Waterfire Saga, Book Four: Sea Spell: Deep Blue Novel, A (9 page)

Yaz cut him off. “Dude, come
on
! There is no decision. It’s
so
clear: we need to attack Abbadon first!”

Becca’s eyes cut to him. So did Neela’s. Both mermaids seemed surprised by his rudeness. They looked at Sera, waiting for her to say something. But Sera didn’t because she’d barely heard him, or her brother. Her eyes were glued to the map. They swept over the cowries that represented her uncle’s troops and the turitella shells that stood for her own. The shells reminded her of chess pieces—kings, queens, knights, pawns. They seemed to taunt her, to tell her that
she
was a queen, the rightful regina of Miromara, but Vallerio was the one who ruled the board.

Neela’s eyes remained on Sera, beseeching her to take charge. When she didn’t, Neela spoke instead. “Hey, Yaz?” she said. “We’re
all
tired and stressed, but that’s no reason to disrespect each other.”

“I know, I know,” Yaz said, holding his hands up. “It’s just that Des and I have been arguing about this for days. We’re both frayed. Especially me. Sorry, Des. You’re up.”

Des nodded. “As I was saying, Vallerio is our biggest threat. He’s the clear and present danger. His death riders are now attacking our troops every time they go into open waters. It’s only a matter of time until they hit our camp, and then—”

“But Abbadon—” Yazeed began.

“Is buried under a polar ice cap!” Des said, clearly annoyed at having been interrupted again.

“Um, bro?” Yaz said. “Don’t know if you’ve heard, but the ice is melting. And the monster man’s waking up. And when he’s stretched and yawned and got his monster butt out of bed, he’s going to make Vallerio look about as scary as a guppy.”

Des lost it. “Open your eyes, Yaz!” he shouted, pointing to the cowries. “Look at Vallerio’s troops—they’re everywhere! We’ll never make it to the Southern Sea. We won’t make out of the
Atlantic
!”

“We will! We can go around them!” Yazeed shouted back.

Desiderio threw his hands up. “Care to tell us
how
?”

“We’ll figure it out! That’s what commanders do. We
have
to take Abbadon out first. If Orfeo unleashes him, there won’t
be
any Vallerio. There won’t be any Cerulea, or Miromara, or you and me. You
know
that. You hate your uncle so much, it’s blinding you to the fact: Abbadon is the bigger threat!”

The two mermen were in each other’s faces now. Their loud voices were ringing in Sera’s ears. She knew she should say something, but she still couldn’t tear her eyes away from the shells.

These shells are lives. So many lives,
she thought.

Finally, Ling put her fingers in her mouth and blew a piercing whistle. Des and Yazeed both winced. They stopped shouting and looked at her.

“Sorry to burst your eardrums, boys,” she said, “but we need to remember that we’re all on the same side here. Maybe we should take a break.”

“We
can’t
take a break,” Desiderio said. “There’s no time. My uncle’s growing bolder. His ambushes are getting closer.”

“I hear you, Des,” Ling said, “but maybe Sera should weigh in on this. Sera, what do you think? Sera?
Sera.
”

Sera lifted her head. “What do I think?” she echoed. “I think that my uncle doesn’t care how many he kills. That’s his strength. I
do
care. And that’s my weakness.”

“Sera, listen—” Desiderio started to say.

“No, Des,
you
listen. You and Yaz…you want me to give the orders to go to war, but I can’t,” she said, her voice ragged. “War takes lives—not only the lives of soldiers, but the lives of innocent civilians who get caught in the crosshairs. If I love my subjects, how can I give a command that will turn children into orphans? Rob parents of sons and daughters?
How?
Can somebody tell me?”

Sera waited, but no one answered her.

“I thought I’d learned how to lead, but I haven’t,” she said. “Because I can’t do this.
I can’t.
”

Desiderio swam to his sister. He put a gentle arm around her. “Shh, Sera. You’re worn-out, that’s all. Go get some sleep. Things will look different in the morning. You’ll see.”

Sera nodded, feeling despondent. She got up to leave, but she knew she wouldn’t sleep.

