by Carrie Ryan
Ardent shrugged. “I made ’em, I get to name ’em. If you don’t like it, make your own magical transport creature.”
“Fine,” Coll grunted. He turned to face the crew. “Split up to even the load on the firefleers.”
“AMFFs,” Ardent coughed, but Coll didn’t pay him any attention.
“Marrill, you and Rrric… sack”—he shook his head—“you and our beetle friend are with Ardent. Remy and I are with Annalessa. Now let’s get out of here before we’re all toast.” The firefleers were already dancing, ready to run as everyone started climbing aboard.
“Hey, wait!” Fin called, waving his arms. “What about me?”
Ardent leaned over the rim of the bowl, giving him a once-over. Fin waited for Marrill to say something—remind Ardent who he was like she normally did. When she didn’t, an all-too-familiar tightness squeezed his chest.
It almost seemed like she’d finally forgotten him.
“Hmm,” the wizard finally said. “Very well, climb on up. I suppose you do look a bit too flammable to be out here on your own.”
“Gee, thanks,” Fin muttered as he clambered aboard. The firefleer took off running before he could get all the way in, sending him tumbling into the bowl. He fell back next to the beetle, who didn’t even seem to notice him.
Not even bugs cared about him, Fin thought with a sinking heart. He watched the way Marrill knelt next to Ardent as the ’fleers raced along the ridgeline. The way the wizard shifted to the side, giving her room. As though she belonged there.
The same old ache bloomed in his gut. The one where he wished more than anything that he could be normal. That he didn’t have to constantly fear Marrill would forget him one day, the way everyone else in his life always did. That he could just find a place where he finally belonged. He wanted it so badly it hurt.
At the very moment the feeling hit him, a geyser of fire erupted beside them, showering them with sparks. The firefleer danced awkwardly, struggling to avoid the burning spray.
“We must leave the plateau fast,” Rysacg buzzed. “The blood flows ever hot here, hot with need and want. Now it boils. The flametide will be on us at any moment.”
“But we’re surrounded by fire,” Marrill cried. “How do we get past it?”
Fin closed his eyes. It was all about want, the beetle said. And the flame had exploded right when he was wanting something the most. It gave him an idea.
“I want a home,” he mumbled. “I want to find my mother,” he added, this time louder. The tips of nearby flames bent in his direction.
“What are you doing?” Marrill hissed at him.
Fin pushed to his knees, clinging to the rim of the bowl. “It’s all about want,” he explained. “That’s what draws the fire. And if it comes closer to us, that means it moves away from them.” He jabbed a thumb at Annalessa’s firefleer. “I want a tricornered hat to wear on the Kraken!” he shouted at the flames. “And a new pack of lockpicking gum, preferably cantelberry-burst flavored, which would be really nice and refreshing right about now!”
It was working. The flames arched toward them, pulling away from the edge of the canyon just enough to create a narrow path for the other firefleer to escape. Annalessa laughed in triumph and snapped the reins, driving through the gap.
Over the crackle of the blaze, he heard Remy shouting, “I want to pass my calculus exam! Even better, I want to never have to take an exam again for the rest of my life!”
The fire shifted. Like a cat after a string, it leapt after Annalessa’s crew, leaving an opening for them to follow.
And the race was on. They darted through the canyons, one on one side, the other on the opposite, each crew shouting out wishes and wants. The fire sliced up one ridgeline, then rushed down the middle and up the other, drawn back and forth by the competing desires.
“I want shoes that never get wet!” Fin hollered.
“Oooh, I’ve been desperate for a full set of Stapleton’s Theories on Best Practices for Juniperia Distillation, including apocrypha, in original mint condition,” Ardent chortled. “With mint-flavored conditioning!” he added.
“I want a new box of coloring pencils, with lead that never breaks!” Marrill yelled.
“How about a new pair of double-sided decision dice?” Annalessa chimed in, laughing.
“A new ship’s wheel made of bronze,” Coll said, finally joining in.
Remy grinned. “A car that doesn’t have teeth!”
