by Traci Chee
The crowd cried out.
Another blow. Gregor’s feet went out from under him and he hit the ground on his back.
The point of the spear hovered just above his throat.
It had taken less than two minutes for Archer to knock one boy unconscious and pin the other to the ground. He wasn’t even breathing hard.
The crowd went berserk, hollering, bloodlust throbbing in their throats and eyes as they called eagerly for the kill.
Gregor cradled his ruined hand to his chest and stared up at Archer from beneath his bloodied mop of hair. On the ground, the boy didn’t look afraid. He looked . . . ready.
All around her, men and women were shouting, veins bulging in their necks and foreheads, their eyes wide. Sefia tried to shut out the sound of them but their inarticulate cries engulfed her, rushing under her skin.
Archer hefted the spear. The noise of the crowd surged through him. Thunder in his blood. And suddenly he didn’t look like Archer anymore. He looked like the boy in the crate. An animal with bloodshot eyes. A murderer. The smell of dust and stone and sweat intensified.
The crowd swelled. They were hungry for it. There had to be a kill.
Sefia watched him, willing him to look at her. She blinked, and the room burst into a fine gold powder, spinning and sparkling, with Archer and the spear and the boy at the center—all the lines of their lives culminating in this moment: kill or die. A choice you couldn’t unmake. Sefia was afraid to breathe, afraid of disrupting those glimmering currents, but she watched, and she hoped. Not this. You don’t want to do this. You don’t want to be this. Look up. Please, look up.
Then he did. His eyes lost that feral look. He became Archer again.
He let his arm drop.
He walked away.
The crowd roared. Dismay. Disgust. Blinking, Sefia was shoved and shouted at—hands groping for her, words lashing at her. Then the pitch of their voices changed. They were excited, eager again.
Gregor had lurched to his feet. He had reached the sword. It was clasped in his uninjured hand. He barreled toward Archer with a wild look in his black eyes, lips pulled back from his teeth.
“Archer!” The word ripped out of her.
At the sound of her voice, he twisted out of the way—too late. The sword scored him across the side. He didn’t waver; it was as if he hadn’t felt it at all. He beat Gregor with the broken spear: a downpour of blows striking his torso, his kneecaps, his bleeding knuckles. Archer was too fast. The boy couldn’t block all of his strikes. They pummeled him. They broke him.
Finally, Archer struck him in the face. Gregor dropped and didn’t get up again.
Beside him, Haku stirred and groaned, but couldn’t rise.
Both of them were alive.
Archer flung the pieces of the broken spear across the ring and climbed the nearest chute door. As he appeared out of the pit, it seemed as if he were rising out of a well in which he had been lost for a long time, and now all the parts of himself he hated and feared most were flowing off him like water.
Sefia tried to run to him, but a cold hand grabbed her wrist, stopping her. “Not so fast, kitten.” The whale-tooth necklace swung in front of her like a pendulum. “There must be a kill,” Lavinia said.
The crowd roared again.
Sefia’s hand went to her belt, but the wand had fallen out. It lay on the ground near Archer’s pack.
“We don’t win anything if there isn’t a kill!”
“He has to do it! Otherwise he doesn’t go to Serakeen!”
Archer balled his fists, but no one dared go near him.
“What does the Arbitrator say?” someone asked.
Sefia squirmed, trying to free her wrist, but Lavinia’s nails dug into her skin.
The Arbitrator sighed. “There’s always a kill.”
Sefia wrenched herself out of Lavinia’s grasp, dove for Archer’s weapons, and flung them at him. He caught the hilt of his sword in midair, its sheath sliding away, its blade gleaming. The crowd went still. All eyes were drawn to him. Sefia snatched up the mate’s wand.
“There must be a kill,” the Arbitrator repeated, his face gray as he sagged against the broom for support. “That’s how it works.”
But Archer was no longer listening to him. He advanced through the crowd, which parted for him like grass withering before a fire. They made no move to stop him as he shouldered his things.
