Deep Blue (Waterfire Saga, #1)(54)

Mfeme faced the Sprite. “What net?” he shouted at Captain Bowen. “You have nothing on me!”

“We got it on tape, Mfeme!” Captain Bowen shouted, holding up a video camera. “You’re headed to court!”

Serafina didn’t stay to hear any more. Neela was already underwater. Sera dove and joined her. Together, they pulled the net open, freeing Ling and the shad. The fish, coughing and gasping, quickly swam away. Ling sank to the seafloor, bruised and bleeding. Her wrist was bent at a sickening angle.

“I’m sorry, Ling,” Serafina said tearfully. “It’s all my fault. It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t gone shoaling. I’m so, so sorry.”

“The gogg’s the one who should be sorry,” Ling said. “He nearly killed me.”

“He’s Rafe Mfeme,” Neela said. “He nearly killed us, too. At the duca’s.”

Serafina remembered what Duca Armando had told them about Mfeme: he was in league with Ondalina, and in his trawlers he’d transported the very troops that had invaded Cerulea.

“Stay with her, Neela. I’ll be right back,” she suddenly said.

“Where are you going?” Neela asked.

“To see what I can learn about Mfeme.”

Serafina sped to the surface and cautiously poked her head up, wary of being seen. But no one was watching the water. Mfeme’s crew had brought the Bedrie?r alongside the Sprite, and Mfeme himself had boarded her. Serafina heard shouts and threats, and then Mfeme ripped the video camera out of the captain’s hands and tossed it overboard. A young man rushed at him. Mfeme threw him overboard, too. As two of the young man’s shipmates tried to haul him back into the boat, Mfeme advanced on a woman, grabbed a cell phone out of her hands, and pitched it into the water.

“You want to follow it?” he shouted at her. Frightened, she backed away from him.

A fast, powerful man, he seemed to be everywhere, all at once. Serafina quickly swam aft and saw him bring a heavy wrench down on the ship-to-shore radio. “I’m warning you, all of you! Stay the hell away from me!” he yelled. He threw the wrench aside, reboarded his ship, and barked orders to depart.

As his crew made ready, Mfeme rested his hands on his ship’s gunwale. “She’s headed for the Dun?rea, Nils,” he said to a crew member. “I want her. Now. Before she gets to the Olt. There are others with her. I want them all.”

Serafina dove. The waters of the harbor were shallow. Neela and Ling were sitting on the seafloor about thirty feet below the ship.

“We’re out of here,” she said, when she reached them.

“Ling can’t swim. Her wrist is broken.”

Serafina looked at Ling. She was cradling her arm to her chest. Her face was gray with pain.

“You’re going to have to,” she said to her. “Mfeme wants you. Us, too. He knows we’re heading to the Olt.”

“How?” Ling asked.

“I don’t know. We’ve. Got. To. Go.”

“We need to help her, Sera. She’s in a lot of pain,” Neela said.

Serafina looked around. Her eyes fell on the fishing net. “We could lay her on the net and drag it behind us,” she said.

“Oh, I’m sure she’d love that, considering it almost killed her. And besides, it’s hard to swim dragging a net! We won’t be able to propel ourselves fast enough to—”

“Wait a minute, Neela…that’s it!”

“What’s it?”

“We can jam the propeller! That’ll stop him. And give us a head start.”

“With what? Our magic doesn’t work against this ship.”

“With the net. Ling, sit tight. Neela, give me a hand.” The two mermaids picked up the net, dragged it to the ship, and began to wind it around the propeller’s fearsome blades.

“Hurry, Sera. If this starts up, we’re chum,” Neela said.

As they worked, Sera thought she heard voices. Was it mer? They sounded strange—nearby, yet muffled. She stopped and looked around warily. There was no one else in the water.

“Neela, did you hear that?” she asked.

“I didn’t hear any—”

And then they both heard it.

A wail, high-pitched and desperate. Coming from inside the Bedrie?r.

Sera swam to the ship and pressed her ear against its hull. Neela did the same. But neither mermaid heard anything further.

“Maybe it’s shad,” Serafina said uneasily. “One of Mfeme’s crew said they couldn’t have the coast guard board them because of what they had in the hold. An illegal catch, probably.”

“Sera…oh, my gods. Oh, Sera.”

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

Neela couldn’t speak anymore. Her hands were pressed to her mouth. Serafina followed her gaze. On the seabed below, maybe twenty feet off the ship’s port side, were bodies. At least a dozen of them.

Serafina uttered a strangled cry. She swam down to them, hoping that what her eyes were telling her wasn’t true. But it was. They were dead. Some were lying on their backs, others facedown. Some had the kind of open, gaping wounds that were made by a speargun. Others had bruises on their faces. Many had their wrists tied behind their backs. Almost all the women had braids in their hair, and all the men wore seaflax tunics—styles favored by rural mer in these waters.