Waterfire Saga, Book Four: Sea Spell: Deep Blue Novel, A by Jennifer Donnelly Page B

soldier with a crossbow and,
voila
, we get rid of Serafina the same way we got rid of Isabella—with an arrow to the heart.”
    “That’s not possible. Serafina’s surrounded by her fighters,” Mahdi said, glad he’d found a weakness in Portia’s plan, a way to shut this discussion down. “There’s no way we could get a lone soldier through them.”
    “Actually,” Portia said, “we already have.”
    Mahdi tilted his head. “I don’t understand.”
    “Listen closely, Mahdi. This is an important lesson for the future,” Portia instructed. “When you choose a spy, make sure to choose someone with many talents; that way they can do more for you than merely gather info.”
    Mahdi felt sick. He wanted to swim out of the room as fast as he could, find Allegra, and get a conch to Sera to warn her. Instead, he jokingly slapped his forehead and said, “Of course. Portia, you’re a genius.”
    Portia smiled. “It’ll cost us our informant, unfortunately, and we’re not ready to lose this operative just yet. But as soon as we’ve got all the information we need, we give the word, and then”—Portia’s smile hardened—“our spy becomes our assassin.”

T HE WEBS were slung low over the swamp, from tree limb to tree limb, like giant white hammocks.
    The creatures who’d spun them, each as big as a large dog, scuttled back and forth above the dark water, checking the webs, hoping to find a hapless bird, a fat raccoon, or a juicy human snared in them.
    But it wasn’t the fierce arachnids that Manon Laveau was searching for in the Spiderlair.
    “Where are you, child? And where are
you
, you nasty water devils?” she muttered, peering into her seeing stone.
    “Manon Laveau, what the
hell
are you doing?” Jean Lafitte shouted, startling the swamp queen. She’d thought she was alone. “Have you gone
cooyon
? What if you lay eyes on one of those Okwa?”
    “You’re jumpier than a frog in a stew pot, Lafitte,” Manon said, trying to shrug him off. “I
won’t
lay eyes on an Okwa, not up close. I’ll only see an image in the stone.”
    “No one who sees the Okwa Naholo, no matter whatever which way, lives to tell about it,” Lafitte said ominously, wagging a beringed finger at her. “Playing with waterfire, that’s what
you’re
doing.”
    “You’re the frettingest pirate I ever met! Hush now!” Manon snapped. He’d rattled her. Embarrassed her, too. She didn’t want him, or anyone else, to know that she was worried about Ava.
    “Why do you care what happens to that fool of a mermaid? She’s trouble!” Lafitte shot back. “You’re not yourself these days. You coming down with something?”
    Manon didn’t answer him. Instead, she thought. She thought about people who would do anything for power and wealth. She’d seen terragoggs bulldoze her precious swamp, pollute its waters, and kill its rare creatures. And that new shack bully over in Miromara—Vallerio—he was mer, but he was just as bad. Traho, too. They’d destroy the world, and everything in it, for a bigger castle, a shinier chariot, or a chest full of gold.
    Manon had seen much in her time, and she’d become hard, even cynical, as a result. She’d become unwilling to help others, because so few of them deserved help. But she still believed one thing with all her heart: that she was here to protect the swamp and pass it on to those who came after, just as her forebears had passed it on to her.
    She knew that her life was a gift she’d one day have to give back. Horok would take her soul. The swamp would take her flesh and bones. It would break them down and use them to nourish the creatures of the dark waters, just as those creatures had nourished her.
    That was nature’s way. That was the circle of life. And now this
thing
, this
abomination
, this
Orfeo
wanted to break that circle. Because he was arrogant and selfish and could not accept his wife’s mortality, or his own. Well, maybe it was high time he learned