The Reader

by Traci Chee

  “Don’t you ever leave my sight again! The impressors will get you!” When she shook his arm, his entire body wobbled.

  The furrier, a plain woman with spindly arms, leaned over the counter, digging her hands into a stack of fox pelts. “I heard another boy disappeared this week, just down the coast,” she whispered, glancing sideways to see if anyone was eavesdropping. Half-hidden behind her armful of pelts, Sefia pretended to take a greater interest in the paper envelopes of goods in the next stall, each one painted with a picture of the spices inside: cumin, coriander, fennel, turmeric . . .

  “See?” The mother’s voice rose in pitch. “This is impressor country!”

  Sefia’s pulse quickened. Impressors. Even the word sounded sinister. She and Nin had been overhearing bits of news about them for a couple of years now. As the story went, boys were disappearing all over Kelanna’s island kingdoms, too many to be runaways. There was talk of boys being turned into killers. You’d know them if you saw them, people said, because they’d have a burn around their neck like a collar. That was the first thing impressors did—brand the boys with red-hot tongs so they’d have that exact scar.

  The thought of the impressors made Sefia hunch her shoulders, suddenly conscious of how exposed she was in this sea of strangers, these watchers and whisperers. Checking behind her, she caught sight of a flash of crimson among the stalls. Redcoats. They were headed her way.

  As soon as the woman and her son left, Sefia dumped Nin’s pelts on the counter. While the furrier thumbed through them, Sefia fidgeted impatiently, glancing around at the swirling crowd, reaching behind her every so often to reassure herself that the mysterious angular object remained inside her pack.

  Someone tapped her on the shoulder. Stiffening, Sefia turned around.

  Behind her were the redcoats.

  “Have you seen this woman?” one asked.

  The other held out a yellowed sheet of paper, curling at the edges. A fading sketch. The features of the wanted woman were hooded and indistinct, but there was no mistaking the slope of her shoulders, the matted bear-skin cloak.

  Sefia felt as if she’d been dropped into dark water. “No,” she said faintly, “who is it?”

  The first redcoat shrugged and moved to the spices stall. “Have you seen this woman?”

  The other smiled sheepishly. “You’re too young to remember her, but thirty years ago she was the most notorious thief in the Five Islands. They called her the Locksmith. Someone a few towns over said they spotted her, but who knows. She’s probably long dead by now. Don’t you worry.”

  Swallowing, Sefia nodded. She recognized the story. The redcoats passed into the crowd again.

  The Locksmith.

  Nin’s old moniker.

  She agreed to the first price the furrier offered her and dumped the gold coins into her purse beside a piece of rutilated quartz and the last few rubies from a necklace she’d stolen in Liccaro. Was it enough? It had to be enough.

  Stowing her purse, she brushed the bottom of her pack once more and plowed into the crowd, elbowing the other shoppers aside in her haste to leave town.

  Once she reached the jungle, she began to run, breaking brush, catching on branches, made awkward and slow by the weight of her pack.

  Was that crashing in the foliage the sound of her own passage, or the sounds of a chase?

  She stole a glance behind her, imagining the creak of leather boots, the pounding of feet.

  She ran faster, the hard rectangular object beating painfully against the base of her spine. The woods grew hot and humid around her.

  Word travels quick. She had to get Nin. If the redcoats knew Nin was in Oxscini, there was no telling who else knew too.

  The campsite was only twenty yards ahead when, without warning, the forest around her went silent. The birds stopped singing. The insects stopped buzzing. Even the wind stopped whispering. Sefia froze, all her senses alert, her breath sounding loud as a lumber saw in the unmoving undergrowth. Her skin crawled.

  Then came the smell. Not the foul, rotting smell of sewage but a too-clean smell, like copper. A smell she could taste. A smell she could feel tingling in the tips of her fingers.

  A smell she knew.

