The Cursed Sea

by Lauren DeStefano

  “Why are you back?” His voice was pleading. “Why couldn’t you just stay dead?”

  In that moment, she pitied him. Both of them broken by this curse.

  “Say something,” Baren demanded. His voice cracked. He let go of her wrist and tugged at his hair. “All these voices whispering in my head. You, whispering all night every night so that I can’t sleep. And now you’re standing before me and you won’t say a word.”

  “What do I whisper at night?” Wil asked.

  “You know what you say,” Baren snapped. He gestured to the woods. “You tell me to visit her.”

  “Who?” Wil’s brow furrowed. “The woman in the train tunnel?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  Wil looked at her brother. Truly looked at him. He was stripped of his defenses now. His sword was sheathed at his hip and his hands were trembling, and it was evident from his heavy eyes that he hadn’t slept for days. Even the sleep serum from her dagger had not been enough to put him out.

  It wasn’t cruelty on his face just then. It was desperation. It was exhaustion.

  “Baren.” She kept her voice gentle, cautious. “What have you told her about our family?”

  “I don’t tell her,” Baren says. “She knows all about us. She tells me.”

  It sounded like the utterings of a boy driven mad without sleep, but Wil believed him. Just as that old woman had formed an invisible vise around her throat, she had done the same to Baren’s mind. But why? And why Baren? Because he was king? Because manipulating someone like Gerdie or her mother would have been impossible?

  “Did she tell you to kill Papa?”

  Baren’s head whipped to her at that. His jaw was clenched, his stare suddenly vicious.

  Wil didn’t move. She braced herself for his next attack and summoned all her strength to combat it.

  But Baren didn’t attack her. His lip trembled. He was looking at her like she should have the answers, and he should be the one asking for them.

  “Your Majesty!” Their mother’s voice called from the castle gates. She moved through the guards with ease; perhaps Baren had given them orders never to hurt her.

  The queen was breathing hard by the time she reached them. She was barefoot, the hem of her pale blue dress sodden with mud.

  Baren canted his head toward her, but his eyes remained on Wil.

  “You shouldn’t be out here, Your Majesty,” the queen said. Her voice was a coo. “You need your rest, remember?” She wrapped her arm around his shoulders, and he resisted at first, but she held firm.

  “I want that thing—that monster—under surveillance,” he growled.

  “All right,” the queen said. “Whatever you’d like.”

  The three of them made their way back to the gate, Wil several paces behind. She was listening for the music of wanderer troupes, but the woods were silent. If there were any wanderers moving through the woods at all, they didn’t want to be found. She wouldn’t be able to find any now, and even if she could, they wouldn’t be able to help her by nightfall. The old woman in the tunnel—if she was still alive—was no longer an option. Leaving Arrod would return her power and restore her health, but the journey would use up the precious time she’d been afforded to save Loom’s life.

  She raised her eyes to the castle. There was Gerdie, watching her from the window of her chamber. She still had him. She always had him.

  Nine

  WIL SAT ON THE BENCH in her brother’s laboratory, nursing a bloody cloth she held bunched under her nose.

  “Here.” Gerdie sat beside her and handed her a flask of clear liquid. “I know it smells like varnish, but it might help. It’s a crystallizing agent I use when I’m making jewels for sword hilts. There’s nothing toxic to it.”

  Tentatively, Wil took a sip. Her stomach lurched, but she forced most of it down.

  She had told her brother about the old woman in the tunnel, whom Wil may or may not have killed. She told him about the strange things Baren had said upon her return. Gerdie had listened to all of it with his usual thoughtful silence as he’d retrieved the flask from his trove of bottles. But he seemed more concerned about the state of his sister than about anything she had to say just then.

  “Your neck is bruising. . . .” He was distracted, distraught.

  “She wanted to kill me.” Wil choked down a final sip of the potion. “She wanted to kill all of us. I think she’s been using Baren to do it. I think you’re right, that Baren killed Papa.”

