“We’re out of here,” she said, when she reached them.
“Ling can’t swim. Her wrist is broken.”
Serafina looked at Ling. She was cradling her arm to her chest. Her face was gray with pain.
“You’re going to have to,” she said to her. “Mfeme wants you. Us, too. He knows we’re heading to the Olt.”
“How?” Ling asked.
“I don’t know. We’ve. Got. To. Go.”
“We need to help her, Sera. She’s in a lot of pain,” Neela said.
Serafina looked around. Her eyes fell on the fishing net. “We could lay her on the net and drag it behind us,” she said.
“Oh, I’m sure she’d love that, considering it almost killed her. And besides, it’s hard to swim dragging a net! We won’t be able to propel ourselves fast enough to—”
“Wait a minute, Neela…that’s it!”
“What’s it?”
“We can jam the propeller! That’ll stop him. And give us a head start.”
“With what? Our magic doesn’t work against this ship.”
“With the net. Ling, sit tight. Neela, give me a hand.” The two mermaids picked up the net, dragged it to the ship, and began to wind it around the propeller’s fearsome blades.
“Hurry, Sera. If this starts up, we’re chum,” Neela said.
As they worked, Sera thought she heard voices. Was it mer? They sounded strange—nearby, yet muffled. She stopped and looked around warily. There was no one else in the water.
“Neela, did you hear that?” she asked.
“I didn’t hear any—”
And then they both heard it.
A wail, high-pitched and desperate. Coming from inside the Bedrie?r.
Sera swam to the ship and pressed her ear against its hull. Neela did the same. But neither mermaid heard anything further.
“Maybe it’s shad,” Serafina said uneasily. “One of Mfeme’s crew said they couldn’t have the coast guard board them because of what they had in the hold. An illegal catch, probably.”
“Sera…oh, my gods. Oh, Sera.”
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
Neela couldn’t speak anymore. Her hands were pressed to her mouth. Serafina followed her gaze. On the seabed below, maybe twenty feet off the ship’s port side, were bodies. At least a dozen of them.
Serafina uttered a strangled cry. She swam down to them, hoping that what her eyes were telling her wasn’t true. But it was. They were dead. Some were lying on their backs, others facedown. Some had the kind of open, gaping wounds that were made by a speargun. Others had bruises on their faces. Many had their wrists tied behind their backs. Almost all the women had braids in their hair, and all the men wore seaflax tunics—styles favored by rural mer in these waters.
“No,” she moaned. “Oh, great Neria, no.”
They were Miromarans. Her people. They weren’t soldiers; they were civilians. And they’d been slaughtered. She felt a deep, tearing sorrow inside, and a white-hot fury.
“I think Mfeme’s trying to capture us for Kolfinn. Because he wants the talismans and thinks we know where they are. But why would he kill innocent people? Why?”
Neela found her voice again. “For information. He must’ve thought they knew something about the talismans. Or about us.”
Above them, a humming noise started. It grew louder, and then there was an enormous whoosh as the blades of the huge propeller started to spin.
“Come on,” Sera said, hoping against hope that their plan would work.
The blades made several revolutions—and sliced through the net effortlessly. Serafina’s heart sank.
“Time to make wake,” she said.
“No, Sera, it’s working! Look!”
As the mermaids watched, the shredded filament wound itself around the propeller’s shaft and jammed it. The shaft strained, turned a few more time, then quit.
“We stopped him,” Neela said.
Serafina shook her head. “We’ve only slowed him. He followed us here. He knows where we’re going. As soon as he fixes his propeller, he’ll come after us again.”
“Sera,” Neela said, “Mfeme transports death riders for Kolfinn. The duca said so. What if they’re on board right now? What if they come out to see why the propeller stopped?”
“If they were on the ship, Mfeme would have sent them out to get us by now. But that doesn’t mean they’re not patrolling nearby. We need to get moving.” She glanced at the dead once more. “Before we end up like them.”
“HI, KITTY! NICE KITTY! Please let us pass, nice little kitty-witty!” Neela said nervously to the catfish circling around her.
There were eight of them in the dusky water, and they were monsters. Six feet long, they had speckled gray backs and fleshy pink undersides. Long barbels stood out like whiskers on either side of their broad, flat faces. Their mouths were over a foot wide. Big enough to down a duck in one gulp, a mermaid in two or three. Neela reached out her hand to pet one.
“Um, Neela? I wouldn’t do that,” Ling said.
“It’s okay. He’s purring,” Neela said.
“He’s not purring. He’s growling.”