by Kali Wallace
She would never again have to worry about finding enough food or a dry place to sleep, or having her entire life upended by a single storm or shipwreck. She could help Izzy and her fiancée buy their own candle-making shop. She could give Fish Hook a job away from the market and the cruel fishmonger.
Someday she would be her own master. She would never again cry herself to sleep knowing the people meant to care for her were gone for good, and all they had left behind was an aching loneliness and deep, cold fear that never truly subsided. She would be the person who cared for others instead.
She could do all of that, if she became a mage.
And these strange, magical bones were her chance.
3
The Lady of the Tides
Renata Palisado, the Lady of the Tides and mistress of Tidewater Isle, was a tall, sturdy woman. She had been beautiful when she was young, or so everybody claimed, but she was now better described as intimidating. Her skin was smooth brown, her face broad, her chin strong, her neck long. Her eyes were the color of pale green sea glass—proof, some claimed, that there was a Pinnacle Isles pirate somewhere in her long family history. Her hair, once deep ruddy brown, bore white streaks that only made her look more severe.
Mara felt like a tiny dull fish when she stood before the Lady. She had to fight the urge to stand on her toes to make herself taller. The library was imposing enough on its own, lined as it was from ceiling to floor with hefty tomes and crackling maps, delicate astrolabes and polished mariners’ compasses. Amid all these human artifacts were the stranger objects from the founders: a long harpoon with a barbed end, the broken curve of shell that had once been part of a sea chariot, a greening metal harness that had been used to subdue sea serpents, a section of pearl and gem mosaic taken from an abandoned underwater tower. The Lady’s display of founders’ bones in their glass case had pride of place against one wall.
Colorful silk tapestries covered the thick walls and muted the sounds of the household. They showed scenes of the founders battling each other, shaping both the city below the sea and the fortresses above from raw stone, racing their serpent-drawn chariots, and surrounding a tiny human emissary who had traveled down to their city in a fragile underwater globe.
Mara had been hoping for another look at the bones she’d found, but they were nowhere to be seen. The Lady had commanded a line of servants to carry them up to her tower laboratory.
“You made a very interesting discovery this morning,” said the Lady.
“Thank you, ma’am,” said Mara.
“Thank you, ma’am,” said Izzy.
The Lady’s lips curved, not quite a smile. She was standing beside the map table at the center of the library. “I’m not yet sure what to make of it. I shall reserve judgment until I’ve had a chance to piece them all together.”
Mara’s heart thumped nervously, but she kept quiet, and so did Izzy. It was better not to speak until the Lady invited them to.
Renata Palisado was the last surviving member of a very old, very rich family that could trace its line all the way to the very first Sumanti explorers who had found the islands. Although the stories told about those long-ago days were more lore than history now, that still meant the Lady’s family had interacted with the founders themselves, which earned her no small amount of awe and admiration even among the city’s other old families. She had studied at the Citadel when she was young; she had never taken a husband or a wife and had no children of her own. She regularly threw parties for the city’s rich and important people: great banquets where the High Mage and his acolytes rubbed elbows with the Lady of the Glass and the Lord of the Garden, and they all vied for the attention of foreign traders, learned scholars, and daring adventurers.
Bindy had always said the Lady of the Tides was a mediocre mage, notable more for her vast wealth than her magical skill, but Bindy had disdained all Citadel-trained mages. She had laughed when Mara had sheepishly admitted that she might want to attend the Citadel someday.
The Lady smoothed one long-fingered hand across the great map. Behind her an expanse of tall windows overlooked the sea. The afternoon’s brief blue skies had not lasted. Clouds were crawling over the city as the day waned, surrounding the islands in a cool gray shroud.
“Driftwood tells me there is more to be found in the same location,” the Lady said.
“Yes, ma’am. We think so,” Mara said, before Izzy could answer.
“Show me where,” said the Lady.
The map detailed every island in the city, from the smallest wave-battered rock to the broad mountains of Greenwood, each labeled in neat script. There were notes indicating where the founders’ underwater city had been, with its crumpled, abandoned towers traced in vague outlines. The Lady had scribed small crosses and naughts to show where her divers had either found interesting artifacts or come up empty-handed.
“We are here,” the Lady said, pointing to Tidewater Isle.
Mara resisted the urge to roll her eyes. The Lady, like almost everybody, assumed that an orphan fish girl couldn’t read her own name, much less a complicated map.
Mara had to stand on her toes to point to the spot north of Lady of the Gales Isle. “There. It was near where the Fool’s Girl sank.”
“I see,” said the Lady. She dipped a quill into an inkwell to mark a black cross on the map. “I do not recall asking you to dive in that location.”
Mara’s heart stuttered a warning. “No, ma’am.”
“In fact I recall asking you to search the water near the sea caves north of Obsidian Isle, where we have had success before.”
Mara swallowed. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I did not give you permission to seek your own dive sites.” The half smile was gone from the Lady’s face.
“No, ma’am,” Mara said, her voice small. She felt the weight of Izzy’s stare on the back of her neck. They had been hoping the Lady would be so pleased with their discovery she would overlook the fact that they had disobeyed her. They should have known better.
