The Storyteller

by Traci Chee

  So the sovereign, in a black traveling cloak and a crown of scales, and Archer were the only witnesses when Sefia raised a mountain range from the depths of the ocean. At the base of the cliff, the breakers thrashed. The rocks groaned. It took her until long after sundown, standing there in the wind without food or water or rest, her hands weaving through the air— tugging and grasping, sweeping and interlacing—but by the time she was done, there was a long spine of stone blocking the northern entrance to Blackfire Bay.

  Ianai’s dark gaze shone with admiration. “It’s a shame you weren’t born royalty, Sefia. You would’ve made a formidable queen.”

  In the starlight, the ridge’s faces were slick and black, jagged and sharp. It seemed . . . unfinished. New and unrefined. But it would do what they needed. Not only would it stop the ships, but it would also stop an army. No soldiers could cross those steep sides.

  Sefia collapsed, exhausted, as Archer ran to catch her.

  “You did it,” he said.

  Like the Scribes before her, she’d changed the geography of the Five Islands. Now there were only two ways for the Alliance to attack Braska: from the west, and through a much narrower channel to the east.

  She slept through the fourth day.

  Archer spent the entire time working with Aljan on his book.

  On the third day, while Sefia was off carving spells onto the Black Navy vessels, King Eduoar Corabelli II came to see Archer aboard the Brother.

  At the sight of the Lonely King, Archer bowed. “Your Majesty.”

  Eduoar sighed. “You don’t need to do that.”

  “But you’re a king.”

  “I am.” The king smiled faintly. “But I’m not just a king anymore.”

  Out in the bay, the ships of the Resistance were arrayed in a multicolored ribbon—the alabaster Delienean vessels, the rebel redcoats from Oxscini, the Rokuine Black Navy, the fourteen outlaws, led by the green Current and the golden Crux.

  “I wanted to talk about curses,” Eduoar said, idly touching his middle finger. “I suppose you know mine.”

  Archer nodded. Everyone in Kelanna had heard of the Corabelli Curse. It had claimed everyone in the king’s family, and anyone his family had ever loved.

  “But curses don’t always work the way you think they will.”

  “I’m not cursed,” Archer said.

  The Lonely King cocked his head. “Isn’t that why you’re not fighting with us?”

  Cursed. Prophesied. Archer supposed there wasn’t much difference.

  “I’d always believed that to break my curse,” Eduoar continued, “I’d have to lose everything—my kingdom, my castle, my life—and I did, in the end . . . just not the way I thought.”

  Archer reached for the worry stone. “You want me to be with you when the Alliance arrives. You want me to fight.”

  The king’s sad eyes gleamed. “Yes. Both the outlaws and the bloodletters say you’re unparalleled in battle. We could use someone exceptional out there.”

  “But if I fight, I die.” It had been written. He’d do what he could to avoid it, but it might come for him all the same.

  “Could you stand there and watch everyone else die?” Eduoar asked.

  Archer was silent.

  “Your curse may not be broken the way you think it will be,” the king said. “Mine wasn’t.”

  “But you’re a king,” said Archer. “I’m just a boy from a small town in Oxscini.”

  Eduoar gripped his shoulder. “I think we know you’re much more than that.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Who Controls the Story?

  As the days counted down to the arrival of the Alliance, Sefia grew more and more desperate. Her skill with Alteration was growing, but not quick enough for her to rewrite Archer’s destiny. In fact, the more she understood about the Illuminated world, the more frustrated she became.

  She couldn’t excise his scars. She couldn’t resurrect his victims. She couldn’t keep them together, that day on the cliff, when she left for the Guard and he left for Oxscini.

  If you want to save him, the Book had told her, you can’t keep him.

  At her lowest point, she even tried eliminating the day they met each other. She’d excise the branded onto the sides of his crate. The impressors would pass beneath her as she lay in her hammock, studying the Book. She’d never rescue him. He’d end up a candidate. But he wouldn’t be destined to die.

  Except he was.

  The threads of his life were too bright to erase without taking the rest of the world too.

  Even with the power of the Scribes, she couldn’t change her world from inside it.

