The Speaker

by Traci Chee

  But all he’d say was, “Soon.”

  Sefia didn’t consult the Book. After Versil’s and Kaito’s deaths, it remained sealed inside her pack, beneath Kaito’s cot, where it couldn’t mislead her again. The past had caused her nothing but confusion. The future had given her nothing but grief.

  For now, the present—and the promise of freedom—was enough.

  One evening, she found Archer sitting in the crow’s nest, watching the sun melt into the water. Scaling the rigging, she dropped down beside him, leaning against the rail.

  A cold breeze tousled Archer’s hair, tugging at his sleeves and the legs of his trousers. His bruises were beginning to fade, but the purplish-green shadows of his sleepless, grief-stricken nights remained.

  “Did you know Versil wanted to see Roku too?” she asked. “He wanted to go dragon-hunting. Not to kill them. Just to see them with his own two eyes, to prove to himself they weren’t ex—”

  “I can’t go to Roku,” Archer said abruptly.

  Sefia leaned back. A deep sense of foreboding opened inside her. “Why not?”

  Behind him, the water turned gold and amber in the sunset. His face was in shadow, except for his eyes, which had the predatory glint of a hunting cat. “Oxscini’s closer,” he said. “And we already know we can find impressors there.”

  Hatchet was in Oxscini. Annabel was in Oxscini.

  “I thought you were done,” Sefia said. “I thought we were done.”

  “How can we be done when there are still boys to save? With you and the Book, we can—” She shook her head, but he kept going. “We won’t rely on the Book this time, if that’s what you’re afraid of. We just need you to locate the impressors. We’ll make quick work of the rest.”

  “Stop. Stop, Archer. You can’t. Not after what happened to Versil, to Kaito—”

  “I’m doing this for Kaito. Don’t you see? This is how I make it up to him. This is how I honor him. This is what he’d do for me, if I was dead and he was still here.”

  “But it’s supposed to be over!”

  His eyes flashed, and for a second it was like he was Kaito. “It’ll never be over,” Archer said. The words were almost a growl.

  Sefia could see it now. He and the bloodletters would tear through Oxscini—killing impressors, amassing followers—and then they’d move on to Liccaro, or Everica, or Roku. They’d lose some boys along the way, of course, but every time it would hurt a little less, would take a little less out of them, because there’d be less and less to take.

  Eventually, the boy she knew would be gone. He might still be called Archer, but he’d be someone else. Someone with an army.

  And a bloody destiny.

  “Are you with me?” He reached for her hand.

  Sefia pulled out of his grasp, searching his face for signs of doubt, for some indication that she could talk to him, reason with him, change his mind.

  But all she saw was grief and grim resolve.

  Archer had been right.

  He couldn’t stop.

  He was the boy from the legends, the boy the Guard wanted for the Red War.

  That night, he outlined his plan for the bloodletters and told them to give him their decisions in the morning. Doubt flickered in some of their faces, but it was like most of them had already known they would follow him wherever he went. He was their chief, after all.

  While he slept, she dragged out her pack. Inside, the Book was just as she’d left it, swathed in its waterproof wrapping.

  Folding back the leather casing, she traced the on the cover: Two curves for her parents. One for Nin. The straight line for herself. The circle for what she had to do.

  Except there was only one thing she had to do now.

  “Tell me how to stop him,” she whispered. “Tell me how to keep him safe.”

  She opened the Book, and there she found her answer. Not in the future, but in the past.

  A past she hadn’t known existed.

  A past that had been erased.

  The Last Scribe

  Once there was, but it would not always be. This is the ending of every story.

  Once there was a world called Kelanna, a wonderful and terrible world of water and ships and magic. The people of Kelanna were unremarkable in many ways—they spoke and worked and loved and died—but they were different in one very important respect: for them, reading and writing were magic.

  They practiced spells for creating light without flint and tinder, for peering into the future, for turning salt into gold. They recorded their histories in immense tomes—their mathematics and philosophies, all their secrets and discoveries—amassing so much knowledge so quickly their halls overflowed with books, and when they slept they curled under sheets of paper inked with incantations, dreaming of inventions yet to be invented, breakthroughs yet to be broken.

  Most exalted among the literate were those who belonged to an elite society of readers known as the Guard, which possessed the First Book.

  Guardians toiled over it generation after generation, poring over its pages and copying them down, harvesting knowledge like sheaves of wheat. For years, they circulated their findings, teaching the people, feeding their desire for more knowledge, more power. Their magic proliferated so quickly Kelanna was overrun with it, as a beach is overrun by the tide.

  And as with the tide, some drowned.

  Kingdoms fought. Orchards burned. Cities crumbled. The very geography of the Five Islands was transformed by the violence of their conflicts.

  Five of the Guard’s divisions—Librarians, Politicians, Soldiers, Assassins, and Administrators—struggled in vain to control the explosion of magic, but Kelanna was already glutted with it, sick and corrupt with the power of the written word.

  So the Guardians turned to their sixth and last division: the Scribes, who made their home in an abbey deep in the frozen Northern Reach.

