City of Islands

by Kali Wallace

  But, a little voice whispered in Mara’s mind, hasn’t she been lying to you for two years? Wasn’t faking her own death about the biggest lie she could have told?

  Mara scowled as she swerved around a group of laughing Blackcliff sailors. She was happy Bindy was alive. Maybe she didn’t understand everything that had happened, but she knew the Lord of the Muck was dangerous and must be stopped. Hadn’t she tried to convince everybody of that from the start? Bindy had been right to hide from him. Hadn’t she?

  Mara caught a glimpse of blue and yellow, and her heart squeezed with relief. She shoved her way down the crowded dock and grabbed the nearest girl. “Where’s Fish Hook?”

  The girl scowled as she heaved a spotted flounder into a cart. “Good question. When he finally shows up, the master’s gonna have his hide.”

  Mara’s ears began to buzz with fear. “What do you mean? Where is he?”

  “How should I know?” the girl said. “He took off yesterday before dinner, saying he was out to see a friend, and he never came back. Left all his work for the rest of us to cover.”

  “No,” Mara said.

  The girl’s scowl deepened. “Are you calling me a liar?”

  Mara barely heard her. The Summer Island docks faded to a blur of noise and color. A great black wave of fear washed over her.

  She had asked Fish Hook to check on Izzy. He would have followed Izzy’s footsteps from the docks to the candlemaker’s shop, right along the dark streets where the pirates had already taken people without being seen. Just last night they had delivered new prisoners to the Muck. He had told his gray man they were waiting for guests. In the confusion of being caught by Captain Amanta and learning Bindy was alive, Mara hadn’t given a thought to those new prisoners. All of her worry had been for Izzy.

  Fish Hook had agreed to help so readily, as he always did. Mara hadn’t once considered that she was sending him into danger.

  Now he was a prisoner of the Muck, and it was Mara’s fault.

  Mara spun away from the girl. She marched over to Feather and shoved her with both hands. Feather stumbled backward, nearly losing her balance.

  “Did you take him?” Mara shouted, shoving Feather again. “Did you take him last night? Did you take my best friend?”

  “Stop that!” Feather said, stepping hurriedly out of the way as Mara advanced on her again. “Are you crazy? What’s wrong with you?”

  “Last night! I saw your ship! I know you went there! He’s my best friend!”

  “Will you be quiet?” Feather hissed. She looked around frantically. “People are staring!”

  “I don’t care!” Mara shouted, but Feather was right. People were watching with entirely too much interest. Her heart was drumming in her ears and her blood was racing and her stomach was all twisted up in knots, but she took a breath, swallowed painfully, and lowered her voice to a hoarse whisper. “You took more people last night, didn’t you? I saw your ship. I saw it when I was swimming away. That’s when you brought them in!”

  “I didn’t,” Feather retorted, her voice just as low, just as angry. “They don’t take me anywhere anymore. I’m too clumsy like this to be a sailor. I’m useless. This is the first time I’ve been out of that wretched crypt in ages.”

  “They’re still your crew, and they took my friend. Do you even care?”

  “What choice do we have? He has—” Feather’s voice cracked, and her shoulders slumped. “He has my dad. And the captain’s daughter. He told us he would let them go when he’d had enough. It was never supposed to be like this. We were supposed to be hunting for treasure by now. What would you have done?”

  Mara glared at her and didn’t answer. She didn’t know what she would have done in Feather’s place. She was tired and hungry and scared. The past few days had made her feel like a boat tossed about on wild, unpredictable waves. The excitement of finding the bones, the fear of losing Izzy, the terror of the Winter Blade, the joy of learning Bindy was alive, and now this—it was all too much, too many conflicting worries and feelings crammed into her mind. She was having trouble keeping track of everything she was supposed to be thinking about.

  “What?” Feather said. “Crab got your tongue?”

  “I’m thinking,” Mara snapped. “How did you meet Bindy? Where did you find her?”