  So while the rest of the Resistance stocked ammunition for their cannons and rifles, while the Rokuine merchant ships and fishing vessels were converted into rescue boats, while the volunteer militia joined the city guard on Braska’s walls, Sefia turned to the storyteller.

  She teleported to the high plains where she’d trained for the first Battle of Blackfire Bay, and there, alone in the wind, she tried to figure out other ways to save the boy she loved.

  “Tell me about the ending,” she said once, wandering along the western slopes of Roku’s main island.

  IT’S HAPPENING SOON, I told her. IN NINETY PAGES.

  “But how does it end?”

  IN DARKNESS. BEYOND THAT, I CAN’T TELL YOU.

  “You can’t tell me or you won’t?”

  I CAN’T NARRATE WHAT I CAN’T SEE.

  “I looked into the future,” Sefia said, kicking at a stone, “the night we destroyed the Library, and I saw the dead returning. Is that because of the Resurrection Amulet?”

  YES.

  “But you said it could only recall one soul from the world of the dead.”

  YES.

  She glanced up. “Can I use it to save Archer, then? Is there a way to transform it so he doesn’t turn into one of those . . . things?”

  IT’S THE ONLY OBJECT THAT CONTROLS THE LAWS OF THE DEAD.

  “That’s not an answer,” she snapped.

  Neither was this: I CAN SEE THEM—IN THE DARKNESS BEYOND THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, WASHING UP AGAINST THE BARRIER BETWEEN THE LIVING AND THE DEAD LIKE A WAVE AGAINST A GLASS GLOBE.

  “Why can’t you just tell me? What am I supposed to do?”

  BECAUSE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO CHOOSE, I said. CANNEK REED HAS ALREADY TOLD YOU HE DOESN’T WANT THE LAST PIECE OF THE AMULET. WILL YOU FORCE HIM TO GIVE UP ITS LOCATION, TO GIVE UP ALL THOSE STORIES HE’S WORKED SO HARD FOR, IF IT MEANS YOU MIGHT BE ABLE TO SAVE ARCHER?

  “Might?” she said.

  MIGHT, I agreed.

  But she didn’t trust me. Why would she? She and her family had all been manipulated into this. She could only trust her power, her instincts, her intelligence.

  She wished she could read the Book. But it was in Aljan’s safekeeping, and she knew it would only seek to thrust her toward destiny if she opened it now.

  She wished she could ask Nin and her parents for guidance.

  But even with the Book, they wouldn’t be with her, not really, in the way that she wanted. She might see passages from their lives, but that wouldn’t be the same as if they were here to listen to her and advise her and hug her.

  The dead were gone, no matter how much you wanted them with you.

  * * *

  • • •

  With two days left before the arrival of the Alliance, Sefia came to see me at dawn. She teleported to a gravel beach she and Archer had seen on their explorations of the main island, with distant cliffs and misty spires rising out of the water, and she begged me to save Archer’s life.

  I CAN’T, I said.

  “Why not?” she demanded. Her will to fight blazed so hot inside her, she could have burst into flames and I wouldn’t have been surprised. “You’re in contro
l of this whole thing, aren’t you?” She swept her arms wide, encompassing the gray pebbles beneath her feet, the smoking mountains to the east, the world itself.

  NO, I’M NOT.

  She flung her hands outward, seizing a sun-bleached log from the gravel and throwing it into the waves, where it cracked in half. She was desperate and frightened and furious and she didn’t know how to be all three at once. “You’re the one telling the story, aren’t you? The one writing all of this? Archer’s grand destiny? His death?”

  There are times when I wish I had arms, and this was one of them. I wanted to wrap her up. I wanted to tell her it was all right. I wanted to give her . . . something.

  But all I had—all I have—all I am—are words.

  I NARRATE THE TURN OF EVERY SEASON, EVERY MOVEMENT IN KELANNA, GREAT AND SMALL, BUT I DIDN’T WRITE THIS STORY. I DON’T CONTROL THE EVENTS OF THIS WORLD OR THE ACTIONS OF ITS PEOPLE. I WATCH. I TELL. THAT’S ALL.

