by Traci Chee
He didn’t answer, but she knew he was still rubbing the worry stone. Serakeen had already claimed vast stretches of ocean. Now he wanted land too. Liccaro, with its corrupt regents and impoverished people, would be easy pickings.
Was that why he needed boys? For his army? But the way Hatchet talked about Archer on the dock made it seem like he thought he was special. Not cannon fodder, but a leader. A captain. A conductor of violence. Archer had already killed fifteen boys, but still Serakeen wanted more. Legions more.
“Never.” She gripped his fingers tighter. “You’ll never have to kill for them again.”
He leaned down and touched the top of her head with his cheek.
After a moment, Sefia reached out, feeling the familiar shape of her pack and the book inside. “We didn’t even find out where they were going.”
Archer tapped the back of her hand excitedly.
“Did they say something?”
He nodded, and she began guessing. Corabel. Kelebrandt. “Roku!” She laughed. The littlest of the kingdoms was a steaming volcanic island that smelled of sulfur and ash. Although it was once an Oxscinian territory and still exported blackrock and gunpowder to its former sovereign, it was too small and isolated in the deep south to be of much consequence. “I know. No one goes to Roku.”
Still, it didn’t take her long to land on the right answer. “Jahara,” she whispered. “They were going to Jahara.”
It seemed like Archer was about to respond when they heard footsteps echoing outside: quick, nimble beats like those of a bird. Inside the crate, they froze. Pressed against Archer’s shoulder, Sefia could feel her own pulse drumming in her neck. The footsteps grew louder, then halted. Someone was close, separated only by a few wooden boards.
There was a scratching noise, like burrowing, like fire on dry wood. It rumbled and crackled around them, filling the crate with noise.
Then, a rough voice: “You there!”
The noise ceased, and they heard someone scurrying away.
“Hey, wasn’t that the girl who—?”
“Nah, too old. She was just a slip of a thing.”
The voices drew nearer, and someone slapped the side of the crate. Sefia shuddered.
“After that brushup on Black Boar, everyone’s behind schedule. Cap wanted us back at sea an hour ago.”
“Even an hour ago wouldn’t have been soon enough for the captain.”
They laughed.
Archer’s hand tightened over hers.
The crate shook. Something large and heavy was being slapped against it. Ropes. The crate was being tied up like a present. She braced herself against the walls. She’d been on ships before. She knew what was coming next.
She felt as if the ground had dropped away beneath her. Her stomach lurched. They were aloft, swinging through the air, listing this way and that. She tumbled into Archer as the packs struck her back. They fell over each other, all elbows and heads and knees and flailing straps.
Then they were dropped. Sefia bit her lip to keep from gasping at the impact.
They were surrounded by hollering and rumbling and things moving into place. Sefia and Archer lay motionless at the bottom of the crate, curled up where they had fallen. His arm along hers. Her shallow breaths in his tousled hair. In all the commotion, he had not let go of her hand.
There was a great thud: a hatch being closed on top of them, and then they were alone. The voices were distant above.
They had been loaded onto a ship.
Sefia shivered. They were stowaways now, and stowaways were expendable. She’d heard the stories. If the ship was on a short journey, between the kingdoms or down the coast, they might be enslaved and sold at the next port. If the ship was on one of those long sea voyages, they’d be killed immediately, their bodies left in the open ocean without ceremony.
The crate, which had only moments before seemed safe and warm, now closed in about them like a prison.
Archer was shaking. His breath came too fast. Under her hand, she could feel him dragging his thumb over the worry stone again and again. She curled around him and pressed her cheek to his hair, muffling his trembling with the pressure of her body on his. “It’s okay.” Her words were barely audible as they whispered past his ear. “It’s okay.”
How much food did they have?
“It’s okay.”
How much water?
“It’s okay.”
How long could they last in the bowels of the ship?
“It’s okay.”
Chapter 20
Her
Tanin leaned against the bulwark of the ship as if she belonged there, propped up on her elbows with her hands crossed loosely at the wrists. It wasn’t her ship, of course, and she didn’t belong there, but from the deck of the old cutter she had a clear, unobstructed view of the dock and, fifty yards away, the crate that contained the boy and the girl.
Beside her, the Assassin was trimming her fingernails with the tip of her knife, flinging little white slivers into the frothy green water below. Under their boots, the decks were slippery with the blood of the watchman, who now lay dead at the bottom of the main hatchway.
“I still think we’re wasting time,” the Assassin said.
Tanin didn’t take her eyes from the crate. “And that would matter, if I cared what you thought.”
The Assassin said nothing, but her frustration radiated from her in waves.
Tanin sighed. “I’m sorry. I know you’re impatient. So am I. But if we act before we have all the relevant information, we may lose the Book, and that’s not a risk I’m willing to take.”
“How is watching them sit in a box relevant?” The Assassin sheathed her knife.
“If they’re as important as I think they are, everything is relevant.”
