Avery took a breath and resumed reading: “The queen named the girl Seiche, after the greatest of the lake-bound storms, and raised her in peace and plenty in the palace. Seiche was so sweet and so beloved of all who knew her that tales of her grace and beauty spread through all the drowned lands. She knew that her mother needed an heir who could hold the throne, and so she did not linger over childhood, as so many drowned children choose to do, but progressed through it at the ordinary speed, counting her birthday from the day of her drowning. And so it was that on her sixteenth birthday she stood before her mother’s people and claimed them as her own people, promising to do her duty if it was ever required of her.
“That night, there was a visitor at the palace gates. Drowned lands get few guests. Most of those who would travel to see their splendor are unable to breathe below the water, but this man had no such trouble. He was tall and slim as the blade of a knife, with a crown upon his brow, and the palace guards opened the doors for him, for they knew that the King of Cups could go where he liked beneath the water.”
“Even though it wasn’t his kingdom?” asked Zib. “It seems to me the queen should have been able to tell him no if she wanted to, since it wasn’t his kingdom.”
“But it was,” said the Crow Girl. “The drowned lands are all underwater, and so they belong to the King of Cups first and forever. He can come and go as he likes when he does it below the water. The palace guards did the right thing by letting him in. Anything else would have been denying him his protectorate, and then he would have been justified in summoning tempests that would grind them into river rocks and flecks of ice. The drowned always belong to him, for they carry the water in their skins and in their souls.”
“She’s right,” said Niamh. “It’s why I’m always damp. The water wanders with me. Even if I can’t go home, I’m still drowned.”
“Oh,” said Zib, eyes going wide and round with the complexity of it all. It seemed like such a strange rule to her, who came from a world where people could be dried off with a towel, and a king was a king, not the beginning of a progression of smaller kings, all nestled inside each other like nesting dolls.
Avery coughed and returned his attention to the book, reading, “The guards allowed the King of Cups to enter, but the youngest and wariest of them broke from her position and ran to find the queen, who was in her chambers. She did not knock when she reached the doors, but burst inside, against all her training and all of royal law.
“The queen, seated at her dressing table, looked up in shocked surprise, for no one had dared to burst in on her in a very long time. She saw that the guard was young. She saw that the guard was frightened, pale and shaking, with ice crystals forming in her tangled hair. Many among the drowned grow colder when they are afraid, even as those who walk in the sunlight may find their skin becoming hot with the frenzied fever of their blood. It is through such small things that we know the drowned are not merely another form of our dead, but a new people altogether, for all that we share a common origin.”
Zib looked to Niamh, who nodded, confirming the story, and hugged her knees to her chest as she continued to listen.
“The queen was not known for her temper, or for her cruelty. So she rose from her seat and went to the guard, embracing her in all her frightened coldness. ‘What is wrong, my dear?’ she asked. ‘Why are you here in such disarray?’
“‘The King of Cups is come,’ gasped the guard. ‘He appeared at the gate as if he had every right to be here, and he is dressed as a man gone courting. I fear he comes for the princess. It can be no coincidence that he arrived the night following her majority.’
“The queen listened to these words and knew them for the truth they were, for the King of Cups did nothing without good cause. She took her crown from its place on the dressing table and lowered it to her head, where it rested as if it had been made for her and there had never been nor would ever be another queen beneath the ice. ‘Rest here, and know that you are my most favored,’ she said to the guard. ‘I will go to receive our king.’
“She walked the halls of her palace with neither guard nor escort, head up and shoulders back, and when she came to her throne room the King of Cups was already there, smiling at the Princess Seiche, her small hand obscured by his large ones. And the princess was smiling back at him, eyes bright as sunlight on the water, and the queen knew she was too late after all. She had waited so long for a child and heir, and now that wait would begin anew, for the King of Cups looked at Seiche as a child may look at a cake, all hunger and wanting and no concern at all for what someone else might desire.”
Avery paused, frowning at the book. “That doesn’t make any sense. If she’d already pledged to be a princess for her people, why would she go off with the King of Cups? He’s not a nice man. I wouldn’t go off with him.”
“He was a nice man, once,” said the Crow Girl, haltingly. “Before he lost the Lady of Salt and Sorrow, before he shared his court with the Page of Frozen Waters. I don’t think her story will be in that book. She’s not a drowned girl, not like Niamh or Seiche in the story. She’s a frozen maiden, and they’re different, and they’re terrible. She’d freeze the world if she could have the way of it, and leave us all encased in ice and unable to escape from whatever terrible thing she plans to do next. But before his heart was frozen, before he lost the knack of caring about the people around him, yes, the King of Cups was kinder. It’s no real surprise that a princess would fall in love with him.”
Avery looked unsure, as if this explanation left out too many pieces for him to be entirely comfortable with it. But he turned back to the book, and read, “The King of Cups led Seiche to the sea, which she had never seen before, and built for her a cottage on the shore, where she could watch the wind and the waves, and where the water would carry messages between her and her mother if she wished it to. And he came to her often, and they were lovers by the side of the sea, and they thought nothing would ever change again, for they had each other, and they were happy.”
