The Storyteller

by Traci Chee

  Her blade tore through the air, striking skulls, slitting throats.

  She teleported to the next ship and the next, her knife swift and merciless—or was it merciful?—punctuating the end of every life with a quick cut. Some, the ones who might still make it, she left alive, hoping they’d survive long enough for the rescue boats to reach them.

  When it was done, everything was silent but for the snapping and biting of the flames, the sounds of the sea swallowing the corpses. The rescue boats, bearing lanterns and doctors, had almost reached her.

  Shivering, she teleported back to the cliff.

  To the west, the remainder of the Alliance invasion fleet was retreating. The Black Navy ships were in pursuit.

  And there were new sails on the northern horizon. War drums and battle cries.

  The outlaws had arrived—the Current, the Brother, and the Crux leading the charge. They sailed in among the Alliance warships like a wedge into wood, making the blue vessels splinter off as they tried to escape from Blackfire Bay.

  But the cliff was bare. Archer was nowhere to be seen.

  “Archer!” Her voice was thin, stretched taut as a wire.

  There was the scrabbling sound of falling rock.

  “Sefia?”

  She raced to the edge of the cliff, where she found Archer climbing down the jagged stones, his face drawn with worry.

  But when he saw her, the fear drained from his eyes. He scrambled up, ignoring the cuts the rocks left on his hands and arms, and caught her as she fell to her knees in the dirt.

  “I was going after you,” he said, folding her into his arms.

  Of course he was. She should have known. She squeezed her eyes shut, curling her fingers in his shirt.

  “I’m sorry it didn’t work.”

  “It did work. It just didn’t work all the way.”

  “What do you mean, it worked? Was excision supposed to look . . . like that?”

  “No, it didn’t work on them . . . but it worked on the other ships.”

  “What other ships?”

  “The ones I erased.” She pulled away from him, frowning. “How many ships do you think were out there in the first place?”

  He looked confused. “Nineteen.”

  “No. There were twenty-four. Don’t you remember?” When he shook his head, she continued, “Where did you think those extra thousand soldiers in the water came from?”

  “I don’t know. I—” Archer passed a hand over his face, as if that would return the missing ships to his memory. “You really did it?”

  Sefia swallowed. She had really done it. She’d rewritten the world. She’d changed the future. But there’d been a cost. One she would never pay again.

  End of the Rope

  With the knowledge that her illness was transmitted through the air she breathed, carried in the fine particles of blood she coughed out of her lungs, Mareah decided to turn her copper sword, which absorbed blood on contact, into three masks. The same blade she’d used to execute her parents would, she hoped, protect Lon and Sefia from contracting the same illness that was killing her.

  So she unspooled the embossed leather of the grip, broke the wooden handle, and asked Nin to remake the steel into fine-gauge wire.

  She cried as she wove the metal thread into a flexible mesh, her tears making her fingers so slippery she pricked herself again and again, her blood soaked up by the thin filaments that were all that remained of the weapon that had been at her side for decades. When she was done, she padded the masks with cotton and slipped one over her head.

  Meanwhile, Lon did what he could to ease Mareah’s symptoms and prolong her life.

  In the mornings, while Nin watched Sefia in the village below, Lon took to the kitchen, where he brewed draughts and potions, sparkling with magic. Wearing his mask, he’d bring them into the bedroom where Mareah lay, and she would drink them all down, grimacing at the taste, at the burn in her throat.

  “I should have been an Administrator,” he said. “Why was I studying books when I could’ve been studying the human body? What good are books when you can’t save the ones you love?”

  Mareah replaced her mask and squeezed his hand. “I believe in you.” The corners of her eyes crinkled as she smiled a smile he couldn’t see.

  He continued to study the power of the Scribes, slowly mastering the magic required to erase Mareah’s illness and rewrite her future.

  Until one day, he learned that it would not be possible.

  The Illuminated world was woven of filaments of shared history, individual threads—people, clouds, the turning of the seasons, tender green shoots, blistering changes deep in the earth, every creature, every pebble—all converging and diverging in an infinite web, a labyrinth, a sprawling story of the world.

  Some of these strands were so important, so intertwined with other objects, other lives, other stories, that in the Illuminated world they blazed like fire, forming strong, bright connections that could not be severed without ripping away parts of everything they were connected to.

  That was how it was with Mareah’s illness. Lon couldn’t remove the sickness from her lungs without shredding the rest of her body. And maybe his and Sefia’s as well.

  You see, excision was the simplest of the Scribes’ powers, but it was also the cruelest. It was a hacksaw. It was a seam ripper. It could gouge out parts of the Illuminated world, but it could not heal the wounds it caused.

  To do that, to fill in the cavities you’d left, to sew up the rifts you’d made, to stitch the raw edges of the world back together, you had to use the second half of the Scribes’ powers—addition.

  Addition allowed you to make adjustments to the Illuminated world. It allowed you to create, to build, to make the world anew. And, most relevant to Lon, it allowed you to excise even the brightest pieces of the Illuminated world without causing irreparable damage to the delicate fabric that surrounded it.

