Noa frowned. “What kind of guides?”
“I don’t know. Creatures of some sort who inhabit the Beyond.”
Creatures. Noa swallowed.
“That’s all I need to know. Thank you, Beauty.” She turned and marched back up the beach. Tomas trailed after her.
“What are you going to do?” His voice was panicked. “You’re not going to—to summon a ghost, are you?”
“No,” Noa said. “I’m going to go to them.” She paused under a tree, its leaves like black lace against the stars. It didn’t cast much of a shadow, given the early hour, but there was a slightly darker darkness than everywhere else. And it felt right, somehow. Noa’s fingers itched to catch hold of it and pull.
“Does the king know you’re doing this?” Tomas demanded.
“Not exactly. And you’re not going to tell him. Well, you’ll need to tell him if I don’t come back.”
Tomas’s face was red. He looked torn between shouting and bursting into tears. “Noa, I know you’re a Marchena, and coming up with mad magical plots is probably in your blood or something, but I’m your friend. That’s why you have to listen when I say this is completely—”
“Tomas, trust me, I have a plan,” Noa said. “Look, I’m a magician, all right? I can handle myself. If you could bake Beauty another cake while I’m gone, that would be great. I’ll have more questions for her about the Lost Words when I get back.” Then she picked up the shadow as if it were a rug hiding a trapdoor, and leaped.
Jumping into Death wasn’t as difficult as it should have been. After falling for a few feet, not very quickly, she hit sand with a soft whump.
She tried to smother the cough that rose in her throat. Death looked just as it had when she left it, and it smelled the same, too. She was instantly on the alert, scanning the sandy hills for ghosts. Oddly, she hadn’t encountered any since that night in Julian’s tower, and she didn’t see any now.
Her hands shaking, she reached into her pack and pulled out the fish. She tore it into pieces and scattered it across the sand. She sat down, leaned her back against a broken bit of staircase, and waited.
It was a long wait, and soon she was shivering. She had remembered to put on a sweater under her black cloak, and she was again wearing her heavy boots, but it wasn’t enough. The cold seeped through the fabric like water.
Finally, she saw the otter. It seemed to slither out of a crack in a ruined wall. Otters had always reminded Noa of snakes; they had an oily, undulating grace regardless of whether they were swimming or walking. It nudged the fish with its nose, but didn’t eat.
Noa’s heart thudded. She remembered those strong claws slicing across her leg. This couldn’t be an ordinary otter, despite its appearance—it was in Death, after all. She had intended to use the fish to distract the creature if it attacked her, and here she was luring it to her. Still, she’d made the decision to come here. She wasn’t going back now.
“I command you, Death guardian,” she said in Shiver, “to lead me to the palace of King Xavier in Florean City.”
16
Noa Flatters an Otter
The otter watched her, motionless, its back arched like a wave.
All right, then. Noa reached into her pack and broke off a piece of cake. She tossed it to the otter. It sniffed it, then hesitantly nibbled. Noa gave a silent prayer of thanks for Tomas and his cakes, which were proving increasingly useful as all-purpose monster treats.
She decided she might as well act as if she knew what she was doing. “Well? Will you be my guide?”
The otter finished the cake. “You’re a weird sort of ghost,” it said.
Noa nearly jumped out of her skin. “You—you talk.”
“You’re surprised.” The otter was speaking Shiver in a quiet voice that sounded a bit like a young boy’s. “Why did you speak to me, if you didn’t think I could understand? You’re not very bright, are you?”
Noa ignored that. “I’m not a ghost, I’m a magician. What are you?”
“What am I? Are you blind as well as thickheaded? I don’t feel like talking to you. But I may change my mind if you give me more of that.” It edged forward, eyeing the cake.
Noa tossed another piece, mainly to stop it—and its claws—from getting any closer. She decided to try a different approach. “I’m sorry I threw a stone at you.”
“You didn’t,” the otter said, munching. “That must have been someone else.”
