I didn’t wake until late in the night, already used to the steady wash of the waves on the sides of the ship and the movements of the crew keeping their watch. I sat up, still a bit shaky, and completely ravenous. I didn’t want to intrude on the galley, but my empty stomach pitched and rolled with the ship and I knew I’d be sick if I didn’t eat soon.
I tiptoed onto the deck, acutely aware that I knew nothing of the workings of the ship and crew, fearful I would get in someone’s way. Rationally, I knew that the likelihood of a misstep from me causing any great harm was about as high as a wrongly turned seam ruining a gown; pick out the stitches and start over, no harm done. Still, the foreign movements and terms I didn’t understand frightened me a little. I was an outsider here, no question.
I was growing tired of having to trust that those around me were working in my best interests. I was growing tired of having allies instead of friends. I missed Galitha City, missed my shop and Alice and Emmi. I missed my Pellian friends, and our lively talks about charm casting that, at their heart, were truly about family and community and tradition.
The moon bathed the deck in pale light, softening the hard edges and painting the unfamiliar tools and riggings with shadows. The ship looked friendlier with fewer people swarming it, as though, in the quiet, I could begin to understand how sail and rope and rigging worked together like fabric and thread and seams.
“It’s late—past midnight,” Ballantine said. I hadn’t seen him until he spoke, but he didn’t startle me. His voice was as pale and melancholy as the moonlight. “They’re asleep,” he added.
The marines, of course. I spoke quietly, in a single low breath. “I was hungry.”
He didn’t reply, but strode past me toward the galley, indicating I should follow. Inside, he produced a hunk of brown bread and some cheese, which he presented to me on a crude wooden trencher.
“If it’s not enough, I—” He stopped with a wan smile as I tucked into the leftovers as though they were a fine feast.
I swallowed and nodded my appreciation.
“You missed supper.” He shrugged, thin shoulders straining the uniform he hadn’t taken off since we left port.
I felt I owed him some explanation. “Casting—it’s more physically taxing than it looks,” I apologized in a bare whisper.
“And it worked?” He coughed. “That is, both this ship and the longboat escaped unscathed, or nearly so. It took barely two shakes to repair the slight bit of damage we sustained.”
“It’s hard to say if it worked, exactly, or not.” I always floundered in explanations of charm casting’s efficacy. “It wouldn’t have saved us from a direct broadside. But a bit of luck—it helped us. I’m sure your captaining of the ship helped more.”
“That, I doubt sincerely.” He sighed. “And my parole—it’s temporary amnesty at any rate. You don’t think—were your charms part of that, too?”
I set down the wedge of cheese I had been gnawing. “It’s possible,” I said, “but I think that was more Alba’s doing than mine.”
Ballantine considered this, unconvinced. In contemplation, his face looked much like Theodor’s, more so now that both wore a drawn, tired mask of worry. “We’ll make it through, one way or another. Now—back to your penitent vows,” he said with a smile.
The days passed in sickening silence, the marines patrolling the deck like cats prowling for mice. Their uniforms, a washed-out green, made them easy to spot against the dark wood of the ship, but I didn’t risk speaking or even leaving my cabin much. Instead, I hid inside and practiced the delicate work of controlling the casting I pulled from the ether. What I had done before had been crude, and I didn’t trust that it was sufficient for the work that everyone expected of me. Already I noticed a weakening in the charms laid over the salt spray–scrubbed ropes and sails, the light scoured dimmer by the harsh conditions. My needle and thread would have secured a more lasting charm, but if I was to infuse good fortune in molten iron or the warp and weft of wool on the loom, I would have to refine this new mode of casting.
Alba slipped quietly into my cabin in the middle of a practice session. I had several threads of light held aloft, slowly spinning them into one another as I drove them into a bowl of water. I let them drop as the door opened.
“We’re nearly to the port outside Galitha City,” she said. I nodded. “When we come into port, I will do my damnedest to move us quickly to another ship. The less time we spend in port, the better.”
