The Storyteller

by Traci Chee

  Then the carriage came into view. Drawn by six white horses and flanked by a team of mounted soldiers, it was a splendor in black and gold, with the Oxscinian crest of a tree and crown emblazoned on the door and sheer white curtains drawn across the windows.

  “The queen!” Lac whispered.

  The redcoats on horseback rode in tight formation, their bodies and banners blocking much of the carriage from view.

  But between the undulating flags, the horses tossing their heads, the soldiers’ flashing gun grips, Ed saw a crowned silhouette inside the carriage lift its hand.

  The crowd cheered.

  “She’s waving to us!” Lac cried.

  Later, Ed would try to remember if he’d seen a puff of smoke from the treetops, if he’d heard the gunshot. If he could have done something to protect the queen. But no, it had been so fast, there had only been the royal wave, and then—

  Blood, spattering the curtains like dozens of tiny red flowers. In the carriage, Queen Heccata collapsed.

  Before anyone had time to react, there was an explosion on the opposite side of the street. Huge chunks of lumber and rock blew outward from the hillside. Smoke and powder clouded the air as the tottering houses collapsed and the edge of the mountain began to crumble.

  Then came the screams.

  The redcoats rushed to the queen’s carriage. Others raced to the site of the explosion as the crowds trampled one another in their haste to escape.

  “The queen is dead!” Lac cried, horrified. “Someone killed her, right in front of us!”

  But Ed wasn’t listening. He was watching the man in black climb down from his tree and turn nonchalantly up the hillside, but not before Ed caught a glimpse of a rifle beneath his long coat. In the chaos, no one else noticed as he slipped away.

  “The queen!” Lac kept saying. “How could we let this happen?”

  “Get ahold of yourself, sir.” Hobs smacked him across the face. “We didn’t let it happen.”

  “But we can stop who did it.” Ed began to shove through the crowd. “Come on, before the assassin gets away.”

  “Assassin? Are you sure?” To his surprise, their new friend with the blue eyes was already behind him, all the merriment drained from their face. They drew a knife. “Which way?”

  Lac and Hobs joined them as Ed leapt over the barrier, leading them into the forest.

  “Assassin!” Lac shouted. Ed winced, knowing the man in black might have heard. “He went this way! Guards!”

  They chased the assassin up the hill, between trees and over logs. At one point, the young person broke away from them, disappearing into the undergrowth.

  They reappeared moments later, emerging from a crop of spiked leaves as they slashed at the man with their knife.

  The man leapt back, drawing a curved, copper-colored sword in one smooth motion. Ed dashed forward—he’d gotten faster, stronger, in his three months at sea, on the road—his long legs pumping, closing the distance as he left Lac and Hobs behind.

  The scent of iron wafted out from the blade as it nicked their new friend’s throat. The blood on the weapon was quickly absorbed into the steel, but the rest of their blood spilled from them as they fell, clutching their neck.

  “No!” Ed skidded to a stop by their side.

  Their blue eyes were open, but they didn’t see him. They were already dead.

  There was a faint breeze as the man in black moved to strike again. But he paused, mid-swing, and Ed got his first good look at the assassin’s face.

  He was old—much older than Ed would have expected, given his agility, with lined eyes and sunken, sun-spotted cheeks.

  For a moment, he stared at Ed. “So.” The assassin’s voice was like smoke, his words seeming to disappear almost as soon as they were spoken. “He lied to us.”

  He? Ed’s mind whirled. Us.

  Arcadimon . . . and the Guard.

  The assassin knew who Ed was, knew he was alive—and that meant Arc was in danger. Ed grabbed the young person’s knife from the ground beside their body.

  But the man in black was so fast. The sword flashed.

  Ed did not flinch.

  But before the blade could reach him, a gunshot rent the air. The assassin hissed as a bullet struck him in the collarbone. The killing blow missed.

  Ed glanced behind him. Lac was holding a smoking gun. Around him, a small army of redcoats was racing toward the man in black.

  Ed lunged—probably a stupid move, he realized belatedly, something Lac would do—and the assassin’s sword kissed his wrist, his thigh.

  But the redcoats were too close. The man in black sheathed his blade and darted away, clutching his injury.

  The soldiers streamed by them as Lac and Hobs knelt beside Ed. “You’re bleeding!” Lac said, obviously.

  Hobs began wrapping the injuries. “What did he mean, ‘He lied to us’?” the boy asked, squinting at Ed. “Who’s ‘he’?”

  Shaking his head, Ed didn’t answer. Arc was in danger, and Ed was too far away to save him.

  CHAPTER 21

  The Power of the Scribes

  Three weeks. That was all Sefia had to master excision, an extinct form of magic, with nothing to guide her but a Book she could not trust. Could she do it before the Book caught her in one of its snares, entangling her more deeply in her destiny? Could she do it before thousands died in the defense of Roku, and the Volcanic Kingdom fell to the Alliance?

  She just had to be faster, smarter, stronger than the Book. She had to.

