She’d fed Ava a spicy, filling stew made of crawdads, salamanders, and river peppers, and had given her medicine to break her fever. Then she’d made her a gris-gris—maybe the strongest one she’d ever made—and hadn’t taken so much as a cowrie for it. Lafitte, Esmé, and Sally had all looked at Manon as if she’d lost her mind.
As she’d hung the gris-gris around Ava’s neck, Manon had told Ava that the Okwa lived in the Spiderlair swamp and instructed her on how to get there. She’d tried to convince Ava to spend the night in her cave and rest close to the waterfire, but Ava had politely refused the offer. “There are soldiers on my tail,” she’d explained. Then she’d thanked Manon and left.
“You keep that child safe, you hear me?” Manon had whispered to the spirits as she’d watched Ava swim away. She cared for that mermaid, though she didn’t want to. Caring was risky in the swamps. The Spiderlair, a four days’ journey from Manon’s cave, was named for the large, vicious arachnids that hunted on its banks. It was the other creatures that lived in those dark waters that worried Manon, though—most of them far too clever to be glimpsed with an occula. The seeing stone showed evidence of them, nonetheless—in the bones and skulls half-buried in the swamp mud.
Manon picked up her tarot cards again now. They’d been cut from the shells of giant washboard clams, polished flat, then etched with tarot symbols. She drew one from the deck and laid it down. When she saw what it was—a tall, upright tower with waterfire coming out of its windows—she caught her breath.
“The Tower means danger. Not good,” Lafitte said, clucking his tongue. “Not good at all.”
Manon glanced at the seeing stone again. Inside it, the image of Ava was fading. The mermaid had swum deeper into the Spiderlair, too deep for the seeing stone to follow. Another image took its place: the brutal Captain Traho riding with his troops.
They were headed the wrong way; that was something. And even if they found out that the Okwa were in the Spiderlair and not the Blackwater, Ava still had a good head start on them. Then again, they were on hippokamps and she was on fin. They were strong and she was weak. They numbered two hundred and she was only one.
Fear, an emotion Manon Laveau was not accustomed to, wrapped its cold, thin fingers around her heart.
“Please, cher,” she whispered. “Hurry.”
SERAFINA SWAM TO the mouth of the cave, high in the side of a lonely, current-swept bluff, and peered into the black water. “They’re not coming,” she said.
“They are,” Desiderio countered. “They probably took a back current to throw off any trackers. It’s dangerous for the N?kki as well as us.”
Sera nodded, but she wasn’t convinced. While she continued to search the water for movement, the others floated around a waterfire, trying to warm themselves. She’d cast the fire small and weak. The last thing she wanted was to advertise their presence.
Sera, Desiderio, Yazeed, and Ling were in no-mer’s-waters, just over the border of the Meerteufel goblins’ realm. They would have preferred to hold this meeting at their stronghold in the Kargjord, but Guldemar, the Meerteufel chieftain, hated the N?kki—a tribe of arms dealers—and forbade them to enter his realm. Any found in his waters, he’d decreed, were to be shot on sight.
Sera didn’t like the N?kki either and wished she didn’t have to deal with them, but she had no choice. The death riders had just intercepted two weapons shipments. Under an agreement Sera had made with Guldemar, the Meerteufel were to supply the Black Fins with arms. The stolen shipments were the last two that Guldemar owed the resistance, and he’d refused to replace them. The death riders were not his problem, he’d said. He’d met his obligation.
Desperate, Sera had made plans to meet the N?kki here, in the lonely borderwaters of the North Sea. But would they come?
The loss of valuable armaments was bad, but far more troubling to Sera was the fact that the death riders had known when the weapons would be shipped and along what route. It confirmed what she’d suspected—that the Black Fin resistance had a spy in its midst. This traitor had done a great deal of damage to the resistance and was poised to do more. Sera had shared her plan to meet with the N?kki with her inner circle only, hoping to keep it a secret from the spy.
Play the board, not the piece, her mother, Regina Isabella, had advised, comparing the art of ruling to a chess game. Ever since Sera had learned that her uncle Vallerio was the one behind the invasion of Cerulea and her mother’s assassination, she’d been desperately trying to keep herself, and her Black Fins, out of checkmate.
Where are the N?kki? she wondered now, still gazing out at the dark waters. Did something spook them?
“Five more minutes, then we’re out of here,” she announced, returning to the group.
At that moment, the temperature in the cave plummeted and the waterfire burned low. Sera heard a noise behind her. She spun around, her hand on the dagger at her hip, her fighters at her back.