They went on and on, their requests growing more and more absurd, until finally they were clear of the City of Burning Ladders, clear of the glass rock canyons, clear of the flametide, and out on the plain proper. Fires still raged all around—if anything, more so—but in the wide open, there was space to maneuver. Fin slumped back against the curve of the bowl and pushed his sweat-soaked bangs from his forehead.
“So, how’s that for some good old-fashioned Pirate Stream adventure?” he called to Marrill. She still knelt next to Ardent, her hair flying out in the wind behind her.
“Hmmm?” she asked, seeming distracted. She glanced at him a moment and then frowned, her eyes shifting toward the beetle. “You didn’t say anything—when we were all shouting wishes. Why not? Isn’t there anything you want?”
“Everything wants something here,” Rysacg buzzed. “My people want to climb the Wall. The buildings want to be rebuilt. The grass wants to grow. The fire wants to eat.”
“That’s how I made the AMFFs!” Ardent announced proudly. “Ordinarily, I would never bring an object to life like this; too much responsibility, you know. But I realized straight off that everything here already wanted to escape the fire. I just had to give it legs!”
Rysacg clicked his wing casings, and Fin noticed there weren’t any actual wings underneath. “Just so. Even now the land wants to regrow, to heal. But wanting can be dangerous. It can burn too hot, turn destructive. It will feed off whatever fuel it can find until there is nothing left but want itself.”
The beetle reached out a claw toward the far distance. “And see, the fire is dying. Soon it will have consumed all there is to consume, and burn itself out. The grass will grow quickly, and everything else, not much slower. The plain will be bursting with life again in a few hours. And a few hours after that, the fire will come back, too.”
Fin squinted at the blackened desert. The lone and level sands seemed to stretch out forever. Then he blinked. What had been nothing but an empty expanse a moment ago now seemed to be taking on shape, turning into something else entirely. He pushed to his knees, leaning out over the rim of the bowl.
“Whoa,” he breathed. “Are you seeing this?” Around them, sand bunched itself into mounds, dunes, and valleys. They, in turn, coalesced into firmer shapes, with sharper, unnatural angles. It was like the whole desert was a sand castle being sculpted by invisible hands before him.
As the landscape took shape, the very nature of it changed, softening into earth, hardening into stone, smoothing into brick and clay. All of a sudden, grass sprouted from the dirt, even as rocks tumbled upward to form the broken walls of old buildings.
“Even now the city rebuilds itself,” Rysacg continued. “Wanting to return to its former glory. But the wanting will bring the fire once more, and the fire will bring destruction.”
Marrill had turned and tucked herself against the curve of the bowl, knees drawn up to her chest as she listened. “So how can the fire come back?” she asked. “Shouldn’t it just… burn out?”
The beetle clicked his claws in a noise Fin had come to recognize as the equivalent of shaking his head. “The fire burns. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Sometimes it hides—embers still glow in the dirt; stones stay hot enough to catch anything that touches them. Sometimes, fire can even keep burning inside something, like an old log, or a tree or a wall, and you never know it until it comes out. Then it does, and all is ablaze once again.”
“Such is the way of wanting.”
“So how does the Salt Sand King survive out here?” Fin asked
. “Does he have a shell like you?”
Rysacg hesitated. “That is not a question anyone has thought to ask.”
Marrill scrunched up her nose. “But aren’t you curious?”
“No,” the beetle said evenly. “It is not anything I’ve wanted to know.” The firefleers raced onward, flames leaping and bounding playfully in their wake.
They hadn’t traveled much farther when Rysacg clicked his wings. “There,” he said, pointing.
The firefleers slowed to a trudge. Before them, a wide clearing opened in the grassland. All along its edges, the remains of sailing ships were littered. It reminded Fin of the marshes of Monerva. Only here, there was no water, just pure desert.
Despite the sails that still flapped limply in the wind, Fin got the feeling these ships were very, very old. Older by far than even the ship-bones in the Monervan marshes. And yet, their style was all too familiar. The same style he’d seen on the Map, when he’d used it to look for his mother, and again with the forgettable girl’s ship in Belolow. Then there was the mark each ship bore on her side: the sign of a dragon under a mountain-filled circle. Fin hopped down to get a better look.