  The words felt so strange to say aloud. Their father, dead. It still didn’t seem possible. She still believed that he was in his throne room, merely ignoring her the way he always did. She would spend the rest of her life waiting—in some way—for his next order.

  “If you killed her, it doesn’t matter now what she wanted,” Gerdie said. He took the bottle from her hands and returned it to the shelf. He couldn’t stand to have things out of their proper places.

  “I don’t know if she’s dead,” Wil told him. “I’m not about to go back and check.”

  “You said that you slashed her throat,” Gerdie said. “If you hit a carotid artery, she’s dead.”

  “Marvelers don’t follow scientific logic, Gerdie.”

  “Pray this one does, then. Here.” He plucked a sprig from one of his herb pots and dropped it into her waiting palm.

  The fine leaves hardened to diamond instantaneously, and Wil’s head and eyes rolled back from the relief of it.

  The crystallizing stopped before it could reach the stem, despite her frantic heart. But for now, it was enough.

  “Thank you,” she breathed.

  “I can’t do much for curses,” Gerdie said. “But potions will have to do for now.”

  When Wil looked at him, he was frowning. She knew what he was going to say even before he’d opened his mouth. “You can’t stay here.”

  “I can’t leave without answers,” she said.

  “There are surely more marvelers in the world,” Gerdie said. “And more wanderers.”

  “But not very much time,” Wil replied.

  “I thought you’d be eager to return to your prince,” Gerdie said. She couldn’t tell if he was teasing her. Either way, he was right. In addition to freeing Loom from Pahn’s clutches, she needed to warn Loom about Baren.

  If the answers weren’t here in Arrod, she had to move on and seek them elsewhere. This thought pained her, and after a moment’s consideration she said, “Have you been able to get into the Port Capital at all?”

  “No,” Gerdie said. “Unlike you, when weapons are pointed at me, I don’t go charging forward.” He broke into a smile.

  “I wonder what the people of Arrod make of him,” Wil said. She had always gotten a sense of the kingdom’s climate by venturing into the Port Capital, but even if she could frequent it now, it would be harder to blend in. When she’d arrived, no one seemed to be lingering at vendors or before shop windows. Everyone was hurrying to wherever they needed to be.

  “I think they’re afraid,” Gerdie said. “Their king is dead, and their new ruler is the heir they’d heard nothing about. But I don’t think they know about the darklead attack on Cannolay.” His voice had taken on a hush, even though they were alone.

  Wil leaned forward. “Can you be certain?”

  “He’s playing that move close to his vest,” Gerdie said. “By the time I’d discovered what was missing from my lab, he’d done it. He wouldn’t have told me if I didn’t already know.”

  “But people must know something is amiss,” Wil said. “Imports have been drastically affected.”

  “I’m sure they have.” Gerdie was sorting through the bottles on his desk. He didn’t seem to be looking for anything in particular, and his eyes had taken on a worried, sort of dazed look.

  “You could leave with me, you know,” Wil said. “Mother would want that for both of us.” She lowered her voice. “I know about Addney. In a few months, Baren will lose the throne, and then you can return—”
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  “Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t talk to me like I’m an infant, like you can just tuck me away in a safe corner of the world while you go off to save us all.”

  He didn’t sound angry. He sounded practical and measured and certain that he was right.

  Wil was quiet for a while. Was he right? Is that what she was doing to him?

  “That isn’t what I meant,” she said quietly.

  “Isn’t it?” Gerdie’s voice rose, and he began to speak rapidly, the way he did when he’d finally found words for all the things that had been building in his mind. “Isn’t that what you did the night Papa exiled you?”

  “What was I supposed to do?” she said. “Run home and tell you that I’d killed our brother? Throw myself at Mother’s feet and beg for forgiveness?”

  “You could have come to me, same as you always have,” he said. “I would have helped you. I’d have fought for you. Don’t you think I’d have stood up to Papa in a heartbeat? You’re my sister, and you let me think that you were dead.”

