Page 63 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

Rieni muttered something before pulling my ride back over by the reins, settling my butt onto a shelf-like seat I hadn’t noticed because I’d been too busy holding on, and strapping my legs into knee-high stirrups. The saddle that I finally realized the creature was wearing had two short seats that protruded outward and, along with the stirrups, did give some stability. But it took work to stay on.

Especially when the beast started forward at just a clicking sound from Rieni, who had jumped onto the seat above mine with effortless grace. It was something that her mount shared and began taking us down the canal with an undulating, smooth glide that would have made an actual horse green with envy. I was green, too, but for a different reason.

The world we were passing through was entirely underground but not dark. A sparkly emerald ribbon ran along the cave’s ceiling that I hadn’t been able to see from under the rocky overhang at the quayside, except for some shifting light. But now daylight speared down in stretchy fingers from high above, tinting us vaguely green and causing my armor to run as if it had been dipped in paint.

Only it wasn’t paint; it was daylight filtering through a suspended river.

“Runs all the way to the throne room,” Rieni said, glancing back and noticing my awed expression.

“Is that where we’re going?”

“No.”

I didn’t ask anything else. She didn’t seem interested in conversation, and I was too busy staring upward. It looked like a Chihuly art fixture but was far more beautiful. I’d seen something like it once at the Circle’s HQ in Stratford, but it had been a pale imitation, as if someone had seen a Michelangelo sculpture once and tried to reproduce it from memory. The Circle might have found someone with fey magic—they even had a few part fey in their ranks—to do the spell, but this. . .

No, they hadn’t replicated this.

It was equally breathtaking and terrifying, as the magic holding it up also held back a lot of water. Having almost drowned repeatedly at this point, my body tensed up at even the thought of all those millions of gallons falling on top of us, especially when I couldn’t shift. It was enough to make me wonder if Nimue’s people were able to swim up under an enemy and just . . . jerk them down.

I was beginning to wonder why anyone in their right mind would attack this place, between the water and the scary things in the water. Then I looked around at the passing sides of the canal and doubled that thought. Because while I’d been daydreaming, the scenery had changed.

I guessed we had entered the stables Rieni had mentioned because they did reek a little. Or maybe that was Pinkie churning up the water behind us. I didn’t care either way because both sides of the canal had open-sided stalls built into them like boat docks, only what was in them. . .

Wasn’t boats.

“Oh,” I said loudly enough that Rieni looked back over her shoulder. And, for the first time, appeared vaguely approving.

“They’re magnificent, aren’t they?”

“Beautiful,” I murmured, trying to look like the towering creatures on both sides of the suddenly narrow seeming canal weren’t scaring me crapless. But at the same time, I meant it. Giant seahorses, each two or three times as big as our current mount, reared up on either side of us, and they were much more flashy and raucous than the comparatively small and demure version we were clinging to.

I couldn’t even imagine riding one of them. And not just because of their size, which would have left me a small lump hanging off the great hide like a remora. But because of that, I thought, as one of them turned and snapped at us, biting the air just above my face.

I didn’t bleat that time. I just stared—at huge, wild, golden eyes; at a zebra-striped hide, black and off-white and with the pattern going everywhere in a wonderfully epic scrawl; at the massive bony protrusions spearing out of its neck that looked like bare tree branches, so many and so thick that I didn’t see how anyone could ride him if they would even dare to try; and at the aggressive way he tossed his head. And that was before the deceptively tiny-looking mouth opened unbelievably wide, showcasing pointed teeth that I was pretty sure seahorses weren’t supposed to have.

But this was Faerie, where everything could and would kill you at the first opportunity, so of course they did. They would have been eaten long ago otherwise. But Rieni didn’t appear impressed.

“Shut it, Golygus,” she said, smacking the great neck. “He knows how pretty he is,” she said, rubbing the spot she’d just made and laughing. “That and being our champion makes him high and mighty.”

Golygus took this rebuke better than I’d have expected, maybe because of the handful of shrimp that accompanied it, pulled out of a bag at Rieni’s waist.

“Your champion?” I asked.

“Fastest ever, three years in a row,” she said proudly. “Only no one can handle him but me. I raised him from a fry.”

I assumed that meant a baby but didn’t have a chance to ask, as the champion was trying to eat Pinkie. But all that got him was a punch in the nose from one of the little tentacles, which seemed to work much like Rieni’s slap. The aggrieved-looking monstrous creature tossed his neck wildly and postured but didn’t try to tear Pinkie a new one, to my surprise.

And most of the rest of the high-spirited creatures seemed more interested in the shrimp than they did in me or my smelly companion. Rieni tossed a few here and there as we passed, mainly to the best behaved, and soon, all of them had settled down in the hope of a treat. I stared at two-story-tall giants hunkering down and trying to behave themselves so that the tiny fey child might bless them with a shrimp and wondered if I was dreaming.

But no, one even leaned down to nuzzle Rieni’s shoulder affectionately as we passed. It was a bright neon pink specimen with soft-looking protrusions that wafted about like delicate scarves instead of the thorn-type that Golygus had boasted. They were blue shading to pink at the bottoms, and I found myself wanting to touch one to see if it felt as soft as it looked.

I didn’t.

I’d learned a few things over the past month in Faerie.

But it was hard to keep that in mind as the procession continued. If this wasn’t the royal stables, it should have been, I decided, staring at the beauty on display. That included a gorgeous iridescent green with bony orange protrusions; several more of the flashy zebra-striped ones, with eyes of sapphire, gold, or emerald green; and a burnt sienna, super bumpy one, with skinny, off-white stripes running across the nobby hide and a “mane” that looked like a little girl’s ponytails gathered up and down its spine, where the skin had pulled into tufts that ended with hair-like filaments.

I tried to pick a favorite but couldn’t. I loved a dark purple one with lavender on its belly, a brilliant neon blue with a pale green underside, and an eye-searingly yellow with delicate blue fins. Of course, they all had fins, with some on their heads like mohawks that perked up as we floated by and others on their backs and along their curled, prehensile tails. A few of the latter reached up from underwater to hesitantly stroke Pinkie or me as we passed, obviously as curious about us as we were about them.

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