City of Islands

by Kali Wallace

  “Oh,” a voice said. “There you are.”

  Renata Palisado emerged from the billowing clouds. She wore a stained smock in place of her usual fine gown, and her white-streaked hair was tucked beneath a tattered red scarf.

  “I sent for you ages ago,” said the Lady.

  Mara tried to say “I’m sorry, ma’am,” but she only managed half before coughing again.

  “Etina, this is my diving girl, the one I found in the fish market.” The Lady said it as though she had plucked Mara from a market stall like a clutch of squid or a bucket of mudfish. “Her name is Mara.”

  Smoke swirled and another woman appeared. She was older than Renata Palisado, her face more lined, her hair a shock of white. Her skin was so dark it looked almost black in the haze.

  “Don’t make her stand there in the blind all night,” the woman said. She had a Sumanti accent, rich and rolling like Driftwood’s. “Come in, child, quickly now.”

  Mara gratefully took a few steps forward. The smoke cleared, revealing the Lady’s laboratory.

  The tower room was alight with lamps and candles, so many Mara felt like she had stepped into a pungent, waxy oven. There were shelves crammed with books on every wall, and piles of scrolls tumbled from chairs. A metal brazier in the center of the room held a crackle of wood. Thick brown smoke rose from the fire to spread across the ceiling and slink down the walls.

  On three long tables lay the bones Mara and Izzy had found. The goat-horned horse’s head gleamed white in the candlelight, its sharp teeth glinting. The bayfish with a serpentine tail was spread out in a long line. The massive bird skull sat at the center of one table; an orange cat dozed beside it, uncaring of the dead creatures all around it.

  Mara hadn’t been in a mage’s laboratory since she’d been forced to leave Bindy’s shop on the Street of Whispering Stones. The Lady’s was larger, finer, and altogether unfamiliar, but still it felt a little bit like coming home.

  “This is Professor Etina Kosta,” the Lady said, gesturing to her guest. “She is a scholar from Sumant.”

  Mara bowed to the professor. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

  “Likewise. You’re the one who found the remains?”

  Mara glanced at the Lady before answering, “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I haven’t got them all put together yet,” said the Lady. “There are pieces of the puzzle missing. I was hoping you would find them today.”

  Mara shuffled her feet and said nothing.

  Professor Kosta laughed. “Don’t blame the girl for your failure, Renata.”

  The Lady’s face was unreadable in the dancing candlelight. “I haven’t failed. I’ll have it sorted before long. The girls have kept this discovery to themselves. Haven’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mara said quickly, with a glance at the smoke-spewing brazier.

  One of Mara’s chores in Bindy’s shop had been to light oily candles in every corner before Bindy sang certain spells. The candles had smelled terrible, like meat festering in the sun, but Bindy had only laughed when Mara coughed and pinched her nose. “Better this stink than those dry old bones at the Citadel stealing my songs,” she would say. When Mara was very little, she had thought that meant the Citadel was populated by animated skeletons who clicked and clattered into magic shops. Only when she was older did she understand that Bindy was talking about the mages of Obsidian Isle, and the spell-smoke kept them from overhearing her songs. Citadel-trained mages, Bindy claimed, were a sneaky, secretive lot, and not to be trusted.

  The thick smoke here served the same purpose as those charmed candles: to keep other mages from spying on the Lady’s laboratory.

  “Tell me, Mara, how did you find these curious skeletons?” Professor Kosta asked.

  “They were in the mud of the shallows,” Mara said, after the Lady nodded at her to answer. “A fisherman’s boy told me where to look. I didn’t mean to disobey the Lady. I was only curious.”

  The Lady of the Tides snorted delicately. “And you were not at all thinking about what reward you might receive.”

  Mara’s face grew warm.

  “Don’t tease the child,” the professor said. “Curiosity should be nurtured in children, not quashed.”

  “Oh, I agree completely,” said the Lady. “I think you’ll find Mara has more than enough curiosity—especially on the subject of magic.”

