Secret in the Stone

by Kamilla Benko

  “Clearly, we’re Spinners,” Sophie said, and Claire noticed that she kept her eyes wide. Claire thought that she was trying to look innocent, but the widened eyes only made her look more suspicious, as if she were looking for an escape.

  “Maybe,” the inspector said. “You’re certainly dressed as such, but those other two are awfully quiet. I’ve never met such silent Spinners before.”

  “We’re scribes,” Nett squeaked out, “for … for Historian Mira Fray!”

  The man snorted. “You’re late. Historian Fray just took a rowboat, and she didn’t mention anything about waiting on lost apprentices.”

  So. Claire had been right. Those had been the figures of Fray and Jasper slipping away into the fortress.

  “What’s in your packs?” the inspector asked. “Open them!”

  Claire had the sudden sense of when you’re on a sled, just starting to slide, and you realize the hill is steeper than you thought. But the only way out of the situation is to get to the bottom. And the only way to get away from the inspectors now was to complete the investigation. Slowly, Claire began to shrug off her rucksack.

  “Stop,” Sophie said sharply, and Claire froze as Sophie swung to face the inspectors. “This is highly unusual. How dare you not believe us?!”

  The first inspector crossed his large arms. “I’ve had enough,” he growled. “Hands together.” There was a jangle as the inspector pulled a pair of handcuffs from his belt.

  “No,” Claire said. “Really! We’re with … we’re with Water Bobbin Fleet!” she said, frantically trying to remember anything about Spinners she could say to convince this Forger inspector otherwise. “You have to—”

  “Let her go,” a new voice said behind them. A familiar voice.

  Sophie whipped around, and Claire heard her gasp of delight, “Thorn! ”

  Blood welled on Claire’s lip as she bit down hard to stop from crying out. Hardly believing her ears, she turned to see a tall boy with blond hair and ears slightly too big for his head stride toward them. Thorn Barley, a member of Greenwood Village, Claire’s friend, and judging by the deep red flush that unfurled across Sophie’s cheeks, her older sister’s crush.

  Thorn looked different from the time Claire had last seen him—travel-worn and wearing a Fyrton cloak as he led her, Nett, and Sena to the entrance of the old Forger mines. This Thorn seemed older. Taller. With a start, Claire realized that he was standing with his shoulders thrown back. She hadn’t realized that he used to slump.

  “They’re with me,” he said now, confidence ringing in his voice.

  “And who are you?” The inspector squinted.

  Thorn set down a leather pack, and from the front pocket, he pulled out a small bundle of documents.

  As the inspectors thumbed through them, Claire held her breath to stop herself from exploding with questions.

  How had Thorn found them?

  How did he come by these papers?

  What had happened in the last month that gave him the courage to talk to the inspectors like that? Claire couldn’t imagine the boy she’d met in Greenwood Village speaking so fearlessly.

  You’re not being fair, a tiny voice inside told her. The Thorn who snuck to Fyrton and led you to the mines was definitely brave.

  Pushing the thought away, Claire looked at Sophie. But Sophie wasn’t looking at her. Instead, she was beaming at Thorn, her eyes sparkling. He beamed back at her.

  Oh brother.

  Her sister was seriously embarrassing. Claire caught Nett’s eye and he pulled a face. Despite the serious situation they were in, she couldn’t stop a tiny grin.

  “These seem to be in good order,” the inspector said, sounding slightly disappointed as he handed them back. “You can take that one,” he said, gesturing to the nearest rowboat.

  “Thank you,” Thorn said, and threw his pack in. The others hurried forward.

  “Don’t say anything yet,” Thorn murmured, nodding his head toward the inspectors who still lingered nearby. “I’ll explain later, I promise. Just get in the boat.”

  Quickly, Nett, Sophie, and Claire clambered in. Nett sat next to Claire, while Sophie sat next to Thorn, who picked up the oars. With a push from the inspectors, they floated out onto the lake.

  Sophie managed to keep quiet until they were just out of hearing range from the shore.

  “Thorn!” she practically squealed, and Claire stared at her older sister curiously, never having heard her talk in quite that tone before. “That was incredible! How did you get those fake papers?”

