Fire (The Mermaid Legacy - Book 2) (16 page)

I watched an Oceanid carrying a delicate limp form, her dark wavy hair wafting around her porcelain face.

“It’s a woman,” I whispered, the blood draining from my face as I swam down into the throng of Oceanids that surrounded the so-called traitor.

“Is she all right?”

The Oceanid that carried her had a grim expression on his face. “She is a traitor and Aoi will decide what to do with her.”

The council room was almost immediately overcrowded, everyone at once horrified at the ribbons of skin and muscle that drifted with the cloth that had covered her legs.Aoi insisted everyone clear the room except for three of the biggest Miengu and the council.

“Call Maya,” I instructed as I knelt at her side.

“No,” Aoi replied.

“But she is hurt, Aoi, she needs healing. I can do it on my own but it’s easier with two of us.”

Aoi shook his head. “She will receive no help from us.”

The others in the council room murmured at the angry words from Aoi, obviously oblivious to the fact there had been a spy in their midst.

“This woman has betrayed all of us,” he announced to them. “In attacking Neith we are putting our lives in danger and this, this scum has informed him of our plans and has probably already told him what it is we have been practising. Make no mistake, she has ensured the deaths of many already with the information she has given to Neith.”

“How do you know this, Aoi?” one of the Oceanids asked.

“Someone has been giving Neith information and we we asked the Zmija to keep guard over The Haven and to bring any who left it back to us…alive.”

He nudged the woman’s wounds and blood swirled into the water.

“I must admit I expected a man and I expected the spy to wait until this evening at the very earliest, but it looks like she couldn’t wait to go and tell Neith and it looks like she very nearly managed to get away too.”

“So you’re just going to leave her to suffer?” I asked in horror, watching her eyelids flutter as she began to gain consciousness.

“We need to find out what she’s told Neith,” Aoi stated matter of factly.

Nausea squirmed through me. “How are you planning to do that?”

“We have our ways,” he replied, his face setting in a mask of distaste and determination as he nodded to two Miengu.They approached her and began prodding her wounds as she groaned in pain.

“Stop that,” I told them, trying to push them away from her.

Both of them stopped before turning to Aoi again who nodded ever so slightly.

One of the Miengu pulled her hair and watched in satisfaction as she came round, letting out a sob of pain.

“What did you tell Neith?” The Miengu hissed into her face.

She closed her eyes, cowering away from him as he wrapped his huge hand around the torn flesh of her leg.

She began to cry.

“I said stop that.” I pushed at the Miengu again, but this time they ignored me.

I drew on the terror and fury the dream had left me with and produced two energy balls, one in each of my palms before swimming above them and repeating my request.

“Alexandra, your behaviour is uncalled for. We will get what we need from her this way,” Aoi admonished

“No…you misunderstand me, this is not for her, it is for them.” There was a gasp from the rest of the council and the Miengu stopped hurting her, glancing fearfully between Aoi andme. “You will move away from her,” I instructed the Miengu, turning my palms in readiness to release the energy at them.

When they’d returned to Aoi’s side I reabsorbed the energy and floated to stand in front of her, glaring at Aoi.

“Alex, do you remember that dream you had of Merrick?” Dad’s voice filled the council room as I continued to glare at Aoi. I nodded, too angry and sickened by their quick willingness to hurt one of their own to speak.

“She is partly responsible for that…you must know that.”

“So to find out what we want from her, you’re going to treat her like they treated him?”

There was silence in the council room.

“We can’t,” I told them looking at each of them in turn. “If we treat her badly we are no better than Neith.” I knelt, keeping a wary glare on Aoi and the Miengu before imagining her healthy and touched her skin, feeling my strength flowing into her as the flesh reknit and skin covered the raw muscle and bone.

She watched the whole process, her expression a mixture of fear and gratitude.

“What is your name?” I asked.

Her eyes were wild as they darted around the council room looking for an escape.

