The Reader

by Traci Chee

  Reed peered down at her. A piercing blue search. “You ever been to Jahara, kid?”

  She shook her head. “No, sir. Aunt Nin always said it was too dangerous.”

  “She was right.” He stared at the waves and tapped his chest. “You’d do better to forget about it. Hatchet’s one thing, but Serakeen ain’t a man you wanna cross paths with.”

  The wind whipped at her hair, stinging her neck and cheeks as they skimmed over the white-capped water. “I need to save Nin.”

  “If she’s still alive.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And then?”

  “Stop them. For good.” She glanced back toward the main hatchway and the sick bay below. “Or no one I care about will be safe.”

  Reed drummed his fingers. “And what if you fail?”

  Sefia turned to the crate and dug her fingernail into the letters, pulling up splinters and flicking them into the sea. “I’ve already failed,” she said.

  He traced the blank circle at his wrist. There was a maelstrom at his elbow, followed by a skeleton eating its own bones, trees on the back of a turtle shell: all the stories of how they got to the western edge of the world, but no story about the edge itself.

  “Sometimes you get what you want,” he murmured. “And sometimes you wish you hadn’t.”

  “Maybe.” As she bit off the word, she pricked herself on a sliver of wood. Blood beaded on her fingertip, and she sucked it away, spitting it into the ocean. “But I have to try.”

  Chapter 27

  In This Web of Light and Shadow

  As the lamplight flickered off the portholes, the walls of the tiny cabin seemed to close in about her. In the web of light and shadow, Tanin hunched over the desk, smoothing the edges of the paper over and over until her fingertips were red and raw. She had cried so much in the past few hours that to cry any more seemed impossible.

  Her mouth twisted as pain lanced through her face. Tears flooded her vision.

  She had one more letter to write.

  Tanin dipped her pen in a bottle of ink, and every movement felt heavy, as if her limbs were made of stone, and bits of bone would explode into bursts of powder at the slightest shifting of her joints. Across the top of the page, she wrote, Dear Erastis, in crumbling script.

  Tanin brushed her fingers across her eyes, spattering black ink over her blouse. She cursed and dipped the nib again. The words blurred on the page as she wrote:

  The Second is dead.

  She paused, her gaze straying to the four sealed letters she’d already prepared: one for each of the Masters, to inform them of the events of the previous night, and of her failure. Five times she had written these words now, and still they weren’t enough. They didn’t describe how the world had been diminished, as if the Assassin’s absence had snuffed out all the lights in all the cities across Kelanna, and objects that had been sharp and solid moments before were now dim, halfway to disappearing themselves.

  She pressed her pen to the page and continued to write, remembering the anger she’d felt when the ship’s lieutenant had told her the Assassin was missing. The hurried search of the decks, her frustration ceding to worry and abyssal panic when she realized the Assassin was no longer on board. The creaking of ropes as the crewmen hoisted Tanin in her longboat over the side of the ship.

  The night had been black and gray as the fog crept over the rowboat, winding along her arms as she strained at the oars. Blisters formed on her palms.

  Then she heard the shot, followed quickly by another, like thunder in the dark.

  She froze.

  The chill of the night touched the tips of her toes and fingers, creeping up her limbs to her chest. She began to shiver.

  Then the splash.

  A body striking the water.

  Somewhere in the mist, there was the sound of voices murmuring indistinctly, all round shapes and half-formed words. In her little boat, Tanin clutched her stomach, rocking herself back and forth as the tears coursed down her cheeks, past her open mouth, her lips forming the words but not saying them.

  No, no, no, no, no . . .

  They had killed her.

  They had killed her.

  And it was Tanin’s fault.

  If only she’d allowed the Assassin to act sooner . . . If only she hadn’t been so harsh with her . . . If only she hadn’t allowed herself to be so distracted by that little girl . . .

  There was a knock at the door.

  Bleary-eyed, Tanin looked up from the page. What had she written? She could barely read her own handwriting. Dashing tears from her eyes, she pulled the carved cylindrical lid over the desk, hiding her writing instruments.

  She cleared her throat. “Come in.”

  The door swung open, and in strode the ship’s lieutenant. Escalia was a formidable woman, broad as a man across the shoulders and chest, with an upright bearing that made every room seem to shrink as soon as she entered.

  She flicked Tanin a smart salute. “The Everican ship is gone, ma’am. Limped off into the fog and left no trace.” Her voice was bold and roughened by weather, but it still retained a brassy shine.

  Tanin nodded. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

  “Shall we mount a search?” Escalia’s gold teeth flashed in the lantern light.

  Tanin had known it would happen eventually, this conflict between Darion’s Blue Navy and herself, with his Stone Kingdom at war with Oxscini, and her ship caught out in the open like any other outlaw. But that didn’t make it less of a nuisance. She didn’t have time to fight off the Blue Navy when she was chasing the Current of Faith. “No,” she said. “Continue on course to Jahara.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Tanin eyed her for a moment. “Is that it?”

  The lieutenant cocked her head. “Is what it, ma’am?”

  “You’re not going to argue with me?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Well that’s refreshing,” Tanin said wearily.

