The Language of Ghosts

by Heather Fawcett

  “That’s nonsense,” Noa said huffily. “You weren’t you.”

  Julian shook his head mournfully, and Noa knew that he was going to blame himself no matter what she said, which was melodramatic and thus entirely like him.

  “And worse,” Julian went on, “you were right about those fishermen. You tried to warn me, and I ignored you.”

  “Sorry, what was that?”

  “I said I ignored you.”

  “No, the first part,” Noa said. “Say that again.”

  Julian made a sound halfway between a sigh and a laugh. He placed his hand over his heart and made his blue eyes wide and tragically earnest. “You were right. You were right. You were right.”

  Noa leaned back on her hands, grinning. “You can go on.”

  His mouth quirked, but then his face grew uncharacteristically serious. “I need your advice on something,” he said. “Something of a strategic nature. One of the mages we captured during the attack has confessed Xavier’s plans.”

  Noa’s jaw dropped. She snapped the Chronicle shut and gave Julian her full attention. “What plans?”

  “Well, for one, he isn’t just going after dark mages anymore.” Julian looked at her for a moment, seeming to weigh something in his head before continuing. “He’s sending out assassins across Florean to quietly kill other kinds of mages, and to make it look accidental. Not just the mages, either, but their families—you know how magic often runs in families.”

  Noa felt faint. “Why?”

  “You know why. Xavier hates magic. Or rather, he hates that he doesn’t have any.”

  Noa knew how that felt. “But how can he do that? His mages won’t stay loyal to him if they find out what he’s doing.”

  “Some of them already know what he’s doing,” Julian said. “They’re still loyal.”

  Noa shook her head slowly. “That doesn’t make any sense. They can see what he’s doing to people like them, and yet they still follow him?”

  “No, it doesn’t make sense,” Julian agreed. “But people don’t always make sense. I’d guess there are two reasons his mages stick with him. One, it makes the mages he doesn’t kill more powerful as their gifts become more rare. And two, they think that as long as they’re fiercely loyal to Xavier, he won’t come for them.” Julian shook his head. “But he will. If he has his way, there won’t be any mages left in Florean in ten years.”

  Noa shuddered. She thought of the assassins who had slipped into her bedroom at night. We’ll find the little one first. She thought of other families, other children asleep in their beds. In her head, they all looked like Mite, down to the chocolate smeared on their chins. She heard the soft murmur of the assassins’ voices, saw the light of a lavastick glint off the edge of a knife. She squeezed her fists around the sand.

  “There’s more, isn’t there?” she said, reading Julian’s expression.

  Julian nodded. “The mage also told me that Xavier’s looking for the Lost Words. Do you know that myth?”

  Noa frowned. She knew more about magic than most nonmagical people—she’d grown up surrounded by magicians, after all, and as a habit, she paid attention to things. “Something about long-lost spells, right?”

  “More than that,” Julian said. “The Lost Words are magical languages that disappeared a long time ago. As you know, there are nine magical languages. Briar, Worm, Gleam, Salt, Marrow, Eddy, Squall, Spark, and Hum. Each named for a different power. Plants and harvests. Rock and soil. Metal of all kinds. The thirteen seas. Healing. Air. Weather. Fire. And finally, light. Some mages believe there were once more than nine languages. That there were other powers that the ancient mages decided were too dangerous for anyone to wield. So they bound them and scattered them across Florean, concealing them with magic on various uninhabited isles.”

  “You’re saying King Xavier is searching for a myth?” Noa frowned. “That doesn’t sound like him. He’s too smart to waste time chasing fairy tales.”

  “What if he learned one of the fairy tales was true?” Julian said. “The story of the Lost Words makes sense. Why can mages command the sea, but not the rivers and streams? Why can I summon light, but not darkness?”

  “Um, because you can’t do everything?” Noa said. “Maybe? Besides, I don’t understand why Xavier would want to unleash any more magic on Florean. If he hates magic, why doesn’t he hate the idea of the Lost Words?”

