“She’s not all Elig, though.” One marshal eyed her hair, her skin. Northerners never realized just how many clans lived in the Elig south—they figured the only real Elig had pale hair and pale skin and pale eyes. Not like Amara, dulled down in every aspect. Light enough to be recognizable, too dark to be genuine.
“Just check her neck already,” the first marshal snapped, and he stepped forward. Another pair of marshals took off in Cilla’s direction, and, oh, how had Amara been so stupid to think they could leave the island so easily?
Amara breathed deeply. Protect Cilla. A trip like any other. She lowered one shoulder, letting the bag of supplies the bartender had given her drop. She caught the strap before it crashed to the stones and swung it against the nearest marshal’s shins.
His grip on her shoulder faltered. She tore loose and sprinted toward the ships. The marshals’ legs were longer, stronger. She heard their boots hit the stones behind her. If she could reach the water, she stood a chance. Either way, the distraction worked. The marshals near Cilla spun back toward Amara. Just a few steps—
A grunt came from behind her. A second later, pain exploded in the back of her head. A baton. Her vision blackened. She went flying to the stones, hitting them chin-first. Her momentum sent her rolling to the edge. Her vision swam, spikes of light stabbing through the dark. She urged her body to roll farther. She felt the edges of the stones in her back—saw the blurred outline of a marshal’s glove—and sucked in a breath before dropping over the edge of the dock.
The noise of the world abruptly died. The water drew her in whole, filling her nose and mouth. Just like before. At least this time her body didn’t panic. Her head felt like it’d split in two, but the pain ebbed. Nolan was sticking around as he’d said he would.
She waited another second or two, trying to stay calm. She closed off her lungs. She didn’t need to breathe. No matter how much her body told her she needed to breathe, she didn’t, she couldn’t, not yet.
Then she kicked. She’d gotten disoriented, but the harbor wall and the ship’s hulls were easy reference points. As she swam, she kept her eyes squinted, the dark of the water obscuring everything beyond a footlength or two. Underneath that ship. Around the pillars of the pier. Avoid the crags of wood. Swim past the anchors. Tear the waterweeds from her face.
Three ships farther, her lungs felt as if they’d pop. She went up for a quick breath. This close to the wall, no one saw her. Shouts came from behind her, where she’d dropped into the water.
She ducked back under. The calm came more easily this time. Her head no longer hurt. No one grabbed fistfuls of hair and forced her still. It was just her. And Nolan.
Amara swam toward the last ship and went to the aft, as far away from the harbor wall as possible. She came up for air a second time. The world rolled back in, voices and shouts, carts racketing along uneven stones, rope fenders thudding against the wood of the docks.
Cilla’s whisper-shout cut through all of it. “Amara!” A silhouette ran toward her, just the bobbing of her head along the ship’s railing.
Cilla was aboard safely. Amara’s distraction had worked. She brought her hands out of the water, relying on her kicking feet to keep her afloat. “You were waiting?” she asked awkwardly.
Cilla leaned over the railing. Even with the sky turning the murky gray of morning, it had to be hard to see Amara in the water. “I’ll get rope,” Cilla signed back.
“No. They might check the ships for me.” Amara tried to make her signs bigger, easier to see in the dark. “I’ll cling to the hull. Pull me up when you’ve left the harbor.” The lights on the boat allowed her to see traces of Cilla’s face, enough to notice her hesitance.
“Be safe,” Cilla signed.
Amara sucked in another breath and dove.
olan!”
Nolan started awake. His chair rolled away from his desk. His arms flailed, knocking his pen to the floor, the notebook dropping facedown after it.
“Are you OK? Are you—” Pat jumped at him, pressing her face into the crook between his shoulder and neck. Her arms squeezed him. Her lips moved against him, mumbling something he couldn’t hear. Her face was wet.
Nolan started to sign, then stifled his movements. He was back on Earth. He needed to speak Spanish, English. Anything but servant signs.
“Patli?” he said carefully. He rested one hand on her shoulder but didn’t push her off. “What’s going on?”
