by Traci Chee
“He loved you,” Sefia said.
“He loved you.” The Master Librarian extended the letter to her.
“It’s addressed to you. Keep it.”
Sniffling, Erastis pressed the pages into her hands. “If you’re going to do this, my dear, you’ll have to be more careful.”
Sefia tucked them into her pocket again. “Would you tell Tanin . . .” She bit her lip. History had made them enemies, but if things had gone a little differently, at a dozen different times, they might have been allies, friends . . . even family. “Would you tell her I’m sorry?”
“I’m sure she’s sorry too. For everything.” He hesitated. “Wait here. I have something for you.”
She shifted the telescope case on her shoulder as he shuffled into the stacks, his voice drifting to her through the bookshelves. “I knew you before I met you, my dear. Your skill, your courage, and your capacity to love.” Soon he reappeared, clutching a manuscript in his arms. Setting it down, he turned the pages, carving the air. Then, taking a straight edge, he pressed it to the book and ripped out a single page.
Sefia gasped at the sound. “What is it?”
“Your way out,” he said, passing it to her.
She skimmed the page and looked up in confusion. “You want me to teleport? Based on a Fragment? Tanin said—”
“It’s dangerous, yes. But don’t you recognize this place?” He tapped the page. “Don’t you know where you have to go?”
She looked down again. “I’ve never teleported before.”
“You’ll make it. It’s been written, and what is written always comes to pass.”
I hope not, Sefia thought. Aloud she said, “Is that why you’re helping me? Because you already have?”
He nodded. “And because I’m a sentimental old fool.”
“You might never get the Book back.”
“I made peace with that possibility a long time ago.” Erastis smiled sadly. “If your parents taught me anything, it’s this: Love what’s in front of you, right now, because now is all you have.”
She knew he was speaking of more than the Book. She nodded. “How do I get back?” she asked. “Do I get back?”
He patted her kindly on the shoulder. “Some of the ancient Masters believed that Teleportation was not a matter of remembering the places you’ve been, but of finding your way back to the stories that had such a powerful impact on you that they’d become entangled with your own.”
Sefia frowned. “What does that—”
“There are some people we can always get back to, no matter how far they are from us.”
She swallowed her questions. “How much do you know about what’s going to happen? How much have you already read?”
He shook his head. “Good-bye, my dear. I’m afraid the next time we meet, we’ll be bitter enemies.”
She clasped his hand. “Then I hope we never meet again.”
Stepping back, she glanced once more at the words and tucked the page into her vest. She could do this. She had already done this. Blinking, she raised her arms as Tanin had done earlier that day, parting the sea of light. As if she were skimming for a passage in a book, she skimmed the golden crests until she found what she was looking for. Then, with a wave of her hands, she vanished.
Chapter 44
What Is Written Comes to Pass
Sefia landed, staggering, on a dock. The air smelled of salt and tar, and the wind was full of the creaking of boats, the cries of gulls. Dinghies and tall ships surrounded her, and a rickety old cutter lay at anchor nearby. At the far end of the pier, a wooden column topped with a metal statue of a songbird—a canary—rose above the throng of sailors, servants, and war orphans scrambling for scraps.
She was back in Epidram, the city where she and Archer had fought Hatchet on Black Boar Pier and stowed away on—
Then she saw it. A green hull and a figurehead shaped like a tree: the Current of Faith. Laughing, she hoisted the telescope higher on her back and charged forward. Captain Reed was supposed to be somewhere in the Ephygian Bay, searching for treasure. What was he doing here?
She had almost reached the gangplank when two figures appeared at the rail. The chief mate looked just as she remembered, his strong rectangular face weathered with age, but the boy beside him . . .
It couldn’t be. Black curls soft as satin, big ears, an easy smile. A red bird perched on his shoulder.
Harison?
Sefia drew back. Harison was dead. She’d been there when it happened. She’d watched him die. She’d felt him die. She’d mourned as his body was sent burning onto the ocean. He couldn’t be alive.
Which meant only one thing.
She was in the past. Over four months before she’d left Erastis in the Library.
For a moment, she allowed herself to feel the full weight of her disappointment. Her mother hadn’t carved those words onto the crate after all. She hadn’t returned from the dead to save her daughter.
Sefia ran her thumb over the sharp black stones of Mareah’s ring.
She couldn’t buckle now. She had work to do.
With a stealthiness she hoped her mother would have been proud of, she sneaked toward the stacks of supplies yet to be loaded onto the Current. Among the chests and kegs, she hunkered down to listen.
There it was—a murmuring from inside one of the crates. She crept closer.
It was only one voice—her voice, higher and more childish than she’d expected. She couldn’t make out all the words, but she remembered what she was saying.
“I’m sorry. I should have been more careful. I should have noticed . . . I just couldn’t control my vision . . .” Then, “Hatchet said you were supposed to lead an army.”
How little they’d known back then.
Sefia blinked and drew her knife. Glancing around once to make sure she wasn’t being watched, she began to carve.
