ONE MINUTE TABITHA was treading water, holding on tight to her knife. The next there were hands around her waist and she was being dragged down below the waves. She tried to stab at her attacker, but whoever it was dodged the blow. A hand closed around her wrist and the knife was twisted free. Tabitha struggled harder but it was no good. A second hand gripped her other wrist and her arms were pulled together behind her back.
As her eyes adjusted to the stinging salt water, she saw figures moving all around them. What in all the ocean was this? Some kind of trick by the League? She glanced down and saw a refracted form below her legs. A fish tail, absurdly oversized, with broad, powerful fins.
Tabitha gasped, swallowing a mouthful of seawater and almost choking in the process. There was only one kind of creature in the Ebony Ocean with the arms and hands of a human and the tail of a fish. Merfolk. She craned her neck round and caught a glimpse of a woman’s face, long hair drifting out in the water, a necklace of shells … And then the mermaid’s tail flicked hard like a cracking whip, and they were suddenly moving.
The shapes around them blurred. Bubbles streamed past her face as they shot forward, faster than any land dweller could swim. The mermaid’s arms wrapped around her, hugging her in close, and they took on another burst of speed.
Tabitha was feeling faint and sick from the seawater. Her chest and head felt as if they were going to explode, and she found herself wondering which would go first. She had to breathe. If she didn’t she was going to pass out. She thrashed feebly, trying to free herself from the mermaid’s embrace, but it was hopeless. She didn’t have the energy or the strength.
Suddenly they were heading upwards. The water became clearer and lighter, and then there was a thundering of spray all around them, and Tabitha realized they had breached the surface. For one incredible moment they were arcing through the air, the cold breeze biting into her wet, clinging clothes. She saw the waves stretching out on every side, saw gulls in the sky above, saw other doubled shapes moving fast below the surface behind them, each one surely a mermaid holding onto a person.
She almost forgot to breathe, and desperately gulped in air half a second before they hit the surface again with a crash; then there was a muffled quiet as they powered onwards.
They carried on like that, streaking below the surface. Tabitha was furious, but she couldn’t break the firm grip of the mermaid. And even if she could somehow get free, what good would it do? She’d be alone, Thalin knew where, in the middle of the Ebony Ocean.
Every time her lungs began to burn with the need for more air, she struggled, and the mermaid, understanding, shot upwards and arced like a dolphin above the surface. Tabitha sucked in as much air as she possibly could, and then they were below again, swimming onwards.
Where are we going?
Tabitha had to admit that the merfolk had saved them from the League. She had to be grateful for that, didn’t she? But she didn’t feel very grateful. How long had they been swimming for? Hours, maybe. It definitely felt like hours. Above water, she tried to count the other mermaids. Occasionally she saw them breaching too, their captives held tightly, with startled faces and bedraggled hair. Tabitha hoped she didn’t look that ridiculous.
Her eyes became accustomed to the salt and she began to see things below the waves. The odd fish, darting away from them as they shot past. A sea snake, coiling through the water. Nothing gave her the slightest clue to where the merfolk were taking them.
They leaped up above the surface again. But this time Tabitha was shoved forward, and suddenly she was tumbling through the air and down onto something grey and hard. Something that definitely wasn’t water. ‘Aaaargh!’ she yelped, going head over heels. She landed flat on her back, staring up at the sky and trying to make the world stop spinning. Behind her, there was a splash as her captor disappeared back into the waves.
Tabitha sat up, rubbing her head. She was on a stony beach, empty except for a slope of scree stretching up ahead of her and a few haggard trees on the horizon.
There were more splashes, and watchmen and smugglers came crashing down around her like cannonballs, yelping with pain and surprise as they grazed elbows and shins. Soon Hal was fumbling his glasses back onto his nose, the troll twins were wringing out their sodden jackets and Captain Clagg was hunting feverishly through his pockets to check that his bottle of firewater had made it safely. Last of all, Joseph came hurtling down, curled up in a ball with his eyes tightly shut, bouncing from rock to rock and coming to rest next to Tabitha. He was shivering with cold, and his new watchman’s coat clung to his bony body.
He ought to count himself lucky, Tabitha reckoned. Not all the smugglers had made it.
She glared at their captors, bobbing out in the deep water. There were between ten and twenty of them, both mermaids and mermen. She’d seen plenty of their kind before, come to trade in Fayt’s bay or locked up in the Brig. But these ones were different. Wilder, somehow. They had untamed salt-matted hair and grim faces. They wore tunics woven out of seaweed and bits of old rope, doubtless scavenged from the ocean.
She was about to give them a piece of her mind when she spotted the long pale rods slung on their backs. She had heard about those things. Bonestaffs, they were called, made from the skeletons of sea creatures that lived too deep for any landlubber to ever see. Hal had explained to her once that bonestaffs were really just large, powerful wands. To say that merfolk were good with magic was an understatement – like saying that giants were a bit on the large side.
Captain Clagg leaped to his feet.
‘You!’ he yelled, then stopped to spit out seaweed. ‘You … brine-crawling bilgebags! You scaly swabs! My ship – what have you done with my ship?’ Tabitha had never seen him look so furious before. Then again, she’d never seen him lose the Sharkbane and half his crew before either. He fumbled in his coat pocket and drew out a pistol, the hammer pulled back.
That’s all we need.
Tabitha flung herself forward, reaching for the weapon. If Phineus Clagg shot a mermaid, those bonestaffs would be pointed at them in no time. But her foot slipped on a seaweed-covered rock and she came crashing down. There was a click. No gunshot. She looked up to see a dribble of seawater emerge from the the smuggler’s pistol barrel.
The merfolk were making strange noises, like a crowd of braying seals. Clambering to her feet, Tabitha realized that they were laughing. At her. It made her shudder. Of course the pistol wasn’t going to go off. The powder was probably damper than a baby dolphin.
Phineus Clagg cursed and hurled the pistol as hard as he could at their tormentors. It splashed harmlessly into the sea, a good ten feet from the nearest merman. The seal noises swelled in volume.
‘What do they want?’ asked Joseph. He had sat up now, rubbing at his bruised arms and looking sorry for himself.
Paddy wrung out his sodden tricorne hat and shrugged. ‘Beats me. But I doubt it’s just a bit of fish and a word of thanks.’
‘They have us trapped,’ said Hal. ‘So whatever it is, I think we’ll have to listen.’