The Storyteller

by Traci Chee

  You’re safe, he tried to tell himself. You’re safe.

  But he wasn’t. He never had been.

  All the things that had happened to him. All the things he’d done and become. All the beatings, the fights, the kills, the suffering . . . it had all been planned. Orchestrated. Intended.

  Written.

  It didn’t make sense.

  Someone had done this to him? Someone had wanted this to happen? Who?

  Tears slipped from the corners of his eyes.

  How could someone be so cruel?

  If he’d written this story, he would have eliminated every hardship, every illness, every conflict. He would have written it with kind, loving people, and he would have made it so not a single one of them died.

  If he’d written this story, everyone would have lived.

  Happily.

  Ever after.

  “I’m so sorry,” Sefia said.

  Archer swallowed. His throat had gone dry. “Do you know how I—” He swallowed again.

  She shook her head.

  It would take the Guard some time to establish their hold on the Forest Kingdom, but after that, they’d come for Sovereign Ianai and the Black Navy, they’d come for the outlaws and the rebel redcoats and the Delienean defectors, and, one way or another, the Red War would come to an end.

  Would Archer take command of an army during that time?

  Would he be victorious?

  It didn’t make sense.

  Was the Resistance supposed to prevail? Was he supposed to lead them? Or was he supposed to turn on them in the space of a few weeks? Months, at most?

  Is that all the time I have left?

  Shoving the papers aside, Sefia climbed across the bunk to him as he began to cry. She held him while he wept, while his shoulders trembled and his tears bled through her shirt.

  “I don’t want to die,” he whispered.

  But he was going to die. Soon. After his last campaign . . . alone.

  “You won’t.” Sefia gripped him tight. “I won’t let you. I’m going to fight this, and so are you.”

  “How?”

  “You know who said it was impossible to save you? That we should stop trying?” Reaching out, she grabbed the discarded pages in her fist. “The Book. The Book that wants you to die. You know what that means?”

  He sat up, sniffing.

  Once, somewhere in the depths of the Oxscinian jungle, Sefia had asked him what he would do if he knew how he was going to die.

  Now he had to decide. Would he run toward it? Run from it? Or do something entirely different?

  “It means we should do the opposite,” he said.

  She wiped his cheeks. “Yes. We should do the opposite. The power of the Scribes changed the geography of the world. It’s got to be able to save the life of one boy.” She lifted her first two fingers, crossing one over the other. “The boy I love.”

  Taking a deep breath, he clasped her hand.

  He was a boy who was loved. And the girl who loved him would never give up on him.

  * * *

  • • •

  So they continued to fight.

  After the funerals, when they said good-bye to old Goro and the others who had fallen in battle, Archer asked Scarza to begin working with the bloodletters again. As they sailed toward Roku, they drilled and sparred on the deck of the Brother, their breath clouding the frigid air.

  He instructed them. He guided them. He demonstrated if he had to, though with the bloodletters, who had coalesced under Scarza’s command, more disciplined, more of a team than they’d ever been under Archer’s, he rarely had to.

  The last battle was coming, and a lot of people were going to die.

  Archer couldn’t lead them, but he wanted them to be ready. He wanted to keep them alive, however he could. As long as he could.

  And that meant getting them ready to fight.

  While they skirmished, Sefia studied the power of the Scribes in the Current’s sick bay. She had to hurry—Horse was dying, his great big body too damaged to repair itself, even with Doc’s skillful attendance.

  For the first time since Archer had known her, the surgeon had lost the steady quiet he knew her for, pacing the tiny cabin, obsessively arranging the bottles of ointment on the shelves, dabbing Horse’s feverish brow with a damp cloth.

  But even when Sefia had finished reading and rereading the pages, she hesitated. “What if I make the same mistakes I made at Blackfire Bay?” she asked. “What if I excise his lungs instead of healing them? What if I erase part of the ship, or you, or—”

  Doc grabbed her roughly by the shoulders, her strong dark fingers curling in Sefia’s shirt. “Stop,” the surgeon said firmly. “If he could, Horse would tell you he believes in you. As do I. Do not doubt.”