“What did you tell Neith?” I asked again, hoping she’d be sensible enough to tell us, because black hatred curled off the skin of every Oceanid that surrounded us and I didn’t want to fight them.

“Please.” I turned to her again. “I don’t want them to hurt you.”

“There is nothing you can do that is worse than what he has already done.”

“Please tell me.”

Her eyes continued to dart around the room before she said, “Only if I can do so alone.”

Aoi and the rest of the Oceanids were not happy with the idea but I insisted, telling them I’d only be a few minutes.

“OK, you should talk quickly. What is your name?” I asked her once they had left the room.

“My name is Cyan and I didn’t want to do this… If I don’t keep communicating with Neith…” she began to sob, “he’ll kill them…my children. He took them a month ago and has insisted that I tell him when there are children in the traps he set up in the kelp. The last contact I had, my orders had changed. I am to meet them every four hours, day or night, to tell them what you are doing. If I don’t they will kill my children.”

“What have you told him?”

“I’ve told him that you’re developing a plan of attack, and that you’re in control. Please, I don’t know any more and I’m already half an hour late for my contact. Alexandra, I have to get to him.”

“Cyan, they will never let you go…unless…”

“I’ll do anything,” she whispered.

I ducked out of the council room and pulled Dad aside.

“She could well be lying, Alex,” he replied after listening to what she’d told me.

“She could be, but I don’t think so. It’s very difficult to fake that kind of fear, that kind of horror. Dad, she has to meet her contact or Neith will kill her children.”

“We can’t let her go.”

“But what if we did, what if we fed Neith the wrong information?”

Dad was thoughtful for a few moments.

“I guess it’s worth a try.”

It was midday, a full three hours later than we’d planned when we began training the Oceanids. Despite the delay my mood had lifted. We’d managed to find and incapacitate Neith’s spy, which meant we could talk more freely and practise more openly.

By the time I got to the arena Dad had been rehearsing the pod in general hand-to-hand combat moves.

I watched in awe as he swirled and pounced through the water in a manner that belied the consistency of our environment. As I watched I understood just a very little how incredible Dad was, how he must have missed the ocean every day he was on the hard, dry, gravity-bound land.

“How does he do that?” I breathed in awe to Sabrina as he pinned a massive Miengu effortlessly onto the ground.

“That’s what we’ve all been learning,” Sabrina replied with a grin.

As we neared the group I was surprised by the murmurs of congratulations as the Oceanids around me stretched out their hands to touch my shoulder, arm or back.

Dad floated, beaming, in the centre of them.

“What’s going on?’ I muttered as I neared him.

“Your triumph with the Zmija was exactly what they all needed to really believe you have the power to lead us, and your compassion with Cyan is what they needed to really want to follow you.”

“What do you mean?”

“They see it as a sign that the queen of the sea chose you. You’ll not have many problems convincing them that you could beat Neith now.”

“OK, well that I guess is good news, and at least they believe it’s possible.”

“Very.” He nodded and grinned at me before turning to the group.

“Alexandra, Defender of Men, will now speak.”

“That’s a bit heavy isn’t it?” I muttered as I floated upwards a little so they could all see me.

“Let’s use what we can,” he replied.

“Er…the first thing I want to work with is cohesion – different units working together as a whole. This is going to require you to trust me and to learn another language. A language the humans use.”

I could see my request stretched the new-found loyalty I’d created through my bond with Mitra to the very extreme.

I split the group up into their different talents and positioned them along the perimeter of The Haven.

“Ferengren is also circular,” I explained to Dad. “I want to develop at least three or maybe even more battle formations and only decide when we get there which one to use.”

“That will take up a lot more time. Why not just rehearse one?”

“I want flexibility and I want them to learn to follow me.”

He shrugged. “We can try I guess.”

I taught the Oceanids a different word for each group that had nothing to do with their talents and then stood in the centre of The Haven and shouted varying combinations of these words.

Each group would slowly descend in a cloud of confused
spiritus
, all of them mingling in a mish-mash at the bottom of the arena.

