By Sun and Saltwater Read online

  By Sun and Saltwater

  Secrets of Itlantis #2

  Other books by Kate Avery Ellison

  The Curse Girl

  Once Upon a Beanstalk

  Frost (The Frost Chronicles #1)

  Thorns (The Frost Chronicles #2)

  Weavers (The Frost Chronicles #3)

  Bluewing (The Frost Chronicles #4)

  Aeralis (The Frost Chronicles #5)

  Of Sea and Stone (Secrets of Itlantis #1)

  With Tide and Tempest (Secrets of Itlantis #3)*

  * coming soon

  By Sun and Saltwater

  Kate Avery Ellison

  Copyright © 2014 Kate Avery Ellison

  All Rights Reserved

  Do not distribute or make copies of this book, electronically or otherwise, in part or in whole, without the written consent of the author.

  For Scott, because you are simply awesome.

  By Sun and Saltwater (Secrets of Itlantis #2)

  Aemi has a new life beneath the sea in the world of Itlantis, but all is hardly idyllic. Her assimilation into Itlantean society is fraught with accusations and rumors, those closest to her are keeping deadly secrets, and most frightening of all, someone is trying to kill her.

  Desperate for answers, Aemi and her friends set off to find answers about the attempts on her life in Arctus, the Ice City, but they might uncover more than they bargained for in the process when they are kidnapped by the Dron.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER ONE

  WHEN I WAS a girl in the Village of the Rocks, I would climb to the highest point in the village and watch the tide come in when my chores were finished. The sun would bake the stones until they burned my bare feet when I walked on them, the shadows would turn deep blue, and the wind would whip my hair back from my face and sting my nose with the scent of saltwater.

  I liked to ask my mother about what was beyond the Village of the Rocks, because she had once lived somewhere else, somewhere distant and strange. What other islands lay in the middle of the churning sea? What other people lived and breathed and worked beneath the vast, searing sky?

  “Can I see the other islands someday?” I often asked. “Would I like them?”

  My mother did not like my questions.

  “There are many islands and cities beyond this place that are inhabited by dangerous people,” she explained as she combed my hair and braided it every night. “It’s not safe in the open sea, Little Cake. If you ever leave this place, you must be smart. You must use your wits and know your enemies.”

  I would crawl into my bed and dream that one day I would be a rich lady, like my master’s daughter, Tagatha, and then I would see what lay beyond the Village of the Rocks. My mother fussed whenever I talked about it, but she also fussed when I let the crabs pinch my fingers to see how much it would hurt, or when I threw sand at the mayor’s second son, Nol.

  I did not believe it was as dangerous as she said.

  ~ ~ ~

  The lagoon danced in its cradle of stone and sand, and the open sea beyond it lapped at the edges of the rocks with a frothy tongue as I emerged from the ship. The sky seethed with storm clouds above me, and the wind whipped my hair. The scent of salt filled my nose. Before me, my old home, the Village of the Rocks, lay in charred ruins.

  The sky was gray as ash as I stepped around debris on the edge of the shore, picking my way through the remains of my old home. Fallen stones filled the bathing pools in the grotto, and blackened beams had fallen across the paths.

  Everything was silent.

  I climbed the carved steps to the houses, my bare feet feeling the chipped grooves, like teeth marks on bone, where chisels had broken away the hard interior of the rock. The steps below were worn smooth with the passage of many feet and many years, but these steps were still young. They’d been carved only a few years after I was born.

  I reached the top and leaned in the doorway, catching my breath after such a steep climb. I brushed back the woven rug that hung in the doorway and the string of shells that dangled beside it with my hand, making a clatter to announce my presence. The sound was a musical tinkling in the windy silence. Through a shapeless window in the rock, I could see the sky, blue-gray as a fish and mottled with clouds, and the sea beneath it, a pale and uneasy green in comparison.

  No sound met my ears. I stood at the threshold, my toes digging into the cold sand that gritted the top of the steps.

  “Kit,” I whispered, the word a flutter of hope in my throat. “Kit?”

  No answer.

  He was not here.

  None of them were here.

  I searched the house anyway, although it contained nothing but a few broken dishes and a rag of a curtain in the window that turned to ash when I touched it. The fire had consumed almost everything, and birds and scavengers had made off with the rest.

  Memories swirled around me along with the wind, haunting me. In my mind’s eye, I saw Nealla scolding me as we made supper; my mother—at least, the woman I’d known as my mother—brushing her fingers through my hair and singing me songs; Kit teasing me, his mouth splitting into a wide smile as dazzlingly white as the sand on the beach; Nol, too serious, too annoying, always raising my ire.

  Nol, who was now dead, just like the rest of them. My heart squeezed painfully.

  Another memory filled my mind—a black sky lit by fire. The world split by screams. Confusion, terror. My lungs aching from running, my fingers stretching to grasp Kit’s.

