Sera was swimming fast to her mother’s stateroom, where the business of the realm was conducted, to tell her what had happened. She knew her betrothal was a matter of state, but surely, in this day and age, no one would expect her to pledge herself to someone like Mahdi.
As she arrived at the stateroom, her mother’s guards bowed and pulled the huge doors open for her. Three of the room’s four walls were covered floor to ceiling in shimmering mother-of-pearl. Adorning them were tall pietra dura panels—ornately pieced insets of amber, quartz, lapis, and malachite depicting the realm’s reginas. Twenty massive blown-glass chandeliers hung from the ceiling. Each was eight feet in diameter and contained thousands of tiny lava globes. At the far end, a single throne, fashioned in the shape of a sea fan and made of gold, towered on an amethyst dais. The wall behind it was covered in costly mirror glass.
The stateroom was empty, which meant Isabella was probably in her presence chamber, working. Serafina was glad of that. She might actually be able to have her mother to herself for five minutes.
The presence chamber was a much smaller room. Spare and utilitarian, it was furnished with a large desk, several chairs, and had shelves stuffed with conchs containing everything from petitions to minutes of Parliament. Only Isabella’s family and her closest advisers were allowed inside it. As Serafina approached the door, she could see that it was slightly ajar. She was just about to rush in, sobs already rising in her throat, when the sound of voices stopped her.
Her mother wasn’t alone. Sera peeked through the crack and saw her uncle Vallerio and a handful of high-ranking ministers. Conte Orsino, the minister of defense, was staring at a map on the wall. It showed Miromara, an empire that swept from the Straits of Gibraltar in the west, across the Mediterranean Sea, to the Black Sea in the East.
“I don’t know if this has anything to do with the recent raids, Your Grace, but a trawler was sighted in the Venetian Gulf just this morning. One of Mfeme’s,” said Orsino. He looked haggard and bleary-eyed, as if he hadn’t slept.
Vallerio, who was staring out of a window, his hands clasped behind his back, swore at the mention of the name Mfeme.
Serafina knew it; everyone in Miromara did. Rafe Iaoro Mfeme was a terragogg. He ran a fleet of fishing boats. Some were bottom trawlers—vessels that dragged huge heavy nets over the seafloor. They caught great quantities of fish and destroyed everything in their paths, including coral reefs that were hundreds of years old. Others were long-line vessels. They cast out lines fitted with hooks that ran through the water for miles. The lines killed more than fish. They hooked thousands of turtles, albatrosses, and seals. Mfeme didn’t care. His crew hauled the lines in and tossed the drowned creatures overboard like garbage.
“I don’t think the trawler has anything to do with the raids,” Isabella said. “The raiders took every single soul in the villages, but left the buildings undamaged. Mfeme’s nets would have destroyed the buildings, too.” Her voice sounded strained. Her face looked troubled and tired.
“We’ve also had reports of Praedatori in the area of the raids,” Orsino said.
“The Praedatori take valuables, not people. They’re a small band of robbers. They don’t have the numbers to raid entire villages,” Isabella said dismissively.
Sera wondered how she knew that. The Praedatori were so shadowy, no one knew much about them.
“It’s not Mfeme, either. He’s a gogg. We have protective spells against his kind,” Vallerio said. He’d left his place by the window and was swimming to and fro, barely containing his anger. “It’s Ondalina. Kolfinn’s the one behind the raids.”
“You don’t know that, Vallerio,” Isabella said. “You have no proof.”
Glances were traded between ministers. Serafina knew that her mother and uncle rarely agreed.
“Have you forgotten that Admiral Kolfinn has broken the permutavi?” Vallerio asked.
The permutavi was a pact between the two waters enacted after the War of Reykjanes Ridge. It decreed an exchange of the rulers’ children. Isabella and Vallerio’s younger brother, Ludovico, had been sent to Ondalina ten years ago in exchange for Kolfinn’s sister, Sigurlin. Desiderio was supposed to have gone to Ondalina, and Astrid, Kolfinn’s teenage daughter, was to have come to Miromara. Inexplicably, the admiral sent a messenger one week before the exchange was to have occurred to say that he was not sending her.
“In addition,” Vallerio continued, “my informants tell me Kolfinn’s spies have been spotted in the Lagoon.”
“Kolfinn has not yet informed us why he broke the permutavi. There may be an explanation,” Isabella said. “And Ondalinian spies in the Lagoon are nothing new. Every realm sends spies to the Lagoon. We send spies to the—”
Vallerio cut her off. “We must declare war and we must do it now. Before we are attacked. I’ve been saying this for weeks, Isabella.”