  But when he turned to the Book to study the remainder of the Scribes’ power, he found the pages missing. Every scrap.

  Someone had taken them.

  Through careful research, he learned that one of the Librarians had begun removing traces of the Scribes from the Book, starting with the highest tiers of their power, their best-guarded secrets, and placing them within a sealed chest inside the Library vault.

  All those years with access to the greatest power in Kelanna, and Lon hadn’t known.

  The old Librarian had died before she could finish her task, but the damage to the Book had been done, the pages Lon needed now locked in the lair of his enemy.

  The vault was a beautiful, complicated piece of work. Set deep into the unblemished stone of the mountain, its single five-spoke wheel was flanked by two keyholes. Lon remembered studying them with fascination when he was an Apprentice. The one on the left resembled a compass rose, embellished with a rising sun, a waxing moon, and fanciful images of flying creatures—an owl, a bat, a hawk, a lark—carved mid-flight around the edges. The one on the right was encircled by an engraving of a mythical thunderbird, its beak open, its wings spread, with lightning clutched in its talons. To open the door, you needed both keys and a complex sequence of twists and turns that only Librarians and Directors knew.

  “We have the Librarian’s key,” Lon said. Nin had made them a copy eleven years ago, back when they thought they could steal the Book and escape the Guard without bloodshed, but their plans had changed at the last minute, and they’d never gotten the chance to use their copy. Since then, Lon had attached the key to a simple gold chain, which he twirled on his finger as he paced the bedroom, making the intricate bits and wards wink in the light from the window.

  It was spring, and he’d filled the room with dozens of flowers—in vases by the bedside, on the dresser, on the sill—perfuming the room with the smells of the garden Mareah loved so much: earth, sprout
s, sap, blooms.

  In the bed, Mareah coughed. “We know the sequence. I couldn’t forget it if I tried.”

  But to get the pages, they needed the second key.

  And that key hung around the neck of the Director.

  With a sigh, Lon caught the key in his fist. “We barely got out alive the first time.” When they’d both been healthy.

  And they hadn’t had a little girl to protect.

  Lon climbed onto the bed beside Mareah. She was getting so thin. Through his mask, he put his lips to her hair. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  When she spoke, her voice was muffled by her own mask: “It’s okay,” she said. “It was a lot to hope. After all, we already knew: What is written comes to pass.”

  So he put the key in the back of the closet where they kept their coins and jewelry. And for the first time in his life, he gave up.

  CHAPTER 22

  Her Father’s Daughter

  Honoring the Rokuine victory over the Alliance in what the newsmen were calling the Battle of Blackfire Bay, the castle at Braska was hosting a celebratory feast. All day long, the castle staff had been busy making up the cavernous dining hall while the cooks prepared heaping platters of food for the outlaws, the bloodletters, and the officers of the Black Navy.

  The Black Beauty and the candidates had escaped, along with ten other Alliance ships, but the rest of the nineteen—no, the twenty-four—had either been sunk or captured. All day, the Black Navy had been busy taking possession of the remaining Alliance vessels and their crews, while volunteers dredged the water for bodies and debris.

  Curled on her side in her bed, Sefia had watched them—the black ships escorting the blue ones into the harbor, the prisoners disembarking, the outlaws and bloodletters being welcomed into the capital like heroes. She’d turned over. She’d slept.

  If she’d had her way, she wouldn’t have attended the feast either, but Sovereign Ianai had insisted. So she bathed in the volcanically heated pool adjoining her room. She may have slept again.

  Archer was in and out. Sometimes he was lying beside her, his body curved around hers. Sometimes he was bringing her tea or plates of food she barely touched.

  At some point, she donned the clothing that had appeared on the chair by the window: the silk blouse, the black corset and matching trousers with gold embellishments, the green velvet jacket. Once, Sefia looked up, into the mirror, and saw Frey standing behind her, gently combing the tangles out of her wet hair. The girl was dazzling in a floor-length cerulean gown that seemed to move about her ankles like water, the diamond bangle from the Trove sparkling at her wrist. She caught Sefia’s eye in the mirror and smiled sadly. When Sefia looked again, Frey was gone.

  Sefia stared at her reflection. These were the finest clothes she’d ever worn, but she hardly noticed the fine cloth, the dusting of gold Frey had left on her eyelids, or the ribbons Frey had woven into her hair. What she saw in the mirror were the dead arrayed behind her like an army: mutilated faces, missing jaws and noses and the caps of their skulls, the faces of people she’d flayed and tortured in dozens of unimaginable ways.

  The daughter of an assassin and the most powerful sorcerer the world had seen in years, and she’d grow up to surpass them both in greatness.

  But there’d be a cost.

  There’s always a cost.

  She’d massacred over a hundred people in a single night. She must have taken more lives than even Archer now.

  Had the Book wanted her to do this? Was it fate?

  She would never attempt excision like that again. She looked down at her hands, the black-and-silver ring that had been her mother’s glinting on one of her murderous fingers.

  Never again.

  “Sefia?”