  He cried out that last word, and it echoed from the walls. It silenced any argument she was going to present. He was right, and Wil knew it. She had always known it. After the panic and the shame of her exile, when she began to think clearly, she could have found a way to contact her brother. She could have returned and slipped past the guards the way she always had, could have hidden in the basement where no one but Gerdie would bother to go. She could have sent word, in code, or scaled the castle wall at night to slip a note through his chamber window. But she hadn’t.

  And now her father was dead, Baren was king, and Addney’s life was in danger so long as she was carrying the next heir. There was so much to fix, and faced with the prospect of all she had destroyed and all that lay in pieces before her, she felt small, and powerless, and weak. That was part of why she hadn’t come to him. She would rather her brother think she had drowned than see what she had become.

  Gerdie had been bracing himself for her counterargument. They had always battled for the last word, but when none came, he turned and saw the look on her face. Some of his steely veneer softened and he came to sit beside her on the bench.

  “Hey.” His voice was soft. “This is my family and my kingdom, too. You’re not the only one trying to save it.”

  “How?” she murmured.

  “Do you think I’ve been sitting here alchemizing padlocks and bangles?” There was a little laughter to his voice. “You aren’t the only one who’s been coming up with plans all this time.”

  She looked at him now, and there was a wicked bright gleam in his eyes, so familiar that for the first time since her return she started to feel hope.

  Making a decision, Gerdie reached for a leather satchel that was tossed rather unceremoniously against a wall. If there was something important inside it, Wil never would have guessed. Gerdie was so very good at hiding things, especially now that Baren had taken an interest in them.

  “Baren is afraid of dead things,” Gerdie said. “He wouldn’t be in the room when Papa died, and he was wild-eyed at the thought of ghosts in the castle. You’ve seen how he gets when one of the snap traps catches a mouse. He’ll yell for a servant to dispose of it, and he won’t even look at the thing.” He undid the fastenings of the satchel, reached in, and extracted something wrapped in cloth.

  When he unwrapped it, Wil gasped and recoiled in shock. He was holding a human hand, the skin torn at the wrist, blood dark and gelatinous around a splintered bone. The fingers had gone wrinkled and blue.

  She shrieked when he threw it at her. It landed in her lap, and a chill went through her.

  He was laughing. “It’s only leather, ink, and bones from a turkey drumstick.”

  All Wil’s disgust and confusion dissolved, traded for fascination. She picked up the hand and held it against her own. The skin was textured, with thin cuticles framing the nail beds. There were fingerprints and pale freckles.

  “How did you create the veins?” Wil asked, breathless.

  “I painted them.”

  Another chill ran down Wil’s spine and she deposited the hand back into her brother’s care.

  “I didn’t think you of all people would be so squeamish,” he said.

  “I didn’t think you of all people would pull a severed hand out of your bag and deposit it in my lap like a bloody hunting dog.” She pressed her lips together, but a laugh escaped anyway. “Your talent terrifies me.”

  “It has the desired effect, then.” Gerdie put the hand back into his bag. “I’m sure I can duplicate Addney’s body and stage a murder scene. It need only be a passable likeness; Baren is too skittish to look very closely. And if he thinks I killed her, I’ll earn his trust and he’ll give me a spot on his council; that way I’ll be able to keep him from doing anything to further this war. Meanwhile, when it’s time to dispose of the body, the real Addney will be the one to go on the cart and be wheeled off. The guards can take her to the funeral pyre, but they’ll have to leave her alone with Mother after that. They won’t be allowed to see a woman’s body undressed before cremation.”

  “Genius,” Wil whispered, stunned. “How long did it take for you to come up with all this?”

  “I’ve had it all figured out since the day I learned about Addney,” he said. “Mother has been helping where she can by distracting Baren. And keep her in hiding until she gives birth to the new heir. After that, Addney will act as regent until the heir is old enough to rule. She could exile Baren to the moon if she sees fit.”

  Wil stared thoughtfully at the water as she considered all this, and when she looked back to her brother, he was grinning. “Sorry if this ruins your plans to save us all on your own.”