Noa blinked. “There are more of you?”
“All otters can move in and out of Death,” it said. “It’s a useful place if you want to avoid a shark. Or hide a nice salmon.”
“All otters?” Noa stared at the unremarkable brown creature before her. “You’re saying you’re not some sort of—I don’t know, special otter? You don’t have any powers?”
The otter stared at her. “Are you saying I’m not special?”
“No, no,” Noa said. “I mean, you’re certainly very . . .” She trailed off, for the otter was the most ordinary-looking otter she had ever seen. “Handsome.”
The otter swiped a paw over its face. “Am I?”
It seemed so pleased that Noa hurried on. “Oh, yes. In fact, um, that’s why I thought you had magical powers. I thought maybe you put a spell on yourself.”
The otter preened. “Nope.”
“Are otters the only creatures who know how to get into Death?”
“For the most part,” the otter said. “Cats find their way in sometimes. Ravens . . . crows. But they usually can’t get out again. We’re the only ones clever enough to use the shadow doors.”
Noa’s surprise was fading. She’d often observed that otters were among the slipperiest of creatures, and they seemed equally agile in two worlds, land and sea, while most beings—people included—preferred sticking to one. She didn’t see any reason why they shouldn’t be just as adept at navigating Death.
“How impressive.” Noa was beginning to realize that the otter had a bottomless appetite for compliments. “And you seem like you must be the cleverest of them. So clever that I bet you could find any door in the world. Even one that leads to the palace in Florean City.”
“The palace? That’s easy.” The otter dashed off. Noa had to run to keep up with it, and even then, she would have lost the mercurial creature had it not waited for her to catch up. Eventually, it stopped by a broken stone house. Noa leaned against it, coughing from the smoky air.
“Is that it? We didn’t go very far.”
“Nothing is far here,” the otter said smugly.
Noa examined the shadow that lay beneath the wall. “And this goes to the palace?”
“Somewhere in the palace,” the otter agreed.
“Somewhere?”
“The doors aren’t exact. Sometimes they move.”
“Great,” Noa muttered. She reminded herself that she was lucky to have a guide at all; she would never have been able to find a door to the palace on her own. A thought occurred to her.
“Otter,” she said, her heart thudding, “Can you talk to the ghosts?”
“Sure,” it said. “But we don’t. They’re boring. All they do is mope.”
Noa swallowed. “Could you find someone for me?”
“Who?”
“Queen Tamora,” she said. “I don’t know if she’s here. But could you—could you spread the word that I’m looking for her? Tell the other otters, and any ghosts you see.”
“I like hide-and-seek,” the otter said. “I win almost every time. All right. But she’s probably not here. Most ghosts that come here only stay a little while, then they go somewhere not even otters can find a door to.”
Noa balled her hands to stop them from shaking. She had been afraid of an answer like that. Still, she had to try. She felt that familiar ache, and wished she’d brought Willow.
But that was silly. She was a mage on a serious mission, not a little girl missing her toy. She swallowed her tears and stood up straight. “Would you mind waiting until
I get back?”
The otter looked dubious. Noa added, “I mean, I’ve heard that otters are very patient creatures. But if that’s not true—”
“Oh, it is true.” The otter stood up straighter. “We’re more patient than anybody.” Noa gave it the rest of the cake, and it flopped down on its back with the treat balanced on its chest, looking extremely pleased with its situation.
Steeling herself, Noa picked up the shadow, and leaped.
Light flooded her eyes, and her boots hit the ground hard. She stumbled and fell against a marble floor polished to such a sheen it hurt, especially after the darkness of Death.
When she looked up, she choked on a yelp. She was crouched behind a column in the palace throne room. The space was enormous, a glittering sea of white and black marble. And there on a dais beneath a row of windows streaming with pearly dawn light was a golden throne, with two guards standing motionless behind it.
Noa couldn’t move. This had been her home. Her mother had sat on that throne, receiving noble guests and ambassadors. For a moment, Noa could hear her mother’s laughter ringing out through the hall.
