by Caitlin Seal
Something that might have been doubt or disappointment flickered across the soldier’s features. “Restrain her,” he said. Two more soldiers stepped forward, one of them pulling a complicated set of wooden cuffs from a pack on his back. Naya clenched her teeth at the icy touch of the salma wood. The chill of it radiated through her limbs as the soldier locked one set of cuffs around her wrists, then clasped a collar around her neck. Another set of cuffs bound her ankles, all of it held together with heavy metal chains.
“Is this really necessary?” Naya asked. The throb of the cracked bone in her hand seemed stronger amid the cold pain of the salma wood, and the chains around her ankles were so short that she’d have to shuffle rather than walk. She was glad that at least the compass and anchor bones weren’t there anymore to add to the dissonant sensations, or worse, to somehow translate her pain back to Lucia or Corten. Both bones had cracked and fallen away as she’d stepped back into life.
The bearded soldier offered her a thin smile. “We know what your kind are capable of.”
The soldier who’d cuffed her pulled out a salma wood club and prodded her toward the edge of the ship. There they hooked a rope onto her cuffs and lowered her down to the waiting rowboats like a sack of grain.
Panic tightened in Naya’s chest as they secured her to a heavy iron loop on the rowboat, then started back toward shore. She flexed her wrists against her restraints but stopped when the soft clink of chains earned her a look from one of the soldiers watching her. Instead she turned her gaze toward the shore, trying to appear calm.
She told herself she would be fine. This wasn’t anything like the last time she’d been locked in chains. She had a plan, and she had at least some allies back at the Congress. She just had to convince Queen Lial that dismissing the accusation was the smartest course of action.
If that failed, at least Corten and Lucia would be safe.
Naya’s thoughts fuzzed in a fog of pain as the soldiers rowed her to shore, then escorted her up the lift to a waiting carriage. Despite her efforts to reassure herself, the carriage ride reminded her all too much of the ride to the executioner’s platform back in Belavine. How was it that she kept getting herself into these situations? Less than a year ago, she’d been a merchant’s daughter. The biggest danger she’d ever faced was that of shipwreck, and even that hadn’t been much of a risk in the routes her father usually sailed. Now here she was facing the prospect of imprisonment and execution. Again.
A cruel voice in the back of her mind whispered that she never should have come back to Talmir. Everyone would have been better off if she’d just stayed in Belavine. Well, everyone except Corten. The memory of him standing whole and alive on the Gallant silenced that voice. She hadn’t told him about the five years the stranger had demanded as part of the price for bringing him back. The choice had been hers, and knowing about it would probably only make Corten feel guilty.
The carriage doors opened and Naya stumbled out. “Where are we?” she asked, the panic rising fresh in her chest despite the numbing chill of the salma wood cuffs. The carriage had stopped in a dark stone chamber. Soldiers guarded an iron-bound door on the far wall. A boom came from behind her, and Naya looked back to see a larger set of doors being latched shut.
“Your new residence, until the queen decides what to do with you,” the bearded soldier from the ship said.
“I thought you were taking me to the palace,” Naya said.
The soldier sneered. “The palace? No. You’ll be staying in the only part of this land where one of your kind belongs.”
Naya looked down the dark hallway with a sinking feeling. “I’m a member of the delegation. You can’t just lock me up like this.”
But apparently they could, because one of the soldiers hit her across the shoulders with a salma wood club, forcing her to stumble forward. Between the effects of the salma wood and her cracked bone, she didn’t have the strength to fight them. She’d hoped the soldiers would take her in for questioning immediately. Instead they’d brought her to the Barrow, the prison in Justice Square where the worst of Talmir’s criminals were held. Did Queen Lial have more evidence than Naya had assumed? Or had she decided she didn’t care about angering the Congress by locking Naya away down here?