  But my fingers had slipped from his.

  I had lost him.

  I had lost him, they had taken me, and he was gone now.

  Pain clutched at me. The ache was fierce and sharp, like a cut from a knife that hadn’t healed right.

  I turned toward the sea and left the shell of a village behind.

  A manta waited for me offshore—a sleek, silver-colored ship with curving fins and a nose like a dolphin. A Graywater ship. It was mine now. It rocked amid the waves, gleaming in the sunlight.

  I stepped onto the pebbled shore and waded into the water. Waves surged around my ankles and rushed past me, heading for the rocks in their never-ending dance of back and forth. Something pricked my toe, and I bent down and saw a bit of purple shell. I dipped my fingers in the water and scooped it up before continuing on to the ship.

  The hatch was open, letting sunlight and air into the interior. I climbed the ladder to the hatch, my legs dripping with seawater, and then I climbed inside. Before I shut the hatch, I turned and took one last look at the village that had once been my entire world.

  Then, I closed the hatch and climbed down.

  Myo waited below. He didn’t say anything. He simply stepped aside to let me descend the ladder into the stomach of the ship. I’d insisted on going alone to the village with only him along to pilot the ship. Myo alone knew the coordina
tes, as he’d been there before.

  I didn’t want anyone else to know where it was.

  Not even my friends.

  I pressed my hands to the glass port as the ship submerged, watching the sunlight disappear as we dove into the watery darkness. Bubbles streamed past, and the ship tilted. My stomach curled.

  Back to the deep.

  Back to my origins.

  Something glanced through the darkness ahead, and my mouth dried. A sea creature? Or one of Nautilus’s ships? Somewhere, an alarm pinged quietly, confirmation that something large was in proximity to us.

  I squinted into the darkness, trying to make out what I’d seen. Another flicker of movement. Another ripple of the shadows. It might just be a school of fish.

  I rose and went to the control room to ask Myo.

  “Did you see that?” I asked.

  He twisted his head to look at me. “The alarms are going off. Something is out there.”

  “Nautilus?”

  “No, it’s alive.”

  The sensors beeped. Whatever it was, it was moving fast. Right in front of us—

  A flash of teeth and gray and fins and a burst of glowing light filled the viewport of the control room, and then it was gone with a swirl of bubbles. Myo hissed an exclamation and gripped the controls.

  Shivers cascaded down my skin. “What was that?”

  He shook his head. “Probably a large shark. Perhaps an orca.”

  “That creature was the size of this ship.”

  Myo laughed shakily. “The darkness makes things seem bigger.”

  “It was glowing. Didn’t you see?”

  “I didn’t.” He paused. “Maybe the rumors are true.”

  “Rumors?”

  “Monsters in the deep.”

  “Monsters?”

  “I was joking,” he said. “It is just a story. It was a shark, Aemiana.”

  But my stomach didn’t unclench as we headed toward Primus.

  CHAPTER TWO

  WE MET THE larger Graywater lightship, the Dolphin, halfway to Primus. Merelus and Tob were waiting for us. They’d insisted on coming, but Myo and I had left them and the larger ship behind while we went on alone.

  The manta docked in the belly of the lightship, and the water drained away before we disembarked. Tob waited for us at the door from the docking bay, his white-blond hair and scar both startlingly white in the glare of lights that shone down on him. Behind him stood Merelus.

  Myo entered first and headed past the others toward the control room. They grunted greetings at him. When I’d steppe¬¬d inside, they studied me silently, and I could tell they were trying to gauge my emotional state. Tob lingered beside me, his hand hovering above my arm in an awkward attempt to comfort. Merelus gazed at me without blinking, as if to coax answers from my eyes with his intense but kind stare.

  I exhaled the breath I felt as if I’d been holding since I’d stepped on the ruined shore of my former life. My bones felt brittle from the sights I’d absorbed. Any hope in my chest had withered into something dry and nearly dead. “They are all gone. There was nothing left but charred debris and overturned stones.”

  I did not say they were dead. I could not speak such a thing.

  They were simply gone.

  Merelus said nothing, and neither did Tob. They simply let me experience my grief in supportive silence. Merelus touched my hand, then turned and went into the control room with Myo to prepare to dive the ship, and Tob put an arm around me and drew me to the bench along the wall. We sat, and I let my head drop to his shoulder, thankful for his presence. He’d become like a brother to me in the last several jarring, tumultuous weeks, and I supposed I was like a sister to him too—a strange, foreign sister with a newly discovered identity that made her one of the most wealthy women in Itlantis.

  That kind of sister.

  Finally, the words rose to my lips and started trickling out.

  “I miss them,” I whispered. The admission made me feel naked. I bit my lip and waited for his response.

