City of Thirst

by Carrie Ryan

  But then, the Master of the Iron Ship had been too. And she knew he was alive and in Monerva.

  Her eyes fluttered closed. Serth was also searching for the Wish Machine; she didn’t have any evidence of that, but she didn’t have any doubt, either.

  Annalessa had said that the Syphon had already consumed a truly massive amount of magic. Perhaps even enough that it could grant any wish at all.

  An awful feeling crawled up the back of Marrill’s throat. She didn’t want to think about what Serth planned to wish for.

  CHAPTER 24

  Everything Wants

  This way,” urged the Salt Sand King.

  Fire raced across the dry plain with Fin fast after it. At times it blazed, choking the air with great puffs of smoke. Other times it smoldered waiting for him, only bursting to life when he came near. It was a pride of lions, running alongside him through the high grass. It was a flood of scorpions, snapping at his feet if he fell behind.

  As he drew closer, a mound seemed to raise itself from the grassy earth. Stones rolled upward to build the walls of an enormous building. Towers shoved into the air like spears.

  “Ah, the Palace of Water and Land,” said a whoosh of rising heat. “Once this was all mine. See how it strives for its former glory. How many times have I burned it down in my madness?”

  Fin pushed onward. When he reached the outer walls, archways snapped themselves together out of the dirt to mark the entrance hall. Bricks fell into place ahead of him, walling away the dappled sunlight.

  Fin stepped inside, feeling the air grow cooler. He sucked it in, appreciating the way it dulled the burning in his lungs.

  “Wait,” the fire growled behind him. Fin turned. The flames had stopped just outside the newly formed doorway. “Take a lamp from the wall,” the King commanded.

  Fin looked around. He hadn’t seen any lamps. There was a hook, though, where one might have hung. As he watched, dust swirled around it, turning into rust, which slowly formed into a little steel cage. Glass melted from its rim, down the sides, until it was exactly what the King had said: a tiny lantern, perfect for hanging on his belt. He grabbed it.

  “What now?” he asked. As he turned back to the Salt Sand King, a great bloom of fire rushed straight at him. Fin let out a shout. But there was no need; the fire flickered and dwindled, dying down into a tiny, floating spark. The spark landed inside the lantern, where it grew to a candle flame.

  “Onward, my new friend,” the King’s voice sputtered from the tiny flicker. Fin glanced out the door. The Burning Plain was scorched black, but empty. No signs of the fire remained.

  He made his way through the palace, following the King’s directions from the lamp. Left and then right, right again and straight ahead. Sunlight filtered in through ragged holes in the stone walls as he went. Holes that narrowed and became windows, trailing a draping of glass across their surfaces.

  They passed through huge archways and long halls, through galleries and grand open plazas. “This was my feast hall, where the butterbeast roasted day and night,” said the candle in a room where long tables rose up, rebuilt from ash and splinters. “Ah, the celebration here, when I united the Boundless Plains and put an end to the Eleven-and-Thirty-Six Century War.”

  Fin ducked through a door and into a gallery with sweeping arched ceilings. “No one believed such a feat was possible.” The flame flared brighter for a moment. “Joyous processions filled the streets, moving in time with the beat of the drum and the wail of the pipe. The entire kingdom danced for days and days.”

  “Sounds like some party,” Fin remarked. He paused at an intersection of corridors. The flame guttered to the right and Fin plunged into a series of smaller rooms. As he darted from one to the next, tables reassembled themselves from cinders. Game boards stacked on top of them, and playing pieces arranged themselves in carved wooden bowls.

  “Here, I won the Dawn Wizard’s cloak in a game of biffletacks. Yet another feat no one believed possible. He invented the game, you know.”

  “So you literally beat a Dzane at his own game?” Fin asked.

  The flame flickered in a laugh. “It’s hard to say if I played fair. But a wager is a wager. And I offered the cloak back to him, of course. For a price.”

  Fin snorted. “Cheating a Dzane. Now you’re sounding a bit brainbroke.” He didn’t know much about the Dawn Wizard, but he didn’t seem like the kind of guy you wanted to stiff.

