“For the North Wind,” the outlaw said with a bow. “Only the best.”
One thing the room didn’t have was a bed. Instead, a pile of thick straw covered in furs and blankets lay on the floor. Heat orbs floated around it like stars. The outlaw scurried out of the room, leaving us alone.
Isolfr collapsed down on the blankets. Bits of straw flew up around him. “I hate the way they’re treating me like a hero. I’m not a hero.”
I sat down beside him. “I wouldn’t say that.”
He stared up at the ceiling. Lights from the crystal danced across his face. “I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow. What any of us are going to do. I can’t believe they’re not letting Trystan come—no, that’s not true. I can believe it. It’s just so stupid. Why would they turn down help from the Mists?” He threw his hands in the air.
“Well, I guess that leaves it up to us, doesn’t it?” I leaned in close to him. The coolness of him was a pleasant contrast to the heat emanating from the globes. “That’s what you told me back in Tulja, remember? That it was up to us. We didn’t even think we’d have Trystan’s help then.”
He looked over at me. “I remember that.”
I lay my head on his shoulder, and, after a moment’s pause, he looped his arm around me. I didn’t tell him everything I was thinking—I didn’t tell him that the idea of marching into the castle terrified me, that I was so numb with fear I felt as if everything about myself had been emptied out, that the only thing tying me to this world was the feel of his body pressed against mine. I didn’t tell him all that because I knew he probably felt it too.
“We’ve got our magic,” I finally said. “When we work together—we’re strong.”
He nodded, his hair grazing my cheek. I pressed in closer to him. He was cold; I was warm. North and south. Together we were like a spring day.
I closed my eyes. My fear had me rattling inside, but at least on the outside I felt calm, comforted, safe.
Isolfr leaned back, pulling me with him. We lay together on the straw and furs, our limbs wound up in each other. We didn’t speak. Both of us knew there was nothing more to say. We were scared and we were going to fight together tomorrow, side by side.
• • •
We left the caves the next morning at dawn.
As Ankia said, we disguised ourselves as traveling performers from the southerly islands—not the Kjoran style exactly, but the patterns in the fabric were still familiar to me. Ankia had developed an entire backstory about how we were a gift for the Queen of Jandanvar from the people of Lamista, how we honored her wisdom and grace and beauty and wished for her long life and prosperity in the years to come. I hoped it was enough to get us through the palace gates.
Ankia did not change her mind regarding Trystan. I saw him as we boarded the caravans, standing off to the side, a breeze blowing his hair. He smiled at me, looking sad.
“Kill him,” he said, and nothing more.
It left me shaken. I didn’t want to think about killing anyone, not even Lord Foxfollow.
As promised, Isolfr, Frida, Kolur, and I all rode together in a single carriage. It was small but decorated with Empire silks and Qilari rugs, and there were bits of fragmented glass hung over the windows so that in the white Jandanvar daylight, the caravan would be full of rainbows. It was a lot of finery for a ruse, but I suspected that the ruse needed to be as a detailed as possible if we wanted to pass under Foxfollow’s eye.
All of us were dressed in what Ankia claimed was the traditional Lamistan style: long, colorful jackets and boots to our knees. It also allowed for women to wear trousers, which was why it had been chosen. I didn’t mention to her that I would be fighting with magic, and that wasn’t the sort of fighting where it mattered what you wore. But still the outlaws put me in trousers. One of them also handed me a small, slim blade and told me to keep it close.
I didn’t want to think about the implications.
We rode in silence, bumping over the rocky roads. Isolfr sat close to me and let his hand drop over mine. Kolur leaned up against the carriage wall and closed his eyes, although I knew he wasn’t sleeping. Frida murmured to herself, prayers for good luck. I couldn’t bring myself to pray. Instead, I stared out the window, watching the grass roll by, a sick feeling lurking in the pit of my stomach.
I wasn’t sure how long it was before our traveling musicians’ caravan was stopped. I couldn’t see anything from the window except sweeps of grass, but I could hear voices up at the front of the caravan. They were low, steady. They didn’t sound like voices readying for a fight.