She yanked her head back. Her eyes were red, her face tear-stained. “I was two seconds away from calling 911, you idiot! You wouldn’t wake up. I was—I was shouting and—I thought you were having a seizure—”
“No. I was sleeping.” He swallowed a lump in his throat. The world dawned on him, both his own and Amara’s. Shit. The ship was taking off with her still clinging to the hull. Her head was above water, but waves battered her, seeping into her lungs. He needed to get back.
“Dad’s already at work, and Mom’s with the Patersons. I didn’t know what to do. I thought …” Pat ran a hand over her face, now more frustrated than anything. “I pulled your hair! Who doesn’t wake up when their hair is pulled?”
“I’ve been working.” He gestured broadly at his desk. He should’ve seen this coming. It’d been years since he’d stuck around the Dunelands this long. It’d been years since he’d wanted—needed—to as much. He could worry about it later.
“Working?” Pat said. “All night?”
“Seemed like a good idea.” He smiled weakly and shut his eyes—
—and Amara was coughing and her nails scraped the wood, trying to keep hold of that ridge with hands numb from cold, and the water slammed into her—
“—I need to get back to work,” Nolan said.
“Seriously? School starts in half an hour.”
“I’m not going.” He couldn’t let Amara get hurt again.
Pat gaped. “Mom and Dad will kill you.”
“I’ll tell them I’m sick. Please, Pat. Can you go?”
“You really weren’t having a seizure? Mom and Dad are worried about you after last night.”
Nolan closed his eyes. He just needed to make sure—
“Stay with me!” Pat smacked his shoulder. Nolan’s eyes shot open, and Pat stood over him, fury in her teary eyes, her fists balled.
“I can’t,” he gritted out. “You have to go.”
“Why? What’s going on? Why are you—what’s with the—” She pointed at the journals. Her finger shook. “You’re scaring me. I’ll hit you again if you say you’re OK. I will.”
“Later. All right?” He propped his elbows on his desk and rested his face in his palms. “I promise I’ll explain later. Right now, you need to leave me alone.”
He shut his eyes again. This time, Pat let him.
illa smiled broadly as Amara climbed through the sidescuttle. “This is Captain Olym’s sitting room. She left spare clothes for us.” She gestured at the winterwear draped over a nearby stool. Thick, rich-colored, far too big for Amara, but—oh—dry. Amara’s limbs felt so numb she was surprised she’d been able to climb up. “Throw your own clothes overboard in case there’s an anchor on them—I did the same. I threw out my other supplies, too. Captain Olym will replace them. Then dry yourself off and come on deck.”
“Won’t the passengers suspect something?” Amara signed.
“We’ll say you were sleeping belowdecks.” Cilla held up an off-brown towel. “Do you … are you all right?”
The wind blasted through the still-open hatch, cutting Amara straight to the bone. “Just need to dry off.” She stepped clumsily forward and took the towel.
“They’re waiting for me upstairs. I should …” Cilla nodded at the door and went back up.
Amara’s first instinct was to wrap the towel around her, soaked clothes and all. One step at a time, though. You can leave now, she told Nolan. Even in her mind, her words felt slight. She couldn’t make herself thank him.
She pricked her index finger to c
onfirm he’d left. She stuck her head out the sidescuttle to wring the water from her hair, shivered at the wind, and shut the hatch as quickly as she could. Given the smile on Cilla’s face, they were safe. Still, Amara rushed through undressing, drying off—the towel was softer and warmer than she could remember any towel being—and slipping into Captain Olym’s wear, which was too loose around her chest and waist and everywhere else. She rolled up the pant legs and adjusted the lacing, knotting it in the small of her back and along her thighs and ribs. The boots fit just as awkwardly.
Amara tossed her old clothes out the sidescuttle as instructed and took a look around the cabin. Gaslight illuminated polished hardwood and intricate drapes, which made it look like midnight even with the sun finally rising. The room felt cozy. Safe. A stringed instrument she couldn’t name rested in a corner, and fruit in matching colors sat on a square plate twice the size of her head.
This place should not feel safe. Nothing should. This was not just another trip.
