Waterfire Saga, Book Three: Dark Tide: A Deep Blue Novel (25 page)

“Look dead,” Shan whispered now. Ling closed her eyes and let her body go limp. She felt her father unlock the iron collar around her neck and heard a clink as he tossed it onto an
evergrowing pile. With a glance around to make sure no one was watching him, he quickly cut her cast away with a small surgical saw. When they’d made their plan, Ling had asked him to get it
off her before he carried her to the death cart. She knew it would only slow her down. A flex of her fingers brought pain, but not too much. Hopefully her bones had healed. Finally, Shan picked her
up.

“Another one?” a voice shouted as Shan swam out of the infirmary.

Ling felt her father freeze. No one else was supposed to be near the cart. If whoever this was—a guard, another prisoner—took hold of her, he’d soon realize she was warm and
very much alive.

“I’m afraid so. Purple fever. Keep back, Zhen,” Ling’s father warned.

Zhen. That was the driver. Ling felt relief wash over her.

“You don’t have to tell
me
, doc,” Zhen said. “I don’t want any part of it.”

It was hard to tell, but it sounded like—judging by the distance of the driver’s voice, and the snorts and whinnies of his hippokamps—that Zhen was in front of his cart.

“You’re not leaving yet, are you? I have more bodies to load,” Shan lied. His voice was steady, but Ling—who knew it so well—could hear the strain in it.

“No, not yet. Gotta see the sarge. You’ve plenty of time to pile ’em high.”

Zhen swam off. Shan exhaled loudly. Ling risked opening an eye. Her father’s face was white.

“Ling, maybe this isn’t—” he started to say.

She cut him off. “I can do this, Dad,” she said. She was determined to escape. Her friends, their quest, the fate of all the mer realms depended on her.

Her father searched her face, then nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I believe you can.”

Shan had left a space for her in the back of the cart. She instinctively shut her eyes as he gently laid her down between two cold bodies. Then, remembering that this might be her last glimpse
of her father, she opened them to find him ripping out stitches at the edge of his tunic. He removed something small and gold—his wedding ring. He pulled a spool of surgical thread and a
needle from his pocket. Then he turned up the edge of Ling’s tunic, held the ring against the cloth, and quickly stitched it into place.

“Give it to your mother,” he instructed as he sewed. “Tell her I love her even more now than I did the day she put this ring on my hand. Tell her I look forward to the day when
this is over, and she can put it on my hand once again.”

Ling couldn’t speak. There was a lump in her throat.

“Tell your brothers to behave themselves, and Ling…”

“Yeah, Dad?”

“You’re very strong and that’s good. But never mistake kindness for weakness, no matter what Grandma Wen says.”

Ling nodded. At that moment, she didn’t feel strong and she hated herself for it. She tried for a brave smile, but instead, her face crumpled. She threw her arms around her father’s
neck and hugged him tightly. A sob escaped her, and then another.

“Shh,
bao bei
, shh. The dead don’t cry,” he whispered.

“Come with me, Dad,” Ling said.

“It’s too dangerous. Zhen always checks with me before he leaves to make sure he’s got all the bodies. He’d think it was strange if I wasn’t here.” Shan
kissed his daughter’s cheek, then released her. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” Ling said, wiping her eyes.

“Okay, then. Now I have to”—he swallowed with difficulty—“I have to cover you with more bodies before Zhen comes back.”

Fear made Ling’s mouth go dry, too. She tried to imagine herself elsewhere. Anywhere but here.

Her father worked all around her first. When he started to ease a body directly on top of her, he lost his nerve.

“Do it,” Ling said, finding her strength again.

He nodded, and lowered the body. Suddenly Ling was completely surrounded. Her back was pressed against a merman’s cold, stiff chest. Her arms were pinned down by more dead flesh. The back
of a lifeless young mermaid’s head covered Ling’s face. For a second, hysteria seized her. She wanted to scream and crawl out from the corpses. Instead, she dug her nails into her palms
and the pain brought her back to her senses.

“Lie perfectly still,” her father whispered.

“I will, Dad.
Go
.”

Shan swam down off the cart and closed the back.

“That the last of ’em, doc?” a voice called out.

“That’s it,” Shan replied.

“Poor slobs,” Zhen said. “Well, at least they’re free of this place. Night, Shan.”

“Good night…” Shan said.

As the death cart lurched forward, Shan spoke again, but in a voice so low and soft that only Ling could hear it.

“…and godspeed.”

L
ING FELT THE DEATH CART SLOW.

“Stop, Zhen,” a lazy voice drawled.

“Why? You searching the cart tonight?” the driver asked.

“Not me. We got orders not to touch any fever bodies.”

Ling, who’d been rigid with fear, relaxed. The guards were no longer searching the carts. Thank the gods. Any second now, Zhen would crack his whip, and they’d be moving through the
gates.

“So can I go?” Zhen asked impatiently. “I want to dump these stiffs and get home. My wife’s got a bowl of whelk stew waiting for me.”

“Hang on a minute, will you? We got a new system,” the death rider said.

“What is it? You poke ’em with spears or something?”

“No,” the guard said. “We use the sea wasps.”

“Ha!” said Zhen. “That’ll make sure there’re no live ones.”

Ling’s blood turned to ice in her veins. Sea wasp venom was one of the most lethal substances known to mer. If a tentacle found her, she wouldn’t last for more than a few
seconds.

“Pull up here, Zhen. Right at the gate,” the guard said.

The cart lurched forward.