  “We didn’t find her,” Fish Hook said. She looked like she wanted to know why Mara was asking, but she explained. “She found us. About a month ago, right after the mage told us he wasn’t going to let Dad and Jemi go unless we did what he said. We had this hideout on Greenwood, and one day when we went out to the ship she was waiting. Captain probably would have killed her, but Mya knew her and convinced us to listen. Bindy said she could help us.”

  “Doing what?” Mara asked. “What exactly is she helping you do?”

  Feather looked at her for a long moment. “She told us there were mage bones in the catacombs that would show us a secret way into the Winter Blade, then we could rescue our people and the Muck wouldn’t have any leverage over us.”

  Something was prickling at the back of Mara’s mind, a bothersome thought just out of reach, like a sticky burr hidden in a wool sweater. “That’s what she said the Muck wanted from her two years ago. Secrets from the old bones.”

  “She didn’t tell us that part before,” Feather said. “We figured out that she knew him, but lots of mages know each other. Even Mya said she’d met him, back before he was master of the Winter Blade.”

  Mara didn’t care who Mya Storm-Eye knew or didn’t know. “Did Bindy learn anything from the bones?”

  “She hasn’t said. She won’t even let us be around when she’s singing to them. She says it’s because her songs are secret, but Mya says it’s because bone-mages are all charlatans. Bindy kept telling us to be patient.”

  “She’s not telling you that now.”

  “No, she isn’t,” Feather said. “The thing that’s changed now is you. She doesn’t need to find a way into the Winter Blade, because you already know one.”

  That was where Mara needed to be headed right now. She didn’t have time to spend trying to figure out what Bindy was thinking. Izzy and Fish Hook needed her help. Nothing changed that. Nothing would stop Mara from rescuing them.

  As she and Feather began to race along the docks again, looking for somebody to take them to Tidewater Isle, Mara realized what it was that had been sticking in her mind like a burr. It was something Bindy used to say, every time she caught Mara making up tangled excuses for why she had forgotten her chores, or taken the long route home before dinner, or spent the day swimming instead of sweeping. She never got angry enough to shout, and she rarely offered any punishment other than more chores. She would only smile, and tap Mara on the nose, and say, “Next time, little fish, make up a simpler story and stick to it. It’ll be easier to remember, and nobody will catch you in a lie.”

  A bone-mage searching for secrets in the Ossuary. Nothing was simpler than that. Bindy could tell that story a hundred times and nobody would doubt it.

  But that didn’t make it true.

  17

  The Worm on the Hook

  By the time Mara found an oysterman willing to take them to Tidewater Isle, it was well into the afternoon. The day was growing gloomy as another storm rolled in. The oysterman and his crew muttered darkly about how quickly summer had ended and how fierce the winter was sure to be.

  Tidewater Isle was lit up with lamplight, giving the rain-slicked towers a shiny gleam. Upon seeing it, Feather whistled under her breath. “I can’t believe you live here.”

  “It’s not my house,” Mara protested. “I’m a servant.”

  Feather shook her head. “But look at this place.”

  The islands of the city were so familiar, from those crowded with shops and markets to those dominated by the palaces of the ruling families, Mara rarely paused to do just that. Look, and marvel at the magic it must have taken to carve those terraces and towers and caves.

  T
hat was the kind of magic the Lord of the Muck wanted for himself. The kind of magic that could shape a fortress from jagged stone, level a tower to rubble, or raise storms big enough to drown entire islands. It was thrilling in stories, such dangerous magic wielded at the whims of capricious founders, spells flung about as easily as harpoons in their endless feuds and battles and quests. But this wasn’t history, and it wasn’t a story. It was terrifying to imagine a single man with that much power.

  Feather nudged Mara and gave her a questioning look. Mara realized she had started humming her mother’s old song, the way she had always done when she was scared. She stopped immediately. It wasn’t just a song anymore. She couldn’t forget that.

  As soon as they were docked in the sea cave, Mara took Feather by the arm and led her through the palace at a run. Feather’s blanket rippled behind them like a cape.