“Hey, I recognize that symbol,” Marrill said, leaning over the rim of the bowl. “It was on the stop sign in my world, and on the obelisk at the Shattered Archipelago.”
Rysacg gave an angry buzz. “Unsurprising. It is the sigil of the Salt Sand King, flames take his name.”
Fin froze. The ships that had carried the forgettable girl and his mother had come from this very fleet, he was sure of it. The fleet of the Salt Sand King. He swallowed, his throat thick with confusion as he tried, and failed, to make sense of the connection.
“This place was once a bay,” Coll declared as he jumped from his firefleer. He helped Remy and Annalessa down, then went to explore one of the ships more closely. “The Stream must have run all the way back here, before the Wall cut it off. Look, you can still see the salt clinging to the old hulls,” he said, running his hand across one, then wiping the white powder against his pant leg.
Marrill walked right past Fin to join Coll. She craned her neck, staring up into the rigging. “Why haven’t they burned?” She turned, looking over her shoulder at Rysacg, who stood a ways back next to the firefleers. “Don’t the fires reach this far?”
“There is nowhere and nothing on the plain beyond the fire’s reach.” The beetle clicked his empty wings. “Why it chooses to leave these ships be, I do not know.”
Coll scratched at his neck. “Well, they’re streamrunners, all right. Which means they’re made of dullwood. Dullwood’s too boring to want. Or to burn. Tidespirals, I’m bored just talking about it.”
Fin followed as they wound their way past the ring of old ships. Beyond, a small clearing opened up, and in its center sat a little hut, seemingly hand molded out of red clay. Whatever else this place might have been, it certainly wasn’t where one would expect to find a king.
That didn’t seem to give Ardent pause. “Shall we?” he asked. He strode across the barren clearing and rapped his knuckles against a crooked strip of wood that presumably served as the door. “Hullo?” he called.
A long beat of silence followed. Everyone listened for movement from inside the hut. Ardent cleared his throat. “Anyone home?” he asked, louder.
He’d just raised his hand to knock again when the door banged open. “Yunh?” a voice squawked. The sound set Fin’s teeth on edge. But it was the sight that made him want to take a step back.
A pitiful creature hovered in the doorway. He was hunched and hunkered, swaddled head to toe in rags, even over his crooked little beak. The wrapping almost completely covered his face, so that only his eyes were visible through a narrow gap. From where Fin stood, they looked like dull pinpricks of embers that had long since turned to ash.
Fin’s stomach churned with an odd mix of horror and pity, and he could see from the expressions on the rest of the crew that he wasn’t alone. Ardent, however, seemed unfazed. He swept into a bow.
“Greetings, sir. I am the great wizard Ardent. Perhaps you have heard of me?” Even bent down, Ardent towered over the creature, and he looked at him expectantly.
“I see Ardent’s opinion of himself hasn’t changed,” Annalessa chuckled under her breath. Fin could have sworn that a tinge of pink flushed the tips of Ardent’s ears as he straightened.
“Yunh?” the creature squawked. Fin couldn’t tell whether the thing was just hard of hearing or simply couldn’t make any other sound.
“I said, I am the great wizard Ardent!” Ardent tried again, almost shouting. “And we are here to speak with the Salt Sand King!”
“Yunh?”
Ardent blew out a frustrated breath and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Do you know where we can find the Salt Sand King?!”
Fin braced himself for another shrill “Yunh?” but it didn’t come. Instead there was a moment of silence followed by what might once have been considered laughter. Now it sounded more like the choking gasp of a dying fire.
“I know of him,” the creature croaked. He lifted one bandaged hand, the fingers wrapped up together almost like a claw, and bent into a bow, mocking Ardent. “Because I am the Salt Sand King.” He lifted his head. “Perhaps you have heard of me, yunh?”
CHAPTER 21
The King of Salt and Sand
Marrill wasn’t sure she’d heard right. This little feeble creature wrapped in rags was the Salt Sand King? The King who’d united the Boundless Plains? Who’d built the Wall and first used the Wish Machine?
