The Language of Ghosts

by Heather Fawcett

  “I’m sorry,” Noa said hurriedly. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Apology accepted, of course,” Beauty said in her usual purr. “Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  “But you can’t go!” Mite cried at her retreating head. “The king wants to kill Julian!”

  “Oh, I won’t go far, little Marchena.” Beauty’s black eyes gleamed. “I don’t intend to miss a moment of this.”

  Noa grabbed Mite’s hand just in time, as Beauty slipped below the waves and slammed her tail against the staircase with an echoing crash. The stone shook, and Mite almost fell into the sea.

  “Forget about her,” Noa said grimly. She, Mite, and Tomas reached the top of the stair and flung back the half-open castle doors.

  The castle foyer was a grand space, tiled with basalt and studded with obsidian tesserae that made the floor gleam like the night sky. Julian had ordered the cracked and faded walls repainted with bright frescoes—portraits of their royal ancestors; flamingos mincing across shell-strewn sand; killer whales charging through watery depths laced with sunbeams. Upon the huge staircase that anchored the foyer, Julian was in the middle of a battle.

  “Duck!” Noa shrieked. She knocked Tomas to the ground just in time—Mite was smart enough to drop right away—and a magician went sailing over their heads, his cloak tangled around his face, out through the doors they had left open. Julian spoke another incantation, and another mage was blasted backward, her all-white eyes wide with fury. She landed in a heap at their feet, and Noa pressed Mite behind her. Julian called out a twisty incantation that reverberated through the hall, and before the corrupted mage could rise, roots made of basalt rose out of the floor and wrapped around her.

  Julian’s hair was disheveled, as it often was when he worked on his spells, and his black cloak was inside out, as if he’d hastily pulled it on. With a slash of his arm and a word, he summoned a wave of water from the fountain splashing in the foyer and swept two more magicians out the door. There were still four left, but they hesitated on the landing, watching Julian like wary animals, still grinning their horrible grins. Julian descended toward them, a storm in his eyes.

  “Don’t hurt them!” Noa shouted. “They’re not traitors, they’re poisoned!”

  Julian broke off whatever incantation he had been casting. With a sharp glance at Noa, he let out a stream of words that sounded to her like wind hissing through a tiny crack. The magicians were lifted into the air—no more than a foot—and drifted back down the stairs. They writhed about and bellowed vicious curses, but it did little good; they were like feathers caught in the breeze, unable to alter their course. Once they were out of Julian’s way, he left them hovering just above the ground, thrashing uselessly.

  “You have to gag them,” Noa said. “They can still use their magic.”

  Julian spat out a command in Marrow, the language of blood, and the magicians fell silent, though their mouths still moved. He had taken their voices.

  Julian knelt before Noa and Mite and swept them into his arms. “Are you all right?” He leaned back and examined them, murmuring a word that healed the cat scratches on Mite’s leg. She buried her head in his shoulder and let out an uncharacteristic sob.

  For the first time Julian seemed to notice Tomas, hovering awkwardly. “Noa, why have you brought Cornelius’s son into this? Timmy, is it?”

  “No time to explain,” Noa said. “Julian, you have to get Astrae moving again.”

  “Yes, I was going to,” he said. “But not a minute after I looked up from my books and saw Xavier’s ships on the horizon, Louise ran in and attacked me. It must be some sort of magical possession—I’ve heard of spells that can cause an irresistible bloodlust in the victim. Then I heard Tyrone screaming bloody murder downstairs—he was unconscious when I found him, but I stopped them from doing worse. Being knocked on the head might do him some good, the scatterbrained—”

  “Julian,” Noa yelled. Even in a crisis, he was incapable of getting to the point.

  “Yes, all right,” he huffed. He lifted Mite, who was still clinging to him like an ant on a picnic basket, and hurried up the stairs, Noa and Tomas at his heels.

  They passed the floor that housed the magicians—now eerily deserted—and raced up the spiral staircase that led to Julian’s tower. Noa ran to the windows, but before she could check whether King Xavier’s ships were within firing range, there was a thunderous roar, and the castle shook.

