That all made sense, but Abeke had to admit she wasn’t entirely convinced by Lenori’s ambiguous vision. She heard footsteps on the deck and turned to see Rollan and Conor approaching. Briggan was in passive state — he was also not the greatest fan of sea travel — while Essix was aloft, soaring on the wind currents.
“This is the safest plan,” Tarik added reassuringly. And then he went on, much less reassuringly, “The only part that worries me is that we will have to sail past Stetriol. I wish there were another way, but I’m afraid we’ll just have to hope we can slip by unnoticed.”
“Oh, good, hoping,” Rollan commented. “That’s always worked out well for us.”
Tarik squinted at him.
“Don’t you dare ask me again if I’m all right,” Rollan said. He grinned in a way that was almost convincing, except that it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’ve dealt with it. I’ve moved on. I am totally fine. Better than fine — I am now someone who can summon his spirit animal to passive mode! That’s right, I’m awesome.” He pulled open his shirt and angled his chest at the sky. “Wait for it. . . . Wait for it. . . .”
There was a pause. Nothing happened. Essix kept circling languidly far overhead, ignoring them all.
“Still waiting,” Conor joked tentatively.
Rollan shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. We have an understanding now. We totally get each other. Right, Essix?” he called.
The falcon shrieked, which might have meant, “Oh, put your shirt back on,” but was at least better than the nonresponses Rollan used to get from her.
Abeke wondered if Rollan really was fine. She didn’t see how he could be, after what had happened with his mother, Aidana, but he clearly didn’t want to talk about it.
There had been a grand total of one conversation on the topic, which was all Rollan would allow. Everyone had noticed how quiet and shattered he was after the battle on the docks, but at first Abeke had thought it was because of losing the Crystal Polar Bear. After all, he’d been the one holding it when the walrus stole it away.
But then, two nights later, as they sailed for Greenhaven, Rollan had told them the whole story. How his mother had abandoned him as a child because her bond with her spirit animal was unstable, making her too dangerous to be around him. How she’d found peace with the Conquerors when she drank Bile, and her bond became manageable. How she’d tried to convince Rollan to join her — and then revealed the dark side of the Bile: Whoever drank it wound up under the control of the Conquerors.
Someone else had taken over her body, Rollan said. Something inhuman had looked out of her eyes and forced Aidana to try to kill her own son.
Abeke still felt shudders of horror whenever she thought about it. She couldn’t imagine what that would feel like, to see someone she cared about taken over by a dark force. Or worse, to be that person, losing all control over your own body. Imagine attacking your own family and not being able to stop yourself. Was there anything worse?
Poor Rollan. Nobody knew if he’d ever see his mother again, or if she could ever truly be his mother again, now that the Bile controlled her.
But he didn’t want to dwell on it. That was the conclusion of his story: He said he wanted no long heartfelt chats about it, no pitying looks, no sad faces, or else he’d have Essix yell at them. What was done was done, and the truth was (he said) that he’d never really known his mother, so he doubted he’d miss her very much.
Abeke knew that was a lie, but it seemed to be a lie that Rollan needed to tell himself.
Ever since that night, he’d been acting like his old sarcastic self, with perhaps an extra note of swaggering now that Essix was finally willing to go into passive mode (occasionally).
Still, Abeke could tell that Tarik was worried about him. She thought they all were . . . but there was nothing they could do except give Rollan his space.
“Have you had any more visions?” Lenori asked Conor. “Has Mulop spoken to you?”
“Um,” Conor said, “I wouldn’t say spoken, exactly.” He rubbed one hand through his blond hair, looking confused.
“I was just telling Abeke, visions from Mulop are always particularly strange,” Lenori said, nodding. “What did you dream?”
“It started the same as the last one,” Conor said. “I was floating in the air over a sea of islands — it looked like thousands of little green and white sheep scattered over the water. And then this dark cloud of ink started pouring into the water from the south, turning every island black as it touched them. And then —” He hesitated, glancing at Rollan.