  With that the warmth in Mara’s face became a full-blown flame. Mara was only a servant. She wasn’t supposed to want anything at all except to please her master. She had never suspected the Lady would notice her interest in magic. The Lady didn’t even know she had spent half her life with a bone-mage; and even if she had, she would have dismissed Bindy’s magic as worthless, like all the other mages did. She had only ever cared about how well Mara could swim and dive.

  Professor Kosta asked, “What do you think of these creatures, Mara?”

  Mara’s embarrassment gave way to a faint panic. Both women were watching her, but she didn’t know what the professor wanted her to say. She had come up to the tower expecting scolding or commands, not questions. She didn’t know why a learned scholar would be asking her anything at all.

  “They could be very old,” she began hesitantly. She looked again toward the remains on the tabletops. By the bird skull, the orange cat had awoken and was cleaning its paws. “They look like they’re from . . . they look like the creatures the founders made with their magic before people lived here?”

  The Lady and the professor didn’t say anything, only waited for Mara to go on.

  “But the bones haven’t been on the seafloor for hundreds of years. Somebody weighted them down with rocks to make them sink,” Mara said. “Not very long ago.”

  The Lady picked up one of those black stones from the table and passed it idly from hand to hand. “Yes, someone certainly did. You’ve had a busy few days. Will you be well rested by tomorrow?”

  Mara nodded uncertainly. “Yes, ma’am?” It came out like a question.

  Professor Kosta’s lips turned in a frown. “Renata . . .”

  “She’s a very strong diver.”

  “It’s not her swimming ability that concerns me.”

  “We won’t find out any other way.”

  “Have you tried to find another way?”

  The Lady gestured dismissively. “She’ll be happy to do it.”

  “She’s your servant. She can hardly say no.”

  “Of course she can say no. We don’t keep slaves in this city.”

  “No, but you do force children to work and earn wages.”

  Mara looked back and forth between the two women, her eyes wide. She had never seen anybody argue with the Lady of the Tides before.

  “Mara likes her work,” said the Lady airily. “And I think she would very much like an opportunity to do more. She’s a skilled diver, but I don’t think it’s a job that fully occupies that curious mind you so want to nurture. Is it?”

  Mara trembled when she realized the Lady was speaking to her. “Ma’am?”

  The Lady raised a single eyebrow.

  “I do like diving,” Mara said carefully—and truthfully. She felt shaky and nervous all over. It didn’t sound like the Lady was going to punish her. It sounded like the Lady was leading up to the exact opposite of punishment. “But I wouldn’t mind other tasks? If that’s what you wish,” she added.

  “At the very least you must explain to her what you’re asking and give her a choice,” said Professor Kosta.

  “I suppose that is reasonable,” the Lady agreed.

  “And we are so very concerned with being reasonable.” The professor’s voice was dry as kindling.

  The Lady said to Mara, “If you know about the magic of the founders, then surely you know how many mages have tried through the ages to draw those ancient songs from artifacts and once again use that magic. I’ve devoted much of my own life to trying to determine where the myths end and the facts begin.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ma
ra said. Bindy used to say that so many mages had tried to wake the magic of the founders that the magic, if it even existed anymore, had probably rolled over on its ancient bed and covered itself with its pillow to keep from being bothered. Like every child in the city, Mara had grown up hearing stories about mages who had claimed to wield the founders’ great elemental magic: Old Greengill, Hars the Half-witch, Nevena the Mad, the Three Drowned Sisters, and so many more. None of them, in the end, had been able to calm storms or turn away waves or shape islands to their will, or achieve any of the magnificent things the sea dwellers had been able to do.

  The Lady went on: “It’s something of a family hobby, in fact. One of my kin first tried his hand at it some years ago. Nobody important, a cousin from a minor family line. He’s been dead for decades. Every family needs an embarrassing failure or two tucked away in their history, don’t they?”

  Mara looked away. The orange tabby on the table was blinking at her, as though to say, with its judgmental cat eyes, that everybody in the room knew Mara had no family.

