by Traci Chee
Reed took up an oar in his weather-roughened hands. “Maybe we’ll hear something from the other side of this island.”
But as they rounded the tree-lined shore, the sight on the beach brought them up short.
All along the sand were bits of flotsam, barrels and nets and splintered timbers, a halo of debris circling a beaten, beached ship.
The hull of the wreck was punctured in more places than Reed could count, her sails cut to ribbons, one of her masts snapped. Even her figurehead, a little leaping dog, had pieces missing.
“The Bad Eye,” Meeks said.
The One Bad Eye had always been a scrappy vessel, with a penchant for picking fights and running from them as soon as the tide turned. But her home waters were the Anarran Sea near Everica. Strange for her to be this far north.
Before they could row in, there was a loud crack from the beach. A bullet skinned Goro’s arm and sank into the water.
They ducked into the boat as a slew of gunfire splintered the wooden siding.
Meeks swore.
Goro clamped his hand over his wound. A trail of blood seeped into the bilgewater at the bottom of the longboat.
Sweeping off his hat, Reed drew the Lady of Mercy from its holster. The revolver’s ivory grip warmed in his palm, as if welcoming his touch.
From behind one of the piles of wreckage that littered the beach, there was a flash of movement.
Reed fired. Someone behind the rubble yelped.
Jules ripped off Goro’s sleeve and looped it around his arm, knotting it tight over his wound. “Time to use those eyes, Meeks. How many do we got in this bushwhack?”
The second mate peeped over the gunwale. “Captain Bee and four of her crew, with more comin’ down the beach.”
Bullets struck the boat again, ricocheting off the oarlocks with sharp pings.
“How’s the arm, Goro?” Reed asked.
The old salt glowered up at him. “It ain’t interferin’ with my trigger finger.”
“Good.” Then, taking a deep breath, the captain bellowed, “Bee!”
The gunfire ceased.
“That the captain of the Current I got pinned in that there longboat?” came the reply.
A chorus of laughter rose from behind the debris.
“That cocky little—” Meeks grumbled.
“Pinned?” Reed barked. “I could put all of you down faster’n you could cry mercy!”
His crew exchanged knowing grins. There was only one person faster on the draw than Captain Reed, and she was long-retired.
She’d given him the Lady of Mercy, the exquisite ivory- and-silver revolver he carried now.
“All right, don’t get your braies in a bunch,” came the response. “Come on in.”
Reed and his sailors kept their guns at the ready as they rowed in, but neither Bee nor any of her crew moved to attack.
Captain Bee nodded at them as they reached the island. She was injured, Reed saw now, cuts peppering one half of her body—the kind of wounds you’d get from canister shot, maybe—and a bandage wrapped around her upper thigh.
“Just like you to shoot first and ask questions later,” he said. They didn’t shake hands, only looked each other up and down like they were studying storm clouds.
The rest of her crew sported injuries too—broken arms, bruised faces. Whoever they’d scrapped with, they were lucky to have come out alive.
Only one of them was freshly wounded, blood running from his ear, staining the collar of his shirt. As the crew of the Current approached, he spat in the sand, stopping Reed short.
Meeks and Goro went for their guns, but Captain Reed shook his head.
“Pay him no mind,” Bee said, jerking her thumb at her crewman. “His ear didn’t do him no good before, or he woulda took cover when I said.”
“Looks like you ain’t the only one with hearin’ problems, Meeks,” Jules said.
Bee’s injured sailor glared at her, but the second mate laughed.
“Sorry ’bout that,” Bee continued, nodding at Goro’s bandaged biceps. “After what we been through, I wasn’t takin’ no chances.”
The old sailor flexed his arm and grunted, accepting her apology.
“Exactly what have you been through?” Reed asked.
“The Blue Navy,” she answered, her voice hard.
“What’d you do? Pick a fight with one of their scouts?”
Her lip curled. “I ain’t tangled with them since Stonegold took power five years ago. This was unprovoked.”
Captain Reed frowned. The Blue Navy, so-called for its blue and gray colors, was Everica’s military force, under the control of King Darion Stonegold. For five years, they’d been preoccupied fighting their rival kingdom, Oxscini. For five years, they’d been picking off outlaws that got caught in their skirmishes, making the Central Sea a little smaller, a little less free.
But they didn’t gun down ships without cause.
At least, not until now.
“Them bluejackets show up outta nowhere and tell us we’re in their waters. Their waters. I thought Serakeen claimin’ the seas was bad enough, but now some rock-thumpin’ bootlickers want the water too?” Bee’s hands strayed to her six-guns and dropped again. She had no one to fight. She’d already been beaten.
Reed squinted at the water. For as long as anyone could remember, the Five Islands had been ruled by infighting kings and queens, by laws and armies and people who craved the stability they provided. The merciless blue sea was supposed to be a place for those who valued freedom above all things. A place for you to go where you liked, where you lived or died on your own talents and the talents of your crew. Even a new king like Stonegold should know better than to lay claim to territory that had been lawless for thousands of years.
Behind him, Meeks muttered under his breath, echoing Reed’s own thoughts: “Can’t be.”
