Serafina’s jaw dropped. “What?” she said.
“Bal-ta-zaar,” Coco slowly repeated, as if speaking to an idiot. “First minister—”
“Yes, I heard you. How do you know that?”
“I’ve listened to lots of conchs since I came here. We can’t go out during the daytime, and there’s not much else to do. I like listening to conchs. I like the Ostrokon, too. A lot better than I liked the court. Sorry.”
Serafina smiled. “Don’t be. I do, too,” she said.
“So as I was saying,” Coco continued. “Baltazaar was, like, Merrow’s accountant. He went on the Progress and conched everything. It took me two days to get through just five of those conchs. He is so boring. He talked about everything they packed. Everything they used. Everything they wore. Everything they said. Everything they did. Everything they saw. Everywhere they stopped—”
“Everywhere they stopped?” Serafina cut in.
“Yes.”
“Can you show me where those conchs are?” Serafina asked, trying to hide her excitement.
“Sure,” Coco said. “Come on.”
“One moment, please,” said Fossegrim. “The death riders sweep the Ostrokon regularly. Coco, you must act as lookout while the principessa studies the conchs. We can take no chances. You’re both to be back here by midnight.”
Coco saluted.
But Serafina protested. “I can’t do that, Magistro. I have to get through these conchs as fast as I can. I’m going to work through the night, the day, and the next night too, if I have to.”
Fossegrim shook his head. “Too dangerous,” he said. “For you and us.”
“I have no choice. I need to find some very important information before Traho does.”
Fossegrim thought about this, then said, “Take two baskets with you. Put as many conchs as you can carry in them and bring them back here. It won’t be as quiet, but it will be safer.”
Coco grabbed a couple of baskets that were on the floor, then swam up to the trapdoor. Serafina picked up two lava torches and followed her, desperately hoping that First Minister Baltazaar could tell her what she needed to know.
“HE SUFFERS. A LOT,” Coco said as she and Serafina swam to Level Three. Both mermaids carried a basket in one hand and a lava torch in the other.
“Who?”
“Fossegrim. He hardly sleeps. Barely eats. He blames himself for everything that’s happened. For the destruction of the Ostrokon. For the theft of the conchs. Niccolo tells him there was nothing he could have done, but Fossegrim doesn’t listen.”
“Poor Fossegrim,” Serafina said. “My grandmother once told me how protective he was of the Ostrokon and its collections, even as a young ostroko. She said it was always clear that he would become a liber magus.”
Fossegrim had described Traho’s attack on the Ostrokon to Sera after he’d led her to the bunker. Several ostroki had been killed trying to fight him off.
“I bet Fossegrim didn’t tell you how hard he fought. Or what they did to him,” Coco said. “Traho’s soldiers beat him so badly, he lost consciousness. Then they left him for dead. Luckily, Niccolo and the others were hiding in the stacks. They waited until Traho left, then they dragged Fossegrim to the sub-basement. They saved his life. We’ve all been down there ever since. Teaching ourselves how to fight back. We named ourselves Black Fins in honor of Fossegrim. We enchanted our fins to match his. Outside, of course. You know how he is about casting in the Ostrokon.” She held up her tail fins. They were a deep, glossy black. “We’re doing pretty well,” she added, smiling proudly. “Cutting off the lava supply really screwed things up at the palace. Finding enough food is the hardest thing for us. I’m better than anyone else at it. I find a lot of stuff in the wrecked houses.” Her smile faded. “I find the owners sometimes too. But I’m getting used to dead people.”
“Why are you in the Ostrokon, Coco? Where’s your family?” asked Serafina.
“Gone.”
Serafina heard a catch in the merl’s voice. She glanced at her—in time to see her brush at her eyes.
“What happened?”
Coco shook her head. The gray sand shark who’d been following in their wake circled worriedly around her.
“Please tell me,” Serafina said, putting an arm around her.
“They came into the palace,” she said. “The death riders. They were rounding everyone up. My parents heard them coming and tried to protect us. My mother cast a transparensea pearl for me and told me to swim up to the ceiling. She was casting one for Ellie when the death riders broke the door down. Ellie was screaming. My mom, too. My dad tried to fight them off, but they beat him up. I watched it all happen. Then they took them.”