  Archer watched Sefia take a steadying breath. Bowing her head, she removed her eye patch. A diagonal scar cleaved her brow and cheek, but her eye was bright as ever, blazing with focus, determination, daring. And then . . . she healed Horse’s bullet-ridden organs. She closed the holes in his flesh. He sat up, wide-eyed, as Doc flung herself into his massive arms with a sob of relief.

  Cradling the surgeon’s head with one massive hand, Horse met Sefia’s gaze with a teary smile that, more than the newly mended patches of skin or the health returning to his pallor, made Archer realize she’d done it. She’d mastered the power of the Scribes. She was the most powerful sorcerer the world had seen in centuries.

  She’d rewritten Horse’s future. Could she rewrite Archer’s?

  Later, while she walked the pitted decks with the chief mate, cataloguing the necessary repairs, Archer wandered to the bowsprit, where Captain Reed was standing in the branches that spiraled out over the water.

  “Hey, kid,” Reed said as Archer approached. “How’re you holdin’ up?”

  Archer climbed onto the bowsprit, closing his eyes as the spray kissed his cheeks. Sefia had already told the captain everything, and it was a relief not to have to go over it all again. Not to have to admit the truth.

  “Sometimes I’m okay,” he said, leaning back against one of the tree limbs. “Sometimes I’m barely holding it together.”

  In the shadow of his wide-brimmed hat, the corner of Reed’s mouth twitched. “Sounds about right.”

  Death may have been coming for all of the Resistance, but only Archer and Captain Reed knew without a doubt that it wanted to take them.

  Soon. After his last campaign. Alone.

  Archer reached for the worry stone. “Sefia said you’re not going to run,” he said.

  The captain nodded.

  “Why not?”

  “Same reason as you, I reckon. Couldn’t live with myself if I did.” With one finger, Reed tipped up the brim of his hat, giving Archer a once-over with his piercing blue gaze. “And ’cause I have hope.”

  “Hope that you’ll make it?”

  “Hope that if I go out this way, I’ll be leavin’ a better world behind. Can’t ask for a better legacy than that, can I?”

  Looking down, Archer watched a pod of dolphins join them, leaping and cavorting in the waves as the Current carved through the water. They clicked and squealed, their shining backs arcing out of the sea.

  “What’s my legacy?” he wondered aloud.

  A string of murders? A count of his victims?

  The bloodletters?

  “What do you want it to be?” Reed asked. “Now’s the time to make what you want to leave behind.”

  What was he leaving behind? Besides his weapons, he had no real possessions of his own.

  But he had a family, back in Jocoxa, the little village on the northwestern tip of Oxscini.

  He had a family here, on the Current and the Brother.

  He had Sefia.

  Captain Reed had retur
ned to watching the water, and he didn’t seem to notice when Archer climbed back onto the main deck.

  He might survive the end of the war. But if he didn’t . . . He wanted to make something to leave behind, just in case. And he wanted it to be made of paper and ink.

  * * *

  • • •

  Soon, Sefia was visiting all the fleeing ships to make repairs, her mastery of Alteration growing stronger each day. Dangling over the side of the hull, she excised bullet holes, repaired broken rails, plugged fissures left by cannon fire.

  And wherever she went, Archer went too.

  They found Haldon Lac and Olly Hobs on the first vessel they teleported to. Archer flung his arms around them, crying, “I wasn’t sure if you made it out of Jahara!”

  Lac laughed. “We did!” Archer hadn’t thought it possible, but the boy seemed even more handsome than before—his hair more wild, his appearance more rugged, his nose, which must have been broken at some point over the past few months, adding character to his otherwise symmetrical features.

  “We had help from a king!” Hobs added.