  When they reached the door at the base of the tower, Mara marched over to the two women standing guard. “I need to talk to the Lady and Professor Kosta.”

  Feather sucked in a startled breath. Mara knew what she was thinking. Mara was only a servant, in no position to make demands, and the Lady didn’t have to listen. She didn’t have to believe Mara’s story. She didn’t have to help. She didn’t have to do anything at all. She was the Lady of the Tides, master of Tidewater Isle, and she could send Mara and Feather away as easily as snapping her fingers. Mara’s plan counted on the Lady not doing that. She needed the Lady to understand the danger.

  When the guards hesitated, Mara added, trying to sound serious and stern rather than pleading, “It’s about the task she sent me to do. She’ll want to see me right away.”

  Without a word, the women opened the door to let Mara and Feather through. When they were only a few steps up the staircase, the door slammed shut behind them. They climbed the tower stairs through the thickening smoke, the Lady’s spell-song echoing all around them. Feather coughed and covered her mouth, but Mara didn’t even pause. When they reached the top, she pounded on the door until it opened.

  The Lady looked down at her. “Where have you been?”

  “Don’t be like that, Renata,” Professor Kosta said, emerging from the smoke behind the Lady. “Mara, don’t listen to her. We’ve been very worried about you. Come in, come in. What’s happened? Who is this?”

  “This is Feather,” said Mara breathlessly, the words tumbling over her tongue. “She’s—she’s been— I escaped, but there are more, he has more people, there’s a dungeon, he has my friends, and we have to help them, we have to, we have to—”

  “Breathe, Mara,” the professor said. “Tell us what happened. Where have you been?”

  Mara took a deep breath and started over. “The Lord of the Muck is holding people prisoner in his dungeon. He has Izzy and a bunch of others. He’s using them for his experiments.”

  There was a brief, weighty silence.

  The Lady lifted a single eyebrow. “Experiments?”

  As quickly as she could, Mara told the Lady and Professor Kosta what had happened after she’d found a way into the Winter Blade. She told them about getting caught in the library, about the dungeon and what the people there had said, and about being taken to the underwater laboratory filled with hybrid creatures.

  “Whatever is he doing that for?” the Lady asked. Her expression was thoughtful as she looked over the bones laid out on her long worktables. The ginger cat slept between two long, curving ribs, peaceful as could be. All the rocks and coils of rope that had been used to sink the bones were piled on the floor beneath one table. “If these bones are his work—and I was beginning to suspect they weren’t as old as we first thought—it is very impressive magic, but what is the purpose of it?”

  Mara started to answer, then stopped herself. It still sounded mad, no matter how she phrased it. But the Lady was waiting for her to reply, and Professor Kosta was looking at her with obvious concern, and Feather was watching Mara anxiously.

  “He told me,” Mara began. She hesitated, cleared her throat. “He told me that he’s working out . . . he told me that he wants . . .”

  “What is it?” the Lady said, a snap of impatience.

  “He wants to turn himself into a founder,” Mara said all in a rush. “He’s practicing bits and pieces on other people, but when he gets them right he’s going to—the whole thing, the whole transformation, he’s going to do it to himself, because he wants to be able to do the founders’ magic and he thinks he’s the only person who deserves it.”

  There was a stunned silence. Mara’s face warmed.

  “It’s true.” Feather’s voice was very small, but she spoke without wavering. “That’s what he told us too. He thinks he can do it.”

  “I suppose that explains . . . Well, naturally he would need human subjects, but the rest of it . . . That’s very . . .” The Lady shook her head. “I confess, Mara, I have never heard of such of a thing.”

  “I’m not lying,” Mara said, and all at once there were tears stinging her eyes. She was so tired and so scared and her friends were in so much danger, and this was her only hope. If the Lady didn’t believe her and agree to help, she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t have any other options, aside from diving into the storm-roughened sea and swimming for the Winter Blade by herself.

