Her vision was blurring, exhaustion washing over her like a wave. “Focus,” she whispered. “You’re wind. You’re everywhere.”
But when she raised her eyes to the trees, she could not imagine herself hovering above them. She could not imagine the world beneath her, reduced to neat patches of land and sloping river lines. Instead, she saw her wardrobe full of dresses, so rich with colors. She saw herself as a little girl, spreading her hands and embracing those dresses, gathering them into her arms and falling into their softness, their silk, their smooth cool beads and ruffled hems.
She heard her brothers, their voices echoing down the hallway and hitting every stone in the walls. She couldn’t tell if they were laughing or calling for her. It didn’t matter. Just for a little while, it didn’t matter. They were safe, and the world had turned warm and soft.
She awoke with a start, the screech of a spawnling jolting her back into the woods, where the sun was now higher in the sky. She blinked into her data goggles: 10:15.
“Winds,” she cursed.
Her side was not aching as much when she pulled herself to her feet, but that was little consolation, given how much time she had lost dozing in the middle of nowhere.
This time, as she walked, she was more mindful about not aggravating her stitches. But she did not slow her pace. Every snapped twig, every rustle of leaves against the mild wind felt like Loom following her.
It was highly unlikely, she tried to convince herself. If he was following her, these woods went on for miles in all directions. She would be long gone, on a ship out in the ocean, before he caught up.
The thought of him caused her heart to beat just a little faster.
Stupid, she told herself. Because of her carelessness, she had to flee the country. She forced herself to think about that instead.
Thanks to Loom, she knew, at least, that Pahn wasn’t a myth. But either way, he wasn’t here. He might be in the Western Isles, she thought. It was a neutral territory with open borders, and from what Owen had told her, it was a good place to hide. Nothing exciting happened there. It was self-sufficient, with few imports and virtually no exports of note.
But more importantly, the people of the Western Isles were highly superstitious. Most shanty songs and fairy tales and folklore could be traced back to them. If Pahn wanted to blend in, he could do it in a place where everyone seemed to have a mysterious past.
Or, he might want to avoid a place like that altogether.
Frustration returned, and she tried to fight it away. If Pahn wasn’t there, someone would know more about him, she told herself. Someone would have to.
It seemed like an eternity before she heard the water in the near distance. She could almost believe that she had wandered all the way back to Northern Arrod. The ocean sounded and smelled the same anywhere.
On this side of Brayshire was the Ancient Sea. It had featured prominently in her mother’s tales from her life as a wanderer. “Do you know how it earned its name?” her mother had whispered one night, when Wil was a child, her lids heavy with sleep.
“A thousand years ago, countless soldiers died embattled in its waters. So many were lost at sea that the tides were red for days.” The queen had played with Wil’s hair, but her eyes were somewhere far, as though she wasn’t telling the story to her daughter at all. She was whispering it into the walls, further filling the castle with her secrets. “The water is filled with ancient skeletons and spirits. Sailors claim to hear the spirits moaning on days when the winds are at their loudest. Some have claimed to hear voices of people they’ve lost.”
A few yards later, Wil broke free of the woods and immediately found herself within a city. Flecks glimmered in white stone sidewalks that branched out like arteries in all directions. Shops and carts and roads. It was past noon now, and the sidewalks were full. Boats bobbed along the water’s surface, tethered to their docks.
On the deck outside a seaside restaurant, a band was playing brass music that filled the streets with life. She allowed herself to be calmed by it. The songs were ships scattering out into the seas of her blood, and for just a few moments, for the first time since leaving home, she felt as though she was still alive.
While she had been worrying over what the boy had seen her do, the world had gone on, oblivious to any of it. She was no one here. She was normal. And finding a ride out of the country should be easy.
There was a dirigible docked on one far end of the shoreline, but it was already crowded. She opted to explore the smaller ships that lined the docks; they usually charged less than the larger ones, anyway.