  Through the trees, she heard Nin’s voice, low and guarded, the same voice she used when she was facing down large game, all claws and tusks, ready to charge: “So. You finally found me.”

  Chapter 2

  Worse Than Redcoats

  Sefia ducked into the nearest patch of ferns, trembling so violently the fronds began quivering at her touch. The stench of scorched earth and copper was so strong her insides hummed with it.

  There was the sound of laughter, like ground glass. “I almost didn’t believe it when we got word some redcoats nearly caught you in the Oxscinian backwoods, but here you are.”

  We. Sefia dug her fingers into the dirt. Her suspicions had been right. Someone—a group of someones—had been searching for them. And found them.

  Because of her.

  She began pulling herself along the ground. Spider-webs caught in her hair. Thorns pricked her skin. She gritted her teeth and kept going, inching closer and closer to the campsite.

  “I’ve spent my whole apprenticeship hunting you. I wasn’t even sure you were as uncatchable as everyone said you were—”

  “Get on with it, will you?” Nin interrupted.

  A quick, muffled snap made Sefia pause, eyes wide, in the brush. But through the huge, shovel-shaped leaves she could see nothing.

  “. . . or if you were dead.”

  After a moment, Nin grunted, “Still kicking.”

  “For now.”

  No. Sefia dragged herself through the brush. Not again.

  Ignoring the spines of an overgrown rattan, she wedged herself up against a rotting log shrouded with moss and air plants. Branches caught at her clothing, but through the spiked leaves and dead vines, she could almost see what was happening in the clearing.

  Nin was on her knees, gingerly touching the side of her head. A trickle of blood ran down the heel of her hand and dropped from her wrist.

  A hooded woman stood over her. Clothed all in black, the woman was like a shadow come striding out of the forest, all violence and darkness. At her side, her right hand rested on the hilt of a curved sword.

  Past the screen of leaves, Sefia could just make out the forms of two black horses tied among the trees. Two horses. There was someone else in the clearing.

  “Search her,” came a man’s voice, dry and brittle as bones.

  Sefia shuddered at the sound of it.

  The woman in black knelt in front of Nin’s pack and upended its contents onto the forest floor. The pots and knives, the tent and hatchet, the collapsible brass spyglass, all of Nin’s belongings came clattering out in a burst of noise. Sefia started. Rattan spines raked her cheek, drawing blood.

  She barely noticed. A cold rivulet of fear ran down her spine. Sefia could see the woman clearly now. Her enemy had a face: ugly dishwater eyes and cratered skin, with a few limp locks of hair floating around her cheeks.

  Was this the same person who had killed her father?

  “It’s not here,” Nin said.

  It. Sefia’s hand went to her pack. Through the leather, the hard metal corners of the strange object dug into her palm. This was what they wanted.

  The woman went rooting among Nin’s things, tossing aside the patched shirts and hand-carved utensils with a carelessness that made Sefia’s insides burn.

  At last the woman in black straightened. The stink of metal grew sharper. It crackled and burned, until the air was buzzing with it.

  She whirled on Nin. “Where is it?”

  Nin glared up at her, bent forward, and spat in the dirt.

  The woman struck her across the face with the back of her hand. In the bushes, Sefia bit down
on her tongue to keep from crying out. Nin’s lip split. Blood pooled between her teeth.

  Sticking out her chin, Nin leaned over and spat again. “Gonna take more than that to make me talk,” she said.

  The woman in black let out a bark of laughter. “You’ll talk. By the time we’re done with you, you’ll sing. You saw what we did to him, didn’t you?”

  Her father. Sefia fought back the memory of amputated limbs. Misshapen hands. Things no kid should see. Things no one should ever see. Nin hadn’t seen the body. She’d spirited Sefia away into the woods as soon as she’d shown up, sobbing and bedraggled, at Nin’s door.

  But Sefia had seen it.

  She knew what they could do.

  Nin said nothing.

  Beyond Sefia’s vision, the man spoke again, his words like ice: “Let’s go. It’s not here.”