Coco was looking ahead into the dark waters as she spoke, but Serafina knew she wasn’t seeing anything nearby. She was seeing her family being brutalized.
“I was so scared,” Coco said. “As soon as the soldiers left, I swam out of the palace. I went straight to the Ostrokon, because it was the safest place I could think of. I hid on Level Four for days. I ate the food at the TideSide. Alessandra and Domenico found me.”
“I’m so sorry, Coco,” Serafina said, her heart aching for the child.
Coco nodded. “Come on, we should keep going,” she said, swimming off.
She doesn’t want me to see her cry, Serafina thought. Rage burned constantly in her heart these days, but once in a while—like now—it flared high. What had happened to Fossegrim and Coco were two more crimes to add to Traho’s tally. She would tell her uncle of them when he swam home with his goblin armies. Traho would pay for his crimes. Vallerio would make sure of it.
“We’re here. Level Three,” Coco said a few minutes later, shining her globe on the writing over the doorway. “We’ll need a sentry,” she added. “Abby, go keep an eye out up top, will you?” The little sand shark nodded. “Abelard’s the best lookout ever. He senses movement way before I do. If the death riders show up, he’ll be down here in two seconds flat.”
Abelard took off. Sera watched him go. “You haven’t seen Sylvestre, have you?” she asked wistfully.
“Not since the attack,” Coco replied. “I sneak into the palace as often as I can to look for medicine, food, weapons—anything the resistance can use. He’s not there.”
Sera nodded sadly. She missed Sylvestre and hoped he’d somehow escaped the death riders, but she realized she’d probably never find out what had happened to him.
“Come on, Coco. We’ve got a lot to do,” she said.
The two mermaids entered the listening room. It was as black as the abyss inside. All the lava globes had burned out.
“The government records are shelved by year, and then subject—ouch!” Coco yelped as she whacked her tail against an overturned chair. “I can’t see a thing in here.” She held up her torch, and then swam to the back of the room. “One thirty-six…no, that’s not what we want,” she said, peering at the shelves. She moved to the right. Serafina followed her. “There’s ninety-eight…sixty-seven…twenty-nine…Here we go…ten anno Merrow.”
Coco ran her index finger along the front of the shelves as she spoke. “K…L…We need the Ps…Here they are…Parliamentary Minutes…Prison Budget…Privy Council…Progress, Merrow’s!” She shined her light over the shelf. “Looks like about twenty conchs in all. We’ll be able to fit them into—”
Her words were cut off by the sudden arrival of Abelard. He nipped her shoulder.
“Death riders?”
Abelard nodded.
“Hurry, Principessa,” Coco said, sweeping shells into the basket. Serafina followed her lead.
The mermaids couldn’t carry the heavy baskets and the lava torches, so they put the torches on top of the baskets, then swam out of the listening room as fast as they could.
When they got into the hallway, they heard voices. Sera guessed the death riders were only a level away. She could feel their heavy vibrations.
Go! she mouthed, hoping she and Coco could g
et far enough down the hallway so that the glow from the torches didn’t give them away.
Coco lurched forward, struggling with the weight of her basket. The jerky motion unbalanced the torch, with its round glass globe. It started rocking from side to side. Coco tried to steady it by moving the basket, but that only made things worse. The torch rolled across the conchs to the side of the basket.
Serafina gasped. If it slipped off and hit the floor, the death riders would hear it.
“Abby!” Coco hissed.
Abelard turned around just as the torch fell. He zipped over to it and managed to catch the globe on the tip of his nose just inches off the floor. He nudged it back up into the basket, did a quick about-face, and shot off down the hallway. Serafina and Coco followed, swimming flat out.
“Hang on a minute…do you feel something?” a voice said. A death rider’s voice.
“No, do you?”
“I thought so. Maybe not.” There was a pause, then, “Tell Fabio to bring the hound sharks down. Better safe than sorry.”
“Fabi-o!”
“What?”