I questioned her with a silent raised eyebrow.
“The port remains open, tenuously held by the Royal Navy. Tenuous, yes,” she said in response to my unspoken question, “because the city, everything within the walls, is held by the Reformists.”
“How do you know?” I mouthed silently.
“Those marines talk. This is, of course, news that’s half a week stale. So it might be outdated. Regardless—the capital port is not a safe place to linger.”
There was much I wanted to say, and Alba’s fidgeting told me that she, too, wished to discuss more but couldn’t. The cabin walls weren’t thick, and nothing we might say now was worth being discovered.
Instead, I walked onto the deck, looking out over the rail, straining to see the coastline. The green tangle of forests gave way to the high cliffs and the stone walls of the city. My heart leapt at the sight of home, and I almost began to cry at the immediate demand to leave it. Was my shop still there? It hardly mattered any longer, with a city broken down the fault lines of civil war. What of Alice, and Emmi? My neighbors, the shop owners in my quarter? What of the Pellians who had chosen Galitha City for its opportunities, who were now folded into its crisis?
I turned away, my eyes swimming with tears. I loved my city. Everything I had done in the past months had been a sad, doomed love song to her, in a way. Despite everything I had done, everything Theodor had tried, war had cracked Galitha City open and her people were bleeding for her.
“My home port,” Ballantine said quietly. I wasn’t sure how long he’d been behind me—likely long enough to watch the city spires and rooflines come into focus as we drew closer. “You can see the palace from here. I used to watch for it, when we came into port, knowing my uncle was there, and later my father, that my family might well be gathered in the private dining room or the gardens. It was as though all was right with the world, when I saw the line of the palace roof. It doesn’t mean the same thing anymore, does it?”
I shook my head, wanting very badly to embrace Ballantine or at least lay a comforting hand on his arm but knowing that Sastra Lieta would not do so.
The marines strode onto the deck. “As soon as the ship is secure, you’ll be with us,” the taller of the two said. He had the dark hair of a southerner and the creased, tan skin of someone who’d spent more time in sunlight than indoors. Ballantine nodded and took his leave of me.
The Hopeful Wayfarer already stood in port, her sails tucked like birds’ wings waiting for flight. Alba stood nearby while we maneuvered close to her. I couldn’t bring myself to look for Theodor’s brother, to watch him taken away, to trial and possible execution.
Before we could depart, Forsithe was on the deck, flanked by more marines. I lowered my eyes, staring at my still-bare feet, as he passed, but I listened as he directed Ballantine’s arrest. I met Ballantine’s eyes as they escorted him from the ship and he gave me a small smile. I closed off the cries that threatened to erupt from my throat. He was led with little ceremony down the gangplank and I saw him, briefly, looking up at the city before he was taken to the Wayfarer.
“And her, too.” A firm hand gripped my arm. The sea-green uniform of a marine brushed my gray habit. I gasped, looking to Alba, who watched with shock. She shook her head, confused and frightened, as another marine flanked me.
“Sophie Balstrade, you are under arrest, as well.” Forsithe strode toward me, his boots echoing on the deck.
Alba forced herself between us. “I don’t know what manner of jest this is, but�
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“I can’t arrest you, Sastra. It would threaten an international incident if we arrested the high sister of a convent, and a member of a patrician house at that. But you will keep out of this.”
“I will do no such thing with a member of my order.”
“I’ve known since I set foot on this ship that this woman is no member of your order. I knew we were pursuing a ship with three fugitives we very much wished to apprehend. The crown prince, the revolutionary leader Kristos Balstrade, and this witch.”
“You…” My knees felt like water and I could hardly breathe. “You knew? Why did you let us come all this way?”
He rested a hand on his sword. “For one, I had hoped you might lead us to the others. That there would be some rendezvous or rescue attempt. That gambit didn’t work, and so you are now of little use. But further, I don’t know what witchcraft you’re capable of. If you’d bewitched this crew or some such dark arts.”
