If Noa’s toes had been numb before, now her whole legs were, and at least half her stomach. She barely dared to breathe. It was one thing to hear secondhand that Xavier wanted her and Mite. It was quite another to hear it from his own lips, while his pale fingers absently plucked petals from the climbing roses.
“Your Highness, perhaps we should focus on the plan,” the younger councillor said.
The king made a thoughtful sound. “We’ll wait until he reaches the Devorian Rocks. That’s the perfect place for an ambush. And then, after I take it from him, we’ll watch his defenses crumble. We may not be able to get our hands on his sisters—yet—but we can have the next best thing.”
Take what? Noa’s thoughts were racing. What did Julian value more than anything else, apart from her and Mite? Had Xavier figured out that they’d found one of the Lost Words? She silently prayed for the councillors to ask questions, but clearly they knew exactly what the king meant.
“What if he guesses our plan?” Maria said. “What if he’s protected it with magics that we haven’t anticipated?”
Xavier let out a humorless laugh. “You’re giving Julian more credit than he deserves. That boy hasn’t had a strategic thought in his life. His mother was just the same . . . it’s why she never suspected me. No, Maria. For all his terrifying magical gifts, Julian Marchena will fall—and it will be because of his own lack of cunning.”
17
The Castle Is Haunted
Noa barely remembered the journey back to Astrae. She knew she had fled through the shadow of a tree fern just as the king and his councillors turned to leave, and that the otter had led her back through Death, but everything else was a blur. A shapeless fear had seized hold of her mind, crowding out everything else.
King Xavier was going to kill Julian. He was going to kill Julian just like he had killed Mom.
For some reason—maybe because, as the otter had warned, the shadow doors moved around—she fell out of Death into waist-deep water on the shore of Astrae, through the shadow of a boulder. She waded to the beach, where one of the mages found her and marched her back to the castle. She was deposited in the empty throne room, dripping all over the marble.
Noa sat on the throne and drew her legs to her chest. It was a warm day, but she was shaking. She fiddled with her charm bracelet, and the little glass whales clinked soothingly. Slowly, far too slowly, her fear ebbed, and she was able to think more clearly. King Xavier wasn’t going to kill Julian—not if she remained calm and remembered everything she had overheard. She pulled the Chronicle out of her pack—which, obviously, was waterproof, because who didn’t think to wear a waterproof pack?—and began scribbling frantically.
The door to the throne room slammed open, and Noa jumped. Julian strode in, cloak billowing and hair sticking out every which way. He looked angrier than she had ever seen him.
“What on earth were you thinking?” he demanded before he even reached her. “Sneaking into the palace like that. If Xavier had seen you—if anyone recognized your face—not to mention you barely know how to use your magic, and here you are leaping in and out of the afterlife as if it’s a swimming pool—”
“So you figured out where I went,” Noa said. “Good. That saves time.”
Julian looked as if she’d thrown a handful of ice in his face. He wasn’t used to being interrupted, Noa knew, but they didn’t have time to wait until he calmed down.
“Julian.” She closed the Chronicle for emphasis. “I went to the palace undercover to figure out if Xavier’s found the other lost language. And it’s a good thing I did, because I found out that he’s planning to attack Astrae again. He’s going to send someone to steal something from you. Something important.”
“What?”
She shook her head. “My guess is that he knows we found one of the lost languages. Maybe his mages went back to Evert and noticed that you turned it right side out. We have to avoid the Devorian Rocks—he’s planning to ambush us there. I don’t know how he knows we’re going that way.”
Now Julian was staring at her as if she’d dumped a bucket of ice on his head. For a moment, the only sound was that of the waves drifting in through the open windows.
“How do you know all this?” he said finally.
“I heard it from Xavier,” she said. “I eavesdropped on him and his councillors.”
Julian blinked a few more times. Then he strode up to the throne, knelt, and pulled Noa into his arms.