  Julian gave a short laugh. “He does. But you’d be surprised how people can learn to love what they hate if it will bring them power.” His expression grew thoughtful. “You said it yourself—Xavier’s smart. He doesn’t waste time on wild-goose chases. If he truly thinks he’s found a weapon that he could use to defeat me, he’ll go after it. The mage said he found some ancient maps buried in the archives at the royal library, which gave him the approximate locations of two lost magical languages.”

  Noa chewed her lip, mulling it over. “Is that why he risked attacking us with those mangoes? Because he thinks we’ve figured out he’s looking for them, so we’re looking now, too?”

  Julian blinked. “I— Yes. That’s what the mage told us. Apparently Astrae came close to the location of one of the lost languages—at least, where Xavier believes it to be—a week ago. It was a coincidence, of course. How did you know?”

  Noa shrugged. “It’s an obvious guess. If he really wants these Lost Words so bad, he’d be terrified of us getting them first. You said they were a weapon. What did you mean?”

  “According to the stories, the ancient mages trapped the Lost Words in books,” Julian said. “One of the mages who could speak the language they wanted to bind would fill the book with all the words in that language, and trap them in it.”

  “Like a dictionary,” Noa murmured. “Well, an evil dictionary. One that doesn’t teach people words, it takes them away.”

  “I suppose. Anyway, according to the stories, all a mage has to do is read the book, and that mage will gain its power. They have to be born with the ability to speak the language, just like any other, of course.”

  Julian absently pushed sand into a tower. “So. If Xavier gets his hands on the Lost Words, he can pass the books around to his mages and acolytes until he finds one who can read it. And then—”

  “Then he has access to a power we don’t.” Noa’s mouth was dry. “A power we won’t even know exists until he uses it against us.”

  Julian knocked over the tower of sand. “You can see why I came to you. We need to figure out what to do about this.”

  Noa’s heart was pounding. “What’s to figure out? We need to get our hands on those books before Xavier does.” She pictured Xavier’s mages wrapping Astrae in a cloud of darkness, or stealing the water from every well. Julian and his mages couldn’t fight a power they didn’t possess—they couldn’t even protect themselves from it, because they didn’t know what form it would take.

  If King Xavier found just one of those books, he could destroy Astrae—and Julian.

  But there was more. Noa’s brain riffled through the possibilities. “Julian, you’ll be able to speak those languages.”

  He frowned. “I don’t see—”

  “Don’t you? You can speak all the others. It’s likely, at least, that you can speak the forgotten ones, too—if we can find them first.” Her words tumbled out in her excitement.

  Julian’s eyes glimmered with speculation, and Noa felt a prickle of unease. If Xavier found the Lost Words, it would be the end of them. But if Julian found them, he could win the war.

  And yet, said a little voice at the back of her mind, Julian was already powerful enough. What would he become if he found the Lost Words?

  “You’re right, of course,” Julian said. “The only problem is convincing the council. Most people think the Lost Words are a myth, if they’ve heard of them at all. They’ll want me to continue with our current plan, capturing Thirial Island.”

  Noa shook her head. “You have to tell them that this is too important. If these Lost Wor
ds are just a myth, we’ve wasted a few weeks searching. If they’re real, we’ll lose this war—or win it.”

  “You can tell them yourself,” Julian said with a smile.

  Noa blinked. “What?”

  “I want you to join the council. I need to listen to you more often, Noa—and so do my advisors.”

  Noa stuck her finger in her ear, as if to clear it.

  Julian waved a ringed hand. “Yes, yes. I know you’ve asked once or twice—”

  “Once or twice!” Noa cried. “I ask you to put me on the council every week. You always say no!”

  “Maybe I would be more inclined to say yes if you didn’t lurk outside the window every time we meet,” Julian retorted. “I’d move the meetings to the tower, but I’m worried you’d try climbing up the side of the castle.”

  “I don’t ‘lurk,’” Noa said. “I’m not a thief. I just happen to be nearby sometimes.”

  “Yes, scratching away in your Chronicle so loudly you’d think we’d been invaded by termites.”

