“... We’ve been gathering up here for tea time more often nowadays, hm?” Andres said.

  Victor wouldn’t say he ‘stormed’ to the top of Lighthouse Seven. He wasn’t that young anymore. All he did was scare off Rhizocapala, made sure his lass and his niece got into their diving bell safely, and sprinted all the way up here from Depth Three within three minutes. Oh, he could’ve gone a faster if he were just a bit younger and a tad bit more flexible, but he didn’t want to scare the gathering Imperators as he exploded onto the surface.

  His problem wasn’t with the Imperators, but with the man standing with his arms crossed behind his back, staring down at the whirlpool with a grim light in his only eye.

  “It’s as I expected, then,” Andres said quietly, refusing to turn away from the glass wall as Victor trudged forward, his walking cane clacking hard against the floor. “The Barnacle God has returned. Rather, he’s made a move yet again. How long has it been since he last appeared? Four years? Five years? And here I was hoping he’d upped and died of old age—”

  Once he was close enough, Victor hooked the back of a chair with his cane and flung it at Andres. The big man didn’t even flinch as the wood shattered against his shoulders, but he have to punch a mantis shrimp arm out to catch Victor’s cane flying at his neck—and Victor gave the man a barbed smile, though he was quite sure his wet bandages made it difficult to see.

  Not that Andres was looking at him, still.

  “You sent her down there to kill the Mutant-Class copepod because you knew something was going to happen,” he said, his arm quivering as he pressed his cane deeper into Andres’ neck. “You knew, you son of a bitch. And you dragged my niece into it. Now look at what you’ve done by moving the rook when we’ve got exactly zero pawns to play with. What do you think would’ve happened if I didn’t feel something was off and went down there myself?”

  Andres curled a lip and glanced back at him, giving him half a scowl. “You think I tried to sabotage your girl? Why would I try to kill a Flower Cape who has been taking on more extermination missions these past three weeks than any other initiate?”

  “Bullshit.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “That you made up five seconds ago when you realised this old man is only slow in flesh, but not in mind,” Victor growled. “Come on, Andres. It’s just you and me here. Zora’s not here to cut through the bullshit, so I’m going to need you to tell me what you were planning by putting her on that mission you was going to go wrong.”

  Silence for a moment.

  Then Andres let out a soft sigh, dropping his arm so Victor could smack him on the back of his neck with the cane.

  “I lying,” he muttered, rubbing his neck as Victor stormed forward to join him by the glass wall. “That coordinated copepod attack on all our initiates a month ago was too timely. The girl’s first patrol down in the whirlpool, and a freak copepod attack just happens to come up? No way. I figured whatever was behind that attack had something else up its sleeve, so I sent her down to kill the Mutant-Class partly because she needed the training, because I knew she could handle it, and because I needed Corpsetaker and his Four Leviathans to spring whatever trap they were planning on her.”

  Victor pursed his lips. “You knew it was going to be a trap, then.”

  “That it was going to be more than just a single Mutant-Class copepod in Depth Three?”

  “But you didn’t know what that trap was.”

  “That was why I sent Reina and Hugo down there to support her.”

  “But that ‘trap’ turned out to be Rhizocapala himself.”

  Andres clenched his jaw, gnashing his teeth together. “I would have sent her and your niece down there if I knew the trap was the Barnacle God. Do you think I would’ve risked losing two Lighthouse Imperators, three promising initiates, and an honest-to-god Flower Cape down in Depth Three?”

  And Victor could believe that.

  After all, the Harbour Imperatrix cared more for his Imperators than his Whirlpool City, a fact he’d never admit even if an axe was about to lop off his head—and was how Victor knew he was telling the truth.

  It was eleven in the morning. Prime brunch hour. Right here, right now, the two of them could see going on below them, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. A month ago, they had half a dozen medical ships swirling around the whirlpool to pull up the initiates’ diving bells. Now, they had over a score of them attending to diving bells being yanked up from Depths Four to Seven, and those same screams and shouts were filling the air again.

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  Even Victor could smell the blood wafting from the ships, and he was all the way up here. He could hardly imagine what it was like for the medics actually pulling the dead out of their diving bells.

  “... Reports have come in already,” Victor said quietly, stabbing his cane before him as he pressed his forehead against the glass. “While the lass and my niece were down in Depth Three fighting the Mutant-Class, the morning patrol Imperators in Depths Four to Eight were all killed. That’s seventy-two Imperators , Andres. Not injured like the initiates from a month ago. They’re dead.”