When he was done, he stared intently at the Arbitrator, waiting. Blood ran over his left eye and down his jaw, but in that moment his predisposition toward violence was only a part of what made him so formidable. Violence had made the others take notice, but now his very presence gave him control of the room. He seemed to blaze as if he had swallowed the sun and it was shining through his eyes and teeth. To Sefia, he had never seemed taller.
The Arbitrator wilted under Archer’s gaze. The muscles twitched in his jaw.
Then he nodded, and Sefia was not surprised.
“I can’t pay you if there isn’t a kill,” he said weakly.
“We don’t want your money. Just tell us where to go next. How to find . . .” The next word tasted foul on her tongue. “Serakeen.”
His eyes flicked nervously toward Archer. “Up the tunnel.”
The room exploded with objections. Raised voices. Threats of violence. Lavinia slipped out her pistol, a wicked-looking thing with a scrimshaw grip.
Goj, the impressor from Everica, took off his blue cap and shook it angrily in front of the Arbitrator’s face. “What gives you the right—”
But the Arbitrator’s hard voice echoed off the stone walls. “Do as I say, or Serakeen will hear of it.”
Invoking the Scourge of the East silenced them, and for a moment, they peered around uneasily, as if something evil and dark would come seeping out of the cracks in the stones. Then Lavinia spat sideways, and with a little discontented grumbling, the bettors began refunding their wagers, returning bags of coins, counting gold mai and silver angs in their palms.
“The porter will be waiting for you,” the Arbitrator said.
A porter. He’d be able to tell them where Serakeen was. If he’d seen Nin.
Sefia and Archer crept around the edge of the pit to the tunnel, where she took a lantern from the wall. They began to walk, Archer pulling on his clothes, leaving behind the scent of blood and the whimpering of the injured.
When the noise and the smell of the fighting ring had faded, Sefia set the lantern on the floor and flung her arms around Archer. He staggered back slightly at the impact, but then he hugged her to him.
“Thank you,” she said into his shirt.
His hand stroked her hair, just once, and settled against her shoulder.
“I was afraid you would . . .” Her voice trailed off. His heart pattered beneath her cheek, and she remembered the warmth of his skin, the raised ridges of his scars touching her chin and the corner of her mouth. “But you didn’t.” She squeezed him once more and released him.
He nodded, touching the edge of his scar. The boys had been like him.
“It’s only going to get more dangerous from here.” She touched the wand. “Should we call them? They said they’d help us.” And we might need it, she thought grimly.
He shook his head. He crossed his fingers.
“You’re right.” Sefia tucked the wand away. “This is for us to do. We’ll scout it out, and if we need help then, we’ll ask for it.”
The tunnel seemed to stretch for miles. As they walked, she imagined them passing under the shoemakers, the bakers, the blacksmiths in their forges with the walls stained black. She felt as if she and Archer had disappeared beneath the world—the people, their conflicts, homes, jobs, and streets—and for a moment, they were almost able to steal away from their own lives, from Serakeen, from dead fathers, from books and violence, and when they
reappeared aboveground, they would seem to have materialized out of nothing, with no past and no direction.
But when they climbed a wide flight of steps and found a door etched with the at the top, Sefia understood that they carried their past with them, growing heavier and heavier each day.
Archer reached for her hand.
When she swung open the door, they stepped out onto a little dock cluttered with broken barrels and empty crates. To the east, the dull rumble of nighttime activity rose from the Central Port, but out here on the edge of the city, the evening was soft and blue, and the lanterns of the night boats glowed like amber fireflies on the black water. Across the Callidian Strait, the smudges of Corabel’s skyline were visible, glittering with lamps.
Sefia started as someone stirred on the dock. Wrapped in a long oilcloth coat, the man was perched on one of the pilings like some enormous vulture with old scars crisscrossing his cracked lips. He didn’t say anything, but he climbed into the boat, beckoning them aboard.
“Are you the porter?” Sefia whispered.
