From out here, the islands were a bit more in focus, but the ship was still bypassing them.
“Beautiful,” Loom said. “Aren’t they?” He spoke with the wistfulness of a boy standing before the portrait of a dead lover.
She spun to face him. Her garments filled with air and then deflated against her skin.
“I like that color.” He nodded to her outfit. “Suits you.”
“I figured you wouldn’t mind if I wore them,” she said. “Have you kidnapped many girls? Is that why there are so many clothes in my cabin?”
He leaned against the railing beside her, unoffended by her slight. “They belonged to my sister. She’ll never be seen outside the palace wearing the same thing more than once, so it’s the task of some poor servant to lug a trunk of outfits everywhere she goes.”
Wil lifted her wrist to study the sleeve. It overlapped her hand in a strangely elegant way. The fabric moved deftly as she twisted her arm one way and the other. The elusive Southern princess.
“But if you like any of her clothes, consider them yours,” Loom said. “She won’t be back to collect them.”
“Do you ever think about them?” Wil said. “Your family.”
He looked at her sidelong. “You ask a lot of questions for someone who doesn’t answer many of them.”
She sighed and turned for the stairs. “Come get me when we’ve docked.”
He snared her elbow, spinning her to face him. “I’ll trade you,” he said. “A question for a question.”
She shook free of his grasp, but he was already letting go. “Fine.”
“Do you ever think about your mother?” he said.
She searched him with her eyes, trying to find the menace of his intentions, but he only seemed interested. She didn’t answer.
He leaned back against the railing and dropped his shoulders, like asking the question was a weight on him. “I was two when my mother died,” he said. “That was fifteen years ago. I don’t remember her at all. No sense letting myself miss her, really. I don’t know what sort of person she was. Maybe she would be glad I’m banished from her kingdom.”
He focused on the clean blue sky as though trying to throw the words into all that nothingness.
Wil didn’t press him, though she was curious. So little was known about the Southern royals, even to her own father, and here she was close enough to touch one of them.
She lowered her data goggles as they got closer to land. Landmass, they read, followed by coordinates that answered none of her questions. “What is this place?”
Loom nodded to the horizon. “That’s Messalin in the distance, about ten minutes by rowboat. The capital city of Cannolay is further north—we passed it on the way—but we can’t go there. My father has ordered for me to be killed upon sight. There’s quite a bounty for my corpse, I hear.” After a pause, he added, “Go on, you can say it.”
She looked at him. “What?”
“I tried to kill my father. I deserve to have a bounty on my head.”
Wil stared at the water. She thought she saw Owen sinking in the clear depths, his gold hair like fire around him, and she clutched at the railing to keep from diving in to save him.
“I wasn’t going to say that,” she murmured. She forced herself to look away from the water and stood up straight. “If we can’t go to any of the ports, where are you taking us?”
“A palace,” Loom said, and he seemed to indulge in annoying her with his vague details. Wil knew the Southern Isles to have only one palace, and there it was in the far distance, glittering against a mountainside, its windows shining like bits of sun as the ship sailed past.
Zay was doing the steering, Wil supposed. It wasn’t long before they reached land, on an island of sand and boulders. From where Wil stood, it looked completely barren.
Perhaps this was all a trap, Wil thought, and Loom planned to imprison her here and use her powers as he pleased. She began scheming a way to overpower him and hijack the control room.
Loom hopped over the railing and began tying the ship to the bedraggled remains of an old dock.
Cautiously, she followed after him, watching his hands especially. He and Zay were quick with sleep serum. After Zay managed to put her out on the dock, Wil paid close attention and saw that they each kept pouches of powders and herbs sewn inside their sleeves. She could see the thin, nearly invisible threads that held them in place. Clever.
Loom walked beside her, keeping enough of a distance that she let herself look away from him for a moment and analyze her surroundings.
Several yards up from the shore, the sand faded to crushed stones, all of it glittering in the midmorning sun.
This place was not an island but a painting of an island. Something an artist had dreamed.
Her escape plan sank like a stone in her stomach.
The sea breeze had given way to warmth, and she shrugged the cloak from her shoulders and let it drape in the crook of her arm.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Loom said.
“Yes,” Wil said. Northern Arrod sat on the water, but its shore was all cityscapes and homes; there was no white sand to whisper under her feet like this. But she was already recalculating her escape route. The mainland was in the distance, too far away to swim. She could steal Loom’s ship—the electric engines were fueled partly by sunlight, and there would be enough of that to get her to another port in neutral territory, where she could abandon it and be gone before Loom could catch up.
But this plan would take patience. Loom was beginning to warm to her, but he knew she could fight, and Zay’s trust would be impossible to earn besides. They would be guarding that ship with their lives.
“A hundred years ago, the royal family lived here,” Loom went on. “Before a great wind brought the tides up higher than the castle walls. My great-grandparents barely made it out with their lives. The castle was abandoned. The palace in Cannolay was built by the emperor of the Eastern Isles as a gift, to acknowledge their alliance.”
