Serafina knew that Mahdi chafed under the burden of Matali’s archaic bureaucracy.
“I couldn’t just sit there while my people were being stolen,” Mahdi continued. “I asked our high commander if Yaz and I could go out with the soldiers, but he said it was too dangerous. So we went to the chief of the Secret Service. He asked us how we were going to help—by going undercover? He laughed at the idea. Everyone in the entire kingdom knew who we were. I got angry then. Really angry. I’d lost three friends and couldn’t do a thing about it. Yaz felt the same way. In fact, the thing we did? It was his idea.”
Serafina raised an eyebrow. “What thing that you did?” she asked.
“We snuck to the stables with four more friends, got some hippokamps, and took off. We went to search for Kamau, Ravi, and Jai. We were gone for two days. No one could find us. It kind of caused an uproar.”
“I bet it did,” said Serafina. “You’re the heir to the throne! What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t thinking. Not then, and not for a long time after,” he said.
“What do you mean?
Mahdi looked up at the ceiling. “I knew about the raids. They’d been happening in Matali for over a year. I’d heard the reports. But I’d never actually seen one of the raided villages. It was horrible, Sera. The worst thing I’d ever seen. Some of the villagers must’ve tried to fight. There were bloodstains on the walls and floors of houses. They scribbled notes and left them behind. Please tell my wife….Please help us….They’ve got my children….”
Serafina leaned her head against Mahdi’s shoulder. She was silent. She had learned that when pain was very deep, you shouldn’t talk. You should listen.
“I lost it,” Mahdi said. “Totally. I was grieving for my friends and for the stolen villagers. I wished I could talk to you and missed you like crazy and I couldn’t even get a conch to you, not without Kamau. He was the only one I trusted with something so private. I was first in line to the throne, the second most powerful merman in the realm, but I couldn’t do anything to help anyone. I kind of went off the deep end.” His jacket was still open. He touched his fingers to his chest, to the place over his heart, and drew out a bloodsong, wincing slightly.
Serafina watched the crimson swirl through the water and the images coalesce. A few seconds later, she sat up straight. Her jaw dropped open. She could not believe what she was seeing.
Mahdi and Yaz were at a club playing a spirited game of drupes, in which players took turns trying to bounce a shiny silver coin into a cup of brack. Whoever got the coin in handed the cup to another player to drink. The two of them had obviously been handed most of the cups, because a minute later, they were on the club’s stage, kicking up their tails in the middle of a showmerl chorus line. A few hours later, they were at a piercing parlor getting gold hoops in their ears.
Serafina saw other memories. Of breakneck hippokamp races and games of Dump the Dude, in which they knocked gogg surfers off their boards. Of raucous shoals, and huge bets made on caballabong matches. There were memories of out-of-control waves that went on all night and ended up with Yaz passed out on top of a turret and Mahdi hanging off a spire one-handed, yelling, “Serafina! SERAFINA!” before he was stopped by the Imperial Guards.
“Wow,” Serafina said now, as the bloodsong faded into the water.
“Yep,” Mahdi said. “’Fraid so. That went on for about a year and then one night—or morning, rather—when the two of us woke up on the floor of a nightclub, a man was standing there. The duca. In trousers, leather shoes, and a tweed jacket.”
“Underwater? How did he—”
“I don’t know. I can’t explain most of the things he did.”
“Does he—did he—have magic?” Serafina asked.
Mahdi thought for a minute, then said. “He had love, Sera. So much love. For the sea and all of its creatures. I think that was his magic.”
Serafina nodded.
“He stood there, leaning on his walking stick, looking down at us,” Mahdi continued. “And then he told us that we were disgraceful. ‘Is this how you honor the memory of your friends? Of those villagers?’ he said. We asked him who he was and how he knew about the villagers. He told us about the duchi di Venezia, the Praedatori, and the Wave Warriors. We explained to him that we’d approached the high commander, and the Secret Service. We said we’d even tried to find the villagers.” Mahdi shook his head again, embarrassed. “It sounds as lame now as it did then. The duca told us we needed to do more than try, we needed to succeed. And we would if we joined his Praedatori. So we did. We took the vow. We promised we’d shape up, but he didn’t want us to. He wanted us to keep doing exactly what we were doing. To hang out in clubs. Rub elbows with caballabong players, sirens, club kids, and the lowtiders who hang around them.”