Nett shook his head, but Sophie let out a frustrated breath of air. “Let me show you.”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a figurine of a bird. It looked so real that Claire half expected it to take off. But she knew it wouldn’t—it was just a statuette Thorn had made from straw.
Claire looked at Sophie, trying to figure out what she’d say next.
Sophie pushed the bird into Thorn’s hand. “What do you see?” she asked.
“My bird,” Thorn said, smiling faintly. “You carry it with you?”
“Not the point,” Sophie huffed, the tips of her ears turning pink. “How did you make it?”
“I wove pieces of straw together.”
Sophie’s idea popped into Claire’s head as clear as a bell.
Woven from river reeds. Maybe Thorn’s bird didn’t look so lifelike because he was a bad Tiller. Maybe it looked lifelike because he was good at weaving … because he was a Spinner.
“I think,” Sophie said quietly as Thorn stared at the little bird in his hand, face expressionless. “I think that maybe guild magic hasn’t weakened because the unicorns are gone. Is it possible that maybe—just maybe—it only seems that some people are born without magic because they don’t have a chance to try a different craft? Because the guilds are kept so separate?”
Sophie glanced at Nett, who looked as if lightning had struck him. “I—I don’t think I’ve read that theory anywhere,” Nett stammered out. “I never thought—but maybe?” He fell silent, but Claire could practically see his thoughts darting around, slipping one over another to be heard.
“I’m not so sure about your theory,” Thorn finally said. “But either way, you need to meet with Fray.” He looked at Claire and added, “She’s been wanting to talk with you.”
“No!” Claire cried. Pressure built behind her eyes. “Fray doesn’t want to talk to me. She wants to kill me! So they can win their needless war!”
“Wait.” Thorn’s eyes darted between Claire and Sophie. “War?”
“Yes, war!” Sophie exclaimed. “I bet it was the Royalists who started the rumor that Forgers destroyed Queen Rock. They’re trying to divide the guilds even more than they are now so that they can … can …” She trailed off, looking angry—not at Thorn, but at herself for not having an answer. “So they can do something,” she finished.
“So they can make it easier for the queen to rise,” Nett said softly. His lower lip trembled. “It’s a tactic written in The Craft of War by Admiral Belli Cose.” He looked Thorn in the eye. “That’s what the Royalists want, right? To see the queen back on the throne?”
“Of course,” Thorn said, spreading his hands out. “But why is that bad? Queen Estelle is a hero. Everyone says so—the legends wanted it! Even Francis believes it!”
Nett frowned. “Grandfather isn’t a Royalist.”
“You don’t know everything, Nettle Green,” Thorn snorted.
But something Thorn had said gnawed at Claire.
There was something missing to his story. “If you woke the queen the way you say you did,” she addressed Thorn, “you would have needed a unicorn artifact. The harp wasn’t the only thing that went missing around that time.”
“The Unicorn Tooth,” Nett gasped.
Claire nodded. “Right. The tooth was stolen from the Forger academy before Thorn joined us.”
“So?” Thorn said, but his eyes widened. Claire knew she had him.
“So,” she said, “that means you knew I could wake Queen Rock … but then you sent us into the abandoned mines. It wasn’t a shortcut at all, was it?” She shook her head as the pattern snapped into place. “You sent us away so that you could get to the Sorrowful Plains first. But you didn’t, because you weren’t expecting a wyvern to help us.”
“Thorn!” Sophie gasped, and Nett shook his head in disbelief at the boy who they had all thought was their friend.
Two notes of a trumpet sounded from somewhere deep in the castle.
Nett swayed slightly. “What if that’s the call for execution? What if we’re already too late—” He broke off and hurried to the door, his rucksack thumping loudly against his back. But before he could reach the door, there was a loud crack.
Nett sprawled onto the floor.
“Are you all right?” Claire asked, surprised. Nett usually wasn’t clumsy, but a second later she saw why he’d fallen: wrapped around his ankle was the thin end of a whip, its handle clutched in Thorn’s fist. Thorn gave a slight tug to the whip, and the first foot or so of cord broke off on its own, binding Nett’s ankles together.
