Then she spotted the merman—the one who’d yelled at the frightened mermaid earlier. She swam up behind him, placed her hand in the middle of his back, and shoved him. It was an awful thing to do, but she had no choice.
The merman lost his balance and fell against the prisoner ahead of him. Scared and angry, they both lost their tempers. Harsh words were traded, then punches. Two other mermen, caught by the flailing fists and thrashing tails, joined the fight. Instantly, every death rider in both the containment area and the water lock converged on them. A fight could quickly turn into a riot, and they knew it.
Ling didn’t waste a second. She ducked behind a sobbing mermaid, darted into the water lock, then disappeared down a narrow hallway. There were doors on both sides of it—some open, some closed. Ling peered around one and saw a small room with two bunks in it.
That’s when she heard the voices.
Ling looked down the hallway. It ended in a T. The voices were coming from the passage that led off to the right and were growing louder. More death riders, she thought frantically. They’d round the corner any second now.
Ling did the only thing she could think of. She swam into the room.
“Shut the damn door, Arturo,” a sleepy voice said. “I’m trying to take a nap here.”
Ling didn’t utter a sound. She stayed perfectly still, praying that the death rider stretched out on his bunk would fall back asleep.
But he didn’t.
He rolled over, opened his eyes, and blinked at her. Surprise chased the weariness from his face. “You’re not Arturo,” he said, sitting up.
Ling panicked. “Don’t turn me in. Please,” she begged.
But he was on her before she even finished speaking. He grabbed her good arm, twisted it behind her back, and forced her out of his room.
“Captain! This one was trying to escape!” he shouted, as he pushed her back into the water lock.
An officer turned around. He swore at Ling, then backhanded her across her face. Stars exploded behind her eyes. She felt herself being thrust into the cage.
The soldiers crowded so many more mer in with her that she was nearly crushed against the bars. She felt the cage being lowered into the chamber under the hold. An instant later, it was plummeting through the dark ocean. All around her, prisoners were shrieking and sobbing. Ling closed her eyes, devastated. This was the end, it had to be. She’d failed. Sera and others wouldn’t find out that Orfeo was still alive until it was too late. Too late for them. For the waters. For the entire world.
And then the cage hit the seafloor with a bone-rattling thud. As the silt cleared, Ling opened her eyes.
She had once heard that some terragoggs believed in the existence of a place of eternal suffering called hell.
As she looked out through the bars of the cage and saw where they had landed, she believed in it, too.
“I STILL DON’T SEE why you made us pick through a cemetery.”
“Go to sleep, Astrid,” Becca said, as she sorted through a pile of barnacles, looking for a juicy one. A slender piece of whalebone lay across her lap.
“A cemetery!”
“It wasn’t an ordinary cemetery. You know that. It was a whalefall. Gods!” Becca huffed.
A whalefall was the hushed, hallowed ground where the remains of dead whales lay. When a whale’s life was over, her body sank through the water and came to rest on the seafloor. Her flesh provided sustenance for hungry sea creatures, and her skeleton enhanced the magic of any mer lucky enough to happen across it. Whales were highly magical creatures—so magical, in fact, that some of their powers remained in their bones after death.
Becca and Astrid had been swimming together for three days now. Eventually Astrid would have to veer north to Ondalina, and Becca would continue west, but they’d decided that until then they were safer together.
Yesterday, they’d come across the remains of a humpback. Becca had been thrilled; she’d tossed away the kelp stalk she’d been carrying around and had swum through the enormous skeleton, hunting for what she needed—a smooth piece of bone: narrow, cylindrical, and about as long as her forearm. While she searched, Astrid kept a lookout.
Half an hour later, Becca had what she wanted and she and Astrid were on their way again. But ever since they’d left the whalefall, Astrid had been jumpy. She’d swum with her sword in her hand, twitching at every change in the current. Becca had tolerated her behavior, but she was getting fed up now.
An hour ago, they’d made camp for the night under a large coral reef. Becca had cast an illuminata and was working by its light. Astrid announced that she was going to go to sleep. She’d made herself a cozy bed from a few armfuls of seaweed she’d gathered, and had curled up in it, but she was wide awake and driving Becca crazy.
“That place totally gave me the creeps,” she grumbled.
“Yes, you told me that. Twenty times at least,” Becca said, selecting a nice fat barnacle from her pile.