  Tob, usually the loquacious one, considered his words carefully this time. “The people from your village?” He paused, and every second squeezed by painfully as he breathed in and out before he spoke again. I felt him shudder, and I knew what he was thinking of.

  Celestrus.

  “I miss them too,” he said, and this time he spoke of our friends, Mella and Nol, lost in the attack on Celestrus only a short time before.

  I wanted to choke with sadness. The deaths were all rolled up together, a knotted chain of darkness and pain that had begun with my capture by Itlantean soldiers and ended with the destruction of Celestrus, the Jeweled City of Itlantis, a place where I’d learned to love the People of the Sea.

  I uncurled my fingers and stared at the broken bit of shell in my palm. This was all I had left of my former life in the Village of the Rocks.

  I clutched the bit of shell tightly as we headed back to Primus.

  Merelus returned after the ship was well on its way toward the capital. He took a seat beside us in the common room to read. He reached out and patted my hand once, and I blinked at the moisture that rose in my eyes.

  It had been weeks since I’d discovered I was not Aemi the surface-born thrall, but instead Aemiana, the long-lost daughter of the wealthy Itlantean Graywater family. The adjustment had not been easy.

  I hugged him, then pulled back and gazed into his face. He had become something of a father to me. It was good to see him. I was thankful that he’d agreed to join me on this venture. “How are you and Lyssia faring?”

  Merelus’s expression shifted subtly. He and his daughter were staying in the refugee quarters with everyone else from Celestrus. “We are managing.”

  “I have a favor to ask,” I said, and paused. “I want Lyssia and you to stay with me at the Graywater house.”

  He drew back in surprise. “Aemi—”

  “Please,” I said. “I’m all alone in that vast estate. The thought of you and Lyssia crowded into the temporary refugee quarters keeps me awake at night.”

  “The quarters provided by the Committee for Refugee Relocation have been more than adequate,” Merelus said.

  “If you like a view of pipes and the smell of dried seaweed,” Tob muttered. Merelus gave him a swift frown. “They’re nice,” he amended. “Don’t worry, Aemi.”

  “Well, be that as it may, I want you all to stay with me. Please. Including you, Tob.”

  “Me?” Tob asked.

  “I’m sure we have need of another cook. And I have need of another friend staying close by.”

  His eyes gleamed, but I saw the war on his face.

  They didn’t want my charity.

  “I need you,” I said. “All of you. Please.”

  “But will your family mind?” Merelus asked.

  “Not very long ago, you said yourself that I had power to do whatever I liked.”

  “I don’t believe those were my exact words,” he said, but he was smiling. “All right. We will join you there, and I thank you for your generosity.”

  I waved a hand at his words. “Believe me, you do me a great favor by coming. I’m all alone with the butler and steward, and the rest of the servants. Not to mention my new, horrible etiquette teacher.”

  Normally, I would not be cowed by servants, but the dynamics had changed now that I was a great lady of some sort, and I found their subservient manner grating and somehow intimidating. As if they mocked me with the presumption that I was worth obeisance.

  “Etiquette teacher?”

  “Apparently, I need softening up if I’m to play the part of the Graywater heir.” I sighed.

  “Well, if you’re in need of a shock cook...” Tob said.

  “Strike the shock and keep the cook, and I’ll be happy to have you in my kitchens,” I said.

  He made a noncommittal noise. “We’ll see what you think after you’ve tried my red tentacle dish.”

  “Please never serve that.”

&
nbsp; The ship shuddered, and my heart pounded as I braced myself against the wall. “Myo?” I called out.

  The intercom crackled.

  “We clipped the edge of a rock. Don’t worry. It’s not an attack.”

  I bit my lip and avoided Merelus and Tob’s suddenly questing gazes. I didn’t want them to know how my every dream involved nightmares of the man who had torn me from my village and ordered my execution. Governor Nautilus of Volcanus, the fire city, had kidnapped me in every way imaginable in my dreams—boarding the ship I was on, stealing me from Primus, finding me in a village on the surface. Thinking of him had shivers cascading down my spine and dread clenching my stomach.

  Despite my silence, Merelus seemed to observe what I wasn’t willing to say.

  “The senate believes the Volcanusean governor will stay far from us for the time being, now that his plan was exposed,” he said gently. “Nautilus may command a large portion of the Itlantean forces, but hardly the majority, and he doesn’t have the advantage of Primus to quarter his troops. Volcanus and Magmus are remote. It would be difficult for him to launch any kind of large-scale attack against the rest of the republic from his location. We believe he’ll do nothing for now.”

  “What about his son?” I asked. “Valus?”

  “He’s being kept under guard. He swears he had no knowledge of his father’s plans.” Merelus frowned. “Governor Nautilus has ceased all contact with Primus and the rest of the nation. Volcanus and its sister city, Magmus, are silent to our communications. No one is sure exactly what he’s planning.”