  “Fake papers?” Thorn said, puzzled. “They’re not fake.”

  Nett frowned. “But how did you get them, then? Grandmaster Iris is on trial, too, and I can’t imagine she’d invite you to be her scribe even if she wasn’t. No offense,” he added quickly as Sophie glared at him. “It’s just, you know … you’re not really a Tiller.” Everyone knew Thorn was a lackie and pitied him because of it. That’s why he was so shy. Or used to be, anyway.

  “I’ll tell you,” Thorn said as he pulled them through the silver water toward the looming towers. “But we just need to get somewhere private first.” He nodded over Claire’s shoulder, and she turned to see a boat with what looked like a Tiller grandmaster suddenly appear from the mist and slide silently by them.

  “And there’s the rest of the Drowning Fortress,” Nett whispered. “By all that’s green, it’s beautiful!”

  That’s not exactly the word Claire would have chosen.

  The sinking fortress was made of a dark gray rock she didn’t recognize. There were no doors, as they had disappeared under the lake, but there were many massive round windows on the lowest level. Their glass, however, seemed to have been broken long ago, and now all the rowers aimed themselves toward one particular round window, gently guiding their rowboats inside.

  “Here we go,” Thorn cautioned as they quickly glided through.

  Claire gasped in awe. She knew of cities where canals replaced roads, but Drowning Fortress was a castle with waterways instead of halls. The roof had long since crumbled, leaving only arched rafters above them. It made Claire think of a giant rib cage—as if they’d been swallowed by a whale. Looking away, she peered over the side of the boat.

  The lake’s water was crystal clear, and she could see down below to what once must have been an open courtyard filled with gardens. She could make out the wavy shape of statues as well as a birdbath or two. The statues reminded her a bit of the sad mermaid stories, the ones that came in the grownup-looking fairy book that Sophie had insisted Dad read to them from.

  “Claire,” Nett said softly. “Look.”

  Leaning toward the surface, Claire caught the glimmer of scales, and peered closer, expecting to see a fish but—a gasp caught in her throat. The glimmer had been scales, but they weren’t fish scales. They were wyvern scales.

  The two-legged, dragon-like creatures lay at the bottom of the lake. Made by Gemmers who had gifted them with stone hearts, they were too heavy to swim.

  But it wasn’t only wyverns she could see through the crystal-clear water. There was also the soft green of copper exposed to the elements—chimera, too, had drowned here.

  “I think it’s the remains of the Battle of Lake Drowning,” Nett said quietly.

  “Why haven’t they cleaned it up?” Claire asked.

  “To remind everyone of why the treaty was signed,” Nett said. “The Drowning Fortress is the only place the Grand Council will meet—even though it continues to sink. Because it’s in the water, it doesn’t really belong to any of the guilds, and it’s the most neutral spot in Arden for all four guilds to meet.”

  He stretched out a finger to the rafters, where Claire saw a massive chandelier made with four materials: stone, metal, plant, and thread. “Each guild has stories about Lake Drowning, stories that could make the case that this should belong to one guild or the other. And so here, when Queen Estelle disappeared, was where it was decided the treaty to end the war would be signed.�
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  Just then a shout rang out, as a Tiller rowboat filled with thorn bushes accidently bumped into a rowboat outfitted with a sail—Spinners most likely. The Spinners in the boat glared at the trespasser and one angrily cracked a whip. No matter how neutral Nett claimed this fortress to be, it felt as neutral as a cat in a dog kennel.

  “Where are they all going?” Claire asked.

  “The council room,” Thorn murmured. “There’ve been rumors of a rogue Gemmer who has been turning the minerals in blood into stone.”

  A slippery worry oozed over Claire, made her feel cold and clammy. “Who?”

  Thorn shrugged. “As far as I know, two Spinners and a Tiller so far.”

  Claire exchanged a look with Sophie. It didn’t seem anyone else knew about Anvil and Aquila’s rubification. And the only Gemmer that she knew had left Stonehaven recently was Jasper … was this part of Fray and the Royalists’ plan to seed confusion across the land? Glancing anxiously up at the sky, she wished that she knew how to read time by the shadows. She had no idea how many hours had trickled by.