  She turned to find Archer standing there, awkwardly tugging at his cuffs, and for a moment, even through the haze of her guilt, she was struck by how well his tailored jacket fit every plane of his shoulders, how the gold piping of his suit accented the color of his eyes.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  She shook her head, and he crossed to her, taking her hands.

  “We don’t have to go,” he said.

  She looked up at him through her lashes. “You think the sovereign would be okay with that?”

  He chuckled. “They’d probably send an armed guard to haul us down there.”

  “Yeah.” In all her interactions with Ianai Blackfire Raganet, it had become clear that when the sovereign demanded your presence, you appeared, whether you wanted to or not. Sefia took Archer’s arm with a sigh. “Let’s get this over with.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Overhead, candles flared in the dining hall chandeliers, casting dancing waves of light over grand tables of Oxscinian hardwood piled high with food and drink.

  Before they ate, Sovereign Ianai, crowned with a simple circlet of diamonds, presented Sefia with a medal for her service to the kingdom. On one side, it was engraved with the Rokuine crest; on the other, a dragon, the sigil of the Raganet family.

  Sefia bowed.

  Everyone in the room applauded.

  She didn’t think most of them knew about the five ships she’d fully excised, but she wondered how many of them knew what had happened to the people who’d been half-erased by her magic. Some of them must have questioned the skinless, dismembered corpses they’d plucked out of the water. She wondered if they’d still be applauding if they knew the whole truth.

  “You may not believe it,” Ianai said as they put the medal around her neck, “but you did something incredible yesterday.”

  Sefia swallowed. “Do you know everything that I did?”

  The sovereign nodded, and their hard black eyes softened slightly. “Archer told me.”

  “It doesn’t feel incredible.”

  “Taking that many lives never should.” They put their long, graceful hand on her shoulder in an unexpected display of compassion. “But you saved lives too—the lives of my people—and I’ll be forever grateful for that.”

  With another bow, Sefia returned to her place, and the feast began. At the other tables, Aljan couldn’t stop gazing at Frey long enough to eat, but Griegi picked apart every dish, pausing only to scribble notes in his recipe book or exclaim over choice morsels, which he offered to Keon at the end of his fork. Blinking in wonder at all the grand trappings of the castle hall, old Goro kept smoothing down his stubborn gray hair only to have it stick back up again moments later. At the head table, Reed was seated next to Sefia. He’d washed up, but he must not have had any finery to wear, because he was dressed in an outfit she’d seen him wear on the Current many times before. Compared to Dimarion, who sat across from them, decked out in silks and jewels, Captain Reed appeared a little grubby, though he didn’t seem to care.

  “Archer says you did it,” he said, tapping each gold piece of cutlery before straightening one of his forks. “You magicked away five whole ships?”

  She nodded.

  “Five whole ships,” he repeated, shaking his head. “And no one remembers they were even there in the first place?”

  “Only me.”

  At the sound of her voice, his eyes softened with pity. “He also said you made mistakes.”

  Sudden tears flooded her vision. She nodded again.

  “I’m sorry, kid.”

  A platter came by. She tried not to gag at the smell of charred meat.

  Under the table, Archer squeezed her hand. “You’re not back there anymore,” he whispered. “You’re safe.”

  Wiping her eyes, she squeezed back. “I don’t know how to live with this. All those people . . .”

  Reed looked from her to Archer and back. “I think it’s a balance: forgive yourself so you don’t get eaten alive by guilt, but never forget, unless you want to make the same mistakes again.”

 
“I won’t. Never again.”

  He took her chin between his callused fingers. “Listen, Sef. You messed up this time. But you still saved a kingdom. You still did some good, and you’re still a force to be reckoned with.” He kissed her on the forehead. “Don’t give up on yourself.”

  As the feast continued around her, Sefia picked at her plate. She’d failed to save the dead she still saw when she closed her eyes. She’d failed to stop her own future from coming to pass. But she had succeeded in changing the future. She’d rewritten the world, excised five Alliance warships, so in everyone’s memory but hers, the Alliance had sent an invasion fleet of nineteen instead of twenty-four. Not even the hundreds of sailors pulled out of Blackfire Bay knew how they’d gotten there.

  Maybe the Book had tricked her into fulfilling part of her destiny, but she had changed something. Five ships might not have been enough to rewrite the future entirely, but it was something. She wasn’t at the end of her rope yet. She could still fight.

  Captain Reed was right. She couldn’t give up. If she gave up, fate would claim her. And Archer.

  She would have to try again, but not until she had the full power of the Scribes in her hands.

  Her father hadn’t had the resources to acquire the pages in the vault, but Sefia did. She could do what Lon hadn’t been able to. Thanks to Mareah, who’d taught her the alphabet and sung her secret songs, she already had one of the tools she needed.

  She’d recognized it the second she saw her father describe the vault’s two keyholes, inscribed with birds and bats. To open the door, he’d said, you needed both keys and a complex sequence of twists and turns that only Librarians and Directors knew.

  Well, Sefia thought, only Librarians, Directors, and my mother.

  The song Mareah had sung, night after night, had given Sefia the series of rotations she needed to break into the vault.

  Little hawk, little hawk, don’t fly away.