Abelard took off. Sera watched him go. “You haven’t seen Sylvestre, have you?” she asked wistfully.
“Not since the attack,” Coco replied. “I sneak into the palace as often as I can to look for medicine, food, weapons—anything the resistance can use. He’s not there.”
Sera nodded sadly. She missed Sylvestre and hoped he’d somehow escaped the death riders, but she realized she’d probably never find out what had happened to him.
“Come on, Coco. We’ve got a lot to do,” she said.
The two mermaids entered the listening room. It was as black as the abyss inside. All the lava globes had burned out.
“The government records are shelved by year, and then subject—ouch!” Coco yelped as she whacked her tail against an overturned chair. “I can’t see a thing in here.” She held up her torch, and then swam to the back of the room. “One thirty-six…no, that’s not what we want,” she said, peering at the shelves. She moved to the right. Serafina followed her. “There’s ninety-eight…sixty-seven…twenty-nine…Here we go…ten anno Merrow.”
Coco ran her index finger along the front of the shelves as she spoke. “K…L…We need the Ps…Here they are…Parliamentary Minutes…Prison Budget…Privy Council…Progress, Merrow’s!” She shined her light over the shelf. “Looks like about twenty conchs in all. We’ll be able to fit them into—”
Her words were cut off by the sudden arrival of Abelard. He nipped her shoulder.
“Death riders?”
Abelard nodded.
“Hurry, Principessa,” Coco said, sweeping shells into the basket. Serafina followed her lead.
The mermaids couldn’t carry the heavy baskets and the lava torches, so they put the torches on top of the baskets, then swam out of the listening room as fast as they could.
When they got into the hallway, they heard voices. Sera guessed the death riders were only a level away. She could feel their heavy vibrations.
Go! she mouthed, hoping she and Coco could get far enough down the hallway so that the glow from the torches didn’t give them away.
Coco lurched forward, struggling with the weight of her basket. The jerky motion unbalanced the torch, with its round glass globe. It started rocking from side to side. Coco tried to steady it by moving the basket, but that only made things worse. The torch rolled across the conchs to the side of the basket.
Serafina gasped. If it slipped off and hit the floor, the death riders would hear it.
“Abby!” Coco hissed.
Abelard turned around just as the torch fell. He zipped over to it and managed to catch the globe on the tip of his nose just inches off the floor. He nudged it back up into the basket, did a quick about-face, and shot off down the hallway. Serafina and Coco followed, swimming flat out.
“Hang on a minute…do you feel something?” a voice said. A death rider’s voice.
“No, do you?”
“I thought so. Maybe not.” There was a pause, then, “Tell Fabio to bring the hound sharks down. Better safe than sorry.”
“Fabi-o!”
“What?”
“Unleash the hounds!”
“Do I have to? I want to get out of here. I hate this place.”
“Gotta do it. If the Ostrokon blows up tomorrow and we didn’t sweep it, it’s our tails.”
“Go, Coco! Swim!” Serafina whispered, wild with fear.
Finally, they got to the basement. Abelard had alerted Fossegrim by butting his nose against the trapdoor.
“Get inside,” Fossegrim said, holding the door open. “Hurry!”
As Serafina passed him, he opened a reed cage full of fish. “Go!” he ordered them in Pesca. “Head for the surface.” The fish rushed out—forty at least.
He looked at the far side of the basement. “Hide us. Hurry!” he said in RaySay. As he pulled the trapdoor closed, two rays rose from the floor. They nudged a basket filled with broken conchs over the door, then disappeared back into the gloom.
Only seconds later, Sera, Fossegrim and the others heard hound sharks baying overhead and death riders yelling at them. No one moved. They barely dared to breathe.
“It was nothing, you dumbwrasse!” one of the death riders yelled. “Just a bunch of blennies! I’ll never get the hounds back now. They’ll chase those fish all the way to Tsarno.”
The soldiers’ voices trailed off. Fossegrim waited. A minute went by, then another. No more sounds were heard. He leaned his head against the door, let out a sigh of relief, and turned to Serafina.
“I hope those conchs were worth it,” he said.
Trembling, Sera said, “So do I.”
SERAFINA STRETCHED. She yawned. She leaned her head from side to side and cracked the bones in her neck.
“You should get some sleep,” Niccolo said. He nodded at the conchs she’d spread out on a table. “How’s it going?”
“Not so well,” Serafina replied.