by Karen Miller
The small pain prompted a wild, bursting thought.
Why was that lid dislodged? Why would anyone need to open that coffin?
With a gasp she sat up. “Really, Da? Really? You hid it there?”
But wouldn’t that be just like him, to hide Barl’s diary in his best friend’s coffin? In the royal crypt that saw hardly a living soul? Wasn’t that just like him to give the poor king one last important job to do, for Lur?
Oh, Da. You clever man.
When Charis finally returned, cock-a-hoop ’cause she’d found them a horse and carriage and arranged for it to be brought to the house first thing in the morning, Deenie used the excuse of needing to fetch the clothes she’d tossed from the Tower, and left her friend to sit with Da.
Reaching the palace grounds unchallenged, so preoccupied she’d hardly noticed the ruined city, she hurried past the deserted, collapsed palace and on to the crypt. First thing she did was brush her fingertips along the edge of Queen Dana’s coffin.
“Don’t be cross, Mama. You had to do difficult things when you were Jervale’s Heir. Well, I’m your heir. And I have to do this.”
With that said, she turned to King Gar’s coffin and stared into his young, peaceful stone face.
“I’m sorry. I wouldn’t disturb you if it wasn’t important.”
She’d never tried using a Doranen compulsion spell before, but she’d seen Rafe do one. The memory had stuck.
Please, Barl, let it work. Don’t let my Doranen magic fail me this time.
Barl must’ve been listening. The heavy stone coffin lid jerked sideways, grinding. She only just managed to stop it crashing to the crypt floor. Beckoning her conjured glimfire closer, palms sweaty, she looked into the coffin, at the wrapped body it contained.
Don’t think about it being a person. Don’t think of it as Da’s dear friend.
Straightaway she saw the diary, a small leather-bound volume, tucked between the dead king’s arm and his side. Snatching it out of the coffin, she took a moment to swiftly leaf through it and felt a sting of dismay as she saw it was written in ancient Doranen. But then she found the scrawled notes tucked between some of the pages, the writing faded and unfamiliar but readable. Praise Barl for small mercies. Someone had managed to translate at least part of it.
Conscious of the time, she slid the journal into her coat pocket. Though it was awful, really, she couldn’t help a surge of triumph. I found it. I found it. Because this was how well she knew her father. And if she knew him this well…
Then I know I’m right about the rest, too. He is still inside himself, fighting. He hasn’t given up—and neither will I.
She and Charis and Da left for Billington the next morning, after breakfast, with the tail-end of the night’s storm still washing the rubbled streets with rain. The carriage was packed with her satchel of trins and cuicks, and her haversack full of clothes and a knife and some fishing line with hooks and the diary stitched tight in a double layer of oilskin, a secret for now, and Charis’s haversack of clothes, and her own knife, and a little food for the journey. They’d buy more vittles as they travelled the rest of the way to the coast, not wanting to rouse questions in Dorana or take from the city. Food was dribbling in from the Home Districts but supplies still weren’t plentiful.
“Barl’s blessings be with you,” said Pother Kerril, standing on the uneven pavement outside Charis’s house. “Travel safely.”
With the reins in her gloved hands, Charis beside her on the carriage’s driving seat and Da tucked cosy inside, Deenie looked down at the pother, suddenly speechless.
Will I see her again? I might not. Anything could happen.
“Thank you, Pother Kerril,” she said, managing a smile. “For all your help and guidance and your good care of Da.”
Then, with a click of her tongue and a shake of the reins, she roused the sturdy carriage horse Charis had borrowed and guided it along the quiet residential street, heading for the main thoroughfare leading out of the city. A few folk were out and about, but nobody paid them any mind. They had too many troubles of their own to chew on.
“There’s still time to change your mind, you know,” she said to Charis, as the city’s open gates loomed before them. “I’ll not think any less of you.”
Charis squirmed round on the driving seat to look at poor, broken Dorana City. “Of course it’s too late,” she said, almost under her breath. “It’s always been too late, hasn’t it? From the day Barl led the Doranen over the mountains, it’s always been too late for Lur.”