  But Thorn turned them away from the staircase, and down a narrow hallway, empty of boats.

  “Where are we going?” Claire asked. “We need to—”

  “Shh,” Thorn said. “Don’t say anything yet! There are ears all around.”

  Nodding mutely, Claire sat back. But she was … uncomfortable. Something inside her wouldn’t settle at his words and instead, kept nudging her. It was weird how the inspectors had done exactly as Thorn said. And shouldn’t he be worried about Sena?

  There was a slight bump as Thorn drew them up to the bottom of a small staircase.

  “Follow me,” he said. He held out a hand to Sophie, and Claire watched as her sister placed her hand in his, and allowed him to help her onto the steps. Thorn held on to her sister’s hand a little longer than Claire thought was necessary.

  Quickly, she scrambled out and was surprised by how slick the stone steps were. She gripped the guardrail as Thorn led them up the spiraling staircase.

  “Are we headed up one of the towers?” Nett asked suddenly.

  Thorn nodded. “Yes, to … here we go!” They’d arrived in front of a small door and Thorn pushed it open and beckoned them in.

  Claire couldn’t tell, exactly, how big the room was because it was crowded with fabrics. It could have either been a large room filled with too much cloth … or a little room filled with too much cloth.

  Nett froze as Thorn locked the door. “You can tell us now what’s going on,” he said, and Claire was surprised to hear his voice so sharp. Nett liked everybody, always. “This is a Spinner room. How did you get access to it? Why aren’t we in the dungeons rescuing Sena right now?”

  “It’s all right,” Thorn said, smiling widely. “I promise you, Mira has a plan.”

  Claire’s heart stopped. It didn’t just stop—it ceased to exist. Her whole body felt as if it had been hollowed out, scraped empty like a jack-o’-lantern.

  “What—what did you say?” she stammered out. “Who has a plan?”

  “Mira Fray,” Thorn said, seeming oblivious to the swirling terror that was starting to spin inside Claire, filling the empty space where her organs had once been. “She was a good friend of my Grand. You’ve heard of her, Nett. She’s a famous historian—the historian’s boat we snuck you onto, actually. Sophie and I used to visit her together and she’d tell us stories about unicorns. Isn’t that right, Sophie?”

  He looked at Sophie, smiling, but when he saw her expression, his smile dropped off. Claire couldn’t blame him. The look on Sophie’s face could only be described as a snarl.

  “What did you do, Thorn?” Sophie said, and her tone was one of such anguish that Claire was momentarily reminded of wraith-burn. Of sorrow that suffocated and dragged.

  “Nothing!” Thorn said defensively. “I mean, I did something, but it’s a good thing!”

  He reached out for the hem of Sophie’s tattered cloak, and pulled at a frayed edge. Quickly, he knotted the loose threads to another one. Claire blinked. The hole that had been in the cloak was suddenly gone, completely repaired as if the tear had never been there at all.

  “Did you just—Thorn, did you just … was that magic?” Nett asked, his voice shrill.

  Thorn smiled triumphantly. “Yes it is. She gave it back to me.”

  “Who gave magic back to you?” Claire asked.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” He looked at Sophie, whose mouth gaped open. “I did it, Sophie! I woke the queen.”

  CHAPTER

  27

  Silence crept into the room like a chill.

  Sophie and Nett stared at Thorn, wearing twin expressions of befuddlement. Claire understood their looks of confusion because she felt exactly the same way. Queen Rock could only be woken with d’Astora Gemmer blood. The same kind of blood that had sealed Queen Estelle into the rock in the first place.

  Claire’s blood.

  She would never wake the queen. And besides …

  “Stonehaven says the Forgers destroyed Queen Rock,” Claire pointed out.

  “Is that what people are saying?” A strange expression skulked onto Thorn’s face. “You should know better than to believe whatever you hear.”

  “But it makes more sense than what we’re hearing from you,” Sophie said, sounding more exasperated than perplexed. “Claire is the only one who could wake her, and she didn’t!”