  Julian caught himself against the wall. He snatched up one of his books, his expression black. “That was the west turret! The library! Oh, you will pay for that, you traitorous, cowardly—”

  There came another thud, and the castle shook again. Two more thuds followed, but these cannonballs struck the cliffside. Noa felt the reverberations pass through her sandals and into her bones.

  She gasped as she caught sight of the king’s ships, now massed just beyond Astrae’s shoals. “Julian—it looks like they’re preparing to launch boats! They’re going to board us!”

  “No, they aren’t.” He slammed the book down on a lectern and moved it to the window. “This is going to be a bit complicated without Kell at the prow—I have to weave together commands in Salt, Worm, and Eddy. Noa, hand me that bucket of seawater behind the—” He stumbled, letting out a sharp exhalation.

  Noa raced to his side. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” He pressed his hand to his forehead. “I feel—”

  He swayed, slamming into the window behind him. Noa followed, but Julian said “No” in a voice that stopped her like a wall. His gaze, when he met hers, was oddly bright. His brow was shiny with sweat.

  “You didn’t—” Noa breathed. Slowly, nausea churning in her stomach, she scanned the room. Her gaze came to rest on the mango on the desk, half-peeled, from which a single bite was missing.

  “Noa, take the others and go.” Julian’s voice was carefully even. “Get as far from the castle as you can. Find Renne—tell him—” He sagged forward.

  “Julian,” Mite cried. Tears streamed down her face.

  “What do we do?” Tomas wrung his hands. “What do we do?”

  “We can’t leave him.” Noa’s thoughts were spinning. She saw the frenzied salt mage on the beach, summoning waves to destroy the pier. Julian could do more than destroy the pier—he could destroy them all, and save Xavier the trouble of doing it himself.

  “Noa, go,” Julian shouted. His eyes were white now, with only the palest hint of blue left in them.

  “This is very bad, very, very bad,” Tomas chanted.

  “Get out.” Noa shoved him toward the stairs. “Take Mite and go. I’ll try to hold him off.”

  Tomas gaped. “How are you going to do that?”

  Noa had no idea. “I’ll figure something out. Mite, no!”

  Mite darted toward Julian, her sobs broken and desperate, and Noa had to wrap both arms around her to hold her back.

  “Mite, stop,” she gasped. “That’s not Julian anymore, he doesn’t—”

  Then two things happened at once. Julian let out a feral cry and lunged at them, and Mite screamed. There was a sound like a dozen cannons going off at once, and Noa was blasted off her feet. Then everything went dark.

  5

  Noa and Mite Move the Prow

  “Noa.” Someone was slapping her face. “Noa, Noa, Noa—”

  “Stop, stop, stop,” Noa groaned.

  Her head was one big ache. Her right arm felt worse—when she lifted her hand, the room briefly darkened again.

  She was lying against the tower door. She brushed her face, and her hand came away muddy. Her clothes, too, were a mess of dirt and seawater and bits of singed leaves.

  Mite leaned over her, her face wet with tears. Tomas groaned somewhere nearby. Noa clambered to her feet, leaning against the door frame for support. The tower was—well, calling it a ruin would be generous. Most of the windowpanes were smashed, and the spiral stair that led to Julian’s bedroom lay on its side. Julian’
s desk was gone, the desk chair dangling out a window a clue to its final resting place. The cauldron lay on its side—fortunately, it was a warm day, so Julian hadn’t melted the hardened lava. Many of Julian’s books were in tatters, the wind idly twirling their pages around the tower, and the floor and walls were covered with the wreckage of his experiments: dirt, leaves, coal, seawater, and bits of metal that combined to form the impression of a mudslide that had just buried a village.

  “How long was I asleep?” Noa asked.

  “Dunno. A few minutes, I guess.”

  Noa limped to Julian’s side. He lay sprawled on his back behind the toppled staircase, his breathing shallow. Blood trickled down the side of his face, making it look like the dragon tattoo had taken a chomp out of him.

  “I didn’t try to wake him up,” Mite said quietly. “He has a big lump on his head.”

