Ice Crypt (Mermaids of Eriana Kwai Book 2) (25 page)

She paused, watching the trainees run.

“So use your legs properly!” she shouted, and swung the iron with all her might.

Her victim—the girl who’d been heaving—was too tired to jump, and it caught her hard on the back of the legs. The girl cried out and hit the ground, where she coughed and gasped, unable to stand back up.

Dani descended like an eagle swooping on a salmon. I couldn’t take my eyes away.

Then a tall, surly girl burst out of one of the cabins, and Dani turned.

I hadn’t seen Texas since we returned from the Massacre. Like many of us, she’d gained a bit of weight back. Next to Dani’s bony frame and the overworked girls running laps, her presence was more formidable than ever. She leaned in to discuss something with Dani in voices too low for me to hear.

The girls kept running. The one on the ground took her chance to scramble away.

After a minute, Dani nodded, and Texas skulked back to the cabin. I wondered what subjects Texas taught. My pity for the trainees, if possible, increased.

Dani whirled to face the trainees again. The way she eyed them reminded me of a cat looming over a nest of baby birds.

I regretted coming to watch. Feeling worse, I lowered myself from the tree and landed lightly on the forest floor.

A small scream came from behind me. I spun with my fists raised, but dropped them when I saw Adette standing there, hands thrown over her mouth.

Flattening myself against the tree trunk, I checked over my shoulder to ensure nobody had heard. The girls still ran, Dani still screaming at them.

“What are you doing in the bush?” I whispered.

Adette narrowed her eyes. “What are
you
doing in the bush?”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. She had a point.

“I asked you first,” I said.

She crossed her arms, flustered.

Though Adette had hit a growth spurt in the last few months, she was still tiny and frail. I tried not to think about how she’d soon be forced to toughen into a warrior like the girls running laps behind me. The question was: how soon? The yearly ritual had crumbled under Mujihi’s new program.

“Shouldn’t you be in a cabin somewhere with the others?” I whispered, nodding towards the glade.

“Dani’s not teaching us until next block. I have Emma right now for First Aid, and she’s not as mean if you’re late.”

“Who?”

“Emma—erm, Blondie.”

“Oh. Right. She’s teaching, too?”

“Yeah.”

Blondie wasn’t as bad as Dani or Texas, but she’d still sided with them on the Massacre.

“What about Fern?” I said.

“No. She was supposed to teach Rigging, but Dani didn’t want her. Said Fern didn’t know what she was doing.”

“Figures.”

She leaned over to peer around the tree at the older trainees, chewing her lip.

“So why did you skip part of First Aid?”

She hesitated. “I was with Papa. He needed me at home.”

“Why? Is something wrong?”

She shook her head, but unconvincingly, with another nervous glance past my shoulder.

When I kept staring, she averted her gaze into the woods beside us, as though contemplating taking off in that direction.

It was then that I noticed a mark on her neck, in the same place as the girl who’d talked to Annith at the Enticer.

It was a burn, barely healed, pink and bubbly.

“What’s that on your neck?” I said, jumping forwards.

She clapped a hand over it and looked at me in alarm.

I pulled her hand away. A symbol had been burned into her flesh. Two dots, like eyes, sloping inwards as though angry, and a triangular beak beneath them.

“What is this?” I said through clenched teeth.

She mumbled something.

“What?”

I grabbed her chin and forced her to look at me.

When our eyes met, I saw panic on her face. I dropped my hand.

“We all have them,” she said.

“The trainees?”

She nodded once, lips tight.

Heat rushed into my face, like lava bubbling inside a volcano. “Did Dani do this to you?”

Her eyes flicked left and right. Her mouth opened but no sound came out.

“Adette.”

“She calls it
branding
. Every trainee gets one, as a mark of her loyalty to her crew and Eriana Kwai.”

“And Dani,” I said. “It’s a mark of your loyalty to Dani.”

Adette said nothing.

I thought of the fire pit in the clearing, and the rod lying on the ground—the one now clutched in Dani’s bony hand. A branding iron.

“I’m going to talk to the committee,” I said. “She can’t get away with this.”

“No, please don’t! My friend Jace told her parents that Dani was being too harsh, and the next day Dani made her run until she barfed.”

“But—” I faltered, trying to compose myself, and drew a breath before continuing. “She won’t know it was you I was talking to.”

“Then she’ll punish all of us. Please, Meela.”

I ran my hands through my hair. If all went according to my plans, we wouldn’t need the training program, anyway.

“Hasn’t your father noticed?”

Surely Anyo wouldn’t stand for this.

“Yes, but I told him I wanted to do it. Dani has one too, you know. She did it to herself. Twice. She also has a snake head on her wrist.”

“I don’t care—Wait. What?”

Adette shrugged.

My heart skipped several beats. Why would Dani have branded a snake onto her body? Was it coincidence that I happened to be searching for a leviathan? Or did Dani know something?

Behind us in the clearing, Dani shouted at her trainees. “Twenty more laps and you can stop, girls!”

Adette’s eyebrows pulled down in desperation. I nodded once to indicate I wouldn’t tell anyone.

“I have to go,” she said.

Before I could say another word, she took off into the trees and skirted the edge of the glade. She would enter the cabins from behind, I knew, to avoid the iron rod clutched in Dani’s white-knuckled fist.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Capital Punishment

I swore the explosion hit me before the dart left Coho’s crossbow.

How?

That was all I had time to think before my head cracked against the back of the cave. Torrents surged, slamming me against the rocks, pushing me sideways. It would have carried me away if Coho had not been there to grab me.

Everything was dark, murky. A high-pitched wailing filled my ears. The water stirred too much to feel anything. My flesh stung. My scar seared. Even my tongue hurt from the bitter taste of iron.

