The Storyteller

by Traci Chee

  Turn the left key to the engraving of the hawk.

  For you’re a mighty huntress with claws to catch your prey.

  Turn the right key to the thunderbird’s talons.

  Sefia knew her father had discovered the alphabet blocks Mareah had been using to teach her to read, but she wondered if he’d known Mareah was also teaching her how to steal the Guard’s best-kept secrets when Mareah was too ill to do it herself.

  With the sequence already memorized, now Sefia only needed the keys. A copy of the Librarian’s key must be in the house on the hill overlooking the sea, in the closet her father had veiled with magic.

  The Director’s key, however, must be on King Darion Stonegold, sailing aboard the Barbaro at the front of the war in Oxscini’s Bay of Batteram.

  The key. The Director.

  If she did this right, she could capture the single most important figure in the Red War and gain access to the second half of the Scribes’ powers in one fell swoop. Being a Politician, Stonegold lacked the skill to teleport from a prison cell. She could strip him of his magic after she’d stolen the pages from the vault and mastered Alteration.

  And in the meantime, the Alliance would be without a leader. It would take time for even the Guard to recover from that. Time for Sefia to find, capture, and excise the powers from all the remaining Guardians.

  The Alliance would disband. The Red War would grind to a halt.

  And without a war to win, Archer would live.

  She explained her plan to him the next morning, as the city was waking from its revelry. Below their window, people were staggering home along the steep streets, shuffling through used firecrackers and crumpled paper streamers.

  “I’ve already done what I was supposed to do, though. I fulfilled my destiny. I killed”—Sefia swallowed—“all those people. There’s only one thing I have to avoid now.”

  She’d already lost her parents. She had to make sure she didn’t lose her friends, her allies, or the boy she loved.

  Archer crossed his arms. “The legend also says you’ll turn the tide of the war. You haven’t done that.”

  “I changed the outcome of the Battle of Blackfire Bay.” She shrugged into a coat. “Doesn’t that count?”

  “If it counts, then you only did what you were destined to do from the beginning.” He sighed. “And if you excised those ships only because you were supposed to, then you didn’t change anything at all. You can’t have it both ways.”

  Sefia sat on the edge of the bed. He was right.

  If excising the Alliance ships and changing the outcome of the battle was the event to which the legends referred, turning the tide in the deadliest war Kelanna had ever seen, then she’d done nothing but make her future come to pass.

  But if that part of the legend was still to come, then she could still change it. If that part of the legend still lay ahead of her, then so did hope . . . and danger.

  And she would need the full power of the Scribes to overcome it.

  “Did you see twenty-four ships out there?” she asked.

  “No. Only sixteen and the three of them you . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “Destroyed,” she finished for him. Closing her eyes, she saw her victims—disfigured and dismembered, dying on the crumbling decks—and she vowed again that she wouldn’t attempt excision until she’d mastered the entirety of Alteration.

  “I fulfilled that part of my destiny because I only had half of the Scribes’ power,” she said, “but I still altered the future. If I learn the rest of Alteration, I think I can change both our fates . . . without casualties.”

  Archer was silent, running his thumb along the worry stone.

  She held out her hand to him. “Are you with me?”

  In answer, he put his arms around her waist. “Always.”

  She blinked and, with a wave of her arms, teleported them to the house on the hill overlooking the sea.

  Snow covered the cliff, the steps. As Sefia opened the broken door, she saw drifts of it accumulating beneath the broken windows, powdering the decaying draperies and shards of pottery that littered the floor.

  As Archer stood in the center of the room, turning slowly, Sefia made her way to the hidden closet, where she pulled open the door and dropped to her knees, pawing through the gold ingots, the scattered coins, the packets of seeds.

  She found the key wedged between the floor and the baseboard near the back of the closet. Carefully, she rubbed her thumb over its surface, blowing on it to dislodge the years of dust and grime.