  “I assume somebody has been attempting to glean the songs of the founders from these bones,” the Lady said. That was what Mara had thought as well. That was, after all, the main reason the Lady and other mages collected magical artifacts at all. Bones weren’t much different than artifacts. “Of course they haven’t a hope of succeeding, but that wouldn’t stop some misguided pretender who claims to sing to bones.”

  “That’s not—”

  The Lady frowned, and Mara stopped.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” she said.

  That’s not fair, she had been about to say. Bindy hadn’t been a pretender; she had been a skilled and clever mage. Just because none of the other mages understood her bone magic didn’t make it any less powerful. Maybe not everything she tried had worked—she’d had her share of failed experiments—but Mara had seen her sing to skeletons of long-dead mages in their Ossuary crypts and hear their replies in eerie, whispered spells.

  As for these bones, Mara wasn’t a mage at all and she had been able to stir their song without even trying. The Lady shouldn’t dismiss the possibility so quickly. Bindy was gone, but maybe there was somebody else in the city who knew bone magic. Somebody who had kept it secret rather than open themselves to mockery. Maybe even somebody who had known Bindy and shared spells with her.

  The hair on the back of Mara’s neck prickled.

  The Lady was still passing the black stone from hand to hand. “I doubt whoever discarded these bones was able to glean anything useful from them, but I should very much like to know more before I draw any conclusions.”

  Mara swallowed nervously. “How will you do that, ma’am?”

  The Lady exchanged a glance with Professor Kosta. “There are a few mages who might be responsible, but this—” She held up the black stone between her thumb and forefinger. “These stones used to weight the remains have certain magical characteristics that lead me to suspect one man in particular. But I have no proof. That is why I need your help. This seems to be a task only you can do.”

  “Me?” Mara’s voice rose to an embarrassing squeak.

  Did the Lady know Mara had used a song to find the bones? Izzy and Driftwood didn’t know—and even if they did, they would have said something to Mara first. Did the Lady know Mara used to be a bone-mage’s servant? It was Izzy who had brought Mara to Tidewater Isle, and all Izzy knew was that Mara had been working in the fish market. Mara had never told Izzy or the Lady about Bindy, never spoke of her at all except with Fish Hook. She was too afraid of being scorned and dismissed as a magical crackpot before she even had a chance to prove herself.

  Whatever the Lady knew about Mara’s past, however she had found out, Mara wasn’t about to betray Bindy’s memory by sharing her spell-songs with another mage, even if she could remember them clearly. The Lady was Mara’s master, but the Lady wasn’t her mage master, and Mara wasn’t her apprentice. She could say no. She could suggest a trade. She could—

  “You are a very strong swimmer,” the Lady said. “For this task, that is exactly what I need.”

  Mara’s shoulders slumped. The Lady wasn’t talking about bone magic. She was only talking about diving.

  “How old are you, Mara?” Professor Kosta asked.

  “Twelve, ma’am,” Mara said.

  “Perhaps the older girl?” Professor Kosta suggested. “She’s very young.”

  Mara bristled. She could take care of herself. She didn’t need to be protected. “I’m a better diver than Izzy.”

  “And more humble too,” said the Lady. “You haven’t heard yet what I want you to do.”

  “Sorry, ma’am.”

  “We must maintain absolute secrecy,” said the Lady.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “If something goes wrong, I may not be able to help you. You will have to rely upon your wits.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “And, yes, it might be dangerous.”

  Mara had never seen her mistress like this, plotting and scheming in her tower. It was a little bit exciting, like working for a pirate witch rather than a rich old lady with an eccentric hobby. But beneath the excitement Mara was still aware of the hair-prickle of unease. It all came back to the bone magic, and there weren’t very many mages in the city who would have learned Bindy’s songs. Bindy hadn’t had many friends. She had been very secretive, always aware of how the other mages mocked her. She had never let Mara look at the journals where she wrote down her spells.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  There was a spark of satisfaction in Renata Palisado’s eyes. “Are you afraid of the dark?”

