Neela narrowed her eyes. “Excuse me very much, but in Matali, you’re called āparādhika. Criminals. A few weeks ago—and don’t even think about denying it—the Praedatori stole Foreign Secretary Tajdar’s collection of shipwreck silver. It’s worth nearly three hundred thousand trocii.”
The duca snorted. “Deny it? I’m proud of it! It was a brilliant heist. Tajdar’s collection wasn’t salvaged from shipwrecks. It was given to him over the course of several years by a captain of a super trawler in exchange for information on the movements of yellowfin tuna. My spies saw the goods passing between the two on several occasions. Need I remind you of the yellowfins’ precarious state? Their numbers have been devastated by overfishing. Your foreign secretary is as crooked as a fishhook, my dear. The Praedatori merely robbed a robber.”
“Are you serious?” Neela said.
“Usually.”
“What did you do with the swag?”
“I sold it to fund covert operations. We cut nets and long-line hooks. We set up field hospitals for the turtles, dugongs, sea lions, and dolphins injured by them. We jam propellers, tangle anchors, puncture pontoons—whatever we need to do to preserve aquatic life. It takes a great deal of currensea to fund it all.”
“But Duca Armando, robbery is robbery,” Serafina said, still mistrustful of this man. “It’s a crime no matter who’s doing the stealing. Or why.”
“Tell me, Principessa, if you were poor and had a child, and that child was starving, would you steal a bowl of keel worms to save her life? What is the greater crime—stealing food, or allowing an innocent to die?”
Serafina didn’t answer right away. She couldn’t argue with his reasoning, or the rightness of his cause, but she didn’t want to admit it. Not before she understood exactly why she and Neela were here.
Neela answered for her. “She’d totally steal the worms. Anyone would. What’s your point?”
“That sometimes we must fight a greater evil with a lesser one. The waters of the world are in the greatest peril. We have had some success in the courts of the terragoggs against the worst offenders, but not enough. So we rob robbers to further our cause. I am more than happy to relieve Tajdar, and all like him, of their ill-gotten gains if it saves one species from being fished to extinction, one more garbage lake from materializing in the Pacific Ocean, or one magnificent shark from being murdered for its fins.”
“Who are the Praedatori?” Neela asked.
“That I cannot tell you. Their identities are kept secret to protect them. Faces, bodies, voices—they’re all disguised by powerful songspells. They come from all swims of life and they pledge themselves to the defense of the earth’s waters.” His expression grew solemn. “It is not a pledge to be taken lightly. The risks they face are enormous. Many are killed in the line of duty. In this day and age, friends of the water have many enemies. Just last week, two of my soldiers died sabotaging a seal cull. I grieved for them as I would my own children.” Sorrow filled his eyes and anger filled his voice. “We have not yet recovered from that loss, and now we face this…this butchery in Miromara.”
At the mention of her realm, Serafina’s fins prickled again.
“Duca Armando, why are we here?” she asked, unable to contain her fears any longer. “You say the Praedatori exist to fight the terragoggs, but the attack in Miromara was made by mer, so why are you involving yourself? This is not the Praedatori’s fight.”
“Oh, but it is,” the duca said.
“But it was Ondalina who attacked us. The arrow that wounded my mother was tipped with poison from an Arctic sculpin. The uniforms the attackers wore were black—Admiral Kolfinn’s color. They were mermen, Duca Armando, not humans,” Serafina said.
“You saw what Kolfinn wanted you to see,” the duca said. “He had help.”
“From whom?” Serafina asked, frightened by the thought of another mer realm aligning with Ondalina. “Atlantica? Qin?”
“No, my child. From a terragogg. The very worst of his kind. Rafe Iaoro Mfeme.”
“IT CAN’T BE,” Serafina said, stunned. “The terragoggs have never been able to find us, or our cities. We have spells to keep them away; we have sentries and soldiers.”
She was practically babbling with fear. She wouldn’t accept what the duca was saying. Couldn’t accept it. For millennia, only magic had protected the mer from marauding terragoggs. Humans couldn’t break the protective spells the mer cast, but other mer could. Is that what Kolfinn was doing?
“If the terragoggs can get to us, they’ll destroy us,” she continued. “Duca Armando, there’s no way that Ondalina would be in league with the terragoggs. Even Kolfinn couldn’t commit such a betrayal. No mer leader could.”
“Think, Principessa,” the duca urged her. “Where did the attackers come from?”
Serafina cast her mind back to the Kolisseo. She could see it all so clearly, as if it had happened only minutes ago. She saw her mother wounded. Her father killed. And thousands of troops descending on the city.