Waterfire Saga, Book Four: Sea Spell: Deep Blue Novel, A (5 page)

“It only gets harder, not easier. You don’t know what it’s like. To rule, to be responsible for so many lives…”

“You’re right, I don’t. But I know
you
.”

A lump rose in Sera’s throat. She squeezed Ling’s hand, feeling lucky to have her for a friend. “Thank you for listening,” she said. “You’re always there when I need you.”

Ling squeezed back. “And I always will be,” she said, releasing Sera’s hand. “But now I need you to listen. I have an idea. That’s why I’m here. I’ve come up with a way to catch the spy.”

Sera’s eyes widened. “What is it?”

“A ruse. A pretty big one. To pull it off, I need to borrow Sycorax’s puzzle ball.”

Sera blinked, speechless. When she found her voice again, she said, “Ling, have you lost your freaking
mind
?”

“No, I haven’t. I need the puzzle ball, Sera,” Ling insisted.

“Ling, it’s a
talisman
. A gift from a god. It’s priceless and powerful and my uncle, and Orfeo, they’ve killed
thousands
trying to get it. They don’t know we have it. Only our inner circle knows. If the spy ever found out—”

“The spy
has
to find out.”

“What?”
Sera said, convinced now that Ling had
definitely
lost her mind.

“Try as we might, we haven’t been able to reveal the spy,” said Ling. “So I’m going to get the spy to reveal himself.”

Sera shook her head. “No way,” she said. “I can’t let you take the puzzle ball. It’s too risky.”

Ling leaned forward. “A moment ago, you said Vallerio’s bleeding us to death. He’s doing more than that. He’s circling for the kill.”

Ling’s words struck Sera with the force of a gale wind. They were rough, and terrifying. Worse yet, they were true. She decided to hear her friend out.

“What, exactly, would you do with the puzzle ball?” she asked.

“Start a rumor,” Ling replied. “Sycorax was Atlantis’s chief justice, right?”

Sera nodded.

“I’m going to let it get out that we’ve got the puzzle ball, and there’s something inside it that Sycorax used to help her tell the innocent from the guilty.”

“But you
don’t
know what’s inside it,” Sera said, confused. “Nobody does. Because the puzzle hasn’t been solved. You only
believe
there’s something inside it.”

“It doesn’t matter what I believe,” Ling said impatiently. “Don’t you see? All that matters is what the
spy
believes.”

Understanding dawned on Sera. “I
think
I see where you’re going with this,” she said, her fins prickling with excitement.

Ling sat forward in her chair. “I’m an omnivoxa,” she said, her eyes sparking with intensity. “My gift is communication. But sometimes, to really communicate, it’s necessary to listen instead of talk. What I’m listening for now is the voice of one who’s hurting.”

“Go on,” Sera said, trying to follow where Ling was leading.

“Pain needs to speak,” Ling continued. “It needs to be heard. If it isn’t let out, it grows inside, pushing out everything bright and good until it’s the only thing left. I know this, Sera. It happened to my mother. She was hurting so badly after my dad disappeared, she turned away from everyone, including me.”

“I didn’t realize that,” Sera said. When Ling had appeared in camp, she’d told them how she’d escaped from a prison camp and found the puzzle ball, but she’d never said anything about her mother.

Ling gave her a rueful smile. “Some things are really hard to talk about, even for an omnivoxa. I was finally able to get through to her, but only after I learned to understand her pain. I bet that the spy’s in pain, too. What he’s doing—lying, deceiving, betraying his friends—it all comes from a dark place. His pain wants to speak, Sera. If I can coax it out, all we have to do is listen.”

Sera remembered Vrăja telling her,
Help Ling break through the silences.
Ling had broken through her mother’s silence, and in doing so had gained insight and wisdom. Now she was trying to break through the spy’s silence.

Ling’s plan was dangerous, but allowing the spy to remain at large was more dangerous.

“All right,” Sera finally said. “The puzzle ball is yours.”