  The flame almost seemed to dance in the lantern. “It was a reasonable price. Only three wishes.”

  “So he built the Syphon of Monerva to grant them,” Fin said. It made sense now. The Legacy of the Salt Sand King.

  “Indeed. Ah, the baths,” the King sighed as they passed a ring of empty stone pools around a dry fountain. “How long since I’ve had a good soaking.”

  After what seemed like forever, they reached a massive atrium with many passages branching off of it. Grass carpeted the floor, so thick it was practically a meadow. Around them, stones rolled up and inward, each falling into place to make a great domed roof.

  “My private garden,” said the Salt Sand King in his lantern. “We’re close now. We shouldn’t tarry here, though. The grass is already growing thick.”

  Fin stepped out onto the soft carpet of green. “What’s wrong with the grass? It’s nice, what without a fire to burn it and all.”

  But as he watched, the grass grew fast and even faster. Tough yellow shoots shot up between the gentle green ones, sprouting all over the garden. As they reached waist height, they coiled and burst into brilliant flowers, soaking the air in rich scents: lavender, honeydew, peppermint, and warm chocolate cake. Fin’s belly growled with hunger.

  For a second, he set aside the craziness of this journey. The Shattered Archipelago, Monerva, the City of Burning Ladders, Marrill forgetting him, all of it. Instead he simply enjoyed being here. He let out a little laugh of surprise when one of the flowers opened up to release a bumbling little bee. It floated across to pollinate another one. Other buds opened, springing loose grasshoppers that bounded through the fresh green leaves.

  “Don’t be fooled,” the King whispered in his lamp. “Everything here has been forged by the same magic that forged me. Move on, before things get worse.”

  “Sure, sure,” Fin told him. “Where to?”

  “Look up and follow my blade,” the candle said.

  Fin looked up. A cloud of dust shuffled across the newly formed ceiling, revealing a faded, ancient mural. As he watched, color flooded back into it.

  A central figure stood in the middle with sword raised, a proud knight or a conquering king. He wasn’t Monervan, or beetle; the man had deep olive skin, dark hair, rounded features like Fin’s own. These really could have been his people.

  All around the painted king, every sort of creature imaginable looked on with awe or envy. Beneath his feet, scrawled across the image of a flapping banner, were two words:

  Fin studied the image. The king in the mural seemed so much grander. So much larger and fuller and… alive. Nothing at all like the bent creature Fin had met in the clearing. “So that was you?”

  The lamp grew warm against his side. “Follow my blade and keep moving,” the flame warned. “Quickly now.”

  As the Salt Sand King spoke, a sprig of grass so tough and dry and brown it was almost a branch pushed up before them. A large bud bulged out from its tip, then blossomed, revealing a yellow-skinned lizard.

  It glanced around for only a second before leaping from its perch and devouring the nearest bug, then the next and the next, gulping them down as fast as it could, like it was starving. Meanwhile, other bugs buzzed frantically from flowers that bloomed heavily on the stalks that grew desperately across the room.

  Before his eyes, the garden turned rapidly into a thicket. From grass to bugs to lizards, growing, buzzing, devouring out of control. What had started as pretty was now a bit scary. Even the scent in the air had grown sickly sweet and overpowering. It was like noth
ing here could ever be enough or get enough.

  “What did I tell you?” the candle sparked at his side. “Do you think I’m the only thing on this plain that burns? Go. Now!”

  The words broke Fin out of his stupor. He glanced back up to the mural, following the point of the blade to a passage at the far end of the room. “On it,” he said. He shoved aside a thick tangle of grass, pushing forward.

  Just then, he heard a hiss. Then a crackle. Then a fwoosh. It was the sound of a fire lighting.

  “Too late,” the King sighed from his candle.

  In the center of the room, a red flame bounced from stalk to stalk, catching each as it went. Fin stumbled backward, fear welling up inside him. The Burning Plain had relit itself. And he was standing in a tinderbox.