  “We know you’re not lying,” Professor Kosta said gently. “But why would he want to do such a thing?”

  “Power,” said the Lady, with a delicate shudder. “Riches. Status. Oh, Etina, you haven’t been in this city long enough to understand, but there is nothing—nothing—as valuable as magic. And ancient magic, the sort we all believe has been lost to history? Goodness.” The Lady was quiet for a moment, her eyes fixed on some distant point beyond the magical smokescreen. “Goodness,” she said again. “The consequences of a single man gaining such power would be . . . vast.”

  “I admit I don’t fully understand,” Professor Kosta said. “What is it he’s trying to achieve? Why go to so much trouble?”

  “What can’t he achieve, if he wields that sort of magic?” the Lady countered. “The founders carved the island fortresses from solid stone with nothing but a song—so who’s to say a petty little man in possession of their power couldn’t level them again? He could trap the entire city in a cage of storms. Punish those who don’t worship him with floods and fires. Set a fever sickness to strike down an entire family for generations. Send creatures of the sea after the ships of merchants who don’t curry his favor. The question, Etina, is not what he hopes to achieve, but whether there would be any way for us to stop him if he succeeds.”

  Professor Kosta nodded solemnly. “Then we had best see that he doesn’t. What happened after you escaped, Mara?”

  She told them about meeting the pirates at the Ossuary, about Captain Amanta’s daughter and Feather’s dad, but she left Bindy out of her story. It would only complicate the story, and Mara didn’t want complications. She wanted action, and fast. She tugged at the ends of Izzy’s shawl, still damp with rain, and shifted her weight from foot to foot. Too much time had passed already.

  She didn’t mention the sea serpents either. She didn’t know what to make of them, and she didn’t know if anybody would believe her. They were, for now, her own secret.

  Mara finished her tale with a desperate “We have to rescue them. I have a plan. I know how to help. We have to help them.”

  “Of course we do. You must be so frightened for your family.” Professor Kosta nodded at Feather, who ducked her head and did not answer.

  “Do you have fins?” the Lady asked. She fixed her gaze on Feather, who shrunk away in alarm. “It’s only that you’re holding that blanket so tightly about your shoulders, and there’s clearly some manner of oddity underneath. I am trying to guess what you and your . . .” The Lady paused, searching for the right word. “Your crew would have requested, but I confess I am having trouble coming up with many plausible possibilities.”

  Feather straightened her shoulders. “I don’t hav
e fins,” she said. There was a pause where she seemed to be considering adding my lady, but instead only jutted her chin.

  “Then what is it?” asked the Lady. “I should very much like to see.”

  “Please don’t be afraid,” Professor Kosta said, rather more kindly. “We only want to know what he’s done to you.”

  Feather started to unknot the blanket at her neck, but Mara stopped her. “Wait.”

  She couldn’t risk the Lady and Professor Kosta getting distracted by Feather’s wings before they agreed to her plan. She needed them to understand that rescuing Izzy and Fish Hook was more important than the Muck, more important than his magic, more important than anything he thought he could do.

  “There’s something else I saw in the Winter Blade,” Mara said. “In the library and the laboratory.”

  The Lady was still looking at Feather. “What was that?”

  “Mirrors,” Mara said. “Tons and tons of mirrors. More than I could count.”

  The Lady’s gaze sharpened as she turned to Mara. “Ah. Yes.”

  “He’s watching everybody,” Mara said.

  The Lady’s lips twitched. “I’d always suspected as much. I told you this noxious smoke was a necessary precaution, Etina.”

  “And you were quite right. What are you thinking, Mara?” Professor Kosta asked.

  “He’s not just spying on everybody,” Mara went on, not letting herself rush, not letting herself skip anything important. “He’s making sure none of the other mages see what he’s doing. He’s afraid people will find out before he’s perfected it.”

  The Lady began to nod, still watching Mara with a knowing, speculative gaze. Mara felt a spark of relief. Bindy had been wrong; the Lady of the Tides was clever. She knew where Mara was leading.