The Merman and the Barbarian Pirate (28 page)

"And h-hurrah to t-that," echoed Sarah. Raef drank in a last, adoring look at Jon, standing in the mouth of the cave, fists clenched and defying all trembles. Their protests wouldn't be enough.

Galyna raised the trident. A fireball cracked up into the sky, and with a blast like a thousand cannon firing, a wave surged up beneath them. Upon the wings of magic, it bore Raef many miles to the south, with Jon's final shout still ringing in his ears.

"Raef. Don't give up. I'll come for you!"

Seventeen

When the rushing wave stopped, Raef was home beneath the sea. A dozen mer folk stopped their daily business and stared at the elders' abrupt return.

The journey had ended on a sandy underwater plateau in the middle of the bazaar, the mer's market place. Here, only a short distance beneath the surface, the fruits of the ocean were bartered beneath awnings woven from seaweed, which wafted in the flow. The familiar sight offered Raef little comfort. The stalls were sparser than he recalled, piled with broken pots and wan-looking flounder. Where there had been a hundred sellers, he counted only ten, outnumbered by the creeping crabs.  His only relief came on spotting Ali, who rushed out from behind his stall, tailfins fluttering.

Raef wanted to greet Ali with a hug, to ask questions and explore. There was no time. Galyna grabbed him by the upper arm and dragged him straight to the volcano. Strong currents swept them down the side, 'til the light faded to an eternal gloaming, and the eels and porpoises gave way to deep-water fishes with translucent bodies and pulsing, orange veins.

At the very roots of the volcano, Galyna cast Raef into a cavern; a small nook, like that Raef had shared with his mother, with a nest of bedding and smooth, rock walls. So deep under the waters, it felt lonely and grim. Galyna addressed the guard, a gargantuan mer with a warty face and slack jaw, which had probably condemned him to this life in the depths.

"It is a while until the next moontide meeting." Galyna's deep voice resonated slowly through the waters. It sounded strange and sinister to Raef's ears after conversing in the open air for so long. Galyna also blocked the exit to his cell with his bulk, thus cutting off any last chance of fleeing. "Make sure he's well-fed and comfortable, but watch him well, lest the foolish boy do himself more harm. He has been consorting with humans—one of them a kluggite!"

"Jon Kemp's not a kluggite," shouted Raef. "He's a pirate and he's a good man, though I didn't understand any of that when I arrived in the world up above. If you hadn't banned us all from mixing with humans, maybe I—"

The door of the cell closed with a dulled clang, and he sagged back against the stone. Nobody was listening to him. He let his sorrow and anger claim him.

Seething in the darkness, he missed Jon so much that he'd have given his right tailfin to be trapped in Edith's old gatehouse again, in peril, but with his love at his side. Each time he pictured Jon's face, or recalled Jon's touch, his longing all but destroyed him. One moment, he'd feel as hollow as if his innards had been scooped out, the next a furnace of red-hot coals sizzled within. Either way, Raef suffered in a blistering agony, as if he had burning tinder thrust beneath each scale.

But he'd be bloody well damned if he'd sit about moping 'til Galyna showed the mercy of bringing him before the court. He had to at least try and get out of here before Jon tried to sail the
Alice O'Shanty
through the treacherous seas above the volcano and came to grief.

The first two days were the hardest. The cave had only a tiny slit of a window in the door, which allowed scant illumination, and contained nothing he could use to pick the lock. The weeds used to weave his nest were useless, too limp even when plaited together, and all the while, he battled his gloomiest doubts. Maybe Jon didn't love him after all. Perhaps Jon wouldn't come. But in his heart, he believed in the man he adored. Faith made him all the more determined.

On the third day of his captivity, the door swung open. Raef surged forward and balled his fists, in case he could overpower his visitor. Instead, the slight, dark-haired mer who bobbed into the gray ripples of light had him crying out in delight.

"Ali!"

"Raef—it's so good to see you." Ali glided forward into Raef's outstretched arms. They held each other tight. "I've been begging for days to come and see you. I think they finally let me come just to shut me up. I can't believe Galyna locked you up… Well, actually, I can, given events of late."

"Tell me more." Raef pulled away, bracing Ali's slender shoulders. "What's been going on?"

"Nothing good." Ali sighed. "When you ran away, you were like the trickle that started the flood. Dozens more young mer have fled, all seeking the love Galyna's laws have denied them, and he's furious. I think that's why he's making such an example of you, now he's got you back. He can't punish everyone, but he can lock one mer up easily enough. I hate to think what he's going to say about you at the next meeting."

Raef pulled a face. "I hate to think, too. Look, I have to get out of here. And you're coming with me."

"No." Ali locked his doleful gaze onto Raef's and shook his head. "I'm not like you. This is my home. I like working in the bazaar, and I want to spend all my days here. If I ever find love… it will be here, in our home. Anyhow, somebody has to stay and fight to put things right again."