  Noa folded her arms. “I have to take notes. Have you even read your secretary’s? He includes everything that isn’t important and leaves out most of what is.”

  Julian massaged the bridge of his nose. “Noa, Noa, Noa. Do you want to be on the council or not?”

  Noa’s stomach fluttered. She could hardly believe what Julian was offering. A chance to be listened to, to have Julian’s chief advisors—many of whom had as much common sense as he did—consider her ideas and evidence and all the plans she had tucked away at the back of her brain for taking Florean away from King Xavier one island at a time. A chance to be helpful, rather than left to roam the island with Mite or to have lessons with whatever stammering teacher Julian had abducted for them that month. Not only that, but she’d be able to keep a closer eye on Julian, which could only help her secret mission.

  “I accept,” she said in a dignified voice. “And as my first piece of advice as royal councillor, you should move the meetings to a different room. The current one’s too easy to spy on.”

  Julian groaned.

  7

  Mite Goes on a Secret Mission of Her Own

  A fierce wind blew across the island as it sailed north, lifting the salt spray from the waves and scattering it over the grasses and cacti. Waves hurled themselves against the shore, so large and glittery green that Mite’s knees trembled. She hopped from rock to rock, pausing to examine a big piece of driftwood for woodbugs. She found a line of them marching purposefully from one hole to another, where there was a nest of tiny eggs.

  Julian thought she was asleep, but Mite had only been pretending. She had something important to do, and she knew that Julian wouldn’t let her leave the castle without Noa, and also that Noa wouldn’t want to go with her. Mite didn’t mind hiking across the island with Noa while she took notes in her Chronicle, but she wished that sometimes Noa would want to do what she wanted to do.

  “You have so many babies,” she told the woodbugs. “Can I borrow some? I’ll bring them back when they’re grown.”

  The woodbugs didn’t seem to mind. March, march, march went their many legs. Like her, they were clearly in the middle of something important. Carefully, Mite took a blade of grass and scooped a few of the eggs into a jar, which she placed in her pocket. She scurried off over the rock, her black cloak billowing behind her.

  The waves were so large that they splashed her no matter how she tried to avoid them, and Mite almost lost her nerve. She kept close to the cliff and pretended that Noa was with her.

  It was low tide, and a little beach of black basalt was exposed beneath the sea cliffs. This was where one of the mages said he had seen the spider.

  Mite shivered with excitement. She had never seen a braided spider before—they were almost extinct in Florean. People had trapped them and hunted them until they were gone, because they were poisonous. Mite didn’t think this was fair. Spiders only bit when they were scared, which was something Mite could understand—after all, when she was scared, she exploded. So when she heard Julian order the mage to set traps along the cliffs, she knew she needed to go on a rescue mission.

  “Hello! Coming through!” she called to warn the beach fleas to get out of the way. After a while, her stomach began to rumble, and she thought longingly of the licorice cakes back at the castle. She wondered if Anna, the cook, would let her have another before dinner. She’d only had five today.

  Finally, she found the traps. After examining two empty ones and a third that held only a confused gray spider, which she set free, Mite’s luck turned.

  Hunched in the back of the fourth trap over the body of a dead mouse, the braided spider was bigger than any spider Mite had ever seen, so big she wasn’t sure it would fit into the other jar she had brought with her. Fortunately, she had also brought along bait in the form of dead flies, and the spider darted into the jar to feast on them, neatly folding its legs inside. Mite twisted the lid on.

  Now that she had found the spider, though, she wasn’t sure what to do with it. A storm was coming, and she didn’t have time to take it to the other side of the island where the mages wouldn’t find it. She would have to keep it in her room for now. The spider ran one long leg slowly along the glass, as if testing for weaknesses.

  Mite’s stomach gave another grumble. She tucked the jar in her bag, then scrambled back the way she had come, her thoughts full of licorice cakes.

  Mite didn’t get her cake. By the time she got back to the castle, someone had noticed she was missing and told Julian. She met some mages who had been sent out to find her, and behind them was Julian, frowning and serious, and she had almost cried. But he just drew her into a hug and told her not to wander off again without telling him.