“Go on,” said Tarik. “He won’t make fun of you.”
“I absolutely will make fun of you,” Rollan retorted. “But don’t let that stop you.”
“And then these long tentacles rose out of the ocean,” Conor said, “and they started picking up the islands that were still green and throwing them at the black islands, knocking them back like a game of marbles. Which made the ink retreat too. And then the tentacles kind of pointed up at me, and then . . . they kind of waved. And then they went back under the water, and I woke up.” He looked expectantly at Rollan.
“That’s not fair,” Rollan said. “That’s barely hilarious at all.”
“It doesn’t give us a lot to go on,” Lenori said, “but it’s definitely Mulop trying to get our attention.”
“I guess we are doing the right thing,” Abeke said. Somehow, hearing it from Conor made her feel better about this plan. He shot her a smile, and she felt a twist of gratitude in her chest. At least one of my friends is still treating me like a friend.
“RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.”
A deep growl rolled across the deck, making all the hairs on Abeke’s skin stand up. She whirled and saw Uraza poised in an attack crouch. The leopard’s tail was lashing violently and her violet eyes, full of fury, were fixed on a perfectly harmless-looking seagull.
A seagull?
The gray-and-white bird sat on one of the crossbeams of the masts above the Greencloaks, too high up for even Uraza to leap and catch it. It looked no different from any of the other hundred seagulls that soared around them.
It clacked its beak and tilted its head, giving Uraza a black, beady-eyed stare.
“Uraza?” Abeke said. “What’s wrong?”
The bird turned its head slowly back toward them. Its gaze passed over Abeke, and she felt a weird shiver down her spine. Then it stopped, staring intently at Conor.
“Looks like you have an admirer,” Rollan joked. “See, Conor, this is why I keep telling you to bathe more. If you didn’t smell so much like fish, you wouldn’t —”
The seagull shrieked once, a piercing cry that sounded like its feathers were being ripped out.
And then it dove straight at Conor’s face.
FEATHERS WERE SUDDENLY EVERYWHERE, SURROUNDING HIM, blocking out the sky and his friends and the air he had been breathing. Gray-and-white wings beat furiously at Conor’s ears like blacksmith hammers trying to knock his brains out. An impossibly sharp beak jabbed at his face, at his vulnerable eyes, at his throat.
Conor let out a yell and stumbled back. The bird kept attacking, and he felt it painfully yank out several strands of his hair at once. He tried to cover his head, and the seagull instantly went for the pocket of his coat.
“The Granite Ram!” he heard Meilin yell, sounding very far away. “It’s trying to steal one of our talismans!”
“It’s a spirit animal!” Rollan shouted. “Working for the Conquerors!”
Conor could sense the others around him, trying to stop the gull, but it was relentless. He thrashed and rolled away, letting the bird pummel his back instead. Blows rained down on him. His hands clutched the stone ram in his pocket. He was not losing another talisman, not even if the seagull tried to peck out his eyes.
And then he heard a cry that he recognized as Essix’
s, and a moment later the seagull was suddenly gone from his back.
“Conor?” Abeke was beside him, crouching to check his face. “Are you all right?”
“Did it get the talisman?” Meilin demanded.
“No.” He shook his head. The weight of the ram was still heavy in his pocket.
“Essix!” Rollan shouted. “Be careful!”
Conor sat up and looked to the sky. His clothes were torn and he could feel blood rolling down his face from at least two seagull-inflicted wounds, but he was more worried about where the bird was now.
High above them, he could see Essix and the seagull diving and snapping at each other.
“Don’t let it get away,” he gasped. “If it’s a Bile-bonded creature, it could lead the Conquerors right to us.”
Abeke sprang to her feet and whipped out her bow. In a moment she had an arrow notched and aimed, but then she hesitated.
“Shoot it!” Meilin yelled.
“I don’t want to hit Essix!” Abeke shouted back.