  “You what?”

  “Are those really the bloodletters on your ship?” Lac asked, peering over Archer’s shoulder at the Brother, where Frey and the boys were sparring. “Who’s the handsome one with the silver hair?”

  “That’s Scarza. He—”

  “Is it true you’re giving combat lessons?” Hobs asked.

  Before Archer could get a word in edgewise, Lac interrupted, “Are you doing that for all of the Resistance? I mean, Royal Navy training is nothing to turn up your nose at, but . . . well, from what we’ve heard, no one is as good as you.”

  “Will you teach us?” Hobs added. “Please?”

  “Or maybe that handsome silver-haired boy could do it?” Lac asked. “Scarza?”

  With minimal wheedling, they managed to convince their commanding officer to allow Archer to train the redcoats.

  They weren’t as skilled as the bloodletters, but who could have been? Led by Lac and Hobs, who were enthusiastic enough to make up for their lack of ability, the redcoats practiced counters and takedowns, pausing only to marvel at Sefia as she smoothed out the splinters in the decks and sealed leaks in the hull.

  Somehow, word of his identity reached the other Resistance ships. He was the boy from the legends. He was a born killer. He was Archer, chief of the bloodletters.

  Former chief, he kept correcting them.

  They didn’t care. They’d heard he was training fighters. They wanted his help.

  And, with Scarza and the bloodletters to help him, Archer obliged.

  Is this my army? he wondered. Am I building it right now?

  No. He would train them. He would hope they survived. But he would not lead them. Not even the bloodletters.

  A few days later, Archer and Sefia were given an audience with the Delienean king, Eduoar Corabelli II.

  Lac and Hobs had told them how the king, who they’d kept calling “Ed,” had sneaked them out of Jahara, kept them alive on the Hustle, helped the refugees from Broken Crown, and joined the Royal Navy as a boy with no last name.

  “And you had no idea he was the King of Deliene?” Sefia had asked.

  “No clue!” Lac had declared.

  She smirked. “What a surprise.”

  Now she and Archer sat across from the Lonely King himself, in the great cabin aboard the Red Hare. He was tall and well-built, with skin a little darker than Sefia’s and black hair pulled back in a high knot. To Archer’s surprise, he didn’t wear a crown.

  But what did Archer know? Maybe monarchs didn’t always wear crowns.

  He had such sad eyes, Archer noticed, dark but clear, like if his eyes caught the light in just the right way, you’d be able to see the shapes of his sadness deep inside him, like formations in a cavern.

  The king thanked Archer for showing the Delienean soldiers “a thing or two” and he thanked Sefia for repairing the Red Hare.

  But, if she didn’t mind, he had another request. He wasn’t sure if she could do it, but he’d heard some pretty remarkable things about her—about them both—and he thought if anyone could do it, she could.

  Before they left the Red Hare that evening, Sefia lowered herself off the edge of the bow, right beside the figurehead. She flicked out a knife and, furrowing her brow, she began to carve into the blue-painted timbers.

  Archer didn’t know what she’d written, but when she was finished, the hull turned white. Dazzlingly white. White as the snow that capped the Szythian Mountains.

  She’d given them back their colors.

  * * *

  • • •

  By the time they reached Roku, three weeks since fleeing from Tsumasai Bay, all fifty-eight ships had been repaired. Using Transformation, Sefia had altered the paint on all of Eduoar’s vessels, changing them from Alliance blue to Delienean white. She’d even begun augmenting some of the Resistance ships, starting with the Brother and the Current, carving words into their prows to imbue them with speed and strength.

  When they sailed into Blackfire Bay, with the glittering spread of Braska laid out before them, Sovereign Ianai was waiting on the dock, flanked by Adeline, Isabella, and the Black Navy generals.

  There was much work to be done.

  Archer and Sefia were offered their old room in the castle, but they chose instead to remain in the harbor on the Brother.