  “No, ma’am,” Mara said. It was almost not quite a lie.

  “Good.” Renata Palisado ran her finger over the head of the orange cat, who bumped her hand and purred. “My cousin wasn’t either. Third cousin twice removed, or thrice. Who can remember these things? The one who spent so much time seeking lost songs. He loved to explore the caves and tunnels of the founders’ underwater city. He had this odd glass globe—much like the ones the emissaries were said to use to meet with the founders, only instead of enclosing the entire body, it protected only his head. I have no idea how he made it. He was a very strange man. But he was kind enough to record how he found his way into the fortress.”

  Mara’s heart was thumping so loud she was sure the Lady could hear it. “Fortress?” she whispered.

  “This is what I want you to do,” the Lady said, meeting Mara’s eyes. “I want you to sneak into the Winter Blade.”

  Mara stared, speechless.

  The Lady held her gaze. “I should very much like to know if the Lord of the Muck has been collecting bones while he’s shut away in that tower, and if he has been, I should also like to know what he’s doing with them.”

  The first thought to worm its way through Mara’s surprise was: that’s impossible.

  The Lady was mad to think that anybody could sneak into the Winter Blade. It was the most foreboding island in the city. The founders had built the tower as a gift for some long-dead mage using ancient, long-forgotten spells. Ever since then, it had been home to a succession of powerful mages, a line of women and men who stole it from one another by tricks, fights, battles, and murders. It was said to be riddled with so many curses, spells, and enchantments even the island’s masters tripped its booby traps from time to time. Living there was almost as dangerous as winning it—but the rewards were great, if you survived long enough to delve into the magical secrets past masters had left behind. Nobody knew exactly what had become of Gerrant of Greenwood, the island’s master before the Lord of the Muck, but all agreed he must have met a most horrible death.

  It wasn’t possible to sneak inside. The Lady had to know that. If there were secret tunnels carved by the founders beneath the Winter Blade, surely Gerrant or the Lord of the Muck or any of the island’s past masters would have found them and blocked them up. Or, worse, turned them into deadly traps.

  But if the Lady w
as right . . .

  For two years the master of the Winter Blade had been the man Mara hated most in the world. The man who had killed Bindy.

  Mara’s chest ached as though she had dove too deep, too fast.

  The Muck had known Bindy. The night Bindy died, she had claimed they were only going to the Ossuary to coax secrets from the bones of dead mages. But she had packed up all her journals before she left, which she had never done just for a trip to the Ossuary. Would she have trusted the Muck with her spell-songs? With her secret spell journals? It was hard for Mara to imagine; Bindy hadn’t trusted anybody. But maybe she had thought the Muck was her friend.

  Bindy’s spell books had never been found. The Muck might have them; he might have stolen them from Bindy before he killed her. If Mara could get into the Winter Blade, she might be able to find the spell books as proof of what the Muck had done. Nobody had wanted to listen to a bone-mage’s little servant girl, but they would listen to the Lady of the Tides.

  “Think before you agree, child,” said Professor Kosta. “It could be very dangerous.”

  “But it could also be very rewarding,” the Lady added. “For both of us.”

  Mara’s hands were shaking. “Ma’am?”

  “Whatever you think of me, child, I do not ask my staff to perform difficult—”

  “Dangerous,” said Professor Kosta.

  “I do not ask my staff to perform dangerous tasks without offering anything in return. If you do this thing—” The Lady glanced at Professor Kosta. “If you choose to do this thing, a choice which is entirely up to you, upon your successful return we’ll see about finding work that makes better use of that admirably curious mind of yours. I could certainly use some help with all of this.”

  She gestured casually to take in the laboratory room around them, but to Mara the gesture seemed as slow and graceful as a dream. Magic. The Lady was talking about magic. She was talking about Mara being allowed to help. It wasn’t an offer to teach, and it certainly wasn’t an apprenticeship, but it was more than she had now.