“Believe it, bucko. Any outlaw in the southeast will tell you the same. If there’s any of ’em left,” Bee said bitterly.
“More casualties?” Reed asked.
Bee ticked off the names of the ships on the tips of her chapped fingers: “The Graybird, the Pickax, the Only Star, the Fool’s Gold . . .”
He kept expecting her to stop, but the names kept coming, rattling inside him like buckshot.
“The Rose and the Marilyn, the Better Luck Next Time, the Water Dog—”
“The Beauty?” he interrupted. The Black Beauty was a black ship with black sails and a captain as mean as she was beautiful. She was like a mythic creature—boundless and unbroken, as much legend as she was reality—that you hoped would never be tamed.
She and Reed had been on civil terms last they’d met, but that was before Dimarion and Reed had formed an alliance, racing the Beauty for the Trove. He didn’t think the captain would be happy when she found out he’d teamed up against her, but he’d rather risk her wrath than never have it light up the water again.
“Nah.” Bee shrugged. “I figger she’s lyin’ low like us. The bluejackets have more firepower than we thought. Even the Beauty ain’t got the gumption to take on warships like theirs.”
“Wouldn’t bet on it,” Reed said.
Bee looked about to reply when a bell tolled from the other side of the island. Jules tensed, laying a hand on Meeks’s arm, as if that would stop him from speaking. He pretended to lock his lips and toss aside a key.
Bee raised an eyebrow at them. “Say, where you anchored? You oughta git the Current on the north side of the islands. Seein’ as this archipelago’s technically part of Liccaro, I don’t reckon we’ll see any bluejackets up here. But I didn’t reckon they’d start chasin’ us outta our own seas either.”
“Serakeen’s on the north side of the islands.” Out of the corner of his eye, Reed caught sight of a flicker of gold on the water. A signal flag. One of the
Crux’s longboats must have heard something—the bell of the Desert Gold?
Bee looked from Reed to the water and back. “Somethin’ out there, Reed?”
He chuckled. “Something’s always out there, Captain.” He motioned his crew back to their boat.
“Reed.” Bee’s voice stopped him. All traces of good humor had left her face, leaving her looking drawn and weary. “We could use your help with the Bad Eye.”
Behind her, the shipwreck was a blight on the beach—a sorry memory of what she used to be.
In other circumstances he might have helped her. It would’ve only cost him his time.
But time was something he didn’t have. Not if he wanted to stay one step ahead of Dimarion before he double-crossed him. Not if he wanted to outrace the Black Beauty, wherever she was, to the Trove. Not if he wanted to make this adventure grand enough to weather the erosions of time and retelling.
“Not this time, Captain.”
She started forward, reaching for his arm. “You can take us with you, wherever you’re goin’. We don’t need no spoils, just enough to keep the old wreck afloat. It ain’t safe out there no more, not for a lone ship.” She stretched out her hands. “Please. We’re sittin’ ducks without you.”
Reed shrugged. “You’re smart. Once you get your ship repaired, you’ll be fast. That’s all you need.”
She held his gaze, and for a moment he thought she’d try to fight him. Her crew outnumbered his, after all.
Reed’s hands brushed his guns.
“Please,” was all she said.
“Sorry, Captain. We’re goin’,” he said. He and his crew began backing away. “Best of luck to you.”
“You’re killin’ us,” Bee called as they splashed into the shallows. “I hope you remember that, when you’re tellin’ this tale in taverns all across Kelanna.”
Reed stiffened as the words struck him, but he didn’t turn back.
As they rowed away from shore, Meeks, Jules, and Goro were solemn.
“Cap, shouldn’t we—” Meeks began.
“Bee’s shrewd as a snake and twice as sly,” Reed interrupted. “She’ll make it.”
Jules set down her oars. “Since when do you turn your back on folks in need?”
“They ain’t my crew.”
“Neither was Captain Cat, or Sefia and Archer.”
“They was all goin’ our way.”
“I wasn’t,” Jules retorted with an unusual sting in her smooth voice, “and you still took me in.”
Reed clicked his tongue. Jules had been running from a bad situation when he’d met her, back when he was just a ship’s boy on the Current. He hadn’t thought to ask permission to bring her aboard when she came to him. He just did it, scuttled her away, and when her family came looking, the captain and chief mate had had to deal with them. It’d cost them a couple of sailors, and the rest of the crew had wanted to abandon her, but Reed had fought for her to stay.
“That was different,” he said.
Green and gold flags greeted them as they returned to their ship. Whoops of joy filled the air. They’d heard it—the bell of the Desert Gold. Soon they’d have the location of the Trove of the King, and they’d be remembered forever as the ones who’d found the greatest treasure in this or any generation.
They’d be remembered. And in that way, no matter what happened to their bodies, no matter what happened after, they’d never die.
As if she knew what he was thinking, Jules looked over her shoulder, where in the heat her tattoos of water lilies glistened with a sheen of sweat. “You’d better think long and hard about what kinds of stories you want to leave behind, Cap,” she said, “’cause I guarantee you ain’t the hero in this one.”