  It was exquisite. Its bow had been formed in the shape of a thunderbird with rubies for eyes, and engravings of feathers cascaded down its shaft to the pin.

  Nin had made this from a casting of Erastis’s key.

  Sefia had known Nin was a skilled locksmith, but she hadn’t known Nin was an artist, with an unerring eye for beauty.

  Slipping its chain over her head, Sefia could feel the key pressed against her chest, over her heart, and she wondered if the original was half as beautiful.

  “Did you find it?” Archer called from behind her.

  Sefia nodded. Sitting back on her heels, she accidentally set off a small landslide of seed packages—castor beans, crab’s eyes, corn cockles, larkspur, moonflower, wolfsbane—and she paused for a second before pocketing a packet of strychnine seeds. If she was fighting the Guard, it could come in handy.

  “This was your home,” Archer said as she emerged from the closet.

  She nodded again.

  “It must have been nice.”

  “It was. Once.”

  They wandered through the house, Sefia pointing out the chair where Lon used to tell stories by the fire; the kitchen, where her mother had butchered chickens and filleted fish with sure, quick strokes of her knives; the basement bedroom, where Archer picked up a moldering toy in the shape of a crocodile.

  At last, they ended up in the garden, blanketed with snow. “If I can pull this off, we’ll both be free,” Sefia said, her breath smoking in the cold air. “But it feels like we’ve still got a long way to go.”

  “Steal the Director’s key. Break into the Library. Learn a power no one’s used for thousands of years.” Archer listed the tasks on his fingers. “What could go wrong?”

  She gave him a halfhearted smile, and he hugged her quickly to his side.

  “I’ll be with you,” he said.

  “It’ll mean fighting again. Maybe killing.” Her stomach churned at the thought. They’d both caused so much bloodshed.

  “I won’t do it, Sefia. Not unless I have to.” His voice was heavy.

  “I hope you won’t have to.” If all went according to plan, they’d beat fate without taking another life.

  But fate, of course, had plans of its own. When they teleported back to the castle at Braska, Frey was waiting for them, still wearing her dress from the night before.

  “Where have you been?” she demanded. “Everyone’s been looking for you.”

  “What’s wrong?” Sefia asked, glancing out the window. But there were no enemy ships in Blackfire Bay. The city appeared safe.

  “A messenger ship arrived this morning,” Frey said. “The Alliance has taken the Bay of Batteram. The Oxscinian capital is under siege.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Strange, Beautiful, and Deadly

  Cannek Reed awoke to the sound of the water whispering, Soon, soon, soon.

  He staggered from his quarters, pulling on his coat. In the frosty predawn, Horse and Doc were the only other two people above deck, sitting beneath a blanket in the crow’s nest, watching the constellations disappear. Smoke curled from the galley stovepipes, smelling of cinnamon bread. The rest of the Current seemed to be asleep—the crew dreaming in their bunks, the timbers creaking and groaning like the breathing of some enormous slumbering beast. From above, Doc
and Horse looked down at him, and the carpenter smiled one of his broad, encouraging grins, the kind that could light up the darkest of hearts. Tipping his hat to them, Reed gave the rail a quick pat and strode down the gangway.

  As he reached the dock, he saw that the waves lapping at the hull were full of stars. Soon, soon, soon.

  The outlaws and Ianai’s war council had spent the previous day arguing. Would the remainder of the Black Navy sail to Oxscini to save their Rokuine brethren, trapped in Tsumasai Bay? Would the outlaws again risk their ships for the sake of a kingdom they had no stake in?

  According to the messenger, King Darion Stonegold and his two generals, Braca Terezina III and Serakeen, had a fleet of over two hundred. Even if every outlaw vessel agreed to sail to Oxscini’s aid, they’d still be outnumbered, fifteen to one.

  What could they hope to achieve?

  Reed’s footsteps echoed on the wooden planks as he passed the Crux and the One Bad Eye, inhaling Braska’s characteristic smells of sea, sage, and sulfur. Beneath his feet, the water still called to him. Soon, soon, soon.

