City of Islands

by Kali Wallace

  “That’s my plan,” Mara said. “We’re going to clear away the smoke so he can see inside and . . .”

  Mara tugged the blanket from Feather’s shoulders.

  “We’re going to set a trap.”

  Feather flexed her wings. The professor gasped in surprise, and the Lady’s eyebrows flew up to her hairline.

  “And I’m the bait,” Feather said. “Aren’t these better than fins?”

  18

  Into the Fortress Again

  A single boat slipped away from Tidewater Isle at twilight. The rain was steady, the sea unsettled. Smoke twisted from the windows of Renata Palisado’s tower laboratory; she was clearing away the obscuring spell that kept other mages from spying on her. Before Mara had left, the Lady had taken up a fan and said to Feather, “You might as well help, as you’ve got the proper appendages for it.” Feather had grumbled but obligingly began flapping her wings. By the time Mara left, the Lady was peppering Feather with questions about the Muck’s procedure.

  Mara huddled down in her cloak. Driftwood was at the oars, but otherwise she was alone. This next part of the plan was entirely up to her. She hoped the old boat at the Winter Blade’s dock was still seaworthy; they would need more space for all the prisoners. She should have brought blankets, maybe food and fresh water too. The prisoners hadn’t been eating regularly. They would be weak and hungry. Fish Hook was always hungry. He never got enough to eat, was always grumbling about how stingy the fishmonger was. She should have brought something for him.

  It was too late for that now. All she could do was get back inside the Winter Blade.

  Once, Mara thought she heard the slick sound of something moving through the water. Her heart skipped, and Driftwood turned to peer into the darkness without missing an oar stroke. Mara couldn’t bring herself to say anything. She couldn’t see the sea serpents, if they were even there. More and more they felt like part of a fading dream, and the more desperately she hoped to see them again, to recapture that fleeting feeling of peace and comfort she had felt swimming alongside them, the more they slipped away.

  When they were near the eastern side of the Winter Blade, Driftwood stopped rowing.

  “We’ll wait here,” he said.

  Mara nodded, trying hard not to shiver. Driftwood lifted a spyglass to watch the island. He had never been a man to waste words, but Mara wished he would say something now. She could have used the distraction. The longer they waited, the more certain she became that her plan wouldn’t work. The Muck might not be looking at his spy mirrors tonight. Maybe he wasn’t watching the Lady of the Tides. Maybe he was too engrossed in whatever horrible things he was doing to Fish Hook and Izzy to watch anybody. The whole plan hinged on his noticing, but what if he didn’t? Mara didn’t know what she could do if they couldn’t draw him out. She would have to sneak into the fortress anyway.

  “Ah,” said Driftwood.

  Mara sat up straighter. “Do you see him?”

  Driftwood wiped rain from the spyglass lens. “There’s a boat. A small one.”

  Mara squinted but couldn’t see anything through the rain. She thought she spotted a flash of light at the base of the fortress, quickly shuttered, but it could have been a trick of the eye.

  “I can’t believe he fell for it,” she whispered.

  Driftwood grunted softly. “Never underestimate how prideful a clever man can be.”

  “Is he alone?”

  There was a pause before Driftwood answered. “There’s another man with him.”

  One of the gray men was at the oars. That meant the other had been left behind.

  As swiftly as he could, Driftwood rowed up to the base of the tower. The statues were even more unsettling now that Mara knew Gerrant of Greenwood’s fate. The horned woman above the hidden tunnel might have been a person once, so long ago nobody remembered her name. She might have been given horns using the very same magic the Muck wanted to master.

  Mara lit one of her murk-lights; she had three spares in an oilskin sack. She wasn’t going to risk being lost in the tower without light.

  “I’ll be watching for your signal,” said Driftwood. “And for the black ship.”

  The pirates were supposed to be nearby, ready to help, but Mara had no idea if they would keep to their part of the plan. She only nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak. She hoped Driftwood couldn’t see how frightened she was.

