The Storyteller

by Traci Chee

  Archer had almost died. She would’ve paid almost any price to stop the Guard, but not that. Not Archer.

  The Book had almost taken him from her.

  And at last she knew. Maybe she’d known it for months, and only now did she admit it.

  She could not use the Book again.

  “We failed,” she said later as she sat by his bedside. Her wounds had been bandaged—“You’re lucky the bullet missed every essential tendon in that hand,” Doc had told her—and her eye was covered with a patch. She’d still be able to see, when she healed, but, as Keon had pointed out, she’d always have a wicked-looking scar, fit for an outlaw.

  Archer nodded. Under the blanket, the worst of his injuries weren’t visible, but his face was swollen with bruises. They hadn’t captured the Director. They hadn’t gotten his key. They were no closer to stopping the Guard, and now they wouldn’t be fit to try again for weeks.

  “But we still know where Stonegold is,” he said. “We’re heading toward him right now. And when we see him next, the First won’t be there to protect him.”

  Sefia looked down at Mareah’s ring. Would her mother have been proud of her, for doing what Mareah was supposed to have done, if she’d remained in the Guard? For taking out one of their enemies so there were only nine left?

  She hadn’t known her mother well enough to say, and it was that thought that made her want to cry. She didn’t even want Mareah’s approval, really. She wanted to smell her smell of freshly tilled earth. She wanted to hear her say, “My little Sefia.” She wanted her to wipe her cheeks with the curve of her finger.

  But she couldn’t have any of that.

  And now, she couldn’t even use the Book to see her.

  Gingerly, Archer reached up and tucked her hair behind her ear. “We can still win, right?” he asked. “We can still beat fate?”

  Beneath her bandages, Sefia felt her tears stinging her wounded eye. “Yes,” she said, sniffing. “But not with the Book.”

  She’d never leaf through those pages again, never discover new, surprising passages that took her breath away with their beauty, never see Nin or her parents again.

  But Archer was still here, and giving up the Book was a small price to pay to keep him.

  Archer cupped her face. “I’m sorry.”

  She squeezed her good eye shut, willing herself to stop crying. “Me too,” she whispered.

  The only constant in her life these past seven years could not be her constant anymore. Not when it had almost killed Archer.

  Instead, they would sail with the bloodletters to Tsumasai Bay, which would give them time to heal. Once there, they’d sneak aboard the Barbaro the old-fashioned way to capture Stonegold and his key.

  Sefia tugged at the frayed edge of the bandage on her hand. “There’s something else,” she said.

  Something in her voice must have betrayed her, because Archer nodded like he already understood her. “The Library?” he asked.

  She swallowed hard. “The Library.”

  Erastis had known they were coming. The Library was brimming with over a thousand years of stored information: Fragments copied directly from the Book, prophecies, conjectures. With that at his fingertips, he could foresee and foil any of Sefia and Archer’s plans. It was the Guard’s greatest repository of knowledge . . . and their greatest weapon.

  If Sefia and Archer wanted to destroy the Guard, they’d have to destroy the Library too.

  “We can use the Rokuine explosives,” said Archer. He’d learned enough watching the bomb teams before the Battle of Blackfire Bay. If he enlisted Keon’s help, he was sure they could rig up something similar, and after Sefia retrieved the Scribes’ pages from the vault, he could place the explosives throughout the Library.

  Then . . . poof.

  All those leather-bound codices, all those ancient works of history and science and philosophy, all those beautiful, deadly words would go up in smoke.

  The thought pained her.

  But it had to be done.

  When Archer finally fell asleep, she tiptoed across the cabin to where her rucksack was hanging on the wall and lifted out the Book. It felt utterly familiar and utterly horrible in her arms.

  Once she turned it over to Aljan, who had promised to keep it safe for her, she’d never lay eyes on it again.

  When she’d learned to use the Book, it wasn’t like she’d had her family back—she couldn’t hold them or speak to them or be scolded by them—but seeing them again, there before her on the page, had been better than nothing.