"I'm so sorry." Raef looked to the rock floor and worried his lower lip. He didn't want to get Ali in trouble by forcing his friend to aid his escape. On the other hand, he could best challenge Galyna with Jon at his side, and he still had to prevent Jon doing anything rash in order to save him. He leaned in, lips brushing Ali's floaty hair. "I need to break the lock," he whispered. "And all I've got for food and bedding is sloppy seaweed. Do you think you can smuggle me in something better?"

That night, the guard brought him a meal of tasty oysters—a gift from Ali, he was sure. He smashed the shells and waited for a quiet moment, when the guard's sonorous snores drifted to his hearing. Then he used a sliver to pick apart the lock on the door.

A moan from the rusty hinges betrayed him, though by the time his watcher had jolted fully awake, Raef was tearing upward in a flux of bubbles. The guard yanked a rope, which set alarms tolling. Raef knew his cause was lost. He still made it halfway up the volcano before recapture, far enough to confirm that many of the houses hewn into the rock were empty. As Ali had warned him, he hadn't been the only mer who had swum away from their home at a quiet moment.

When the day of the tribal meeting finally came, an escort of eight accompanied Raef for the swim upward, all brandishing pikes. He glanced into a schoolroom as he passed, spotting only four young mer scratching at their slates. His blood, already simmering, boiled. He suspected the chieftain wouldn't listen to him today, but it grew blatant that more than his liberty was at stake. Galyna's laws had destroyed what had once been a joyful place.

Raef was taken to a small niche at the side of the crater, positioned below the platform of the elders. Galyna sat in his throne, his back straight as his trident's pole, but looking tired and haggard. The place was about half as crowded with mer as it had been before Raef left. Everyone seemed grave. Even the seams of quartz in the volcanic walls appeared to have lost their luster.

Galyna's plangent bellow shook the waters. "Raef! You disobeyed my order to marry my ward." He pointed at Henna, who waited among a crowd of onlookers floating opposite the platform, near Ali. She'd scraped her brown hair back into a tight bun, making her look as drawn and weary as the rest of the company.

Raef caught her eye, and wished he could apologize for the trouble. When she mouthed,
"Sorry,"
he wanted to hug her.

"Moreover," continued Galyna, "you used a sacred summoning shell without permission of the elders, though neither of these crimes are your greatest. You have been consorting with a human, who declared himself brazenly to be the dreaded Pirate Kemp. A kluggite!"

"Don't call him that!" Raef whooshed upward out of the niche, thumping his tail in a fury that'd built and built as Galyna listed his so-called crimes.

"That is what he is," said Galyna. "An ugly fiend who will harm mer or get them killed. Do you not recall what happened to my sister Lucinda? You're lucky to be alive. Mer should mate only with other mer, in carefully-arranged partnerships—"

"That's codswallop! I'm sorry for your sister's misfortune—we all are—but we must be free to choose who we love!" A hiss of approbation rose from the audience, louder than the bubbling springs. "You'll listen to me, and if you don't hear to me now, you will one day soon. Because I'll escape. You can clap a thousand chains on me, and I won't give up. I'll get away. I've escaped from darker dungeons than yours, and I will again. Then I'll come back with a whole fleet of pirates and make you see the truth. You can't stop us interacting with humans. We young mer would be a lot safer if we could get out there and see the world for ourselves, rather than relying on old stories… most of which are rubbish, by the way. Pirates can be much more beautiful than lords, inside
and
out."

"Enough," yelled Galyna. He gestured to the guards, who seized Raef, dragging him backward across the hall. "I'm trying to protect this tribe, and you're undoing all my good work. I think you need more time to reflect upon your sins.
Much
more time."

Raef thrashed wildly, making it as hard for the guards as possible. "Nobody's happy anymore, and all these rules, these laws we're taught about good and bad, it's all nonsense. Maybe the true evil lurks at the heart of our home." He wrenched an arm free to shake his fist at Galyna, who was bellowing back at him, the foam at his mouth blending with his beard. Raef yelled even louder. "'You won't let us be with who we choose, male or female, mer or human, so we have to flee. You're destroying our tribe!"

Henna and a few of the others, including Ali, raised nervous cheers. Still, Raef knew he couldn't win. Not alone. Galyna brandished the trident as if preparing to blast a thunderbolt at Raef. The guards hauled Raef out of the crater, so they floated by the edge of the volcano.

Raef looked up through the waters to the surface, catching a glimpse of the nebulous, white orb of the sun. When would he feel its balmy heat again? He was bracing himself to be hauled back to the depths—who knew for how long—when a long, dark shape slid across the glassy sheen above, casting its shadow over the volcano.

His heart skipped a beat. A ship was cutting the narrow channel between the sandbanks of the bazaar and the underwater mountain. Only one man was brave—and mad—enough to take that risk.

"Jon," whispered Raef.

"Look!" One of Raef's escorts pointed, everyone stared, and then a huge net breached the surface, cast from the side of the boat. It plunged toward them. Raef jerked his body and swished his tail. His guards let him go, each mer scattering and swimming for their life.

The weighted net scraped down the side of the mountain. It gathered up the mermen and maids that spilled from the courthouse in panic, as well as Raef, who dived straight into it. He landed on top of Henna, his tail tangled with that of the furious Galyna, whose trident had got knotted between the strings.