“I have no such powers.” I struggled to speak.
He raised a brow as though wagering a sporting guess at whether I was telling the truth. Of course, now it didn’t matter. “You are under arrest for conspiracy against the king. Remove her,” he ordered the marines.
The hand on my arm forced me forward. I nearly fell on the gangplank, my balance canted with the weight on my arm, and foolishly, briefly, considered flinging myself and the marine into the oily water below. It would do no good; they’d either let me drown or fish me out quickly enough.
As we stepped from gangplank to dock, I glanced at the man charged with my keeping; he avoided my eyes. Frightened of me. Could I harm this man, if I wanted to? I could almost sense the dark curse magic throbbing around me, waiting to be drawn out. Could I drive it into him as I’d driven it into the water, crumple him as I’d wilted the lilies? Was that even how it would work?
No, I screamed at myself. It was wrong, despicably wrong. And even if I could control it for this one man, there was no way I could wrangle enough curse magic under my control to dispatch every marine, sailor, and soldier bustling around the port under Forsithe’s control. Even if I killed Forsithe first, I acknowledged, hating myself for both identifying this best tactical move and for being too frightened to attempt it.
The bright crack of a rifle broke the low murmur of voices around me, and the hand on my arm first tightened, then fell away. I backed away from the marine, assuming he was readying his musket, but then felt the wet slick on my arm and saw the blood spatter on my skirt. He lay gasping on the dock beside me.
Someone screamed. Another rifle report, and another marine dropped. Forsithe shouted behind me, but I couldn’t make out the words. I tried to blend into the crowd that pulsed and quivered on the dock, but it pulled away from me.
A strong hand gripped my arm; I wrenched away from it. “Quit it!” The voice hissing at me was familiar, and I realized with a start that the arm holding mine was clothed in rough brown linsey-woolsey, not the seafoam color of the marine uniform.
I met Niko Otni’s eyes. “Come quick,” he said.
“Alba, too. And Lieutenant Westland.”
“We’ve got the nun already. Westland—” He shook his head. Westland had already been on board the Wayfarer. “Put this on.” He handed me an oversize brown linen smock, something like a laundress would wear to protect her clothes from soap and steam.
I let Niko push me through the crowd on the dock. He ripped the veil from my head and threw it into the water between the docks, the filthy water soaking the white cloth quickly and muddying it, disguising that we had ever passed by. The sheer linen was now just more refuse in the thick water of the port.
We ducked down an alley and snaked quickly upward, the steep incline shortening my breath. Only a few avenues led from the port to the rest of the city, secured behind cliff face and wall. A red cap greeted us at the entrance to a fortified staircase. The symbol that once spelled danger to me now meant safety. More guards closed behind us, and we began to climb. “They know they’re in for a fight if they try to search for you in the city proper.”
“No one’s following,” one of the red-capped guards said.
“Good. They didn’t see us leave the docks.” He offered me a hand. “Well met, Miss Balstrade.”
60
THE CITY WAS SIMULTANEOUSLY EXACTLY AS I KNEW IT—EACH shop and street and cobblestone familiar—and overturned completely. On a bright, sunny day that should have been bustling with street criers and market women and children playing hopscotch and the game of graces, the streets were silent. The pallor of war washed over deserted street carts and the broken glass of windows. Scorch marks and the remains of barricades marred the streets.
“We set those up right away, when the king declared a stay on the reforms,” Niko said, pointing to crude but effective barricades as we walked, “and we drove them out of the city, block by block.”
We rejoined Alba and several more of Niko’s crew in what had once been a butcher shop in the narrow storefronts near Fountain Square. The butcher’s blades were absent from the wall, but I felt sure they had been quite recently put to use. Most of the men in Niko’s retinue wore red caps; some of the women had their hair wrapped in red kerchiefs. There was no other uniform demarcating what I presumed were members of the Reformist army. Several of the nearby buildings were festooned with red banners. “We tried to take the king out as he left the city, but we missed our chance.”
