“Great,” Serafina said. “Looks like we have a battle with ax-wielding goblins to look forward to. I’m so happy about that. Because, you know, Abbadon just isn’t enough of a challenge for me.”
“Magdalena!” a voice called from the doorway. It was Tatiana, another one of the Iele.
“Baba Vr?ja wants to see you. Right away.” There was panic in her voice.
“What’s wrong?” Magdalena asked.
“Captain Traho just entered the mouth of the Olt. The cadavru saw him.”
“So? He’s done it before. It’s only a search party,” Magdalena said.
“He has five hundred death riders with him. Five hundred!” Tatiana said, her voice edging toward hysteria.
“Calm down, Tatiana. He doesn’t know where we are,” Magdalena said. “No one knows where we are.”
“He does now.”
It was Ling. She was leaning on the doorjamb, panting. Her face was flushed from swimming fast.
“But how is that possible? Who told him?” Magdalena asked.
“Abbadon.”
“I WAS SO WRONG,” Ling said.
She swam into the room. “All this time, I thought Abbadon was talking to itself,” she said. “Monster speaks, like, two hundred languages. And a lot of them are very old forms. That’s why it took me so long to see the pattern. I mean, ever try to make sense of ancient Abahatta?”
“What pattern, Ling? What are you saying?” Serafina asked, alarmed.
“I’m saying that Abbadon talks. But not to itself. It talks about us. Constantly. I didn’t understand at first. It kept changing languages so I couldn’t follow what it was saying, but now I can. Here, look…I wrote down a lot of its words.” She showed them a piece of parchment. It was covered with lines.
“Six children the witch sends to defeat Abbadon…Scared little children…stupid and weak…They will not find the talismans…They will die…Their realms will fall…and Abbadon will rise again….” she read aloud. Then she looked at the others. “It hears everything spoken in these caves. It says our names. Where we’re from. Who our mage ancestors were. What our powers are. It talks about everything we’ve talked about for the past few days. About landmarks—the ones Vr?ja gave us to lead us here. It talks about the Malacostraca. Because we talked about them and it heard us,” she said.
“Oh, no,” Becca whispered.
“Look, do you see this word here? Kyrios. And these? Zh?…st?pan…dominus. They all mean the same thing: master. It’s talking to Traho, or Kolfinn, or whoever wants to free it. It’s telling him everything,” Ling said.
“Which means he knows where we are,” Serafina said, fear squeezing her stomach.
“And how to get here,” Becca said.
“If the death riders find the entrance to these caves…” Neela said.
“You mean when they find it. If Abbadon told Traho about the landmarks—the Maiden’s Leap, the bones, the waters of the Malacostraca—then it’s only a matter of time.”
“You have to get out of here,” Magdelena said. “There’s a tunnel beneath our caves. It will take you several leagues south of here. Well away from Traho and his soldiers. Get your things and meet me in Vr?ja’s study.” She left then, swimming rapidly after Tatiana.
Fury rose from deep in Serafina’s heart, like waterfire from the depths of the earth. It pushed out the fear. Traho was forcing them to flee again. He’d torn her away from her home, from the safety of the duca’s palazzo, and from Blu. Now he was tearing her apart from the other mermaids when they’d only just come together.
“She’s right,” Ling said. “We better not be here when Traho knocks on the door.”
“No. Forget it. I’m not leaving. Not like this,” Serafina said defiantly.
“But we can’t stay,” Becca said.
“We’ll go, but not yet. First, let’s really give Abbadon something to talk about.”
“Such as?”
“A bloodbind.”
“Whoa,” Ling said. “Really?”
“Really.”
“It’s darksong, Sera,” Ava said. “It’s canta malus.”
“These are dark times,” Serafina replied.
Canta malus was said to have been a poisonous gift to the mer from Morsa, in mockery of Neria’s gifts. The invocation of some malus spells could get the caster imprisoned: the clepio spells, used for stealing; a habeo, which took control of another’s mind or body; the nocérus, used to cause harm; and the nex songspell, which was used to kill.
“Outlaws use bloodbinds,” Becca said. “So they can never turn against each other.”
“Traho has made outlaws of us,” Sera countered.
“A bloodbind is forever. You break it, you die,” Ava said.
“I know that,” Sera said. “I want to show Traho that we mean it. That we’re all in. Abbadon called us a lot of things. It’s right about one—we’re scared. But we’re not stupid, we’re not weak, we’re not children, and we won’t quit. I still don’t know how we’re going to do this. I don’t know how to use all my powers. I don’t even know how to stop Neela’s nosebleed. But I do know this: I will fight to the death with you, and for you. It’s time Abbadon and Traho and every single lowtide death rider knew that too.”