Lucia looked at the dagger as if she had no idea how it had gotten there. She put it in her pocket, then turned back to Mahdi. “I have to break the songspell,” she said. “I have to free him.”
“How?” Bianca asked. “It’s super hard to undo someone else’s songspell. You have to figure out exactly which spell was used, then invent a counter-melody and—”
“There’s another way,” Lucia said impatiently. “It’s much quicker.”
“What is it?”
Lucia remembered Baco Goga’s report about the location of the Black Fins, and their leader. Her father said he would attack them. He was gathering intelligence. He was making a plan.
He was taking too long.
“Lucia, what’s the other way?” Bianca asked again.
Lucia smiled. “Kill the songcaster.”
ASTRID, HER EYES on Desiderio, flattened herself against the cell door.
His face darkened. “Oh, right, I forgot. I’m an assassin. Don’t worry, I won’t murder you,” he said caustically. “I can’t. See?”
As he started toward her, the heavy chain attached to his collar pulled taut and stopped him. Droplets of blood fell onto his bare chest. The iron collar—designed to prevent both escape and songspells—was biting into his skin.
Astrid’s mind raced. Her parents had told her that Desiderio was a spy, that he’d tried to kill Kolfinn, and that he’d been arrested with his troops near Ondalina. She knew now who was really trying to kill her father, but that didn’t mean that Desiderio wasn’t a spy, and that he wasn’t here on Vallerio’s orders. She would have to proceed cautiously.
“You’re accused of being an assassin,” she said.
“From what I just heard, so are you,” Desiderio shot back. “Something tells me there’s no truth to that claim, either.”
He swam unsteadily to a narrow cot pushed against the far wall. He sat down, leaned back, and closed his eyes. Another drop of blood fell onto his chest.
He’s seriously hungry, Astrid thought. And probably in pain, too. Torture? Starvation? This is not how Ondalina treats its prisoners. She put down the key ring, took off her pack, and started digging through it. “What happened with you and your troops outside the Citadel?” she asked.
“Does it matter?” Desiderio replied wearily.
“Yeah, it does.”
She found what she was after—a packet wrapped in kelp leaves. It was a little crushed, but she doubted Desiderio would mind. She was about to toss it to him when they heard the sound of tapping, iron on ice.
Desiderio’s eyes flew open. “The guards,” he whispered. “They swim by every hour until midnight and tap their nightsticks on the doors. You have to show yourself. Get back up above the door. Hurry!”
Astrid scrambled up. She got herself to the ceiling just as the guard tapped on Desiderio’s door. He rose to attention. The guard peered in through the barred window, then moved on.
Astrid sank back down to the floor. He could have turned her in just then. Or earlier, when Rylka was in his cell. Many prisoners would have, to gain favor.
“Here,” she said, tossing him the packet.
Desiderio caught it and looked at her.
“Squid eggs.” She’d bought them a few leagues outside of Ondalina.
“Thank you,” Desiderio said, tearing the packet open.
Its contents were gone in seconds. When he finished eating, he folded the kelp-leaf wrapper and tucked it under his mattress.
A soldier’s trick, Astrid thought admiringly. Kelp leaves weren’t the tastiest things—they were used mostly for parchment and wrapping material—but they were edible in a pinch.
Desiderio had a bit more energy now. “You wanted my story,” he said. “So here it is: I was sent with four regiments to defend Miromara’s western border. This was months ago. My mother and uncle were worried about an attack. With good cause, it turned out. We were ambushed a week after we arrived.”
“By whom?”
“Ondalinians.”
Anger flared in Astrid again at learning that Rylka was using her father’s soldiers to attack without cause.
“They came at night,” Desiderio continued. “It was wholesale slaughter. I lost two-thirds of my troops. The survivors were rounded up. Our hippokamps and weapons were confiscated and we were forced to swim north. More soldiers died along the way. As we neared the Citadel, Rylka rode out to meet us. She accused me of conspiring to attack the Citadel and of trying to assassinate Kolfinn. I said I’d done no such thing, that we—my soldiers and I—had been attacked. A merman came at me then…with three orca teeth on his uniform—”
“Tauno,” Astrid said.
“He hit me in the face with the butt of his crossbow. I blacked out. When I woke up, I was in here.”
Astrid studied his face, looking for a twitch, listening for a false note in his voice, anything that might indicate that he was lying. She saw nothing.
Desiderio studied hers in return. “I’m telling you the truth,” he said. “I’ll prove it.”