  Thorn lifted his chin. “I said I woke the queen. It took me a little while to figure it out, but once Nett said that you,” he nodded at Sophie, “climbed out of a well, I pieced it together. ‘A place where fire meets water’ and all that. The old wishing well that you said was actually a chimney where you came from. I figured out you two must be the lost Prince Martin’s descendants, and I knew then that I needed your blood to wake the queen.”

  “But how did you get my blood?” Claire asked in shock.

  He shrugged. “I wasn’t sure, but when you tripped and split open your knee, it became a lot easier than I had thought.”

  “The handkerchief …,” she said slowly, remembering how he had helped to dab her wounded knee for her.

  Tugging on a silk cord, Thorn lit a chandelier above him. “And now the unicorns will return, the wraiths will be defeated, and magic will flourish again. It already has!”

  “You don’t understand,” Claire croaked. Thorn’s words seemed to wrap tight around her chest, suffocating her.

  Thorn frowned. “What’s there to understand?”

  “Queen Estelle wasn’t a hero,” Sophie said, arms crossed. “She’s not going to bring back the unicorns—she killed them all in the first place!”

  But instead of looking aghast, Thorn laughed.

  “Are you laughing at me?” Sophie shot back, looking so fierce that Thorn immediately stopped.

  “No, no, I’m not,” he rushed to assure her. “But it’s funny, because I’ve met her. She’s on her way now.”

  “Impossible,” Nett said, while at the same time Sophie made a rude noise. “You probably only met someone pretending to be her.”

  “Then how would you explain this?” Thorn asked. He pulled something tiny and silver from the hem of his tunic and plunged it into his cloak. A needle, Claire realized as he began to stitch. The many shawls and scarves rustled around them as they watched. Then they began to flap, as though in a great wind.

  Claire looked around. The door was still closed, and the only window was partially opened and high up. So where was the draft coming from?

  “It’s like I said,” Thorn said as he continued to stitch. “With the queen back, wraiths will be under control …” He tied up his cloak and it billowed and swelled like a balloon. Or like the cloak was calling the wind to it and trapping it. Like a sail.

  “… the unicorns shall return …”

  Claire stumbled forward. For a moment, she thought someone had accidentally nudged her, but then she realized a sudden gust had knocked a
gainst her. Her beribboned hair was now in her face, and Sophie’s white-streaked ponytail whipped around.

  “Thorn, stop it!” Sophie yelled over the howling wind. And suddenly, all was still. Claire’s hair fell to her shoulders and Nett patted down his tunic. The only thing that moved was Thorn’s cloak-bag, which lurched and bulged as if it contained a thousand balloons.

  “And,” Thorn finished, “true magic, great magic shall return.”

  With that, he opened the bag—and a punch of wind burst out.

  The wind whirled in an upward spiral, twisting scarves and hair as the wind rushed toward the lone window like a living creature. There was a giant BOOM and the wind released itself out the window in a shower of broken glass.

  Claire’s mouth dropped open, and Sophie stared at Thorn. There could be no doubt.

  Thorn had magic. He was a Spinner.

  Queen Estelle d’Astora had returned.

  Thorn looked at the girls—well, Sophie mostly, and gave a cocky little bow. It was so unlike Thorn—Thorn, the humble boy who’d shyly asked Claire to give a gift to her sister for him—that Claire wondered for a moment if she’d simply forgotten what Thorn looked like and this was a stranger in his place instead.

  “Oh, Thorn,” Sophie sighed, shaking her head sadly. “I don’t think anyone gave you magic. I think you always had it.”

  Thorn’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

  Sophie looked around the room—at Nett, who was quickly slipping his hand into his rucksack, at Claire who was carefully pulling her pencil out from behind her ear. Sophie appeared calm, but Claire could tell by the way she bit her bottom lip, she was all attention. All anticipation.

  “I think that you were always a Spinner,” Sophie said. “You never needed the queen to give your magic back to you because you always had it.”

  A baffled snort filled the space. “I’ve never been able to do magic,” Thorn said. “I couldn’t even light a fire without needing a flint.” He looked at Nett. “You know. You’ve known me practically my entire life. Have I ever had magic before?”