City of Islands

by Kali Wallace

  “You didn’t know she was coming here?” Captain Amanta said, her eyes narrow.

  “Not at all. It’s a wonderful surprise.” Bindy slung her arm around Mara’s shoulders, and Mara leaned into her for comfort. “I’m sure we can all make sense of it if you stop bleating long enough to listen.”

  Mara stifled a giggle. She had forgotten how much she liked to hear Bindy insult people who tried to intimidate her. But beneath her amusement and relief, Mara had questions for Bindy, so many that every time she thought of a new one, another piled up behind it: Where had she been? Why had she vanished for two years? What happened the night she and the Muck went out together? Why was she here at the Ossuary? How did she know these pirates? What did she know about the Muck’s experiments?

  And most of all: Why had she left Mara alone for so long?

  “Bindy,” she said, “what happened? I thought you were dead. Everybody thought you were dead. How do you know these people? Where—”

  “All in good time, my dear,” Bindy said. “Sit down and warm up.”

  Even though she wanted to keep asking more than she wanted to obey, Mara sat beside Feather. She unknotted Izzy’s shawl from her waist and spread it over the bench to dry; the fine silk was bedraggled from the dungeon and her long swim. She didn’t care if Izzy was mad at her for the rest of her life for ruining the shawl, as long as Izzy was alive.

  There was hope now. Bindy would help.

  Feather held a skewer before Mara’s nose. “Hungry? It’s only mudfish, but we have plenty.”

  Mara accepted the food absently. As hungry as she was, she didn’t want to waste time eating. She wanted to make a plan. “Bindy, what—”

  “You must be very angry with me,” Bindy said. She sat in a chair and folded her hands over her knees, looking so much like she had before that Mara was momentarily confused, lost between her memories and now, with Bindy here, alive, and talking to Mara as though it had been two days since they’d seen each other, not two years.

  Mara didn’t know how to answer. She took a bite of mudfish so she didn’t have to say anything. She didn’t know if it was anger she felt churning in her stomach. She had been angry when Bindy first died—disappeared—but all that anger had been directed at the Lord of the Muck and the mages who scavenged Bindy’s shop and everyone who refused to listen. Only later was she angry at Bindy herself. For not telling Mara what she was doing that night. For going into danger alone. For working with a man like the Muck.

  For not coming home.

  For abandoning her.

  “It’s okay if you’re angry,” Bindy said, as though she was reading Mara’s mind. “I understand. I’m so angry with myself, but I didn’t have a choice. It was too dangerous. I wanted to keep you safe.”

  The mudfish was warm and filling, but Mara’s next swallow felt like a stone in her throat. She hadn’t been safe when she was tossed out of Bindy’s shop and she’d had to sleep on the streets through the rainy, blustery winter. She hadn’t been safe scrounging for food behind inns and begging for scraps on corners. She had been cold and scared and alone until she met Fish Hook. Even in the fish market, she had awoken every morning fearing the fishmonger’s strap and went to bed every night cold and hungry.

  Mara said, “Where did you go? I thought he killed you.”

  “To explain that, I have to go back a bit farther than that night.” Bindy smoothed the fabric of her trousers over her knees. When she looked up, she glanced first at Mara, then around the room at each of the pirates. “Do you know why they call him the Lord of the Muck?”

  Captain Amanta said, “We don’t care, bone thief.”

  But Mya Storm-Eye looked curious. “I’ve never heard him called anything else. I don’t even know his proper name.”

  “What I mean is: Do you know why they call him the Lord of the Muck rather than the Lord of the Winter Blade?” Bindy asked. “By rights that should be his title, but he’s had the same nickname since he was a student.”

  Captain Amanta looked skeptical. “How do you know?”

  “Because we studied together at the Citadel,” Bindy said.

  Mara felt a chill pass through her. She had never known Bindy had learned magic at the Citadel. Bindy had always disdained Citadel scholars, mocking the High Mage and his underlings as stuffy old warts without a shred of imagination. She had never—not once, not ever—told Mara that she had walked those obsidian halls herself.