All I knew was the rocky cave, and Coho, wrapping his arms around me to stop the current pulling me away.

Terror seeped off of him. Ephyra. Had she made it to safety? She had nothing to cling to, as we did. What if she’d gotten carried away in a whirl of iron debris?

My head throbbed, as though my brain had smashed against the inside of my skull and was now dripping down my spine.

Where were Spio and the others? The blast happened before the guard made it to Spio—but that didn’t mean my friend was safe. Had his hiding place been enough? Did he get blasted away?

The sea churned for an eternity. The surface roared as displaced water cascaded back down.

We stayed huddled in the cave, wordless, waiting for the iron to settle.

I pressed my palm over my scar, fruitlessly trying to keep the dirty water from making it burn. I needed to get away from here. Even more, I needed to surface. Between the pain and lack of air, my head spun.

Coho’s heartbeat drummed against my skin. Beyond that, my senses were blind. The ringing in my ears wouldn’t stop. The world was too murky to see beyond an arm’s length. My flesh prickled.

How did the mine detonate? The more I reflected, the more certain I became: the dart had not left the crossbow when the mine exploded. I’d seen Coho’s fingers on the trigger.

Did one of the other guys do it—too impatient, or nervous, to wait?

Maybe I’d been confused in all the panic. My perception could have been off. I remembered feeling dizzy moments before.

Slowly, the water calmed.

A face appeared in front of us. I straightened.

Spio.

He looked unharmed, though his face was smudged with green muck and his hair stood on end more than usual. His leather cap had fallen off, or been blasted away.

We exchanged a sense of relief at the sight of each other.

He said something. The words were lost beneath the ringing in my eardrums.

“What?”

My voice was hollow. I shook my head. Pain shot through my skull.

“... going to find the brothers,” said Spio.

He sounded distorted, like he was speaking to me from above surface.

“See you back at Utopia, all right?” he said slowly.

I gaped at him. In the chaos surrounding the explosion, I’d forgotten about the rest of the plan. Spio, Pontus, and Junior would need to get moving so they could notify the commander.

“Is Ax dead?” said Coho.

Spio nodded once, jaw tight. He exuded something I’d rarely felt in him before—something dark, serious.

I tried to speak. So many questions raced through my mind but none of them came out.

“Go,” said Coho. “Bring our troops home.”

Was this victory?

I hadn’t exactly planned on a celebration once we detonated the mine, but I had expected to feel some sense of triumph and relief. Instead, I felt only fear.

Feeling like my brain was leaking from the back of my skull, I reached up to check for blood. My hand came away clean.

Before I could verbalise anything, Spio disappeared, leaving a wake of bubbles.

“Wait,” I said, but the word hardly came out as a grunt.

I tried to pull myself out of the cave. I was stuck.

I hadn’t said a proper goodbye. Anything could happen between now and when we all got back to Utopia.

But he had to go, and this was not the time to linger. I stopped myself from shouting after him. We didn’t know who, if anyone, was alive out there.

Coho mirrored my unease.

A glance outside the cave told me my weapon was gone.

Someone appeared on our other side, projecting urgency.

“Abandon the plan,” said Nobeard in a low voice.

He rubbed grit from his eyes with trembling fists. He’d lost his eyepatch again.

“Uh, you’re a bit late,” said Coho.

“I mean telling the commander. He can’t mobilise the troops until we’re sure the target is dead.”

“Of course he’s dead,” said Coho. “Did you feel the size of the explosion?”

“He wasn’t as close as he should have been.”

“But they’ve already left,” I said, finding my voice at last. “Spio went to get the brothers.”

I sounded hollow to my own ears.

Nobeard turned southwards. “I’m going to stop them.”

“No,” said Coho, grabbing Nobeard’s wrist.

“Mate, I’m not convinced he’s dead,” whispered Nobeard.

Doubt bled from him so thickly that I wondered the same.

“If he’s still alive, where is he?” I whispered.

“Waiting out the rubble, like us.”

“Do we try and find him?”

Nobeard turned, listening. “If he’s alive and we find him, then what?”

“He won’t be alive,” said Coho stubbornly. “We can search, but we’ll find him in pieces.”

He pushed himself out of the cave.

Nobeard extended a hand and pulled me out. We peered over the rocks.

My throat tightened at the devastation. The sand that had once anchored the mine was now a barren, dead crater. The surrounding coral had shattered. I felt no sign of fish, heard no chatter, saw no rainbow of colour.

I’d been too concerned with carrying out the plan to consider what it might do to the world around us.

And then there were the bodies. Corpses floated overhead, sinking gently. Pieces of mermen littered the floor.

The stench of iron wafted, but beneath it, there was blood.

“I need a breath,” I said.

“Hold on,” said Coho.

He grabbed my arm. Something shifted across the way.

The three of us sank behind the rocks with a soft glop.

Voices rose. At first, the settling current distorted the sound. I strained to hear.

“… you all right?”

Ladon’s voice.

Mumbling. Then Katus said, “Where are the others?”

My stomach churned. Katus and Ladon had seized Adaro a moment before the blast. If they were alive …

I had to check. Ignoring Coho’s hand on my wrist, I raised myself slightly to see over the rocks. Beyond the brown murk, Katus and Ladon hovered near the edge of the cliff. Even from this distance, I could tell they’d been hit with iron shards. A cloud of blood rose from Ladon’s tail. Katus held his arm at an odd angle.

I scanned the corpses, trying to identify the pieces, or any of the bodies falling away into the depths.

“
Find who did this
,” said a slow, menacing voice. “Bring them to me.”

I snapped my gaze back to Katus and Ladon. A third shape rose beyond them, using the cliff edge to pull himself up.

My hands tightened into fists. I couldn’t fight the webs growing between them, the redness blooming in my vision, the tingling in my transitioning skin.