I’ll head toward the barracks to make them happy,
she thought,
then veer off and swim through the camp. Maybe a breath of fresh water will help.

Des and Neela swam with her to the cave’s mouth. As she left, they remained where they were, watching her, uneasy expressions on their faces.

The acoustics around the headquarters were strange. Hollows in the rock caught sound; jutting boulders bounced it this way and that. Sera could hear her best friend and her brother talking about her as she swam away.

“She’ll be fine,” Desiderio insisted. “She just needs some rest. She’ll make a decision in the morning.”

“No, she won’t,” Neela said. “Her heart won’t allow her to. She can’t be the reason innocent people die.”

Desiderio didn’t respond right away. Then in a heavy voice so low that Sera almost didn’t hear him, he said, “She doesn’t have a choice, Neela. She needs to find a way. If she doesn’t, we
all
die.”

T
HINGS WILL LOOK different in the morning.

Desiderio’s words echoed in Sera’s aching head.

“Will they?” she asked herself.

They’d changed, all of them—Neela, Ling, Becca, Astrid, Ava. They’d grown. And she had, too; she knew that. She’d conquered many painful challenges since her mother had been assassinated, but this one—leading her fighters into war—seemed like it would conquer her.

She was failing now. Failing her duties, her people, and herself, and the knowledge of it plunged Sera into despair. She felt so lost, so wretched, that she just swam forward, paying no attention to where she was going. Past caves, boulders, and clumps of seaweed. Past the north gate.

Almost an hour after she’d left headquarters, the blood-chilling howls of a pack of dogfish startled Sera out of her desperate thoughts. She looked around and saw that she was on the far eastern edge of her camp, beyond the protective cover of Devil’s Tail, in a desolate patch of scrubweed and rock.

The currents keened mournfully through the rocks; the waters were a good deal colder out here than they were back at headquarters. Shivering, Sera pulled her collar up around her neck, ready to turn back for the warm heart of her camp. But before she could, she heard the sound of voices. They were coming from the other side of a large boulder that was encrusted with tube worms.

The speakers had heard her, too. “Who’s there?” one shouted tersely.

Sera tried to back away quietly.

“This is Ensign Adamo of the Black Fin resistance! Show yourself!
Now!
Or I’m coming around that boulder arrows flying.”

Sera panicked. She couldn’t let herself be seen in this state. She was supposed to be an inspiration to her fighters, not a cause for concern.

“I
said
, show yourself!”

Frantic, Sera cast a quick illusio spell, hoping to turn her copper-colored hair black and her green eyes blue. Thanks to the iron-rich boulder, though, she ended up with black eyes and blue hair.

“I’m not asking again!” the voice threatened.

Then Sera heard a crossbow being cocked. She swam around the boulder, hands raised. “It’s okay. I’m a Black Fin,” she said.

A merman, gray-haired, with a craggy, bearded face, had his crossbow trained on her.
ADAMO
was embroidered on his uniform. Two others—a younger merman, and a female goblin—also had their weapons raised.

“If you’re one of us, why are you sneaking around the outskirts of camp?” Ensign Adamo demanded, eyeing her uniform.

“I wasn’t sneaking. I—I couldn’t sleep, so I went for a swim.”

“Where you from?”

“Cerulea.”

“Swashbuckler, huh?” Adamo said, taking in her bright blue hair. “What’s your name, merl?”

“Sera,” she replied without thinking. Then she hurriedly added a surname. “LaReine.”

“That doesn’t sound like a Cerulean name to me,” Adamo said, his eyes narrowing.

“My mother’s side is from the city,” Sera quickly lied. “My father’s family comes from westerly waters. Off the shores of France.”

“I guess that accounts for it,” said Adamo, lowering his weapons. His companions lowered theirs, too. “You’re welcome to sit with us and warm up,” he added, nodding at the waterfire. “We finished our watch. Couldn’t sleep. Decided to go foraging.”

“Thank you,” said Sera.

Adamo told Sera that his first name was Salvatore. The younger merman introduced himself as Enzo Lenzi and the goblin simply as Snøfte. They made room for her around the waterfire. As she sat down, Enzo picked up a knife and a small block of wood. Little pieces of wood littered the seafloor around him. Sera realized he’d been carving before she barged in upon them. As she looked at what he’d been making—a little figure of a seal—her heart clenched.