The soldiers dragged her down and down, past cells with heavy barred doors. The upper levels of the prison were loud with clanking metal and the cries of prisoners. As they descended the shouts were replaced with silence broken only occasionally by a quiet sob or a burst of hysterical laugher. Through the ice of the salma wood and her own dread, Naya could feel the darkness of the prison’s aether seeping into her. The air tasted thick and heavy with despair, a sickly-sweet stench like something long dead. It made her shackles feel heavier and her doubts and fears multiply.
The soldiers finally stopped at a heavy door of dark salma wood. The bearded soldier unlocked the door and opened it to reveal a windowless cell little bigger than a closet. Or a coffin. Naya’s throat went tight and the last of her courage left her. “No,” she whispered, trying to push away from the dark opening. “No!” Her bare feet slid against the damp stone floor as she struggled to scramble away. She tried to push her wrists through her cuffs, but the shackles held fast.
A club slammed into the back of her head once, twice. Dazed, Naya stumbled into the cell. Her shoulder hit the wall and the freezing touch of more salma wood greeted her. Before she could even turn around, the heavy door boomed shut behind her, sealing her in darkness.
Corten paced back and forth across the ship’s cabin. This was wrong. He shouldn’t have let Naya go like that. He should have said something, done something.
“Corten, please, sit down,” Lucia said, her voice taking on the faintly exasperated tone he’d heard so often back when he was her apprentice. When he drew in aether, he could sense the sour mix of her fear and guilt, neither one strong enough to overshadow a bright thread of urgent excitement.
Corten turned to face her. “Sit down?! Is that really all you have to say? ‘Sit down, Corten. Be quiet, Corten.’ ” He reached up, tugging at his hair, trying to let the sharp sensation ground him. “How can you be okay with letting her go like that? How are you okay with any of this?”
“I’m not,” Lucia snapped. “But I see no point in acting rashly. One thing I’ve learned about Naya is that telling her not to do something she’s set on is an exercise in futility. We’ll have to trust her to take care of herself for a while until we can figure out how best to help. In the meantime, I would very much like to get back to our previous conversation.”
“Of course you would,” Corten muttered. Lucia had always been fascinated by necromancy, sometimes maybe too fascinated. After what he’d seen on the other side of death, Corten was starting to think that there were some secrets better left alone. Lucia narrowed her eyes and remained silent, waiting. Corten looked away, but he could still feel her gaze on the back of his neck. “I don’t know anything else, all right?”
“Think, Corten. You know as much about our art as any fully trained necromancer. You must have some theories about what you saw.”
Our art. Corten braced himself for the pain of that reminder but was surprised to feel only a soft ache. After his first death, nearly every conversation he’d had with Lucia had ended in an argument. She’d asked him to stay on with her and help carve runes, and he’d hated her for it. He’d wondered how she could be so blind as to why he didn’t want to live surrounded by reminders of the future he’d lost.
Maybe it would have been different if his death had meant something. But he’d died so stupidly. With one wrong step, he’d lost his place as the family heir and his chance of becoming a true necromancer. When he’d told Lucia he wouldn’t waste his time carving runes for her, she’d called him a spoiled child, claiming he was throwing away his talents just because he didn’t want to face what had happened. And maybe in a way she’d been right. He’d
spent years focused only on that loss, all the while avoiding the question of what he wanted to do with the life he had left.
“I’m not sure why the people Naya spoke to wore faces, and the one I met was only a shadow, but it seems obvious they’re all part of the same group. The vision they showed must be connected to the ancient magics they told Naya about. I saw people who could have been necromancers performing some sort of ritual. Most of it I couldn’t understand, but one of them talked about becoming gatekeepers and commanding the doors of death.”
“Gatekeepers,” Lucia muttered. “What do you suppose they meant by that?”
“I’m not sure, but whatever they were trying to do, it went wrong. Very wrong.”
“Well—” Lucia began.
She was interrupted by the sound of the cabin door opening. Corten barely had time to take a surprised step back as a girl in a servant’s dress hurried in and shut the door behind her. For an instant he hoped the girl was Naya, wearing a different face and somehow having already escaped the Talmiran soldier. Then he recognized her as the girl from earlier, Felicia.