But then Isolfr gripped my hand more tightly, and I knew we had to be close.
It seemed like we were stopped for a long time. None of us spoke, although Frida stopped praying and glanced out the window. Kolur opened his eyes. He looked hollow and drawn. His eye sockets were sunken. Dark.
And then, just as I wasn’t sure I could stand the stillness any longer, the carriage jerked forward.
“Are we there?” I whispered to Isolfr.
“We’re passing through the gates,” Isolfr said. “Or we should be soon.” He pointed to the window. The chains of broken glass swung in time to the motion of the carriage. On the other side of it, the grass ended abruptly at a tall white-stone wall. A guard watched us drive by. I couldn’t tell if he was human or Mists. He had two pistols tucked into his belt and a sword at his side, but he was kicking at the ground, not paying us any mind.
I pulled away from the window. The wall passed by.
We were inside the palace estate.
The landscape beyond the wall was no longer an empty stretch of grass, but a garden, threaded through with shimmering flowers and tall, willowy trees with white bark and crystalline leaves. A constant chiming stirred around us, a discordant, beautiful music that only set my nerves further on edge.
“Ankia’s going to take us around to the back,” Kolur said in a low voice. “We’ll be taken to a performer’s room to wait until the queen and Lord Foxfollow are ready to see us. Keep the light on. The ceremony will take place once the sun’s dropped below the horizon. A Jandanvari custom.”
We’d gone over all of this earlier. Ankia had laid out the entire plan. It felt too easy for me. Lord Foxfollow was not some mortal man who could be easily fooled by performers in bright clothes. He was a lord of the Mists. He had grown up in a world built of magic. Surely, he could see through our trap.
This was why it was folly that Trystan hadn’t come with us. But the outlaws weren’t going to listen to a half-Empire windwitch. They weren’t even going to listen to the North Wind himself.
No one stopped the caravan as it pulled around to the servants’ entrance of the palace. Our carriage shuddered to a stop. My heartbeat quickened. Kolur was the first to stand up. I didn’t want to leave this place. The silks and broken glass were beautiful—it was a beautiful dream, and I was about to wake up into the horror of the morning.
But I still climbed out of the carriage, my hand in Isolfr’s.
The caravan had circled around into a wide courtyard built of the same white stones as the palace wall. In the sun’s cold light I was momentarily blinded, dazzled by the whiteout. I stepped closer to Isolfr. I wanted to be as close to him as I could during our time in the palace. If I was going to die, I wanted him to be the last person I saw.
No. I couldn’t think like that. My family was waiting for me in Kjora. I would see them again. I would kiss Isolfr again, I would sail on the rich dark sea again. I was not going to die here.
“Performers!” shouted Ankia, waving a ribboned staff in one hand. “File into the palace! Master Eloy will lead you to the waiting room!”
The outlaws muttered together, playing their roles. They had disguised their weapons as musical instruments—pistols hidden away in the hollow of a guitar, harps whose strings could be snapped away for the purpose of garroting an enemy.
Ankia swooped her staff through the air the way any troupe leader would, and leaped off her carriage.
We followed her inside. I’d been too frightened, really, to think about what a palace might look like on the inside—but we were in the servants’ corridor, and so it looked no different from the manor houses back in the Mists. The hallway was narrow enough that we had to walk single file. I was shaking the whole time, certain that Master Eloy was leading us to our deaths, that we’d been found out long before we passed through the gate and Lord Foxfollow was toying with us. But soon enough I found myself standing in a large, bright atrium, sunlight pouring in through skylights in the ceiling.
A small, hunched-over old man held the door for us, and he gave a tilt of his head when we passed. His eyes were dark brown. Human. He must be Master Eloy.
Once we were all inside the room, he said in a thin, quavering voice, “We will call for you when Her Highness is ready. She is most looking forward to your performance.”
He slipped back out into the hallway, letting the door swing shut behind him.
Isolfr moved closer to me. He’d wound a scarf around the bottom of his face, trying to disguise the qualities that made him so clearly inhuman. It mostly worked.