Without another word, she followed Goro and Meeks up the side of the Current, leaving Reed alone in the boat. He stood there for a moment, with the sea beneath him whispering promises of glory and the crew chattering excitedly above. He had his ship, his crew, and the next leg of his adventure. That was all that mattered.
He spared one last glance over his shoulder for Bee’s island—little more than a green smudge on the sea—and began his ascent.
A
CHAPTER 7
All Is Light
The night before they brought the prisoners to town, Sefia took a lantern from the supplies, retrieved her pack, and sneaked up the hill to a secluded spot overlooking camp, where she pulled out the Book. Drawn by the light, moths began flinging themselves against the warm glass globe, making shadows flicker and jump over the on the cover.
“Show me the impressors,” she whispered.
But when she opened the Book, instead of a location, she got images of beatings, burned flesh.
Disgusted, she closed the Book again. Maybe she had to be more specific: “Where are the impressors now?”
But when she turned the pages, all she saw was more stories of torture and mistreatment—her parents’ legacy. The reason she was here.
As the hours passed, Sefia tried commands, orders, pleas, anything to get the Book to show her what she wanted.
But the Book would not cooperate.
The paragraphs revealed blood and bruises, scorched skin and scars, but every time she thought she’d found the impressors’ whereabouts, the story shifted. It went deeper into the fight, or farther into the past, or switched to another scene entirely.
It was as if the passages in the Book were as fluid as the Illuminated world, ever-shifting, slipping past her like leaves on the surface of a stream.
With a groan, she rubbed her temples. She could master the Book. She had to. For Archer, and for herself. She glared at the cover.
The first time she’d seen someone consult the Book, she’d been in the office of the Guard, deep beneath the city of Corabel.
Taking a deep breath, Sefia whispered the words Tanin had used the last time they’d seen each other: “Show me where the last piece of the Resurrection Amulet is hidden.”
As she parted the covers, she gasped.
A page was missing. Only the margin remained—a jagged range of paper peaks.
Was this what Tanin had seen? She’d been furious. What did you—? Did Lon do this?
Sefia ran her finger along the torn edge. Had her father done it?
There was one way to find out.
She closed her eyes, summoning her sense of the Illuminated world, and when she opened them again her vision was filled with eddies of gold, passing over and through the hills.
When she turned her Sight on the Book, however, she nearly cried out. It was blinding, like staring into the sun, all the brightest fires bursting and expanding, sending out arcs of flame and drawing them in again.
Squinting, she traced the ripped page, using the damage to focus her Sight on the one piece of history she was searching for.
Pain pulsed at her temples. White crept in at the corners of her vision. The Illuminated world pitched and rolled around her in nausea-inducing undulations as images and sounds lurched out of the sea of light: a ship’s cabin—night creeping in at the portholes—voices murmuring “We have to” and “It’s been written”—the tearing of paper—the splitting of fibers.
A silver ring studded with black stones—slender brown hands speckled with scars—delicate shoulders—black hair pulled into a knot.
Her mother.
Her mother had removed the page.
The Illuminated world grew brighter, narrowing her field of vision to a pinprick. But she did not lose sight of her mother.
It had been eleven years since she’d seen Mareah, and here she was now, perfect, so close Sefia almost felt like she could reach out and touch her.
“Mom,” she whispered.
Of course, her mother didn’t hear her. She was just a moment in history—one story among billions. The light swelled. This wasn’t
the sea of gold Sefia was used to. This was pure, excruciating brightness. She couldn’t see anything, couldn’t get her bearings, and she felt more than saw the riptides of the Illuminated world flashing past her, carrying her farther from her own time, her own body.
“S-sorcerer?” someone asked.
She was slipping away into torrents of light. She tried to gasp, but she had no lungs. She tried to blink, but she had no eyes.
Then, a distant shout: “Archer! Archer!”
Did time pass—seconds, decades, millennia?
Then, the pressure of someone’s hand on her cheek.
And a voice, enfolding her, drawing her out of the light: “Sefia.”
With a cry, she came plummeting back into her skin, and she shuddered at the shock of air in her chest, the blaze of pain in her head, and the dizzying twist in her stomach. She opened her eyes—
And saw nothing but white. Endless fields of white.
Someone—Archer, she recognized him now—gripped her shoulders. “Sefia, talk to me. Are you okay?”
She rubbed her eyes. Her knuckles were hard. Pink spots appeared in the whiteness. “I can’t see.”
“You what?”
Before she could explain, a gunshot rent the air, searing her ragged senses. The horses cried out in fear.
“Impressors!” someone shouted below.
Sefia reached blindly for her knife. The smell of gunpowder and frightened animals was thick around her. It was chaos—boys yelling, swords clashing.
“It’s the impressors who escaped last night,” Archer said.
A gun went off nearby, and for a moment his familiar form left her. Someone screamed. The gun went off a second time. But there was no second scream.
“Aljan. Stay with her.” Archer returned to her side. “I’ll be back.”
She found his face with her hands. “You’d better.”
He pulled her near, so close she could feel his breath on her lips.
Kiss me.