Waterfire Saga, Book Three: Dark Tide: A Deep Blue Novel (2 page)

“—and we’re in the vaults!” Sera had interrupted, excitedly slapping tails with him.

“But how do we get inside the palace in the first place?” Neela—Sera’s best friend, Yazeed’s sister, and now a Black Fin, too—had asked.

“The old Traitors’ Gate on the north side of the palace. It’s at the bottom of the seamount and it’s overgrown by seaweed. It’ll give us plenty of cover,”
Luca had replied.

Sera had known about the Traitors’ Gate, but she’d been amazed to learn about the network of old lava pipes. Clearly she’d missed much during her days as a pampered princess.
Songcasting, school, and her mother’s endless lectures had filled her hours. These things were important, but they didn’t get one into the treasury vaults—cunning and daring
did.

“When do we go?” Neela had asked.

“As soon as I can get Mahdi to throw a party—a big one, with a lightworks show,” Yaz had replied.

“I don’t follow,” Neela had said. “Why do we need a party? And lightworks?”

“Because when we divert lava off the main line, the pressure in the palace will drop. Any lights on that line will flicker. Lavaplaces will fizzle. Someone’s bound to notice and
become suspicious.”

“So Mahdi cuts the lights for the show and nobody’s the wiser!” Neela had exclaimed.

“Exactly,” Yazeed had said. “By the time the lightworks are over, the lava’s flowing again and we’re on our way back to HQ with as much swag as we can
carry.”

“Yaz, you’re a genius,” Sera had said.

“So true,” Yazeed had agreed. Everyone laughed and then eagerly started planning the heist.

Sera had been so thrilled about their having the building plans that it was only later, as they were heading to their bunks to crash, she had thought to ask Yaz
how
he had gotten
them.

“Luca and I went to the Ostrokon,” Yazeed had replied lightly. “You can learn a lot there, you know.”

Sera had raised an eyebrow at his joke. Everyone knew that the Ostrokon was one of her favorite places in Cerulea. Before the city had been attacked, she had loved to go there and listen to
history conchs, but it wasn’t safe now. “That was risky, Yaz. It’s heavily patrolled,” she’d said. She hadn’t even wanted to think about what would have happened
if they’d been caught. She could not have asked for a better second-in-command. Yaz was smart, brave, and bold—but sometimes he was too bold.

He had grinned. “Not heavily enough, apparently,” he’d said, continuing to his bunk.

“Hold on a minute,” Sera had said, stopping him. “I still have a question for you: the old pipes…How do you know for sure that they’re still there?”

“We checked,” he had admitted with a shrug.

“You
checked
? The pipes are
inside
the palace. And there’s a bounty on your head. Just how did you check?”

Yaz had frowned. He’d tapped his chin with his finger. “Hmm. Well, now that I think about it, we might’ve crashed a party. Lucia sure loves parties.”

Sera had pressed a palm to her forehead. “Gods, no. Tell me you didn’t.”

Yaz had cast a quick illusio spell. His hair had lightened to blond. His eyes had turned blue. Tattoos, swirling and ornate, had appeared on his face, neck, and chest. He had affected a vapid
look and the voice to match it.

“Bro, that’s
Bilge
playing! I loooove that band! Hey, did you see the
ballast
on that merl? It’s time to get jolly, Roger!”

Sera had shaken her head angrily. He’d gone too far. “You could’ve been
captured
, Yazeed.
You
, a leader of the Black Fin resistance. Do you have
any
idea what they would have done to you?”

“But we weren’t. And now
we’re
going to do some capturing. As in treasure.”

He’d kissed her forehead and flopped into his bunk. As angry as she had been with him, Sera hadn’t been able to suppress a triumphant smile. The resistance needed gold—lots of
it, and Yazeed had found a way to get it.

“We’re in!” he called out now.

Sera turned her attention to the gate. Six bars had been cut away to make a space big enough to swim through. She raced back to the tunnel entrance and whistled. Almost instantly, the camoed
fighters were at her side, following her into the tunnel.