“Are you lost?”
Noa spun, and found herself facing a palace guard. The woman had a kind face, and was smiling at Noa.
“Um—” She frantically blinked the tears back, trying to remember the story she had rehearsed. “Yes, sorry. I’m one of the new pages. The palace is so big!”
“That’s all right.” The woman patted her shoulder, clearly assuming Noa was upset about being lost. “It takes a while to get the hang of things. Where’s your uniform?”
Noa looked up as if startled. “Oh no! I knew I forgot something. Papa will be so angry—”
“No, he won’t,” the woman said gruffly. “Come along. I’ll find you a spare. Just mind you remember it next time, all right?”
Noa nodded, brushing away a tear.
The guard shook her head. “I don’t know what your papa was thinking, buying you that cloak. Black cloaks are banned in Florean City. You’ll have people thinking your family are Marchenans.”
“Marchenans?” Noa said, turning wide eyes of innocence on the guard.
“You know. Supporters of the Dark Lord. Come on, don’t dally. I’m supposed to be on duty.”
This was interesting. Did Julian have supporters in Florean City? Noa knew she couldn’t ask questions without arousing suspicion, so she filed the information away.
Twenty minutes later, she was striding purposefully along one of the servants’ corridors, her new red cloak billowing behind her and her old clothes stuffed into her pack.
She had no intention of attacking Xavier or anything like that. No, she was here to gather information about his plans, particularly how they concerned the Lost Words. She would find out if he’d recovered any magical languages himself, and if so, what they were and how he planned to use them against Astrae. Then, Noa thought smugly, she would take that information to Julian, and show him just how valuable her newfound powers were.
She spent the morning wandering the palace, eavesdropping. She knew that nobody paid much attention to pages, most of whom were the second or third children of unimportant nobles, and that as long as she acted as if she knew where she was going, people would leave her alone. She knew every room and hallway, and she knew which parts of the palace to avoid in order not to arouse suspicion. Sometimes she recognized a guard or ambassador who had served under her mother, but none of them recognized her. Noa wasn’t surprised—she had been barely eleven when they’d fled, and she looked different now, being a head taller and skinny rather than round-faced and plump. Her freckles had faded and been replaced by a smattering of pimples, which she had never been grateful for until now. Grown-ups didn’t seem to change much in two years, she noticed, apart from sometimes getting fatter.
A strange sense of unease hung over the palace. Noa often found herself eavesdropping on conversations held in hushed whispers in shadowy corners. If anyone saw her listening, she hurried up to them and nervously asked for directions somewhere, as if she had been waiting for them to notice her.
After a few hours of this, one thing had become clear: people were almost as afraid of Xavier as they were of Julian. They whispered about the executions of dark mages, and even about the new king going too far. Noa didn’t understand it—most people disliked dark mages. Why would they be so upset about Xavier killing them? Then she glanced out a window.
Queen’s Step didn’t have any beaches, just a stretch of rocky shore that disappeared at high tide. Down on that shore was a row of skeletons chained to the rock. At least, they were skeletons now, the bones picked so clean they gleamed in the sunlight. It was low tide, and crabs scurried hither and thither. It took Noa a moment to put those two things together, and to realize that everyone in the palace—all Xavier’s mages, servants, and soldiers—would have been able to watch as the crabs devoured the dark mages.
Noa drew back from the window. She had to sit down for a while after that, because her knees had turned into pudding. She had seen animal skeletons—dead whales and seals sometimes washed up on Astrae—but never people. A servant asked if she was all right, and she forced herself to answer normally, concealing her clenched fists beneath her skirt.
After another hour of spying, she knew that she couldn’t stay in the palace much longer—she was beginning to attract frowning looks from some of the guards she had walked past more than once. Yet she couldn’t leave without finding out more about the Lost Words.
She rubbed her clammy hands against the red cloak and took a deep breath. Then she set out for the royal wing of the palace.
