Rogue Wave (Waterfire Saga #2)(25)

“Why did you join the Praedatori?” she asked. She wanted to hear the whole story, from the beginning.

“Serafina, I can’t break—”

“Your vow? Sorry, that catfish is out of the bag. And besides, you didn’t break it. Not technically. You didn’t tell me. I guessed.”

Mahdi took a deep breath. “It all started soon after I returned home from Miromara. After it was decided we were to be betrothed. I sent you conchs at first, do you remember?”

“Remember? I lived for them,” Serafina said.

“I didn’t choose to stop sending them. My messenger—Kamau—was taken. With two of my closest friends—Ravi and Jai.”

“What do you mean taken?”

“They were traveling back together from Miromara and stopped for the night at a village about twenty leagues from Matali City. The village was raided. Khelefu, the grand vizier, came to tell me. He brought me Kamau’s bag. It was found at the inn where they’d stayed. There was a conch in it for me from you, a necklace he’d bought for his merlfriend, and a study conch. Kamau was cramming for the entrance exam to our military college. Ravi and Jai had been on a year abroad at the university in Tsarno…”

Mahdi shook his head, overcome by emotion. “Yaz and I, we grew up with those guys. They were more than friends; they were our brothers. We asked Khelefu what was being done. He said the proper forms had been filled out and a battalion of soldiers had been sent to the village, but they’d found nothing. Other villages had been raided too. No one knew who was behind it. I asked him to send more soldiers. To widen the search area. He told me that would be highly unusual and that additional forms would have to be submitted.”

Serafina knew that Mahdi chafed under the burden of Matali’s archaic bureaucracy.

“I couldn’t just sit there while my people were being stolen,” Mahdi continued. “I asked our high commander if Yaz and I could go out with the soldiers, but he said it was too dangerous. So we went to the chief of the Secret Service. He asked us how we were going to help—by going undercover? He laughed at the idea. Everyone in the entire kingdom knew who we were. I got angry then. Really angry. I’d lost three friends and couldn’t do a thing about it. Yaz felt the same way. In fact, the thing we did? It was his idea.”

Serafina raised an eyebrow. “What thing that you did?” she asked.

“We snuck to the stables with four more friends, got some hippokamps, and took off. We went to search for Kamau, Ravi, and Jai. We were gone for two days. No one could find us. It kind of caused an uproar.”

“I bet it did,” said Serafina. “You’re the heir to the throne! What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t thinking. Not then, and not for a long time after,” he said.

“What do you mean?

Mahdi looked up at the ceiling. “I knew about the raids. They’d been happening in Matali for over a year. I’d heard the reports. But I’d never actually seen one of the raided villages. It was horrible, Sera. The worst thing I’d ever seen. Some of the villagers must’ve tried to fight. There were bloodstains on the walls and floors of houses. They scribbled notes and left them behind. Please tell my wife….Please help us….They’ve got my children….”

Serafina leaned her head against Mahdi’s shoulder. She was silent. She had learned that when pain was very deep, you shouldn’t talk. You should listen.

“I lost it,” Mahdi said. “Totally. I was grieving for my friends and for the stolen villagers. I wished I could talk to you and missed you like crazy and I couldn’t even get a conch to you, not without Kamau. He was the only one I trusted with something so private. I was first in line to the throne, the second most powerful merman in the realm, but I couldn’t do anything to help anyone. I kind of went off the deep end.” His jacket was still open. He touched his fingers to his chest, to the place over his heart, and drew out a bloodsong, wincing slightly.

Serafina watched the crimson swirl through the water and the images coalesce. A few seconds later, she sat up straight. Her jaw dropped open. She could not believe what she was seeing.

Mahdi and Yaz were at a club playing a spirited game of drupes, in which players took turns trying to bounce a shiny silver coin into a cup of brack. Whoever got the coin in handed the cup to another player to drink. The two of them had obviously been handed most of the cups, because a minute later, they were on the club’s stage, kicking up their tails in the middle of a showmerl chorus line. A few hours later, they were at a piercing parlor getting gold hoops in their ears.

Serafina saw other memories. Of breakneck hippokamp races and games of Dump the Dude, in which they knocked gogg surfers off their boards. Of raucous shoals, and huge bets made on caballabong matches. There were memories of out-of-control waves that went on all night and ended up with Yaz passed out on top of a turret and Mahdi hanging off a spire one-handed, yelling, “Serafina! SERAFINA!” before he was stopped by the Imperial Guards.

“Wow,” Serafina said now, as the bloodsong faded into the water.

“Yep,” Mahdi said. “’Fraid so. That went on for about a year and then one night—or morning, rather—when the two of us woke up on the floor of a nightclub, a man was standing there. The duca. In trousers, leather shoes, and a tweed jacket.”