Aside from some green peeking out in the crevices, there was nothing but stone and sand as far as Wil could see. She sat on a large rock and began unlacing her boots.
Loom was several yards ahead before he realized her absence and backtracked. “What are you doing?”
She slipped out of her boots. “Venture a guess.” She tied the laces together, hung them over her shoulder, stood, and dusted the dirt from the violet satin. All else condemned, she loved the way the fabric felt on her bare hands. The fashions of the Southern Isles seemed to value comfort and function over form. The sea breeze filled the loose sleeves, offering reprieve from the punishing heat. The trouser legs were smooth and soft, but loose enough to offer adequate range of motion in a fight.
“You know . . .” He made a point of walking slower to keep up with her evasive pace. “It was mostly a silent journey out here. It’s nice to hear your voice again.”
Her chest swelled and dropped with a sigh. “Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Play nice with me. We both know what this is. It’s a hostage situation.”
He chuckled. “It’s clear to me you aren’t hostage material.”
Wil only looked at him in silence as she stood.
“We have more in common than you dare to admit, you know,” he said.
“I have more in common with the king of Arrod than with you.” She breezed past him.
“How are you able to walk barefoot on the stones like that? Isn’t it painful?” There was concern in his voice.
She wasn’t about to answer his question. In deceiving her, he had forfeited his right to get to know her. Her childhood spent barefoot climbing walls and trees, running to hide from her instructors. The years of calluses protecting her soles like armor. The family she still missed and loved, even if she had been cast out of it forever. The very same family Loom wanted to kill. She walked in silence.
The castle appeared to be made of sand at first.
In the d
istance it sparkled and shone, golden as the grains along the shore. But, as they trod closer, Wil could see that there was greenery on this island after all, in the form of weeds that snaked through the castle’s stone walls. And the castle itself was not made of sand, but rather covered in it. Half buried in a dune, in fact, on the north side.
She had never seen such a thing. It was a relic. As though something divine had reached through the sky and planted it here in the sand and the stones for safekeeping.
They walked across an old drawbridge, its chains broken, forming a wooden mouth that was forever agape.
The castle doors, also wooden, were faded down to the bare boards. But Wil could see faint traces of etched patterns worn thin by the elements. She wanted to study them, but later when she was alone. She would not reward Loom with her interest in his broken castle.
Inside, the stone floors had been swept clean, but there were still traces of sand that had once filled this place. The island had tried to swallow it whole, but it stood proud come what may. With that, Wil was startled to realize that she liked this place.
She turned to Loom, her eyes dulled over. She thought that she was concealing herself, but from his gaze he seemed to recognize her sense of wonder. “Where do I sleep?” she asked.
“Anywhere you want. There are a dozen chambers up the stairs. It’s never been outfitted for electricity, I’m afraid, but there’s a water pump.”
“You’ll let me choose my own room? You’d grant that kindness to your prisoner?”
He didn’t flinch at her biting tone. “You’re not my prisoner, Wil. You’re only here to help. Today we rest, and tomorrow we’ll take a smaller boat to the mainland so you can see firsthand why I brought you here.”
“I know why.”
“No.” His tone was eager. “Until you have seen Messalin, you don’t know.”
Wil knew Messalin in name only. It was a spot on a map in the atlas. She wanted to know what a tiny city in the outskirts of Cannolay meant in the grand scheme of the world, and she hated that Loom was the one to show her the things she’d wondered about as a child.
She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing this. She moved for the staircase on the far end of the empty grand entryway, and turned when she felt him staring at her.
“What now?” she asked, gripping the banister with one hand.
“It’s just—” He canted his head. “In those satins, in this castle, you look like royalty.”
What game was he trying to play? They were enemies, through and through, and now that he had her on his island and the clock was ticking, he wanted to charm her into staying for his cause.
It was not going to work.
“I’m taking a very long nap,” she said. “I haven’t had a proper rest in a week. Wake me when it’s time for dinner.”
He bowed with a flourish. “Of course, Your Majesty.”
She chose the last room at the end of the hall, with a large arched window that overlooked the ocean. The glass was filthy and cracked, but when she threw it open, the distant mountains of Cannolay were not visible. All she saw was that brilliantly bright sea.
It was a large chamber, and Wil could tell that it had once been beautiful. It was made of smooth white stone. The doorways and windows were trimmed by carved wood, painted a chipping aquamarine.
There was a fireplace with a wooden mantle that went up to the ceiling, with carvings of steerwolves stalking through heavy vines, painted over in that same chipped aquamarine.
And throughout the walls, vines snaked through the cracks, heart-shaped leaves twitching in the breeze through the open window.
The bed was large, the mattress stuffed with feathers. The bedding was orange, crisp and new. No way was it a survivor of some century-old flood. Someone had tended to it recently.
So this was where the banished prince lived. Quite nice, all things considered.
Wil listened at the door. Loom was in the kitchen, she’d guess by all the clattering.
She moved to the window. The sea breeze threw back her hair as she leaned forward to survey the structure. She counted the shelves and protruding bricks, charting her path, and then she began her descent.
