Liar's Moon

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

  Now. Where were the people who had left these tracks? I paused at the base of the steps, looking into the sparkling gloom, but seeing only barrels and coils of rope and two sad hammocks strung limply in the stern. Above me, footsteps on the deck made the ship creak as we bobbed gently in the current.

  I swiped my hand against a glittering wall to pick up some of the magic left behind, and shined it before me like a light as I had once seen Meri do. I was half amazed that such a thing was even possible. I went deeper into the hold, now hearing the muffled voices above me as I moved astern through the ship. The holds were small and dirty, but I could tell the vessel had once been well appointed; Talth’s ships would no doubt have been newer, nicer, faster, and better than what ordinary Ferrymen had had access to before her. My foot scuffed over something on the floorboards, and I looked down. As I cast my hand in a slow arc at my feet, I saw long, straight lines of magic join into a neat square — illuminating the edges of a door set into the floor.

  I knelt down, picked the lock, and flipped the hatch open, and the invisible light from the depths below nearly knocked me backward with its brightness. Blinking it away, I squinted through the glow to the hold beneath — and found at least a dozen wide, frightened eyes staring back at me.

  “It’s all right. I’m here to help you. I’m —” What should I say to them? I took a reckless stab in the dark. “I’m called Digger. I’m not with the Ferrymen.”

  There was no glimmer of understanding, of recognition. They just stared, as if wondering what I might do to them next. “I think they’re gone,” I said. “If you come with me now, we can get out of here.”

  Nothing. Pox and hells. Someone in the group was incredibly powerful, and it was hard to see naturally with that distracting glow around them all. I was going to have to touch them, douse their light a little. I gave a little flick of my hands, scooting them all backward, and then dropped myself down into the hold with them.

  I heard a sob, a whimper, a sharp intake of breath. “I won’t hurt you,” I said. “I just — you’re too bright. How many are you?”

  The knot of people finally sorted themselves out and a woman about Lord Ragn’s age stepped forward. She should have been pretty, with black hair and pale green eyes that filled her narrow face, but she looked haggard and worn. “Nine. I’m Irin, and this is Meis,” she added, indicating the child at her side. I recognized her now, the lean features, the long, thin wrists, the guarded hazel eyes. She must be the mother of the boy at Cartouche.

  “I’ve seen your son,” I told her. “He’s safe here in the city. I can help you — all of you. But we need to get off the ship before the Ferrymen come back.”

  “They said they were off to fetch their buyers,” Irin said. “What does that mean?”

  Nothing good, I thought with alarm. But I just shrugged. They all shifted uncertainly in the small space, and as they parted, I saw a boy a little younger than me tucked in the back, alone and wary. He was the source of all that power, bursting up through the cracks in the wood, blinding me. His magic had a strange, slightly off-kilter tinge to it — yet it was familiar, and as I reached for him, my fingers barely brushing his arm, I understood why. “Reijk-sarta,” I said, surprise coloring my voice. “You’re a Channeler.”

  He looked back at me blankly, as if he couldn’t understand Llyvrin. I wasn’t sure he’d be capable of understanding anything after being crammed into the tiny hold of a ship for weeks, and who knows what horrors and abuses before that. I knelt beside him in the smoky darkness. “Your magic is different.” My voice was as gentle as I could make it, but he cringed away from me. “No,” I said, and tried to smile. “It’s a good thing. Really. Look.” I lifted my hand to his, and when he touched me, I flared brighter. Sometimes they couldn’t see their own magic without my touch. The Reijk-sarta were incredibly rare, even among magic users. Master Reynart had only known of one: Meri. The discovery of a second Channeler would revolutionize magic in Llyvraneth, could turn the tide of the war decisively in Wierolf’s favor. Look forth and see if you might not find another like me for we could sorely use him now.

  Or this boy would go peacefully into the countryside, or the seacoast, or the city — or to Corlesanne or Talanca or Brionry, and live out his own life in quiet anonymity, unmolested by Ferrymen, Inquisitors, or wild thief girls who popped in from nowhere, spouting all kinds of nonsense about magic. I bit my lip and drew my hand away. Before he could make that choice, I had to get them all out of here.