“Ew,” said Zib. “Mushy stuff.”
“Mushy and weird,” said Avery. “What changed?”
“The Page of Frozen Waters,” said Niamh. “She changed everything. She’s a monster, and not of his making. He had no defenses against her.”
“Oh,” said Avery, and read, “The people of the Saltwise Sea called Seiche the Lady of Salt and Sorrow, for she was theirs, and she mourned her mother and her home, for all that she had left willingly. Not all hearts are broken without cause. She was good to them, and they loved her, more even than the King of Cups did, for he had other lands to tend over, and she was always by their side. They made of her a story of the sea, well-loved and oft-recited, the sort of tale meant to be told when the wind blows cold and the sky burns red. She was born, she drowned, she was beautiful, she disappeared. On such foundations are legends all too often built. Now rest my dears, and be at ease; there’s a fire in the hearth and a wind in the eaves. And the night is so dark and the dark is so deep, and it’s time that all good little stars were asleep.” He turned the page and scowled, clearly frustrated. “That’s where it ends. That wasn’t a story at all! That was just pieces of a story. Where did she go? Did she ever find her family again? How did the Page get the attention of the King?” For it was difficult to think of the sleepy, sullen man they had all met as the sort of figure who could win the heart of a princess.
“I don’t know any of those answers except for one,” said Zib. “I think she’s on this ship. Lýpi said that she’s a story of the sea, and the captain doesn’t want us letting her out.”
“Fairy stories aren’t real,” said Avery.
“What you call fairy stories, we call history,” said the Crow Girl. “Put the book down. Get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be complicated.”
“Life so often is,” said Niamh, and blew her lantern out.
ELEVEN
ROCKED AWAY
There were no windows in the cabin; Avery knew it was m
orning by the sound of Zib climbing the bunks, and her hushed giggles as she shook the Crow Girl awake. The Crow Girl grumbled but didn’t burst into birds, which seemed to be as close as she could come to acquiescence. Niamh slid out of her own bed, damp feet squelching against the floor, and picked up her iron shoes before leaning over Avery. Water dripped off her hair to splatter on his cheek. He wiped it roughly away, rolling over and away from her. She leaned further over the bunk, and water splattered on his opposite cheek. Avery opened his eyes, turning his head enough to glare at her.
Niamh smiled, all in innocence. “Oh, good,” she said. “You’re awake. I was starting to worry you might sleep the entire day away.”
“How could you tell?” He sat up, rubbing his face dry with his hands. “I don’t know what time it is. There’s no way you can tell the time. The sun can’t find us here.”
“The tide,” she said simply. “I feel it turn. When I’m this close to the water, I always know what time it is, and right now, the tide says that it’s time for you to get out of bed, you old lazybones. Don’t you want to talk to the captain?”
It all came back in a rush. The borrowed book, the story that didn’t finish itself, the strange woman in the locked room, and the questions they were intending to ask the captain. Avery found himself gripped with the sudden urge to stuff his head under the pillow and shut out the rest of the world—especially the three girls who were now shuffling through their own attempts at getting ready for the day.
“I want a bath,” said Zib. “I don’t think I’ve ever said that before, but that doesn’t make it be not true. I want a bath, and I want clean clothes, and I want to brush my hair.”
Her hair, which had been resembling a hydra more and more as time went by, seemed to silently agree. It was less tangled than terrifying, as if it had decided to aspire to become a blackberry bramble and begin abducting children. Could they be abducted at this point, with their parents in a different country and entirely unable to come to their defense? The thought was a frightening one. Avery set it steadfastly aside as he finally sat up and slid out of the bunk.
“Maybe there’s someplace to take a bath here on the ship,” he said. “We can ask the captain.”
“We have better things to ask the captain,” said Zib. “We need to know if the woman in the cage is the Lady of Salt and Sorrow.”
“So what if she is?” asked Avery. “We don’t know why she’s locked up.”
“If we let her out, maybe the King will stop being a bad guy,” said Zib. “I don’t want him to find us. I don’t want to go back in his cage while he coaxes feathers out of my bones.”
“He’s not the one we need to be afraid of,” said Niamh. “The Page will hunt us down long before he does.”
“And if we bring back the Lady, maybe the Page goes away,” said Zib.
The Crow Girl shrugged. “It’s as good a guess as any,” she said. “I don’t really understand how it works with the nobility. They keep their practice and their power to themselves, and vermin like me stand to the outside and hope they don’t get close enough to decide that we’re worth the effort of hurting.”
Avery nodded and stepped into his iron shoes. “Can you be birds yet?”
The Crow Girl shook her head, expression turning mournful. “Still no,” she said. “I should be scared, but my heart’s beating better now that it’s remembering what it means to be only one heart and not a hundred. I think maybe I’ve been birds too much, and I need to be a girl for a while. But I don’t know why I can’t be birds at all.”