  Especially Mareah. Because of the Book, Sefia knew more about her mother than she ever had in life.

  She’d watched her mother’s funeral pyre get carried out to sea, but she’d never gotten to say good-bye to her father or Nin. They’d been taken too suddenly, too violently.

  But she could say good-bye now, in a way, though she knew she shouldn’t. But she wanted to say good-bye to the Book too, after all these years together.

  So she sat in the pool of lamplight and ran her fingers along the edges of the cover, one last time.

  She traced the , one last time.

  She asked to see her family, one last time.

  After this, she’d no longer get messages from the dead.

  Nothing and Everything

  Once Lon and Mareah gave up hope of trying to save her, they felt unexpectedly—wondrously—free. For the first time since they were fourteen, they weren’t scheming or planning. They weren’t running—Mareah couldn’t run, in her deteriorating condition. They weren’t grasping after greatness or power or control. They had no orders to obey, no higher purpose to which they were beholden. They were beholden to no one but themselves and their little family, with no other obligation than to love one another.

  Without a doubt, Mareah was still dying, inexorably, painfully. She was often weak and exhausted; some days, she slept for hours without stirring to drink or eat or speak.

  But she also lived.

  She sat in her garden, her copper mask glinting in the sun, and picked strawberries, plump and red. She played with Sefia, arranging alphabet blocks while Lon was down in the village, and combed her hair, tying ribbons in it if Sefia, wiggling in her eagerness to check on the newborn lambs, would let her.

  At nap time, Mareah counted her daughter’s fingers and toes, touching her chubby knees and cheeks, sticky with last year’s blackberry jam. She memorized the sounds of her daughter’s tantrums as well as her laughter, like they were pieces of music played only once and never again.

  She drank, if she felt like it, with Lon and Nin on the front step, after Sefia had gone to bed. She watched Nin’s skillful fingers weave grass crowns and she leaned into Lon’s shoulder, tugging one of his oversize sweaters closer about her bony frame. Together, they sipped from smooth glasses and watched the moonlight on the Central Sea and spoke of nothing and everything, as the tide spoke of nothing and everything, nothing and everything, with each breath of the waves on the cliffs.

  On Sefia’s fifth birthday, they threw a party. A small one. They decked the house with paper streamers and hung lanterns in the garden. They wore hats of foil and ate soft cakes with lemon curd centers and glazed blueberries like buttons on top. They played games and told stories, one for each year of Sefia’s life.

  That night, because she was tired, Mareah lay in bed against her patchwork pillows and watched Sefia and Lon through the window. They raced across the hillside, bearing handheld fireworks that threw off showers of sparks, which trailed behind them like the tails of shooting stars.

  And silently, Mareah told herself other stories—countless other stories—for the years of Sefia’s life she wouldn’t live to see.

  Sefia’s first broken bone. Sefia’s first kiss. Sefia’s first day sailing the open ocean, for in Kelanna, you’ve never been home until you’ve been
to sea.

  Lying there, Mareah imagined Nin teaching Sefia how to pick locks and Lon spinning stories to put her to sleep. Mareah imagined Sefia’s confusion when she began to bleed and hoped her cramps wouldn’t incapacitate her. She wished Lon would live another fifty years, his teardrop eyes growing less hungry but no less keen with age, and she wished he’d know their daughter as she became an adult. Mareah wondered what Sefia would like, what she would hate, and whom she would love. Closing her eyes, she imagined dozens of futures: Sefia would take after Nin and become a locksmith, Sefia would take after Nin and become a jewel thief, Sefia would be a mother, an outlaw, a hermit, a hunter, a reprobate, a sheriff, and she’d have hundreds of adventures and an equal amount of peace. Mareah hoped Sefia would be passionate and hopeful and fierce and happy and fulfilled. Most of all, she hoped Sefia would have love, and that she’d live, like this, wondrously and free.

  A month later, Mareah was gone.