The man nodded. The valleys of his face shifted in the evening light, and she had a sudden urge to put her hand on his arm, to reassure them both, maybe, that he was real and solid and wouldn’t drift apart the moment she touched him.
“Is Serakeen here, in Jahara?” she asked.
The porter pointed across the water, toward the mainland. Toward Corabel.
The Scourge of the East had left his territory around Liccaro for this? It might be their only chance to find him before the next fight in the Cage.
“Where in Corabel? We can get to Serakeen on our own if you tell us where he is.”
The porter said nothing. He gestured to the boat.
Archer tapped four fingers on his cheek. He wanted her to read the porter, like she’d done to the bartender in Epidram.
Taking a breath, Sefia searched for a mark that would allow her to focus her Vision—the scars around the porter’s mouth. She blinked. The currents of light washed over her, and she realized the porter couldn’t speak. He had no choice—he had no tongue. It had been cut out of him years ago, a lifetime, it seemed. He’d even forgotten how to moan.
He’d been an impressor, once, from Liccaro. He’d gotten to the Cage, where he’d tried to bribe the Arbitrator. The Arbitrator had sent him through to Serakeen, who’d removed his tongue.
Now he was the nameless porter, who came when he was called and did only things he was asked to do: Ferry candidates from Jahara to Corabel. Ask no questions and give no answers.
Maybe he deserved it, for what he’d done as an impressor. Sefia didn’t know.
She blinked again. “I’m sorry.”
But she was the only one among them who could speak, and she got no reply. She wouldn’t get answers this way.
Stepping nimbly into the boat, she sat in the center with the pack between her knees. “He’ll take us to Corabel’s harbor,” she said. “There’s a warehouse. He takes everyone there.”
If the porter was surprised, he made no sign.
Archer took a seat opposite her, where he could watch the porter, though there was nothing threatening about the man who hung up the lantern—just a silhouette against the starred sky. The porter loosed the sails.
As they left Jahara, Sefia cleaned and bandaged Archer’s wounds with supplies from their packs. She mopped his side with a wet cloth, gently wiping away the blood.
When she was finished, she let her hands linger on the sides of his face. She wanted to trace the curves of his brows with her thumbs, to brush her lips against the soft freckled corner of his eyelid. A flush of heat rose in her cheeks, and she sat back, busying herself with stowing the canteen and dirty rag.
“We’re going to find the people who did this to you. To them. To all of us.” She didn’t say what they would do after that. Learn what the book was for. Rescue Nin . . . And then . . .
She didn’t know. The only thing she knew was that whatever she had set out to do a year ago, things had changed. She had changed. She wouldn’t take another life. She’d find another way.
They rode in silence across the narrow Callidian Strait, with only the sounds of the water rocking against the boat to accompany them. The bruised sky above Jahara began to fade, replaced by the sight of Corabel at night.
Three spiral lighthouses took shape along the rocky coast, warning sailors away from the treacherous cliffs and quick riptides of Deliene’s coastline. Great towers topped with rooms of glass and mirrors, they sent beams of light across the dark water, guiding ships into the smooth harbor of the capital on the hill.
Seven years had passed since she’d left Deliene, watching the scalloped snowcapped mountains disappear into the distance from the back of a tipsy old merchant ship. She’d been crying, her tears frigid on her cheeks, her nose red with cold, and Nin had stood behind her, wrapping the folds of the bear-skin cloak around the two of them.
“Will we ever go home, Aunt Nin?” she had asked.
The old woman squeezed her shoulders. “There’s no going back, girl. Not for us.”
Sefia bit back a sob.
“Home’s what you make it.” Nin shrugged. “Could be a ship. Could be what you carry around on your back day after day. Could be family. Or maybe just one person you love more than any other. That’s home.”
The porter brought Sefia and Archer to a secluded pier in the western arc of the harbor, inside the long, tall arm of the cliff. Lanterns flickered near the center of the port, where the road led up the hill to the city, but here was all shadow and starlight.