“Sorry for barging in,” Felicia said. “They’ve taken Naya and I wasn’t sure what to do. I mean, when she said someone would come for her, I didn’t think she meant—”
“Slow down,” Lucia said. “We were just talking about what to do about that.”
“You were? Good. Because Lord Francisco is up on deck preparing to go ashore, but he really does not look well. Naya gave me all these documents to give to his father, but given how angry Lord Francisco is at us, I wasn’t sure I should give them to him. In fact, I’m not sure he should be going ashore at all. Even Captain Cervacaro tried to stop him.”
“Well, of course he shouldn’t be going, not unless he’s trying to court a second death,” Lucia said with a scowl. She shook her head. “Give me the documents, and go tell Francisco that I must speak to him before he considers leaving. If he still won’t come, tell him I have an urgent message for his father that I cannot possibly entrust to anyone else.”
“Right. What about…?” Felicia’s eyes darted to Corten and then quickly away. The look on her face made Corten painfully aware that he was still naked aside from the blanket around his waist.
Lucia followed Felicia’s gaze, then shook her head. “If anyone asks you about him, tell them this is Matius. He’s a sailor from the Lady who will join us to act as Francisco’s footman on the journey back to Talmir. He’ll be needing to borrow a set of clothes from Francisco, unfortunately, as he accidentally fell in the ocean on the way over and managed to drop his own bag in the water.”
Felicia smiled. “Matius. Of course. I’ll go tell Lord Francisco then.”
“What was that?” Corten asked as soon as Felicia was gone. “No one’s seriously going to believe I’m a sailor from the Lady. They’ll have seen you come over without me.”
“It was the best I could come up with,” Lucia said irritably. “Anyway, a sailor nobody noticed is a good deal less likely to draw attention than a young man who simply appeared out of nowhere.”
“And what do you mean to do with Francisco when he gets here?”
“Stall him,” Lucia said. “Felicia is right. Francisco has a four-inch hole in his stomach and we’ll all be better off if he stays here.”
Francisco clearly didn’t agree. He barged into the room a few minutes later. “What’s this message you have for my father?” he asked. “And what was Felicia talking about when she said you’d need to borrow clothes for some footman? I don’t have time to—” His eyes fell on Corten and he seemed to make the connection. “No,” he said. “Find someone else’s clothes to steal.”
“There will be fewer questions if you just give him some,” Lucia said. “As you may recall, we all have a vested interest in keeping his presence here a secret. Once Corten is properly clothed, we can all sit down and discuss what to do next.”
“There’s nothing to discuss,” Francisco said. “You’re staying here, and I’m going back to the palace to help my father fix this mess.”
“You can barely walk,” Lucia said. “You are in no condition to be going anywhere, and even if you did manage to make it to the palace alive, I expect your father would send you right back here.”
“I’ll go with him,” Corten said.
“What?” Francisco asked.
“No,” Lucia said, shooting him a glare. “That’s a terrible idea.”
“And sitting on our hands waiting for something to happen is better?” Corten asked. “You told Felicia that I was supposed to be Francisco’s footman. So I’ll do that. I can help him get to the palace and keep him safe.” And maybe, while he was there, he could figure out some way to help Naya, or at least find out whether she was still safe. Anything was better than waiting here.
“Absolutely not,” Lucia said. “If anyone out there finds out what you are, they’ll kill you.”
“I’m not some newly dead. I know how to hide,” Corten snapped. “Nobody in Talmir is going to know what every sailor on the Lady looks like. Out there people aren’t likely to give me more than a second look. If anything, I’ll be safer than if I wait around here until someone starts asking questions.” He turned to Francisco. “And Lucia’s right, you can barely walk. Like it or not, if you want to get back to the palace, you’re going to need help.”
