Waterfire Saga, Book Three: Dark Tide: A Deep Blue Novel (19 page)

But first she had to get past the guard.

She saw him now as she rounded a curve. He was sitting in a small office to the left of the gate, listening to a conch. He rose at Astrid’s approach and swam out to meet her.

Astrid said the first thing that popped into her frantic mind. “I’m here to inspect the dungeons. On my father’s—Admiral Kolfinn’s—orders. I’ve just
come from his bedside. Rumors of a breakout are circling through the Citadel. One of the prisoners has threatened the admiral’s life.”

The urgency in her voice was real, even if her words were a lie. The guard heard it, but he was uncertain about Astrid’s request. She could see it in his face.

“I haven’t heard any rumors,” he said.

“You need to open the gate and let me in,” Astrid said calmly. “Right
now
.”

Voices echoed down the passageway. Terror clutched at Astrid’s heart. She kept it hidden.

“That’s the commodora,” she said. “She’s right behind me. Perhaps you’d like to explain to her your refusal to follow the admiral’s orders?”

The guard blanched, clearly unwilling to cross Rylka. He fumbled for the large iron ring dangling from his belt, then inserted a long skeleton key into the gate’s lock.

Astrid’s heart was beating so hard now, she could barely breathe. She heard fins beating the water, and then Tauno came hurtling around the curve with Rylka right behind him.

“You there, stop her! That’s an order!” Rylka shouted.

They were only yards away. Astrid had a heartbeat in which to get her next move right.

As the guard pulled the key out of the lock, she struck. Whipping her powerful tail around, she caught him broadside. The impact sent him sprawling into the wall. He hit it hard, then sank to
the floor with a groan, dropping the key ring.

Astrid snatched it up and was through the doorway in a flash. “I’m sorry,” she said as she pulled the gate closed. She jammed the key into the lock and tried to turn it, but it
wouldn’t budge. A whimper of fear escaped her. “Come on…come
on
…” she pleaded.

She wriggled the key and tried again, and this time it turned. Just as the lock’s bolt shot home, Tauno slammed into the gate. He thrust an arm through the bars.

He can’t get the key ring!
Astrid yanked the key out of the lock with her right hand and tossed it behind her. Tauno swore and grabbed her left arm, his fingers digging into her
flesh.

“I’ve got her, Rylka! Find another key!” he bellowed.

Rylka swam into the guards’ office and proceeded to ransack it.

Tauno thrust his other arm through the bars, trying to get a better grip on her. His body was pressed up against the bars. His face was jammed between two of them.

Astrid saw her chance and took it. She cocked her arm, then drove the heel of her hand though the gap in the bars, straight into Tauno’s nose. He let go of her and fell backward, blood
gushing from his nostrils.

Astrid grabbed the key ring and swam flat out. Dead ahead, the tunnel split into three, as the one in the Hall of Elders did. Speeding down the middle passage, she barely registered that there
were cell doors on either side of her or that there were prisoners behind them. She was focused on one thing only: getting out.

The tunnel got smaller. It veered left, then right. Astrid swam with arms over her head, palms together, to reduce drag. She rounded bend after bend, hoping each time that the exit would appear
in front of her, but it didn’t. Her breath was coming harder; she was tiring. A sharp hairpin turn loomed in front of her. She rounded it, then stopped short, skidding through the water.

A guard—an elderly merman, stooped and shuffling—was a few yards ahead of her, pushing a cart that held a large black pot and two stacks of bowls. Luckily, his back was to her.
Beyond him, maybe twenty yards away, was another gate, much like the one at the dungeons’ entrance. The exit, she was sure. One of the keys might open it. If only she could get there! But she
feared there wasn’t enough room in the cramped tunnel to allow her to get past the guard. She would have to wait until he went inside a cell, then swoop by.

The guard unlocked a door now and pushed it open.

“Prisoner up!” he shouted.

Astrid heard a chain dragging. The guard slowly ladled slop into a bowl.

Come on! Hurry up!
she silently urged him, nervously glancing back the way she’d come. She didn’t dare retrace her strokes—what if she swam straight into Rylka and
Tauno? She flattened herself against the ceiling, ready to inch by the guard. Why was he taking so long?

Finally he put his ladle down. “Hands on your—” he started to yell. The rest of his command was drowned out by shouting. It was Rylka.

“Come out, Astrid Kolfinnsdottir! I have prison guards searching every tunnel!”

Astrid moved along the ceiling toward the gate as fast as she dared.

The guard turned and squinted down the tunnel. “What in the gods’ names is going on?” he asked cantankerously. He banged the bowl on his cart, then passed right underneath
Astrid, missing her by only a scale’s breadth.

Astrid was about to try for the gate when Rylka shouted again, from much closer, just on the other side of the bend. Astrid was hopeful that one of the keys on the ring would open it, but which
one? And how long would it take to try them all?

She didn’t have time to find out. If she allowed herself to be captured, her father would die. Moving swiftly, she ripped a walrus-tooth button off her vest, threw it down the hallway, and
ducked into the open cell. Chest heaving, she swam up above the doorway and pressed herself against the wall.

A prisoner, his hands on his head, an iron collar around his neck, floated in the center of the cell. He looked at Astrid, surprise on his face. She held a finger to her lips, then mouthed one
word:
Please.

The prisoner dropped his gaze and looked straight ahead.

“You there!” Astrid heard Rylka call. “Have you seen the admiral’s daughter?”

“The
admiral’s daughter
?” the guard echoed, in a tone that suggested Rylka might be crazy. “Here in the
dungeons
? There’s no one down here but me
and the prisoners!”

“She’s wanted for poisoning her father,” Rylka said, swimming into the cell. “If you see her, apprehend her immediately.”

My gods, if she looks up…
Astrid thought, squeezing her eyes shut.