  “I deserve that,” Wil conceded.

  “Yes you do,” he said, and then he softened. “Wil, we’re on the same side. Nothing can ever change that.”

  Wil had nothing to say to this. She did not deserve her family’s forgiveness. She didn’t deserve their aid, and she didn’t deserve to be welcomed back into their good graces. But this was not about her; it was about fixing what she had broken. Arrod would never have Owen as its king, but it would still have Owen’s legacy.

  “You’re bleeding,” Gerdie said.

  Wil felt it a moment after he’d said it. She brushed her fingertips under her nose and they came back slick with blood. She stared at it, and all her worries from moments earlier came rushing back. She had managed to forget them for just a little while.

  “I’ll have to sneak into the cart with Addney,” she said. “The only way to get out of this castle now is as a corpse.”

  She didn’t register the words until after she’d said them. As a corpse. For the second time, the princess of Arrod would play the part of a dead girl.

  “It’s best if Baren doesn’t see you and think you’re dead,” Gerdie said. “He’ll try to detach your limbs. And your head—it would be a shame for you to lose that.” He was trying to make light of their situation, and Wil laughed, playing along. It was a lie for both of them, but it lightened the air just enough to make things bearable.

  “I can sneak into the cart at the last second,” Wil said. She was still good at being invisible, even under Baren’s intense scrutiny.

  “Best to lie low until then,” Gerdie said.

  “Your lab is the most secure part of the castle thanks to your latest security measures,” Wil said.

  “That’s convenient.” He smirked. Then he stood and moved for his cauldron. “Let’s get to work.”

  Alchemy in the modern world had become increasingly rare. Gerdie had brought life to a dying medium. With the rise of electric machinery and the instant gratification it brought, no one had the patience to forge a sword from scraps of titanium and a fistful of crushed obsidian. No one had the mind to think up bullets capable of seeking out the enemy’s spine.

  And Wil was certain that no one—in this life or the next—would ever think to fashion a corpse from bits of cloth and ink and bone. />
  Her brother had allowed her to assist in his work before, but he operated on a short budget of patience, and usually it wasn’t more than an hour into a task before he was shoving her out of his way.

  This time, however, they worked in tandem. The only words spoken were Gerdie’s patiently uttered instructions. Wil cut strips of leather. She measured vials of ink. She coated bones with epoxy and sprinkled them with a glittering powder that would fuse them in the cauldron steam. And all the while, she focused only on the task at hand. She did not think of the old marveler woman who’d tried to kill her, or her father, or even Loom. All these thoughts were kept folded safely inside her chest, to be unfurled when there was something to be done for them.

  By late afternoon, alchemized limbs began floating at the surface of the cauldron. Gerdie extracted them, laying each hand and leg on the metal table to cool. They looked strange, Wil thought, devoid of any veins or flush of color—which her brother would have to paint himself.

  He used gallium for the blood at the fake wounds. It was a metal that melted at low temperatures and gave the appearance of congealed blood.

  “Are you all right?” he asked her. “You look a little pale.”

  “I’ve seen worse things,” she said. It was true. But this hollow, worried feeling that plagued her was not merely about these gruesome pieces laid out before them. Her entire kingdom had fallen ill. A strange girl with Wil’s eyes awaited her in her dreams. Her father was dead, and she could not bring herself to mourn him; she was still angry with him for casting her away. That anger had been a dull ache she’d meant to contend with later, when less was at stake, but now she found herself clinging to it. It was the only thing that suspended her in her old life, in which she had believed that one day she could be redeemed. She had always known that her worth to her father depended on what she could do for him. She knew that she was a weapon he called upon when needed, same as his swords and daggers and guns. But still, she had thought, dumbly, that one day she would realize he had loved her—just a little bit—after all.

  Gerdie handed her the flask of clear potion, and Wil took a sip. The sprig of mintlemint she reached for barely crystallized at her touch, but it was enough to keep her going.