The water continued to seep upward, inexorable.
“Oriana? Are you still there? Oriana!”
Oriana paused. The fear in Isabel’s voice tore at her heart, but she needed to get loose more than Isabel needed an answer, so she kept chewing. But she did stop and glance up when Isabel screamed.
The water had reached the top of Isabel’s head. Isabel began thrashing wildly. “No!” she screamed. “No!”
This was cruel. Crueler now that Isabel had figured out the fate planned for them.
“Isabel, be quiet.” Oriana used her voice to call Isabel, the one magic she possessed. She wove the imperative into her words—not a spell like a human witch might use, but simple desire, yearning. It would have been more successful with a human male, but she could hold almost any human’s attention for a few minutes, and even prompt her to action. The magic drew Isabel’s gaze to her and, although she didn’t think Isabel could see her, it forced Isabel to focus on her words. Oriana hoped she could buy them some time. “Isabel, bend forward as far as you can,” she ordered. “Right before the water gets to your nose, take a deep breath and hold it.”
Isabel’s ragged breathing was interspersed with sobs, but she obediently bent forward, her dark head almost touching the table.
Oriana prayed that would be enough. She set her teeth back to the rope. It gave suddenly, and she yanked it with her mouth. It had been wrapped around several times, so she had to pull each loop loose. Chilly water touched the back of her head. Cold fingers of water spread along the back of her housemaid’s costume, grasped her shoulders, climbed up her garments.
It reached her mouth, and she took it in. Her gills opened involuntarily and her throat closed, stealing her voice. She breathed in the familiar water of the Douro River as she dragged her arm free of the loops of rope.
No! The rope holding her other arm hadn’t loosened at all. They were separate ropes. She would have to chew through each one individually. She tore at her shirtsleeve, but her wrist was tied too tightly to get her dagger loose, not until she could get that hand free.
There was no time. Oriana didn’t want to look, but she couldn’t stop herself.
Across from her in the darkness, Isabel’s eyes were stricken in the pale oval of her face. The water had nearly reached her waist. Oriana didn’t know how long Isabel had been holding her breath, waiting to be rescued.
If she could just reach Isabel, she could breathe for her. Oriana jerked against the rope trapping her left arm, but it didn’t give an inch. She tried to shove the ropes binding her chest down to her waist, but they tangled in the fabric of her apron.
Isabel’s bow-shaped lips opened. A flood of bubbles streamed from her mouth, the last of her breath. Her body jerked convulsively against the ropes that bound her to the chair. Her eyes were wide with terror.
Unable to reach her, Oriana pounded her free hand on the surface of the table, setting off painful vibrations through her webbing. She wanted to scream. She wanted to beg Isabel’s forgiveness. But her voice was gone underwater. She reached out her throbbing hand and laid it over Isabel’s fingers. What could she do?
She couldn’t sing underwater, but she could hum. Oriana wove a call into the tune to comfort Isabel, using her memories of an old lullaby her father had sung to shape the sound. It was all she had to give.
Isabel’s expression eased, the fear in her eyes fading.
Then she was still.
Oriana’s song faltered to a stop, and soundless sobs shook her body. The water had stolen her ability to cry. She could taste Isabel’s death in the water, the sudden tang of a voided bladder—loss of control along with the loss of life. Oriana tugged the silk mitt off her hand with her teeth and spread her fingers wide, stretching the webbing between them. She could feel the vibration of her own heartbeat.
From Isabel there was nothing.
And then a glow crept across the surface of the table between them, almost like blood flowing from a wound. Letters imprinted on the surface gave off a pallid light, forming words that made no sense to Oriana’s eyes. A ring of words circled the table’s edge. Inside that was another ring of nonsense symbols, shapes she didn’t recognize, and in the center a third ring held a collection of straight lines. The glow crept to the center of the small table and then stopped as if it had hit a wall.
The table had come alive in response to Isabel’s death.
Oriana looked back at her friend. She tried to touch Isabel’s face. Her fingers fell short, so she grasped Isabel’s hand again, as if Isabel could still feel her there. Isabel’s head began to sway loosely with the motion of the water, a single strand of hair floating past her open mouth and snagging against her lips.
Oriana squeezed her eyes shut, unable to look any longer.
She didn’t know how long she stayed like that, trembling against the ropes that bound her. The water continued to rise about her. It swallowed her legs. The cold seeped into her tight-laced shoes.
Then the last of the air slipped out of the room and the whole thing began sinking quickly, some anchor drawing it down. The pressure of the water made the wood groan. Then it came to a stop, far gentler than that first slam into the surface of the water. Now that the room was flooded, they should sink to the bottom of the river, but for some reason they continued to float.
Oriana opened her eyes. At a deeper depth it was even darker, but the table’s surface continued to glow, lighting Isabel’s motionless features. Oriana stared at that tabletop for a long time, those meaningless words and lines burning into her mind.
She felt wrung out and dull, like a chemise whose dye had all seeped away into the wash water. She needed to escape this place, but there was no longer any need to hurry. She had all the time in the world now—now that Isabel was gone.
Someone had put them here to die, but it hadn’t been the Special Police. They would have known a sereia could breathe as easily underwater as above it. No, this was a trap meant for humans. Someone had wanted Isabel to die terrified and helpless.
But that someone had made one mistake.
They hadn’t weighed Oriana Paredes into their equations, no doubt thinking her simply another housemaid. They’d tried to drown a sereia. And she was going to make them pay.
Not for herself. During the year she’d trained to be a spy, she’d been taught that her own life might be forfeit. She’d accepted that possibility. No, she would make someone pay for doing this to Isabel, who had started the day with such great hopes and ended it with terror. She would hunt the murderer down and, one way or another, they would see justice.
It seemed a long time later that Oriana bowed her head and began to chew at the other rope. Once she got that hand free, she was able to draw her dagger and cut the remaining ropes that bound her to the chair. She pushed herself out of it, lightheaded when her body righted itself.
In the darkness, she touched Isabel’s face, a final farewell. Isabel’s ebony hair had held to its coiffure, save for that one loose lock. It streamed upward now, almost reaching Isabel’s lap, a streak of darkness against her white maid’s apron. Lit by the table’s eerie glow, Isabel was lovely even in death, her face at peace. Tiny bubbles of air worked loose from the shadowy wooden structure about them, glistening in the darkness.
Oriana’s throat ached, but she couldn’t cry. She clasped the unmoving fingers one more time, and then swam to the top of the little room.
She wedged herself next to the fixed chairs, crowding Isabel’s bound feet. She hammered against that floor or ceiling with one hand. Each impact sent uncomfortable vibrations through her webbing, so she wrapped one arm about the base of the table and used her feet to kick at one of the corners instead. After a few good kicks, she felt it give. Nails tore loose from the wood. She slid her hands into that narrow opening and pushed with all her strength.