Page 62 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

And then what the girl had said registered.

“What do you mean, still?”

She shrugged. “I hit it with a spell, the one I use on the stables when they get rank. It should have helped.”

“Pinkie, uh, exudes stuff all the time. So that sort of thing doesn’t work.”

“Well, I’ve smelled worse,” she said, eyeing our two companions. They seemed to be getting along famously, the giant wad of demonic phlegm and the oversized seahorse, and were happily screeching at each other.

The noise echoed around the cave, but nobody came running. Unless they were going in the other direction. Couldn’t blame them there.

“I’m Cassie,” I told the girl and stuck out a hand before realizing that it was dripping, too.

She rolled her eyes. “I know. I’m Rieni. I was sent to fetch you.”

“To where?” I asked a little apprehensively.

“Grandmother wants a word.”

“Is that . . . a good thing?”

“No.”

I sat back down.

“Prince Emrys is with her,” she said wryly and had the fun of watching me clamber back to my feet again.

And then onto her seahorse, which appeared to be the only way through the chambers of interlinked caves, some of which hedged the canal pretty tightly. Only that wasn’t nearly as easy as mounting a horse. As I discovered when I almost fell into the canal.

Rieni grabbed me at the last minute, but that still ended with me back on the pier instead of on the beast, which was eyeing me with the same disdain as its master.

“I’ve never done this before,” I told her, although that was pretty obvious.

“You’re a goddess.”

“Half and I mostly got the human stuff.”

She watched me with dark, disbelieving eyes. “And yet you came to this court?”

“Didn’t get the smarts, either.”

She huffed out what might have been a laugh—or a snort of derision, the jury was still out—and then jumped back onto the quayside and pushed.

My dragonscale-covered backside wasn’t as limber as I would have liked, my currently noodle-like arms weren’t as strong, and the damned seahorse kept bobbing about, making itself a moving target. And sometimes moving away and forcing Rieni to leash him while also shoving at me. But I somehow got onto what could in no way be called a back because it was either that or face plant into the water, and I’d had enough freaking water.

And then I just stayed there, clinging to the long spine, because there was no broad back to provide an easy perch. Instead, the creature was essentially perpendicular, leaving me hanging on desperately, like balancing on the side of a ladder. A moving ladder.

“No, no, not like that! You’re covering his gills, so he can’t breathe,” Rieni said as I and the seahorse drifted away from the dock again.

“That part’s in the air!” I said, panicking because the quayside was getting too far away. And because I was pretty sure that seahorses couldn’t breathe air.

Only to be proven wrong, at least where these were concerned.

“They breathe both air and water, but not with your hand there. Now move it!” she said, and I moved it because she was a little drill sergeant in the making.

And then almost fell into the canal.

Again.

---