  She dove into the black water. She found the tunnel and swam its length. When she emerged in the well, she climbed out quickly, shivering in the cold.

  The door to the well room was still unlocked. Still hidden by magic. Mara breathed a sigh of relief. The Muck hadn’t found out how she’d gotten into his fortress.

  The tower was just as silent as it had been before. Mara crept along the hallway, counting the doors until she found the sea cave. She ran down the steps, holding her light high. The rowboat was gone, as she’d expected, but the old pleasure boat was still there.

  Mara lit a second murk-light and slipped into the water. She swam toward the mouth of the sea cave, but slowly, cautiously. If she swam too far, she might not be able to get back through whatever spell hid the cave. But if she didn’t swim far enough she wouldn’t be able to show Driftwood the location of the entrance.

  She stopped when she could feel the spell thrumming through the air and stone around her, a faint pressure in her ears and a tickle on her skin. She didn’t know any songs for revealing obscuring spells, and certainly not a spell so ancient as this. She didn’t even know if it was a single spell. There could be spells from the founders and all the island’s human masters piled on top of one another, protection after protection, tangled together for centuries.

  She thought about what she knew: this spell wasn’t just about hiding the sea cave. It was about hiding it so well that it looked like unbroken stone from the outside, so indistinguishable from the rest of the fortress that even people who had lived in the city their entire lives couldn’t remember where the mouth was supposed to be.

  Mara didn’t know much about obscuring spells, but she had a song for stone magic. It was worth a try. She sang out a few notes of her mother’s song: “Over the sea and under the sky, my island home it waits for me.”

  Nothing happened, so she tried to mimic the melodious song she’d heard echoing from the hidden tunnel the first time she’d found it: “Over the waves and under the storms, my heart is bound but my dreams are free.”

  Still nothing. Mara frowned, trying to think in spite of the urgency she felt in every heartbeat. She had heard a powerful obscuring spell just a few hours ago, when she and Feather had charged through the Lady’s smokescreen, but that was for hiding a room from spying eyes. She wanted to do the opposite. If you wanted to switch a song around, she thought, you had to switch the words around too.

  She mulled it over, then began to sing:

  “Over the sea and under the stone, my island home it welcomes me.

  Across the waves and into the cave, the way is clouded but my eyes can see.

  As I sail near and my home awaits, my island opens to the sea.”

  The air before her flickered. Mara was so surprised she stopped singing, and the flickering vanished.

  She sang again, the same melody at the same pitch, but with words of her own devising—“The tall black spire calls to me”—and the flicker returned. It was as though the darkness itself had turned to water, rippling like a puddle disturbed by raindrops. The ripples grew stronger and stronger, and a low hum surrounded Mara, trembling through the water and stone and air. The water became choppy, splashing over her head and pushing her side to side, and the reverberations grew louder and louder, trembling through the stone walls like thunder in a storm until finally—

  A shudder passed over the entire cave.

  The obscuring spell vanished like a popped bubble.

  For a moment Mara was so stunned she only stared. She had only wanted to find the spell. She hadn’t meant to take it down e
ntirely! She hadn’t even known she could do that.

  With the spell gone, the mouth of the sea cave was open to the night. She threw the spare murk-light as far as she could: that was the signal Driftwood was waiting for.

  The cave hummed with the echo of her song as she swam back to the dock. It made her teeth ache, that low vibration in the stones, and something about it felt off. But there wasn’t anything she could do about that. It wasn’t even a proper spell-song, just something she had made up in the moment, and it had done what she needed it to do. She had friends to rescue. She hoisted herself onto the dock and raced up the stairs.

  In the corridor the gray man was waiting.

  He stood directly across from the door, his long arms dangling from his slumped shoulders, the gills on his neck fluttering. When he saw her, his milky eyes widened. With a wet, rasping groan, he lurched.

  Mara jumped back. Her foot curled over the top step, and she began to tip, flailing her arms for balance. The gray man caught her shirt with his spidery hand and dragged her through the doorway.