  “I already told you that,” Nin grumbled. “For folks who’re supposed to be so powerful, you aren’t too bright, are you? No wonder it took you so long to track me down.”

  “You think that matters? You think that’ll stop us?” The woman in black hit her again. “We are the wheel that drives the firmament. We’ll never stop.”

  And again, her fist making wet smacking sounds against Nin’s wrinkled flesh.

  Sefia flinched. A branch snapped beneath her. She tensed.

  The rhythm of the woman’s blows didn’t falter, but across the clearing Nin froze. For a second, her eyes locked with Sefia’s, warning her to stay put. To keep quiet.

  Nin crumpled at the next impact. Her face in the dirt, her flesh swollen and cut.

  Stop them, Sefia told herself. She could go out there and give up her pack. Just give them what they wanted.

  But fear roiled inside her.

  A dismembered corpse. The sick stench of metal.

  She’d seen what had happened to her father.

  There was movement to her right. Sounds of footsteps in the dead leaves. Sefia went cold. The man was coming for her, stalking the underbrush like a predator. She still couldn’t see him, but the tips of the ferns bent and tilted at his passage, sending ripples among the fiddleheads. He was getting closer.

  The smell of metal was so sharp it made her teeth hurt.

  “Wait,” Nin coughed.

  The man halted.

  The woman in black paused, her arm drawn back.

  Slowly, Nin pushed herself off the ground. Blood and saliva dribbled from her chin. She wiped it away, squinting up through her bruises. “If you want to do any real damage, you’ve got to get my good side,” she said, tapping her other cheek.

  The woman in black seized Nin’s hand and twisted.

  Nin buckled.

  Her wrist snapped.

  Sefia nearly lunged out from the brush to get to her, but Nin was watching her again. Stay put. Keep quiet.

  “Enough,” the man said.

  The woman in black glared in his direction, but she grabbed the collar of Nin’s cloak, hauling her to her feet. The horses were stamping and whiffling at the edge of the clearing.

  Now, Sefia thought. Before it’s too late.

  But she couldn’t move. She couldn’t.

  They bound Nin’s hands and mounted, Nin letting out a slight whuff of air as they forced her up. Despite the thorns that caught on her hands and arms, Sefia pushed away the barbed leaves until she could see Nin’s swollen eyes watching her from the back of the horse.

  Nin.

  The only family she had left.

  Then they were gone, slipping away between the branches, which closed behind them as if they’d never been.

  As the sound of the horses faded into the distance, the copper smell dissipated like mist, leaving that familiar metallic taste in the back of Sefia’s throat.

  Her breath came in ragged gasps. Hoisting herself over the log, she staggered into the clearing, where she fell forward among Nin’s belongings. The sobs came suddenly up from her stomach, wracking her entire body.

  Six years on the run from these people. A lifetime in hiding. And still they’d found her.

  Sefia began gathering up Nin’s things—an oversize shirt, the spyglass, her lock picks—as if the weight of them would be enough to hold on to, now that Nin was gone.

  Of course it wasn’t.

  Sefia unfolded the leather case that held the lock picks, her fingers catching on the metal tips of Nin’s most trusted tools. Her eyes blurred with tears.

  Her mother and father were dead. And now Nin had been taken from her too. To be beaten and tortured and who knew what else.

  No. Sefia twisted the leather in her hands. Not yet.

  The woman’s words came back to her like shards of glass, cutting into her: We’ll never stop.

  Not until they’d gutted everything she’d ever loved.

  Not until they’d laid waste to everyone who stood in their path.

  Sefia’s hands burned, as if everything she touched would burst into flame.

  They wouldn’t stop? Well, neither would she.

  Tucking the lock picks away, she jammed a bundle of Nin’s things into her pack and shouldered it. Then, narrowing her eyes, she located the hoofprints in the soft earth and marched into the jungle.