Noa hadn’t wanted to go there. Partly because pages weren’t normally allowed in that part of the palace. But also because the royal wing had been her home.
Her heart thudded in her ears. She felt like a ghost herself, retracing the path she had often taken all those years ago—past the councillors’ offices, up the black marble staircase, past the courtyard with its flowering vines. She worried briefly that the finches would recognize her and raise a fuss. There was the banister she and Julian used to slide down. She forgot all about being mad at him. She just wished he were with her.
She lost her nerve at the sight of the guards standing at either side of the huge doors. Her old bedroom was beyond those doors. What would it look like now? Was it still a bedroom, or had Xavier turned it into something else? She doubled back and slipped into a small garden, folding herself onto a bench between two trellises crowded with climbing roses.
She brushed away her tears. She hadn’t realized how hard it would be to come back to the home that had been stolen from her. Last night, she had tried to think of everything that could go wrong, but she hadn’t thought about this. She hadn’t come up with a contingency plan for her own memories.
Voices murmured behind her. Several people were approaching. Noa tried to press herself into the trellis, but the roses were prickly. Her thoughts were too jumbled to remember any of the excuses she had invented for her presence in the royal wing. She jumped to her feet, but before she could dart away, three people rounded the corner.
Two of them were councillors—Noa could tell by their fine clothes and elaborate cloak pins, which were just like Gabriela’s. They blinked at her, their expressions only slightly surprised, as you might be upon finding an iguana in your boot.
The third was King Xavier.
The current king wasn’t an old man—he was only five or six years older than Julian. But he looked like one, with his pale, colorless hair, heavy glasses, and skinny, frail frame. Even the layers of red and bronze velvet that made up his cloak couldn’t conceal the stoop in his shoulders from a childhood spent hunched over books in libraries. People said that Xavier was a strategic genius—that was how he had built up a rebellion against Noa’s mother. Not because people liked him better, or because he was a great hero or warrior, but because he had known exactly what rumors to spread, what false promises to make, and how to
bribe the generals and the greedy nobles who felt ignored in the queen’s court to take his side.
Noa’s breath died in her throat as Xavier’s eyes met hers. He had been one of her mother’s councillors. She had spoken to him several times; he had even attended her tenth birthday party—
“Get out, girl,” Xavier snapped. His voice was just like the rest of him, thin and reedy. But his pale blue eyes were sharp with intelligence, though they barely rested on Noa before he turned to one of the councillors. “I thought I ordered this area cleared.”
Noa bowed, shaking with fury. She tried to disguise it by making her face a mask of fear. She ran from the courtyard and down the corridor. But rather than turning and going down the stairs, she went straight through a series of servants’ halls until she came to another entrance to the courtyard. She slunk toward the ivied nook where she had left the king and his advisors, keeping to the shadows.
“—have to take precautions,” the king was saying. “We need more information from him. Otherwise what good is he?”
Noa peered through the greenery. The king was pacing, his eyes like shards of glass, while his councillors hovered nervously.
“The Dark Lord’s movements have become increasingly erratic, Your Highness,” said the older of the two councillors, a woman with a Ferralian accent.
“But we’re certain he’s nearing the Gabriolan Islands?” Xavier said. The councillor nodded.
Noa frowned. How did Xavier know where Astrae was? The island was invisible if viewed from behind, so he couldn’t have spies following them. And the stretch of sea between Astrae and the Gabriolans was empty of islands to station sentries.
The councillor said something that Noa couldn’t hear. They had moved behind a canyonweed bush, and its fat yellow flowers obscured the woman’s face. Noa’s toes went numb with fear at the sound of her own name.
Xavier shook his head. “Maria, if I ever manage to get my hands on just one of those brats, I could have Julian Marchena eating out of the palm of my hand. He’d cut his own head off to spare his sisters any pain—and after he did, we could quietly execute them both and finally have done with the whole rotten Marchena line. One day.”
The Language of Ghosts Page 14