  “All right, let’s go. I didn’t see a ladder or a rope handy, but I can pull you up after me, with your help.” I squeezed back through the jumble of bodies. A thick, musky scent filled the cramped hold, fear, as palpable as a fog, seeping from their pores as surely as their magic did. I was just about to jump for the edges of the opening and haul myself back out onto the cargo deck when I heard footsteps rattling down the narrow stair. I dropped back, motioning the refugees into the shadows.

  “Don’t get your breeches in a knot, I’m going,” said a disturbingly familiar voice. Pox. Smooth black boots stepped toward the opening, bringing a bobbing circle of light with them. Durrel stumbled into view, knocked off balance by a sudden shifting of the rolling ship and the butt of a musket rammed into his back. The armed Ferryman moved into the light, and every single one of us pulled back deeper into the darkness. It was instinctive. Karst. He bent his leering face low to the crammed hold and grinned at us.

  “Looks like there’s room for some company down there,” he said, and shoved Durrel hard over the edge of the hatch.

  I caught him — barely. It was more like he landed on me, flattening me into Irin and the others, and we tumbled back against the wall together.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled, trying to stand, and I realized his hands were bound behind him. “I usually fall with far more grace.”

  “Enjoy your new quarters,” Karst called down. “You won’t be in there long.” He kicked shut the hatch door above us, sealing out all the real light. I heard Durrel take a hiss of breath, the shuffle of bodies shifting fearfully into position.

  I heard the snap of a padlock on the trapdoor hasp.

  “Oh, bloody pox.”

  “Celyn?” Durrel hauled himself to his feet, with the help of a tall, older man whose eyes were dark with haunted shadows. Durrel bore an expression of utter disbelief — and something else that faded too fast for me to see. “I’m glad you’re here. I think. Can’t you pick any lock?” he added.

  “I can,” I said. “But I have to be able to reach it first. And that one is on the other side of a locked door.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  There was a dead, crushing silence following my words, as the reality of our situation sank in. Well, for Durrel and me, at least; the others had lived for days, weeks without hope. Having us locked in here too didn’t change anything for them.

  “Well, this is inconvenient,” Durrel said, looking around the hold. “Now what do we do?” He made a halfhearted jump for the hatch. “Celyn, do you still have your knife? They took my weapons.”

  “And a pistol.” I fumbled it from my leg, found the shot and powder at my belt.

  “Better yet. Are you a good shot?”

  “Not by half. Why?”

  Durrel edged backward, pushing us deeper into the hold. “Maybe we can shoot our way through.”

  A murmur of hope whispered through the group, but the tall man spoke up from the back. “Are you mad? That hatch is two inches thick. You’ll never shoot through it.”

  “It’s worth a try, though,” argued Irin.

  “Right,” Durrel said. “Celyn?”

  “You’d better do it,” I said, passing him the gun. “I’m liable to miss and take somebody’s head off.”

  “Who are you?” the older Sarist demanded.

  “Vorges!” Irin said, as Durrel looked at them in surprise.

  “Sorry. Of course. I’m Durrel Decath, and this is — a friend, Celyn Contrare.”

  “
Decath?” Another man, who hadn’t spoken yet, pushed through the crowd. “Lord Decath was supposed to meet us.” There was a darkness in his voice, and I was suddenly alarmed for us.

  “You’ve been deceived,” I said firmly. “Unscrupulous people used that name to convince you to trust them. The real Decath has been searching for you. He’s on his way now. This is his son. We’ve come to help you.”

  I spoke clearly, slowly, trying to make them — all of them — believe me, but a dissatisfied grumble rose up from the others, while Durrel’s knuckles whitened around the pistol grip.

  “Some help,” Vorges said. “You’ve gotten yourselves trapped as well.”

  “It’s all part of my clever plan.” I sighed. “How do we get out of here?”

  Durrel was studying the trapdoor. “Maybe we could dig away at the hinges, see if we can’t pry the pins out? Celyn, your knife?”

  “That’s a good idea,” Vorges said reluctantly. He stepped forward. “I’m tall; I can help.”