“Would you care to explain why you ignored my instructions?”
“Ma’am,” Izzy began, but Mara interrupted her.
“It was my idea to look there,” she said quickly. “Izzy had nothing to do with it.”
“Yes, I had supposed that to be the case,” said the Lady, even as Izzy made a noise of protest. “What I want to know is why. Why, of all the places in the sea, did you choose that one?”
Mara’s thoughts whirled. This wasn’t going how she had expected at all. She didn’t know what to say. She could tell the truth. She could lie. It was better to tell the truth—she hadn’t done anything wrong, not really. All she had done was disobey the Lady and use a bit of magic. That wasn’t so much.
But she couldn’t force the words past her lips. All at once she was thinking about the days after Bindy had died—after the Lord of the Muck had killed her. Nobody had wanted to hear what Mara had to say when they found Bindy’s boat. The storm had swept her away, they said, and what was the foolish woman doing on the water during weather like that anyway? Bindy had only been an eccentric bone-witch on the Street of Whispering Stones, obsessed with magic they all believed to be half fraud and half delusion. Mara had tried to get the other mages to listen, to believe that the Lord of the Muck had killed Bindy, but nobody cared. They said Mara was lying for the attention. She had been stunned and bewildered and so very alone, and every bit as frightened as she had been when she was little and her parents died, before Bindy found her. She’d had to leave Bindy’s shop, taking only the clothes on her back and not even a cloak against the cold. For all that they had scorned Bindy’s magic while she was alive, the other Quarantine Island mages were quick to claim her belongings for themselves.
The way the Lady of the Tides was looking at Mara now reminded her very much of those dismissive mages on Quarantine Island. It was the look of a woman who had already decided not to believe whatever answer Mara provided.
Mara felt a hot spark
of anger. The magic she had used to find the bones was her magic. She was not going to let the Lady take credit for it. Mages had to protect their songs from thieves and eavesdroppers: that was as much a part of life in the City of Islands as the towers of black stone and howling winter storms.
But she had to tell the Lady something, so she decided on half of the truth. “A fisherman’s boy told me. He said he fell from a boat and saw some bones.”
Renata Palisado raised a single eyebrow. “And?”
“I thought I might find another sea serpent,” Mara admitted. “He didn’t say what kind of bones. I just thought . . . it would be okay to look?”
The Lady stared at her for so long Mara began to tremble. She was sick with fear. She was going to be dismissed. The Lady did not mistreat her servants, but she did not indulge them either. Mara had been so stupid to expect praise and a reward just because she found some bones. Tears sprang into her eyes and she felt her face grow hot. She dropped her eyes to the floor. Her bare feet looked small and grubby against the woven carpet.
Finally the Lady said, “For now, I will not punish you for your disobedience.”
Mara was so relieved she felt dizzy. “Yes, ma’am.”
“But if it happens again, I will not be so forgiving, no matter what curiosities you find.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“You will dive again tomorrow at the same place. If there are more bones to find, you will find them.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Izzy said. “We promise—”
The Lady quelled her with a look. “Do not try my patience. You are dismissed. Tell the kitchen staff I’ve released you from your other duties for the evening. Both of you. Go.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” said Mara. Izzy echoed the words half a beat later.
“One more thing,” said the Lady as they reached the door. “You will keep this discovery to yourselves. You will not gossip with the kitchen or boat staff. I don’t want to give other collectors a chance to steal our find. Is that understood?”
Mara didn’t like the way the Lady said our find, as though she had been the one out there on the boat, shivering in the morning cold and diving until her lungs burned. But she nodded, and Izzy did too, and they fled the library.
Izzy waited until they were descending the stairs to say, “You’d think she’d at least thank us for what we found.” She slapped at the stone wall and made a face. “She didn’t even care.”
Mara also felt the sting of disappointment; her hopes of ending the day with rewards and admiration had withered on the library floor. But even worse than the disappointment was the knot of fear in her gut. She had been so caught up in her dreams about magic and the future she had forgotten how precarious her position was. She had forgotten how dangerous it was to be a servant who upset her master. In the fish market she had never forgotten, not with the fishmonger always looming with his switch at the ready. But here, in the warm, protected rooms of Tidewater Isle, she had grown as careless and naive as a Greenwooder newly descended from the hills, and that was unacceptable. She wasn’t angry at the Lady—not entirely—but at herself. She knew better.
“We’re lucky she didn’t decide to punish us,” Izzy said. “She wasn’t happy we disobeyed her.”
Mara mumbled, “You didn’t have to listen to me.”
“That’s not what you said this morning, when you were begging and pleading.”
“I was right, wasn’t I? If we didn’t go, we wouldn’t have found anything at all.”
“Oh, did we find something?” Izzy’s voice was sharp. “Here I thought you were taking all the credit for yourself.”
“That’s not what I meant! I didn’t want—”
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Izzy said. “No matter what we find, she’ll be just as angry tomorrow. What good is a night off? She could have given us something real.”