  Mara kicked and thrashed, trying to get her feet under her again and wrest free, but his grip was too strong. He caught her around the waist and lifted her. Mara clawed at his hands and arms; her fingernails dug into his skin and salt water dribbled from the wounds. She reached for his face, for the gaping gills on his neck, but nothing hurt him. He didn’t even flinch.

  The gray man plodded down the corridor, Mara struggling futilely in his grasp. The murk-light dangling from her wrist swung back and forth, casting dancing shadows all along the walls.

  Then she remembered when she had seen him flinch.

  She stopped fighting abruptly. The gray man was so surprised his grip around her middle loosened—not enough for her to break away, but enough for her to twist one arm free and swing the murk-light wildly over her shoulder.

  The light struck the man’s neck with a solid thunk. The glass was strong; it didn’t break. The gray man dropped Mara to the ground to bat it away. She whipped the light at him again and again, hitting his shoulder, his neck, his face, and finally his brow. One glass pane cracked in a spiderweb of fractures.

  The captured flame surged with its first taste of fresh air, and fire escaped through the cracks in delicate golden wisps. Mara untangled the rope from her wrist and hooked it around the gray man’s grasping arm. His watery eyes grew wide, and he let out a frightened groan. Mara snatched the ring of keys from his belt and scrambled away.

  The gray man tried to shake the murk-light from his arm, but he only managed to knock it against the stone wall. The glass shattered and flames exploded from the broken globe with a bright pop. He screamed.

  Mara was already running. She looked back only once to see him batting angrily at his flaming sleeve. His cries were a terrible thing, agonized and wild, but she didn’t stop.

  She paused only when she reached the long hallway that sloped into the heart of the island. The dungeon was down there, through the vertebrate-stone arch, and that’s where she had to go. She dug into her oilskin sack for another murk-light. The gray man was bellowing behind her, his shouts carrying through the fortress, but he wasn’t following.

  Mara took a deep breath, gripped the keys tight, and returned to the depths of the island.

  19

  Rescue

  Finding her way to the dungeon was harder than Mara expected. There were more intersections than she could count, and all the hallways looked the same: floor, walls, and ceiling of black stone, distant drips of water the only sound, and nothing but darkness beyond the reach of her murk-light.

  Thinking that she might get a useful reaction like she had in the cave, she tried a bit of her mother’s song with the new words again: “Over the sea and under the stone, my island home it welcomes me.”

  The answer was a low rumble in the walls, so deep she felt it more than heard it. It came from all around—left and right, above and below, no direction stronger than any other—which was exactly the opposite of what she wanted.

  Mara stopped singing, and the rumble faded. She needed something else. But all she remembered about being carried to the dungeon was the dragging shuffle-scrape of the gray man’s feet in the darkness.

  Footsteps. Stone.

  “Magic can’t solve every problem.” Mum used to say that, and she had never been sad or disappointed when she did. She had always said it with a smile, like she was facing a challenge she was happy to take on. “Even if mages sometimes forget that.”

  Mara looked down.

  The gray man didn’t lift his feet when he walked. He shuffled along, his heavy shoes rasping over the stone. He must have walked from the sea cave to the dungeon a dozen times or more, every time he brought a prisoner inside.

  And he had left a path: a trail of fresh scuff marks.

  Sprinting as fast as she could, Mara followed the scuff marks all the way to the dungeon. She skidded to a stop in front of the door and began searching through the gray man’s ring of keys. The lock was big and old, so she tried the biggest and oldest key on the ring. The rusty metal shrieked, and something inside the lock clanked.

  At the same moment, Mara felt a kick of dizziness, as though the floor had lurched beneath her. A low sound groaned through the fortress, like rocks grinding on rocks, but it faded quickly.

  Behind the door somebody shouted, “What was that?”

  “Is he coming back?”

  “What’s happening?”

  They had felt it too. But what was it? Had the Lord of the Muck placed some kind of protection on his fortress since last night? If he had, it hadn’t stopped Mara from getting in, hadn’t stopped her from breaking the obscuring spell on the sea cave, hadn’t stopped her from escaping the gray man. It hadn’t done anything at all that she could see, and she didn’t have time to worry about it.