  Across the fire Bindy’s eyes sparked, and in them Mara saw something like a challenge. Mara kept quiet and ate another bite of fish. If you don’t know where a conversation is going, it’s better to listen than to interrupt—Bindy had taught her that.

  “I met Londe at the Citadel,” Bindy said. “That’s his real name, you know. Most people have forgotten it. He hasn’t a surname, because he’s an Outcaster orphan.”

  Mara looked at the fire. She didn’t have a surname either, at least none that she recalled. She had forgotten her parents’ names long ago.

  “The High Mage took him on because he had obvious talent, but he made Londe work for it. While the rest of the students were reveling at masquerades, Londe was in the kitchens scrubbing pots and pans. When the others spent the summers impressing their parents’ wealthy friends at parties, Londe stayed at the Citadel to mop the floors and dust the library. That’s where his nickname came from. The other students called him Muck Boy. Children can be so cruel.”

  “Are you trying to make us feel sorry for him?” Ketta demanded. “He’s a liar and a cheat.”

  “Not at all,” said Bindy. “I wouldn’t spare him any pity if it were made of salt and I owned the sea. But I did pity him, once. My parents were fisherfolk from Cedar Isle, so I knew what it was like to be poor at the Citadel. We became allies, in a way, the way people facing the same enemy do. We convinced ourselves that if we worked hard enough, we would prove the others wrong. We would show the rich daughters and sons of the ruling families that we were accomplished mages too.”

  Mara glanced around the circle to see the pirates listening raptly, caught up in Bindy’s story as she had been so many times herself. She felt a swell of pride that Bindy could captivate a crew of pirates like children before a nursemaid.

  But at the same time Mara’s unease was growing, and mixed with it was a share of anger. Bindy still hadn’t explained why she was here, nor how she knew the pirates. She had heard Mara’s questions and neatly ignored them.

  “We tried to do just that,” Bindy went on. “We sought patrons in wealthy merchants, only to see them hire their friends instead. We devised songs to protect shipping lanes and valuable cargo, only to see the High Mage recommend his incompetent staff for the work. After a while, I lost interest in proving myself to the merchants and ruling families. And to the High Mage.” Bindy spat derisively. “He wouldn’t know interesting magic if the founders themselves returned to sing it in his bedchamber.”

  Mara had always giggled at Bindy’s mockery of the city’s most prominent mages, but now she saw she had missed an edge of jealousy in Bindy’s words.

  Bindy said, “I saved for my own shop and focused on my own craft. But Londe, he was not so easily put off. For him magic was a way to climb above others before they could trample on him.”

  Mara looked into the fire, ignoring the unpleasant squeeze in her chest. So many times she had thought that same thing: magic was her way out of cold attics and stinking fish markets, her way to someday being something more than just another orphan forgotten by the city. She didn’t want to have anything in common with the Lord of the Muck.

  “I confess I did not think he would ever go so far,” Bindy said. “He came to my shop to ask my help singing secrets from the skeletons of some old mages. Nothing I hadn’t done before—and he promised to pay well. I had no idea he was planning to take the Winter Blade. I didn’t see the danger until it was too late.”

  Bindy didn’t appear to be looking at anybody, her gaze resting on the flames, but Mara felt as
though Bindy was watching her anyway. The knot in Mara’s chest tightened. If all Bindy had been planning to do that night was use her bone magic on skeletons, why had she needed to bring all of her spell books and journals with her? Bindy was no amateur; she didn’t need notes to sing songs she had sung a hundred times before.

  “When I realized the bones he wanted me to sing to were the past masters of the Winter Blade, I figured out what he planned. I wanted nothing to do with it—to be perfectly honest, I thought Londe would get himself killed. Gerrant of Greenwood was a powerful mage. But it was too late.” Bindy shook her head sadly. “I demanded we return to Quarantine Island, and Londe pretended to agree. But as I was bringing the boat around, he hit me in the head and shoved me overboard.

  “I let him think he had drowned me, because I knew that if he suspected even for a second that I had survived, he would come after me again. So I went into hiding, and I waited, and I watched for signs of what he was up to. I knew he must have had some terrible reason to close himself up in that fortress. You,” Bindy said, nodding at Captain Amanta, “were kind enough to fall into his thrall just as I was beginning to lose hope of ever uncovering the truth.”

