”

Adaro had been planning to take the Atlantic from Queen Medusa for a while, but I never knew how close he was to actually taking it. The troops stationed up north were probably instructed to wait on the defensive until the rest of us had pushed as close as possible to Medusa’s cities. I imagined once we rounded the tip of South America, Adaro would tell the northern troops to attack, and the assault on the Atlantic would begin.

“We’ve got a long ways to go,” I said.

My energy dropped thinking about the journey. The strong currents at the equator would be no easy feat to swim through. After that, we still had an entire continent to pass.

“One bite at a time,” said Spio. “We’ve got an army to slay, first. There’s one coming from the south.” He made a wide swing with an invisible weapon.

“How’s their skill?” I said.

“It’s numbers you should worry about. They’ve got three times the soldiers.”

“So? In the Battle for Eriana Kwai we outnumbered them by a tidal wave. It didn’t matter. Their skill and weapons …” I grimaced, remembering how many comrades had been killed.

Someone shouted up ahead. Voices rose. The water churned. I reached for my weapon in Spio’s bag, but something shiny flew past.

Spio pumped a fist. “Mackerel!”

Sure enough, the army ahead closed around the glistening swarm of fish. The smell of blood wafted over.

“Let’s get in there before it turns into a frenzy,” I said.

Already, the fish spun like a whirlpool, trapped between the army and the surface. Gulls dove in and snatched their meals from the top. The school tightened into a huge baitball that could have sunk a ship.

Mermen jostled for a place, elbowing each other out of the way even though there was plenty to go around. Spio and I ducked beneath the baitball to snag our share from the bottom.

A tuna shot past as I ate. Turbulence hit me as several more joined in. I was hungry enough to eat a tuna, but these ones were as big as me. Maybe I could have caught one on an ordinary day, when I wasn’t such a sleep-deprived mess.

I looked on with jealousy as a couple of huge mermen managed to catch tunas the size of my upper body.

A mako shark rose beneath me, jaws open. With nowhere to go and no time to think, I propelled forwards, straight into the baitball.

Mackerel pummelled my face, shoulders, and arms. The world became nothing but swirling silver bodies writhing to get away from me. But as they pushed out, the feeding predators directed them inwards. I caught glimpses of expressive eyes as they shot past my face, and pointed mouths opening and closing. The whirlpool muffled the outside world. I heard only slopping water and bodies bumping into each other. The current all but disappeared. I couldn’t help laughing at the sensation.

I burst out the other side. The mackerel swirled and the predators continued feeding as though nothing had happened.

Behind me, Spio let out a whoop. I turned to see him fly by, arms wrapped around a thrashing tuna that probably weighed more than he did. The tuna turned sharply, plunged downwards, and rose again. I wondered if Spio was steering. It wouldn’t have surprised me, considering he once stole a speedboat and actually drove it for a while before crashing into a rock.

The tuna spun a tight circle, Spio hanging around its middle. Then, with a gnash of Spio’s teeth, it stopped struggling. A cloud of blood spilled from behind its skull.

“Want some?” said Spio, relaxing his hold.

“No, thanks. It’s your catch.”

I didn’t need his pity. I could take care of myself.

Spio pulled a bone blade from his bag. An octopus tentacle fell out and floated away.

“I can help you wrangle your own,” he said.

“I don’t need help.”

Unfortunately, that was the moment I made a swipe for another mackerel and missed completely.

I blew a bubble in exasperation.

Spio cast me a fleeting glance. He used the blade to cut the tuna into pieces.

“If you need help, ask for it,” he said.

“I don’t.”

The jostling worsened. The current roared. Between the swirling bubbles, my senses picked up a marlin. I decided to get out before someone shoved me into that needle-sharp beak.

With new determination, I snatched a fish in each hand.

“Lysi,” said Spio.

“What?”

I was prepared to defend my hunting skills—but something changed in the current.

Spio looked up.

I sensed a blank, single-minded focus.

The frenzy had masked all signs of their approach. They travelled in complete silence. Ripples of movement faded before reaching us.

The world darkened.

A hundred hammerhead sharks eclipsed the remaining daylight.

CHAPTER SEVEN
Skaaw Beach