Silently, he led them around the harbor to an enormous warehouse hewn into the stone cliffs.
“Thanks,” Sefia said. “We’ll take it from here.”
But he just shook his head and opened the door. Sefia and Archer tensed, preparing to run, but nothing stirred inside. Except for the stacks of crates and giant spools of rope, it was empty, cavernous, echoing. Cautiously, they followed the porter inside.
At the far end, he ran his hands over the wall and a panel of stones slid aside. A hidden door with a pressure-sensitive key. Sefia was reminded of her old bedroom, from a long time ago.
She glanced up and down the warehouse. “Isn’t there another way in?”
The porter reached into the opening, where he found a torch in the shadows and set fire to it, illuminating a tunnel of dry stone.
In the light, Sefia could see he had the kind of face you’d see on your local baker, on your tailor, on the man who swept the streets at dusk, on your father or your uncle.
He turned abruptly and pulled his black hood over his head. He stepped inside the tunnel, waiting for them.
Archer paced along the warehouse wall, searching for another entrance. Sefia ducked into the foreman’s office, running her hands over the floor, feeling for seams.
Still the porter waited.
Finally Archer returned, palms up to show he’d found nothing.
“This can’t be the only door,” she said to the porter. “Have you seen another entrance?”
He shook his head. This was the only way he entered and the only way he left. But she’d known that from her Vision. She’d just dared to hope.
“I guess we’ll return in the morning. We can keep watch on this place, at least.”
Archer touched her elbow.
“It’s too dangerous. We don’t know what’s down there.”
He shook his head. They knew exactly what was down there. The person they’d been searching for all these long weeks. Just beyond the threshold.
Sefia swallowed hard. This was what she’d come for. They’d go in only so far as they had to, until they found another way out. Then they’d turn back. Regroup. Plan.
With Archer behind her, she entered the tunnel.
Closing the door behind them, the porter led them down the na
rrow hallway, and the only sounds were of their own breathing, and their footsteps along the corridor, and the snapping of the fire.
At last, they arrived at an intersection. The tunnel forked on either side of them, disappearing into darkness, but before them was a metal door. It gleamed dully in the torchlight, dominated by a large iron circle inscribed with four lines, three curved and one straight:
It was pointed the wrong direction, but it was unmistakable. Sefia put her fingertips to the metal. “Serakeen?” she asked.
The porter glanced furtively to the left, and from the shadows there came a soft, “Just beyond the door.”
Sefia started. A guard stepped forward, his arms crossed, leaning casually against the wall as if he waited for Serakeen’s victims every night. His gaze skimmed over her.
“Are you here to make sure we go in?” she asked.
“Just here to make sure you don’t go nosing about.” Lazily, he brushed a lock of red hair from his eyes. “You’re free to leave, though we were told you wouldn’t.”
“We?” she echoed as Archer moved behind her.
A second guard.
She glared at the porter. “You could have warned us.”
The guards laughed as he opened his mouth, showing her the scarred flesh where his tongue had been.
She’d pitied him earlier. She didn’t pity him now. “You should have found a way,” she snapped.
Bowing his head, he withdrew, the slick shine of his oilcloth coat disappearing down the tunnel until he was swallowed by the shadows.
Archer was watching her. His eyes seemed more gold than usual, almost burning.
“Well, they know we’re here,” she said. She glanced at the redheaded guard, who smirked. “Are you ready?”
Archer nodded.
They turned to the door, to the symbol they had been hunting, and to what lay behind it.
Red Waters
Before the Crossbars, before Sefia and Archer, before the quest for the Trove of the King, Captain Reed and the Current of Faith were on a journey to the western edge of the world. They had passed the tear in the sky that had doomed Cat and her crew, but the wind had died soon after. The ship floundered. The sails drooped from the yards like stained drapes. Only Captain Reed kept them moving forward, seeking out sluggish currents in the still water, maintaining their course despite the blinding light and the blistering heat of the west.