The outlaws muttered among themselves. They didn’t talk about the attack, just little grumbles about the state of the atrium, the weather the last few days, the condition of the instruments.
Kolur looked determined. Grim. Frida stood at his side with her eyes closed. Her chest moved in and out. Readying herself. I knew I should be doing the same, gathering up the strength of my magic, but I was so frightened I wasn’t sure I could think clearly enough for it.
We waited in that room forever. I watched the light in the window, afraid that it was darkening, that it was too late—
And then the door opened. It wasn’t Master Eloy, but a pretty woman in a long brocade gown the color of wine, her hair twisted up around her head in braids so complicated they looked like a tiara. For one wild moment I thought she was the queen, that she had sensed Kolur somehow and come to stop him.
But she only held out one hand, gesturing toward the hallway, and said, “Her Majesty Queen Penelope of Jandanvar and her betrothed are ready for your performance.”
The queen’s name struck me hard between the eyes. All this time and I’d been fishing on a boat named after Kolur’s biggest mistake.
“About damn time,” one of the outlaws said, and Ankia hushed him and gave a broad smile to the woman.
“My apologies, my lady,” she said, “but Amado here isn’t used to being in the presence of such finery. We’ve never been given such an honor before, and—”
“It’s a wedding! You should all be in better spirits.” The woman looked amused. “Come, let me show you the way.”
Once again, we filed out into the hallway. I was numb with fear. Isolfr walked right behind me, so close he sometimes stepped on the heels of my boots. I didn’t mind. It was a reminder that he was there.
We walked, winding through the palace, past sculptures and paintings and twinkling bursts of magic.
I was afraid I would just stop breathing.
Eventually, we came to an alcove partitioned off with a curtain. Music drifted in from the other side of the curtain, along with the sound of people talking and laughing, their voices twinkling like stars. The woman in brocade slipped through the curtain. The outlaws had fallen silent. Their muscles corded up beneath their clothes. Sweat gleamed on their skin.
It was my last chance to turn and run. I could probably make it, too, if I followed the hallway back out to the courtyard, and then pretended I’d been besieged by a fear of an audience. But I glanced over at Isolfr, and he was pale and trembling but he was determined too, as determined as Kolur, and I knew I couldn’t leave him like that.
“Your Majesty Queen Penelope and her paramour, Lord Foxfollow, the good people of Lamista have seen fit to grant you a gift of their finest musical performers on this most sacred of days.”
The audience’s polite applause turned to the buzzing of insects inside my head.
“Time to fight,” Kolur whispered in my ear.
We shuffled out into the open.
The throne room was enormous, with high arched ceilings made of a polished, transparent stone that let in the diffused sunlight. The room was hung with flowers and ribbons, and the courtiers milling up against the walls wore gowns of silk and fur, their faces painted for the celebration.
And then there was the bride and groom, Penelope and Foxfollow, sitting on thrones carved of the same transparent stone as the ceiling. Penelope was older than I expected but extraordinarily beautiful. Her long brown hair was streaked with pristine white the same color as snow. She wore a tall, spiked crown that glittered like stars, and a gray gown that flowed over the steps leading up to her throne. It sparkled with jewels at the bodice and the hem. It was a wedding gown.
Lord Foxfollow wore a black suit. He looked exactly as I remembered when I called him in the in-between world.
My throat went dry. I stumbled backward, trying to hide myself among the outlaws.
Penelope gazed over us and smiled. “Musicians of Lamista,” she said, her voice imbued with a kindness and warmth I would not have expected from someone betrothed to Lord Foxfollow. “Welcome to Jandanvar.”
The courtiers stirred and then issued a polite ripple of applause. Lord Foxfollow stared straight ahead. His eyes were hooded, dark, unreadable. I pressed close to Isolfr, and he shrank against me, and we were in the back, where Lord Foxfollow would never see us—
“You!” he roared, his voice breaking through the whispery quiet of the throne room. He leaped to his feet and jabbed his finger toward the outlaws.