She knew another young merman who carved. He’d made a tiny octopus for her once. In the gardens of Cerulea’s royal palace. As she watched Enzo work, she missed Mahdi so badly, it hurt.

Snøfte suddenly elbowed Sera, startling her out of her reverie. The goblin held out a bowl woven of scrubgrass. It contained clumps of plump, juicy squid eggs. “Help yourself. We found them under some rocks.”

Sera took a clump and popped it into her mouth. The sweet, briny eggs burst as she chewed them. “Mmm,” she said through a mouthful. “Wow, are those good. Thank you.”

“A whole lot better than conger eel stew,” Salvatore commented. He was sitting by the fire now, too.

“I swear to Vaeldig, if I have to eat another bowl of that swill, I’ll throw up,” Snøfte complained.

Vaeldig, Sera knew, was the goblin god of war. Inwardly she winced, feeling guilty that she couldn’t provide her troops with better food.

Snøfte shook her head. “I came here because Guldemar ordered it,” she said. “You three”—she nodded at Salvatore, Enzo, and Sera—“
volunteered
.” She laughed.
“Skøre tåber,”
she said in her own language.
Crazy fools.

“Yeah, I
did
volunteer,” Salvatore said wryly. “At the time, I thought there were things worth dying for—my realm, my city, my ruler. Now, I’m not so sure.”

Sera’s despondency deepened as she listened to Salvatore and Snøfte. She’d been unable to face sending loyal soldiers to their deaths, soldiers who believed in the fight. The idea of sending soldiers to die for a cause they no longer believed in was even worse.

“We sit here day after day, getting by on conger eel,
barely
, and all the while, the death riders are coming closer,” Snøfte said. “We need to ambush
them
. Kill them all and put their heads on stakes. Right outside the camp’s gates.”

“Too right,” Salvatore said, spitting a gob of chewing seaweed into the waterfire. “Serafina will never do it, though. She’s too weak. Too inexperienced. She’s nothing more than a pawn in her uncle’s game.”

Sera felt like she’d been slapped. Instinctively, she spoke up for herself. “Serafina’s not
all
bad,” she protested, unable to keep a twinge of defensiveness out of her voice. “I hear she loves her subjects very much.”

Salvatore snorted. His bushy eyebrows shot up. “
Love?
Who cares about love? I’m hungry. I’m cold. I need food and arrows, not
love
,” he said contemptuously. “Love means nothing to me.”

Enzo, who hadn’t spoken one word the entire time, looked up from his carving. “It means something to me,” he said quietly. “It’s the reason I’m here.”

Salvatore flapped a hand at him and spat another gob of seaweed into the fire.

Enzo turned to Sera. “I come from Cerulea, too. From the fabra.”

Sera nodded. She knew the district well. It was where the city’s artisans lived.

“My family, we’re woodworkers,” Enzo continued, giving her a smile both proud and sad. “We salvage beams from shipwrecks, comb the shores for driftwood. We carve it into beautiful things—statues, tables, frames.” His smile faded. “We don’t make beautiful things anymore, though. Now we make stocks for crossbows and handles for daggers. My grandfather, my father…they don’t want to do this work, but they don’t have a choice: Vallerio commands it. My uncle refused…” Enzo paused for a few seconds, overcome by emotion, then continued, “…and they took him away.”

“I’m sorry, Enzo,” Sera said, her heart hurting for him. “I’m guessing you’re here because you didn’t want to do Vallerio’s bidding, either.”

“No, I didn’t,” Enzo said, defiance in his voice. “I snuck out of the city gates one night when a guard’s back was turned. My grandfather and father cannot fight. They’re too old. My little sons are too young. But I can. And I will. That’s why I’m here. Because I’d rather die fighting for them than live and watch them suffer.”

Salvatore crossed his arms over his chest. He stared into the waterfire. “Maybe there are some things worth dying for,” he said gruffly.

“No, Salvatore,” Enzo said. “Not
some
things. One thing:
family
.”