Sneaking by two grooms and three death riders to get inside the stables had taken some doing. Luckily, they’d been so busy drinking posidonia wine in celebration of Lucia’s Dokimí that they hadn’t noticed Sera as she’d crossed the exercise yard, swimming low behind bales of sea hay.
Now, as she crossed the stateroom, she looked at the gaping hole where its east wall had once stood. A mournful current swept through it. Anemones and seaweeds grew along its broken edges. She swam to the throne, then bent down to touch the floor near it. Head bowed, she stayed there for quite some time, remembering her mother. Then she rose and backed away from it.
As she did, a movement behind the throne startled her. She spun toward it, dagger out, then realized she was seeing herself in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors on the wall.
For a moment, she worried that Rorrim might be lurking behind the network of cracks in the silver glass, or worse yet, the eyeless man. But the mirrors were empty.
She took the transparensea pearl out of her pocket and cast it. Now all she had to do was figure out where her uncle was. His living quarters were in the palace’s north wing, so she decided to start there. To get to them, she had to swim past her mother’s presence chamber into the north corridor. As she approached the chamber, she saw that its door was closed. But voices were carrying through it.
Careful not to make any noise, she pressed an ear to the door. The voices belonged to Vallerio and Portia. But she couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Sera quickly swam through a hole in the stateroom wall and around the side of the palace to see if the Presence Chamber’s tall windows were open. Luckily, one was. She squeezed through the opening, and swam silently into a corner to listen and watch.
“If the people knew…if they ever find out…” her uncle was saying.
“The people are fools. No one has any idea you were behind the invasion. You covered your wake well. You warned Isabella that Ondalina would wage war. Kolfinn inadvertently helped us by breaking the permutavi.”
“I still don’t know why he did it,” Vallerio said.
“Nor do I. And I don’t care. It was a real piece of luck for us. So was your begging Isabella to declare war on the very day of the attack. The councillors who survived will remember your words and tell the people how wise you were.”
“But how were the payments made? If they find that gold is missing from the vaults…”
“He paid Traho. As promised. And the councillors will have no problem paying the Kobold, because they saw how you used them to liberate the city,” Portia said, laughing.
Sera wondered who this he was.
“That was a stroke of genius, my darling,” Portia continued. “Making it look as though you and the Kobold frightened Traho into surrendering. Now that the beasts are here, they can root out the resistance for us. Miromara is ours. Matali is ours. Soon Qin will be, too. Mfeme is on his way there as we speak. Atlantica will fall next, then Ondalina, and finally the Freshwaters. Soon our daughter will rule all the waters of the world!”
“Nineteen years,” Vallerio said. “That’s how long I’ve waited for this. How long I’ve waited to make you mine. To be the family we always should have been. To put our daughter on the throne.”
Serafina put a hand against a wall to steady herself. She felt as if she’d been gutted.
It wasn’t Admiral Kolfinn who’d ordered Traho to attack Miromara. And it wasn’t Kolfinn who’d collaborated with the gogg Mfeme. All this time, it was Vallerio, her own uncle. He hadn’t escaped to the north to bring liberating troops back to Cerulea. He went there for reinforcements—for goblin thugs who would make sure that no one challenged Lucia’s coronation. And he and Portia weren’t going to stop with Miromara; they planned to invade every mer realm. As soon as she was in the azzuros, and the safe house, she would warn the others. Astrid, too. Astrid had been telling the truth; Ondalina had nothing to do with the invasion.
Portia picked up a bottle of posidonia wine on a table and filled two glasses. She handed one to Vallerio. “Things are going so well. Even better than I’d hoped,” she said, touching her glass to his. “He’s pleased, and why wouldn’t he be? He has the black pearl, and now Mahdi’s found the blue diamond for him.”
Serafina’s heart nearly stopped. Who in the gods’ names was he? She had to find out. Whoever this person was had Orfeo’s talisman. She and her friends would have to get it from him.
“He’ll want the other talismans, too,” Vallerio said. “They were his price for helping us. We mustn’t keep him waiting.”
“We won’t,” Portia said. “The camps are full. The prisoners are working day and night to find the talismans.”