  They were faster than her, but Sefia was relentless. She tracked them through miles of rain forest, over fallen logs and into creeks, past gnarled thickets of thorns and stagnant pools buzzing with mosquitoes. By midafternoon, just as Nin had predicted, sheets of water began pouring over the rain forest, dripping from the canopy until everything was wet through. Grimly, Sefia pulled her rain cloak over herself and the pack, squinting into the rain.

  As she slogged through the downpour, it became harder and harder to track the horses. But they didn’t stop, and neither would she. She carried on, searching for crescent-shaped puddles and broken twigs in the failing light.

  The rain fell, but she didn’t stop.

  Darkness fell, but she didn’t stop.

  But on the edge of a roaring creek, swollen with rain, she slipped. She slid down the muddy bank, clutching at loose roots that ripped away in her hands, and landed in the turgid water, tumbling over and over in the dark and the cold. Again and again, the current thrust her under, but every time she came up gasping for air, striking at the rapids with her arms and legs, searching for shore.

  With nothing but her stubbornness and what remained of her fading strength, she made it to the opposite bank and hauled herself out of the water on shaking limbs. The rain pelted her face as she lay gasping in the dark. How far had she come? She must have been miles downstream now.

  Sefia pushed herself to her feet, gritting her teeth against a sudden pain in her ankle. She knelt, testing the swollen joint with numb fingers. It wasn’t broken. At least there was that. Gathering her pack, she ran her hand over the outside to check that its contents were safe, and limped away from the water to set up the little tent.

  The rain didn’t stop. It hammered on the canvas as she hauled the pack after her and placed it in the space where Nin would have lain, though she couldn’t fool herself into thinking the sodden lump was her aunt. Wincing at her scrapes and bruises, she struggled out of her wet clothes and climbed under her blanket, pulling herself into a ball with her hands clasped around her knees.

  Dry-eyed, she stared into the darkness.

  “Nin,” she whispered.

  Chapter 3

  The House on the Hill Overlooking the Sea

  There were a few hours every morning when the house on the hill became a round island, cut off from the village below, floating in cold fog with views of nothing but birds, air, and an endless ocean of insubstantial white.

  Hours before he was killed, Sefia’s father walked her down the misty slope to the blacksmith’s shop, as he had done every morning for four years, since her mother died. They’d go hand-in-hand th
rough the grass, her father turning his head like a stag watching over his tiny herd, and when he said good-bye he always tapped her once, lightly, on the chin. Then he’d go back to the house on the hill to tend the animals or repair the fences or study the ocean through the telescope.

  Sefia loved the workshop. It wasn’t a shop, really, just a shed in the back of the blacksmith’s house, with a dirt floor and blackened walls hung with hooks and tongs and hundreds of locks and keys.

  Sometimes she brushed her fingers against the keys, making them clatter and clank until the small room was a cacophony of noise. Other times, like today, she simply watched the blacksmith’s strong hands bend to their craft.

  “Aunt Nin,” she said, tapping the woman’s round shoulder. “Will you teach me to do that?”

  “Do what,” Nin said, her voice like gravel.

  Sefia put her hands on the tall counter. “Pick locks.”

  “I’m fixing a lock, not picking one.”

  “But will you?”

  “Will I what.”

  “Teach me.” She had perfected the whine of a nine-year-old.

  Nin didn’t pause in her work. “When you’re older.”

  Sefia laughed. Nin’s gruffness never bothered her; she’d known the woman all her life. When her parents had built the house on the hill, Nin had helped them. She’d fitted all the doors and windows with locks, and at their request, installed three additional, secret doors.

  The first was hidden in the stones beside the hearth. You used the end of the fire poker to unlock it, and it opened onto a secret stairway that led to Sefia’s basement room, just a small place for her bed and belongings. Her parents never let her keep anything in the house proper, though they never had visitors to notice. To anyone peering through the windows, it used to look as if there were only two occupants in the house on the hill.