“Unleash the hounds!”
“Do I have to? I want to get out of here. I hate this place.”
“Gotta do it. If the Ostrokon blows up tomorrow and we didn’t sweep it, it’s our tails.”
“Go, Coco! Swim!” Serafina whispered, wild with fear.
Finally, they got to the basement. Abelard had alerted Fossegrim by butting his nose against the trapdoor.
“Get inside,” Fossegrim said, holding the door open. “Hurry!”
As Serafina passed him, he opened a reed cage full of fish. “Go!” he ordered them in Pesca. “Head for the surface.” The fish rushed out—forty at least.
He looked at the far side of the basement. “Hide us. Hurry!” he said in RaySay. As he pulled the trapdoor closed, two rays rose from the floor. They nudged a basket filled with broken conchs over the door, then disappeared back into the gloom.
Only seconds later, Sera, Fossegrim and the others heard hound sharks baying overhead and death riders yelling at them. No one moved. They barely dared to breathe.
“It was nothing, you dumbwrasse!” one of the death riders yelled. “Just a bunch of blennies! I’ll never get the hounds back now. They’ll chase those fish all the way to Tsarno.”
The soldiers’ voices trailed off. Fossegrim waited. A minute went by, then another. No more sounds were heard. He leaned his head against the door, let out a sigh of relief, and turned to Serafina.
“I hope those conchs were worth it,” he said.
Trembling, Sera said, “So do I.”
SERAFINA STRETCHED. She yawned. She leaned her head from side to side and cracked the bones in her neck.
“You should get some sleep,” Niccolo said. He nodded at the conchs she’d spread out on a table. “How’s it going?”
“Not so well,” Serafina replied.
She was losing hope in Baltazaar. She only had two more conchs to go, and still had no idea where Merrow had hid the talismans.
She’d begun listening to the conchs as soon as the death riders left the Ostrokon. She’d worked through the remainder of that night, and the following day—stopping only once to nap for a few hours. That day was now ending and her second night in the bunker was beginning.
Meanwhile, Niccolo and the others, who’d slept all day, were beginning to stir. They’d tunneled under the palace and had placed a large pile of explosives under the Janiçari’s old barracks—which now housed some of Traho’s troops. They planned to detonate the explosives in a few days’ time and blow the barracks to bits.
Serafina picked up another conch, cracked and yellowed with age. Only the one listening to a conch could hear the sounds within it, and Sera was glad of that. Knowledge of the talismans was dangerous, and she didn’t want to put Fossegrim and the others at any additional risk.
As she pressed the shell to her ear, Baltazaar’s now all-too-familiar voice started speaking.
Last night, when she’d listened to the first conch, it had been amazing to hear the faint words of a long-dead merman coming to her across the millennia. She’d struggled a little at first to understand him since he spoke an old form of Mermish, but the more she listened, the more familiar his ancient words became. He told of how Merrow went on a progress to find new waters for the mer. The regina and her ministers had investigated everything, he explained: kelp forests, plankton-rich shallows, abyssal plains, seamounts, and crevasses, and hazards, too.
She was very brave, Baltazaar said, and examined all dangers with no regard for her personal safety, noting size, location, and description of each, so that she might warn her people away from them.
Coco was right—Baltazaar was boring. He went on and on, exhaustively listing every tent, bowl, cup, spear, pen, spoon, and saddle taken on the expedition. Every water apple, flatworm, and eel berry eaten. Every boulder, reef, and cave they saw. One hour in, Serafina wanted to bang the conch on the table. Two hours in, she wanted to bang her head on the table.
She had persevered, however, writing down on a piece of kelp parchment every hazard Baltazaar mentioned. The Deathlands of Qin, where underwater vents spewed sulfur and smoke; freshwater lakes so hot they boiled anything that fell into them; the lands of the Kobold goblins; and the caves of the Näkki—murderous shapeshifters in the northern Atlantic.
