by Traci Chee
She’d seen the light before, but she’d never seen it like this. Strings of it radiated from his body, twining and intertwining, on and on, back and back, whirling around this moment. The world spun.
In the spirals of light she saw him trip. Just a kid, he lost his footing on the slippery dock. His face splitting on the splintered edge. That’s how he got his scar.
The currents shifted, and she saw his birth. His mother had been a woman with curly hair and a mole on the side of her neck, and she’d named him Palo, after her father. Palo Kanta. That was his name. She saw his sisters and half brothers and the raggedy old cats he rescued from the streets, fistfights, blood, the smell of sewage, the first time he ever held a gun, his first murder, the women he’d loved or thought he’d loved and really just wanted to own. She saw a recurring nightmare in which he tried to outrun a rising tide but no matter how fast he ran, no matter how hard he pumped his arms, it caught his feet and legs and body, and it always swallowed him up.
Nausea struck her, and she gasped. She saw his death: knifed outside of a bar, past midnight with no witnesses.
She could see all the interconnected ways his life was knotted up, and how it had led here—to her own death. She could see it coming, the whole thing: the moon and the trail of smoke leading into the sky, the bullet speeding toward her, the light streaming out behind it like waves. It would puncture her. The cords of her life would snap.
She didn’t want to die. She had so many questions left to answer. She was suddenly filled with hot, biting anger. She hated this man with the scar on his mouth, this man who was preventing her from doing what she had vowed to do.
Sefia found her feet. She put all her strength in her legs and lunged, swiping her hand through the streams of light. She felt her muscles burn, her bones buckle under the pressure. But the tides shifted. A wave of gold roared away from her, sparking with whitecaps.
This wasn’t her death anymore.
Maybe there was thunder. Or was it the sound of the bullet exploding from the chamber—delayed?
The man ripped.
His threads snapped.
Making fragments.
The sound came rushing back into the world.
She looked down at her arm, expecting to see ruptured flesh and broken bones, but it was unharmed. The world was spinning, twisting tighter and tighter around her skull. She looked wildly for the man with the gun, but he wasn’t there. He was on the ground, gasping. With a hole in him.
He was just a man now, no longer filled with light. The light was leaking out of him, growing dimmer and dimmer. The scar on his mouth no longer looked menacing. His face was crooked, yes, but sad, like the reflection in a cracked mirror.
He looked at her but didn’t speak. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe his words were leaking out of him too. He looked at her . . . and then he wasn’t looking at her anymore. He wasn’t looking at anything anymore.
Sefia fell to her knees and pressed her hands to his wound. His blood was slick and lukewarm between her fingers. Her hands turned red.
This was what it meant to kill someone.
She looked up and saw Archer standing at the corner of the cabin, staring at her.
She looked down again. The world had gone wet and blurry. Was she crying?
Palo Kanta. That had been his name.
Then Archer was beside her, pulling her to her feet. He took her hands unflinchingly and held them in his own. He put his forehead to hers. He didn’t speak.
She tried to jerk away. “Where are the others?”
He pulled her back to him and shook his head. Holding up three fingers, he pointed northwest toward Hatchet’s camp.
Only half of the impressors had survived the encounter. Archer must have killed two of them.
“They ran?”
He nodded.
“Because of me?”
He nodded again.
As he led her to the cabin, she tried to explain. The man had shot her. The bullet had come at her. And she didn’t know how, but she had turned it back. She’d seen his story—and then she had violated it, changing the man’s death.
Changing everything.
He sat her by the front door and brought her a pot of water and poured it over her hands. The liquid splashed over her skin and onto the ground, creating a small puddle of mud. Archer gently rubbed the blood away. The color. The stickiness. Sefia let him.
While he raided the cabin for supplies, pulling open drawers, grabbing things out of the cabinets, she sat dumbly in the doorway, rubbing her fingers one by one. She had killed a man. She kept picturing the vacant expression, the slack jaw. Her head ached.
“I didn’t want to kill him.” She found the words, feeling for them like foreign objects in the dark.
Silence inside. Then Archer sat down beside her. His fingers strayed to his neck—the scar. He understood that sometimes you did things out of necessity, things that were horrible, or underhanded at best, things you wouldn’t do if you had a choice.
“I always knew I wanted to kill someone,” she said. “But not him . . . and not like this.”
Whatever this was.
Archer put his hand on her shoulder. He had a pack now, filled with items. A dark ribbon of blood caked his left temple. The gunshot she’d heard earlier. The bullet must have grazed him.
“You’re hit,” she whispered.
He touched the side of his head with his fingertips and showed them to her. The blood was already drying. Then he collected her bow and helped her to her feet. He led her around the side of the cabin, past the body of the man he’d killed. One-Eye. His throat had been split, and the dirt was dark beneath him. Sefia tried to focus on where she placed her feet.
They crossed into the trees. The silver leaves rustled. The loam was soft and spongy beneath their feet. Archer got Sefia to direct him to her hiding place in the stump, where her pack was still stashed, and then they walked into the woods—Archer leading, Sefia following.