Deenie nodded, full of sorrow. “I know.”
“Everything’s falling apart so fast,” said Charis. “D’you think there’ll be anything left by the time we come back?”
“I wish I knew,” she said, and took one hand off the reins to clasp Charis’s arm, briefly. “Best we don’t think on that.”
“No,” Charis whispered. “Best we don’t.”
And with nothing else to say, they settled into the long drive to Billington.
They passed a few fellow travellers on the main city road, some in carriages, some on horseback. Clip-clopping through the Home Districts they saw storm damage and signs of tremor, but both lessened as they took slantwise Fimble Way which would lead them, eventually, to their distant destination.
The horse Charis had found for them was dependable, not flashy, so it took them nearly three hours to reach the hospice that would be Da’s home. Billington was a sleepy place, the town centre for a sheep district. The pothers and Barlspeakers at the hospice greeted them cautiously at first, but after learning who was in the carriage, and reading Pother Kerril’s letter, they became quite excited and talked of “honour” and “welcome duty.” Eager hands laid sleeping Da on a stretcher and rushed him into the long, low hospice building. Deenie offered to leave coin for his keeping but Brye, the senior pother, shook his head as though she’d said something dreadful.
He was a tall, stooped man whose blond Doranen hair was thinning. “You’re a good daughter,” he said. “But we’ve no need of your coin. And you’ve no need to worry, Deenie. We’ll follow Pother Kerril’s instructions exactly. And we’ll not breathe a word that your father is here.” His mouth turned down. “She has also written of your dear mother. I’m so sorry.”
His sympathy stung her to tears. Mama’s death was another thing it was best not to think on. She wept too easily now. She needed to be strong. “Thank you.”
“Now, child,” he added, “do you stay with us as we care for your father?”
“I’d like to, but I have some duties first,” she said, hoping he couldn’t read the prevarication in her eyes. “But I would like to come back and be with him, if I may.”
Pother Brye smiled. “Of course you may. You’re the Innocent Mage’s daughter. Our doors are never closed to you.”
Leaving Charis to mind the horse and carriage, she went inside the hospice to bid her father farewell. The pothers had dressed him in a clean nightshirt and settled him into a private chamber, sweet with fresh flowers and a window open to the country air. It was so peaceful. The misery and destruction of Dorana felt far, far away.
Bending over his narrow bed, Deenie kissed his forehead. “I have to go now, Da,” she whispered. “But I’ll be back, and I’ll bring Rafe with me. I promise. So don’t you go anywhere, you hear me? Da?”
He didn’t answer. She kissed him again and walked away, before her courage failed her and she couldn’t leave him, not even for Rafel or Lur.
Climbing back onto the carriage’s driving seat, she took the reins and pulled a face. “Ready?”
Charis’s cheeks were pale but her eyes were determined. “Ready.”
Shaking the reins, urging the horse to get a move on, she bumped shoulders with Charis. “I’m glad you bullied your way into coming. I don’t think I’d be brave enough to do this on my own.”
“You’re brave enough,” said Charis. “You may be a mouse at heart, but you’re a fierce mouse, Deenie.”
For some strange reason, that made her laugh. Even as her heart broke, as she tried not to think of Da being cared for by strangers, of Mama alone and sharing a stranger’s coffin, she turned the horse and carriage onto the road out of Billington, still laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Charis demanded. “Are you laughing at me?”
Sobering, Deenie shook her head. “No, of course not. I don’t know why I’m laughing. Maybe it’s ’cause you’re right, and I’m mad.”
Mad to think I can defeat the whirlpools and the waterspouts. Mad to think I can sail a boat so far. Mad to think I can find my lost brother.
“Well, if you’re mad, then so am I,” said Charis. “And that’s the last time we’ll say it. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” she said, and stirred the horse into a jog.
