“Our sister.” Baren sounded nervous at that, as though Wil could be spying on them from the trees. “She comes to my room late at night, dripping water on the floor, her hair full of dead things. She sits in the chair by my bed and she doesn’t let me sleep.”
Gerdie knew this had to be a lie. If ghosts were real, Wil wouldn’t bother with the likes of Baren. She wouldn’t even go to their mother, he suspected, for fear of triggering her compulsions. She would go to him. She would rearrange his things, leave him clues she knew he could solve.
Even so, he asked, “What does she say?”
“Nothing. She either can’t speak, or she won’t. I suspect she won’t. She wants me to suffer.”
“Perhaps you can call it even, then,” Gerdie said, dusting the grass from his trousers. He began walking for the calmer waters so he could cross, and Baren walked parallel to him.
“I thought you could talk to her for me,” Baren said. “Make her leave.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because she’ll listen to you,” Baren insisted. “And Owen. Owen knows what I’m thinking, but her.” He pulled at his hair. “She just stares and stares.”
“Say her name,” Gerdie said. He stopped, and they stood facing each other. “You’ve never liked saying it. How can I help you if you won’t even say her name?”
Baren balked at that. He laughed, but it was a distracted sort, and his eyes stared past his brother. After a long silence, he said, “She wasn’t even supposed to live, you know. Mother was in labor for days, screaming for days. A woman from a camp of wanderers came to see her. I remember her Brayshire accent. I heard her whisper to Mother, ‘This child inside you is cursed. She’ll cause you nothing but pain. You should let her drown in you.’”
Gerdie was breathless. “What did you say?”
“It’s true,” Baren said. “She’s cursed. She’s bad luck. You didn’t see her when she was born, but I did. I knew.” He shook his head. “Mother didn’t listen. She never has when it came to her.”
Gerdie’s arms were trembling. It wasn’t even anger. He couldn’t manage anger. Was too dazed and broken. Wil was not there to say something to this. She was not anywhere. Even what was left in the rapids wasn’t her anymore. It had been her, before she succumbed, before the water filled her lungs and her eyes and her hair. Now she only existed in words and in thoughts. And the words Baren had just said were too terrible.
Gerdie began walking at a faster clip. Baren kept up. “You know it’s true,” Baren went on.
Gerdie saw the vendor hardening into ruby, falling away and revealing Wil’s stunned expression. He saw the old woman from the wanderers’ camp.
Darkness in your blood. There’s something ugly in you. Something vicious.
His breath came shallow and quick. The world felt dull.
“You know,” Baren kept insisting. “She was supposed to die. A long time ago.”
Gerdie’s guns felt heavy in their holster. “Say that again, and I’ll have to console Mother as she mourns a third child.”
That silenced his brother, but it didn’t stop him from keeping pace, even as Gerdie moved faster.
When he reached the calmer shallows, he steadied himself before crossing a trail of stones.
Wil could have crossed here. Why hadn’t she crossed here?
FOURTEEN
WIL DREAMED OF CASTLE WALLS and of her brothers. And then the king and queen, seated hand in hand before the stained glass window with a map of the world. They stared at Wil and never said a word. Behind them, glass dirigibles sailed over candied blue seas.
The king and queen were cold and strange, their faces darkened by shadow when Wil tried to get a better look at them. She could not find her mother’s familiar smile, her father’s strong eyes.
In her hazy half-sleep, Wil heard the bellowing of the university’s clock tower, and remembered that she was far from home.
She counted five chimes. Her eyes opened, greeted by two candles left burning on the overhead chandelier, and the sound of cadenced breathing. She forced herself upright.
The haze of the morfin was waning, replaced by a dull pain.
The boy was sitting slumped in the corner across from her mattress, his chin tucked low, his dark lashes downcast, shoulders moving gently with each breath.
He was elegant in the low, flickering light. The lean muscles of his arms were traced in shadow. His strong jaw was slackened by sleep, giving him an unguarded gentleness.
Wil sat very still to watch him. She was sure that she was awake, and that he was alive. But how?
In the quiet and the calm, she began to feel the faint presence of hope. Maybe this dreadful thing inside her was gone. Maybe it had been a side effect of handling smuggled chemicals after all, and had at last worn off.
But a strange current in her blood brought her back to reality. It was a sensation with which she had become bitterly familiar. It had been a full day since she’d turned the grass to emerald now, and her entire body ached for it.
Carefully, she pulled herself to her feet, wincing as the pain ignited in her wound. She checked to be sure the holster was still at her hip, bearing the two guns Gerdie had given her the last time she saw him, and that her dagger was sheathed in one of her boots. She walked slowly past the boy and into another room that she presumed was the living area. In the darkness she could just make out Hettie’s form lying asleep on a cushion. Beside that, a desk with a gas lamp and a stack of books. She was most likely a university student. Brayshire was the world’s hub for art and music, and so many young people flocked here to pursue these things.
Beyond the apartment, there was a staircase that led to the alleyway outside. It was quiet now, the small city asleep and dreaming. The ground was mostly dirt, but Wil found a daisy sitting in a burst of dying grass. She removed one glove and reached for it.
