Then the guard looked over her shoulder, turned back, and made a sweeping motion with her hands that conveyed a clear message. Go, she was saying. Run.
With one last, heartbroken thought for her brothers, Lovisa scrambled over the wall behind the queen, jumped, and ran.
PART FOUR
The Keeper
When the four silbercows explained to the creature what they wanted her to do, she was not impressed.
Why would I do that? she said. How could I do that? It would draw the attention of everyone in the ocean, just when all the other silbercows are finally starting to forget about me.
The silbercows told her that no one in the ocean was forgetting about her. All the silbercows talked about her, all the time. The only reason she didn’t see them was that they were careful not to get too close to her singing range.
Good, said the creature, who actually found this to be terrible news. She started singing, putting all her refusal into it. It made her feel so brave. Once, long ago, she’d been happy. She’d had treasures and no one had come near them. She’d hid, and watched the water above, and loved her treasures. It had been all she’d wanted. Then one night, because of a terrible attack on the surface that hadn’t been her fault, her life had changed, and now she had silbercow friends she missed when they were gone, and her tentacle hurt, and they wanted her to do things she didn’t want to do.
When she finished her song, ruffled and triumphant, the silbercows sat silently, staring at her. She waited for them to agree amongst themselves that she was very different from the Keeper, therefore unsuited to heroics.
Instead, as they continued to stare at her, she began to notice the way their shoulders slumped and their whiskers drooped.
She felt her own body droop. What’s wrong? she said. Is it my singing?
The silbercows told her that in fact, they were starting to get used to her singing. This thing we need you to do will help humans, they said. And we need to help humans, because then maybe humans will remember silbercows and feel an obligation to help us. But you’re the only one in the ocean big and strong enough to do what we need. We don’t know what to do, if you won’t help.
The creature decided to pretend that the silbercows weren’t there. She swung her eye-stems away from them and held her ring up to the light, admiring it. Then, anxiously, she pulled that tentacle close and tucked it away, because she remembered that the silbercows knew the human who’d lost the ring. She didn’t want to give them ideas about “helping the humans” by returning it.
She sank down and put an eye to her Storyworld, where her two skeletons lay in their well-preserved clothing. Mine, she thought. Mine.
The silbercows were still looking at her sadly. It was setting off unhappy implosions inside her heart.
I’m scared, she said, bursting out with it suddenly. What you’re asking is scary.
The silbercows stirred, curious and interested. They asked her why it was scary.
I’ve never gone far from home, she said. I’ve never undone anything that was done. I’ve never done anything for anyone else. I’ve never had to give up a treasure.
The silbercows asked her if there was anything they could do to make it easier for her to give up this treasure.
She sat with that question, circling her tentacles around her body and sinking her head down inside the cave they made. She tried to think of what would make her feel least like a hero.
Then she popped her head back up. You could come with me and guard me from other silbercows so they don’t talk to me, she said. You could sing with me while I go. And you could promise me that I can have my Storyworld back after the humans are done with it.
The silbercows asked her, would she accept two out of three?
Chapter Thirty
Giddon and Hava flew to Torla’s Neck in one of the airships that conveyed the Keepish Mail.
You would hate this, Giddon told Bitterblue as the Keepish landscape slid by below. The rocking, and the feeling of being blown out of the sky whenever the wind hits. Hava loves it, of course. The rougher it gets, the louder she laughs. I wonder, he thought, as another gust made him think he might dissolve into wind, if this is how it feels to be a bird.
Quona had arranged this conveyance for them. “It’ll minimize attention,” she’d said. “No one would ever expect you to fly with the Keepish Mail.”
This was probably because it was so uncomfortable, the car cold and jammed with boxes and sacks, the crew working hard in the open air for most of the flight. The Mail airship was very unlike those sold to the Ledra elite, which were designed for the comfort of passengers, with warm stoves, glass windows, comfortable seats, tables for eating and drinking.
When they’d arrived at the Mail hangar that Sunday morning, only three people had been there, loading an airship car with sacks. When Hava had handed an envelope to one of them, the woman had barely glanced at it.
“From Quona Varana?” she’d said.
“Yes.”
“Climb in,” the woman had said. A moment later, that academy student Nev had arrived, her fox kit sleeping in a bag strapped across her front, its head craned back and its little nose sticking out. A moment after that, the Mail carriers had unhooked the dock lines and the ship had risen into the air.
The three passengers stood together, watching the coast of Winterkeep go by.
“Why exactly are you here?” Hava asked Nev.
Nev shrugged, her brown face expressionless. “Quona says I know things that put me in danger, though of course she hasn’t seen fit to tell me what’s actually going on.”
“So she’s exiling you to Torla’s Neck?”
“My family is there,” Nev said shortly. “I’m going home. You’re welcome to stay with us.”
“Oh. That’s very kind, thank you,” said Giddon.
“Do you know about Quona’s foxes?” said Hava.