“Are you looking for a ride?”
Wil turned to face the voice that had called to her. It belonged to a woman. Young, only a year or two older than Wil, and astonishingly beautiful. It was the kind of beauty that was sharp as a blade, sudden as an attack. Her copper-brown skin was shimmering under the bright sun; her hair was a contrast of darkness and light—streaked with glossy silver, as though it had been dyed, and true black. She had light-brown eyes framed by heavy lashes.
A tattoo coiled around the woman’s lean upper arm, a serpent with jeweled eyes and tiny suns for scales. Above that, two moons in the sky of her skin, accented in shimmering silver, were overlapping; it was a popular Southern wedding ceremony tattoo, Wil knew from Owen’s books. But if the woman was married, that spouse was nowhere in sight.
“Where are you headed?” Wil asked. The woman was standing before a modest ship, the kind commonly owned by families who might have room for the occasional fare. The shape of the deck was customized, just slightly longer than standard trade and passenger ships, which meant it was likely once owned by a royal family. The woman could have been from a royal family herself, but more commonly these ships were stolen, artfully repainted, and sold to the untrained customer; this was more likely the case. Wil saw the thin, reflective sheen of solar panels on the roof of its cabin and knew it was one of the more modern, digital models. Expensive and exclusive. She saw them often in Northern Arrod. Had even boarded a few larger ships when she and Gerdie snuck into parties.
“West,” the woman said, and flashed a smile filled with shining white teeth. “Is that where you’re going?”
“Yes,” Wil said, doing her best not to betray the flare of pain in her side. “How much are you charging?”
From behind the young woman’s legs, a little boy with long dark hair and light-brown eyes blinked curiously at Wil. The woman patted his head affectionately. “It’s five hundred silver. This is my son. He won’t be any trouble, will you, Ada?” The boy tilted his head up at her. Ada. The Lavean word for sun.
The woman held out her hand. “I’m Zay.”
“Wil,” Wil said. Something about Zay’s breezy demeanor put her at ease. She followed her onto the ship, Ada hopping ahead of them.
The woman was undoubtedly Southern, and the ship had a rich aroma of plants and extracts that Wil couldn’t identify.
Zay boasted about the ship, going on about its state-of-the-art navigation system, how it steered itself, all as she led Wil to her bunk. “Not much of a talker, are you?” Zay said. “That’s okay. This is your bunk.”
It was lavish for a ship’s accommodations, with a lush down comforter and gold sheets. Wil didn’t show her surprise, though. She sat on the edge of the bed, pretending it wasn’t the softest mattress she had encountered since her days as a princess. “It’s wonderful,” Wil said. “Thank you.”
“I’ll give you privacy,” Zay said. “There are some books in the drawer under the bed; help yourself to anything you like. We’ll be leaving at the top of the hour.” And then she closed the door.
It was not Wil’s first time on a ship. She had been on dozens, but they stayed close to land if they left the port at all.
This was the first time she was going to actually set sail, though, and excitement stirred its way through her numbness. The wanderlust in her blood had always overpowered the royalty; though this ship was no castle, she felt
as though she was home.
Above the bed, there was a small porthole, through which she could see endless water shimmering with pieces of sun. The world was so vast, a solution had to be out there somewhere. All she had to do was find it. She would start with Pahn, but if he eluded her, or if he couldn’t help, or wouldn’t, there would be another way. There had to be.
Before long, the ship pulled away from the docks.
Zay was standing at the railing when Wil found her, watching Brayshire get smaller in the distance. The ship moved fast—the land was already nearly out of sight.
“How many days will it take to get to the Western Isles?” Wil asked. Though this ship was smaller than the ones she’d boarded back home, its design was superior. She didn’t feel as though they were moving at all.
“Hm?” Zay spun around to face her. Ada was at her heels, playing with a length of rope that had been tied into a sort of ragdoll. “I don’t know. How long would it take to reach the Western Isles?”
