Deep Blue (Waterfire Saga, #1)(2)
Sunlight filtered through the glass panes from the waters above, waking the feathery tube worms clustered around the room. They burst into bloom, daubing the walls yellow, cobalt blue, and magenta. The golden rays warmed fronds of seaweed anchored to the floor. They shimmered in the glass of a tall gilt mirror and glinted off the polished coral walls. A small green octopus that had been curled up at the foot of the bed—Serafina’s pet, Sylvestre—darted away, disturbed by the light.
“Can’t you cast a songspell for that, Mom?” Serafina asked, her voice raspy with sleep. “Or ask Tavia to do it?”
“I sent Tavia to fetch your breakfast,” Isabella said. “And no, I can’t cast a songspell to open draperies. As I’ve told you a million times—”
“Never waste magic on the mundane,” Serafina said.
“Exactly. Do get up, Serafina. The emperor and empress have arrived. Your ladies are waiting for you in your antechamber, the canta magus is coming to rehearse your songspell, and here you lie, as idle as a sponge,” Isabella said. She batted a school of purple wrasses away from a window and looked out of it. “The sea is so calm today, I can see the sky. Let’s hope no storm blows in to churn up the waters.”
“Mom, what are you doing here? Don’t you have a realm to rule?” Serafina asked, certain her mother had not come here to comment on the weather.
“Yes, I do, thank you,” Isabella said tartly, “but I’ve left Miromara in your uncle Vallerio’s capable hands for an hour.”
She crossed the room to Serafina’s bedside, her gray sea-silk gown swirling behind her, her silver scales gleaming, her thick black hair piled high on her head.
“Just look at all these conchs!” she exclaimed, frowning at the pile of white shells on the floor by Serafina’s bed. “You stayed up late last night listening, didn’t you?”
“I had to!” Serafina said defensively. “My term conch on Merrow’s Progress is due next week.”
“No wonder I can’t get you out of bed,” Isabella said. She picked up one of the shells and held it to her ear. “The Merrovingian Conquest of the Barrens of Thira by Professore Giovanni Bolla,” she said, then tossed it aside. “I hope you didn’t waste too much time on that one. Bolla’s a fool. An armchair commander. He claims the Opafago were contained by the threat of sanctions. Total bilge. The Opafago are cannibals, and cannibals care nothing for decrees. Merrow once sent a messenger to tell them they were being sanctioned, and they ate him.”
Serafina groaned. “Is that why you’re here? It’s a little early in the day for a lecture on politics.”
“It’s never too early for politics,” Isabella said. “It was encirclement by Miromaran soldiers, the acqua guerrieri, that bested the Opafago. Force, not diplomacy. Remember that, Sera. Never sit down at the negotiating table with cannibals, lest you find yourself on the menu.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Mom,” Serafina said, rolling her eyes.
She sat up in her bed—an enormous ivory scallop shell—and stretched. One half of the shell, thickly lined with plump pink anemones, was where she slept. The other half, a canopy, was suspended on the points of four tall turritella shells. The canopy’s edges were intricately carved and inlaid with sea glass and amber. Lush curtains of japweed hung down from it. Tiny orange gobies and blue-striped dragonets darted in and out of them.
The anemones’ fleshy fingers clutched at Serafina as she rose. She pulled on a white sea-silk robe embroidered with gold thread, capiz shells, and seed pearls. Her scales, which were the bright, winking color of new copper, gleamed in the underwater light. They covered her tail and her torso, and complemented the darker copper shade of her hair. Her coloring was from her father, Principe Consorte Bastiaan, a son of the noble House of Kaden in the Sea of Marmara. Her fins, a soft coral pink with green glints, were supple and strong. She had the lithe body, and graceful movements, of a fast deep-sea swimmer. Her complexion was olive-hued, and usually flawless, but this morning her face was wan and there were dark smudges under her eyes.
“What’s the matter?” Isabella asked, noticing her pallor. “You’re as white as a shark’s belly. Are you ill?”
“I didn’t sleep well. I had a bad dream,” Serafina said as she belted her robe. “There was something horrible in a cage. A monster. It wanted to get out and I had to stop it, but I didn’t know how.” The images came back to her as she spoke, vivid and frightening.
“Night terrors, that’s all. Bad dreams come from bad nerves,” Isabella said dismissively.
“The Iele were in it. The river witches. They wanted me to come to them,” Serafina said. “You used to tell me stories about the Iele. You said they were the most powerful of our kind, and if they ever summon us, we have to go. Do you remember?”
Isabella smiled—a rare occurrence. “Yes, but I can’t believe you do,” she said. “I told you those stories when you were a tiny merl. To make you behave. I said the Iele would call you to them and box your ears if you didn’t sit still, as a well-mannered principessa of the House of Merrow should. It was all froth and seafoam.”
Serafina knew the river witches were only make-believe, yet they’d seemed so real in her dream. “They were there. Right in front of me. So close, I could have reached out and touched them,” she said. Then she shook her head at her foolishness. “But they weren’t there, of course. And I have more important things to think about today.”