Tanin’s eyes narrowed at a flicker of movement on the dock. A slender figure darted from behind a set of crates, her long black hair tied back. She moved with the quick steps of a thief, or a blackbird hunting insects, so sure and elegant that Tanin’s breath caught in her throat.
No. It can’t be her.
Tanin was too far away to see her face clearly, but as she watched, the woman paused beside the crate. A knife flashed in her hands. She glanced around to make sure no one was looking and then she began to carve.
Tanin straightened suddenly. She would have recognized that posture anywhere.
The woman was writing.
Vaulting over the rail, Tanin ran down the gangplank to the dock. Through the crowded pier, she saw two men approach the crate. The small dark-haired woman looked up once—too far away for Tanin to make out her features—and ducked into the crowd.
Tanin’s gaze skimmed over beggar children and sailors, servants and merchants, messengers running this way and that in their black caps.
The Assassin joined her on the pier. “Is that—”
The woman sprinted out from behind a cluster of passengers and raced away. Tanin ran after her.
She could see the Assassin out of the corner of her eye, running beside her as they dodged through the throng, narrowly avoiding pull-carts and men rolling kegs across the wooden planks. Ahead of them, the woman leapt over piles of nets and slid, legs kicking, over the tops of wooden chests, squeezing between plump businesswomen and groups of confused travelers.
As she ran, Tanin kept hoping—hoping—the woman would turn, even if only for a second. Just long enough for Tanin to get a good look at her. To see that it was really her. Even if it was impossible.
But the woman didn’t look back once.
They chased her to the end of the pier, and without breaking her stride the woman bounded up a set of crates and took a flying leap over the water, arms outspread like wings.
The Assassin raised her knife. It flashed in the sun.
“No!” Tanin shoved her aside as th
e blade left her hand.
It slashed through the woman’s arm just before she disappeared. The blade dropped into the water, but there was no other splash. It was as if the woman had winked out of existence entirely.
Tanin halted.
Teleportation. That tier of magic was so far advanced that even Master Illuminators rarely attempted it. But the woman couldn’t have been . . .
The Assassin skidded to a stop and slammed her gloved fist into one of the crates. It burst apart, its boards breaking like kindling. A few nearby dockworkers started toward her, but she glared at them with such malice that they raised their hands and backed away, shaking their heads.
“Why did you stop me?” she demanded.
Tanin stared at the space where the woman had been moments before. “I didn’t want you to kill her,” she said faintly.
The Assassin kicked at the bits of splintered wood on the dock. “I wouldn’t have killed her. Stopped her from teleporting, yes. Gotten you the answers you wanted, yes.”
“I couldn’t take that chance.”
“Was that even her?”
Tanin turned away as tears distorted her vision. “I don’t know,” she whispered. Her words cracked as her voice, always so under control, split and fractured like ice.
The Assassin snorted. “Why do you care so much?”
Another few tears spilled from the corners of her eyes, and she wiped them away hastily, straightening her clothes. “Because she was family.”
“We don’t have families. We swore to it.” The Assassin spat sideways. “Sometimes it’s like you don’t even want the Book back.”
All traces of Tanin’s disappointment vanished in an instant. She snapped her hand over the Assassin’s wrist and gave it a vicious twist.
Crying out, the Assassin dropped to one knee, her hand caught fast in Tanin’s viselike grip.
“I like you, Assassin,” she said sweetly. Her regular voice had returned, as supple and sharp as a fencing foil. “Under ordinary circumstances, I even like your obstinate braying and your mulish devotion to the cause.” With every word, she put more and more pressure on the Assassin’s wrist, until the joint began to buckle and tears welled in the younger woman’s eyes. “But these are extraordinary times, and if you can’t stop yourself from sounding like a shortsighted nag every time you open your mouth, I will ship you back to the Main Branch to let the Administrators break you like the wild ass you are.”
She gave the Assassin’s wrist one last wrench and released her.
The Assassin gasped, cradling her injured hand to her chest.
Tanin smiled down at her. “Now, let me spell this out for you: That woman—whoever she was—transformed that crate. She’s protecting them. If someone that powerful is watching over these children, they must be important. You’d be a fool to try to capture them now.”
Despite the pain in her wrist, the Assassin’s eyes flashed at the challenge.
Straightening, Tanin threw back her shoulders and lifted her chin. The sea breeze caught her silver-black hair, whipping it away from her face. “At any rate, we know where they’re going. We’ll follow the ship.” She paused. “They’ll be safe enough, if they’re careful.”
At her feet, the Assassin looked like she could spit venom, but she said nothing.
“Come.” Tanin took her arm and helped her to her feet, brushing splinters of wood from her black sleeve. “I owe you a new knife.”
Chapter 21
What the Stars Mean
Lon stood by the glass wall of the Library, looking out over the mountains. Gray fingers of moonlight parted the clouds, touching on blue ridges and black trees dusted with snow. Taking a deep breath, he blinked, allowing the Illuminated world to swim before his eyes.
Under the blanket of winter white, the boulders and trees glimmered with golden threads of light, swirling and shifting with the passage of time.