Even before she’d finished plucking it from the ground, it had turned to solid diamond with an emerald stem, and her skin was awash from the sensation. Her heart thudded against her chest. With this went the distant hope that maybe her power had gone away after Loom survived it.
She was among the world’s horrors, she thought. No different from the undead apparitions and monsters in the Western folklore. The apparitions stole skin and hearts because they wanted to be alive again, and turning things to stone made her feel the most alive she’d ever been. How long, she wondered, before this craving overtook her entirely? How long before she had crystallized every living thing in the world just to ease the pain?
She began walking to quell the adrenaline. Though she had never been to this part of town, it wasn’t hard to find her way back to the market square. The smell of old fires still lingered long after the ashes had cooled.
There was still chaos to be dealt with come morning. Windows had been boarded, though all the buildings appeared to still be standing. Wil had never encountered marauders before; Owen told her they would never be so stupid as to attack the Port Capital, not with their father’s aggressive police force. They preferred more remote regions, where they could cause a commotion, grab what they needed in the frenzy, and get away fast.
She had never thought to ask him if he’d encountered marauders himself. There were so many things she had never asked him. And though he was gone, the questions came, along with the persistent notion that she could still find him and ask them.
Her throat felt tight.
“Hey.” A soft voice made her flinch. She turned to find Loom standing a mere yard away from her; she’d been so lost in her thoughts that she hadn’t heard him approach—or he was just that stealthy. Those with the softest strides had the loudest secrets, her father often said.
“Hey,” she said. “I wanted to see the damage.”
“Looks like this place will be fine,” Loom said. “Might take a little longer than normal to clean things up. Money is in smaller quantity out here. But I’m sure people will pull together.”
“Have you been
here long?” Wil asked. She knew from his accent that he had grown up in the Southern Isles.
He shrugged out of his leather coat and draped it over her shoulders. Only when she felt its warmth did she realize how chilly the night air was. Her blood still stained its sleeves, but it had been scrubbed dull.
She traced a fingertip over a faded red spot.
In the leather, she could smell the herbs that had filled her senses when he’d lifted her from the ground. She could smell winds and plants and the notion of some faraway land, and the war being waged there.
“I’m never anywhere for long,” he said.
She raised her eyes to him. He was intricately designed; his bottom lip was too full and always pouting, as though he were the subject in a portrait whose artist had decided to be generous with it. And with each second that his mouth didn’t move, she found herself increasingly curious about what he was thinking as he looked at her. The idea that he might be thinking about her gave her a strange rush. This boy, who had not only saved her life, but remained by her side through the night as she slept. There was no one left in the world to stay by her side.
“Why did you do it?” he said. “Why did you save a girl who was a stranger to you, when it wasn’t your fight?”
“Because it was my fight,” she said. “If someone like that man can see a person he wants and just sell them, and nothing is done about it, then the world is worse for it.”
He gave a lopsided smile. Now that her mind was clear of the morfin’s effects and she could truly focus on him, she saw the tragedy on his face, affixed to his skin just as surely as his tattoos.
“That’s the kind of thinking that will get you killed,” he said.
She shrugged. “I haven’t been yet.”
She turned to a charred storefront whose windows had been boarded, considering. Her father made no mention of marauders, didn’t see them as a problem big enough to address. There was so much in the world that her father refused to see, but Owen had seen all of it. He wanted to fix all of it. And maybe he would have, but he was never going to be king. He was never going to be anything again, and it was all her fault.
The pain of that realization was a shard forever flowing through her blood, and she was always caught off guard when it stabbed at her.
Loom was watching her. He’d seen the change in her face.
“Northern Arrod, isn’t it?” he said. “Your accent.”
She pulled his jacket tighter around her as a gust of wind came through. “Yes.”
“I’ve seen you around,” he said. “You’re the one who’s been asking about Pahn.”
She was no stranger to being invisible, but he had far surpassed her in that regard. She had never seen him. But he had seen her.
Wil didn’t have to say anything. Her startled expression answered for her.
“What do you want with someone like that?” he said. “Haven’t you heard that marvelers are swindlers and crooks?”
“What I hear doesn’t have to be what I believe,” Wil said, raising her chin. “And I believe he can help me.”
Again she felt herself falling back under his scrutiny. Logic was pleading for her to get away, telling her that he was trouble, while something tragic drew her to him, something telling her that they were the same somehow.
“Pahn does not serve the public; he wants the world to think he’s a myth,” Loom pressed. “There’s only one reason people seek him out, and it’s because they’re desperate.”
Wil met his stare. “What does it matter?”
“I am trying to help you.” The sudden urgency in Loom’s voice startled her, breaking through the tenuous caution of strangers and giving the illusion of something familiar. “Whatever it is you think you need from him, you’d be wise to go somewhere else.”
She saw Owen, hunched over the crystal aloe leaf, like the crystals that later filled his hair, his lungs, his heart. His lifeless blue eyes full of moonlight. The power that surged through her blood as she stood helpless.
“That’s just it.” When Wil spoke, she didn’t recognize her own voice. “I have nowhere else to go.”