  “We are not in his thrall,” Captain Amanta said. “We have a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

  “Remind me again who has so carelessly left her daughter in his fortress?” Bindy said, lifting her eyebrows. “You are his creations. He has owned you from the day you agreed to let him turn you into abominations, all for want of a treasure that might not even exist. You walked willingly into his cage. You are foolish to think he’ll ever let you out.”

  “We’re not in a cage now,” grumbled Mya Storm-Eye. “Not all of us.”

  Bindy snorted. “For now you’re more useful to him out here, doing his bidding while nobody knows who you are. The moment that changes, you’ll be back in the fortress. You’ll never see daylight again.”

  The pirates began squabbling, and Bindy kept mocking them, and none of them spared a second of thought or breath for all the innocent people they had captured. They only cared about rescuing their own people and finding Old Greengill’s treasure.

  Mara touched the edge of Izzy’s shawl. The silk was drying quickly so close to the fire, warm beneath her fingertips. Her urgency was turning into panic. She was the only one who wanted to help the prisoners. She was the only one thinking about Izzy. She couldn’t lose sight of what she had to do. Finding Bindy alive, and here with the pirates, didn’t change that. The holes that pockmarked Bindy’s story didn’t change that. Mara needed to get back into the Winter Blade, and she needed to bring the prisoners out before the Muck could hurt them. Prisoners in the dark. The Lord of the Muck in his laboratory.

  Mirrors filled with smoke.

  The Lady of the Tides in her tower.

  Just like that, Mara had a plan. It fell together like shards of tile in a mosaic.

  They were all talking over one another, so nobody heard Mara say, “I know how to get them out.”

  From her chair, Bindy was watching, eyes glinting.

  Mara cleared her throat. “I know how to get them out.”

  One by one the pirates fell quiet.

  “What did you say?” Captain Amanta demanded.

  Mara did not let herself quail under the green woman’s angry gaze. “I know how to rescue the prisoners. All of them, including your daughter. I have a plan.”

  Ketta rolled her eyes. “What do you know about anything? Be quiet, little girl.”

  Mara felt her fear drain away, and in its place grew a white-hot anger. She was doing this for Izzy. The bearded man, the Roughwater woman, the little boy, all of them needed help, but most of all Izzy, who was Mara’s family in every way that mattered. The pirates couldn’t scare her away from that.

  “I will not be quiet. If you want to keep arguing, go right ahead, but my friend is in that dungeon, and I’m going to rescue her. I’m the only person who knows how to get into the Winter Blade without the Muck seeing.”

  “He’ll catch you,” Yousef said. “He’s always watching.”

  “He can’t see everything,” Mara retorted. “And he won’t be there.”

  Captain Amanta tilted her head thoughtfully. “He rarely leaves the island.”

  Mara looked over the pirates one by one, examining their strange features. Finally she settled on Feather. She smiled.

  “What?” Feather said. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “He told me he’s working in absolute secrecy for now. What do you think he’ll do if he finds out another mage has gotten her hands on you?” There was a brief silence. Mara’s heart was thumping, but this time it was with excitement as much as fear. “And what if it’s the richest mage in the city, from the oldest of the ruling families he hates so much? Don’t you think that might draw him out of his fortress?”

  Bindy began to laugh, a low chuckle that rolled like tumbling rocks around the crypt. “Oh, Mara, you are such a clever child.”

  16

  Partings and Plans

  Summer Island rose like an ax blade from the sea, a long, sharp spine of black rock covered with steep streets, stacked buildings, and winding staircases. The air was filled with the rich scents of smoke and spice, frying fish and roasting meat, and ripe fruits and vegetables in the markets. It was early afternoon. The rough seas and lashing rain had faded to a cold drizzle. The docks were crowded and noisy with sailors and merchants talking in a dozen languages.

  “I don’t like being here in daytime,” Feather said. “Anybody could see us.”