Chapter 13
There Are No Coincidences
It was all so quick, so improbable, that if she hadn’t seen it before, if she hadn’t done it herself, she never would have believed it.
There was a gunshot.
A burst of smoke and a lashing of fire.
And the girl sent the bullet spiraling back into the man’s chest.
Crouched just beyond the reach of the light, Tanin fought to steady her breathing. She was suddenly aware of her body, her lungs, the ache in her chest. Behind her, the trackers hefted their rifles and watched for her signal, but she didn’t move.
The girl dropped to her knees by the man’s side. Tanin marveled at her. She was so young, but she had the same lampblack hair, the same dark eyes.
And she knew Manipulation. If she had already mastered the second tier of Illumination, there was no telling what else she could do.
“Now,” the Assassin said. She blended into the darkness so neatly that even her voice was a shadow, like the breath of a nonexistent breeze.
“Not yet.”
The girl was trying to stanch the wound. She was going to fail.
She looked like her. Tanin hadn’t been expecting that. Hadn’t thought it would matter so much.
There was a crackling in the undergrowth, and a man burst from the trees behind them, his round face twisted in anger. He took one look at Tanin and the trackers and raised his rifle.
This she could handle.
A glance at her men, a flick of her fingers.
The lead tracker ran his knife across the man’s throat and caught the corpse as it slumped to the ground. The man’s head lolled forward, his short-billed cap tipping over his lifeless eyes.
The Assassin edged forward, toeing the pool of light. “Why not?”
“You didn’t know . . . her.” Tanin grimaced. Even after all this time,
she still couldn’t bring herself to use her name.
“It’s not her.”
No, she was dead. And Tanin hadn’t even been there to see it. To hold her hand or wipe her brow or whatever you did when your loved ones were dying.
She had to do something now. This was what she’d come for, wasn’t it? Tanin scanned the clearing, her gaze skimming over the cabin, the fallen bow and arrows, the bodies. “She doesn’t have the Book on her.”
“You could make her tell us. It would be easy.”
Tanin watched the boy help the girl up. The light from the cabin flashed on his collar of scar tissue.
He was a candidate.
Tanin shook her head. Out of all the companions the girl could have chosen, she had picked a candidate.
“Look at his neck,” she whispered, her voice trembling. When was the last time it had done that?
The Assassin didn’t take her eyes off the girl. “So what?” Her voice dripped with condescension. “Serakeen’s dogs bring another one to the Cage every few months.”
Tanin passed her hand over the hidden pocket of her vest where she kept the folded page. “Edmon used to say there are no coincidences, only meaning.”
Ten years, Serakeen had been paying impressors to fetch him scarred young killers.
Twenty years, she had been searching for the Book.
And now here they were, both of them together.
It had to mean something.
“We can take the boy too, if that’s what you mean.” The Assassin slid her sword an inch out of its sheath. The smell of copper bloomed around them.
Tanin caught her by the elbow. “I said no.”
The Assassin glared at her, but Tanin’s attention had already moved on.
The boy took the girl in his arms and led her back to the cabin, where she collapsed on the steps, all knees and pointy elbows. Awkward. Vulnerable.
The Assassin wrenched her arm from Tanin’s grasp. “This is what we came for. Capture her. Take the Book. It has to be now.”
“If he’s the one, you couldn’t take her with a hundred swords.”
“I only need one.”
With a wave of her hand, Tanin directed the trackers back into the jungle, where they slipped away like eels in black water.
She turned on the Assassin. “You will obey me in this, or you will be removed from this assignment.” Her voice cut. “I have no use for subordinates who can’t follow orders.”
The Assassin balled her fists until the leather glove on her left hand creaked. “You never trust me,” she said. “Not like you trusted her.”
“You’re not her.”
The Assassin’s eyes widened at the sting of Tanin’s words, and she whirled away, darting soundlessly into the undergrowth.
The girl was sitting on the cabin steps, rubbing her fingers as if she could erase what they had done. For a moment, Tanin wanted to go to her. Hold her, maybe. She didn’t know.
Slowly, she backed away from the clearing, fading into the shadows beneath the trees until she could no longer see the girl.
Sefia.
A reader and a killer.
Chapter 14
Doubt
Sefia felt the warmth of the breeze and the swaying of the hammock before she was even fully awake, and for a moment she was couched in the gentle cocoon-like space between being asleep and awake, completely content. All was warmth and light and cottony softness.
But then she woke.
She opened her eyes and found herself staring up into the treetops. The events of the previous night flashed through her mind.
Palo Kanta.
Sefia untangled herself from the blankets and sat up. Archer sat across from her, legs swung over the branches for balance as he sharpened his new knives. All around him, suspended from the tree like misshapen fruit, were other new items: stolen shirts, socks, a length of rope, a tin cup, an extra blanket, sacks of food.
Seeing her rise, he wiped down the knife with a cloth and sheathed it.
“You did all this?” Sefia asked weakly.
Archer’s gaze skimmed over the little encampment he’d made in the trees. He nodded.
