The Twice Lost

Luce.

20 Saying Hello

Luce sang through the night, holding herself just below the surface with slight rotations of her fins and only pausing when she surfaced for quick inhalations. She was singing as the military helicopters jarring above them were joined by more and more helicopters with the logos of television networks on their sides. She was singing when the immense wave supported by the mermaids’ voices turned into a furling sail of molten gold with the dawn light. Her voice webbed into the enchantment of those hundreds of gathered voices. Sometimes the music came to her like clouds of exalted laughter, sometimes as grief for the dead. But one thing was clear: for tonight at least they had won an astonishing victory. And as she had promised, they had won it without resorting to murder. Luce knew it was strange, but she felt a sense of profound triumph at the thought that the dead of that night were all her own followers, not more random humans.

Even the human soldiers, with the possible exception of that submarine pilot, hadn’t died. Pharaoh’s army would see that the mermaids weren’t just mindless killers. And they’d see as well that the mermaids weren’t about to wait around passively to get slaughtered. She’d turned her enemies into witnesses, and that was a victory.

It was well into the morning when Luce was shaken from her entrancement. Yuan’s golden face was shining and determined, and her hand was on Luce’s shoulder. “General Luce? You’re off duty.”

Luce didn’t want to stop singing. The brilliance of her voice surging into everyone else’s voices was too great, too astonishing. She kept the song going, her tone like liquefied sunlight.

Yuan looked a touch annoyed, but she was grinning at the same time. “Give it a rest, general, okay? You can come back soon. Anyway, you’re already late for a strategy meeting with all your lieutenants. Except Cala—I’m leaving her in charge for a little bit.”

Yuan’s words reminded Luce that they weren’t just playing at war. But the song was so overpowering that Luce had to struggle with her voice for a few moments before she could force it into silence. The music stopped and started in quick staccato outbursts before she finally mastered it, and Yuan laughed. “Okay,” Luce managed.

“Yeah? You’re all better now?”

Without the song thrilling through her, Luce was suddenly much too aware of the horror of the previous night. “Yuan? Do we know how many of us . . .”

Yuan reached out and hugged her. “We were at five eighty-three before the attack. Only about three hundred made it to the bridge at first, but a bunch more girls drifted back here during the night. We’re at four twenty-two now. But the problem is—with everyone missing, we can’t tell who died and who just panicked and swam off.”

Luce recoiled a little. “I thought—I only saw a few of us get shot. Bex and maybe three girls I didn’t know. I thought we were almost all okay! Yuan . . .”

Yuan hugged her tighter, her arms strong and comforting. “Most of them are probably okay. I mean, they got really scared, but they’ll come back once they calm down. And you have to remember, Luce, almost everybody would have died last night if you hadn’t guessed—I seriously have no idea how you knew those submarines were coming, but I do know for sure that you’re the reason so many of us are still alive. Okay?”

“I didn’t know anything,” Luce murmured. “It just felt like something was wrong.”

“You can be sad later, okay?” Yuan said, but her voice was very gentle. “This is war. We need you to keep it together.”

“Okay,” Luce said breathlessly. “Okay.” All at once she was struck by a realization that should have been obvious: now that the humans knew about them, that immense wave was the only protection they had.

Now that the wave was standing there, it had to stay standing. If there was any lull in the mermaids’ singing, Luce knew they would be massacred almost instantly.

Yuan took her hand and guided her, keeping well below the water, toward a cluster of brick buildings with low docks on the shore of Sausalito.

Twenty of her lieutenants were already waiting in a circle beneath a broad, half-collapsing platform set on pilings. Catarina was there, her blazing hair fanning out across the water and her face blazing even brighter with a kind of exhilarated fury. Imani was beaming, her white lace kerchief tied over her short afro. And there was Graciela, looking almost crazed with joy, next to a freckled strawberry blonde Luce didn’t recognize.

There was a brief pause while they stared at her, and Luce felt a familiar tightening in her stomach. Were they looking at her as if she was a stranger?

In the next instant there was a wild swirl of dozens of fins, and Luce found herself embraced on all sides.

“Luce! You figured it out! We stopped them!”

“They would have wiped us out if you hadn’t . . .”

“I was so worried when you told us your plan. I can’t believe it’s working!”

“It’s not just your singing. It’s how you think, too. You’re like a real general!”

“Hey, I haven’t met you yet, Luce. But I’m ex–Queen Eileen, and that was just awesome.”

Luce did her best to hug everyone back, trying not to cry. It was hard not to suspect that they were crazy to trust her this much.

Especially when she hadn’t even been honest with them, really. She hadn’t been lying, but she knew she’d been keeping too many secrets: about Seb, about the video . . .

And especially about what Seb had told her: that if she had anything to say, the humans might be ready to listen to her.

Even now that everything about mermaid life was changing—their whole world upended and the timahk hopelessly shattered—Luce couldn’t quite shake the sense that there were some things a mermaid just shouldn’t admit to doing. Talking to humans and saving them from the consequences of their own stupid behavior were both right at the top of the list. But Luce had never completely forgiven herself for lying to Dana about Dorian. She couldn’t make that mistake a second time.

“I’ve got some things I need to tell you,” Luce gasped out. Everyone fell silent almost instantly. Did they really think that what she had to say was so important? Luce told them the whole story: collapsing under that dock and swimming out the next day without caring that she might be seen, then her surprise at noticing a camera pointed at her. Rescuing Seb and everything he’d told her afterward.

There were a few shocked exclamations, a few sharply indrawn breaths, but at least no one told her off for behaving so dishonorably. Luce gazed around at them, wondering what they’d all say to her when the silence finally broke, and found that she could look at everyone except for Catarina. Cat was glaring at her with such obvious disappointment that Luce found it hard to meet her former queen’s eyes.

“Well, everything is different now,” Yuan said at last. “It actually makes sense strategically to try to get some humans on our side, right?” She sounded like she was arguing, though it wasn’t clear whom she was trying to convince.

“If Luce had saved someone who counted, I might have to agree with you,” Catarina announced. She spoke in a silky, disdainful tone that Luce hadn’t heard since the days when Cat was queen. “But saving a dirty vagrant like that, only because she felt sorry for him? What possible use is that to us? No, Luce is too impulsive, too thoughtless—”

“He made me think about submarines,” Luce pointed out, a little brusquely. “And talking with him gave me the idea about the bridge. You really think he’s supposed to do more than that?”

“And he’s why we know about the video too. If a lot of humans are already interested in Luce, then maybe they won’t like it that the government is trying to kill her. Cat, I have this feeling that we’re going to need all the