Rollan cupped his hands around his mouth. “Essix!” he called. “Stop! Back off so we can shoot it!”
Essix screeched in response, but she dove and flapped away, leaving Abeke a clear shot.
Abeke fired the arrow, but it missed the seagull by a feather. Swiftly she drew and aimed again, but the second arrow was too late. The gull was already winging away into the clouds.
The falcon shrieked with what sounded like frustration, at least to Conor, who felt the same way. But he saw the look on Abeke’s face, so as he climbed to his feet, he patted her shoulder. “It was an impossible shot,” he said. “None of us could have made it either.” He looked at Meilin for confirmation, but she just narrowed her eyes and didn’t respond.
“But now the Conquerors will know where we are,” Abeke said, her voice cracking. “That seagull could lead them right to us.”
“They probably already know,” Meilin said unhelpfully. “Since someone is passing them information, as you might remember.”
“Meilin, it’s not me!” Abeke protested. “I’m not the mole. I promise you can trust me!”
“How?” Meilin exploded. “How can any of us trust anyone anymore?” She clenched her fists as if she was trying to hold in her anger. “I want to, by all the Great Beasts, of course I do; I hate feeling angry and suspicious all the time, especially with you — I mean, with any of you,” she added, but her gaze was fixed on Abeke. “I thought we were friends.”
“We are,” Abeke tried to interject. Conor wanted to jump in too, but he could see that Meilin was too upset to listen.
“But someone is the mole — someone has been leading the Conquerors straight to us over and over again,” Meilin barreled on. “And no one seems to care and no one wants to talk about it, so fine, but what are we supposed to think when your Conqueror boyfriend keeps showing up just in time to steal talismans from us? That last battle — you realize that was the second time you were conveniently captured so you could be used as leverage against us?”
“He’s not my boyfriend, and I would never ever do that on purpose,” Abeke cried. “Shane is different from the others! I know we could reason with him if we got him away from the rest of the Conquerors. I swear, I was only trying to help us escape alive, because even if you don’t believe it, Meilin, I really care about you. About all of you.”
Meilin’s shoulders dropped and she put her hands to her head, suddenly looking exhausted instead of confrontational. “I care about you too,” she muttered after a moment, barely audible. “But who else — and how — I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s someone here. It’s one of you, and it kills me —” She broke off, took a deep breath, and turned to Jhi. “Let’s go get Conor some bandages.” The two of them headed for the ladder that led below. Jhi walked close enough to brush Meilin’s arm with her fur, a worried expression on the giant panda’s face.
Abeke sighed.
Conor put his arm around her shoulder in a half hug. He knew how Meilin felt — every time he thought of Shane, he wanted to punch something, and he couldn’t at all see what Abeke saw in him. But he knew what he himself saw in Abeke — courage, loyalty, and honor. He believed in her. He wasn’t going to let any of the small voices of doubt reach into his brain and change that belief.
“Don’t worry,” he said to Abeke. “Meilin just prefers to have problems she can beat and stab and kick, instead of ones that circle around quietly haunting us. You know that. She’s angry, but she’ll come around once we — uh, once we . . .”
He trailed off. Once they figured out who the real mole was? How could that information be anything but devastating to all of them?
“Thanks,” said Abeke, looking down at the rolling deck. “I think I need to — I’m just going below for a minute.” She hurried away, brushing at her eyes, with Uraza close on her heels.
Conor wished he could have said something to make her feel better. They’d all been through so much together since Abeke first left the Conquerors and joined the Greencloaks. It didn’t seem fair that suddenly she was back in the same corner of distrust and suspicion where she’d started out.
Well, she isn’t. Not with me, anyhow.
He touched the tattoo on his arm where Briggan was dormant. He hadn’t had time to call his spirit animal for help when the gull attacked; he hadn’t even had a chance to think. He reached inside, calling for him now, and Briggan responded immediately, appearing next to Conor on the deck. The wolf looked Conor up and down and shot a dangerous glance at the remaining seagulls — a look that said, “Seagulls for dinner would be all right with me, if anyone else wants to try a stunt like that again.”