She had to admit, she’d expected someone grander. Pity stabbed at her—how far the poor creature had fallen. After the Dawn Wizard tricked him, the angry beetles must have forced him into exile on the Burning Plain and left him out here to fend for himself. If the bandages were any indication, it hadn’t been an easy existence. She didn’t even want to think about how many times he’d been burned, or what injuries those bandages might conceal.
For a moment she wondered what the proper etiquette was in a situation like this. Did one bow to a king? Curtsy? She glanced around, hoping to take cues from the others, but they all seemed to just be staring.
Except for Ardent, of course. “Most noble host, thank you for taking the time to speak with us,” he said. “We’ve come searching for information and with the hope of some assistance.”
The Salt Sand King said nothing but “Yunh!” in a tone that sounded more like fingernails down a chalkboard than speech. Marrill clenched her teeth, trying not to cringe.
“We’re hoping for your help against a most dangerous foe. A powerful being of unknown origin, who seeks to unleash a great evil onto the Pirate Stream.” Ardent held his hand up to the brim of his hat. “He’s about this tall, has a very fine beard, wears a suit of armor.”
“I’m familiar, yunh?” the Salt Sand King said. “He came for the Syphon of Monerva.”
Marrill gasped. “Did you tell him?”
The Salt Sand King spun, fixing her with his gaze. “Yunh,” he grunted. “And why wouldn’t I?”
Ardent stepped forward. “We’d like the same informa—”
“Can’t help you,” the Salt Sand King spat before Ardent could finish.
Annalessa stepped forward and placed a hand on Ardent’s sleeve. “Let me try,” she murmured.
Turning to address the Salt Sand King, she said, “Most honorable King, it’s very important to us to find this Syphon and stop—”
The Salt Sand King cut her off. “You’re a wizard, yunh?”
She smiled and nodded. “I am.”
“I spoke wrongly. I meant to say I won’t help you, yunh?” he hissed. “I don’t work with wizards. Tricksters, the lot of you.”
It was all too much for Marrill. “But the Master of the Iron Ship is a wizard,” she pointed out. “Isn’t he?”
The Salt Sand King shrugged. “And I don’t trust him either, yunh? But someone had to go to the Syphon and grant my wish. Now I don’t need to w
ork with wizards anymore. So I won’t.”
Frustration bubbled through her. She didn’t understand why he didn’t get it, why he wouldn’t help. “But we have to stop him, he’s bad!” She stomped her foot. “He’s going to cause the Iron Tide and destroy the Pirate Stream.”
The Salt Sand King fixed her with eyes that glowed a flickering shade of red. She swallowed, forcing herself to hold her ground. “And how do you know about this Iron Tide?” he asked, taking a step toward her.
Sweat trickled down the back of Marrill’s neck. The air in the clearing was so hot it almost felt physical, like a weight in her lungs. “Because it already happened.”
The Salt Sand King tilted his head to the side. “It has? The Stream has been destroyed and I missed it, yunh?”
Marrill glanced at the others. None of them looked eager to intervene. “I mean, the Tide hasn’t happened yet but it does. We know it will. Because people have talked about it in the past.” She waved her hand in the air, trying to explain. “Which is also… the future.”
Her shoulders slumped. Even she realized how ridiculous it all sounded. “Just please.” Her voice cracked and she bit her lip, trying to stem the sting of tears already clawing its way up the back of her throat. “Everything I love is at stake here. I have to stop the Syphon.”
The Salt Sand King moved closer, his voice dropping low like the hiss of steam. “I know what it is to lose all that you love. Even more, I know how it feels to be responsible for that loss—to have it all fall on your shoulders.”
Relief flooded Marrill’s system. She let out a long breath. He understood! “So you’ll help us?”
Behind the rags wrapping his face, the Salt Sand King’s eyes pulsed, the coals of a dying fire. His clawlike hands reached for hers. She forced herself not to cringe or pull away as his grip closed around her fingers.
He was hot, more than hot. His touch was almost burning. “I know what it is to want. I know what it is to lose. But even more than that, I know what it is to be tricked.”
He spoke as though his words were meant only for her. “I can feel the way your want calls to the fire.” His entire body seemed to glow with orange light. He dropped her hand, stumbling back. “All of you—all your desires burn fiercely enough to consume you. To blind you. To deceive you.”