  At the other end of the harbor, where the civilian vessels were moored, he rented a skiff from a fisherman and set off across the still waters of Blackfire Bay.

  Soon, the ocean murmured.

  Nearly six years ago, it had promised him he’d die at sea. He’d get one last kiss from the lonely salt breeze. The Executioner would be in his hand. He’d see a white dandelion hovering above the decks.

  Would it happen in Oxscini, if he took the Current into battle there? Even if it wasn’t the season for dandelions?

  Then the explosion?

  The end of him? The end of his ship?

  If it was going to happen in Oxscini, could he ask his crew to go?

  Reed turned the skiff south, around the jagged shores of Roku’s largest island, leaving behind the smoke-smudged districts of the capital. Above him, the cliffs rose black and sharp.

  Look to the horizon, he told himself. That’s where the adventures are. If it was going to happen soon, he was going to see something he hadn’t seen before.

  Leaning over the side of the skiff, he touched the sea. It nuzzled his palm, cold and familiar.

  “Bring me an adventure,” he murmured.

  And the water complied.

  It brought him past the coastal mountains, so tall their heads were lost in the clouds, past the waterfalls diving headfirst into the ocean, past spikes of black stone jutting from the seafloor, until he reached the south side of one of Roku’s most active volcanoes. Unlike the majestic cones you could see from the north side of the island, it was little more than a hill at this distance, scooped out on one side, with a coursing river of molten rock carving channels along a sprawling black plain, all the way to the sea. Along the coast, streams of fire seeped from the shore, dripping red-hot into the surf, where the breakers hissed and spat, exhaling clouds of steam.

  Reed sat back in the skiff, lacing his hands behind his head. “Not bad,” he said. “Not great, but not bad.”

  He watched gas pockets in the molten rock ignite as they spilled into the water, flaming brilliantly before being extinguished in the sea.

  How many losses had the Oxscinian Royal Navy sustained trying to defend the Bay of Batteram? If they had enough ships, they might still be evenly matched against the Alliance . . . and sixteen outlaw ships might be enough to tip the scales.

  Or they might all be gunned down before they reached Kelebrandt.

  The capital was on the north side of Tsumasai Bay, which had four points of entry. The west entrance was so shallow, Stonegold’s warships couldn’t hope to make it through. The two east entrances were the widest and most difficult to defend; the Alliance would be concentrating their forces there.

  The south entrance, though . . . it was the narrowest and farthest from Kelebrandt. A dozen ships were all that was needed to defend it from either side. More than twenty would be a waste.

  If the outlaws attacked the Alliance forces at the south entrance, they could break the siege. The Oxscinians could circle back on the bulk of the Alliance fleet and attack on two fronts.

  And sixteen outlaw ships would have made all the difference in the war.

  But what would it cost?

  Soon, the water murmured.

  “Can you be a little more specific?” Reed drawled.

  The water was silent.

  Sighing, he touched the outline of the Resurrection Amulet between his shirt and his tattooed chest. There was a chance it would work without its missing piece, but he knew it wasn’t likely. Without the last piece, it was just a hunk of treasure like any other. It couldn’t save him.

  He could go after the piece. He could leave now, for the Citadel of Historians in Corabel, in search of the Amulet’s folklore, and hope to elude the Alliance patrols, somehow.

  But could he leave Oxscini to fall? Could he leave his fellow outlaws, if they decided to go?

  As he watched the burning shore, he saw something stir on the black cliffs—something big, and fast, with a dark, rough hide that camouflaged it among the rocks—crawling down the jagged stone and slipping into the water without so much as a splash.

  What was it?

  For a moment, he barely breathed.

  Then a large, diamond-shaped head arose from the waves. Red lava dripped onto its forehead, hissing, and pearled off its scaled snout, dropping into the sea.

  A dragon.

  A real dragon. Reed had thought Dimarion killed the last of them.

