Waterfire Saga (4 Book Series) Read online

  Copyright © 2016 Disney Enterprises, Inc.

  Cover design by SJI Associates, Inc.

  Cover illustration © Disney Publishing Worldwide

  Maps and chapter opener illustration by Laszlo Kubinyi

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Hyperion, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.

  ISBN 978-1-4847-1315-0

  Visit www.DisneyBooks.com

  www.WaterFireSaga.com

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two

  Fifty-Three

  Fifty-Four

  Fifty-Five

  Fifty-Six

  Fifty-Seven

  Fifty-Eight

  Fifty-Nine

  Sixty

  Sixty-One

  Sixty-Two

  Sixty-Three

  Sixty-Four

  Sixty-Five

  Sixty-Six

  Sixty-Seven

  Sixty-Eight

  Sixty-Nine

  Seventy

  Seventy-One

  Seventy-Two

  Seventy-Three

  Seventy-Four

  Seventy-Five

  Seventy-Six

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  Realms of the Mer

  About the Author

  For my readers, who make the real magic

  The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea.

  —Isak Dinesen

  MANON LAVEAU, regal on her throne of twining cypress roots, regarded the merman before her. Her eyes traveled over his black uniform, his close-cropped hair, his cruel face. He and six of his soldiers had barged into her cave, deep under the waters of the Mississippi, as she was laying out tarot cards on the mossy back of a giant snapping turtle.

  “Captain Traho, you say?” Manon’s voice, like her eyes, betrayed no emotion. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m looking for a mermaid named Ava Corajoso,” Traho said brusquely. “Dark skin. Black braids. She’s blind. Travels with a piranha. Have you seen her?”

  “I have not,” Manon replied. “Now if you’ll excuse me, Captain, the cards require my attention. Au revoir.”

  Manon’s manservant moved to show Traho out, but Traho pushed him away. “Ava was observed entering your cave,” he said. “I’ve also been told you have a seeing stone that you’re using to follow her. Hand it over and I’ll be on my way.”

  Manon snorted. “C’est sa cooyon,” she said with contempt. Fool.

  She snapped her fingers, and twenty bull alligators, each weighing half a ton, burst up from the thick mud covering the cave’s floor. Tails thrashing, they surrounded Traho and his men.

  “I have a better idea,” Manon said, her green eyes glittering. “How about my hungry little friends eat you alive?”

  Traho slowly raised his hands, never taking his eyes off the alligators. His men did the same.

  Manon nodded. “That’s more like it,” she said. “I’m the shack bully in these parts, boy.”

  She laid her cards down and rose from her throne, her turbaned head high. It was impossible to tell how old she was. Her light brown skin was smooth, but her eyes were ancient. She had high cheekbones and a strong nose. A white tunic and a red reedcloth skirt covered her body and her silvery tail. A belt studded with river pearls and mussel shells cinched her waist. The belt had been handed down from the first swamp queen, a Native American who had journeyed to Atlantis as a human. She’d survived the island’s destruction, had become mer, and then returned to the delta.

  Manon spoke with the twang of the swamp. Her language was a mixture of freshwater mer salted with the African, English, French, and Spanish words of the terragogg ghosts who dwelled in the Mississippi. Some of those ghosts kept her company, among them a runaway slave called Sally Wilkes, a Creole countess named Esmé, and the pirate Jean Lafitte.

  Manon was not afraid of ghosts. Or thugs in uniform. Or much of anything. As her alligators growled, she circled Traho.

  “This mermaid Ava, she’s boocoo brave. She goes into the swamps all alone. But you?” she said mockingly. “You need two hundred soldiers to hold your dainty little hand.”

  Manon couldn’t see the rest of Traho’s soldiers from inside her cave, but she didn’t need to. The stone had told her of their approach.

  Traho ignored the taunt. “Kill me, and those two hundred soldiers will kill you,” he said. “I need to know where Ava Corajoso is. I’m not leaving until I find out.”

  Anger flashed in Manon’s eyes. “You want information, you pay for it,” she spat. “Same as everyone else. Or are you a thief as well as a coward?”

  “Ten doubloons,” Traho said.

  “Twenty,” Manon countered.

  Traho nodded. Manon snapped her fingers again, and her alligators burrowed back into the mud. One of Traho’s soldiers had a satchel slung over his shoulder. At his leader’s command, he opened it, then counted out gold coins, placing them on a table.

  When he finished, Manon said, “The mermaid stopped here two days ago. She was on her way to the Blackwater and wanted a gris-gris to protect her from the Okwa Naholo. I made the charm. Used talons from an owl, teeth from a white alligator, and the call of a coyote. Bound them with the tongue of a cottonmouth. Won’t do her any good, though. She was worn-out. Sick, too. By now she’s nothing but bones at the bottom of the Blackwater.”

  Traho digested this, then said, “The seeing stone. Where is it?”

  Manon chuckled. “No such thing,” she replied. “Stone’s just a story, one I don’t discourage. Mer in these parts are boocoo wild. They behave a little better if they think they’re being watched.”

  Traho glanced around. He muttered a curse about the godsforsaken Freshwaters, then left the cave.