She landed soundlessly in the sand. Her boots were slung over her shoulder, still tied at the laces. She wriggled into her gloves as she walked.
The sand erased her tracks, but the landscape provided little cover. There were no trees this close to the water. When the ship came into view, she crouched low behind a shallow dune, and watched.
Zay swan-dived off the deck and into the sea, bobbing to the surface with her face to the sun. Her hair was down now, floating around her like kelp. She dipped underwater again and then emerged at the shore. Trying to relieve herself from the punishing heat, Wil supposed.
Wil pressed herself more against the sand and stayed silent. After Zay stood and wrung the water from her hair, she walked several yards down the shoreline, to where a rowboat was bobbing on its rope. From there she extracted a fishing pole. Wil tensed, readying herself to run.
Zay climbed into the boat and rowed herself from the shore. She didn’t go far. Only just enough to cast out a line. It made sense. Apart from rations, this island provided few meal options.
Wil had counted all thirty seconds it took Zay to row to her current spot. Keeping low, she crept toward the ship. She waded into the water, moving slowly to avoid making any sound, and then climbed the rope ladder that was draped over the ship’s north-facing side, out of Zay’s view.
Even as she made her way belowdecks, Wil didn’t allow herself to breathe a sigh of relief. Never celebrate a victory until it’s a victory, Owen had often said.
The engine was still running. It was nearly silent, its vibrations slight, but Wil could feel the rush of cool air blasting through the vent in the ceiling. Odd that Zay would leave it on, Wil thought. She didn’t seem like the type who would forget.
For the second time on this sojourn, Wil found herself in the engine room. She closed the door and latched it—just in case.
She sat at the stool before the control panels and quickly did her best to learn what each one was for. The data goggles helped; because they were a port novelty, they had a comprehensive database of modern ships.
A digital screen showed her a detailed map of her coordinates. The nearest port was in Cannolay, the South’s capital. But it was too close, Wil decided. Best to venture east, where she hadn’t searched, and where Pahn was rumored to be.
She pressed her gloved palm to a glowing green button, and felt the rumble of the anchor retracting into the body of the ship.
“This will work,” she muttered, grasping the wheel. It was shaped like an anchor. “This has to work.” She bared her teeth, tugged at the wheel, and began to steer. Her stomach bubbled with nervous excitement. The ship lurched back from the shore. From one of the panel’s screens, Wil watched Loom’s island drawing back into the distance. She turned the wheel to face the horizon, and just that quickly, she was gone.
An hour passed before she felt confident with the controls. The ship did most of the work; she felt a kinship with it, as though they were partners that had escaped together.
She ran her palm across the length of the panel, smiling, then laughing.
“No one’s following us now,” Wil told the ship. All Zay and Loom had was that rowboat. Zay could row to the mainland, buy or steal a ship, Wil supposed, but there would be no catching up now.
A sound interrupted her thoughts. Small, soft, like a breath. Her blood went cold. She stood, pressed her ear to the door. The sound went on, shuffling. It couldn’t be a person, she reasoned. A mouse? She hadn’t seen any on the voyage out here, didn’t even know if mice took up residence in ships.
Heart pounding, she opened the door just enough to peer out. What she saw was worse than a mouse. It was worse, even, than Zay wielding a blade—or wielding ten thousand blades and a hundred flaming torches.
The figure on the other side of t
he door smiled at her. A sweet, innocent smile that lit up his sleepy eyes.
Ada.
TWENTY-TWO
“WHERE DID YOU COME FROM?” Wil asked, as though having an answer would somehow better her situation.
Ada was little more than two years old, small for his age, and very bright.
He’d been sucking on his finger, but he extracted it from his mouth with a wet plopping sound and pointed to the cabin beside him.
The ship lilted just slightly, and Ada staggered sideways but didn’t fall. He was used to living at sea, had probably learned to walk here.
At least one of them was calm, Wil thought.
Ada walked forward, pushing the door open and inviting himself into the engine room. Wil jumped back to avoid touching him. And in that small gesture, a thousand new reasons plagued her. Ada was a child. Children needed to be cared for. Needed to be held, fed, changed. Ada was a crier at night—Wil knew this well—dependent upon his mother’s singing and rocking him to sleep. Wil couldn’t do any of these things, even though she thought she might be halfway decent at them under normal circumstances.
Even with her gloves, she wouldn’t dare risk it. A simple brush of her skin and he’d be dead.
“Ada.” Wil knelt before him. He fell to a seated position, playing with a length of rope he’d found on the floor. It was dyed green and vaguely resembled a bear made of knots and frays. “Do you know where your mother is?” She spoke in Lavean, even though she was fairly certain by his past responses and his time spent in port towns that he could understand Nearsh.
He shook his head. He was unconcerned, petting at the fray of the bear’s paw.
“Do you know where your father is?” Desperately, Wil considered the idea that she could leave Ada with his father. Even if it meant returning to the Southern Isles, she stood a chance at avoiding Zay and Loom. She would likely have to abandon the ship, but there would be some other way out, surely.
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