He watched the growth of the trees and felt wildfires burning across the landscape, experienced lightning strikes on the granite domes, and suffered the slow inevitable advancement of glacial ice. Entire lifetimes revolved before him while he stood there, dimly aware of the passing minutes, his breath fanning against the glass.
Erastis had always said he would need a referent, something in the physical world to anchor him in the seas of light that spanned all of history. But Lon was better than that. It had taken him months of training, but now he could absorb decades of information without falling ill or losing himself in the waves of light.
“I thought I’d find you here.”
Lon blinked, and the Illuminated world drained away. He turned to find the Second standing beside him, smelling of metal. She was dressed in her black Assassin’s garb, with frost still clinging to her dark hair. Her curved sword hung at her side.
“You’re back,” he said. Even though he spoke softly, his voice still echoed faintly in the marble hall.
The Second didn’t look at him, but she nodded. There was something different about her now. After their encounter in the Library, they’d spent six months becoming friends—as she forged her bloodsword and he trained in the Sight—and then one day, over five weeks ago, she and her Master had disappeared. No one would say where they’d gone, and Erastis, when pressed, had only shaken his head and said, “I told you not to get too attached to her, Lon. Assassins don’t form ties they can’t break.”
And now, she seemed almost as distant as she had the day they’d met.
“Where did you go?” he asked.
“I was on another mission.” Her words were a thread of condensation, fading quickly against the glass.
“Oh.”
For a whole minute, nothing moved but the snowflakes outside.
“How long are you going to be back?”
“As long as I’m ordered to.”
“Oh.” Lon watched her intently. She’d been on missions before she’d gotten her bloodsword, before they became friends. But he didn’t remember her coming back like this, cold and remote as the frigid Northern Reach.
The Second slid her sword a hand-span out of its sheath, her gaze passing over the copper-colored steel, which had been inscribed with hundreds of words, swooping up and along the blade in perfect spirals. After forging the blade, she had spent another three months using Transformation to engrave the weapon, imbuing it with its magical properties. In the moonlight, the letters seemed to glow.
He tugged awkwardly at his huge sleeves. He didn’t like thinking about it, but Apprentices were assigned to their divisions for a reason. At eighteen, the Second had already had at least a dozen missions, each one of them a kill, and as she grew more powerful, she would begin operating on her own, separate from the First, doubling their deadly reach. One day, Rajar, his bighearted, bigmouthed best friend, would hold the lives of hundreds of soldiers in his hands. The Apprentice Administrator, who was almost as old as her dying Master, had been chosen long ago for her aptitude for poisons and torture.
Lon was still anxious to prove himself, but he no longer envied his fellow Apprentices.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked quietly.
The Second hesitated a long moment before sliding her sword back into its scabbard with a definitive click. “What were you doing in here?”
He swallowed. “Watching the glaciers.”
There was a flicker of their old friendship in her eyes. “You must have improved since I saw you last.”
He shrugged. “I still can’t see the future, though.”
“Only one seer in a thousand can see the future.”
“That’s what Erastis says too.” Lon slowed his voice and clipped his words in imitation of the Master Librarian. “‘It takes a rare talent to see the stories yet to be told, my Apprentice. How can you see them when you don’t know what they will be?’” He rolled his eyes. “But that doesn’t mean
I can’t try.”
The Second raised an eyebrow. “I suppose you’ll want to teleport to the future too, in a few years.”
“Why not?”
“Because that has never been done.”
“That doesn’t mean it can’t be done.”
A light bloomed in the corridor at the other end of the Library, and the Second grabbed his hand, pulling him to the glass doors of the greenhouse and into the warm soil-scented air inside.
Easing the door closed again, she crouched with him behind an array of papery poppies as they watched Erastis enter the Library, an oil lantern dangling from his hand. He claimed it was a waste of power to use the electric lamps just for him.
Lon grimaced. “I thought he’d be asleep for longer tonight.”
“Shh.”
At night, the Master Librarian wore the same long velvet robes he wore during the day, and they swished and slithered across the floor as he ascended the steps to one of the alcoves. The lamplight wavered as he disappeared behind the bookshelves.
“He scolds me for sneaking in here at night, but he brings lanterns to the stacks,” Lon grumbled.
“He’s in charge of the Library. He makes the rules.”
“But I’ll be the Master Librarian one day. And I won’t burn it down then either.”
Erastis emerged from the shelves carrying a red-bound volume under his arm. He padded out of the Library again, the light batting at the ceiling as he withdrew down the hall.
“You’re lucky to be a Librarian. The rest of us”—the Second paused for a moment; her mouth twisted, and the rest of the sentence seemed to change direction abruptly—“can’t come in here and take whatever we want. Not even the Director can do that.”
Lon’s powers of observation, honed during his time as a street performer, told him something was wrong. That her latest mission had been different, had shaken her somehow, so that the pieces of her had been dislodged and were now rattling around inside her. But he didn’t dare ask about it again. Instead he said, “Neither can I.”