“Hava,” said Giddon warningly, for they hadn’t discussed how much they were going to say about that to other people.
There was a long pause, during which Nev stared down at the little fox kit sleeping against her chest. “I’ve suspected she might have secret foxes,” she said. “Some of the fur on her clothing isn’t cat fur.”
“Really?” said Hava, surprised. “You can tell that?”
“She brings me to her attic sometimes, too,” said Nev, “where she has a balcony for visiting the silbercows. Have you been up there?”
“Yes.”
“Then I don’t need to describe it. Sometimes when we arrive, the doors in the walls are flapping, as if someone just left.”
“She has seven secret foxes,” said Hava, which made Nev’s eyebrows rise to her hairline and stay there for a while.
“So,” said Giddon quietly to Hava, when Nev had moved away. “We’re telling her everything, are we?”
“We’re going to need her help once we’re in Torla’s Neck.”
“How hard can it be to sneak into a house?”
“Listen, who’s going to be doing most of the sneaking? You or me? I want her help.”
Giddon couldn’t dispute that, so he watched the landscape instead. The airship hugged the coast, passing over hills with cows grazing on their golden slopes. Idly, he counted buildings, fields, tiny bright dots in a tangle of vines that might be pumpkins. Then he lifted his eyes to the bank of clouds far out at sea, which seemed to be growing as the airship flew north, masses of gray blobs piling themselves up into mountains.
Giddon was about to ask Nev about the clouds when something astonishing came into view. He’d heard of glaciers, but he’d never seen one before. The glacier, if that’s what it was, was gray and wrinkled, but shining white and blue from within, like the delicate insides of a shell, but massive, as if the earth were an animal with beautiful scales just under a translucent membrane. It flowed between mountain peaks a
ll the way to the sea, where it dropped blue blocks of ice into the water.
On either side of the glacier, the land stretched up from the sea in dark, climbing steps that were cultivated with rows of some now-dead crop that Giddon guessed was tea. Beyond the tea stretched forests of fir trees; beyond those climbed mountain peaks with more glaciers flowing between.
He was about to ask Nev about the glaciers when Nev pointed out to sea. Giddon knew, before he even looked, what she was pointing at, for he felt them: silbercows, filling his mind with a touch as light as a soap bubble.
Hello! Giddon called out. I hear you! Then he saw them, racing across the surface of the water, trying to keep up with the fast-flying Mail airship.
You! they said, sending him the image of the house, the shadowy airship, and the terrible, heart-wrenching explosion. Then they sent him the Seashell, resting on the ocean floor beside the gigantic tentacles of the Keeper. We will help you!
Help me! said Giddon, surprised. How will you help me?
We’ll bring you what you need!
What I need? said Giddon, his heart filling with Bitterblue, even though he knew that couldn’t be their meaning.
In response, their own feelings changed to a kind of surprise and confusion. Tentatively, they began to show him a new story. A swimmer; a drowner. The impression of a small, cold, furious, determined, drowning person passed through Giddon like an arrow and his whole being cried out in anguish and need, because he recognized her.
Wait! he shouted, for the silbercows were turning away. A fjord reached out into the sea, cutting off their path; the airship swept on, but the silbercows had to go around. Wait! he screamed, running to the airship’s stern, trying to hold fast to the thread connecting his mind to theirs. Show me the rest! he cried. Show me the rest. But the thread was broken. They were gone.
Giddon dropped to the floor of the deck, his face buried in his hands. When, a moment later, Hava lowered herself beside him, there was no way to pretend he wasn’t sobbing.
She was quiet, waiting until he was over the worst of it.
“Did they show her to you?” he finally said when he was quieter, numb.
“Yes.”
“What did it mean?”
“I don’t know. It didn’t mean anything, beyond what we saw. We can’t even know if it’s true.”
“But it was her. They saw her! We need to find them and talk to them again,” he said. “As soon as possible.”
“Giddon,” said Hava, in a low, heavy voice. “She was drowning. Do you really want the silbercows to show you the story of her drowning?”
“Yes,” he said, his tears starting up again helplessly. “Because then we’re there, witnessing it, and it’s less like she was all alone.”
* * *
—
Later, as the light began to turn to pinks and golds, a long isthmus came into view far ahead. It formed a bridge to a spreading mass of forests that Giddon, remembering his maps, realized must be the beginning of the rest of the Torlan continent. He was looking across an isthmus at the nation of Kamassar.
“Torla’s Neck,” he said out loud, forming a new understanding of the name of the Keepish province that connected the continent’s head to its body.
“Where’s the Cavenda house?” Hava asked Nev. “Do you know?”
Nev flashed sudden, surprised eyes at Hava. “It’s at the top of the isthmus,” she said, “very near the border to Kamassar. We’re too far away to see it from here.”
“Have you been there?”
“No, I’ve never seen it, but Torla’s Neck isn’t big. Everyone knows where the rich people live. Why are you asking about the Cavenda house?”