Conor crouched and put an arm around Briggan, who started licking the wounds on Conor’s face and hands.
After a moment, Conor shook himself, stood up, and headed over to Rollan and Tarik. The older Greencloak was leaning on the railing of the ship and looking back at the clouds where the seagull had vanished. Briggan stuck close to Conor’s side with an alert, vigilant expression on his face.
“Are you all right? That was creepy,” Rollan added as Conor nodded. He looked up at the other seagulls, several of which were perched on the mast crossbeams or along the sides of the ship. “How can we know which animals are working for the Conquerors?”
“There’s no way to know unless they look unusually large or if they do something odd,” Tarik said. “Uraza must have noticed the way that one was studying Conor.” He glanced down at Conor, and without saying a word, Conor handed the Granite Ram over to the older Greencloak. It seemed safer if Tarik held on to it.
“I’d say we can expect more of that kind of thing,” Tarik said, pocketing the talisman. “It’s only going to get more dangerous the closer we are to Stetriol. We could be watched at all times.”
Conor shivered. “Maybe that’s how the mole is getting his information. Maybe it’s not one of us — maybe it’s some animal that’s been following us.”
“Aha,” Rollan said. “I knew that boll weevil in my soup last night looked suspicious.”
Conor smiled halfheartedly. It was an unsettling thought, but not as unsettling as the idea that one of their friends and fellow Greencloaks was working for the enemy.
As if he’d read his mind, Rollan added, “I’ve been trying to use this intuition thing to read everyone since we left Eura. And I swear, I’m only getting sincerity from everyone, including Abeke. I don’t sense any deception or betrayal . . . it’s weird.” He kicked the railing, looking down at his feet. “Or maybe I’m missing something, the way I missed that Pia was lying when she gave me the compass.”
He fell silent, and Conor guessed he was thinking of the darkness he hadn’t seen inside Aidana either, until it was too late.
“Don’t blame yourself,” Tarik said. “For all we know, there is no mole and the Devourer just wants us to suspect each other.” r />
Rollan nodded, but Conor could see that he didn’t really believe it. The message from his mother had been pretty clear — someone among them was passing messages to the Conquerors. Somehow they had known exactly where the Greencloaks would be with the Crystal Polar Bear. Somehow they always knew.
It didn’t make any sense, though. Conor’s mind kept circling the options, leaving him more and more puzzled and worried.
Meilin hated the Conquerors for what they’d done to her father and her home — she’d never work with them. Abeke might be friendly with Shane, but Conor trusted her; she wasn’t the kind of person who betrayed her friends, and she believed in the Greencloaks’ cause. Rollan . . . maybe someone might think it was suspicious that Rollan still refused to join the Greencloaks. But if he was on the Devourer’s side, he would have gone off with his mother, or at least he would have known about her and the Bile. Conor was sure Rollan hadn’t been faking the pain that came with the story he’d told them.
So if it definitely wasn’t any of them, who else could it be? Tarik or Lenori? Tarik was their guardian, their rock. Conor believed he would die to protect them if he had to. There was no reason for him to betray them. He didn’t know as much about Lenori — and it had occurred to him that if she could receive visions from a great distance, perhaps she could send messages the same way. But that didn’t feel true to what he knew about her either.
None of them made sense as the mole. But there was no one else it could be.
“I’ll see if the whales can go any faster,” Tarik said, straightening. “We’re only a day away from the channel between Nilo and Stetriol, the most dangerous point of our journey. We need to travel as swiftly as we can. That seagull was only a harbinger of what’s yet to come.”
Conor felt a shiver travel down his spine.
Watched on all sides. Dangerously close to Stetriol. And divided among themselves, each of them looking at the others and wondering who the mole could be.