  He raced for the passage, barely clearing its archway before the flames burst into a full-blown fire behind him. A wave of heat washed over him. The sickly-sweet perfume turned burnt and curdled in his lungs. As he tore forward, he glanced back to see flames leapfrogging after him.

  “Do something!” he screamed as the passage plunged abruptly downward, growing steeper with each step.

  “Like what?” the candle hissed. As they descended, the air ahead grew cooler, like they were dropping down into a cellar. But even as the walls dampened with moisture, Fin’s feet continued to crunch over brittle dry grass.

  “I don’t know,” he shouted, turning one corner and then another. No matter where he went, the heat still licked at his heels. “Isn’t fire, like, yours?”

  “Well, it won’t hurt ME either way,” the King remarked.

  “Thanks,” Fin shot back. “That’s very reassuring.” He sucked in great gulps of air, arms pumping in a full-on sprint. Ahead, the hallway opened up into a larger chamber.

  “Almost there,” the King called. “But watch out for the backdraft!”

  Backdraft? Fin wondered.

  Just then the air sucked past him with such force it almost carried him with it.

  He twisted to look.

  The orange flames guttered away from him. For just a second, a long second, he thought they might be dying.

  And then the fireball exploded down the hallway.

  Fin shrieked and dove forward. At the end of the chamber, a door loomed ahead of him. There was nowhere else to go. As he crashed into it, he whipped around, throwing his arms up over his face as if that could shield him from the flame.

  But the heat didn’t burn him. If anything, it grew a little bit milder, turning from stuck-in-an-oven painful to just super-hot-day uncomfortable.

  “Well done, well done!” the lantern crackled. “We made it after all!”

  Fin opened his eyes. In front of him, a wall of flame shimmered. He stood in what looked like a small antechamber, just at the end of the hallway. Ornate carvings decorated the walls on all sides, but he couldn’t tell what they were, because every inch of them was covered in thick white and blue crystals from ceiling to floor.

  He reached out a cautious hand and touched one. It was cool and dry, and a thin white sheen of dust came off on his fingertip. He sniffed it, then pressed it to his tongue. Salt. The crystals were salt.

  Fin looked down to see his own footprints behind him, traced in the same sort of salt. Where the salt ended, the wall of fire loomed. That, he realized, was what kept the fire at bay. Just as it must have done on the ships around the Salt Sand King’s clearing.

  Something moved at the edge of the flaming wall. Fin peered closer. In the glowing orange curtain, he could make out the outline of the lizard, dancing as one with the blaze.

  It leapt at him.

  Fin cringed and tossed a spray of salt at the creature. It struck the flame-lizard with a fizzle, and it guttered and died. An air current whisked the remains up, swirling them around the room as errant sparks. A second later, it all winked out of existence entirely.

  “Poor lizard?” Fin said. It didn’t stop him from shoving a handful of salt into his thief’s bag.

  “Thus why you had to carry me,” said the Salt Sand King. “It was the Dawn Wizard who did this, just as he enacted a price to keep me—no, US—from our destiny. But now, thanks to you, my loyal soldier, the Syphon is within reach!”

  “No problem,” Fin lied. Only he wasn’t sure who he was lying to—the King or himself.

  CHAPTER 25

  DOWN… Down… down…

  The injured Wiverwane flapped frantically in front of Marrill, struggling to keep aloft. The leg Serth had been clutching hung limp and the skin there was withered from frostbite. Serth had injured the creature beyond repair.

  As much as she didn’t want to be plunged into another memory, the poor thing was about to plummet to the ground. She shot out her arm, offering it a place to land. It clambered awkwardly onto her shoulder. She waited for the onslaught of memory, but it didn’t come. Instead the Wiverwane stretched out one of its legs to tap gently against the bare skin of her neck. Where it touched, her flesh rippled.

  The memory was brief and thankfully one of her own. A snapshot of her family laughing at one of her father’s particularly terrible jokes, bringing with it a surge of warmth and love that drove away Serth’s lingering chill. Marrill smiled. “Thank you,” she whispered to the creature.