In the Illuminated world, the words blazed beneath the tip of her blade. She hoped she was doing this right. The most she’d ever achieved with Transformation was removing mold from a book. Making something disappear was entirely out of her depth.
The voice inside the crate went silent, the air hushed and tense. She wished she could reassure her younger self. They were going to the Current of Faith, where she’d meet Captain Reed and the chief mate, Meeks and Horse and Jules . . .
In her mind’s eye, she pictured the way the crate had seemed to flicker in and out of her vision, the way the mate kept touching it to reassure himself it was still there. The way the door in the house on the hill had done the same thing.
She didn’t have much time. The crew of the Current were coming. She knew they would. She remembered their voices.
“You there!”
She looked up, blinking. Theo and Killian were heading toward her, readying the ropes that would swing the crate onto the green ship.
But her gaze was drawn by movement farther down the dock.
From the deck of the old cutter, a woman in black leapt onto the gangplank. Sefia’s breath rushed out of her. She knew that pale pockmarked face, that curved sword.
Another corpse risen from the dead.
And just a few feet ahead of her, Tanin.
Cursing inwardly, Sefia sheathed her knife and dashed into the crowd. Her attempt at Transformation had to work—it had been written, and it had already come to pass.
Escaping with her life was another matter.
She dodged through the throng, knocking aside merchants and burly stevedores. She leapt coils of line and gleaming chests waiting to be loaded.
Behind her, she heard startled cries and Tanin’s annoyed hiss.
She had to get out of there, had to find a way back to her own time. What was it Erastis had said?
There are some people we can always get back to, no matter how far they are from u
s.
Some people’s stories were so entwined with your own that you’d find your way back to them again and again.
Archer.
Archer was her referent. Her anchor. Her home.
She blinked. The Illuminated world swept over her, turning her vision to gold, and she could see her way through the groups of passengers and stacks of kegs, past the cannons ready for the warships and the discarded fishing nets stinking on the docks.
But she needed to see more than this.
Racing down the pier, she ducked around a cart, wincing as her elbow struck the hard corner.
Archer. His face. His scars. The color of his hair in the lamplight and the feral glow in his eyes. The strength and gentleness of his hands.
Where was he? As she ran, she searched the Illuminated world for him. For the boy she’d saved, the boy she loved, the boy she’d gladly join her life to—in this story or any other.
Oceans of time slipped past her as she ran. Days in the blink of an eye. Months in a breath.
And she still couldn’t find him.
She was nearing the end of the pier, looming before her with a stack of crates like steps into the sky.
Archer.
Where are you?
She was out of space to run. Teleport or be caught. And she already knew she wouldn’t be caught.
Though it made her a target for Tanin and the Assassin, she bounded up the crates and flung herself into the air. She spread her arms wide, like wings, hoping, desperately hoping, to see him at the other end of the parted sea of gold.
He wasn’t there.
The water rose up to meet her.
Pain seared through her arm as a knife flew past.
She wouldn’t make it. She’d end up stuck in the past or in some far-flung future. Worse, she’d end up nowhere. Dissolved into nothing but dust, all the pieces of her carried off by the currents of history. She’d never be able to tell Archer she’d been wrong. She never should have kept him in the dark. She never should have left him. She should have stayed, and they should have faced this, together, whatever came for them.
Then, seconds before she hit the water, she saw him. Flawed. Perfect. Surrounded by a tapestry of light so dazzling it nearly blinded her.
She waved her hands, sweeping herself through the sea of gold. And then she was gone.
CHAPTER 45
Always
Sefia hit the ground and rolled, coming up in a low-ceilinged storeroom crowded with kegs and dark barrels of wine.
Archer was tied to a wooden chair, his head lolling forward, his hair matted, his clothing torn.
Archer. Her heart dented. Bruised, bleeding, groaning, golden Archer.
By the door, two guards were already drawing their weapons. Bullets sped toward her. Blinking, Sefia sent them back. One of the guards cried out, clutching his throat as red spattered his lips.
Swiftly, almost casually, Sefia lifted her hand. The remaining guard catapulted toward the ceiling, where she struck the beams and went limp, falling to the ground again like a sack of bricks.
There was shouting outside.
Someone thrust the door open. Sefia got a glimpse of eyes and steel before she shut them all out with a sweep of her arm.
“Sefia,” Archer whispered. He was so hurt, bleeding everywhere. A gash yawned in his side, deep and black.
Keeping her hold on the door, Sefia went to him, kneeling as she pulled her knife and cut his bonds. The ropes pricked her fingers.
A gunshot split the door. Splinters flew into the storeroom. Sheathing her blade, Sefia swept barrel after barrel in front of the door, barricading them inside.
“Sefia,” Archer kept saying—just her name, like the word was a lifeline and he was drawing himself to shore.
Gently, she loosed the ropes, easing them from his wrists and ankles. “What happened? Who did this?”
Archer slumped forward. She barely caught him before he hit the ground, his skin sticky, his hair smelling of sweat and thundershowers. “Serakeen,” he said. “He—”
Sefia’s grip tightened. “Serakeen’s here?”
Tanin lied. She’d said all those things about trust, about family, and Sefia had believed her, had even felt sorry for her.