  She was seated beside Mara in the rowboat, her wings hidden beneath a blanket. Yousef and Ketta were at the oars, and Bindy was on the opposite bench with her eyes closed and her expression peaceful. But Mara knew she was listening. Bindy was always listening.

  “I wanted to leave last night,” Mara pointed out. It had taken entirely too long to convince the pirates of her plan. By the time they had grudgingly agreed, the storm had grown so bad they were stuck on the Ossuary until it passed.

  Mara hunched down and shivered. She was wrapped in Izzy’s shawl, which didn’t smell like Izzy anymore. It smelled like seawater and smoke, and it barely offset the chill. She looked away from Bindy, away from Feather, and gazed across the water.

  There was no sign of the sea serpents. She might have thought them a dream, except that she could still feel the gentle bump of the big square head against her legs. She could still see those watchful, intelligent eyes. She didn’t know what it meant that the serpents had returned to the city. She didn’t want to believe it was the Muck who had brought them back, that he might be getting close to wielding the founders’ magic after all, and the poor, lonely sea serpents mistook his efforts for a sign of their long-lost masters. It was too cruel to contemplate, that such beautiful creatures could return to their ancient home, to find only the Muck and his caged hybrids.

  All through the night the thought of Izzy on the Muck’s laboratory table had spun around and around in Mara’s mind. With every passing hour the horrors she imagined had grown more terrible. More than once she had been certain, absolutely certain, that it was too late. Izzy was already transformed or dead, and it didn’t matter if Mara stayed in the Ossuary tombs for the rest of her life, because she had failed her friend and nothing would be okay ever again.

  The storm was still blowing when the day dawned cold and gray, but by midday the seas were low enough not to capsize an open rowboat. Captain Amanta had taken the black ship and most of her crew to a hidden cove on the eastern side of Greenwood Island. Ketta and Yousef agreed to row Mara and Feather to Summer Island, and Bindy to Quarantine Island, but they refused to go as far as Tidewater Isle. When Mara protested, Yousef had laughed and said, “Pirates and ladies don’t mix, little girl. We’re staying well clear of your fancy mistress.”

  The pirates slotted the rowboat into a free spot at the docks. Mara helped Feather climb out, but when she went to follow, Bindy stopped her with a ha
nd on her arm. “You know what you have to do.”

  Mara nodded. It was her plan, after all. “I know.”

  “I know too,” Feather put in. “In case anybody cares.”

  Bindy didn’t even glance at her. “I wish we had more time to prepare. There’s so much I could tell you about Londe’s magic.”

  “You can tell me after,” Mara said impatiently. They had already wasted too much time.

  Bindy smiled and tapped Mara’s nose. “I will. I’ll explain everything.”

  Mara watched as Ketta and Yousef rowed away from the dock, Bindy relaxed and smiling in the prow of their boat. They were headed to Quarantine Island, where, Bindy claimed, she still had friends who would be willing to speak against the Muck when the time came.

  Mara wondered where those friends had been two years ago when Bindy had vanished and Mara had been cast out into the streets, but she hadn’t dared ask. Asking would only lead to another discussion, and another discussion would only waste more time, and they had no time to waste, no matter how certain she was that Bindy wasn’t telling them everything.

  She turned away from the water to find Feather watching her.

  Feather tilted her head thoughtfully. “You know, when we first met her, she told us she was all alone. She said there was nobody in the world she trusted. She wouldn’t even let us meet the foreign kid she had rowing her around. She definitely didn’t mention an apprentice.”

  “So? She’s been in hiding,” Mara said. “She faked her own death so the Muck wouldn’t come after her.”

  “That’s what she said, sure,” Feather said. “But she seems okay trusting you now, and sending you off to do this while she stays away.”

  Mara bristled and turned away. “Look for a blue-and-yellow boat. They’ll be loading up right about now.”

  Mara stomped down the docks, searching for the fishmongers’ boys and girls, and most of all for Fish Hook. He would help them without question. She didn’t have time to deal with whatever Feather was trying to say. Bindy had hidden to stay safe from the Muck. To keep Mara out of danger too. She wouldn’t lie about something like that.