The Language of Ghosts
Page 25
Renne was dead. Gabriela, characteristically, had escaped. There had been no whisper of her anywhere, but Noa was convinced she was biding her time until she could get revenge on Julian. Julian pretended not to care where she was, but Noa had discovered that he’d been about to send word to her family that she’d get a full pardon if she surrendered. It was the first time Noa had needed to talk him out of doing something out of kindness rather than wickedness.
Mite furrowed her brow. “Will you learn how to boss the ghosts around? Julian says bossing people around is your special skill, and he doesn’t know why dead people should be any different.”
“Mite,” Noa said with dignity, “why don’t you go down to the kitchens and have a cake? Tomas’s father sent over some fresh ones. Licorice spice, your favorite.”
“Oof.” Mite flopped onto the bed, looking green. “I don’t think I can eat another cake. I might be sick.”
“Now I’ve heard everything.”
Julian poked his head into the room. “My Noabell,” he said, surveying the organized wreckage of Noa’s bedroom, “only you could make packing a suitcase look like a military campaign.”
“Can I go to magic school, Julian?” Mite said.
“Maybe when you’re older, Mighty Mite.” Children usually attended Northwind when they were twelve or thirteen, though some went when they were younger. It depended on when their parents decided they were ready or when they got fed up with the side effects of having a magical child who didn’t understand their magic, such as explosions—though Mite was really the worst-case scenario. Students usually stayed for a year, or until they mastered their powers. Noa was confident she could master hers more quickly.
“But I want to go with Noa. Maybe they can teach me about Hush,” Mite said. Julian had let her name the language of fear, and Noa couldn’t think of a more appropriate name for a language she wished to never hear again.
Julian settled on Noa’s bed, surveying her progress with bemusement. He looked more relaxed than Noa could remember seeing him, which probably had something to do with the fact that after the battle with Xavier, he had taken Astrae to the Iskial Sea for a few days. Iskial was the nicest of the thirteen seas, in Noa’s opinion, being a sunny blue expanse dotted with over a hundred tiny islands of white sand and scalesia trees. There Julian and Noa had spent their time swimming and lounging about and generally avoiding work altogether, while Mite had spent her time collecting crabs (Mite’s interests were expanding from bugs and spiders to bugs, spiders, and things that looked like spiders), and everyone was in agreement that it had been a splendid holiday.
Noa started as a sock jumped out of her suitcase and flopped across the floor like a woolly worm. It flopped purposefully toward the wardrobe, where several cats had their lairs, and when Noa picked it up, she was rewarded with a telltale hiss from an unseen source. The invisible cats had migrated from Astrae to Queen’s Step along with the Marchenas, though Noa often wished they hadn’t. Packing was a difficult task with invisible cats. To be fair, though, most things in life were more difficult with invisible cats.
“Does everyone at magic school dress like that?” Mite said dubiously.
“Probably,” Noa said, though she secretly hoped not. She wanted to stand out—she was a rare and powerful death mage, after all. She adjusted her sleeves, which were intimidating but not overly practical. She had asked Petrik, the village weaver, to make her a cloak that befit her new powers. It had an enormous, dramatic hood that could cover her entire face if she wanted it to (good for scaring people, but only if you stood in one place and didn’t try to walk anywhere) and drapey sleeves that resembled bat wings. Obsidian beads ran along the hem and cuffs and made an eerie clacking sound if you twirled around, which Noa did often. She paired the new cloak with a hairband woven with whalebone and black garnet. When Julian had received the bill, he had asked if Noa had purchased the entire shop.
“I have something to show you two,” Julian said.
“Are we moving back to Astrae?” Mite said eagerly. Mite asked to move back to Astrae almost daily. Noa understood why. As much as she loved her old royal home, it was strange to live on an island that didn’t move again. She missed the resident sea lions that sometimes got left behind when Astrae took off, and followed in its wake, roaring indignantly. She missed the winds that buffeted Astrae from all sides and made the confused trees grow crooked. She even missed the little jerky motions the island made after it passed through a whirlpool, as if all that bubbly water had given it the hiccups.