“Hey!” Nett said. “That hurts!”
“I’m sorry,” Thorn said, looking slightly horrified by what he’d done, but still, he didn’t drop the handle. “I can’t let you leave without telling Mira.”
He cracked the whip in Claire’s direction. She yelped as she felt the cord rush by her, coiling into a mini-tornado above her head before dropping down.
But before the cord could settle around her, there was another deafening crack, and suddenly, the whip was wrapping itself around Thorn—its handle clutched tightly in Sophie’s hand.
“I tried to tell you,” Sophie said as the cord coiled around Thorn, binding him tight to the spot. “Queen Estelle doesn’t give out magic. You’ve always had it. I’ve always had it. We just needed to be given a chance to try our options.”
Claire watched as her sister bent down and quickly undid the knot tying Nett’s ankles together. A second later, the Tiller boy was on his feet, staring down in horror at Thorn.
The whip had wrapped carefully around Thorn, binding him mummy-like from his feet and ending right below his nose—allowing him to breathe, but not giving him a chance to yell for help. His blue eyes stayed fixed on Sophie.
Sophie met his gaze. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But I can’t let you put Claire in danger.”
The trumpet sounded again.
“Hurry,” Nett hissed, his hand already on the doorknob. Sophie nodded and walked to the door. Claire glanced once more at Thorn, then rushed to meet them. As she shut the door, she thought she heard a muffled sound that could have either been “Sophie” or “Sorry.”
Or maybe, she hadn’t heard it at all and only imagined it. Either way, they couldn’t risk a known liar giving them away to Fray or Jasper—not when their enemies were so close. Not when she’d heard for herself what they wanted:
Her death will be the key to our victory.
CHAPTER
28
They ran down the winding stairs of the tower, back to where they’d tied up the rowboat, and jumped in. Sophie picked up an oar, but when Claire gently nudged her, Sophie scooted to the middle, letting Claire take her place instead. As she took the oar, Claire’s heart ached for her sister. She didn’t know what to say. Claire had never had a boyfriend—well, except for the neighbor boy when she was three but that didn’t count—but she could guess that whatever Sophie was going through was not fun.
“The spyglass,” Claire said, searching for a distraction. She nudged Sophie’s Hollow Pack with her toe. “Use it to locate Sena.”
Giving a short nod, Sophie dug into her pack and pulled out the little spyglass. Holding it to her eye, she began to sweep the walls.
“I don’t see her,” Sophie whispered. “I can’t find cells, anywhere. I only see the—” She stopped short and looked at Nett. “I’ll try again,” she mumbled.
Nett stared straight ahead, pretending not to understand, but Nett was smart, and Claire knew that he had put it together, just as she had: Sophie must have spotted the execution platform.
“Dungeons don’t usually have windows,” Claire said. “Try looking into the shadows.”
“I don’t—” Sophie began, then gasped. “I found her!” She pulled the spyglass away from her eye and pointed. “That way.”
Slowly, Claire and Nett dragged them through the water-filled passageways, as Sophie pulled her knees to her chest, watching to make sure they di
dn’t bump into the walls or another boat. Claire’s arms began to ache but she didn’t mind. All that mattered was that they get to Sena and smuggle her out of here.
There was a loud skritch as the bottom of her oar hit something, and she realized it was the sunken floor—they were in shallower water now. The passageway they’d been floating down continued to get narrower and narrower, but from here, they could not see where it ended. The walls had changed, too. They were no longer the color of slate like the rest of the Drowning Fortress, but a velvety black.
“She’s this way,” Sophie said, and Claire heard the confidence in her voice.
“All right, then,” Nett said. “We’ll … have to get out and wade the rest of the way. Wait!” he said as Sophie threw one leg over. “If you have any food in your pack, I’d leave it on the boat—just in case.”
Claire suddenly had a very bad feeling. “In case of what?”
“Ah,” Nett said, looking sorry he’d said anything at all. “There are stories—rumors, really—of a lake monster that some Tillers may have accidentally crafted.”
Sophie blinked. “Come again?”