Three weeks and five days it took them to reach Westwailing. They didn’t dare push harder or faster, because it wasn’t their horse and the poor thing was doing the best it could, considering, and there wasn’t enough coin in the satchel to stuff the animal full of oats. Not when they had to buy food for themselves, enough to last them to Westwailing and beyond.
That was the biggest worry—storing enough food to keep them alive as they made their way along Lur’s coastline to the end of the reef and out into open water. Always assuming they managed to get even that far. They didn’t talk about that, but Deenie knew Charis fretted. She fretted. She tried to seem confident but inside she was sick with doubt and fear.
But they’d come too far to turn back now.
* * *
The sun had slid almost to the horizon when they finally reached Lur’s biggest fishing township. Slowing the carriage on the headland road that would in roundabout fashion take them down to the pier, they stared at turbulent Westwailing Harbour and the whirlpools and waterspouts that had swallowed it alive.
Deenie shivered. Even this far away she could feel the churning, vicious blight. It woke her mage-sense to shrieking, so that pain like fireworks burst behind her eyes.
“Oh, Deenie,” Charis whispered. “You told me what it was like, but it’s—it’s—”
With an effort she kept the awful nausea at bay. “It’s much worse seeing it for yourself,” she said. “I know.”
In chilled silence they watched the capricious magic-born waterspouts whip up, whip up, then collapse in foam and spray only to whip up again somewhere else, twice as large.
“What about the whirlpools?” said Charis, her voice croaky with fright. “Are they constant or do they shift about too? Because if they shift about, Deenie…”
This far from the water she could count seven—no, eight—whirlpools. There might be more, smaller ones. These eight were as large as the one that had swallowed Arlin Garrick’s father and the other mages and helped to wreck that fishing smack on the reef, killing all those good Olken men.
“I don’t know,” she said, shrugging. “I think they stay where they start. But it makes no difference, Charis. Either way I have to dance with them and the waterspouts all along the coastline to the end of the reef.”
“So far,” said Charis, faltering. “Deenie…”
“I can do it,” she said, as the reef’s blight, Morg’s twisted magework, curdled through her blood. “I have to.”
Leaning sideways, Charis stared down at the township. “I can see a few people wandering about. The place isn’t entirely deserted.”
Maybe not, but it felt that way. Remembering how it had bustled the last time she and her family had come here, how busy and cheerful it was, when she’d been a child, she felt clogged with fresh sorrow.
All ruined now, because Arlin Garrick’s father and that horrible Fernel Pintte wouldn’t pay attention to Da.
“Look,” she said, pointing. “Boats, moored at the pier. They haven’t all been sunk or pulled to bits for firewood.”
Charis looked at her. “You thought they would be?”
“I thought they might,” she admitted.
“Now you tell me!” said Charis, crossly. Then she sighed. “Deenie, are you sure we have to steal one? Couldn’t we find one you like and pay for it?”
They’d already discussed this, and more than once. “Charis…”
“And the horse and carriage,” Charis said, nearly wailing. “However will I look Meister Barett in the face again after promising to return them? He must be frantic by now, and cursing me.”
“You can always drive back to Dorana, Charis. I can go on my own.”
“Oh, don’t be a noddyhead,” Charis muttered. “You know I won’t leave you.”
“Well, then.”
Waking the tired horse with a shake of the reins, Deenie guided the carriage down the sloping cobbled street into Westwailing. Its emptiness was eerie, and so melancholy she could have wept. Two old men sat on upturned barrels in front of a boarded-up alehouse. They stared at her with surprised, rheumy eyes as she halted the carriage beside them and leaned down.
“Good meisters, my sister and I need a place to stay for the night. Can you tell me if there’s an inn that could take us?”
The old men, fishermen it looked like, with their seamed faces and scarred, gnarled hands and the oiled wool coats and stout boots keeping them warm and dry, looked at each other, then back at her.
“The Mermaid’s got beds,” one of the men told her, his voice crackling with age. “It be the only inn we got left. Even the Dolphin shut its doors. Hiram walked away, like most everyone else.” He sniffed. “Westwailing’s a dead town these days, near as.”
