Deep Blue (Waterfire Saga, #1)(30)

Serafina, her eyes huge with fear, nodded.

“You lumpsucker! Take your hands off her!” Neela shouted, struggling against the eels who were still holding her.

“Get me something to shut her up,” Baco ordered. Tiberius brought him a length of sea silk. Baco jammed it into Neela’s mouth and tied it tightly behind her head.

“These two are trouble. I want them gone. Go to Traho right away,” Baco told Tiberius. “Tell him I have what he’s after.”

The moray nodded and swam off.

“Tiberius, wait!” Baco said.

The moray turned. Baco flipped him a doubloon. He caught it in his mouth.

“Give that to Zeno. With my thanks.”





THE SOLDIERS REMOVED Baco’s flimsy restraints. They shackled Serafina’s wrists with iron cuffs and blindfolded her. They forced an iron gag into her mouth and wrapped a net around her. Then, one of the soldiers slung her over the back of his hippokamp and rode fast. The others followed. The ride was agony. The net’s filament bit into Sera’s skin. The gag, with its bitter taste of black metal, made her retch.

An hour later, they arrived at what sounded like some kind of camp. Sera couldn’t see anything through her blindfold, but she could hear hippokamps whinnying, orders being shouted, and the blood-chilling roar of Blackclaw dragons. One of her captors carried her a short distance, then dumped her on the ground. She tried to free herself but soon stopped, for she was slapped—hard—whenever she moved. She tried to call out for Neela but couldn’t because of her gag.

Lying on her side, she strained to hear all that she could, sifting the conversation for clues to her whereabouts.

“…on Traho’s orders…”

“…pockets of fighting, but they can’t hold out…”

“…find the prince. Just dangle a siren or two…”

Who are they? she wondered. What do they want with me? She didn’t have long to wonder, for she was soon hoisted up and set down again. This time, in a chair.

“The principessa, sir,” a voice said.

“Remove the net.”

Several hands pulled the netting away. Serafina’s shackles were removed, her blindfold, too, but not her gag. She looked around warily, her eyes adjusting to the light of lava lanterns. It was still dark. Probably close to midnight, she guessed. She was inside a well-appointed tent. There was a large campaign table in its center. A bed stood in one corner and several chairs were scattered about.

A woman—obviously unconscious, her head lolling—sat in one of them. Serafina was horrified when she realized who she was.

Thalassa’s beautiful gray hair was down around her shoulders. Her face was bruised. She held her manacled hands close to her chest. Blood swirled above them, pulsing from the stump of bone where her left thumb used to be. Serafina tried to swim to her but was roughly pushed down in her chair.

“Do you wish to help her?” a voice asked. The same voice that had instructed the others to remove her net.

Serafina searched for its source and saw a merman floating in the corner. He wore the black uniform of the Ondalinian invaders. His thick brown hair was cut short. He had a compact build and a cruel face.

“My name is Markus Traho,” he said. “I’m going to remove your gag. You are to use your voice only to speak. And only to me. Attempt to use magic and the canta magus loses her other thumb. Do you understand?”

Serafina glared at him but did not reply.

Traho pulled a dagger from a sheath at his hip. With a quick, fluid motion, he drove it into the arm of the chair in which Thalassa was sitting.

“I said, Do—you—understand?”

Serafina quickly nodded.

“Very good.”

Traho retrieved his dagger, then swam to her. He worked the tip of the knife under the strap of her gag then jerked the blade toward him.

Serafina spat out the gag. “What have you done to her?” she shouted.

“It wasn’t me, Principessa. It was the canta magus who cost herself a thumb,” Traho said, putting his dagger back in its sheath.

“Who are you working for? Kolfinn?”

“All in good time,” Traho said. “You’ve been summoned, have you not?”

“Summoned? I’ve been brought here against my will,” Serafina said, furious.

Traho smiled thinly. “Very clever, Principessa.”

Serafina gave him a look of contempt. “I’m not trying to be clever. I’m trying to get answers. First Kolfinn breaks the permutavi. Now he attacks Cerulea, murders our merfolk—”

The blow was hard. And so quick Serafina never saw it coming. Her head snapped back. Light exploded behind her eyes. She stifled a cry. When the pain subsided, she sat up straight again and spat out a mouthful of blood.

Traho leaned over her, his face only inches from her own. “Dear Principessa, I don’t think you really do understand,” he said. “I ask the questions. You answer them.”

For the first time in her life, Serafina blessed her court and the hard lessons it had taught her. She fell back on those lessons now. Hiding her fear behind a mask, she forced herself to meet Traho’s gaze.

“I can’t answer a question I don’t understand,” she said coolly. “You didn’t summon me, you kidnapped me.”