  “Someone planned this.”

  BUT SHE’S GONE.

  Sefia fell to her knees, her legs a W beneath her and her arms limp at her sides. “Why,” she mumbled. She had started crying, but she didn’t seem to notice. “How could she do this to us?”

  Because she was hurt and broken and confused. Because people die and they don’t come back. Because you don’t get messages from the dead.

  In truth, I didn’t know, so I didn’t answer.

  To some questions, there are no answers.

  Sefia dug her hands into the gravel. She looked like something had been cut from her and she was never going to get it back.

  “Is there no hope, then?” she asked quietly.

  THERE IS HOPE, I replied, IN CHOICE.

  “What choice?” she asked bitterly. And that was the last thing she said to me before she teleported away.

  * * *

  • • •

  The day before the Alliance arrived, Sefia and Archer reported to the watchtower where they would spend the last battle. From this vantage point on the cliff, they could see the walled capital of Braska to the east, the entirety of the Resistance arrayed in Blackfire Bay, and the Alliance approaching from the west, and they and a small squad of soldiers would raise and lower signal flags to allow the various parts of the Resistance to communicate with one another.

  They did another tour of the watchtower—the single door at its base, the winding staircase, the square stone roof where the Black Navy soldiers were stationed.

  And then, taking each other’s hands, they disappeared.

  Sefia brought them back to Oxscini, to the cave overlooking the waterfall. The jungle was crowded with the buzz of insects and the chirping of birds flitting through the canopy, but to Sefia it felt like the first time they’d been alone in months.

  “Do you remember this place?” she asked, looking up at the tree that covered the cave’s entrance.

  Archer answered her with a smile.

  It had been her birthday. He’d given her a green feather. Then she’d shown him the Book and asked him to follow her.

  That was almost a year ago now. In eight days, she would turn seventeen.

  They climbed up the collapsed rock pillars to the cave, which seemed smaller now as they lay down shoulder to shoulder, peering at the waterfall.

  That seemed smaller now, too, coursing through the forest below them into a vivid blue pool.

  So much had changed in a year. The feather was gone. The Book had betrayed her. She’d learned more than she ever wanted to know about her parents and her enemies and the truth of her world.

  But Archer was still with her.

  In all the ways that mattered.

  “Leave with me,” she said, turning onto her side. “We can disappear. We can go anywhere and no one will be able to track us.”

  All they had to do was run.

  If they ran, he’d live.

  On his face, a sad smile formed and failed and formed again. He nuzzled her shoulder. “You know I can’t . . . and neither can you.”

  Their friends needed them. The world needed them.

  Nodding, she began to cry.

  She knew.

  Leaning over, Archer kissed the tears from the corners of her eyes, gathering them with his lips as if they were drops of sweet wine.

  A deep ache flowered inside her, dark and damp and urgent, and she grasped the back of his neck, pulling his mouth to hers. They undressed, awkwardly, banging their heads and elbows in the cramped space, laughing and coming together again, tongues and hands. Then—

  Opening, gasping.

  The sweltering heat making their skin slick with sweat.

  Hair clinging to her neck. Words, barely intelligible, caught somewhere between whisper and longing. The arching of spines. And a sudden glimpse of the sky through the mouth of the cave—blue. Startlingly, dizzyingly, vastly blue—Sefia blinked, eyes widening, lips parting—it was the bluest she’d ever seen—the blue of the sea, the blue of the waves, crested with spray, the blue of the tides rushing in and back out, again and again and again.

  Later, they bathed in the pool at the base of the waterfall, washing the sweat from their skin and hair, with the stones slick under their bare feet. They dried and dressed. Archer tucked her hair behind her ear and clipped it back with the emerald pin.

  “Ready to go?” he asked.

  “Where?”

  His smile was full of secrets. “The Current,” he said.

  * * *

  • • •

  It was a party.