  Escalia shrugged. “I follow orders. I don’t question.”

  “What about your own opinions?”

  “I’m a simple woman, ma’am. I leave the opinion-having to minds greater than my own.” The lieutenant paused, thumbing one of the metal bands she wore on her upper arms. “I know there’s always a reason you do what you do. Things always turn out.”

  Tanin pressed the pads of her fingers to her paper cuts. “Do they?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I believe they do. Even a tragedy such as this.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant. You’re dismissed.”

  Snapping Tanin another salute, Escalia squeezed out of the cabin and shut the door behind her with a click.

  Tanin stared at the back of the door. The entire thing was a mirror with a silver frame of pages and waves—the letters spraying upward into frothy whitecaps, with riptides and whirlpools of words below—details so exquisite it seemed as if the frame were made of liquid metal.

  She had always believed that coincidences didn’t exist, that everything that happened, happened for a reason. But what reason was there for the Assassin’s death?

  They could have retrieved the Book at the cabin in Kambali. The Assassin had wanted to do it, but Tanin had stopped her. Because of the girl.

  Sliding back the top of the desk, Tanin skimmed the letter, her gaze hovering on the words:

  The Second is dead.

  But now she felt numb, as if by the fifth time repeating it, throwing herself against the rocks of her grief, they had finally eroded, leaving nothing but smooth cold emptiness behind. Grimly, she folded the paper with crisp movements and ironed the creases.

  It all came back to the girl. She had the Book. She knew Illumination. She had somehow freed a candidate, and together they had discovered that the final test lay in Jahara.

  And she was a killer.

 
With a match, Tanin heated a stick of wax until molten pearls began to drop one by one onto the paper, creating an inky black pool. She flicked her tongue over a brass seal to moisten it and pressed the stamp firmly into the wax.

  A reader and a killer.

  The idea spread through her as the wax cooled and hardened beneath the pressure of the seal.

  Was this why the Assassin had died?

  So they would have an opening in their ranks?

  The seal had left an impression in the wax, and Tanin traced it with raw fingertips. A circle inscribed with four lines, as familiar to her now as the shape of her own face.

  It fit. It was almost perfect. The girl was a little old to be inducted, but exceptions could be made. After all, she already had no one. No family. No existing ties.

  She’d make an excellent Assassin.

  Everything under the sun came full circle—the seasons, the stars, the cycles of life itself. It was like poetry.

  Carefully, Tanin gathered up the five letters, shuffling them into place between her hands, and approached the mirror. Her face, normally pale and smooth as chalk, was pink and bloated with crying. She studied her own reflection with disgust.

  She was the Director—the leader of their order, the one to whom all the Masters and their Apprentices looked for protection and guidance—and the Director did not show weakness.

  Edmon had been weak. And his weakness had cost them all.

  She stared into her gray eyes and tucked a strand of black hair behind her ear, summoning the words of her oath as if they were an incantation.

  “Once I lived in darkness, but now I bear the flame,” she whispered. “It is mine to carry until darkness comes for me again . . .”

  She straightened the collar of her ivory blouse, redid the buttons of her vest, regaining her resolve as she recited the words.

  “It shall be my duty to protect the Book from discovery and misuse, and establish stability and peace for all the citizens of Kelanna.”

  Running the blade of her finger beneath her eyes to remove the last of her tears, she sniffed a few times and raised her chin.

  “I shall fear no challenge. I shall fear no sacrifice. In all my actions, I shall be beyond reproach.”

  Tanin’s gaze roved over her reflection. “I am the shade in the desert,” she murmured. “I am the beacon on the rock. I am the wheel that drives the firmament.” With every sentence her voice grew stronger, until it rang like steel and glittered like ice, and anyone who heard it would know in their bones that she was as hard and impenetrable as armor, and she would not be moved from her course.

  Harison Saves the Main Royal

  It’s the same with stories as it is with people,” Meeks said, his brown eyes gleaming in the dwindling light of the sunset, “they get better as they get older. But not every story is remembered, and not all people grow old.

  “It was thirty-two days since we left the turtle island, and the night was still as death. I remember the stars had a particular brightness to them, like snowflakes on a black table. You could see the whole blasted sky reflected in the water, and us too, all our sails and the lights of the watch, like we was in two places at once: aboard the Current cuttin’ through the sea, and below the surface, upside down and starvin’ for air.

  “We felt the breeze first, and scrambled to bring in the sails, but we were too slow. The wind came bellowin’ great guns out of the northeast, the waves washin’ over the bow, beatin’ against the hull like the hands of giants come risin’ out of the sea.

  “Then the sky opened up, all jagged along the edges, and the light just pourin’ through it, bright as dawn. What an uproar! We were on the yards, and the winds were battin’ us about like leaves. There wasn’t no time to stare into that hole in the sky like Captain Cat and her cannibal crew, or all our sails would be torn to shreds and the masts snapped in two.

  “Then came the thunderclap, and the world went dark. The sound of it knocked all the noise right out of our ears, and we were workin’ in complete silence—couldn’t hear the wind, couldn’t hear Cap or Jules or Theo callin’ out, couldn’t hear nothing.

