The Selkie King grimaced, but after a moment he nodded in agreement. He walked away from the edge of the water so they could talk without being overheard by the Selkies and Merpeople still waiting patiently for their sovereigns.
“It is not so much that we know anything, Baba Yaga. I assure you, if we did, we would have informed the Queen no matter what the possible . . . repercussions.” They all looked at the broken crystals and the still-quivering stalactite and shuddered in unison at the thought of the Queen in one of her rages.
“We have simply been hearing rumors,” Boudicca put in, her voice melodic and gentle compared to the gruff old Selkie. “You know how such things swirl about in a court; at first we thought them merely gossip and the mutterings of a disaffected and unsettled populace.”
“And just what were these rumors?” Beka asked, a touch grimly.
Tyrus had the grace to look guilty, where his father did not. “Some said that there was a mysterious stranger who had come to lead the underwater people back to glory. No one ever admitted to speaking to this man, or knowing anyone who had. It was always a friend of a friend of a friend. But everyone agreed that this person was attempting to recruit members of the Mer and Selkie communities to his cause.”
“This rabble-rouser made ridiculous, impossible promises,” Gwrtheyrn said bitterly. “He spoke of driving the Humans from the sea and allowing our people to live openly on the wide ocean as we once did, feared and worshipped rather than dismissed as tales for children. Anyone with any sense would know that such things could never happen. They are too many and too powerful, and we are too few, and vulnerable to the brutal weapons you land-dwellers are constantly inventing.”
“No offense,” Boudicca said with a rueful eye roll.
Beka smiled at her. Gwrtheyrn’s mostly well-deserved anti-Human bias didn’t bother her nearly as much as discovering that the outlaw leader the Queen had tasked her to uncover had already been hard at work sowing dissention and recruiting followers among the undersea people.
“How many of your people do you think have chosen to follow this agitator?” Beka asked. “And do you think they are dangerous?”
Boudicca sighed, her abundant bosom heaving. “It is impossible to say. The rumors are everywhere. The renegade himself seems to be nowhere. As for dangerous . . . how dangerous are Humans when they are feeling threatened and helpless and frightened, and some forceful figure comes along and tells them exactly what they want to hear?”
That was exactly what Beka had been afraid of. Queen Morena’s fears that this renegade and his followers would do something that would irrevocably reveal the existence of magical creatures to the entire Human race had apparently not been an overreaction.
If Beka couldn’t find and stop these people before they went too far, Humans could get hurt or even killed. And then the backlash, should the paranormal world be discovered, would be unspeakable. The best they could hope for would be dissection tables, zoos, and internment camps. The worst—the witch hunts all over again.
She had to find these renegades fast, and not just because the Queen was going to take her job away from her if she didn’t.
Beka said her good-byes to Boudicca, Gwrtheyrn, and Tyrus, and made her way back to the pathway that would return her to the doorway between the worlds. Frantic plans tumbled through her brain as she walked. She would try to find Kesh and see if he had heard anything about this renegade leader, or even been approached to join the group. She would send a message to Marcus’s father (hopefully without Marcus finding out and ripping her head off) asking him to warn the other fishermen to be alert for trouble. Although that one was tricky, since she couldn’t exactly explain what forms the trouble might come in.
And she thought it was time to call in some help.
As soon as she got home, she was going to summon the Riders.
*
JUST AS THERE had always been Babas, there had also always been the Riders. No one seemed to know if they were immortal creatures who chose to look like men, or if they were simply a series of creatures who took on the same guise when one took over for another. Brenna had insisted that the Riders she knew had been the same ones that her mentor Baba knew, and between them, they covered hundreds of years of experience.
No matter what manner of being they truly were, the Riders were dedicated to the service of the Baba Yagas. Attractive, powerful, and completely dependable (as long as you didn’t mind some collateral damage along the way), the White Rider, the Red Rider, and the Black Rider had ridden their magical horses through the old Baba Yaga stories, inspiring awe and fear. If a Baba Yaga had a problem too big to handle on her own, she could call in the Riders.
As far as Beka was concerned, this particular set of problems definitely qualified.