“You lost the favor of the King of Cups when you left him, and we’re surrounded all the way by water,” said Niamh. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s withholding his gifts from you as a punishment.”
“Any gift you can take away that easily was never a gift at all,” said the Crow Girl, in an oddly philosophical tone. Avery realized that she had been sounding less scattered, less distractible, since she had donned her iron shoes and stopped trying to fly away. Maybe there was more to becoming birds than he’d originally assumed. Maybe she’d been getting lost within the murder, and needed to remember how to be a person rather than a collective. It was a chilling thought. Even here in the Up-and-Under, where water could have opinions and people could be seasons, there was a cost for the things people might want to give you.
Nothing came for free.
“All right,” said Avery. “Let’s go see the captain.”
As if on cue, Zib’s stomach gave a growl so loud it was audible several feet away, and she pressed her hands against it, like it was a wild animal she was trying to contain. “Food first?” she asked pleadingly. “It’s breakfast time, and Maddy will miss us if we don’t come for something to eat. And some orange juice. Orange juice is important when you’re out at sea.”
“I guess we can stop for something to eat,” said Avery, his own stomach rumbling at the thought. He wasn’t starving, but what they were about to say to the captain might upset her enough that she decided to stop letting them have anything they thought of as nice. He’d heard stories from an uncle who’d been a member of the Navy for a while, and apparently, most people who went sailing lived on salted pork and something called “hardtack,” which didn’t sound appealing in the slightest.
“Yay!” said Zib, and hugged him quickly, her hair slapping him across the face and catching in his mouth before she ran out of her room, steps surprisingly nimble for all that she was wearing iron shoes.
The trip to the mess hall was easy, following what was fast becoming a familiar path. Several sailors were already there, attention fixed on their own meals, as was Maddy, who served them oatmeal with brown sugar and sliced-up peaches, smiling a sly smile when the Crow Girl asked where all the fresh fruit had come from. The children gathered together at the table where they had settled the day before, eating almost too fast to taste their food, gulping down cups of orange juice like liquid sunshine, like the power of the sky transmuted into the sweetness that lingered on the backs of their tongues, like a promise.
When they finished, it was Zib who gathered up their bowls and spoons and whisked them away to the basin, where she paused long enough to have a quickly murmured conversation with Maddy before bounding back over to the others and grabbing Avery by the arm, as if she thought she could, through sheer force of will, force him to start moving at her speed.
“Well?” she chirped. “Come on, come on, we have questions to ask and stories to hear and doors to open, and we’re not doing any of those things sitting here with our chins in our hands. We have to move!”
Avery, who had long since figured out that Zib was a force of nature, and that sometimes it was genuinely better to give in and let himself be swept away, stood. Niamh and the Crow Girl did the same, and together the four children left the mess hall and made their way up to the deck.
There had been no storms in the night. Sails which had been tightly tied when they went to bed were still tightly tied now; rails which had been buffed smooth and clean were still polished to pointed perfection. Sailors moved through the open space, adjusting ropes, checking knots, and generally keeping them sailing onward. The captain was nowhere to be seen.
Avery, who was by this point relatively comfortable approaching the captain’s cabin, led the rest of them across the deck and raised his hand to knock, twice. A moment later, the door swung open, revealing the captain herself, still blinking and bleary with sleep.
“What is it?” she demanded.
“I read that book you let me borrow,” Avery said. “And we had a question for you.”
“About a book of fairy tales?” asked the captain. She had little enough experience with children that she didn’t recognize the danger in children with questions about fairy tales. Fairy tales are lies wrapped around kernels of truth, meant to make the world comprehensible and clear. When they are questioned, it is almost always because the one asking the questions has found a crack in the lies and is homing in on something that, pe
rhaps, they were not yet meant to understand.
“Yes,” said Niamh. “There are stories of my city in that book. The city under the ice.”
“How are you here if you come from there?” asked the captain.
“There was a thaw,” said Niamh. “I surfaced to see the world where I had been born before my drowning, and while I was on the shore, the lake froze again. I can’t go home until the next thaw, which could be tomorrow, or could be never. I walk in the world of the air-breathers until such time as the ice allows.”
“Hmmm,” said the captain. “Perhaps next time, you’ll know better.”
“Perhaps,” said Niamh.
“Seiche,” said Zib. The captain whipped around to stare at her, eyes going wide and glossy. “The Lady of Salt and Sorrow. She comes from Niamh’s city.”
“She did,” said the captain slowly.
“Is she locked in that little room?” The question was asked with solemn innocence, as if Zib couldn’t imagine a world where an honest answer wasn’t given.
“We don’t speak her name on this ship,” said the captain. “Not the name she had before she left the King. The wind has ears, and it’s impossible to sail entirely free of the Queen of Swords. Perhaps that’s why the Queen of Wands was the one to go missing; it’s possible to sail beyond the reach of fire, but not of wind. Quiet.”
Along the Saltwise Sea Page 13