  Mara reached for the key again. It turned slowly, stubbornly, until finally the tumblers clacked into place. Chips of rusted metal pattered to the floor. The door was so heavy Mara had to pull with all of her weight. The hinges screeched in protest.

  From the other side came a frightened cry: “They’re coming back!”

  She slipped inside. The candle by the door flickered to life.

  “Mara!”

  “Izzy!”

  She ran down the aisle between the cages, her murk-light swinging wildly. Voices called out as she passed, but she didn’t stop until she was in front of Izzy’s cage.

  Izzy was sitting on the floor, leaning into the corner of her cell so that half of her was lit, the other half shadowed. “What are you doing here? We thought you got away!”

  “I came back for you. I have the keys.” Mara’s hands shook as she searched for the right one. “I’m going to get you out of here. All of you.”

  Izzy was shaking her head. “It’s too dangerous! He could come back any moment.”

  “He’s not here. We saw him leave. Driftwood is waiting outside.”

  She tried another key—there! The lock opened with a click; Mara pulled the door open. Izzy winced and hissed in pain as she rose to her feet.

  “Are you hurt?” Mara demanded, looking Izzy over frantically. Izzy’s right arm was strapped across her middle by a ragged sling. The cloth was dirty and stained, but Mara couldn’t see what injuries it was hiding. “What did he do to you?”

  “I just need a second,” Izzy said, panting. “I’m fine.” She swayed before leaning heavily against Mara.

  “You’re hurt,” Mara said.

  She didn’t like the way Izzy was staggering, as though she couldn’t find her balance. She didn’t like the strange angles and points pressing from underneath the dirty bandages. She felt sick to her stomach. She’d left Izzy for a whole day and night. That was more than enough time for the Muck to have begun his work.

  “Not as bad as I might have been,” Izzy said. “You running out of that laboratory like a madwoman messed up his plans. After he got it all cleaned up, he only had time to do one side. Come
on, come on. Let’s get the rest of these open.”

  Izzy couldn’t balance on her own, so together they went from cage to cage, turning every lock and opening every door. There were fourteen prisoners in all. A scowling, dreadlocked girl about Izzy’s age stared when Mara asked if she was Jemi, Captain Amanta’s daughter.

  “You’ve met my mother?” Jemi asked warily.

  “I’ve met your whole crew,” Mara said. She held the cell door open to let Jemi out. She was the last; the next cell was empty. “Where’s the man who was with you? Is he here?”

  There was a gleam of tears in Jemi’s eyes. “They took him away. He never came back.”

  Feather’s dad. Because she had found that femur, Mara had known one of the prisoners must have died, but she hadn’t known who it was. Feather was back at Tidewater Isle, eagerly helping the Lady trap the Muck, believing her father would be safe soon. The sick feeling in Mara’s stomach only grew worse.

  “We have to go,” Mara said, “but where’s—”

  For a second, Mara couldn’t breathe.

  Fish Hook was nowhere to be seen.

  She ran through the dungeon, searching every cage, shining her light into every shadow. There was a new roar of fear rumbling through her ears.

  “Izzy!” Mara called out, her voice wavering. She ran back to the prisoners clustered by the door. “Was my friend here? Was Fish Hook here?”

  “Those men brought him in last night. He was right over—” Izzy looked around in confusion. “He was right there.”

  “They took him earlier,” said an old man. He hunched up and coughed, his body quaking. “While you were sleeping. That creeping man came in and dragged him away.”

  “Oh,” Izzy said. “Oh, no, Mara. He said he got caught when he was looking for me.”

  And he had only been looking for Izzy because Mara had asked him to. Mara sucked in a short breath and pressed her lips together. There was no time to panic. The Muck had taken him away. That meant Fish Hook was already in the laboratory. She could go to the laboratory. The Muck wasn’t here. She could still save Fish Hook. He was going to be fine.