For one dizzying, stomach-sick moment I was certain he was pointing at me, and that I would have to act when I had forgotten, in my fear, all my magic. But then Kolur drew back his hood and said, “Yes, it’s me.”
The queen paled. Her mouth moved but I couldn’t hear what she said, not over the chatter of the courtiers.
“Intruder,” Lord Foxfollow snarled. “Interloper. Guards!”
The outlaws didn’t wait for a signal. They sprung their weapons free from their instruments, swords and knives and pistols. The courtiers’ scandalized mutters transformed into screams, and they began trampling toward the formal entrance at the back of the room. Lord Foxfollow lifted his hands above his head and conjured a ball of light out of the air—but Kolur shot back with magic of his own, and it collided with Lord Foxfollow’s and erupted into a shower of glitter that sizzled when it touched my hair and my clothes.
Guards poured into the throne room, shoving the courtiers aside. All around me was the painful clang of steel hitting steel, the pop of firearms. I whirled around, trying to find a place where I could cast magic in safety. Through the melee I saw a tapestry threaded through with flowers from the Empire. There. Perfect.
“Come on!” I shouted to Isolfr, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him across the room. He resisted at first, but a bullet whizzed past our heads and he stumbled after me. I ducked a swinging blade, toppling us both to the floor. Magic exploded in the air above the room. I smelled burning hair.
I yanked Isolfr behind the tapestry. It was dark and sickly with the scent of flowers back there, and the sound of fighting had followed us. But we at least had the illusion of safety.
“We can’t just hide,” Isolfr said, his voice shaking.
“We’re not! But if we’d stayed out there we would have gotten ourselves killed. We need to decide exactly how we’re going to fight.”
Isolfr nodded. I peeked around the curtain. At first I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing—it was just a whirling storm of blades and pistol smoke and glittering magic. Penelope was bound up in a tight coil of silver thread, and she thrashed against her restraints and screamed. Kolur and Frida couldn’t get to her though—Lord Foxfollow was beating them back with wave after wave of shimmering white magic that made the entire room hum like it was about to light on fire.
I jerked my head back behind the tapestry. ??
?We need to help strengthen Kolur and Frida’s spells.”
“What spell is it?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
Isolfr took a deep breath and peered around the side of the tapestry—then immediately snapped his head back in, his eyes wide and panicky. “Foxfollow’s going to kill all of us if we don’t stop him,” he said. “That’s Ansley’s Folly.”
I shook my head. I’d never heard of it.
“A Mists spell!” His voice edged on hysterical. “I’ve read about it. There’s no time to explain. Just know that it will kill all of us if he keeps casting it.”
“Well then, we’ve got to stop him.” I grabbed Isolfr by the hand and then leaned over and kissed him once, quickly, on the mouth.
“Ready?” I said.
He nodded.
I yanked back the tapestry and in one solid movement, our hands still linked, Isolfr and I called down the power of the winds: the north wind and the south wind both. Everything in the room stilled—and then the air surged, wind rushing through the walls, strong enough to blow the guards and outlaws off balance. The wind threaded into Kolur and Frida’s magic and there was a vast expansion of light as our spell struck the Ansley’s Folly. The strength of the wind raced through me, setting me alight—but Foxfollow was pushing back, his magic cold and damp and hollow. It was an absence of movement.
In the center of the room, arcing above the battle between outlaws and guards, these two magics pummeled each other.
Lord Foxfollow let out a shout of rage, and his anger jolted through me, shuddering down deep into my bones. Isolfr gasped and his hand slipped away from me. I reached out for him, not daring to take my eyes off Lord Foxfollow—
And then Lord Foxfollow’s magic collapsed in on itself. The shimmering light grew smaller and smaller until it was a dark spot in existence. Something rushed out of me. I didn’t know what was happening.
Kolur shouted. It sounded like Stop.
That dark spot of magic slammed into Penelope, the Queen of Jandanvar. She was lifted off the ground and then slammed down hard in front of Kolur. Her bounds loosened, spilling around her like water. But she didn’t move.