In her confusion, it took Wil several seconds to realize that Zay was not talking to her, but to someone who had come up onto the deck behind her. Someone who had moved so silently, she hadn’t known anyone was there. Somehow, even before she turned around, she knew who it would be.
His skin had blanched just slightly, and his eyes were glassy—a side effect of the sleep serum. And the way those eyes looked at her had changed. Where once there had been curiosity, even intrigue, now there was impassiveness. A cut traced his forearm, the blood that lined it dark and dry.
Loom.
Her blood went cold.
“The Western Isles are two days by sea,” he said. “But I don’t see why it should matter. That isn’t where we’re going.”
Wil took a step back, away from Loom. He was immune to her strange power, she knew that much, but she would fight him if she had to. Lean muscles, haughty stance. He would undoubtedly be a match, but he appeared a little unsteady; the sleep serum hadn’t left his senses yet; his reflexes would be slow.
Zay might succumb to her powers and die instantly. But then again, she might not. If Loom was immune, there was a chance she would be as well. Something in their diets? Their genes, assuming they were family? She didn’t know.
Her fists clenched inside her gloves. Zay would be easy to knock unconscious, Wil thought. She didn’t have a fighter’s stance and wouldn’t see an attack coming. Loom might prove to be more of a challenge. He was more alert, as though he’d spent his life dodging arrows.
“Are you sure this is the right one?” Zay said, to Loom. “She doesn’t look like much.”
“It’s her,” Loom said. He was holding her bag, Wil realized, and he reached inside and pulled out a fistful of crystallized alber blossoms.
When Wil snatched the bag from his hand, he let her have it. No matter. The damage had already been done.
“Where are you taking me?” Wil didn’t have to work hard to make her roiling anger sound like fear.
Zay looked at her as though she were a stain on her shoe. When Loom looked at her, though, some of that intrigue was back, although it was veiled now by suspicion, and something more sinister. “We’re on a course for the Southern Isles,” he said.
“That’s impossible,” Wil said. “It doesn’t matter if the Southern Isles is your home; its borders are completely closed.”
“Let me worry about that.”
“Why the South? What do you want from me?”
“Let’s talk belowdecks,” Loom said. “There’s a storm coming.”
As though on cue, a rumble sounded, and the clear blue sky began to darken.
SIXTEEN
THE HALLWAY BELOWDECKS WAS NARROW, Wil noted. Much too small for her to spread an arm straight out at her side. And Loom could barely clear the ceiling, which meant it was only a little more than six feet high. Zay brought up the lead, and Loom stayed close behind Wil.
She began running a list of attacks that could incapacitate two opponents in rapid succession in cramped quarters. She didn’t know what sort of fighter Zay would be. Despite her ferocity, her bare arms didn’t seem to have much muscle to them. Her stance was haughty and guarded, but not especially menacing.
Loom would be the true opponent, she suspected. He had been strong enough to carry her all the way to Hettie’s apartment, and quickly at that, without getting winded.
She thought of what Owen had taught her about assessing opponents. What did Loom want from her, and how hard was he willing to fight her for it? He wouldn’t kill her. She knew that. He needed her alive because her power meant something to him.
And Zay was hard to get a read on. She might be hiding her physical prowess.
They both stopped walking, pinning Wil between them.
“I have to disarm you,” he said. “I’d prefer the easy way, but I’ll leave that up to you.”
“How kind.” Wil spread her arms in a display of complicity. “You tended to my wound. You know where I keep them.”
It was Zay, though, who raised the hem of Wil’s tunic. Gerdie’s twin platinum guns rested on either side of her hips, still fully loaded—his final parting gift before she’d left on their father’s spy mission.
Zay whistled at the sight of them. Platinum guns weren’t uncommon, but nothing Gerdie made was ever simple. The barrels were embellished with an etching of the Port Capital skyline—a perfect likeness he’d alchemized from a map dipped in coffee, which gave the engraving a sepia tint.