Cold snaked through me. Niko hadn’t changed—still distant, still directed by goals too simple and direct to consider the king anything but an obstacle.
“We knew he went south,” I said.
“Royalist strongholds are down south. The only thing keeping us from taking the city completely is that the navy has the port.”
“Completely blockaded, then?” Alba said. A door served as a large table, with a hodgepodge of chairs drawn up to it, and Niko settled on a rickety stool.
“From the port side, yes.” Niko unfurled a map, drawn by hand on the back of a broadside. “The river is still open.”
“Good. We’ll find a way out of the city as soon as possible, likely by river.” Alba squinted at the poorly rendered map.
“Hold on there, sister.” Niko rolled up the map. “We’ll talk about when and if you’re leaving soon enough.”
If—of course. I shrank against the wall, fiddling with a torn edge of the smock. Niko was too calculating to save us just to be nice.
“How did you know we would be there? And that we would need help?” Better to start here, on neutral ground.
“Kristos promised you’d come. Said he’d be pulling into port in Hazelwhite on a Serafan vessel with you and others—but you didn’t show. So we kept an eye here, figure we’ll have to redirect you around the blockades, and instead we find a pair of nuns with an armed escort,” he said. “Good thing we were on the lookout or you’d not have made it long before the gallows.”
“For conspiracy against the king.” I nodded. I sat up a bit straighter. “Who’s in charge in the city? You alone, some committee?”
Niko smirked. “You don’t think I could be in charge?”
“I know full well you could be. I want to confirm who I’m talking to. Commander, dictator?”
His mouth twisted into a scowl. “You always were a snob,” he said. “I’m head of operations here. Of the Reformist army, if it has a head.”
Alba snorted. I shook my head slightly. It wasn’t wise to challenge him now.
“So why are we here?” I asked quietly.
Niko waved a hand. The others, in their linen frocks and work shirts and the unifying theme of the red cap, filed out.
“I figure, if you were on your way north, you had a reason to be heading that way. And with the Kvys?” He raked a hand through his thick black hair, disrupting beads of sweat on his forehead. “What were you planning?”
I pressed my lips together. “I was going to Kvyset with Alba. People keep trying to kill me,” I explained drily.
>
“Ah.” Niko snorted. “If it was just you, Sophie, I’d believe you could be that selfish. You certainly were last winter.” I forced back protests. “But Sastra-set Alba? She’s a devotee.”
“Then you know one another,” I confirmed.
“You know that I knew her cousin? Yes, you do,” he said with a glance at my strained expression. “He made the introductions via letter, and Divine Natures, but she was helpful.”
“Yes,” Alba said quickly. “We’ve discussed this already. I made my apologies to Sophie for the… unexpected turn of events last winter and my part in that.”
“Unexpected, yes,” Niko mused. There was a knowing glint in his eyes—perhaps not so unexpected. He had moved quickly last winter, and he moved quickly now, with the nimble ingenuity of the Galatine streets, the adaptability of the children of Pellian immigrants. “I cannot imagine that Sastra-set Alba agreed to anything that wasn’t of some long-term benefit to our great cause.”
“Sastra-set Alba,” I said deliberately, “is a true believer in the reforms and the rights of all. And so she wishes to offer me some protection as she is able.”
“Sastra-set Alba,” Niko replied, “can answer for herself.”
“It’s of no use keeping it from him, Sophie.” Alba sighed. My eyes widened. I didn’t want Niko to know, to use us for his aims. I didn’t want any of my power under his control. “I am returning to Kvyset to attempt to broach alliances with the Fenians.”
“Fenians?” Niko coughed. “They barely have a military.”
“Yes, but they have industry. Forgive my blunt observation, but you have a distinct lack of uniforms. I imagine it reflects a lack of arms and ammunition and all sorts of other necessities.” Niko’s mouth formed a hard line. “Kristos and I discussed this at length,” she added, maneuvering that piece on the board, just a nudge, just to remind him he wasn’t solitary in his leadership.
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