It was over. She was truly dead. She’d never find the puzzle ball, or help Sera and the others defeat Abbadon. She’d never get her father’s ring to her mother. Instead,
she’d end up dumped in a common grave. No one would ever know what had become of her.

“I’m sorry, Sera,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, Mom and Dad.”

She lay perfectly still, hands clenched, waiting for the pain. There was a body on top of her, and it was dark out, but the sea wasps were giving off so much light that Ling could see the faces
of the dead on either side of her. Suddenly a movement to her right caught her eye. She held her breath. A tentacle—blue and quick—came toward her. It wound around the neck of the dead
merman next to her, snaked over his face, and then stopped only inches from her own.

Another tentacle slithered over the head of the mermaid on top of her. A third coiled around the neck of the merman on her left.

Then a whistle was heard, and the tentacles were gone.

“Go on, Zhen. You’re good,” the guard shouted. “If anything
was
alive in there, it’s dead now!”

Ling exhaled. It was over. By some miracle, the tentacles had missed her. She’d survived.

And then everything went white.

The pain slammed into her as a tentacle slid across the bottom of her tail. Ling felt as if she’d bitten into an electric eel. She clamped down on a scream, gritting her teeth so hard, the
cords stood out in her neck.

“Hey, Bella! Back in line!” the guard shouted. “Swear to gods, Zhen, these things are so damn mean, they’ll sting anything—a dead mer, a rock, even each
other—just for the fun of it.”

As quickly as it had come, the tentacle was gone again. But the pain was not.

Ling’s heartbeat was a crazy staccato. Lights flashed behind her eyes. She dimly heard the guard wave the driver on. The cart lurched forward and picked up speed. She tried to remember how
long she was supposed to wait…fifteen minutes? Fifteen seconds? She couldn’t think straight. It was as if the pain had shorted all the circuits in her brain. She started to convulse. The
lights in her head turned into visions. On one side of her, the dead merman started to laugh. Snakes started twining through the hair of the mermaid above her. Terrified, Ling pushed her away. She
pushed so hard, she flipped the body onto its side.

Have to get out!
Ling’s mind screamed. She struggled to sit up, then pulled her tail free. Crawling over the bodies, she made her way to the edge of the cart, then tumbled over
the side. She hit the seafloor with a thud and lay on her back, chest heaving, hands scrabbling in the silt.

Sight and sound blurred together inside her head, then broke apart.

Ling groaned in pain, then lost consciousness.

Only twenty yards from the camp.

“I
DON’T LIKE THIS, LUCIA,” Bianca di Remora said, eyeing the decayed hulk looming above them.

HMS BRITANNIA
was written on the ship’s prow. Rust had devoured some of the letters. “Then go back,” Lucia said crisply.

“And let you board a ghost ship
alone
? No way. We’re
both
going back. We shouldn’t have even come here. If anyone ever found out that we did…”

But Lucia wasn’t listening; she’d already started for the top deck. She’d come to see Kharis and nothing was going to stop her. Bianca, fretting ever since they’d snuck
out of the palace, trailed Lucia, wringing her hands.

Vallerio
still
hadn’t attacked the Black Fins.
Soon,
he’d said, when Lucia had asked him why not.
I can’t send my troops to the Kargjord right now. I have
other tasks for them.
He’d refused to tell her what those tasks were, so Lucia had devised her own plan for dealing with Serafina. And Kharis, a servant of the death goddess Morsa, had
something for her—something she desperately needed in order to set that plan in motion.

Figures flitted inside the ship. Lucia glimpsed them as she swam past portholes to the aft deck. She heard laughter. Glasses clinking. A piano playing.

The
Britannia
had been a luxury ocean liner. A storm had taken her down in the Adriatic Sea in the summer of 1926. Nearly a thousand had perished, passengers and crew.

Humans who died under the water became ghosts. Their bodies decomposed, but their souls lived on trapped beneath the waves—restless and hungry. The
Britannia
pulsed with the force
of its ghost passengers’ longing. Lucia could hear it in the mournful groaning of the ship’s hull. She could feel it in the shuddering of its deck.

The
Britannia
hadn’t broken up as she’d sunk, but had settled in one piece on the seafloor, listing slightly to her port side. Her smokestacks still stood, as did the
pilothouse. Lifeboats remained in position.

On the top deck, crabs scuttled over upended deck chairs. Tiny fish darted in and out of a woman’s shoe. Anemones clustered on hats, books, a pair of binoculars.

Other creatures lived on the decks, too, growling deep in their decayed throats, staggering on their tattered legs, swiveling their eyeless heads.

Rotters.

Bianca grabbed Lucia’s arm. “What are they?” she asked, terrified. “They look like dead terragoggs.”

“They are,” Lucia said. “They died in the
Britannia
’s wreck, too. The priestess uses them for protection. They kill anyone—human or mer—who tries to
board the ship.”

Unlike ghosts, rotters possessed no soul. They were merely the decaying bodies of humans who’d died on the surface of the water. Their souls had been released at death, and their bodies
had sunk to the seafloor. Practitioners of darksong knew how to reanimate the bodies and make them do their bidding.

The rotters lumbered toward Lucia and Bianca now, their hands swiping at the water. Bianca screamed. She tried to pull Lucia away, but Lucia shook her off.

“I am Lucia, regina of Miromara. Take me to Kharis,” she ordered.

The rotters stopped their attack. Their growls became sullen. They turned and headed for an arched doorway.

“Ghosts shun rotters. They think they’re disgusting,” Lucia said, following them.

“I can’t imagine why,” said Bianca, her voice trembling.

“We need to stay close to them. They’ll keep us safe.”