  Scribes were more powerful than any of the other Guardians, for they knew how to rewrite the world. With the stroke of a quill, they could erase a man from history, inscribe new stars into the firmament, alter the currents in the vast blue sea.

  When the Master Scribe learned of the disorder in the Islands, she knew she had a choice before her—the most difficult choice any Guardian would ever have to make.

  The word was beautiful, precious, capable of molding the very fabric of the world into exquisite, transcendent forms.

  It was also dangerous, insidious, capable of corrupting even the most honorable with an insatiable desire for knowledge and power.

  The Master Scribe gathered together her servants and Apprentices and put this choice before them:

  Destroy the word and preserve the world?

  Or preserve the word, and in so doing, destroy the world?

  The Scribes deliberated for many months, and at the end of the deliberation, they all took up their quills.

  Using a deep and ancient magic, they revised the Illuminated world itself, in inks of gold and light. They eradicated literacy from Kelanna, erasing alphabets, books, enchantments, libraries, universities, all the institutions built upon foundations of reading and writing and magic. They took it all—spelling songs, storybooks, folios of poetry, scientific dissertations, blueprints of architectural innovations, even the events of the past themselves—leaving only empty husks behind: nonsense rhymes, irreproducible inventions, citadels so complex that without records to show how they were constructed, no one could figure out how to replicate them.

  Under the direction of the Master Scribe, they gutted history of every trace of reading and writing—except the Guard. Someone needed to protect the written word, to preserve the memory of what had happened when it went unchecked, and to ensure that it would never run rampant over the world again.

  But there was one bastion of literacy still to be eliminated, a place dedicated to the most
perilous magic of all, a place too dangerous to exist.

  The abbey of the Scribes.

  To prevent anyone from ever finding them, the Scribes erected towering walls of ice around the entirety of the Northern Reach, so steep and formidable they obscured even the memory of the white lands beyond.

  Then the Scribes laid down their quills, or whatever arcane instruments they used for their craft, for the last time. They would rewrite the world no more.

  Alone in her office, the Master Scribe continued the work. Her quill raced across the lands of the Northern Reach, blotting out roads and isolated villages, snowshoers and sled dogs and infants lying asleep in their baskets.

  And when her magic reached her own abbey, she destroyed that too.

  She brought down the pointed roofs and frosted eaves. She caved in the chimneys and roaring fireplaces, the walls, the windows, the tiled ceilings. The furniture splintered. The floors split.

  As the Master Scribe worked, she could hear the noise of her own quill striking out every room in the abbey, from the cellars to the attics, snuffing out the lives of all her Apprentices, all the men and women and children who served in the abbey.

  In a world without literacy, there could be no Scribes, who wielded the most powerful magic of all—the power to rewrite the Illuminated world. So she sacrificed them.

  She could hear the approach of her own ruin, could hear it come thundering down the hall in explosions of rock and powder, and when it reached her, she severed the line of her own life with one last flourish.

  All was still.

  Kelanna had been stripped of the written word. Only five divisions of the Guard remained, protectors of the First Book, a last line of defense between the word and the world.

  CHAPTER 33

  Poison on Her Tongue

  Sefia had asked how to help Archer escape his fate, and the Book had answered.

  If you want to save him, you can’t keep him.

  To prevent the people of Kelanna from ripping each other apart, the Master Scribe had sacrificed her purpose, her beliefs, the people entrusted to her care. She’d even stricken her own life from the world.

  To save Archer, all Sefia had to do was leave him.

  She’d known he was a killer since the day they’d met, but now he was a warrior, and a leader, and if he didn’t stop himself—if she didn’t stop him—the Guard would claim him, and their war would kill him.

  And Sefia was not going to let that happen. She could still change his destiny. If she could save him from himself, and from the Guard.

  If she left him, he wouldn’t have the Book to guide him to the impressors anymore. But if she left him, he’d be more vulnerable to the Guard.

  She had to stop them from seeking him out ever again. She had to take him out of their plans for good.

  • • •

  A couple of the bloodletters had left, including Mako, the youngest, but nineteen remained. As they prepared for the voyage to Oxscini, selling off their horses and carts for the provisions they’d need during their weeks at sea, a plan began to take shape in Sefia’s mind.

  It wasn’t a great plan. She’d be giving up the Book, her freedom, maybe her life, and all the lives that might be lost in the Red War.

  But Archer would be safe. He’d be happy.

  Because she had the one thing the Guard wanted more than they wanted the boy from the legends.

  She checked the Book to make sure, saw herself making the bargain, knew it would come to pass.

  She knew better than to trust that everything would go smoothly after that, but she also knew that however risky her plan was, it still might work. And she had to take that chance.

  Her secret was like poison she held on her tongue. One false word, one whisper of what she knew about his future or of her fragile plans, and she might accidentally break her silence . . . and force him closer to his own death.

  So she kept it to herself, between her teeth, and poisoned only herself.