Nett shrugged. “I don’t think it really exists. But there were rumors a few years ago that a young Tiller journeyman accidentally grew a water plant that drifts around the lake like an animal. It’s called a Gelatinous Fish.”
“So, a jellyfish?” Claire asked.
“No, Gelly fish … but it’s really not a fish at all, just a cross between white snakeroot and a jungle trapper. You know, the plant that eats small bugs.”
“Oh good,” Sophie said, sounding relieved. “So it only eats insects.”
“I didn’t say that.”
Sophie stared hard at him. “Right, then. I’m sure it can’t be here where the water is so shallow.”
Still, it was with an uncomfortable splash that they clambered out of the boat and into the water-clogged passageway. Claire pulled her beribboned hair up into a bun, carefully removing the pencil to slip it into her tunic’s Lock-it Pocket—just in case. They waded slowly. The roof had been fixed here, and there was no sunlight to illuminate the lake’s waters. It was all murk and gloom, except for a few sleepy sparkles in the black rock walls.
You can know a stone’s intentions by how it feels, how it shines, and what it says, Scholar Pumus’s squeaky voice sounded in Claire’s mind as her first lesson in Identification came back to her. Reaching out a hand, she brushed one sparkle with her fingertips.
It was hard, but softer compared to most stone, and in its reflective depths, she could make out layers of color, like bits of broken rainbows. She wanted to sink into the colors, allow them to swirl around her as she sank into the rock—wait, what?
Claire yanked her hand away, as quickly as if she had been burned. No, she was not falling for that again. Opals—and not just any opals. Mesmerizing Opals, expertly Gemmer-crafted. Even now, she could feel their glow calling to her thoughts.
In fact, all the glittery spots were opals, trapping light … and she knew how easily they could trap the mind, too.
“How much farther?” Claire whispered.
Sophie held the spyglass to her eye. “A few more steps.”
“Does she look all right?” Nett asked anxiously.
“As well as can be expected,” Sophie said, squinting into the spyglass.
The passageway began to go up now, the water slowly shrinking back until finally Claire could see the slippery flagstones beneath her feet. Her wet shoes sloshed and squished loudly.
Pain flared in Claire’s ankle. She screamed.
“Claire, what—Sophie!” Nett yelled as blood began to billow around Claire’s ankle. The Gelly! It’s got her!”
Claire yelped again as a second nip got her ankle. She kicked out, trying to shake whatever was on her foot, but it was too heavy. And with her own blood darkening the waters she couldn’t see where the Gelly was, or even what it looked like.
Suddenly, she felt what seemed to be rubbery tentacles, or lake weed, wrapping around her ankle, pulling her back into the deeper waters.
“Grab her!” Nett shouted, and both he and Sophie grabbed Claire by the arms trying to pull her out of the plant’s grasp. “Harder!”
“Hang on, Claire!” Sophie yelled. “Don’t let go.”
At least, that’s what Claire thought her sister was saying. It was too hard to know exactly. The pain intensified. Black dots swarmed the edges of her vision. The passageway darkened. She needed …
“Light!” Claire wheezed out. “The marimo!”
It stayed dark—could they hear her above the splashing? Had she even spoken, or had the pain silenced her?
A burst of white light shot through the entire passage, Nett’s marimo glowing as brightly as a miniature sun. And as its light spilled over the glittering passageway, the opals exploded into color.
“Close your eyes!” Claire gasped out. “Don’t let the light die!”
She knew that if any of them looked at the Mesmerizing Opals while the light shone off them, they would become entranced by the stone and would be no better than puppets, their minds numb and unable to think for themselves.
Squinting through her lashes, she saw a bit of gleam in the murky, bloody water. The pain was becoming unbearable now—she had to act quickly. Letting go of one of Sophie’s hands, she plunged her fist into the roiling water. Nothing … nothing … there! Her fingers closed around a loose opal.
“The marimo isn’t going to last!” Nett shouted, his eyes squeezed shut. “If you have a plan, do it now!”
Claire yanked the opal out. If she could get the angle of the stone right, she’d be able to sway the fish, catching its eyes and its thoughts.