  In the mornings, Sefia was whisked away to fortify walls and ships with magic, and Archer stole off to work with Aljan on their books.

  But the afternoons Archer and Sefia claimed for themselves. No one even tried to refuse them. They spent their hours hiking the Rokuine highlands, peering into steaming geysers of the most vibrant colors Archer had seen in his life, skipping over dry volcanic mudflows, watching mountain buffalo go wandering over the plains.

  They spent their hours talking.

  They spent their hours in bed.

  They spent their hours with the bloodletters and the crew of the Current and Adeline and Isabella, who had begun dictating stories to Meeks to put in the book of their lives.

  Often, their friends could be found writing in the books Keon could not churn out fast enough. Aljan was recording the exploits of the bloodletters, though he had little time for it because the others continually approached him with questions about their own books, which he answered without wavering in his patience, no matter how frequently they interrupted him. Meeks was writing the saga of Captain Reed and the Current of Faith. To her book of trees, Frey was adding mangroves she’d seen as they sailed toward the siege of Tsumasai Bay. Griegi was still scribbling in his book of recipes.

  And Archer had work of his own. For every long hour that Sefia was occupied with the Resistance, he and Aljan sat together—Archer speaking, Aljan transcribing—in the lantern light, until Archer’s voice grew hoarse and Aljan’s cramped fingers were stained with ink.

  Then, after dinner, Archer and Sefia attended the evening council meetings. They answered questions about the Guard. They helped plan for the defense of the kingdom.

  When they retired to their cabin, sometimes long past midnight, Sefia continued her study of Alteration. She got quicker. She got stronger. And while she practiced, Archer watched her for as long as he could keep his eyes open, thinking of all the things he still wanted to say to her.

  * * *

  • • •

  Then, one day, almost three months since the fall of Oxscini, a single ship appeared on the western horizon, bearing flags of blue, gold, white, and a new stripe of Royal Navy red.

  The Alliance had sent a messenger.

  Sovereign Ianai and Roku were to yield to the Alliance. The so-called Delienean king was to renounce his claim to the throne and declare Arcadimon Detano the rightful leader of the Northern Kingdom. The Alliance would mete out just
consequences for the Delieneans who had defected and the redcoats who had disobeyed their queen. To everyone else, the Alliance would be merciful.

  If these terms were refused, however, the Alliance would strike the Volcanic Kingdom with the combined might of the four larger islands, and they would give no quarter.

  Surrender or perish.

  The messenger reported that the Alliance forces were six days from Roku. The Resistance had six days to decide.

  Sovereign Ianai called an emergency council meeting, where the leaders from the outlaws, the bloodletters, the Delieneans, the redcoats, and the Black Navy argued back and forth for a day.

  Some believed they should submit.

  Others—like Reed and all of the outlaws—wanted to fight.

  Someone suggested they use the boy from the legends. Put him at the head of an army, and destiny would do the rest.

  Someone else claimed they put stock in guns and ships, not in stories. The Alliance had hundreds of fighting vessels at their disposal. No matter who led them, the Resistance was outnumbered.

  Another said, legend or no, they weren’t going to hand over their soldiers to a child.

  Some wanted to use Sefia. She was a sorcerer.

  Archer knew, however, what the Resistance leaders would decide long before they came to a unanimous conclusion.

  The Red War had to have a last battle.

  It had been written.

  The Resistance would fight, and they would hope.

  The next day, the fifth day before the Alliance’s arrival, against the advice of the war council, who warned their sovereign to give Sefia a wide berth when she was wielding magic, Ianai escorted both Sefia and Archer to the cliff where they had stood during the Battle of Blackfire Bay, so Sefia could use Illumination to alter the Rokuine defenses.

  It was too dangerous, the royal advisers said. You know what happened the last time she attempted such powerful magic.

  “It’s my kingdom,” Ianai snapped. “I want to see this for myself.”