  “The ship was plungin’ into the troughs one after another, the sails gapin’ in the wind. The staysail was blown to ribbons; the main topsail, split earing to earing. We was all scramblin’ to the bowsprit or up the mainmast, the wind slashin’ at us, roarin’, though we couldn’t hear it. I was sure the whole blasted ship was gonna be shaken apart, and us dropped into the waves like fish bait.

  “Then the main royal came loose from her gaskets, flappin’ and makin’ the mast quiver like a bean stalk.

  “Cap was shoutin’ orders. I could see his mouth wide open and his eyes wild. The mainmast was gonna snap if someone didn’t take in that royal or cut it loose.

  “Somewhere in all that chaos, it was only Harison who knew what to do. He sprang aloft, gatherin’ the sail with his long arms. There was times the wind was so bad he was nearly shook off the mast, but he kept at it. Through the pitchin’ of the waters and the impossible soundlessness of the night. All by his lonesome, he sent the yard down. Saved the mainmast—saved the ship—all on his own.

  “It was bold moves like that one that got us through the night, till the winds lost their spite and the waters cooled down. We had a job the next few weeks, fixin’ all the damage those winds had done, but thanks to Harison we had another few weeks to do it.

  “That boy earned his place with us that night, all right.”

  Chapter 28

  It Is Written

  Things were good.

  The sun was blazing down upon the ship, and the clouds were puffs of cotton in the sky. The Current of Faith was clipping along at tremendous speed, smooth as silk through the water. At this rate, they’d reach Jahara in ten days.

  In exchange for their assistance with the woman in black, their honesty in retelling their remarkable tale, and the assurance of their continued services, Sefia and Archer had been granted passage to Jahara under the provision that Sefia’s book and lock picks be kept in a safe, with special dispensation for reading when she wasn’t on watch, until she disembarked, at which point they would be returned to her in their original condition.

  Until now, she hadn’t had time to read. There was no shortage of duties for her and Archer to perform—scrubbing decks, scouring pots, trimming artichokes for Cooky, who shouted at them if it wasn’t done quick enough—and they were kept so busy that when she did have a free moment, she would fall exhausted into her hammock and sleep until her next watch.

  But after three days of backbreaking work, she was finally adjusting to life at sea, and today she was going to see the book again. Sefia prodded the calluses forming on her hands and waited on the quarterdeck.

  Above her, Horse and Archer were on the yards with little wooden pails, tarring down the rigging. Their hands moved along the lines, stiff-bristled brushes dripping. Every so often, the acrid smell wafted over the ship.

  These past few days on the Current, Archer had looked happier and more relaxed than she’d ever seen him. His smile was broader and he was quicker to laugh—a sort of silent breathy laughter that showed in his eyes.

  As if he could sense her watching him, Archer looked down. Silhouetted against the flat blue sky, he rested easily on the yard, as nonchalant and perfectly balanced as a cat. Though at this distance she couldn’t see his eyes clearly, she felt his gaze on her, probing, questioning, lingering on her eyes, her lips, her face.

  Sefia blushed and glanced away. For some reason, she couldn’t stop smiling.

  The sound of footsteps on the stairs startled her, and she looked up to see the chief mate crossing the quarterdeck, his arms outstretched, holding the book as if it were a live and dangerous thing, like a snake. She laughed as he dumped it into her waiting hands.

  Gathering the book to her chest, Sefia inhaled its familiar smell, felt
its edges on the insides of her arms. “Why do you hold it like that?” she asked.

  The mate shook himself like a dog and crossed his hands behind his back. “Don’t know what’s inside it,” he said. “The farther it is from me, the less likely it’ll get me, if something comes crawling out.”

  “All that’s inside it are words,” she said.

  “Have you seen everything that’s inside it?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then how can you be sure?” His tone was quiet, matter-of-fact.

  Sefia peered up at him. The chief mate was a handsome figure, with his square jaw, his wide mouth, though the skin around his neck was beginning to sag, and the wrinkles in his face were like ravines. As she studied him—the gray of his hair, the notch across the bridge of his nose—she felt the world of gold and light swirling just beyond her line of sight—

  “You’re a nosy one, aren’t you?”

  Her sense of the Vision faded, and she sat down abruptly. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Sure you did.”

  Sefia swallowed. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t do it again.”

  “No, sir.”

  He sighed. “I see things too. Anything that happens on this ship.” When she nodded, he continued, “I recognized what happened to you the other morning. You almost lost yourself.”

  “Yes.” She leaned forward. “Although my Vision works differently, I think. I can’t see the present like you, but sometimes I’ll catch a glimpse of what’s happened before.” Even after finding Archer, she’d been so alone in this, muddling through the words, struggling to control the Vision, with no one to help her understand what was happening, what it meant. “And history is huge,” she said faintly.

  “When I first joined the crew, I used to get seasick, not from the rocking of the ship, mind you, but from pure sensory overload. I can sense everything on the Current, not just the people, but the cargo too. And the rats.” He grimaced. “People aren’t meant to take in so much.”