  “Good. Hopefully that’ll keep him out for a while.” Noa stood, wincing. Her wrist was definitely sprained, if not broken. “What happened?”

  “I—” Mite bit her lip. She looked as if she might start crying again. “It was me. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  Noa burst out laughing. It turned into a cough—she had dirt stuck in her throat. “Mite. Are you saying you blew up Julian’s tower?”

  “Yes.” Mite sounded miserable. “He’s going to be so mad. Look at his books!”

  “He won’t be mad. Though I’d take an angry Julian over a magically possessed Julian any day.” Noa hadn’t thought she’d ever be grateful for Mite’s habit of accidentally blowing things up when she got upset, any more than you could be grateful to have a volcano for a next-door neighbor, but she had clearly saved them all. Mite was a dark mage, too, and could speak two magical languages. Even more unusually, they were oppositional in nature: Worm, the language of earth, and Spark, the language of fire. This made her volatile, and while Julian had been teaching her to control her powers, he would likely be happy to learn that he hadn’t succeeded yet.

  Noa patted her awkwardly. “It’s going to be all right.”

  “You said that before,” Mite said. “And it wasn’t.”

  “Fine,” Noa said, annoyed. “It might be all right, and it might not be. Either way, there’s no point moaning about it. Now be quiet and let me think.”

  Mite nodded. She didn’t look in danger of crying anymore. “That sounds more like you.”

  Noa huffed. Tomas stumbled over, rubbing his head.

  “Oh, Tomas!” Noa said. She had forgotten he was there. “Are you all right?”

  “I think so,” he said, though he sounded a little put out. “I hit my head, but I don’t think anything’s broken.”

  “Why are you holding your wrist like that?” Mite asked suddenly.

  “Forget about it.” Noa pulled off her backpack, but a lash of pain stopped her. “Actually, help me. Please.”

  Mite opened the backpack and placed the Chronicle in Noa’s lap. “What’s in there except a bunch of stuff about what the weather was like last month?”

  Noa treated her to a dignified silence. She opened the Chronicle, savoring the familiar smell of parchment and iguana leather. Her neatly organized columns and charts soothed her immediately. She pressed it open to today’s entry, creasing the pages just the way she liked, then allowed her mind to drift.

  She traced the sketch she had drawn of the mysterious island. It had been large—large enough to conceal the king’s warships. But it had been an illusion, and illusions were incredibly difficult magic. That made it likely that some of the king’s most powerful magicians were on those ships. But the poison in the mangoes was so dangerous that it was a risk to have them transported with such important people. If the mangoes burst or exploded, which could happen when ordinary objects were imbued with magic, they could have infected Xavier’s soldiers. Noa’s thoughts drifted to the bakery, and the strange steam the mango had given off, which had turned clear the moment it was immersed in water.

  “Bring me some water,” Noa said.

  Mite looked around. “There might be some left in one of those buckets.”

  “Not seawater. Get some from the tap.”

  Mite didn’t ask questions. She dashed into Julian’s bathroom and returned with a half-full cup. “Is this enough?”

  “Let’s hope so.” Noa knelt next to Julian. Summoning her courage, she threw the water in his face.

  He hissed something in a voice that wasn’t his own, and his body twitched. Then he let out an odd sort of sigh, and was still again.

  Noa gingerly pushed back one of his eyelids. A twilight-blue eye stared sightlessly back at her.

  Mite let out a cry. She sat on his chest and began patting his cheeks hard enough to make his head loll back and forth. “Julian! Julian!”

  “Don’t you start that.” Noa drew her off. “He’s hurt worse than I was. He needs a blood mage.”

  Tomas gaped at her. “How did you know what to do?”

  “It’s obvious,” Noa said, trying to sound nonchalant as her insides danced with relief. “The poison in those mangoes is so dangerous that King Xavier would have wanted the antidote to be easily available, just in case someone on his side accidentally came in contact with it. He wouldn’t care that we might figure it out, because he didn’t need the poison to be foolproof—he just needed it to infect enough of us to distract Julian and make us all run amok for an hour or two. Then he’d march in with his soldiers and take control. Speaking of which—” Noa darted to the window. “The king’s boats have almost reached the beach. The waves keep pushing them back—maybe one of the salt mages is at it again.”

