Camps? Prisoners? What is she talking about? Serafina wondered. Then she remembered that Neela had mentioned something similar. Was Traho taking people prisoner and forcing them to work?
“All obstacles are being overcome, Vallerio,” Portia continued, “and all threats to our power eliminated. That fool Mahdi is on our side, and will continue to be as long as we keep giving him money. Bilaal and Ahadi are dead. Aran and Sananda are our hostages. Bastiaan is dead. Happily, Isabella is, too.”
“Happily?” Vallerio echoed. “It’s not a happy thing, Portia. She was my sister. I wish it could have ended differently.”
Portia had no such sentiments. “Come, Vallerio, this is no time for regrets. What we’ve done, we’ve done for the good of the realm.”
“She was only following Merrow’s decree, that only a daughter of a daughter can rule Miromara, not a daughter of a son,” Vallerio said, gazing into his glass.
Portia snorted. “Of course she was! That was one of Isabella’s so-called strong points—slavishly following Merrow’s absurd decrees. It’s time for some new decrees—our decrees. Handed down to the people by our daughter.”
Vallerio nodded. “You’re right, my love. Of course you are.”
Portia smiled. “You mustn’t lose your nerve. Not now. We’re almost there. Soon, nothing will be able to stop us.”
“Is there any news of Desiderio?” Vallerio asked. “Of Serafina?”
“We have death riders tracking Desiderio. They haven’t found him yet, but they will. As for Serafina, she’s proving to be tougher to capture than I anticipated. But sooner or later, her luck will run out. I tell anyone who asks that she’s dead, and soon she will be. The death riders have their orders and they’ll carry them out. Our daughter’s rule is not assured as long as Isabella’s daughter lives.”
There was a knock on the door.
“Enter!” Vallerio said.
A servant swam into the room. “Your Graces,” he said, “the betrothal dinner is about to begin.”
Vallerio offered Portia his arm and they left the presence chamber together. As the door closed behind them, Serafina felt an overwhelming urge to destroy the room, to smash everything Vallerio and Portia had touched. She fought it down. Only fools alerted enemies to their presence.
She swam back out of the window, and headed for the kelp forest and her friends. Yazeed was right. They had to get out of Cerulea. The sooner, the better.
As Sera swam, she quietly sang a lamentatio, a mer funeral dirge.
She had just lost another member of her family.
SERAFINA LEANED HER head back and stared up through the fronds of the kelp forest. Night was falling. She could see the rising moon’s pale rays on the water.
“‘Happily.’ That’s what she said. ‘Happily,’ Isabella is dead….As she smiled and sipped her wine.”
Her voice caught. Coco twined her arms around her waist. Neela kissed her cheek. Yaz took her hand.
“Oh, Sera,” Neela said. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Finally, when she was able to speak again, Sera said, “Somebody has a talisman. Orfeo’s black pearl. I don’t know who he is, only that Vallerio and Portia are helping him. Yaz, Neela, do you know? And do you know anything about labor camps and prisoners?”
Neela told her everything that had happened to her after they’d parted company in the Incantarium.
Sera was sickened by her description of the labor camps. “How could they do such a thing? How could my uncle?” she asked. “Nothing can explain it. Not even his nineteen years of pain.”
“We’ve got to find out who this he is,” Yazeed said, releasing her hand.
“We’ve got to get the black pearl from him,” said Serafina.
“We’ve got to get out of here first,” Neela said.
The kelp they were hiding in grew so densely that they had to float upright in it. They could not sit down and stretch their tails out.
“Who are we still missing?” Yazeed asked.
“Bartolomeo and Luca,” came the reply from farther in the kelp. It was Niccolo.
“We wait for another half hour, then we head for the safe house,” Yaz said.
Serafina felt a thump. Coco had nodded off, floating upright. The child’s heavy head had fallen on her shoulder.
“I’m going to swim a little farther into the forest,” she whispered, picking Coco up. “See if I can find a place where she can stretch out. I won’t go too far. Give a whistle when the others get here.”
Yazeed nodded and Serafina pushed her way through the tall, leafy stalks. Abelard followed her. A few minutes later she came across a small clearing—only it wasn’t empty, as she’d hoped. It contained two long earthen mounds. Each had broken bits of bronze statuary lying on top of it. She saw a torso on one. A hand. A plaque. Fins. Part of a tail.
She bent over and carefully lowered Coco to the ground. The little merl woke instantly. “What’s going on?” she asked fearfully. “Death riders?”
“Shh, Coco, it’s okay. I was just trying to find a place for you to sleep,” Serafina said.
Coco blinked at the mounds. “What are those? Graves?” she asked.