  The Wiverwane had no face and no expression, but it hunkered against her shoulder, the way a dog might lean against its master’s leg. It took care to touch only her shirt, and Marrill realized with relief that so long as it didn’t come into direct contact with her skin, it wouldn’t transfer any memories.

  “Can you help me?” she asked it. “I need to find the Syphon of Monerva, and I’m hoping you can show me how to get there.”

  The creature hesitated. Marrill held her breath, waiting. If it couldn’t or wouldn’t help, she wasn’t sure what she’d do. “You’re my last hope,” she whispered to it.

  Slowly, it stretched out its leg and tapped the side of her neck.

  She was completely unprepared for the visions that filled her mind.

  The Dawn Wizard glanced over his shoulder, surveying the docks to ensure he was not being followed or watched. And then he slipped through an unassuming door and headed to the farthest reaches of the palace’s sprawling catacombs, where the heart of his creation awaited.

  Wishes were double-edged swords. The old creature knew that from long experience. He was Dzane; his brothers had lit stars in the heaven as testaments to their glory. Now those stars burned on, their makers all but forgotten.

  The little creature stopped at the entrance to the chamber. His long blue fingers drummed against an empty crystal orb. The key was to look at things from both sides, he thought. The in and the out. The cost and the gain. Land and water, salt and sand.

  Already the room was beginning to sink under the weight of the city, as the Dawn Wizard had intended. And it would continue to do so for eternity.

  Burying the Syphon along with it.

  Marrill sucked in a gasp as the Wiverwane retreated, the memory nothing more than a ripple across her skin. “The Syphon’s buried under Monerva!” She scrambled to her feet. “I’ve got to find a way down there!”

  She started toward the narrow hole she’d climbed through to get into the Tower. Then she hesitated. The Wiverwane still crouched on her shoulder. “Don’t you want to go back to your friends?” she asked, nodding at the roiling cloud amassed on the ceiling inside the Tower.

  The creature tucked into itself and clutched at her sleeve. “So I guess we’re in this together, then?” she asked.

  With a touch of its appendage, she felt a wave of half-formed memories, all of them reassuring.

  Marrill blew out a long breath. “Okay, then. Let’s do this thing.” She pushed her way outside and eased along the top of the Wall.

  Thankfully, it looked like the Highest of Monerva were back at it, and Talaba, the tall woman with her canopy, had enlarged it in a bid to take the crown. It flapped beneath where Marrill stood. “Hold on,” she warned the Wiverwane
.

  And then she jumped.

  Marrill would have thought she’d be used to the sensation of plummeting through the air by now, but she totally wasn’t. She landed against the canopy with an “Oomf!” and the sound of fabric tearing. It gave way, and she tumbled down to the small glass platform, coming to rest against one of the pillars.

  “My canopy!” Talaba wailed. “My only shot at being highest, and you ruined it!”

  “Oh, give it a rest,” Necarib scolded.

  “Sorry!” Marrill cried. She started down the iron ladder, then the twisty glass stairs between the spires. At this rate, even with the city sinking as fast as ever it would take hours—if not an entire day!—to get all the way to the Grovel.

  She needed a shortcut. She sprinted across a glass bridge, jumped onto a sinking staircase, and found her way onto a lush garden overhang. She stared down, about to give up, when the swirl of a familiar shell came into view.

  “Hey, Elle!” she called. “How about a lift?”

  A thick green snail tail sprang from Elle’s shell and whipped toward her. The tip of it slipped over Marrill’s shoulder before wrapping securely around her waist.

  “To the bottom, Elle!” she cried.

  Ever since they’d visited Kawarau Bridge in New Zealand when Marrill was younger, she’d wanted to bungee-jump. But her parents always said she wasn’t old enough. Now she finally had her chance. She threw her arms in the air, squealing and whooping as the city flew past.

  “W

  H

  E

  E

  E

  E

  E

  E

  E

  E

  !

  !

  !”

  she cried as she dropped

  down

  down

  down

  down.

  In the distance she could see a large wave gaining steam, plowing toward the Wall. As it reached the edge of the Grovel, it lifted docks and any remaining seaworthy ships, including the Kraken.