Now Niccolo and his fellow resistance fighters waved good-bye to Fossegrim and Sera as they headed out on their night’s duties. Fossegrim gave them stern warnings to be careful. Sera waved back, then continued adding to her list of hazards, noting down the EisGeists of the Arctic Ocean, the Grindylows of the English Channel, the Gates of Hell in the Congo River. Three hours later, she picked up the last of Baltazaar’s conchs. She’d written down over a hundred dangerous places.
This is totally hopeless, she thought, looking at the list. We couldn’t search all these places if we had a thousand years. I’ve wasted so much time. She wondered what Traho had learned from the conchs he’d taken. He might be holding one of the talismans in his hands right now.
Sighing, she looked at the very last shell. On the acquisition and maintenance of hippokamps was written on it. With special regard to expenditures on provender and medicaments.
No way, Serafina thought. I can’t do it. I can’t waste any more time on this. She was about to put the conch back into the basket, but something made her stop. I’ve started this; I should finish it, she thought. Her mother had always insisted on that, whether it meant practicing a songspell until it was perfect, reworking a thesis until it was polished, or brushing Clio herself after a long ride, instead of handing her off to a groom.
Sera held the conch to her ear, expecting to hear Baltazaar drone on about the high price of sea straw. Instead, his voice was brisk and aggrieved.
“I attended the meeting of the regina’s privy council in her tent this morning,” he said, “in order to raise the topic of her evening rides, the too-frequent destruction of good hippokamps on said rides, and the high cost of procuring new animals in foreign waters. Since there are no mer where we go, we must buy from Kobold or Näkki traders. They know we have no alternative and price their stock accordingly. I pointed out that the rides are dangerous not only to our animals, but to the regina herself. Several times we’ve had to engage the services of local healers for her as well as her mounts. She would not be dissuaded by me, however, and claimed she needs time alone at the end of the day to order her thoughts. These rides are a reckless occupation and I note it here so that upon our return, any charges of profligacy with the realm’s monies will be leveled at the deserving party, not the innocent one.”
Serafina sat up, puzzled. Good riders didn’t injure their animals, never mind destroy them. And Merrow had been many things, but reckless was not one of them. What had she been doing during these rides? How many mounts had she lost? Sera continued to listen, writing down the casualties as Baltazaar dictated them.
White stal
lion bought to replace animal lost to the maelstrom off the coast of Lochlanach, 500 trocii.
“Lochlanach…that’s an old mer name for Greenland,” Serafina said. She remembered Vrăja saying that Orfeo had come from Greenland. Her fins started to prickle.
Paint gelding bought to replace animal lost to a dragon in its breeding grounds, 400 trocii. Healer’s charges for the Regina’s injuries, 30 trocii.
Dragons lived and bred in one place only—the Indian Ocean. “Navi had come from India.”
Gray mare bought to replace animal swept away by the wind spirit Williwaw in the waters of Hornos, 350 trocii.
Hornos was what the early mer called Cape Horn, on the shores of Atlantica—Pyrrha’s home.
Bay stallion to replace animal eaten by Okwa Naholo in swamps of the river Mechasipi, 600 trocii.
“The Mississippi. A Freshwater realm,” Serafina said. “Nyx lived on its banks.”
Roan mare to replace animal lost on slopes of Great Abyss, 400 trocii.
That was in Qin, upon whose shores Sycorax had dwelt.
Dapple gelding bought to replace animal stranded on the shores of Iberia, 700 trocii. Healer’s services to regina for wound from terragogg fishing spear, 40 trocii.
That would be the Spanish coast of the Mediterranean Sea, Merrow’s realm. Iberia was an old word for Spain.
As Baltazaar began complaining about the cost of saddles, Serafina put the conch down. Merrow had ridden to places so dangerous they led to the deaths of her hippokamps six times. In each of the six water realms.
“For each of the six talismans,” Sera said aloud.
Her pulse quickened. She was certain there had been a method to Merrow’s madness. Merrow had been close to the other five mages—even Orfeo, before he became evil—and she’d lost them all during the destruction of Atlantis. Their bodies had not been recovered. She’d had no remains to mourn. No funeral dirges had been sung. Had she carried their talismans to hiding places in waters near their original homes as a way of putting their souls to rest? Sera wondered.
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