“Not exactly, Maita,” Julian said. There was a mischievous glint in his eye that Noa knew better than to trust. He led them through the palace and out the smaller rear door, which opened onto a winding stair down the back of Queen’s Step. It was fine weather—the salt spray caught the sunlight like handfuls of pearls. Guards bowed to them as they walked, and Noa held her head a little higher. Her attempt at magician-like dignity was spoiled somewhat by her drapey sleeves, which kept catching on the railing.
“Here we are,” Julian announced when they came to the bottom of the stair. A few hundred yards off Queen’s Step was Astrae, rotating slowly in the jewel-blue water. A path led around the side of the crag, up and down the uneven basalt until it came to the harbor, which was now full of General Lydio’s warships.
Julian’s warships, Noa corrected herself, and felt a little rush of self-satisfaction. The novelty of seeing Julian as king of Florean—even if it wasn’t all of Florean yet—hadn’t worn off. Surprisingly, though, Julian didn’t act much like a king. He performed all his kingly duties, of course, but he did them in ordinary clothes and without feeding anybody to a sea serpent. He spent as much time talking to ordinary sailors and mages as he did with his councillors, to the point where most people he met went away only mildly scared of him, as opposed to terrified. Noa could see that something about him had changed since those terrible moments on the Nose, when their minds had filled with dark visions, though whether the change was permanent or not, she had no idea. It would certainly make her life easier if it was. She had other things to worry about besides Julian—starting with getting her sleeves taken in. They trailed in the seaweed on the rocks, and she would have a hard time impressing anybody covered in seaweed.
“I know you both miss Astrae,” Julian said. “I have to say, I do, too. After all, there are a lot of advantages to a moving island. So!”
He lifted his hands and released a stream of bubbly, gritty, windy words. Astrae gave a little hop, and then it began to move toward them. A fishing boat off the coast of Astrae rocked in the wake the island left behind. Astrae picked up speed, the forest blown back like windswept hair.
“Uh, Julian,” Noa said.
“It’s all right,” he said breezily. He spoke another incantation, and the island slowed. Not enough. It was going to slam right into them! Screams filled the air as the inhabitants of Queen’s Step came to the same conclusion.
“Julian!” Noa yelled.
“Hold on!” he said. He grabbed Mite, and Noa held on to the rocky cliff for dear life. And then—
Shwump.
Astrae struck Queen’s Step with an oddly underwhelming squishy sound, as if the islands were made of mud rather than rock. The impact rolled through Queen’s Step like a gentle wave, and Noa kept her feet. A cascade of salt spray fell across the island, drenching them.
When Noa dashed the water from her eyes, she saw that the northern promontory of Queen’s Step had fused with one of Astrae’s sea cliffs. What’s more, Queen’s Step no longer seemed to be anchored into the water. It rocked when Astrae rocked, bobbed when Astrae bobbed.
“There,” Julian said, a little flushed. “That wasn’t so bad.”
Noa doubted this was the majority opinion on Queen’s Step. No one seemed hurt, but the air was still punctuated by screams. Servants and courtiers leaned out of palace windows, gaping, while mages ran hither and thither, clearly under the impression that the palace was being attacked, but
lacking any sense of what to do about it. A man standing on a balcony fainted, landing with a thump that Noa could hear all the way down at sea level.
“What do you think?” Julian said.
“It’s great,” Mite said, hopping up and down.
Astrae began to rotate, and as Queen’s Step was now joined to it like two cakes smashed together, the palace rotated, too. A fresh chorus of screams echoed across the water. Noa began to feel nauseous.
“Hang on,” Julian said distractedly. “I can get the spinning to stop.”
“Oh, why?” Noa said. “This is such a delightful way to travel.”
Julian muttered another stream of nonsensical incantations. Slowly, the horrible spinning ceased, and the island of Astrae/Queen’s Step gave a shudder that rattled Noa’s teeth. Then, with a sound like an avalanche of rusty cutlery, the island surged forward, before settling into a calm, southward glide.