“She might still,” Mara said, but weakly. She hated the way the Lady made her feel like she ought to be grateful for a night of rest after a long day on the water. That she was grateful made it even worse.
By the time they arrived in the kitchen, Izzy was ignoring Mara entirely. She found her other friends, the older girls and boys on the kitchen staff, and began complaining to them at once about how she had dove all morning and gotten nothing but a scolding for it. They responded at once with sympathy and kindness. Everybody liked Izzy; they were all going to miss her when she left.
Mara didn’t join them. Izzy was nice to her when they were diving together, but here at Tidewater Isle Mara was just the little fish girl, and the older servants wanted nothing to do with her. Izzy would be no better in her current mood. It didn’t matter that Mara had only been trying to keep Izzy from getting in trouble, telling the Lady it was all her idea. The Lady was angry, it was Mara’s fault, and Izzy had better friends to talk to anyway.
And there was a little voice in the back of Mara’s mind whispering: the bones were Mara’s discovery. She didn’t think it was wrong to want credit for that.
She took a bowl of spicy fish curry and went down to the sea cave, hoping for a chance to see Fish Hook. Even if she couldn’t tell him anything about the bones, Fish Hook would know just the right thing to say to cheer her up. But the fishmonger’s boat had already come and gone that day.
Feeling even lonelier than usual, Mara retreated to the girls’ dormitory above the kitchen. The room was warm, tucked in the embrace of the kitchen’s numerous chimneys. As the newest girl in the household, having been here only half a year, Mara’s pallet was crowded against a drafty window. It was the least desirable spot, but she didn’t mind. The stone wall at her back reminded her of her parents’ Gravetown workshop, and she could look out at the city and sea any time she wanted.
Through the rain she could just see the tall silhouettes of the Hanging Garden and Glassmaker Isle, and beyond them Spellbreak and Cedar islands, connected by a slender metal bridge lit with lanterns. The bridge was formed by long arches in the shape of tentacles, as though a kraken as large as the islands was lunging from below to swallow them whole. The bridge had been fashioned by the founders hundreds of years ago; no metal-mage knew the songs to create a structure like that anymore. Human metalworkers in the city were considered admirably skilled if they could forge harpoon heads that didn’t snap and knives that didn’t rust. Important things, but little things, nothing like what the founders had been capable of creating.
Beyond the bridge, lurking beneath the arch like a bruise, was the stinking brown mass of Outcast Island, which wasn’t a proper island at all but a patchwork of derelict ships, houseboats, and floating docks all strapped together.
Mara huddled on her pallet, eating spicy hot chunks of fish, watching the waves rise and swell. She had a good job, a warm bed, a hot meal to fill her belly. She even had a handful of coins knotted up in a handkerchief and hidden in her mattress. That was more than a lot of people had in the city. It was stupid to complain just because her rich mistress hadn’t given her a pile of gold for finding a few bones. The Lady hadn’t even studied the bones yet. As soon as she looked at them, really looked at them, she would know how special they were.
The door to the girls’ dormitory opened. Izzy hesitated on the threshold, then came in and approached Mara’s pallet. She held out a knotted napkin.
“I brought you some mango cake,” she said. “It’s just out of the oven.”
Mara recognized the offering for the apology it was. She unfolded her legs and scooted over to let Izzy sit beside her. Their shoulders pressed together, and Izzy drew the blanket over their legs. Mara unknotted the napkin. The cake was still warm. Its sweet, delicate crumbs melted on her tongue. Mangoes tasted to her like summer, like sunshine, like long-ago memories and half-remembered songs. She swallowed the first bite and did not take another.
“I’m so tired my arms could fall off,” Izzy said. “I really thought she would be more impressed than that.”
Mara
shrugged; her shoulder moved against Izzy’s. She had thought as much too, but admitting it out loud felt like defeat. There was a small part of her hoping the Lady was up in her laboratory tower even now, examining the bones through a magnifying glass and scratching notes in a leather-bound book, and by morning she would realize the mistake she had made in scolding her diving girls.
Mara leaned against Izzy. The other islands were vanishing into the fog. “I’m sorry I got you into trouble,” she said.
She didn’t really know if she was sorry or not, but Izzy was her friend, and that was what you said to friends.
Izzy laughed softly. “Oh, it’s okay. You were right. I didn’t have to listen to you.”
“Tomorrow we’ll find something even better,” Mara said. It was a promise.
4
Fish Hook
For three more days, Mara and Izzy returned to the spot to dive again and again. They piled strange skeletons of all shapes and sizes into Driftwood’s boat, including a cat with wings and a monkey with grasping sharp talons. But by the end of their fourth day on the water the bones were getting harder to find. They had expanded their search to a larger area, but that only meant they kept uncovering things from the shipwreck that weren’t magical or interesting at all.
“I think we might have all of them,” Izzy said. They were treading water beside the boat. She playfully flicked water at Mara’s face. Her murk-light was dangling from her wrist by a chain, a tiny sun beneath the greenish-gray sea. “We’re digging up handfuls of mud at this point. Ready to go back?”