Rogue Wave (Waterfire Saga #2)(12)
Someone else had been right, too, and Sera hadn’t acknowledged it. If she didn’t do it now, she might never get the chance again.
“Hey, Ling?”
“Mmm?” Ling said, chewing a limpet.
“Before we head out, there’s something I need to say….I’m sorry for not listening to you. Back near the Dun?rea. When you said I had to face the fact that my mother might not be alive.”
“Forget it, Sera. You already apologized for that.”
“No, I didn’t. I apologized for going shoaling, not for refusing to listen to you. You tried to make me see what I needed to do. You said that omnivoxas had a responsibility to speak not only words, but the truth. You never backed down from that responsibility, even when I was being angry and stupid. I just want you to know that I think that’s really brave.”
Ling shrugged. “I used to get picked on a lot. Back home. I had to develop guts early on. You need them to take on your enemies.”
“And your friends,” Sera said ruefully.
Ling laughed. The two mermaids finished eating, and then it was time to leave.
“Gotta go save the world,” Ling said, picking up her bag.
“Take care of yourself,” Serafina said, hugging her tightly.
“You too,” said Ling, hugging her back.
As Sera swam away, she glanced back at Ling. Her friend looked so small in the distance, so alone.
“Yes, we have to save the world, Ling…but who’s going to save us?” she wondered aloud.
And then she turned and began the long journey home.
“YOU ARE NOT the Princess Neela,” sniffed Matali’s subassistant to the third minister of the interior under the oversecretary of the Emperor’s Chamber. “The Princess Neela wouldn’t be caught dead dressed like that. You are an imposter. Obviously disturbed. Possibly dangerous. You must leave the palace right now or I shall call the guards.”
Neela groaned. She’d been arguing with the subassistant, the gatekeeper to the Emperor’s Chamber, for a solid ten minutes. And that was after she’d argued with the executive assistant to the keeper of the portcullis, the senior assistant to the chamberlain of the Emperor’s Courtyard, and the assistant chief steward, twice removed, of the exterior grand foyer.
She’d arrived at the palace an hour ago. After diving into the mirror inside the river witches’ Incantarium, she’d gotten lost in Vadus, and it had taken her a long time to find her way out again. Finally another mirror got her to a Matali dress shop. Luckily, the place was so busy, no one noticed when she’d suddenly appeared in the dressing room. Never had she been so happy to be home. As she’d swum out of the shop, she’d spotted the palace and as always, the very sight of it—with its gleaming golden domes, its soaring rock crystal colonnades, and vaulted archways—had taken her breath away.
The heart of the palace was an enormous white marble octagon, flanked by towers. Matali’s flag—a red banner featuring a Razormouth dragon with a silver-blue egg in its claws—fluttered from each one. The palace had been built by Emperor Ranajit ten centuries ago, on a deepwater rock shelf off the southwestern coast of India. When subsequent emperors ran out of room on the original shelf, they built on nearby outcroppings and connected the old to the new with covered marble bridges. Slender and graceful, the passageways allowed the courtiers and ministers who lived on the outcroppings to travel to and from the palace without having their robes of state rumpled by the currents.
As Neela had drawn near, she’d seen that the palace looked different. Its windows had been shuttered, and its gateways locked. Members of the Pānī Yōd’dhā’ō?, Matali’s water warriors, patrolled the perimeter.
“Excuse me, can you tell me what’s going on? Why is the palace surrounded by guards?” she’d asked a passing merman.
“Have you been living under a rock? We’re preparing for war! The emperor and empress have been assassinated. The crown prince is missing. All of Matali is under martial law,” the merman had said. “Ondalina’s behind it all—mark my words.”
Neela was so stunned she’d had to sit down. The man’s words felt like a knife to her heart. During the chaos of the attack on Cerulea, she had become separated from her family. In the days that followed, she’d assumed they’d been taken prisoner, but she never thought the invaders would kill them. Her Uncle Bilaal and Aunt Ahadi…dead. Grief had hit her full on. She’d lowered her head into her hands. Why? Her uncle had been a just ruler, and her aunt kind and good-hearted. And Mahdi…he was missing. That meant her parents were now emperor and empress. Was Yazeed with them? Had he escaped the carnage?
After a few minutes, Neela had picked her head up. Sitting on a bench, she realized, was helping no one. “Get up and do something,” she’d told herself.
She’d fought her way through guards and bureaucrats to get to the Emperor’s Chamber and now she wanted to go inside it. She needed to see her parents and tell them all that had happened. What she didn’t need was to spend one more minute arguing with the subassistant.
“I am the princess! I was in Cerulea when it was invaded. I’ve been on the swim ever since. That’s why I look like this!” she shouted, slapping her tail fin in frustration.
“Ah! You see? More evidence that you are an imposter,” the subassistant said smugly. “The Princess Neela never shouts.”