Yazeed and his mermen—Luca, Silvio, and Franco—were ready at the gate, carrying pickaxes, weapons, and lava torches. Sera saw the determination on the faces of her comrades, and her
heart clenched. Their loyalty, their trust, their willingness to die for the cause were what made the resistance strong.

She knew the mission they were about to undertake was insanely risky; she also knew they had no choice. The Black Fins were fighting not only for her realm, but for
all
the mer realms.
Vallerio and Portia had already taken Miromara and Matali. They wanted Atlantica, Ondalina, Qin, and the Freshwaters, too. The vicious human Rafe Mfeme was helping them in their quest.

Someone else was helping, too, though Sera didn’t know who or why. She’d heard this someone else referred to as
he
, and knew he’d paid for her uncle’s invading
mercenaries—the death riders. In return, Vallerio and Portia were aiding him in a search for six talismans—powerful objects that had belonged to the mages of Atlantis. Sera had learned
that this person, whoever he was, planned to use the talismans to unleash a great evil submerged in the Southern Sea—Abbadon, a monster created by Orfeo, one of the mages. Who
was
the mysterious
he
? And why would her uncle ally with him? Sera didn’t know, but she knew that Vallerio and Portia didn’t care how many mer were killed, as long as they
satisfied their desire for power and wealth, but what they didn’t seem to realize is that there would be nothing left to rule, nothing left to plunder, if this shadowy
he
got his
way. She had to stop him, but to do so, she first had to stop her uncle.

Sera cast one last glance at her fighters. Fossegrim, the realm’s liber magus, had been their leader. After his arrest, Sera had taken over. He was dead—Sera was certain of
it—but neither she nor his fighters would forget him.

Words her mother had once spoken echoed in her head.
A ruler’s greatest power comes from her heart—from the love she bears her subjects, and the love they bear her.

The Black Fins were Sera’s subjects. They were her brothers and sisters, too. Her family. And she loved them fiercely.

Gods, protect them,
she prayed now.
Keep them safe.

Sera raised her crossbow and addressed her fighters. “Fast and furious, just as we planned,” she said. “Watch your own back. Watch each other’s backs. No fear, no
screwups, no prisoners. Let’s
go
.”

F
RANCO WENT FIRST with a lava torch, followed by Serafina, with the others right behind them. They shot through the murky tunnel, its walls furry
with algae, not stopping until they entered the palace’s enormous lava chamber.

The cavernous space had been hollowed out of the palace’s rock foundation. In the center of it was the channeler—the main pipe that directed lava from a seam deep below the seafloor.
As it neared the ceiling, the pipe branched into four tributary pipes that snaked through tunnels in the rock. Each tributary had about four feet of space around it, allowing workers access for
maintenance and repairs.

Sera, Yazeed, Luca, and Franco were going to follow the tributary on the west side of the room to the old pipe that ran above the treasury vaults. The rest of the Black Fins would stay where
they were and wait for the four to return.

Yaz and Franco put their crossbows down. They were still carrying torches and had pickaxes slung over their backs; the tributary’s tunnel was too narrow to allow the weapons, too.

Sera started for the channeler, her crossbow raised, when Yazeed suddenly grabbed her arm. He pointed wordlessly, but she’d already seen what had spooked him. A watchman had entered the
room. He swam to the channeler and bent down to examine a glass-covered dial, his back toward them.

The Black Fins had prepared for all eventualities. Sera nodded at Silvio, her best marksman. He raised his crossbow and a split second later, a dart found his target’s neck.

The watchman gave a surprised shout of pain. The dart’s tip was filled with weak stingray venom. Full strength, the venom would kill a mer. Diluted, it only put its victim to sleep. Silvio
caught the watchman as he fell backward, his eyes already fluttering closed.

“Nice shot, Sil,” Yaz said, racing by him. Franco and Sera were right behind him.