  On the day of the Brother’s departure, Sefia stood on the cliff above the flooded quarry as the wind nipped at her hair and clothing, like it was trying to rip her out to sea.

  Her pack lay at her feet, and in it, the Book.

  “Sefia?” Archer asked from behind her.

  She turned. In his rolled-up shirtsleeves and well-worn boots, he was a rugged kind of handsome—tall in height and broad in the jaw and shoulder, with the grace and swiftness of a jungle cat. He was more confident than the boy she’d met over four months ago, more at ease in his own skin.

  But he was damaged. Up close she could see it—the hairline scars from the knife fight on the Current of Faith, puckered bullet wounds, scrapes, blemishes, fading bruises, crescent-shaped cuts on his face and knuckles, and a look in his gold eyes that told her no matter how many dreams he dreamt or fights he fought, he’d never be able to forget what he’d done, the people he’d killed.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  No. But she placed the mate’s wand, made from the same timbers as the Current itself, in his palm.

  He blinked, struggling to understand what it meant. Then his eyes widened. “You’re not coming?”

  The wind stung her cheeks as she whispered, “No.”

  He gripped the wand and said in a small voice, “I thought you were with me.”

  “I can’t watch you do this to yourself anymore. It’s like you’re killing yourself, and you don’t even know it.”

  “I’m trying to make up for the things I’ve done.”

  She smiled sadly. “I think you’re trying to justify what you’re still doing.”

  A muscle twitched in his jaw.

  She almost told him. She almost spilled her entire plan. Maybe, just maybe, things could be different. Maybe they could be together. “Come with me, please,” she said, reaching for his wrist. “Just come with me. Tell them you’re not going. Tell them it’s over. Together, we can run. Together, we can be free.”

  For a second he hesitated, and she thought he might go with her, might give up the bloodletters, give up the mission, give it all up to be with her, wherever she went.

  But then he balled his fists and looked away. “I’m not free,” he said.

  And Sefia swallowed her secret once and for all. “So . . .” she said. “I guess this is—”

  Suddenly, Archer grabbed her and pulled her to him—his hands finding her waist, her spine, her shoulders.

  He thrust her back again, staring into her eyes. “I love you,” he said. “I should have told you sooner. I love you.”

  The words took the breath out of her.

  Love?

  Love.

  Of course.

  She didn’t say it back—couldn’t, or she’d never be able to leave—but that didn’t stop her from hurling herself against him, crushing his lips with hers, fingers knotting in his hair. Their bodies came so close even their breath was mingled—the desperate in-out of air between them as they found each other’s mouths over and over again.

  It hurt. Her chest was so tight every kiss was an arrow, and her heart the quivering string.

  At last, Archer took her face in his hands and brushed his thumbs over her cheeks. “Don’t leave,” he whispered.

  “Leave with me.”

  He found her lips again. And again. And each time it seemed like the last, and each time it wasn’t.

  “Where will you go?” he asked.

  “Corabel,” Sefia answered softly. “But I don’t know where after that.”

  “Will I ever see you again?”

  “I don’t—”

  He stopped her with his mouth. “I love you,” he breathed between kisses. “I love you. I love you.”

  She closed her eyes, memorizing the sound of his voice, the shapes of his words against her lips. She locked them up deep inside her
. Because she didn’t know if she’d ever see him again—not for years, maybe, if she made it out at all—and she’d need those words in the days to come.

  Finally, they parted for the last time, their skin flushed, their faces radiant. The sea breeze tore at them, whipping the grass into a frenzy.

  Collecting her pack from the ground, Sefia got to her feet.

  Archer stood beside her. He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. They roved aimlessly over his pockets, up his chest and to his throat, where he removed the leather cord from around his neck.

  Sefia blinked. He hadn’t had it when she’d read his future in the Book, but she’d assumed he’d thrown it into the sea. Crushed it beneath his heel, maybe. Anything to forget her.

  Instead, he placed it over her head. Still warm from his skin, the piece of quartz nestled in the open V of her collar, below the hollow of her throat.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  He almost looked as if he were about to reply, but he only pressed his lips together and nodded.

  Sefia took a step back. Grass crumpled beneath her boot heel. Then she turned, beginning the long hike southeast to Corabel, with the weight of the Book against the small of her back.

  • • •

  It rained the first night, and she huddled miserably inside her tent, watching her meager fire hiss and snap in the drizzle.

  Of course, the weather was the least of her miseries.

  Her hand kept straying to the crystal looped around her neck, until the stone was warmer than her stiff fingers. She held it tight in her fist as she opened her pack and began to burn her possessions.

  Embroidered handkerchiefs. Bandages. Spools of thread.

  Nothing she brought to Tanin could be marked by her time with Archer and the bloodletters, for any Illuminator worth her salt would be able to glean information from a rip in a shirtsleeve, a dent in a cup.

  And Sefia couldn’t risk them learning anything about Archer. Or where she planned to hide the Book.

  Along the way, she traded what she couldn’t destroy. Forks. Pots. Knives. None of it in the same place. Always for objects of lesser quality.