  That night, Mite waited in bed, her stomach in knots. Was Julian mad at her? Would he not want to read her a story? She couldn’t sleep if he didn’t. He had read to her every night since Momma died. Mite’s memories about her death were jumbled—she had only been five, after all, which was practically a baby. But she did remember that Julian had read her a story that night, because Momma always did, and that he kept turning away to wipe his eyes.

  She leaned over to check on the spider under the bed. Once she’d made it back to her room, she had transferred the spider into a larger jar, which hadn’t been easy. As soon as the spider tasted fresh air, it made a getaway, its many legs ping-pinging against the glass. But Mite knew how spiders thought, and had the other jar ready, so the spider merely ran from one prison into another.

  “I’m sorry I can’t let you out,” Mite said regretfully. She usually let her spiders roam free, but given the braided spider’s size, she suspected it would eat the others. “But you’re my honored guest, so I’m going to take care of you for as long as you’re here.”

  Mite didn’t know what honored meant, but it sounded welcoming. The spider hulked against the back of the jar, perfectly still. Now that she was able to look at it properly, Mite was impressed by the spider’s beauty. It had a red spot on its back, which gazed up at Mite like another eye.

  “We’ll have to think of a name for you,” Mite said. She always named her pets, though given that she had so many, she sometimes forgot what their names were. “How about Patience? That’s the name of the dog in my favorite story.”

  When finally Mite heard Julian’s footsteps outside her door, she felt a surge of relief. She shoved Patience back under the bed.

  Reckoner came in first, snuffling at the floor. Being nearly blind, he made his way mostly by smell. He flopped onto his usual spot on the woven rug, where every night he left a patch of dragon drool. Mite scratched his head. She liked Reckoner. She was glad Julian hadn’t chosen a scary dragon for his familiar. There had been other dragons on the island where he’d found Reckoner, bigger and healthier and much more impressive pets for a future king, but Julian had felt sorry for old Reckoner, and wouldn’t hear of leaving him behind.

  Julian entered the room, carefully stepping over
the dragon’s twitching tail. Mite eyed the tray he carried, which held a glass of milk and something wrapped in cloth. “What’s that?”

  “This?” Julian settled on the edge of her bed, his face serious, but this time Mite knew he was only pretend serious, and she started to smile. “I heard from a reliable source that a certain princess didn’t get her cake this afternoon. Would there be any truth to that rumor?”

  He unwrapped the cloth, revealing a perfect golden cake, studded with licorice and lightly steaming, as if fresh from the oven.

  “I warmed it for you,” Julian said as Mite let out a cry of delight and lunged at the tray.

  “Thank you,” she managed around a mouthful. Cake and a story was almost too good to be true, especially after worrying that she wouldn’t get either. She was glad Julian had forgotten about what she’d done.

  But as if reading her mind, he said, “Don’t think you’re off the hook, Maita. You know you’re not supposed to go off without me or Noa—or Kell, if she’s free. Tomorrow you’ll stay in the tower with me and practice your writing. I should be making you do that more often, anyway. If only that last teacher I found for you two hadn’t panicked and run off . . .”

  Mite nodded. She wasn’t worried anymore.

  “Where did you go, anyway?” Julian said, flicking through one of the storybooks.

  Mite hated lying, especially to Julian. But she knew he wouldn’t allow her to keep a poisonous spider in her room, no matter how pretty it was. Julian didn’t like any of her pets, though he tolerated them as long as they didn’t land in his hair or crawl up his leg. The last time that had happened, he had let out a stream of words Mite had never heard before, then dashed out of the room quicker than she’d ever seen him move. He had finished reading her story through the door.

  But Mite knew she had to lie. Because sometimes, spiders needed someone to protect them, just like people did. “I was looking for woodbugs,” she said quietly.

  Julian gave her a long look, but he didn’t ask any more questions. Mite let out her breath. Under the bed, Patience went tap-tap against her glass cage, but fortunately the noise was covered by the nighttime scuffling of the stinging beetles that lived in Mite’s closet.