“Ah, it’s
you
,” Rylka said.

Despair engulfed Astrid. She opened her eyes. It was over. Her father would pay the price.

But as she looked down, she saw that Rylka was speaking to the prisoner, not her.

“You have no right to keep me here,” he said. “I’ve done nothing wrong. I have a right to counsel. To a trial. I have—”

Rylka cut him off. “There won’t
be
any trial. Not in your lifetime.”

She glanced at the bowl of food on the cart. “Don’t waste food on this one,” she told the elderly guard. “We don’t need him anymore, and Miromara doesn’t want
him. There’s no reason to keep him alive.”

Another prison guard was floating near the doorway. “Commodora!” he said, holding something out to her. “We found this on the floor a few feet down the hallway.”

The walrus-tooth button.

Rylka scowled. “It’s hers,” she said. “She must have let herself out. Tauno, swim to the hospital in case she tries to get to her father. I’ll go through the gate
and try to catch up with her. Out of my way, you stupid old fool,” she added, shoving the elderly guard.

The cell door slammed shut. The key turned in the lock. The guard moved off, pushing his food cart.

Astrid’s entire body was trembling. She sank through the dusky water until she was sitting on the floor, still clutching the key ring. The prisoner remained where he was.

The two looked at each other. Astrid took in the merman’s copper-colored hair, his emerald-green eyes. She’d never seen his face before, yet she knew it. It was the spitting image of
his sister’s. But thinner and marked with bruises.

Neither Astrid nor the prisoner said a word until the guard had finished his rounds, wheeled his cart past the cell door, and made his way back down the winding corridor. When they could no
longer hear him grumbling, the prisoner spoke.

“Quite a place, this Ondalina,” he said. “You must be Astrid. I’m Desiderio. Pleasure to meet you.”

L
UCIA CAST A GLANCE around the VIP room of the Depth Charge, a nightclub in the heart of the Lagoon, near the terragogg city of Venice. It was
empty except for herself and Mahdi. And that was exactly what she wanted.

Music blared from the next room. Throughout the club, bioluminescents—tiny shrimps, squids, and frilly jellies—filled the darkness with a bewitching blue light. Neon angelfish darted
between the glowing creatures, their scales flashing pink, green, and orange.

Lucia, dressed in a clingy, low-cut purple gown, was perched on a long banquette made of three giant clams. The creatures inside the open shells, mottled bright blue and yellow, were so soft to
sit on. Or sleep on. As Mahdi was doing now.

He was stretched out across the banquette, his head in Lucia’s lap, his tail fins hanging off the edge. Lucia stroked his lustrous black hair.

Most of the club kids had already left. Lucia’s courtiers remained, as did her personal guards. They would have to leave soon, too, before the waters lightened. It was much easier to sneak
out of the palace—and back in again—with her mother en route to Ondalina and her father and Traho occupied with constant closed-door meetings. Still, Lucia didn’t want to be
spotted by some gossipy minister or tattling noble.

The Lagoon was forbidden because it was full of spies, informants, and criminals, but the danger didn’t worry Lucia; that’s what guards were for. Her concern was privacy. The Depth
Charge’s VIP room offered it and the palace did not. Lucia needed to be away from prying eyes tonight.

She gazed at Mahdi while he slept, tracing the outline of his jaw with a crimson-tipped finger. A fierce possessiveness gripped her. She wanted him to love her as much as she loved him. She
needed
him to. She would not suffer her mother’s fate—being denied the merman she loved, becoming a figure of pity and scorn.

Most of the time Lucia believed that Mahdi
did
love her, but sometimes she would catch him staring off into the distance, unaware that she was watching him, with an expression of such
deep longing on his face that it made her catch her breath.

She
had
to know if he still cared for Serafina, and there was only one way to find out. Being careful not to wake him, she lifted Mahdi’s head off her lap and slid to the edge of
the banquette. He stirred and rolled onto his back but didn’t wake. She rose and was about to swim to the door to lock it, when it opened.

“Hey, Luce, you coming out to dance?” Bianca asked loudly, swimming inside in a swirl of orange sea silk. She spotted Mahdi asleep on the banquette. “Oops! Sorry!” she
whispered. “Wow, how can he be asleep? It’s sooo noisy in here. Being emperor must be
really
tiring!”

“Don’t be stupid,” Lucia said. “No one could fall asleep in here. I drugged him. I poured a somna potion into his drink.”

Bianca’s eyes widened. “Where did you get it?”

Lucia smiled.

“Her?”
Bianca said, shocked. She lowered her voice. “Luce, you
said
you were done with her. It’s canta malus. If anyone finds out you’re using
darksong—”

“No one will. Unless
you
tell them.”

Bianca was quick to reassure her. “I won’t. Of course I won’t. But why do you want Mahdi to be asleep? Aren’t we heading back to the palace soon?”

“Lock the door,” Lucia ordered.

Bianca did as she was told. Lucia swam over to the banquette and sat down next to Mahdi. Bianca cast a regretful glance at the door, as if wishing she was still on the other side. Then she
joined her friend. As she did, Lucia began to songcast.

“A stealing songspell?” Bianca asked, with a nervous giggle. “What are you going to do? Boost Mahdi’s wallet?”

Bianca’s silly chatter stopped abruptly as she saw Lucia press her hand to Mahdi’s chest, then violently yank it back. Skeins of blood were entwined in her
fingers. He groaned in pain. His eyes fluttered open.

Lucia panicked.
If he wakes up…
she thought.
If he realizes what I’m doing…
But he didn’t. His eyes closed again. Relief washed over her. The somna potion was
strong.

“Oh, my gods, Lucia…
don’t
!” Bianca said, horrified. “That’s against the law! It’s worse than canta malus—it’s canta sangua—blood
magic!”