It took a few more minutes, but eventually Corten wore down their arguments. Francisco returned with a set of black pants, along with a shirt and vest in a more formal style than Corten was used to. They were about the same height, but Francisco’s shoulders were narrower, leaving Corten’s chest feeling strangely tight as he squeezed into the clothes. Still, he felt far more relaxed with pants on.
Francisco had covered his bandages with a fresh shirt and a crisp black jacket. It made him look less like someone who’d crawled their way out of a hospital, but he couldn’t disguise the grayish tint of his skin or the careful way he moved. “So, I’m to call you Matius?” he asked Corten.
Corten nodded. He felt foolish using a fake name. Unlike Naya, he’d never been good at pretending to be someone he wasn’t. He couldn’t even change his face for more than a few minutes without feeling the wrongness of it as an ache in his bones. Would that be different now that he didn’t have bones? A part of him wanted to experiment, but any mistakes he made would risk exposing him as a wraith. Better to keep things simple.
When they reached the ship’s deck, Corten had to fight to keep from gawking. It had been one thing to reconcile himself to the fact that they weren’t in Ceramor. It was something else entirely to see the vast ocean spread out on one side and the white cliffs of Lith Lor on the other. More than a dozen ships were anchored nearby, all of them decked out in bright flags. Inside the Gallant had felt cramped and damp. Now when Corten looked up, he saw huge masts rising to a dizzying height. Sailors were everywhere. Some lined up with bowls outside a little house on the other side of the deck where a man sat next to a cookpot. Others lounged or worked at tasks Corten couldn’t identify.
Francisco earned a few odd looks when he ordered the sailors to let him down in one of the rowboats so he could go ashore. The captain, a bearded man with broad shoulders and dark eyes, pulled Francisco aside and the two argued in harsh whispers. Eventually it was agreed that they’d go ashore with two other sailors from the Gallant, who would wait with the rowboat in case they needed a prompt ride back to the ship.
Corten stood to the side while the debate went on, then helped Francisco into the rowboat. The white cliffs loomed over them as the sailors rowed for shore. He’d heard of Lith Lor, but he hadn’t given the city much thought as anything other than a distant place he’d never see. Now it struck him as somehow appropriate that the Talmirans had decided to build on top of an imposing cliff. From up there they could look down on anyone who came to visit, forcing them to climb stairs or take a lift if they wanted the pri
vilege of seeing the city itself. It was nothing like the welcoming bustle of Belavine’s harbor.
When they reached the shore, they were greeted by a group of stern Talmiran soldiers. Francisco approached them and said something in Talmiran. One of the soldiers shouted what sounded like an order, and another jogged away down the docks.
“What’s going on?” Corten asked Francisco in a low whisper.
Francisco gave Corten an appraising look. “You don’t speak Talmiran, do you?”
“Of course I don’t. Why would I?”
Francisco shrugged. “They’re going to arrange for a carriage for us.”
“They don’t seem happy about it,” Corten noted.
“In the past two days, there’ve been multiple assassination attempts, and now there’s this mess with Naya. Even if the whole Congress weren’t collapsing around us, these men know what I am and hate me for it.”
“You sound surprisingly unworried about that,” Corten said. Just standing next to these soldiers made him feel uneasy. They were part of a force that sought to wipe out everything he was. Their predecessors had hunted Lucia and her companions like wild animals.
“They won’t do anything to me, not here at least. We’ll see what rumors have spread at the palace, but if Queen Lial had decided to go after our entire delegation, then we wouldn’t have made it even this far.”
Corten wasn’t sure whether he should be impressed with Francisco’s confidence or annoyed. As they waited, he turned his thoughts to the question of what he was going to do once they reached the palace. He didn’t have anything even remotely resembling a plan.
But if Francisco was going to speak to his father about what Naya had done, Corten wanted to be there. Francisco, and maybe also Lucia, seemed to have the idea that the safest course would be to keep him locked away on the Gallant until they could quietly ship him back to Ceramor. They saw him as an inconvenience and a risk. At least maybe if he spoke with Delence, he could regain some control over his own fate.