She rose and swam to the niche in the cave’s wall where she kept the talismans that she and her friends had found: Sycorax’s puzzle ball, Merrow’s blue diamond, Pyrrha’s coin, and Navi’s moonstone. She undid the songspell that camouflaged the niche, then removed the ball.

The ancient talisman sat heavily in Sera’s hand. A phoenix decorated its surface. It was carved out of white coral and contained spheres within spheres. The spheres had holes in them. To solve the puzzle, one had to make the holes line up to reveal what was in the center of the ball.

Sera gave Ling the precious object.

“Thank you,” Ling said. “For the talisman, and for your trust.”

“Find him,” Sera said.
“Please.”

“I will, I promise,” said Ling. And then she swam out of the cave, head down, eyes on the puzzle ball, turning it over in her hands.

Sera watched her go, worry etched on her face.
She needs time to put her plan into play,
she thought.
And we don’t have any.

Eyes still glued to the puzzle ball, Ling bumped—literally—into a merman and a goblin on patrol. Ling excused herself, and the two soldiers asked her what she was doing. They were close enough that Sera could hear their conversation.

“We have a spy in our midst,” Ling solemnly told them.

The merman gripped his crossbow tightly. The goblin swore.

“Serafina’s so desperate to find him,” Ling continued, “that she gave me this….” She held up the puzzle ball.

“What is it?” the goblin asked, peering at the object.

“It’s a powerful, priceless talisman, given to Sycorax, a mage of Atlantis, by the gods,” Ling explained.

The goblin let out a low whistle. The merman’s eyebrows shot up.

“It contains something called the Arrow of Judgment, which can tell the innocent from the guilty,” Ling explained. “If I can solve the puzzle, the arrow will point out the spy.”

“I love puzzles,” the goblin said eagerly. “Let me have a try.”

He used his long claws to turn the inner spheres but couldn’t make them line up.

“Give it to me,” the merman said. But he couldn’t crack the puzzle either.

Ling heaved a worried sigh as he handed the talisman back to her. “I’ve
got
to get this solved. Can you ask around and find out who’s good with puzzles? Tell them to come to me. Anyone and everyone. Our lives depend on it.”

The soldiers said they would and moved on. Ling went in the other direction. Before the soldiers got very far, they met another pair on patrol and stopped to talk to them. Sera couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she saw them point toward Ling. The second pair hurried off to catch up with her.

She’ll have the whole camp talking about the spy and the Arrow of Judgment by breakfast,
Sera thought.
Goddess Neria, let that be a
good
thing.

T
HE LIQUID SILVER was tensile and bright, almost alive.

It swirled and lapped around Astrid as she picked herself up off the floor of a long, magnificent hallway.

How am I going to breathe this stuff?
she wondered, panicking.
I’ll suffocate!

She held her breath for as long as she could, then inhaled fearfully. The silver was cold and heavier than seawater, but her lungs accepted it. Relaxing a little, Astrid looked around. The hallway stretched into the silver in both directions, as far as she could see. Its walls were hung with mirrors of all shapes and sizes. Sparkling chandeliers dangled from the ceiling.

Vitrina moved through the hallway. Some idled in chairs or sat slumped against the walls, heads lolling, bodies limp—like puppets whose strings had been cut.

“This place gives me the creeps,” Astrid muttered, wishing, as she did a dozen times every day, that Desiderio was with her.

She missed all her friends, but him most of all, because he’d become more than a friend. The memory of the kiss he gave her right after he saved her from the Qanikkaaq, a murderous maelstrom, still made her catch her breath. Just before he kissed her, he’d told that he wanted to be with her. And she, too surprised to speak, hadn’t said anything. She regretted that now. She would tell him the same, and more. Much more. If she ever made it back to him.

Astrid was looking up and down the hallway, wondering which way to go, when a voice—oily and sly—spoke from behind her.

“!olleh, lleW”
it purred.

Astrid whipped around. A man, heavyset and bald, was standing a few feet away. His hands were tucked into the bell-like sleeves of his magenta dressing gown.

Astrid thrust her sword at him, catching his chin with its point. He lifted his head, placed a fat finger on the sword, and gingerly pushed the blade away.