  Mite leaped to her feet, her eyes shining. “We can cure the others!”

  “We need to get to the prow before we worry about curing anybody,” Noa said. “We have to get the island moving. Come on.”

  She turned and almost ran into Tomas, who was still staring at her. “How did you figure all that out?” he demanded, a note of helplessness in his voice.

  “Noa always figures things out,” Mite said in exasperation, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  “Stay here and look after Julian, all right?” Noa said to Tomas. “Lock the door and don’t let anyone in until we get back or he wakes up.”

  They ran out, leaving Tomas staring after them.

  Ten minutes later, they were clanking and sloshing along the path behind the castle.

  “Hurry up,” Noa called over her shoulder.

  Mite’s face was a brilliant red. “They’re heavy!”

  “Dump out some water, then.”

  They had stopped in the kitchen on their way out of the castle, grabbing the first things they saw that could hold water and filling them to the brim. Consequently, Noa held a stewpot with her uninjured hand, while Mite had two saucepans, one under each arm, and a cookie tin that was already half-empty, given that she had forgotten the lid.

  Panting under the weight of the brimming pot, Noa was beginning to regret her idea. It was hot, and a bead of sweat trickled down her back. They hadn’t encountered any corrupted mages so far, and the pots and pans were certainly slowing them down.

  No sooner had she had that thought, though, than she heard a twig snap in the brush. She whirled and caught sight of a malevolent, grinning face. She barely had time to recognize Kell’s first mate, Eron, before he lunged at her.

  “Look out!” Mite shouted. She ran in front of Noa, flinging the contents of one of the saucepans in the man’s face. Eron fell back as if he’d been struck with a bat, then sat down heavily. The color returned to his eyes, but he seemed dazed, swaying in place.

  They didn’t have time to make sure he was all right, so they ran on, water sloshing. When finally they reached the prow, Noa’s left arm was aching almost as much as her injured wrist.

  The prow of Astrae was composed of a wheel scavenged from an old pirate ship and a plain wooden box that Kell liked to sit on when she steered. There was also a pole from which hung a scrap of fabric that
could have been a bedsheet, but was actually an old piece of sailcloth. That was it. The prow was currently on a hill at the north end of the island, but depending on their course and the direction of the wind, Kell sometimes moved it to another spot.

  Noa looked up at the furled mast. The sailcloth was still as stone, despite the breeze brushing the hillside. Both mast and wheel were enchanted, of course, but there was one problem: the island had to be moving in order for them to control it. Usually, Julian kept Astrae moving constantly, even when they docked somewhere, though then the island moved so slowly that it was almost imperceptible. But if Astrae ever came to a dead stop—if, for example, it ran into another island—the prow became useless. The fact that Astrae wasn’t stuck anymore didn’t matter. Julian called it a safety measure—if he needed to leave the island, or was ever captured, he could simply bring Astrae to a halt, and nobody else could take control of it.

  Noa chewed her lip. Without Julian, how on earth were they going to move the island?

  Cannons boomed in the distance, nearly a dozen shots this time, and Noa winced. She didn’t want to think about the state of the castle. She tapped on the wheel, squinting up at the mast.

  The sailcloth twitched.

  Noa’s jaw dropped. “Mite,” she said, trying to stay calm, “look at the mast. Tell me I’m not imagining things.”

  Mite had been watching her with an expectant look tinged with impatience. She obediently turned her face to the mast. “What?”

  Noa’s heart fluttered. “I think the king’s cannons may be moving the island! Only a little, but it might be enough—”

  Voices behind them on the path. Mite spun around, her remaining saucepan held high.

  “Mite, I don’t think—”

  The owners of the voices rounded the corner. Two men and a woman, resplendent in red tunics and bronze breastplates—King Xavier’s colors—each with a sword held loosely in their hands.

  Noa swallowed. Astrae had been boarded.

  “Hey, kiddos,” one of the king’s soldiers said, and began to lower his sword. “Don’t be afraid, we’re—”