As two other Black Fins dragged the unconscious merman over to a closet, Silvio cast an illusio spell to transform himself into an exact double of the watchman. He would busy himself checking
dials and valves in case Vallerio’s soldiers decided to patrol the lava chamber.

Sera, Yaz, Luca, and Franco swam into the west tunnel, hugging their tools and weapons close to their bodies, and followed it upward. Lava globes, spaced ten yards apart, illuminated the tunnel.
Each had a hook underneath it to hold maintenance workers’ tool bags. Unable to move their tails vigorously for fear of smashing the globes or getting caught on the hooks, the four lost
speed. They’d hoped to reach their target destination in five minutes, but it took them nearly ten.

“I see it,” Franco finally said, pointing above them to where the main artery split into two. One section of pipe continued straight up into the palace. Another ran due west above
the treasury vaults. “We’re behind,” a tense Yaz said as they reached the join. “The lightworks show is going to start soon.”

“There’s the valve,” Luca said, pointing at a bronze handwheel jutting out just past the join. “All we have to do is rip a hole in the old pipe, then open it.”

“Easier said than done,” said Yaz, holding his torch up to the tunnel that contained the west-running pipe.

The tunnel snaked horizontally through the rock foundation and was much narrower than what they’d just swum through. Small blue crabs clung to its top; they scuttled away from the
torch’s light. A thick layer of silt lined its bottom.

Franco was the slimmest of the three mermen. He entered the tunnel’s mouth and started to swim through, holding his torch in front of himself. When that didn’t work, he
crawled…until he got stuck.

“I can’t move!” he called out. “Yo, pull me out!”

Yaz and Luca grabbed his tail fin and yanked. He came out covered in silt.

“I’m the smallest. I’ll go,” Sera said.

Her nerves were as taut as a bowstring as she entered the tunnel. She was worried about getting stuck in the small space, but excitement overrode her misgivings. They’d made it this far.
They might actually
do
this if she could just break the pipe.

Yaz handed her his pickax. “Swim about ten yards in, then rip open a good-sized hole,” he said.

Sera made her way down the passageway on her back, holding the torch and pickax on her chest and pushing herself along with her tail. Silt swirled around her, making it nearly impossible to
see.

When she got far enough down the tunnel, she waited for the water to clear. There was so little room to maneuver that she had to extend both arms above her head and swing the pickax from her
shoulders without bending her elbows. Within minutes her muscles were screaming. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she forced herself to swing over and over again.

The pipe was made out of goblin-forged steel, strong enough to resist the extreme heat of lava, but it was centuries old and corroded. Finally, just when she thought she couldn’t swing the
ax one more time, Sera heard a satisfying metallic screech as its blade punctured the pipe. She gave a victory yell and swung again and again, ripping at the hole’s edges until it was big
enough. Then, spent and shaking, she wriggled back down the tunnel. As she crawled out, her excitement dimmed. She’d realized they had a problem. A big one.

“I was able to rip the pipe open, but that doesn’t change the fact that the tunnel’s super narrow,” she informed the others. “Even if we manage to get into the
vault, how are we going to get any treasure out? Most of the fighters won’t be able to squeeze through.”

This was the Black Fins’ one and only chance to get into the vaults. Their break-in would eventually be discovered and Vallerio would make sure it could never be repeated.

“We’ll think of something,” Yaz said. “We have few weapons, little food, and no medicine. We can’t keep fighting without any gold.”

“We need the ochi now,” said Luca. “It’s gotta be close to showtime in the Grand Hall. You ready?”

Sera nodded. An ochi, or spying songspell, was fiendishly difficult to cast and needed all the energy the caster could summon. It required that a gândac, or bug, usually a shell of some
sort, be placed near the mer to be spied upon.

It would have been tough to get into the palace to place a gândac, and even if Sera could manage it, Portia had the rooms swept for them regularly. But what Portia didn’t know was
that a gândac was already in place. It was one of Sera’s favorite shells—a large, beautiful nautilus.