  He’d thrown her a party. Everyone had—the bloodletters and the crew of the Current, Adeline and Isabella, Lac and Hobs. Garlands of flowers cascaded from the rigging between glowing globe lanterns, hovering over tables heaped with so many treats, it was as if Cooky and Griegi had been trying to outdo each other: glazed duck, salads of summer greens speckled with pink and purple flowers, berry tarts, swirled bowls of chocolate and cream, four different kinds of herbed butter to slather on rolls and sizzling cuts of beef, spicy skewers of pork and sweet onion, and, her favorite, little white buns with sugary decorations and sour lemon curd centers.

  Theo, whose injured leg had been replaced with a wooden one, played lively tunes on his fiddle while his red lory sang sweetly along. Beside him, Marmalade strummed Jules’s old mandolin, her fingers expertly finding their way up and down the frets.

  “Surprise!” Lac declared, embracing her. He was dressed smartly in his redcoat uniform, so smart, in fact, that it was hard to look away. “It’s a birthday party!”

  “My birthday’s not for over a week,” she said, turning to Archer, who grinned at her unapologetically.

  “That’s why it’s a surprise,” explained Hobs, who’d also shown up in uniform, as, he later told her, it was a fancy occasion.

  “No, I get it. I just . . .” She took a shaky breath. “I’ve never had a party like this before.”

  Taking her hand, Archer kissed the top of her head.

  They made their way among the party guests, stopping every so often to grab bites of roast pigeon or drunken cherries and to refill their glasses with liquor the chief mate had dug out from his special stores. Griegi dogged Cooky across the deck, asking if it was crab or lobster stock in this broth, true cinnamon or cassia in this chocolate sauce, jotting each gruff response down in his book.

  Every so often, someone cleared their throat and raised their glass and, after a bit of stamping or shouting to get everyone’s attention, they’d tell a story.

  First was Captain Reed, who leapt onto the rail. “The first time I met this kid, she was a scrawny little thing that smelled like the bilge, but in the time I’ve known her, she’s . . . well, she’s still scrawny, but at least she don’t smell no more.”

  There was a chorus of laughter as Sefia blushed.

  He shook his head, grinning d
own at her. “Nah, this kid . . . this kid brought me adventures I never thought I’d have.” He gave them a play-by-play of the fight with the Administrators in Jahara—the magic, the enforcers, the vial of poison flying through the air, the way she’d teleported them to safety. “I always thought the world was big and full of wonders, and I was more’n happy to go my own way, doin’ what was right for me and my crew. But this kid showed me the world’s got more wonders than I ever dreamed, and it ain’t so big that people don’t need each other to survive it.” He tipped his hat to her. “Happy birthday, Sef. You’re my crew, now and always.”

  The others whooped and hollered as he hopped down and Sefia rushed into his arms, hugging him tight.

  Later, Meeks told a tale of the discovery of the Trove.

  Frey talked about the first time she caught Archer in Sefia’s cot. There was a chorus of whistles and catcalls. Sefia could feel her face burning. Archer took a bow.

  Aljan described how Sefia had taught him to write, giving him a voice to express himself after what the impressors had done to him.

  Archer told the last story, his voice quiet and sure, describing the night she rescued him from the impressors—the crack of light, the sound of her voice, the way she’d saved him, over and over, in more ways than one.

  Lifting herself up on tiptoe, she kissed him.

  “And that’s seventeen!” Reed declared. “Seventeen stories for seventeen years in this world—”

  “And many more to go!” the others cried.

  Sefia turned to them, beaming so brightly she was sure she was crying again. “Thank you,” she said, hugging her own arms like if she didn’t she’d burst open with joy. “I always wished for a big family, and you’ve given me the biggest, wildest family I could have ever imagined. I love you all.”

  There was a round of applause, and Marmalade and Theo, with Harison’s red lory perched on his shoulder, struck up the music again, the notes so bright they seemed to shiver in the air.

  Grabbing Griegi’s hands, Keon dragged him into the center of the deck for a dance, quickly followed by Frey and Aljan, who swayed, forehead to forehead, as if the songs were slow and tender as romances, while Killian and Horse and Doc, Archer and Sefia, hauling Scarza along behind her, whirled around them like petals in a sudden wind. From their seats, Adeline and Isabella laughed and clapped.