Waterfire Saga, Book Three: Dark Tide: A Deep Blue Novel (14 page)

He’s enjoying this,
she thought.
Why
? And then she realized, with a sickening certainty, that she knew why. She knew exactly what he was going to say.

“It’s the prin—Ah! Forgive me, my regina, I meant the
former
principessa. Serafina. You thought she was dead, I believe? I’m so sorry to disappoint you, but
she’s very much alive.”

A
STRID LIFTED HER face to the sky and smiled as the snow kissed her cheeks.

Her eyes drank in the colors of home—the soft gray of an arctic gull’s wing. The clear blue heart of an ice floe. The crystalline white of a million snowflakes. To Astrid, these
shades of pale were the most beautiful colors in the world.

She’d surfaced a moment ago, eager to hear a guillemot’s cry, a seal’s bark, the silence of snowflakes falling on water, before descending to the Citadel.

In the distance, she could see icebergs drifting, secret and mute. To the goggs, they were places where no one and nothing lived—which is just as the Ondalinians wanted it. But under the
surface, there was movement and life, color and sound. The massive bergs, weighing millions of tons, contained floating mer cities.

Ondalina was the northernmost realm, and most mer found it forbidding, but Astrid loved it. The cold made her heart beat faster. It cleared her mind. She could think straight among the glaciers,
the pack ice, the snow.

And she desperately needed to think. She and Becca had parted company a week ago, when they reached the current that Becca would follow south to Cape Horn.

“Becca, I can’t—” Astrid had begun. She meant to finish by saying “thank you enough for the whalebone pipe,” but Becca, misunderstanding, had cut her off.

“You’re not allowed to say no, remember?” she’d scolded. Then she’d hugged Astrid tightly. “I’ll miss you,” she’d added. “And
I’m still hoping that you’ll join us. Think about it, Astrid. Please. We need you.”

Becca wants me with them, even though she knows I can’t sing,
Astrid thought now, still unable to fathom it. Becca actually believed Astrid could make the group stronger. Here, in
Ondalina, a mermaid who couldn’t sing would be shunned as a weakling.

Sera wants me with them, too,
Astrid thought.
But she
doesn’t
know the truth about me. If she did, she might change her mind
.

All the way home, Astrid had asked herself, “What do
you
want?”

She still didn’t know the answer.

Part of her wanted to join her new friends. She wanted to help them fight Abbadon. But part of her was scared. If she joined them, she’d have to tell them the truth about herself, and that
went against everything Astrid had been taught.

Openess wasn’t the Ondalinian way. Life was harsh in the Arctic. Bitter cold stalked the mer constantly. Food was scarce. Predators were everywhere. Ondalinians prized toughness, hunting
prowess, and the ability to hide—to hide yourself, your home, and, above all, your weaknesses.

Ondalinian camouflage spells were known throughout the merworld to be the best. Children learned them while they were still in the cradle. When a merbaby was born, well-wishers didn’t say,
Congratulations!
Instead they said,
Hide it!

Becca had asked Astrid to think about joining them, and Astrid was. She knew she’d soon have to
stop
thinking, though, and make a decision.

But there was another thing Astrid had to think about—her father. Eyvör, her mother, always told her to listen to her instincts. And right now, Astrid’s were telling
her—loudly and clearly—that the things she’d learned during her journey to the Iele’s caves and back were connected to the bad things that had happened to her father. What
she didn’t know was
how
.

Before she’d set off for the River Olt, someone had placed a sea burr under Kolfinn’s saddle, causing his hippokamp to rear and throw him into a wall. He’d broken several ribs.
Then someone had slipped poison from a Medusa anemone into his food, making him very sick. He’d mostly recovered, but the poison had left him weak.

Both the burr and the anemone were found only in Miromaran waters. In the Iele’s caves, Sera had vehemently denied that her mother had had anything to do with the attempts on
Kolfinn’s life. Astrid hadn’t believed her then, but she did now. Sera, she’d learned, was many things, but she wasn’t a liar. Yet
someone
had attempted to
assassinate Kolfinn.

Was it Vallerio? Astrid wondered now. According to Sera, he’d ordered Isabella’s assassination and had decimated his city in order to place his daughter on Miromara’s throne.
If he could murder his own sister in his quest for power, he’d have no qualms about poisoning a merman he barely knew.

But if Vallerio
had
made attempts on Kolfinn’s life, how had he done it? Security around her father was impenetrable. He was constantly surrounded by his guards. How could an
assassin have slipped through them?

The answers to these questions eluded Astrid. She knew the best thing to do was to go to Kolfinn and tell him where she’d been and what she’d learned. He would know what to make of
it all. Before she could tell him anything, though, she had to find him. He could be in the council chamber of the admiral’s palace, or in any number of ministry buildings. Her mother,
however, was only ever in one place—the stables. A seasoned rider and celebrated hunter, Eyvör spent a good part of each day with her hippokamps. Astrid decided to go there first.
Eyvör would know where Kolfinn was.

Astrid felt a deep relief at the thought of her father being well again and back in command. The waters were growing more dangerous, and the balance of power between the mer realms more
unstable, with every passing minute. Ondalina needed a strong hand at her helm, now more than ever.

With a last glance at the sky and the snow, Astrid dove and headed for home.

Thank gods,
she thought as she sped toward the Citadel,
that Ondalina has Kolfinn
.

T
HE CITADEL HAD been built thousands of years ago, using a method that was still followed today.