  CHAPTER 26

  One True King

  Later, after the assassination of Queen Heccata, Ed found himself in an interrogation room somewhere inside the castle at Kelebrandt. Though he, Lac, and Hobs were witnesses, they were being treated as suspects. He wouldn’t have expected anything less from the Royal Navy. The room was small, with moisture-slick walls and rust accumulating on the door’s iron hinges. They were given rickety wooden chairs and made to wait while the narrow window in the door opened and closed, opened and closed, anonymous eyes peering in at them while hushed voices whispered outside.

  The last time Ed was at the castle, he’d seen only the grand rooms appointed in crimson and gold, well-lit by crystal chandeliers dangling from the painted ceilings. It seemed so long ago now that he found it hard to believe he was the same wide-eyed boy wandering the carpeted halls.

  Well, he thought, shifting on his creaking chair, I suppose I’m not.

  He’d changed in the past few months. He’d put on more weight than he’d thought possible. He’d grown stubble. He’d begun to wear his hair long. When he saw his reflection these days, he looked more like an outlaw than a king.

  But the transformation went deeper than that. He still had sad days, bleak with melancholy, but gone was the feeling that he was constantly drowning—cold, numb, gasping for a breath of lightness and air. And when he felt his sadness approaching, he now had ways to keep the worst of it at bay: listening to Lac and Hobs’s simple, foolhardy chatter, tending to the animals he so dearly loved, finding ways to make himself useful. He may have lacked a crown, but he’d still found ways to serve and to lead, and when he lay down at night, he looked forward to waking. He liked being Ed, the boy without a family name.

  But something was still missing.

  After what seemed like half the day, a uniformed interrogation officer and court recorder entered the stone cell to begin the questioning.

  How did you get to Kelebrandt? On which ship were you stationed when the Alliance attacked?

  Lac and Hobs did most of the talking. They described the battle on the Fire-Eater, the loss of their friend Fox, the rescue by Captain Cannek Reed and the Current of Faith, the flight from Jahara on the Hustle, the voyage to Epidram and then to Broken Crown, the journey inland with the refugees.

  They told the officer Ed was an Oxscinian who’d been living in Jahara until the day Deliene joined the Alliance.

  Oxscinian? Ed touched his finger where he’d once worn the Corabelli signet ring. There was nothing left of that boy now, nothing to prove he’d ever been a Delienean or a king.

  Why were you on the hillside where Queen Heccata was killed?

  “My terrible sense of direction,” Lac said.

  With a rueful smile, Ed patted him on the shoulder. “Not one of his talents.”

  Who was the man in black?

  “We don’t know,” said Hobs, “but he had an odd smell, didn’t he, Ed? Kind of metallic.”

  “I shot him,” Lac declared, preening.

  “Yes.” The interrogation officer exchanged a long-suffering glance with the recorder, who had been silently memorizing their every word. “You’ve told me. At least five times.”

  “Did you catch him?” Ed asked.

  The officer said nothing.

  Ed wanted to look around the room, searching for north, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to tell in this cramped cell.

  North was Deliene. North was Arc, who was surely in danger now.

  After recognizing Ed on the slope, the man in black must have informed the Guard of Arcadimon’s betrayal. Arcadimon Detano had let the Lonely King escape.

  Eduoar Corabelli II was still alive.

  Was he? Ed wondered. Am I?

  He’d thought that part of himself had died that day beneath Corabel. But maybe the king had just been slumbering deep inside him, like a maple in winter, waiting for spring.

  Maybe now he was beginning to wake.

  Ed didn’t think the Guard would kill Arc now, when they still needed Deliene’s support in the war, but it was only a matter of time before they found a way to replace him. And if they didn’t need him, they wouldn’t hesitate to eliminate him.

  But what could Ed do to save him, at this distance?

  At last, the interrogation officer seemed satisfied. She and the recorder left them. While they waited, Hobs proposed a game: he would hold up a certain number of fingers behind his back, and Lac would guess how many.

  “Two!”

  On Hobs’s other side, Ed watched him uncurl his thumb and reveal his hand to Lac, three fingers spread.

  “Let me try again!”