She wouldn’t have stayed at the Dolphin anyway, on the chance she’d be recognised. But even so, she was sorry. Westwailing’s slow dying made her sad. And the harbour… the blighted harbour…
How will I stand it, when it makes me this sick and I ain’t even got my feet wet?
She didn’t know. She’d just have to.
“The Mermaid?” she said, memory stirring. “That’s further along this street, isn’t it? Not far from the pier?”
“Been here afore have you, lass?” said the other fisherman. “Don’t recall your pretty face, or your sister’s.”
“Not for many years,” said Deenie. “Our thanks, good meisters.”
The Mermaid’s innkeeper greeted them with cautious curiosity. Deenie spun him the tale she and Charis had dreamed up on the road, how they were come down to the coast to find what was left of their family and tell them how their mother had perished further up north in a storm. Satisfied with that, he showed them to a room with two beds and called for a lad to stable the horse, house the carriage and bring in the young meistresses’ belongings.
“Don’t bother,” Deenie said quickly, thinking of their sacks full of food. “We don’t have much. We’ll fetch them.”
With the innkeeper paid and the day’s light fast fading, they wandered down to the waterfront to see up close what boats they had to choose from for stealing. The few townsfolk they came across stared as though two strangers were the oddest thing they’d ever seen. And these dire days, doubtless they were.
Leaning against the stone harbour wall, feeling the blighted magic burn in her blood, watching the waterspouts rise and dance and die, Deenie breathed in the sharp salt air and sighed it out, gustily.
If only I could breathe out this mage-pain as easily.
“When I think of the stories ole Darran told me and Rafel, about the Sea Harvest Festival, it makes me so sad,” she said. “Westwailing used to be such a grand place. Out there—” She pointed across the harbour. “That’s where Da saved Prince Gar from drowning. The day of the terrible storm, when King Borne was so ill.”
Charis sighed too. “It doesn’t seem real, does it? Those days seem like something out of a book.”
They did. A book with tattered pages now, thrown aside and forgotten.
And then she shook herself, because moping on the past wouldn’t help them. Instead she shifted her gaze to the scattering of smacks and skiffs and runabouts tethered along the pier.
“Deenie?” Charis sounded nervous, of a sudden. “Are you sure you can sail one of those? They look awful big.”
“The smacks are big,” she said. “We can’t take a smack. And the runabouts are too small for the open water past the reef. We’ll have to take a skiff.”
“A skiff? Which one’s a skiff? They all look like boats to me.”
Narrowing her eyes, Deenie looked at each rising and falling vessel, stirred at anchor by the endlessly restless water. For Charis’s sake she was trying to sound confident, but her heart was beating hard and sweat dribbled down her spine.
I can’t do this. I can’t sail a boat beyond the reef and up the unknown coastline for days and days. Look at those waterspouts. I’ll never sail around them. I’ll never be able to keep us out of those whirlpools.
Not when the magic made her feel so poorly she could retch.
But I have to.
“Deenie?” said Charis. “What’s amiss? Can’t you tell which ones are skiffs?”
If Charis had forgotten how Westwailing had made her sick last time, she wasn’t about to do any reminding. “ ’Course I can,” she muttered. “Now let’s go back to the Mermaid. We need to pack everything good and tight and put our heads down early. It’s not going to be restful, you know, sleeping on a boat. Especially if it starts raining or a storm blows in.”
And both are likely. Oh, Da. This ain’t going to be much fun.
But Charis didn’t step away from the stone harbour wall. Instead she leaned over it, her bleak gaze reaching across the seething, surging, magic-poisoned water.
“He’s out there, Deenie,” she said, her voice fierce. “Rafel. And you and me, we’re going to find him, and we’re going to save him, and we’re going to bring him back to Lur. Tell me you believe it. Tell me you know that in your bones.”
I want to believe it, Charis.
But wanting didn’t count. Not here and now. Not faced with this terrible thing they’d come so far to do.