“Right,” Julian said. “A few kinks to work out. I’ll speak to Kell about it.”
“What?” Noa was bent double against the rock with her hands over her ears.
“Oh, come on,” Julian huffed. “I think it turned out pretty well.”
“I think,” Noa said, “that you could warn people before you go gluing islands together. Do you want everyone to keep calling you the Dark Lord?”
Mite grabbed his sleeve. “Can we go to Astrae now, Julian? I want to visit Patience.”
“Of course, Maita,” Julian said, looking put out. “It’s nice to know that someone appreciates immensely difficult feats of magic.”
Noa snorted. She felt an odd wave of sadness. Though she was secretly happy that they could go on living on Astrae—in a manner of speaking—it made it all the harder to leave. Of course, she wasn’t really leaving Astrae behind, for how did you leave a place that could follow you wherever you went? And she wasn’t leaving Mite and Julian, either—if either of them needed her, she would come back. They were Marchenas, after all. And Marchenas were always first.
Julian had to stop a few times on the lumpy, slightly soft middle ground between Queen’s Step and Astrae to smooth out fissures and ripples in the earth. Several people had waded into the water to gawp at the new bay that had formed between the islands. A towering dark shadow bloomed near a knot of chattering nobles, but Julian swept them to safety with a wave just in time.
“Beauty!” Julian shouted.
The sea serpent’s huge head surfaced. A smaller head surfaced next to hers, an identically murderous gleam in its eyes. The baby serpent, whom Mite had named Lovely—sea serpents didn’t abide with names, and they had to call her something—stretched her mouth wide, revealing a freshly grown row of jagged teeth.
“I thought I sent you away,” Julian snapped. “Shouldn’t you be somewhere in the Untold Sea by now, terrorizing pirates?”
“You didn’t really think you’d get rid of me so easily, did you, dear?” the serpent cooed. “I’ve sworn to have my revenge on you for keeping me captive, and I keep my promises. One day, dear Julian. One day, you will let your guard down. And the air will fill with the sound of your screams as I feast upon you bone by bone. . . .”
Noa folded her arms. “How about instead of all that, Tomas promises to bake you a cake once a month?”
Beauty fixed Noa with a long stare, her tongue flicking across her teeth. “Two cakes,” she said finally. “Provided one’s lemon-lime.”
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my brilliant editor, Kristin Rens, for making this and every book ten times better than what it would have been; thanks as well to the team at Balzer+Bray. Huge thank you to my agent, Brianne Johnson, who is the most talented and enthusiastic advocate any author could hope for. Thanks to Allie Levick, for always being on top of everything, and to Julia Iredale for crafting the perfect cover. Thanks again to Kim Ventrella, Claire Fayers, and Ruth Lauren. Thanks to all the librarians, teachers, and book bloggers who supported this book and who champion children’s literature online.
Thank you to Shannon Grant, Ross Conner, Rebecca Larsen, and Stephanie Li for reading early drafts of The Language of Ghosts and providing advice and encouragement. Thanks to Tanis Cortens and Jane Cortens for the advice on chapter titles, and to the local writers’ community here on Vancouver Island. Thanks to my family, particularly my dad, who provided feedback as well as general nautical insights and is thus responsible for any related errors present in this book (kidding!).
About the Author
Photo by Karen McKinnon
HEATHER FAWCETT is also the author of the middle grade novel Ember and the Ice Dragons and the young adult series Even the Darkest Stars. She has a master’s degree in English literature and has worked as an archaeologist, photographer, technical writer, and backstage assistant for a Shakespearean theater festival. She lives on Vancouver Island, Canada.
Heather can be found online at www.heatherfawcettbooks.com.
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Copyright
Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
THE LANGUAGE OF GHOSTS. Copyright © 2020 by Heather Fawcett. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Cover art © 2020 by JULIA IREDALE
Cover design by ALICE WANG
Digital Edition SEPTEMBER 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-285456-8
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-285454-4
2021222324PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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