Rogue Wave (Waterfire Saga #2)(21)

It’s probably a regimental flag, Sera thought.

She tore it off the wall and threw it on the floor. Then she took a bottle of wine from the bar and doused the flag, ruining it. She pulled the lipstick Filomena had given her out of her bag and scrawled Merrovingia regere hic on the wall. She used Latin, the language of history. Because she was determined to make some.

“When the sea scum come to, translate for them,” she said to the barman. “Tell them what this says: the Merrovingia rule here.”

And then she was gone, out of the club and down the dark current, swimming fast for the open waters of the Adriatic. For Cerulea.

For home.





IT WAS NEARLY MIDNIGHT when Serafina reached the walls of her city—or what was left of them. The route had been difficult to navigate because familiar landmarks had been destroyed or obscured and lava globes had been broken. She’d taken a back current and swum low to avoid detection. She hadn’t seen another soul on the way.

Only a few globes sputtered weakly above the East Gate now. Sera swam through the archway and stopped dead. She took a few more stumbling strokes then slowly sank through the water until she was sitting in the silt.

“No,” she said, unable to believe her eyes. “No.”

Her beloved city was in ruins.

Serafina had fled when Cerulea first fell under attack. She hadn’t witnessed the full force of the invaders’ destruction. All that remained of the thicket of Devil’s Tail that once floated protectively above the city were stumps where the vines had been hacked away. Huge sections of the wall that surrounded Cerulea had caved in. The ancient stone houses that once lined the Corrente Regina were now piles of rubble. Temples to the sea gods and goddesses had been pulled down. Worst of all, a terrible silence had descended. Serafina knew that the heart of a city was its people, and Cerulea’s were gone.

Tears threatened, but she held them back. Grief was a luxury she could no longer afford. The sun would be up in only a few hours and the waters would lighten. She remembered the duca’s warning not to be seen, to find a safe house. She had come here to find the locations of the talismans. That’s what would defeat her enemies. That’s what would help her people. Not sitting in the silt, crying.

She started up the Corrente Regina. There were only a few lava globes left to light her way. In their flickering half-light she could see the broken windows of looted shops and the remains of hippokamps killed in the fighting. Wild dogfish roamed in packs, feasting on carrion, or growling from the shadows.

Sera swam across a deserted intersection, turned a bend, and saw the royal palace, high on its hill. It was the only building that was still illuminated. Some of the damage inflicted by the Blackclaws had been repaired, but not all of it. A large chunk of the east outer wall was still missing. Sera remembered how the dragons had battered their way through it and into her mother’s stateroom.

Scores of soldiers rode in and out of the west wing of the palace on hippokamps. They must be using it as their base, she thought. Her eyes followed the riders. She wondered if her own hippokamp, Clio, now belonged to them. And her pet octopus, Sylvestre—had he survived the attack?

Staying in the shadows, she continued up the current until she reached the Ostrokon. Its large, ornate pediment had fallen to the sea floor, and its entrance was filled with debris. She thought about Fossegrim, the elderly liber magus, the keeper of knowledge. He would never have willingly allowed the invaders to enter this place of learning and peace. The death riders had surely killed him.

Sera peered up and down the current, then shot across it. She skimmed over the rubble, darted inside the Ostrokon, and hid behind a pillar, hoping no one had seen her. Much of the first level was still intact. The front desk was undamaged. A pair of eyeglasses still rested upon it, as if its owner had just swum away for a minute. Here and there, broken conchs littered the floor.

Like all ostrokons, Cerulea’s was modeled on the nautilus shell. It had twelve levels, in honor of the twelve full moons of the year and their importance to the seas. While the nautilus’s chambers were sealed off from one another, those of the Ostrokon opened off a tall central hallway, and it was this hallway Serafina swam down now. She knew where she needed to go—to Level Six, where the collection of conchs on early Merrovingian history were kept.

The water became inky as she descended, so she grabbed a lava torch off a wall. The spiraling hallway, usually so familiar to her, felt eerie now. Doorways loomed at the left and right like giant, gaping mouths. Schools of thick-lipped blennies and bright orange wrasses—usually shooed out by the ostroki—swam silently through them.

As she rounded the bend to the fifth level, a movement startled her. She whipped out her dagger.

“Who’s there?” she called out.

There was no answer.

“I’m not afraid to use this!” she shouted.

A low growl rose. Serafina slowly raised her torch, holding it—and her knife—out in front of her. She saw sleek gray bodies flash by, black eyes, sharp teeth. It was a pack of dogfish. She didn’t know what they were doing in here. Or why they were so aggressive. And then the stench told her. She lowered her torch to illuminate the floor and saw the dead merman they’d been eating.

“Easy, pups,” she said with a shiver, moving on. “I’m not here to steal your dinner.”

Finally she arrived at Level Six. She hurried inside and swam to the shelves where the conchs on Merrow’s Progress were stored. When she reached them, she held up her torch, ready to grab a conch and start listening.