“Have the silbercows shown you the picture of the explosion?” Hava said. “With the house?”
Nev was quiet for a beat, turning her face away so Giddon and Hava couldn’t see. “Is the house in the silbercow image the Cavenda house?” she finally asked.
“We think it might be,” said Hava.
“Is it their airship? Their doing?”
“We don’t know. We think it might be.”
“Mmph,” Nev said, an obscure, but plainly dissatisfied, sound.
“What?” demanded Hava.
“I may have abandoned a friend in a time of need,” she said.
* * *
—
The Mail crew landed at an airship dock on a cliff above a rocky beach, near a cluster of buildings at the edge of a pine forest. A man came running from the closest building, waited for one of the flyers to shoot an anchor into the landing web, then fed them a dock line.
“The post office is here,” one of the Mail crew said, lowering the ladder. “After we deliver our mail, we can drop you closer to where you live, if there’s a dock.”
“This is perfect, actually,” Nev said. “I live here.”
“That’s lucky,” said the woman.
But then, once they’d disembarked, Nev began to walk toward the cliff edge.
“Where are you going?” said Giddon.
“Home,” she said.
“The houses are that way,” Giddon said, pointing.
“I pretended I lived there,” said Nev. “I don’t need Quona Varana knowing exactly where I live. Come on, it’s this way.” Then, a small pack on her back and her fox still strapped to her front, she marched right off the cliff edge. Immediately it became apparent that there was a stair of rock where she’d stepped, but still, Giddon started forward in alarm.
Gathering himself, he stepped in behind her, Hava following.
* * *
—
The beach below was difficult, covered with loose, uneven rocks. Nev marched along it as if it were a smooth path through a grassy glade.
The gathering clouds on the horizon seemed closer, more menacing. “Is that a storm?” asked Giddon.
“Probably,” said Nev, not even glancing at it. “They grow for days, then move in.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“We’re used to it.”
After another minute, Giddon tried again. “Are you missing classes to take this trip?”
“Yes,” she said shortly, breaking off from the beach and beginning up a dirt path that climbed steeply into hills of golden grass.
“Will you be able to pick up where you stopped?” said Giddon, who usually left this nosiness to Hava, but today he was feeling unlike himself. Off-kilter, ever since the silbercows had shown him Bitterblue.
“I don’t know,” she said, then changed course again, leading them over the top of a hill and down onto the other side. “Shortcut,” she said, at Giddon’s puzzled noise.
“I wouldn’t want to have to follow verbal directions,” he said.
“I would never send a stranger this way.”
On the other side of the hill was a low wooden door, built so neatly into the hill’s slope that Giddon almost didn’t notice it. “What is that?” said Giddon. “Does that open into the hill?”
“It’s a sod hut,” said Nev, “for if you get caught in a storm.”
“But you have to know it’s there for it to be useful,” said Giddon. “Why is it hidden from the path?”
Nev hesitated, considering her own climbing feet. Then she said, “This is federally owned land. It’s against the law for us to build on it or into it. But storms rise fast. One of my neighbors died once, when I was a kid. We do what we have to, but out of the way.”
“But wouldn’t Parliament understand the need for a survival hut in a place with sudden storms?”
“Parliament takes forever,” said Nev. “And no. With the exception of our own few reps, they don’t tend to understand anything about life in the north. They don’t understand anything about anything, really. Why are they talking about legalizing zilfium use, for one, when Torla’s running out of z
ilfium? Every time someone reminds them of that, they pretend not to hear. That’s how they are. Why should we need the permission of one of their committees to do something that’s common sense? We prefer to take care of ourselves without drawing their attention. None of which I would tell you if I thought you were unsympathetic, but you seem too interested in the silbercows’ recent stories for that.”
Giddon glanced at Hava. Hava considered him flatly, then said, “We think someone in Winterkeep drowned two Monsean diplomats because they learned a dangerous secret. We don’t know if it’s connected to the explosion in the silbercow stories, but we do know it connects to the Cavenda house in the north.”
“I see,” said Nev. “So you’ve come north to look at the Cavenda house?”
“Yes.”
“And then what?”
Hava shrugged. “That’ll depend on what we find.”
“Can silbercows testify in court in Winterkeep?” asked Giddon.
“No,” said Nev. “Their stories are too chaotic, and mixed with things they’ve imagined. Or anyway, that’s what Parliament’s decided.”
“Have—have the silbercows shown you the story of the drowning of our queen?” asked Giddon, trying, and failing, to sound casual.
“No,” said Nev. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s quite all right,” said Giddon, sinking into disappointment. Falling behind the others, he climbed the red-gold hills, higher and higher, colder and windier, looking out at another wrinkled glacier ahead, at the whitecapped sea. This place was so different from Ledra. The views stretched on forever, vast and open, and the wind felt like it was blowing uninterrupted from the other side of the earth.
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