After half an hour of explaining again and again what it was I envisioned I called a break.

“Dad, it’s not working,” I sighed. “They’re not getting it.” Frustration mingled with the desperate image of Merrick screaming in pain that was emblazoned into my mind from the awful dream.

He nodded. “Let’s split them into smaller groups and teach them individually what we want.”

“No, we don’t have time for that. We need them to get it and quickly.”

“Alex, this is completely foreign to them…you have to be patient.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, it’s completely foreign to me too and I don’t have time to be patient. What is it going to take for them to get this? Maybe some heat waves at those that get it wrong,” I muttered to myself.

“If there is anything I have learnt as a leader who was usurped it is simply that people follow their hearts more than power. You can try to get them to change through force, but if you want the change to stick you must take the time to appeal to their hearts. Motivate them to want to do this.”

I took a deep breath and tried to focus the panic that edged my every thought when contemplating attacking Neith into something constructive.

“OK, let’s try to teach the leaders of each group first and then let them practise for a bit together and then try again as a whole group.”

Aoi sent the rest of The Haven Oceanids to find food and ready more capsules for the visitors we hoped would join us soon before he joined Dad and mein the arena.

The children hovered on the edge of the arena watching my discussion with the leaders and chattering about it seriously between themselves.

I smiled at the leaders we’d chosen as they waited respectfully for me to speak, uncomfortable with the admiration and deference that shone in most of their eyes, as I turned what I needed to say to them over and over in my mind, looking for a way not to offend them.

“I need to understand, why there is such hesitancy in your movement when I call your group to the centre?”

“It is not in our fighting style to fight like this, Alexandra,” Aoi explained. “Usually we have a single champion who goes up against the champion of the opposing side and the rest of us watch the duel.”

“So how many of you have been champions before?”

Only Takimu raised his hand.

I had to work hard to hide the horror I felt. I was by no means a military leader and had assumed that they, at the very least, would have had some sort of experience. The fact that they didn’t just increased the odds of failure that were already stacked very high against us.

“Takimu, could you explain how you would attack an opposing Oceanid?”

He moved to stand beside me, the gesture respectful as he took my lead and spoke to the group.

“In Oceanid war,” he glanced at me, his expression patient, “we do not attack as Alexandra has suggested, we face each other and then on the signal we fight one on one with Mizrak until first blood is drawn.”

“So you don’t kill each other.”

It was a statement not a question but it resulted in Aoi and several others letting out a string of shocked expressions. “No of course not.”

“There is a good chance, if we are to survive this, that you might need to kill another Oceanid,” I told them bluntly.There was an uncomfortable shifting in the group. “You know that, right?”

“It’s not our way, Alexandra,” Aoi began.

“I don’t care what your way is…” I snapped before reigning in my panic to rephrase the question. “Neith doesn’t care what your way is, Aoi. And so we have to think differently, we have to fight differently because he will kill whoever gets in his way.”

“Have you killed anyone, Alexandra?” The question was innocently asked by Nessa who, along with the other children, had inched closer and closer until they were part of the discussion. It was a genuinely curious question but it rubbed against the self-doubt that continued to plague me. If truth be known I didn’t even like squashing insects let alone killing another sentient being. But then an image of Merrick, broken and screaming in pain, would rush into my mind and a fury so deep and black it shook me to my core would rise up within me and I knew I’d do whatever it took to save him.

“No,” I replied. “And if I can possibly help it I won’t…”

The group murmured, some in consternation and others in approval. “But,” I continued, “I will not stop until the people Neith holds captive are free. I will do whatever it takes. That’s all I’m asking of you. To do whatever it takes to free those innocents caught in Neith’s web of power.”

I watched in relief as the leaders’ doubt settled into firmer determination.

“We want to fight too,” Nessa told me.

The Oceanids gasped. “Absolutely not,” Aoi replied.

“Why not?” Conway challenged. “It’s our families at risk, and it’s our future you are fighting for, why can’t we be part of the solution?”