She rested her head on his shoulder, and some of the tears she’d been holding back in the palace spilled out. She wanted to tell him about all the familiar places she had visited, and how wrong it had felt. Their mother’s throne, now guarded by soldiers in Xavier’s colors, and Xavier himself, striding around as if he owned the palace and always had. But there wasn’t time.
Julian drew back. His blue eyes were serious. “Noa, I realize that I can’t stop you from using your magic. But promise that you’ll tell me before you do something like this again. At least give me a chance to talk you out of it.”
Noa wanted to point out that if he had talked her out of it, they never would have learned about the king’s trap. She also wanted to point out that he hadn’t given her many chances to talk to him lately. But she just looked away and nodded.
Julian’s brow furrowed. “What are you wearing?”
“I was undercover,” Noa said, exasperated. “Obviously.”
Julian sighed. “You have a lot of explaining to do, my Noabell. But I suppose we don’t have time for that now, do we?”
“No, you have to go tell Kell to change course,” Noa said. “And double the sentries.”
Julian rose. “All right. Go get dried off and have something to eat. We’ll talk more about this later.”
Noa wondered if that was true. She watched Julian sweep out of the throne room, then headed for the door to the main hall. She paused by the statue that had been Esmalda. She had been lurking there in the shadows this whole time, and Julian hadn’t even looked at her.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, because she felt like someone should be. Then she left, trying not to imagine the statue’s eyes boring into her back.
“Noa, look!”
Noa looked up just in time to see the lava leap up in the cauldron, then collapse with a hiss.
Mite frowned. She said something else in Spark, but all the lava did was spit out a cloud of ash. It was beginning to harden, a dark crust spreading across the surface.
“I don’t know what happened,” she said, chewing her lip.
Noa sighed and picked up the poker. Julian’s spell kept the lava in a liquid state, provided you stirred it occasionally. “Mite, you don’t need to teach me magic. And leave the lava alone. It’s cold out.”
A storm had rolled in that afternoon, pelting Astrae with chilly rain. The wind howled and the waves crashed so high that the castle foyer was now two inches deep in seawater. They were perfectly dry in Julian’s tower, of course, but the wind kept finding crevices in the walls to squeeze through. The cats had come up with a new game in which one of them, invisible, would grab at the end of Noa’s blanket and yank it around, while another would pretend the writhing blanket was a mouse and pounce on it. At least every five minutes the blanket would be yanked off her lap. Noa was used to the inconvenience of invisible cats, but this was a bit much.
She settled herself before the lava again, shivering. She didn’t like this storm. While it was perfectly normal to encounter squalls in Malaspina Pass, caught as it was between two towering volcanoes, this one had come out of nowhere. She was glad that Julian had ordered the sentries to stay on duty.
There came the sound of metal scraping against wood as Mite dragged a bucket of earth across the floor. She scooped out two handfuls and placed them on the rug. “It’s important to be loud when you do magic,” she said, her face serious. “Sometimes I’m too quiet, and the dirt just ignores me. Julian said it’s okay to be quiet most of the time, but not when you’
re casting a spell.” She babbled something in Worm, and the pile of earth rose into the air. Mite grinned.
Noa smothered a sigh. “Thank you. That’s good advice.”
“You try it.” Mite looked around. “Are there any ghosts here? You could try bossing one around. Not a scary one,” she added quickly.
Noa didn’t reply. There were ghosts in the tower—that was the problem. None of them had tried to grab her (yet); they just hung around at the edges of her sight in a woebegone sort of way, as if they really were dogs that were used to being ignored. If she turned her head quickly enough, she could sometimes glimpse a pallid face or a tendril arm, but as soon as she did, the ghost would fade into the shadows. Why was Julian’s tower the only place she saw ghosts?
She wondered if the otters had started looking for Mom yet. She’d been trying not to wonder that all day, because she didn’t want to hope. The otter had said ghosts didn’t linger, but clearly, some ghosts did.