But Tanin had been lying all along. The Guard would never stop hunting them.
Archer shook his head. Blood dripped from his lips like strands of molten sugar. “We’ve got to get them,” he mumbled.
Tanin, she thought, Serakeen, whoever else was responsible for doing this to him. “We will,” she said, “but we can’t stay here.”
Bullets came flying through the door, puncturing the barrels. Burgundy wine poured onto the floor. The sour smell of fermentation filled the storeroom as Sefia looped Archer’s arm over her shoulders.
Summoning the Sight, she swept her arm wide, searching the currents of light for the only safe place she knew of.
There.
The vault of sails and rigging and the length of the deck before her.
As the sounds of banging and bullets grew dim around her, she gripped Archer tight and teleported them from the storeroom . . . onto the deck of the Current of Faith.
Her telescope hit the floor as she and Archer collapsed in a heap. He was heavy and half-conscious in her arms, but he was alive. And they were together.
Exclamations of surprise exploded around them like fireworks.
“Sefia? How did you—”
“Is that Archer?”
“He’s injured.” She sat up, cradling Archer’s head in her lap. “Get the doc!”
Footsteps scampered across the deck as the news of their arrival went through the crew.
“Sefia,” Archer murmured.
Laying her palms on his cheeks, she leaned over him, memorizing his face: the contours of the bones beneath his skin, his bruises like sunsets, and the deep bloody cleft in his side.
“You were right. I should never have left,” she murmured. “I’m so sorry. I’ll never let them take you again. I won’t let you die. I promise, I promise . . .”
“You came back,” was all he said.
Sefia nodded. Tears spilled from her eyes.
“Did you get Frey and Aljan out too?”
She froze, frantically trying to recall the details of the storeroom. Archer. Two guards. No one else. She was sure of it.
“Were they supposed to be with you?” she whispered.
He nodded.
She leaned back, ice forming in the pit of her stomach. Serakeen still has them.
“Move, girl.” The chief mate pulled her aside as Doc arrived with her black bag.
“Hey, Sef,” Horse murmured, patting her shoulder with one of his enormous hands. “I dunno how you got here, but I sure am glad to see you both.”
Doc’s keen gaze flicked over Archer. “How did this happen?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t there.” Sefia squeezed her eyes shut, trying to conjure up the storeroom in her memory. It had been dark, with clay floors, kegs stacked in the corners. What color were the walls? How high was the ceiling? Was it lighted with torches? Lanterns? Candles? She couldn’t picture it. She hadn’t been there long enough.
And if she couldn’t remember it clearly enough, she couldn’t teleport back there. She couldn’t save Aljan and Frey.
While Doc examined Archer’s wounds, the other crew members gathered around. Meeks swept her up in a hug, crying, “Sef! Sef! You came back!”
For a moment she buried her face in his dreadlocks and gripped him tight.
The safest place she could think of.
As the second mate let her down, she caught sight of Captain Reed—his blue eyes bright beneath his wide-brimmed hat, looking quite the hero with the sun blazing behind him.
Sefia straightened. “Cap.”
“Sef.” He tipped his hat at her. “I don’t know how we keep meetin’ like this.”
“Sorry, Cap, I guess I should’ve sent a messenger.”
“You’re always welcome on the Current, kid. You know that. In fact, we been lookin’ for you—” He paused.
Quick as lightning, he grabbed her hand.
“Cap!” Meeks shouted.
Reed’s fingers dug into her skin. Pain shot up her arm. She blinked—clouds of gold burst across her vision. It took all her self-control not to fling him across the deck.
He ignored the cries of his crew, studying her ring with the same intense focus he’d had when he first saw the Book.
No, when he saw the words inside. When his anger had exploded out of him like a bullet from a rifle.
In a flash, Sefia understood: He’d seen the ring before. Somewhere on his adventures, he’d met Mareah. And it hadn’t gone well for him.
She wrenched out of his grasp.
“Where’d you get that?” he asked quietly.
“It was my mother’s.”
“Your—” His gaze went from the ring to her face and back again. “I thought she was—”
“She is,” Sefia said flatly. “I found this when I went home.”
Captain Reed rubbed his eyes. “Kid, I think we’ve got a lot to talk about.”
Before she could reply, Doc stood, motioning to Horse. “He’s taken quite a beating, but he’ll recover with time. Get him down to the sick bay.”
As Archer was lifted from the deck, he reached for Sefia.
“Are you back?” he asked, the plaintive note in his voice a heartbreak all its own. His grasp tightened, as if he was afraid she’d slip away like water through his hands. “For good?”
In answer, Sefia crossed her fingers, one over the other.
They were together. And nothing, not even fate itself, would part them again.
“For always,” she said.
CHAPTER 46
Of Oaths and Prophecy
When Sefia fled the dungeons, Tanin assumed she’d have to run as well—run or die. By helping the girl escape, Erastis, her only remaining supporter, had betrayed her. She no longer had allies in the Guard, and without the girl, without the Book, she had little chance of ousting Stonegold before he killed her.