“You did good.”
Looking down, she noticed traces of dried blood in the creases of her hands and the U-shapes of her fingernails. Grimacing, she dug her thumbnail into the cuticles of her other hand. It came away with rusty specks underneath.
Her face twisted. Palo Kanta. He’d had a whole life behind him . . . and he could have had a whole life ahead of him . . . but she had taken that away. She had taken the threads of that moment and changed them, reversed the trajectory of the bullet so that it wasn’t coming for her—but for him. And the bullet had entered him, made a hole in him, and he had not survived it.
She had killed a man.
Tears spattered her arms.
There was a movement in the branches, and then Archer was taking her hands, wiping each of her fingers with a clean wet cloth.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Not to Archer but to Palo Kanta, though he couldn’t hear her, though he would never hear anything again. “I’m sorry.” That it had come down to this. Kill or die. Him or her. A choice you couldn’t unmake.
Archer squeezed her fingers once and let go again, tucking away the cloth.
Sefia pressed her fists to her eyes and shook her head. “No. No, no. What am I saying?” She’d been so sure this was what she wanted. Answers. Redemption. Revenge.
But this hadn’t been revenge.
“He would have killed me.” She bared her teeth. “He was an impressor. The world’s better off without him. Why am I sorry?”
Archer tapped his chest, over his heart, and smiled sadly.
“I am not a good person. All these months, all I’ve wanted . . . A good person wouldn’t have . . . I just let them take Nin.” The last words came bursting out of her. “It’s my fault she was captured. If only I hadn’t gone into town alone . . . If only I’d come back a little sooner . . . I was right there, Archer. All I had to do was say something. It’s my fault. It’s all my fault, and now . . .”
She beat her own thighs. Pain blossomed beneath her fists. Archer tried to catch her hands, but she jerked out of his reach. “I was supposed to do this. For Nin. For my father.”
We’re a team, you and me. That’s what her father had said to her. We’re in this together, no matter what.
But when it had mattered most, she hadn’t been there for him. He’d died alone in that empty house while she played, stupidly, ignorantly, in the village below. She’d been the only one he had left, and she had failed him.
Frantically, Sefia dug through her pack for the book. She needed it in her hands, this thing, the only thing she had left of her father. She needed it to remember. To remind herself. She flung off the leather wrappings and traced the brand on the cover.
Two curves for her parents. A curve for Nin. The straight line for herself. The circle for what she had to do.
“Learn what the book is for.” She flubbed the words. “Rescue Nin, if she’s still alive . . .” Sobs choked her voice. Her vision had gone wet and blurry.
But try as she might to reach for that anger, that rage that had sustained her all these months, whenever she grasped for it, she saw Palo Kanta.
Saw the bullet strike him.
Saw the blood drain out of him.
Saw him dead at her feet.
Sefia clutched the book in her arms and cried. Hating herself for this weakness.
“I don’t think I can do it,” she whispered.
Then Archer crawled into the hammock and took her in his arms. She felt the pressure of him on her shoulders, the plane of his cheek on the top of her head, his hands holding hers. The kind of contact she hadn’t had in years, wrapping around and around her like a bandage, until all the br
oken things inside her were held fast, secure in the loop of Archer’s arms.
Captain Cat and Her Cannibal Crew
After the Current of Faith fished him out of the maelstrom, and Captain Reed announced his intention to sail for the western edge of the world, there was some consternation among the crew.
He’d cracked, they said.
Something had happened to him, down there in the wild water.
This was going too far.
Some of them left, of course, but for the most part they stayed. Perhaps they’d grown so used to hearing the tall tales of their own adventures that they truly believed they would survive when all others had failed. Perhaps they thought Reed and the chief mate wouldn’t let the Current disappear into the sea like the rest. Perhaps they knew she was the only ship in Kelanna with even a shred of hope of making it.
Whatever their reasons, they took their considerable earnings, loaded up with provisions in the Paradise Islands off the coast of Oxscini, and set a course for the blue and boundless west. All was smooth sailing till eight weeks into their journey when, on the verge of uncharted waters, they came across the longboat filled with human bones.
Pelvises, scapulae, ribs.
Among the skeletons, two survivors stared up at the curving hull of the Current with sunken eyes. Their lips drew back from their teeth, revealing swollen tongues.
“It ain’t right,” said Camey, one of the sailors on Meeks’s starboard watch. He was new, someone they’d picked up in the Paradise Islands, and a bit of a rabble-rouser, but no one contradicted him when he said it again, louder: “It just ain’t right.”
While the crew shifted uneasily at the rails, Captain Reed waited, counting out the seconds, weighing his choices. Take them in or let them die? It happened that way, sometimes on the ocean.
Of course he took them in. He was Captain Reed. He went down himself.
One of the survivors fainted as soon as Reed landed in the longboat, but the other backed away, scrabbling for purchase in the piles of bones. She had a fine velvet coat and felt hat, but her clothing was in tatters, and her long red hair had begun to fall out in clumps. She clutched at a splintered femur and sucked it greedily.