What if Mom was one of them?
The table was set for dinner—the servants had come and gone some time ago, and the food was rapidly getting cold, but Julian hadn’t arrived yet. Noa thought it was probably going to be one of those nights where Julian didn’t come to dinner at all, and she and Mite ended up eating by themselves, sending a full plate back to the kitchen for the servants to heat up again whenever Julian was ready for it.
Noa was just opening her mouth to tell Mite that they should probably start eating when Julian strode in, bringing half the storm with him. He was sopping wet, his hair plastered to his head. He paused on the threshold and sneezed three times.
“Well, the island’s battened down,” he said, removing his boots and setting them by the lavaplace, where they began to hiss. “Kell thinks the storm’s heading south, so we’re going to wait it out until it passes rather than moving with it. Not now, Miss Claudia,” he said to the cat trying to rub up against him. He padded up to his loft, sending a small waterfall cascading down the stairs as he went, which effectively discouraged the cats from following. When he came back down, he had changed into dry clothes, and his towel-dried hair was sticking out every which way.
“You should have eaten,” he said, flopping down in a chair. Reckoner, having woken at the sound of his voice, happily fell over on top of his feet.
“You said you’d be here,” Noa said.
There was a knock at the door, and one of the kitchen servants came in. “Hello, Marsha,” Julian said, tossing her a dazzling smile, the wattage only slightly dimmed by his dampness.
The woman curtsied, blushing furiously. The servants loved Julian—he was far kinder to them than he was to his mages, and he spoiled them, paying them twice what even the palace servants in Florean made and ignoring any bad behavior on their part. He had once commented when the head cook had caught one of the maids stealing silverware that anyone who thought they needed to steal something as meager as forks and spoons should be allowed to keep them. “Just came to see if you’d be needing anything else, Your Highness,” Marsha said.
“No, thank you,” Julian said, even as Noa opened her mouth to ask for the soup to be warmed up. “Everything looks delicious.”
Noa sighed. “Can the sentries see at all in this weather?”
“As well as can be expected. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“There’s a surprise,” Noa muttered. She didn’t like herself when she was this snappish, but her stomach was growling and the cats had stolen her blanket again, and it was impossible to be pleasant when you were cold and hungry. Besides, she wanted to be angry at Julian for almost forgetting about dinner again, especially after he’d promised they would talk.
Julian sighed. “Noabell, I’m not in the mood to argue. If you have any suggestions for turning night into day, or fog into moonlight, I’m all ears.”
He sneezed again, and Noa relented. She helped herself to smoked salmon and sea broccoli, then passed the plate to Julian. “Did you put any sentries up on the Nose?”
“Yes. It’s all taken care of.” He set down his cup and gave her a meaningful look. “I believe we have something else to discuss. That is, you sneaking off this morning and putting your life in danger.”
“I don’t remember any sneaking,” Noa said. “I remember a daring undercover mission to the palace.” She folded her arms. If Julian thought he was going to lecture her now, he had another think coming.
He rolled his eyes theatrically. “I know that look. All right, we’ll take that point up another time, when you’re not in a mood.”
“I’m always in a mood. So is everybody. No one is ever not in a mood.”
“When you’re in a different mood, less like Reckoner’s when I try to give him a bath. Now, what is it that you overheard? Apart from what you told me earlier?”
Noa swallowed a mouthful of cassava soup. A ghost hovered at the edge of her vision, but she ignored it this time. She opened the Chronicle to the notes she had taken while eavesdropping in the palace. “Xavier has been executing nobles who he thinks are loyal to you. At least, people think they’ve been executed—mostly it’s just a bunch of mysterious disappearances.”
Julian’s spoon froze on its way to his mouth. He set it down. “Which nobles?”
Noa consulted her notes and read him the names she had heard. There were more than ten of them. When she was done, Julian’s eyebrows were drawn so close together, they were almost touching.