  It was a good idea, except that the hinges were with the lock on the other side of the hatch. “Wait,” I said, having the worst idea ever, and everyone stopped and looked at me. “Which one of you is the best trained?”

  There was a blank silence. “In magic. Nobody? None of you even played around with it a little bit? Hells.” Not that I could really blame them; why should I expect any more from these people than from the girl who’d fled the Celystra six years ago? There was no safe place to practice magic.

  “I know a little,” a tiny voice finally piped up, and a girl just as small to match wriggled forward out of the group.

  “Good. What can you do?”

  She gave a shrug. “Um, I can make a light —” which she demonstrated, and Durrel smiled at her in appreciation. “And swirls —” Pretty, but impractical. “And sometimes I can make a room smell like lilies.”

  I reined in my impatience. “Anything else?” I said encouragingly. “Fire? Wind?”

  “I can light a candle —”

  “Perfect! What’s your name?”

  She smiled shyly at me. “Teina.”

  “You, in the back —” I held my hand toward the Channeler. “What are you called?”

  “Jos,” he said, edging forward suspiciously. “What are you going to do?”

  The proper question, I thought, was what he was going to do. “I’m going to show you how to use your magic.” Or I was going to kill everyone. Even chances. But Teina and Jos watched me eagerly, and even Durrel gave an encouraging nod.

  I moved Teina closer to Jos as the others shuffled aside. “Jos, you have a special kind of power, and it can magnify Teina’s.” I couldn’t believe I was standing here, locked in a ship’s cargo hold with a band of refugees, giving a primer on magic. But as I watched the group, curious faces drawn into the circle of Jos’s light, I realized these people were as desperate for knowledge as they were for freedom. I was no Master Reynart, but I’d do what I could.

  “All right,” I said. “This is how magic works.” And I briefly sketched out the fail-safe system Reynart had once explained to me, how magic was the power of the gods, lent to mortals; how Sar had split her gift, so that no one mage could wield more than a lone mortal could handle, into Channelers and Casters; how the magic was buried deep within the earth, and it took someone with Jos’s gift to pull the power up from the land, and someone with Teina’s gift to shape that power into a weapon.

  “Or a tool,” I amended, considering what I was about to attempt. I took a breath. “So, Teina, if you touch Jos, you should be able to make a brighter light, bigger swirls —” Larger fires. “Let’s practice first on swirls.”

  Beaming, Teina slipped her hand inside Jos’s, who flinched slightly, but then grabbed her almost fiercely. “Easy there,” I said. “Now give it a try.”

  Teina drew her hand through the air, and a glittering pattern of vines and curlicues followed, but nothing much greater than she’d done on her own. I felt my eyebrows pull together. What was I missing here? Jos, frustrated, yanked his hand away. Ah! That was it. All of Reynart’s students had worn tattoos, as if the ink conducted the magic more efficiently.

  “Teina, I don’t suppose you have a tattoo, do you?” She giggled and shook her head. Nobody was carrying pen and ink either. I stared up at the ceiling for a moment. Teina certainly wasn’t powerful enough on her own to budge that door. We needed Jos for this plan to work.

  “Durrel, can I have my knife back?” I asked, and felt it slip into my hand as naturally as if it belonged there. I rolled up my smock sleeve and touched the tip of the blade to the crook of my elbow, near the long scar that already snaked down my forearm, but Durrel caught me by the wrist.

  “Wait,” he said. “Let me.” And he shucked out of his doublet and shoved his sleeve halfway up his arm. It seemed a shame to mark that smooth, beautiful skin, but I did it. I nicked as tiny a cut as I could manage, right where the blood welled up at the surface of his skin, as good as charmed violet ink. I dipped my fingernail into the blood and turned to Jos. The boy seemed to realize what I was doing, and he swiftly rolled up his own tattered and filthy sleeve, revealing a painfully thin, bruised arm beneath.

  “You’re not going to cut him,” a woman’s voice objected.

  “No.” As carefully as I could, with my glittering finger, I traced a crude seven-pointed star with Durrel’s blood on Jos’s arm. I hoped we didn’t actually need magical blood; blood freely given in sacrifice seemed sensible as well. When the Mark of Sar was on Jos, with Durrel breathing on it to dry the blood, I traced the same symbol on Teina’s palm.