  At night, she laid the Book in her lap and studied her father’s progress with excision or practiced hand motions by her window while boats ferried back and forth between Braska and the outer islands. There were three entrances into Blackfire Bay—one to the east, one to the west, and a narrow channel to the north between two smaller islands. With the other entrances covered by the remains of the Black Navy, the north channel would be the most logical point of attack for the Alliance invasion fleet.

  Sovereign Ianai had ordered the towns along the channel to be completely given over to the Black Navy and the volunteer militia, so nonessential citizens were being moved behind capital walls for safety.

  Sefia pressed her forehead to the glass. Below her, the districts of Braska were separated by deep trenches that would channel mudflows when the volcanoes erupted, sending the blistering rivers of lava and rock safely into the bay. The stench of sulfur permeated the capital, muted only a little by the pans of sage and flowers that burned beneath the lampposts.

  When she finally crawled into bed each night, she slept little, tossing and turning on the uncomfortably stuffed mattress. Every time she closed her eyes, she pictured the Illuminated world—bright and immense—trying to drown her.

  After a few hours of fitful sleep, she’d pull on her cold-weather layers, take the Book, and leave the city before dawn, hiking up the cliffs that overlooked the capital to the high mountain plains, where geysers steamed and smoke from hidden volcanic vents went drifting over the brittle grasses and windswept trees.

  Archer remained behind, hauling sandbags, stocking gun turrets, ushering evacuees to temporary housing, doing whatever Sovereign Ianai and the Black Navy required.

  Alone in the dry cold, with the black cones of Roku’s volcanoes in the distance, Sefia practiced what she learned of the Scribes’ power.

  To excise something without causing a ripple of consequences, you had to cut the threads of light that connected it to the rest of the world. A single stone could have dozens of influences: the rocks it had chipped on its way downstream, the grasses it smothered, the insects and tiny rodents it sheltered, the miners it tripped as they stumbled home from the quarry.

  In the Illuminated world, Sefia would sever the pulsing streams that linked the stone to these other things, so even if the stone disappeared, the chips, the smothered grasses,
the stubbed toes remained. The insects and field mice survived. But there were gaps in their history—like the architectural wonders and technological innovations the Scribes left behind when they erased writing from the world, for though people could use them, no one could remember when or how they were created—and someone, taking off his boots at night, might wonder at a particular bruise on his foot, having no recollection of where he’d gotten it.

  The days passed, but her progress was frustratingly slow. Again, she wished her father was actually with her, instead of just in the Book. Together, they could have conferred. Together, they could have made faster progress, more breakthroughs.

  But every so often, instead of turning to the page she wished, the Book would remind her: Lon was in the place of the fleshless, beyond the dome of the living world, with Mareah and Nin. He was a specter of the person he used to be. Even if she could have talked to him, she wouldn’t have recognized him.

  “I know,” she said once, snapping the covers shut. “But I need him. Show him to me.”

  When she opened the Book, it willingly parted to a scene of her father erasing skipping stones on the beach below the house. But she had to excise more than that. She had to excise ships. The people of Roku were depending on it.

  On her.

  She had to move faster.

  With her father’s progress to guide her, she began excising leaves from gnarled branches. She took boulders. Then entire trees.

  When she returned to the city at dusk, the construction would still be under way. No matter how late the hour, people were at work on the walls and batteries, erecting watchtowers on the cliffs.

  At the end of every day, Archer was exhausted but satisfied with the work.

  Helping. But not fighting. Not killing. Though that didn’t stop his nightmares.

  “They’re all counting on me,” Sefia said, touching their window.

  Archer came up behind her, smelling of sweat and dust and rain, though they hadn’t seen rain in months. “I couldn’t think of anyone better to count on.”

  “I’m scared. How many of them are going to die if I can’t do this?”

  “No one is going to die.” He turned her around, away from the window. “I believe that because I believe in you. More than anything else in the world.”

  She let him enfold her in his embrace. “I hope you’re right,” she whispered.

  One week turned into two. There was still no sign of the outlaws, who just might make it in time, with the Current to guide them.

  Had they been waylaid somehow? Had they run into the Alliance invasion fleet on their way to Roku?

  As the days counted down, Sefia began excising weatherbeaten shacks on lonely hills. She erased abandoned mine shafts. She removed a compound of buildings from the bottom of an old quarry.

  Could she erase an entire ship?

  Two?

  Half a fleet of them?

  * * *

  • • •

  The Alliance invasion fleet arrived at Roku three weeks after Sefia and Archer. It was a few hours before dawn, and the ships glittered along the horizon like a fearsome floating city, drawing ever closer.

  The Rokuine defenses had been fortified. The cannons had been stocked with shot. The volunteer militia had been given armaments and been hastily trained. Boats were waiting to retrieve the wounded from the water. They were as ready as they could have been.

  The steep ridges of the northern channel into Blackfire Bay had been evacuated and rigged with explosives that Archer found fascinating. You had to detonate the first by means of a wire, but if you placed them correctly, the others would be set off simply by the shocks, one after another, like a cascade. If Sefia failed, the explosives would be detonated, sending the mountainside crumbling into the water, taking out the edges of the Alliance fleet as it sailed into Blackfire Bay.