  Manon floated perfectly still, staring after him, listening to the shouts of soldiers and the whinnying of hippokamps. Sally and Lafitte joined her, anxious expressions on their faces. When the soldiers finally rode off, Manon let out a long, ragged breath.

  Esmé,
her silk skirts swirling around her, walked up to Manon and tugged on one of her earrings. “You’re telling lies, Manon Laveau! That merl’s not in the Blackwater. Why would she be? There aren’t any Okwa in the Blackwater. She’s headed for the Spiderlair, and you know it!”

  Manon shrugged her off. Turning to Sally, she said, “You still have it? Nice and safe?”

  Sally nodded. She reached down the front of her dress and pulled out a polished garnet. It was as large as a snake’s head, and so dark it was almost black.

  Manon took the stone and cast an occula songspell. A few seconds later, an image of a mermaid wearing silver glasses and a fuchsia dress appeared in the stone’s depths. She was frightened, Manon could tell, but trying not to show it. It was Ava. She was already in the Spiderlair. Manon didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  “That mermaid’s trouble,” Lafitte fretted, wringing his hands. “I told you she’d bring the likes of Traho to your door. You bluffed him good this time, but what if he comes back?”

  Manon didn’t have an answer.

  Ava Corajoso had shown up at her door five days ago, led by a growling piranha. She was thin and feverish, but she hadn’t begged for food or medicine. Instead, she’d held out what little currensea she had and asked for a charm to keep her safe from the Okwa Naholo.

  “The Okwa?” Manon had said, looking her up and down. “Those nasty monsters are the least of your worries! Take that money and buy yourself some food!”

  She’d started to close the door, but Ava had stopped it with her hand. “Please,” she’d begged. “Everyone in the swamps says your charms are the strongest.”

  “Everyone’s right. But no charm’s strong enough to save you from the Okwa. Just the sight of them will stop your heart dead.”

  “Not mine. I can’t see them. I’m blind,” Ava had said, lowering her glasses.

  “So you are, cher, so you are,” Manon had said, her voice softening, her bright eyes taking in Ava’s unseeing ones. “Tell me, why do you want to mess with the Okwa?”

  “I don’t want to,” Ava had said. “But they have something I need in order to stop a monster—a monster ten times worse than any Okwa.”

  “Doesn’t mean you’ll get it. The Okwa might still kill you. In fact, I’d put money on it.”

  “They might. But I’d give my life gladly if it meant I could save many more.”

  Merl’s crazier than a swamp rat, Manon had thought. She’d been about to send Ava away once and for all, but something had stopped her. Something in Ava’s eyes. They weren’t right, those eyes, but still…that mermaid saw. Right down into you, to what was deep and true. She saw the good there no matter how hard you tried to hide it.

  “Keep your coins,” Manon had said, against her better judgment. She’d led Ava inside, offered her a chair and a cup of thick, sweet cattail coffee. She’d sat down across from her and asked what she was after in the swamps. “Tell me straight. No lies, cher,” she’d cautioned. “A good gris-gris needs many ingredients. The truth’s one of them.”

  Ava had taken a deep breath, then said, “A monster lies under the ice of the Southern Sea. For centuries, it has been asleep, but now it’s waking. It was created by one of the mages of Atlantis.”

  Manon’s ancient eyes had narrowed. The swamp mer were given to telling tall tales. Decades of listening to them had made her a skeptical soul. “A monster?” she’d said. “Why would a mage make a monster?”

  Ava had told Manon about Orfeo, the talismans, and Abbadon, and how Ava and five other mermaids had been chosen to defeat that monster. She told her about Vallerio, that he was kidnapping and imprisoning merfolk, and forcing them to search for the talismans. By the time Ava had finished her story, Manon was so shaken, she’d had to call for her smelling salts.

  Rumors had come to Manon’s ears, carried on the river. Rumors of powerful objects and labor camps. Rumors of soldiers in black uniforms moving through her swamp, and of a shadowy man with no eyes. She’d thought they were only more wild stories. Ava’s arrival at her cave, and Traho’s, had convinced her otherwise.

  “You need to find that talisman, child. No two ways about it,” Manon had said as soon as she’d recovered. “I’ll do what I can to help you.”

  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 Näkki 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 Näkki—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 Näkki 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 Näkki here, in the lonely borderwaters o
f 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 Näkki 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 Näkki? 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.

  Three figures floated in the cave’s entrance. Their faces were hidden in the silt-covered folds of their hoods. They had long, powerful tails and looked like mer, but Sera knew they weren’t.

  “Näkki,” she said silently, releasing her dagger. Shapeshifters. Wary and elusive, they could blend in with a crowd of mer, a school of fish, or a rock face within seconds.

  A sickly sweet smell wafted from them, one that made Sera’s stomach clench—the smell of death. It took her back to the invasion of Cerulea and the rotting bodies of her merfolk lying in the ruins.

  Instinctively, she touched the ring on her right hand. Mahdi had carved it from a shell for her, as an expression of his love. Thinking of him gave her courage.

  “Welcome,” she said, nodding to her visitors.

  The Näkki removed their hoods. Under them were mermen’s faces, handsome and fine. Their leader, dark-skinned and amber-eyed, his black hair worn long and loose, extended his hand. Sera took it. His grip was hard. His companions were amber-eyed, too. Their skin was pale. Long blond braids trailed down their backs.