  Slowly, the creature swam toward him, its long body undulating through the waves like that of a crocodile. Its back and tail were armored in thick plates. It could snap the skiff in half like a twig. It could take one of his arms in a single bite.

  But he was Captain Cannek Reed.

  He lived for things like this.

  He scrambled to the prow of the boat, leaning out over the water as the dragon approached. It paused a few feet from the skiff, peering up at him through slitted yellow eyes.

  “I ain’t gonna hurt you,” Reed murmured.

  In answer, the dragon let out a sound somewhere between a purr and a growl. Bubbles escaped from between its teeth. It rose from the waves—the wide, viper-like head, the elegant neck, the taloned forepaws flexing just beneath the surface. It smelled like the sea. It smelled like iron and earth. It seemed to study him for a moment, its head swaying from side to side.

  Cautiously, Reed lifted his hand.

  Hot breath, smelling of fish, wafted over him. It was like lifting the lid on a stew pot and being blasted with steam.

  He waited.

  Then the dragon pressed its nose to his palm. Its scales were almost too warm to touch, but he didn’t draw back. From deep in its throat came that soft rumbling again, like the distant churning of rock.

  After a moment, the creature slunk beneath the waves again, flicking its tail, and dove under the skiff on its way out to sea.

  Reed watched it until he could no longer see its dark shape beneath the surface. Then he hoisted the sail.

  The old ways weren’t dead. The outlaws were still here, and there were still adventures to be found, uncharted waters to sail, strange and beautiful and deadly things to experience in this wonderful and terrible world.

  If he was to have only one more story to add to his collection before he left the world, what did he want it to be? Did he want it to be in pursuit of something he might never find, gunned down on an ordinary day by an Alliance patrol somewhere off the coast of Deliene? Or did he want it to be fighting for the old ways, the wild ways, the ways of the free?

  Because if Oxscini fell to the Alliance, it wouldn’t be long before the rest of Kelanna did too . . . and the outlaws with it.

  Would they tell stories of his last battle at the entrance to Tsumasai Bay—an outlaw, a siege breaker, a her
o, chasing impossible odds?

  There were worse ways to die. Worse things to be remembered for.

  Captain Cannek Reed was going to war.

  CHAPTER 24

  Traps Within Traps

  On the night he returned from the far side of the island, Captain Reed outlined his plan to break the Alliance’s siege at the southern entrance to Tsumasai Bay, giving the Royal Navy the chance to mount a two-pronged attack on their enemies.

  He seemed so confident, in that bold, no-nonsense way of his, that the other captains quickly threw in their lot with him. As did the bloodletters. The Black Beauty and the candidates were still out there, and though they hadn’t fought during the Battle of Blackfire Bay, the bloodletters’ desire to stop them hadn’t lessened.

  They were taking their cue from Chief Kemura and the Gormani clans. They were forming the Resistance.

  For days, while the outlaws prepared to go to war, Sefia and Archer argued over whether to use the Book to locate Stonegold. They had agreed to capturing him and taking his vault key so Sefia could master the last of the Scribes’ powers, but they could not seem to agree on how.

  “The Book almost got Aljan killed because it didn’t tell you about the nightmaker,” Archer said.

  “It got me to the bloodletters too,” she replied, packing white paste made from strychnine seeds into the hidden compartment of her mother’s ring. She didn’t want to have to use it, but if she won this argument with Archer, she’d be facing the Book, and she wanted to be prepared for anything that might lay in store for them. “And it got us to Braska.”

  Archer ran his fingers through his hair. “But look what happened in Braska.”

  She closed the lid on the compartment, where the tiny spring-loaded blade would rest until she needed it, though she hoped she wouldn’t need it. “You don’t have to remind me,” she said.

  “Then why are you so eager to use the Book when we could just wait until we get to Oxscini and find the Director the old-fashioned way?”

  “Because we’re running out of time to stop the Guard before Oxscini falls. The Alliance could break through to the capital any day now.”