  It was a destructive, desperate measure Sovereign Ianai hoped they wouldn’t have to use, because if Sefia failed, it wouldn’t take out enough ships to save them. But fewer Alliance ships might mean fewer Rokuine casualties.

  It was in one of these abandoned cliff towns that Sefia and Archer stood, among the empty shells of houses, doors swinging in the chill winter wind. From there, the Alliance invasion fleet would sail close enough for her to reach it, excising half of their ships before they had the chance to fire a single broadside. In the south, Sefia could see Braska alight like a shining target.

  Her gaze passed to the Alliance vessels, now beginning to take shape. She could almost pick out Alliance flags coiling and flapping in the moonlight like gold-blue serpents with forked tongues.

  Archer stood by her, his body a shelter from the cold wind. Without a word, he placed a hand on her shoulder.

  The warmth of his touch coursed through her.

  She could do this.

  She would do this.

  Because he believed in her. And she wouldn’t let him down.

  She blinked. Light unfurled across her vision like a golden veil. In the Illuminated world, she could see all twenty-four ships of the Alliance fleet, and as they inched closer, she could see more—every rusted bolt at the portholes, every strand of rope in the rigging, every beating heart of every soldier.

  She took a breath.

  And when she exhaled, she felt her Sight expanding. The currents of light separated into filaments of time, into stories both close and distant. The fleet was a dense web of gold, more entangled than anything she’d ever seen, woven through with veins so bright they seemed to throb.

  Lifting her hands, she began the work of excision. She sliced through the particles of light. She severed connections. She watched currents of gold go dark.

  “Sefia?” Archer asked. “They’re almost here.”

  She was running out of time.

  She couldn’t find all the connections, couldn’t sever them neatly. She had to act now.

  So she slashed. She shredded and tore. She could almost feel the story threads snapping in her fingers, until she held half the light of the Alliance fleet in her hands.

  And she extinguished them. The timbers, the sails, the running lines, the anchors and anchor chains, all the history of all the ships dimmed, died, and disintegrated into nothing.

  She’d done it.

  She’d excised eight ships.

  She’d saved hundreds—if not thousands—of lives. Her limbs felt watery with relief.

  But then the screams reached her.

  Sefia opened her eyes to . . . there was no better word for it than horror.

  As expected, some of the Alliance ships had disappeared completely, their crews floundering, bewildered, in the black water. But three vessels had only been partially excised—their sails shredded, their cannons corroded as if by acid, their decks cratered with hundreds of holes.

  The timbers of the nearest ship caught fire. Black smoke billowed into the sky as flames licked at the cobweb-like rigging, the splintered masts.

  But the ships weren’t the only remnants of her failed magic.

  In the light of the blaze, she could see sailors staggering across the listing decks—it was like they’d been half-erased, trailing blood and body parts attached only by raw tendons.

  An explosion rocked the darkness as another ship went up in a ball of flame, so bright and hot, Sefia felt it on her tearstained cheeks.

  As the small, flailing figures caught fire and fell, shrieking, into the water, she remembered the future the Book had laid out for her: She would demolish her enemies with a wave of her hand. She would watch men burn on the sea.

  It had been written, and learning Alteration had not only failed to change it, doing so had ensured that it came to pass.

  “What have I done?” she whispered.

  Archer tried to take her hands. “Sefia, look at me. How do we fix this?”

  F
ix this. Yes. She had to fix this. She wrenched out of his grasp. Before he could say anything more, she was summoning the Sight, she was seeking stable landing among the wrecked ships, she was disappearing with a wave of her trembling arms.

  Then she was among them.

  The sounds struck her first: creaking ships being sucked under the water, crackling flames, the moans of the people she’d only partially excised, their screams and hoarse, pitiful cries.

  They were missing arms, legs, fingers, eyes, chunks of their ribs. Some were already dead, and among the corpses she saw scooped-out skulls, black maws where chests should have been. Some survivors were crawling toward her, gasping. One woman seemed to be missing her bones, her body going gelatinous, the dirty blond knot of her hair slipping from the top of her head as all her flesh collapsed under its own weight.

  As Sefia hesitated, a man divested of his skin, like a peeled plum, staggered into her from behind, pleading for help.

  Sefia felt the man’s hot weeping muscles press against her back.

  “Please.” The skinless man could barely form the word with his bleeding lips.

  Sefia nodded. She sobbed as she lifted her fingers . . . and snapped the man’s neck.

  She hadn’t wanted this. The Alliance soldiers were dying in agony. Hundreds of them. They’d been her enemy, but they hadn’t deserved this.

  Blinking, Sefia drew one of her knives and lifted her shaking hands. The blade floated out of her fingers, hovering, for a moment, in midair, the firelight dancing along the steel edge.

  The ship was sinking, shifting and groaning beneath her feet as the water claimed it. She didn’t have much time.

  In the Illuminated world, she found every person that could not survive after what she’d done, every tortured, half-erased soldier left on the ship, saw their pain in hot sparks of light, like signal flares.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and flicked her fingers, sending the knife flying across the ship. One by one, she found them all—the sobbing, the screaming, the unconscious—and one by one, she killed them.