Carvers had selected an enormous iceberg, calculated the midpoint of its submerged section, then tunneled inside it. They’d hollowed out the ice around the center point, creating the huge
public square where the admiral’s palace was located, and where he addressed his mer and paraded his troops.

The carvers then cut concentric rings in the berg, working outward from its center. Passageways were cut between the rings, allowing inhabitants to move freely throughout the berg. Dwellings
were sculpted into the ice that remained—mansions and palaces that were as finely detailed as anything in the great gogg cities of Saint Petersburg, Prague, and Paris.

Though much of the Citadel was contained within the iceberg, farmhouses, stables, and the sprawling market quarter were located along the berg’s craggy bottom, allowing hunters to come and
go with their hippokamps, farm animals to roam, and merchants to drive their carts into the market.

It was to the admiral’s stables that Astrid now swam. Since they’d been sculpted at the bottom of the iceberg, their roofs were attached to the berg and their lower floors, trimmed
with decorative carving, hung down into the water.

Astrid swooped inside the main building. She passed hippokamp stalls, and then the tack room. The stables were illuminated by lava globes suspended from the ceiling. Lava could not be piped into
an iceberg, so Ondalinians imported lava globes.

“Astrid Kolfinnsdottir? Is that you? Where have you been all this time?” a voice asked.

It belonged to Sanni, the head groom. She’d swum out of the tack room, still holding a silver bit she was polishing.

Astrid stopped and turned around. “Hi, Sanni. I’ve been hunting,” she fibbed. It was the excuse she’d come up with to explain her absence. “Where’s
Eyvör?”

Ondalinian children called their parents by their first names. Ondalinians, no matter their age, shuddered at words like
Mommy
and
Daddy
and thought mer who used them were
ridiculous.

“In the ring. With Prince Ludovico,” Sanni replied.

“Kolfinn’s not with them, is he?” Astrid asked.

Sanni stopped polishing.
“Kolfinn?”
she said. “Astrid, you…you don’t know?” she asked, her eyes widening.

“Know what?”

“The admiral, he…he’s not here,” Sanni said, clearly uncomfortable.

“Any idea where he is?”

Sanni didn’t respond. She was polishing again, furiously.

“Sanni?” Astrid pressed, vexed by the groom’s silence. “Is something wrong?”

“Go see your mother,” Sanni said. She turned away then, but not before Astrid saw a glimmer of tears in her eyes. An Ondalinian
never
shed tears publicly.

Fear took root in Astrid. “What is it? What’s going on?” she asked.

Sanni shook her head and swam back into the tack room.

Astrid’s fear blossomed. She sped through the stables to the indoor ring, desperate to find out what had happened to her father. Eyvör was in the center of it, her hands on her hips,
her brow furrowed. Tall, blond, and muscular, she was wearing a long walrus-skin coat and a necklace made from the claws of a polar bear that had been foolish enough to attack her. Near her, a
groom was leading a hippokamp in a circle. Astrid recognized the animal: Blixt, Eyvör’s favorite mount.

Eyvör was talking with a distinctive-looking merman. His hair was black with a white streak in it; his eyes were blue. He was Principe Ludovico di Merrovingia, younger brother to Vallerio
and the late Regina Isabella. Astrid knew him well.

Ondalina and Miromara had once battled each other in the War of Reykjanes Ridge. A condition of the peace treaty was the permutavi—which decreed that the ruling families must exchange a
child when that child came of age. It was thought the realms were less likely to attack each other that way.

Ludovico had been exchanged with Sigurlin, Kolfinn’s sister, who lived on an estate in rural Miromara with her family. Astrid was supposed to have been exchanged with Sera’s brother,
Desiderio, but Kolfinn had refused to send her. He knew her disability would become known were she to move to Miromara and he didn’t want that to happen.

Ludo, as he was known, was a breeder of hippokamps. He also trained the orcas used by Ondalina’s military. He and Eyvör were close friends.

Although right now, they were having a heated argument.

“Rylka’s the acting admiral. Talk to
her
, Ludo,” Eyvör said.

Astrid, who’d been about to swim closer, was so stunned she couldn’t move. Rylka was Kolfinn’s commodora, the second most powerful mer in Ondalina. Astrid couldn’t stand
her, or her son Tauno. They both knew her secret and treated her dismissively because of it. Why had Rylka been made acting admiral? she wondered.

“I
tried
to talk to Rylka,” Ludo said angrily. “I can’t get in to see her. And even if I could, it wouldn’t do much good. This insanity is all her doing.
Why is he in prison, Eyvör? Why can’t I see him?”

Astrid remembered Sanni’s refusal to say anything about Kolfinn. She put that together with Eyvör saying that Rylka had been made acting admiral and jumped to a terrible
conclusion.

“Eyvör, Ludo…what’s going on? Is Kolfinn in prison?” she blurted out.

Blixt startled at the sound of her voice.

Eyvör did, too. She turned around. “Astrid, you’re back. I’m glad,” she said evenly. “Was the hunting good?”

“Eyvör…who
cares
about the hunting?” Astrid asked, upset but trying not to show it. “Why is Rylka acting admiral? Why is Kolfinn in prison?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Kolfinn’s not in prison,” Eyvör said, rubbing her left temple. She turned to the groom. “Keep leading Blixt around,” she
instructed.

Astrid exhaled, relieved, but something was still very wrong, she could feel it. Eyvör looked exhausted. Ludo looked like he was going to explode.

“Well,
someone’s
in prison,” she said. “I wish one of you would tell me who.”