“.
rittodsnnifloK dirtsA, emocleW”

“I can’t understand you,” Astrid replied, her sword still raised. She’d deciphered her name—probably because the bloodbind had given her some of Ling’s language ability—but she couldn’t make out the rest of the man’s words.

“Ah! Pardon me,” said the man, in mer this time. “Not everyone speaks Rursus, do they? Welcome to the Hall of Sighs, Astrid Kolfinnsdottir. I’m Rorrim Drol. I’ve been expecting you.”

Astrid stiffened. “How do you know my name?”

“My dear friend Orfeo told me about you. We’ve known each other for years, he and I. We deal in the same”—Rorrim smiled, revealing a mouthful of pointed teeth—“
commodities
.”

Astrid tightened her grip on her sword. “Orfeo’s here?” she asked warily. “Where is he?”

Rorrim steepled his heavily jeweled fingers. “Let’s just say he’s in the neighborhood.”

“Can you take me to him?”

“For a price.”

“I have currensea,” said Astrid, lowering her sword. “How much do you want?”

Rorrim shook his head. “Trocii, drupes, cowries…they mean nothing to me,” he said. “It’s danklings I want.”

“What are those?”

“Your deepest fears,” Rorrim replied. As he spoke, he moved closer to Astrid. She suddenly felt a liquid chill run down her back, then a tearing pain.

“So strong,” Rorrim said unhappily, his eyes on the dark, squealing creature now pinched between his fingers.

“Did that…that
thing
come out of me?” Astrid asked, horrified.

“Yes,” Rorrim sighed. “But it’s so small, it’s barely enough for a snack.”

Astrid backed away from him. “Touch me again, and you’ll lose those fingers,” she growled, hefting her sword.

Rorrim popped the small, squealing dankling into his mouth, then swallowed it. “There’s not much you fear, is there?” he asked her, his eyes searching hers. “Only one thing, really, and he can remove it, if you let him.”

“There’s
nothing
I fear,” Astrid blustered. “Definitely not you and your weird mirror world.”

Rorrim smiled knowingly. “Not true. Not true at all,” he said, wagging a finger at her.

Then he spoke, but not in his voice.

“Who wants a mermaid without magic?”
he said, mimicking her father’s voice.

“She’s a freaky freakin’ freak!”
That was Tauno, a bully from back home.

And then:
“Where are you going, Astrid? To your friends? Do you really think it will be any different with them?”
Those words were spoken in Orfeo’s voice. A cold dread gripped Astrid at the sound of them.

“You fear those voices are right, Astrid, though you tell yourself otherwise,” Rorrim said, in his own voice now.

Astrid felt painfully exposed, as if the mirror lord could see deep inside her. “N-no, you’re wrong,” she stammered. “I don’t believe them anymore. I—”

She gasped at a sudden sharp pain in her back. Rorrim, cunning and quick, had gotten behind her and torn another dankling from her spine.

“Oh, this is
much
better! So plump and juicy!” he said, greedily gobbling it.

Astrid swiped at him with her sword, but he ducked the blade and beetled off down the hallway, still smacking his lips.

“Come along now!” he called over his shoulder. “He doesn’t like to be kept waiting!”

Astrid was furious at Rorrim, and at herself for listening to him, but she sheathed her sword and hurried after him. She had no choice if she wanted to get to Orfeo.

The mirror lord walked for a long time. For a heavy man, he was surprisingly fast, and Astrid had to work to keep up. The Hall of Sighs grew narrower as they moved down it. There were fewer mirrors, and no vitrina. Chandeliers, spaced far apart now, gave off little light. Dark blooms of corrosion and decay mottled the walls.

Just as Astrid was about to ask how much farther they had to go, they came to a dead end. Against the wall stood a single massive mirror. Its glass was pocked, and its heavy silver frame had tarnished to black. A length of sea silk hung over one corner like a shroud.

“This is the entrance to Shadow Manse,” Rorrim said. “Orfeo’s palace.”

Astrid could see her reflection, and Rorrim’s, in the dark glass. She squared her shoulders, trying to work up the nerve to swim through it.