It was the sneer in Zay’s eyes that awoke Wil’s anger. The idea that this girl from an enemy kingdom was about to take something her brother had labored over. The only piece of Gerdie she had left.
Wil threw herself back, anticipating that Loom would catch her. He did, and she wrapped her arms around his forearms, locking his elbows and pressing her back to his chest. Her right leg swung up and kicked Zay under the chin, hard. She was out before she hit the ground.
Loom broke free of her grasp and tried to grab her waist, but she spun out of reach, leaping over Zay’s prone form.
Loom was fast, but she was faster. Think, she commanded herself. Gerdie had once wooed a captain’s daughter into letting them see the control panel of a digital ship. It had been at the end of the hall. She sprinted for the door, Loom at her heels.
He grabbed her wrist, forcing her around to face him. She raised her arm, twisted free, and grabbed his fingers with her other hand. She was trying to break them, but he easily pulled away. She glanced behind her. The door was so close. When Loom reached for her again, she ducked low and evaded him by somersaulting for the door. She pulled it open, hurried inside, and slammed it shut behind her.
There was a latch that locked it from the inside, Wil recalled from her brief tour in the control room, to protect the captain in the event of a hostile takeover. There was a key that could open it from the outside, but only the captain and select crewmembers would have it, and Wil hoped that somehow Loom wouldn’t have one on him.
The other side of the door had gone unnervingly quiet, but there was no time to investigate why that was.
The button that activated the life raft was easy to spot. It had to be, in the event of an emergency, but especially a hijacking—these had grown common in Western waters, Owen had told her.
She pressed her palm to the glowing white button, and within seconds, a metal hatch had unfurled from the wall, revealing a rapidly inflating life raft.
Sounds from the other side of the door now. Zay’s voice, the rattle of a key ring.
Wil jumped into the raft and jammed her palm against the red button on the wall beside it. The door began to close. Just before it entombed her in perfect, airtight darkness, Wil heard the door to the control panel burst open.
“She has to be in here.” Zay’s voice was dazed, but resolute. Wil was impressed she had come to so quickly.
“The raft,” Loom said. And before Wil could hear the words he said next, the outer hatch of the compartment finally slid open, casting her raft out i
nto open sea.
The wind had picked up and the waters were choppy. She grasped at the oars and began rowing for land. She had hoped to incapacitate Zay and Loom more indefinitely, but if they came after her now, she would have to shoot them. A tendon in the back of the ankle would be ideal, if she could manage it. But if they came at her from the water, she could go for the shoulders. They wouldn’t be able to swim for her at any significant speed if they couldn’t move their shoulders.
Though it hadn’t been much time since she’d boarded the ship, it had gone quite far from the port. Nervously, she glanced at the ship’s deck, but there was no sign of either of them.
Land was far, but if she could keep rowing at this rate, she would reach it before she’d exhausted herself. Her gaze shifted from the shore to the ship. Loom and Zay had reached the control panel by the time she’d escaped, but they hadn’t come after her yet.
Why aren’t they chasing me?
Then the sharp sound of something bolting through the air. A clear, shimmering net enveloped her raft. Before she could react, there was a sharp tug, and she was underwater.
This was no ordinary net. The lower half of it dug through the raft with the force of the motion, shredding it to ribbons.
She could see the surface through the murk and gloom, but when she kicked toward it, the net snared her arms until she bled, and reeled her farther away.
Don’t panic, she commanded herself. For a moment, she kept still, relaxing her muscles to slow her heart rate and store her energy.
Then, lungs burning, she unsheathed her dagger.
She tried sawing from several different angles, but the net was impenetrable. Unnatural. It had to be forged by alchemy.
Her vision was starting to tunnel. She couldn’t tell if this sensation of rapidly moving was from the net being pulled, or some sort of hallucination.