She was running away.
She wrapped her arms around her chest. Her eyes fixed on one of the drapes that had been embroidered with a map of the area. Teschel was on the left, shaped like a tadpole, the tail a protective bay. The rest of the map showed the nearby islands and the ever-recognizable shape of the Dunelands mainland—the dagger, as people called it, with the capital Bedam at the tip. She read the letters slowly, and the names of other mainland towns, and the names of the islands and their cities, too, but reading didn’t—couldn’t—give her the thrill it had before.
She tried to recall the maps Cilla had shown her over the years. She imagined the lines of the mainland stretching farther east, the Dunelands’ dagger growing broader until it bled into the Continent: the Collected Cities, the Ohn and Dit mountains, the State of Jélis, the Andan Kingdom, and a dozen other territories, so much larger than the Dunelands and so far away Amara couldn’t comprehend it. And the south—Eligon—was farther still. The maps always colored it white, for the snow.
Amara imagined that same snow crunching underfoot, a hundred days away from Jorn on that island behind her, a hundred days away from the ship swaying under her feet.
If she went on deck, people might ask questions. If she stayed here, people might come find her. If she went on shore, she’d be caught, and if she went back, she’d be caught, and Maart was dead no matter what. She wanted Nolan back in control of her body so she wouldn’t have to steer it, since there was nowhere to steer to that didn’t make her tremble at the thought.
She swallowed to clear her throat, which felt as if fingers were clenching it shut.
Cilla had asked her onto the deck. Amara clung to that. She left the cabin and went up the stairs, and if the cozy heat downstairs had dulled her, the wind up top woke her up again. She whisked her topscarf higher as cover, wrapping it around the tips of her hair to shield her neck better. She breathed in the salt air, letting it burn away her fears. She was still obeying her princess’s orders; she hadn’t abandoned her duties.
No one else would see it that way, but it calmed her, regardless.
Captain Olym sat on the deck, talking to a crew member, and she gave Amara a small nod. The captain was a short, round woman, her arms all muscle, her face weathered and lined, her hair cropped to near nothing. The rising sun threw pinkish rays over her face and tinted the air a gray that hovered between yellow and blue, painting the clouds colors Amara couldn’t find names for. The cold pricked at her arms, but she didn’t mind.
Maybe Cilla had called her up to see this. The view from inside the cabin couldn’t compete with something so beautiful.
“Look!” Cilla said.
Amara’s eyes stayed fixed on the clouds. “I haven’t seen a sunrise from the sea in ages.”
“No,” Cilla said. She touched Amara’s shoulder, turning her around. “Look.”
At first, Amara thought Cilla meant for her to see the Teschel harbor in the distance, maybe a ship headed their way. Then she spotted the stretch of beach that made up Teschel’s tail, curling at the horizon. Round shapes scampered over the sand in fits and starts, and Amara didn’t need to think before signing, “Diggers!”
Her record was seeing three at once, and one of those she hadn’t been sure of. Now—oh, she couldn’t begin to count the dark shapes dotting the sand. The more she looked, the more diggers she saw, some in the water, others scurrying through the dune grass, visible only by the way the grass swung counter to the wind.
From here, she couldn’t see the way their stick-thin legs practically danced over the sand, or the way their pointed snouts would swing left and right in an endless search for bugs, or how they’d slide into the water, legs wide—but she didn’t need to. She could imagine.
“Apparently morning is the time to go digger-watching.” Cilla beamed.
“You knew I liked them,” Amara said. They stood turned toward the beach; as long as she kept her movements minimal, no one on the ship would see her sign. “The servant before—before—told me diggers weigh less than you’d think. That’s why their legs are so thin. Their bodies are round, but only because they contain a sack of air that helps them float in the water.”
“I’d forgotten that!”
“They breathe in extra before they go into the water and store the air on their backs. If you puncture the skin there, they’ll drown.”
“That’s … really sad.” Cilla frowned.
Amara fell silent. Her eyes followed the shapes skittering across the beach.