  “What did them in?”

  Victor scowled. “The rest of them,” he said, clasping his hands over his cane. “Rhizocapala, the weakest of the Four Leviathans, was lying in wait for the lass and my niece in Depth Three. What did you think the other three were doing?”

  Andres grimaced. “Details.”

  “Eurypteria slaughtered everyone in Depths Four and Five, but she stuffed their bodies back in the diving bells before letting them surface. Kalokas swallowed all but one diving bell in Depth Six, but let’s just say we won’t be using that disfigured bell anymore. Marculata didn’t even bother returning a single diving bell to us, but we can reasonably assume the Imperators down in Depths Seven and Eight are all dead.”

  “They’re dead. Marculata doesn’t take prisoners—”

  “All at once Andres,” Victor snapped, clicking his tongue in irritation. “The Barnacle God, the Water Scorpion God, the Remipede God, and the Mantis Shrimp God. When’s the last time they coordinated an attack like this? I’ll have you know, big man, that the readings of Corpsetaker’s aura also exploded in concentration four minutes ago. We’ve lost all our navigation data between Depths Four to Eight, and we don’t have a single man down there right now. They’ve retaken over half the whirlpool in a single hour.”

  “Which they couldn’t have done on a whim,” Andres muttered.

  “No shit. Corpsetaker and his Four Leviathans own Depths Four to Nine now. Whatever he’s planning down there, he doesn’t want us knowing, and I’ll bet my right eye the Four Leviathans’ only goal from now on is to stop us from reaching him.”

  “We won’t take that sitting down,” Andres said, cracking his neck. “We’re putting a stop to all patrols between Depth Four to Eight. All Imperators are to only undertake missions three Depths above their level, and we’re prioritising protecting the Depths we still have. Depths One to Three cannot be allowed to fall.”

  “And?

  “This applies to the other Lighthouse Imperators, too. From now on, going below Depth Four without my explicit permission. I’ll handpick my scouts and send several dive teams down for recon in Depth Four, but they’ll always be backed by at least one Lighthouse Imperator.”

  “What’s the big plan?”

  “The big plan?” Andres narrowed his eye at the sole Depth Six diving bell being hauled onto a medical ship far below. “We’re besieging the whirlpool from top to bottom. If Corpsetaker wants to own this city, we’ll hold the line at Depth Three and stop the Swarm there. Have the Harbour Guards line the Upper Depths with heavy anti-chitin cannons. I want five cannons in every sector and a third of the garrisoned Guards on standby in the lighthouses, and then we’ll retake each Depth one by one—”

  Victor clicked his tongue. “I’m not your bitch. Tell Hugo to play courier for you. I’m asking what doing.”

  Andres threw him a scowl. “We need time to figure out what’s going on in the Middle Depths now that we’ve lost control of them. My handpicked scouts will dive overtime to collect more information, but it’ll be just like before. It’ll be at least a month or two before I’m confident enough to send an elite team down to spearhead the reclamation of Depth Four, which means—”

  “You’re gonna send the lass again.”

  “She’s , Victor. I’m sure Reina did her part protecting her team against Rhizocapala—”

  “—you bet your ass my niece put her life on the line to get them out of that situation—”

  “But this whole thing revolves around our dear ‘Storm Strider’, and whether we want her to or not, she get her vial of healing seawater,” Andres finished, shaking his head as he turned to walk away. “So train her harder. Make her stronger. I’m putting her in every single elite vanguard team starting with Depth Four, so she’ll either crush her way down to Depth Eight or die trying.”

  Victor thought about hooking another chair so he could fling it at the man, but decided against it at the last moment. The chair next to the Imperatrix’s seat his favourite chair.

  “... It’s time, Victor,” Andres said, waving behind him as he left the room. “Quit it with the beating around the bush. She’s a fully-fledged now, so stop letting her run around with an unregistered Altered Symbiotic System already. Bring her to see him. He’s the only one who can unlock the full potential of her Archive, isn’t he?”

  And so, like every other discussion they’d had over the past two months, it ended the way it always did: Victor alone at the very top of Lighthouse Seven, staring down at a whirlpool that demanded his absolute attention.

  He didn’t turn to look at the little bug on his shoulder. He’d been looking at her for decades, and the novelty of it had already worn off long ago.

  He smiled and prepared to flick Camilia off his shoulder, so she stammered and backtracked quickly, holding up her little forelegs to protect herself.

  she said, sighing as she did.