Loom was studying her the way she studied vendors in the underground market, like he was waiting for her to betray something—anything—that might tell him who she really was. She feared what he would find, and for once, she was the one to look away.
“Hey.” He reached, as though for her hand, but held the cuff of her coat sleeve instead. “Is it someone close to you? They’re sick—is that it? Because there are some plants that can do amazing things. There’s a ban on the Southern Isles, but I carry a lot of things with me.”
Wil knew the wonders of Southern medicine. Her own father was trying to ravage the kingdom to take control of it all. It had saved her brother’s life, and once she thought those plants could do anything, but not this time.
“I don’t have anyone close to me,” she said. She meant it to be one of her lies, but once the words had been spoken, she realized they were true. She pushed past him, toward the woods that bordered the market square.
He followed her, and their breathing grew shallow as she quickened her pace and he kept up. And then she broke into a run.
“Wait,” he was saying. “Please just wait. You’re still weak.”
Against all reason, she stopped and swung around to face him. Her wound was aching and she suspected blood was beginning to leak past the stitches. She didn’t want to let him see that he was right; her head felt light, her muscles aching.
“What do you want?”
He reached forward, concern in his eyes, and he cupped her cheek.
She tilted her head against his hand. His touch sent warmth through her blood, overpowering the wicked thing inside her. Still breathing hard, she said again, “What—”
Her heart kicked up a furious beat—in protest or in longing, she didn’t know. She could hear him breathing, feel his fingers brush the length of her jaw and disappear in her hair.
He was still alive.
Insects buzzed and fluttered. “What is it?” he said, to her alarmed expression. “What’s wrong?”
She felt that familiar rush. No, no, no. He was going to die in her arms, because she had been reckless.
But seconds passed, and when she heard the crackling of gems, his breath was still falling against her exposed throat.
“Hells,” she heard him say, a moment before she turned her head and saw the branch of alber blossoms gleaming ruby against the darkness.
She ripped free of his grasp, her breath coming in panicked spurts no matter how she tried to keep calm.
She staggered back, and Loom advanced on her, the confusion in his eyes giving way to some sort of understanding. Now he knew why she was looking for Pahn.
Stupid. She was so stupid, letting herself give in to a moment of such recklessness—why had she given in? And now he could do anything with what he had just learned, this boy she didn’t even know. This boy who should by all rights be her enemy, whose king would love nothing more than to see her family slaughtered.
He moved toward her again, and she knew what she had to do.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and grabbed her dagger from its sheath and sliced a line across his forearm in one fluid motion.
A second later, his eyes went dull as the sleep serum overpowered him, and he collapsed.
FIFTEEN
WIL RAN FOR AS LONG as her body would allow her, before the blood from her wounded side began to seep through the leather coat.
She knew that she had gone into the thick of the woods that bordered Brayshire, and judging by the sun’s position as it began to rise, she had gone west. She tried to remember the maps that were posted throughout town. Cutting through the woods meant she’d reach the ocean in about five miles. Only a few hours’ walk if she could keep going.
She slowed to a careful pace, lifting the flap of her bag as she went. Her tent was a lost cause now, left behind in the camp set up by the wanderers, but no m
atter. Everything else was here, including the branch of crystallized blossoms she’d grabbed in her haste. She pulled her data goggles onto her head and blinked once so that the time would appear in the lower right lens: 7:15.
It had been two hours. Two hours since she’d gotten too close to that boy. That strange, lovely boy with the deep sad eyes and tattoos he kept hidden like words that went unsaid.
Loom.
Stop it, she told herself. It would do no good to think of him. The mistake of falling into his touch had gotten her caught. He would be awake by now, and he would be in pursuit. Or worse, he could have told someone what she had done. He could have allies hidden somewhere in Brayshire, and they could be coming for her now.
Her knees threatened to buckle, and at last she relented when she reached a thin, babbling stream. She sat on a giant rock beside it, cringing as she shed her coat. The leather clung to her wound for a second before it fell away.
The stitches held. They were deftly placed, she noted, running her fingertips across their surface, but blood from the constant motion and adrenaline had seeped through.
With her gloved hand, she pulled at a tuft of thin feathery flowers growing wild among the fallen leaves. Spring sprigs. She rinsed a rock in the stream and used it to grind the flowers into a mushy white paste. It would help prevent infection, in a pinch. Gerdie had taught her that.
The paste was cool as she dabbed it over the blood, even soothing.
Breathing hard, she shed her torn, bloody tunic and began shredding it into scraps to use as a makeshift bandage. If she was going to find a boat to take her out of the country, no captain would take a fare who was bleeding through her clothes. She couldn’t imagine how she must have looked just then. Her bare stomach was pale as a root, her skin so wan it looked like a paper lantern devoid of light.
She bound her wound and pulled a fresh tunic from her bag. It was the only other piece of clothing she owned, loose fitting and made of red cotton, with baggy sleeves that tightened at the wrist, so that they belled out and looked full of wind. It had been slightly more expensive than the others for sale at the vendor’s cart, but the gold-embroidered lions and thorns at the hem had reminded her of her dresses back home. The dresses she’d only worn to please her mother—the dresses she didn’t know were a part of her identity until she’d been forced to leave them behind.