The Gelly squeezed.
Claire screamed. Searing pain shot up her leg. She was going to pass out! Her hand dropped. She had been foolish to think that—
Suddenly, the tentacle’s grip on her ankle slackened slightly. Looking down, Claire realized that she’d finally gotten the opal in position: she’d made contact with whatever constituted the Gelly fish’s eyes.
And now it was weakening, its mind becoming too distracted to focus on the big meal in front of it.
Taking advantage, Claire kicked out at the creature. A second later, she fell forward onto Nett and Sophie as the Gelly suddenly released her ankle. Splashing, she twisted to look back at the passageway.
Squinting, she saw that the water had stilled, only a few ripples spreading across the surface. Claire still held the opal. She moved her hand to the right, and the ripples seemed to follow it. It was as though even the water was willing to do whatever the opal wanted.
Careful not to stare at the opals’ hidden rainbows, which she knew would hypnotize her just as much as it had hypnotized the Gelly fish, she pulled her arm back, and threw. The stone arced over the watery passageway, still trailing rainbows in the marimo’s light, before sinking into the water. There was a flurry of ripples, and then the water was still.
The Gelly was gone. And as the marimo’s light winked out, the opals’ whispering rainbows did, too.
“Away from the water,” Nett croaked out, and Claire ran the last few steps to dry land before collapsing onto the ground, not caring that it was damp, not caring that her wound still bled freely—she was just grateful to even be alive.
“That’s what you call a rescue?” A familiar voice called out a little farther down the hall. “I think I would have been better off on my own. At least it would have been quieter.”
Though her feet still throbbed and her heart pounded twice as fast as normal, Claire felt a delighted grin stretch across her face.
“Hi,” Sena Steele called as she poked her head out of a cell where she’d clearly watched the whole scene. “What took you so long?”
“SENA!” Nett yelped and ran down the rest of the passageway to his foster sister. Claire made to follow.
“Ouch!” She had to stop. Her feet still hurt.
“Wait a second,” Sophie s
aid. “Let’s see what the Gelly did.” Claire sat on the slimy floor while Sophie took a look at her foot. There were two little punctures at the back of her ankle where something—teeth, Claire supposed—had sunk into her skin. Though the wounds were deep, they weren’t bleeding as much as it had appeared when she was in the water. Even so, Claire could barely look at the injury without the black spots blurring her vision.
“We need to clean these up,” Sophie said. Her fingers lightly prodded the sensitive skin around one of the wounds. “Hang on.” She rummaged through her Hollow Pack.
“You’re not going to stitch me up,” Claire protested. “I don’t care if you are a Spinner.”
“I gathered some first aid things in Woven Root,” Sophie said, and pulled out a white square of cloth. “The seller who sold it to me said it’d get rid of any infection.”
“No stitches,” Claire repeated through gritted teeth. Ignoring her, Sophie quickly placed the cloth on the wound, then counted to three before whipping it away. She gasped.
“What’s wrong?” Claire asked, still not wanting to look.
“The cuts—they’re gone!”
“Really?” Claire looked down and saw that Sophie was right. The bite marks were totally gone, replaced by smooth, pale skin that was only slightly pinker than the rest.
“That’s some magic,” Sophie said, holding up the cloth. “I’m impressed.” She offered Claire a hand, and Claire scrambled to her feet. Not only did her ankle no longer hurt, but the exhaustion from their travels seemed to have lifted somewhat.
They hurried down the passageway just in time to hear Nett quickly wrapping up a summary of what had happened since they’d been separated from Sena—Claire had never heard him talk quite so fast.
“… the-queen-is-actually-evil-and-Thorn-is-a-Spinner-and-by-the-way-he-says-that-he’s-woken-the-queen-from-the-stone-and-Sophie-and-Claire-are-kind-of-princesses.”
“Huh,” Sena said, looking at Claire and Sophie with a critical eye. “Not exactly what I’d imagined.”
“It’s good to see you, too,” Claire said, grinning.
The redhead flashed her sharp smile, but then the smile hesitated, Sena’s confidence flagging slightly as she saw who was behind Claire.
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