  Smiling, Ed shook his head.

  After thirty-three rounds of this, two riddles about sandwiches, and Lac repeating “I’m thirsty” twelve times, the interrogation officer returned. Their stories had been corroborated.

  A few of the redcoats Ed had helped in Jahara had made their way to Kelebrandt. The refugees from Broken Crown and the Bay of Batteram had been found in the camps on the outskirts of the capital. Everyone they’d helped had vouched for them. Everyone maintained that Ed was one of them.

  For their service and dedication, Lac and Hobs were to be given promotions, and Ed, despite his lack of military service, was to be offered a place in the Royal Navy. With the Alliance laying siege to the capital, they could use all the warm bodies they could get.

  “Ed, it’s perfect!” Lac said, leaping to his feet. “As a lowly seaman, you’ll have to obey my every order, naturally, but—”

  “Lac, no.” Ed caught the boy’s arm. “I can’t.”

  “I don’t understand.” Lac’s brow furrowed. “Don’t you want to stay with us?”

  “Of course I do, but . . .” His voice trailed off. But I’m not a redcoat. He wasn’t a red-blooded, battle-loving Oxscinian. He couldn’t be, not when his heart still longed for the White Plains, the Szythian Mountains, the Heartland, the snow-tipped spires of Gorman striking out of the icy sea.

  “There’s no guarantee you’ll all be posted together,” the officer added.

  “What?” Lac’s chiseled jaw dropped. “Whyever not?”

  “You’re redcoats. You’ll go where your kingdom needs you.”

  My kingdom needs me home. The thought flickered to life inside Ed, and for the first time in months, he didn’t try to snuff it out.

  Deliene needed him. Arc needed him.

  But they’d both made their choices, hadn’t they? Arcadimon had thrown in his lot with the Guard and the Alliance. Ed had abandoned his kingdom and left Arc to contend with his enemies. He couldn’t return to the Northern Kingdom to change anything now.

  “Although, after all you did on your way here . . .” The interrogation officer bit her lip. “I suppose I could recommend that you all be stationed on the same ship. I’d hate to be the one to break up this merry band of misfits.”

  Lac beamed.

 
But Hobs looked solemn. “Lac and I need a third party, Ed. We don’t work, him and I alone.”

  “Hobs!” Lac looked aghast.

  “It’s true, sir.”

  “You don’t need to call him sir anymore,” the officer said. “You’re both midshipmen now.”

  Hobs shrugged. “I like calling him sir.”

  “Hobs is right,” Lac said. “When we met you in Jahara, you were lost without us. Now, we’re lost without you.”

  “Actually,” Hobs said, “when we met him in Jahara, we still would’ve been lost without him.”

  Ed gave the two boys a fond smile.

  He could no longer look back. He had to do what he could for the people who needed him here, now. He had new choices to make.

  He could pledge his life to a foreign kingdom.

  He could die, far from home.

  But he’d do it fighting for what he knew was right. He’d do it standing for what he believed in.

  Stopping the Alliance. Oxscini and the redcoats were the only ones who could do that now.

  “I’m in,” he said.

  * * *

  • • •

  Soon, he, Lac, and Hobs were assigned to the Thunderhead, a warship of the Red Navy, posted in the center of Tsumasai Bay, in the event that the Alliance broke through the defenses in the east. As midshipmen, Lac and Hobs were assigned to the fighting tops—much to Lac’s dismay—but Ed was a low-ranking seaman, and he was put on one of the gun crews, tasked with the firing and reloading of a great gun nicknamed “the Ripper.”

  As the winter rains slid into spring, they saw no action as the Alliance continued their siege of Tsumasai Bay and Kelebrandt. The Oxscinians mourned their dead queen for a day before her daughter took the throne, tightened the rationing, and imposed a curfew. Every day, there were reports of action in the east—rumors of the blue beasts of the Alliance chipping away at the Royal Navy line. Every day, the Alliance soldiers making their way overland through the swamps of Vesper Province gained a little more ground. Every day, there were more casualties.