“Just because it’s sad doesn’t mean you should stop talking.” Cilla bumped her shoulder into Amara’s.
“I’m sorry,” Amara said automatically. “I don’t know much else about diggers.”
“No, I mean …”
Amara knew what she meant.
“Did you only run because I said I wanted you to?” Cilla asked.
Amara didn’t know either answer: the real one or the one Cilla wanted. She tried to keep her thoughts on the beach, but the diggers had lost their appeal. She couldn’t see them anymore, anyway. The ship moved too fast.
“I meant … I thought running was best for you. You can answer me honestly. Except if I have to tell you that, it rather defeats the point, and—” Cilla threw up her hands and laughed feebly.
“Told you it’s not that simple,” Amara said. Maybe nothing was simple. The world had come close to simple before, doing whatever Cilla and Jorn asked. Now, Amara second-guessed every thought; Cilla probably second-guessed every word. Every formerly innocuous question turned into something more.
Good, Amara thought. Cilla should know that her words meant something.
“You can joke about it?” Cilla said.
“It wasn’t a very good joke.”
A smile played at Cilla’s lips. She looked at the beach, even with the diggers too far to be recognizable. Her hands wrapped around the railing. They looked soft next to the polished wood. “Amara, I know we’re not friends, but you’re all I have. Jorn is … It’s complicated.”
“Jorn’s always protected you.” Amara’s signs had a hard edge to them. They came choppier, like Nolan’s. She wiggled her toes just to make sure she still could. “It’s OK to care for him.”
It wasn’t, but Amara still understood.
“I don’t know if I do. I don’t want to.” The wind took Cilla’s hair, playing with it, and Amara’s first instinct was to smooth it down as she’d done with her own. Cilla had no need to hide her neck, though. “Sometimes he was kind. Sometimes he wasn’t. But I wasn’t allowed to be alone, and with him, I didn’t have to be so careful. Maar—he hated me.”
No point in denying that.
“I know you hate me, too.” Cilla turned briskly. One hand stayed on the railing. The wind brushed her hair into her face in a way that was wild and beautiful and did nothing to hide the uncertainty in her eyes. “I understand. I wanted you to know that: I understand, and I’m sorry. I should’ve stayed behind.”
“If you weren’t
with me, you’d die. I don’t want you to.”
“I’m still sorry.”
“I know.” Before she could change her mind, Amara said, “I just don’t know if it changes anything.”
Cilla’s shoulders squared, as if she was bolstering herself. “I deserve that.”
Amara raised her hands to speak, then stilled. She’d never thought about these things. There was no point. But she didn’t only think about them now, she said them straight to the princess’s face, and she wasn’t even scared anymore.
It wasn’t right. It wasn’t comfortable. But it was safe. The thought took her breath away.
“Maybe I was wrong before,” she signed. “I don’t think I hate you. I hate what you are; I hate what I am, too. We can’t change either of those.”
“I can. When I’m in power, you’ll get everything you want. I’ll remove your tattoo. You’ll live where you want to. You’ll get however much silver you need.”
Amara laughed. “I’d want books. I want to read books.”
“There’s a library in the Bedam palace. You could take every last book in there.”
“I’d want to live on the beach. I’d see diggers every morning.”
“Yours.”
“I’d want to see Eligon.”
“I’d arrange it.”
It’d be that easy for her, wouldn’t it?
Behind them, Captain Olym called orders. The crew adjusted the sails. “I thought you wanted us to be equals,” Amara said. She’d depended on Jorn for food, shelter, safety. Being dependent on Cilla, instead—that wasn’t freedom.
“But I owe you.” Cilla thought. “All right. Tell me what you do need.”
Why was Amara laughing again? None of this was funny, but she couldn’t help it. The world sank under her feet, and Cilla promised her silver and books and diggers, and she turned them all down. She was turning into Maart. He’d say these same things—or maybe he wouldn’t. He might take all that Cilla offered and say he deserved it. He’d be right, too.
“I need …” The wind tangled Amara’s hair, and the sea stretched out endlessly before her. “I don’t know,” she said, almost dreamily.
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