  “Now try,” I urged, and Teina carefully put her hand on Jos’s arm, matching star to star. She pulled back like she’d been shocked, and giggled. Jos turned stunned eyes to her.

  “Do that again,” he said, almost the longest sentence he’d yet spoken.

  Suppressing a grin, Teina grabbed Jos’s arm, harder this time, and before I could say anything, she swept her hand in a glittering arc through the dark air, and a brilliant tracery of light and smoke flared into the space like fireworks. Gasps and murmurs greeted this display, and I could feel the longing, hungry people in the hold pressing closer, wishing for their turn with Jos.

  “That will do,” I said, gently separating them. “Now, let’s see if we can’t get out of here. Teina, I want you to try and break down that hatch.”

  “How?” Jos spoke up.

  “With fire,” Teina said with solemn understanding. “We can shove the fire through the door, and it will come off.”

  Jos stared at her, at me. “Will it work?”

  “You don’t need to ask me,” I said. “Feel it for yourselves.” But I was worried. I had no doubt those two could blow the door right off its hinges — the key was not blasting the hatch straight through the hull of the ship.

  “Careful,” Durrel said, apparently having the same thought. “Everyone, get back. Cover your heads.”

  “I have no idea what’s going to happen next,” I warned. But I hoped at least some of them could swim. “Teina, can you picture the lock, clasped on the other side of that door?”

  I held my hands up to show her the lock’s size, and imagined sending a strand of my own magic floating through the crack around the door to find the target. Teina had her head cocked thoughtfully to one side, her gaunt face screwed up tight in concentration. Jos looked patient, ready. At last Teina nodded and clutched Jos’s arm once again. The blood was smeared and flaked now, but that didn’t seem to affect either of them. Teina lifted her free hand and pointed one slim finger toward the trapdoor in the ceiling.

  I held my breath, and didn’t even realize Durrel was squeezing me as tightly as Teina gripped Jos, until he bent my head against his shoulder, turning his face into my hair. I held him hard, bracing my body against his, hearing the anxious breathing of the refugees, the lapping of the waves against the hull, the creak and shift of the wet boards — and, suddenly, a tiny explosive crack of shattered metal. Sp
arks flew everywhere — visible, invisible, and Teina stood frozen in the middle of the hold, hands clamped over her mouth, dark eyes huge and surprised in her little face. Beside her, Jos frowned up at the ceiling.

  “Did it work?” somebody asked, and Durrel peeled away from me, to give the trap a gentle shove. It came loose, crashing down into the hold, nearly on top of Teina and Jos — but Durrel swept the girl up in his arms and away from the falling wood. She gave a shriek of laughter, and the other refugees broke into spontaneous applause. Jos stared at the opening, at me, in wonderment. I grinned back.

  “That was impressive,” Durrel said. “And — loud.”

  “Is anyone coming?” I edged forward to peer up through the darkened hatch. We could probably shoot the first Ferryman who came to investigate, but we’d lose the advantage after that. “How many men are up there?”

  “I only saw Karst and the captain,” Durrel said. “But I heard another voice as well.”

  “Karst usually has three men with him,” Vorges said. “I’ve seen at least five different faces, though.”

  I glanced at Durrel, whose brows were knitted together in a mirror of my own concern. Our sad little band of refugees, against possibly six armed Ferrymen? “So we’re outnumbered,” I said — practically, if not technically. “And almost certainly outgunned. The captain is armed with handguns and a sword, at least. We’ve got one knife and one pistol.”

  “And us.” Irin’s voice was firm.

  I admired her bravery, but what were we going to do? Fend Karst’s men off with swirls?

  “What are we waiting for?” Vorges demanded. “The longer we wait here, the better the chances of them coming back.”

  “Right,” Durrel said. “Up we go, then.” He made a stirrup of his hands for my foot, boosting me up and out of the hold. I landed lightly, crouched low beside the broken hatch, my fingers tracing the darkness for signs of Karst and his men. They must have judged the lock sufficient, for there was no one in sight on the cargo deck. From the decks above came a clatter of footsteps and agitated voices.