“I know most of those names. They’re all nobles who were part of Mother’s court.” He let out his breath. “It sounds like we may have more supporters in Florean City than I thought. Xavier hasn’t convinced them all that Mother was a monster, and me a worse one.”
“We don’t have supporters if the king kills them all,” Noa pointed out. “Although some people think a few of them ran off before Xavier could get to them.”
Julian clicked his rings together. “Whether they fled or were executed, it can’t be good for morale. Xavier’s going to make people just as afraid of him as they are of me.”
Noa thought that through strategically, as she knew Xavier would have done. “As long as he’s only getting rid of unpopular people, his court will probably stay loyal to him. But I think he may have gone too far—I heard one of his councillors say he was planning to retire, just to get away from the king. And the mages aren’t happy. Apparently Xavier wants to ban certain kinds of magic from Florean City.”
“He’d ban them all if he could.”
“And he’s still killing dark mages,” Noa said. She glanced at Mite, thinking of the skeletons and all those scurrying crabs. Instead of saying it out loud, she passed her notes to Julian.
He read the part about the dark mages, but he didn’t look surprised. Noa wondered if he’d already known the gruesome details. “At this rate, Mite and I will be the only dark mages left in Florean before I retake the throne,” he said grimly.
Noa opened her mouth to reply, but at that moment, another ghost drifted into view. He hovered just behind Julian, and then, when he noticed Noa watching, slunk back into the shadows. There was something familiar about him, but Noa couldn’t place it.
Something smashed behind them. Noa whirled to see a different ghost standing over Julian’s desk. He had knocked over a half-empty glass, spilling water across several books. Half his face was worn away, but his eyes were full of such bitterness and malice that Noa was filled with cold terror. The ghost held her gaze for a second before fading away.
“What was that?” Mite said around a mouthful of octopus. She had been eating steadily, watching their conversation with an avid gaze.
“The wind, I guess,” Julian said with a sigh. “I’ll clean it up later.”
Noa’s heart thudded. Julian’s tower was drafty and inhabited by, on average, half a dozen invisible cats. It was perhaps unsurprising that things were often being knocked over, lost, or moved around. Once, Noa had watched an odd breeze float one of Julian’s papers into the cauldron, an important document contain
ing spells he’d been working on for a month. Another time, a lavastick had suddenly overturned next to him, setting the sleeve of his cloak on fire. That had been particularly strange, because most of the cats were afraid of flame.
Noa hadn’t always been able to see ghosts, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. She’d just never given them much thought, the way you tended not to think about things you couldn’t see.
Had Julian’s tower been haunted all along?
“—but if they did flee, perhaps they’ll come to us,” Julian was saying. He was leaning his chair on its back legs, his hands clasped behind his head. “It would be useful to have the nobility on our side. . . .”
The oddly familiar ghost flitted into view again. Noa choked on her water. Mite pounded on her back as she coughed.
“What is it?” Julian said.
Noa felt light-headed, and not from the coughing. She knew who the ghost was—or rather, she knew who it had been. It was one of the not-fishermen they had stumbled across when Astrae ran into the fake island.
One of the men Julian had killed.
“You look like you’ve . . . ,” Julian began. “Oh! Have you seen a ghost?”
Noa swallowed. The ghost of a woman drifted into view. She held a sword at her side, and was dressed in red and gold, Xavier’s colors. It was one of the soldiers Noa and Mite had met during the mango attack. The one who had let them go. She and her companions hadn’t made it off Astrae.
Julian’s tower was haunted by the people he had killed.
“Oh no,” she whispered. She felt all wobbly, and gripped the table so hard her hand went white.
“Noa.” Julian put his hand over hers. “What’s wrong? Are they threatening you?”
“No, they . . .” Her voice was a croak. The soldier had faded into the shadows, but something told Noa she would be back. Something told Noa she never left.
The Language of Ghosts Page 15