City of Islands

by Kali Wallace

  Justice for Bindy. Magic for herself. Mara’s heart was racing so fast she thought it would leap from her chest like a fish from a bucket. She ignored the whisper in the back of her mind insisting it was no accident the Lady was saying everything she wanted to hear. This was Mara’s chance. She was not going to let it slip away.

  “I’ll do it,” Mara said. “I want to do it.”

  The Lady smiled. “Splendid,” she said. “Let us make a plan.”

  6

  Night on the Water

  The next afternoon, Mara paced the dock impatiently. The sea cave beneath Tidewater Isle was a flurry of activity. Lamplight glinted off the glass and stone mosaics on the walls, and the chamber echoed with noise. The Lady’s party would be under way in a few hours. There were merchants, musicians, and players arriving all at the same time. There was even a tailor, a thin-faced woman in striped trousers and a long jacket, who had leapt from her boat and raced toward the stairs, muttering about charging double for troublesome clients.

  Mara had been excused from helping with party preparations. She was supposed to be resting for the long night ahead. Tonight she was going to the Winter Blade.

  She was far too anxious to sleep. She wanted to talk to Izzy before it was time to go. Izzy hadn’t yet come back from Summer Island, and Mara hoped she would be returning this afternoon. She knew she couldn’t tell Izzy about the plan for tonight. She only wanted to know somebody besides the Lady would be waiting for her to return.

  “Mara?”

  She spun around. “Fish Hook!” She had been so distracted she hadn’t seen the fishmonger’s boat come into the cave. “Is Izzy with you?”

  “She said she’d come back with an early boat. You mean she’s not here?”

  “She didn’t come back yet,” Mara said. “But maybe she just . . . decided not to? She’s moving to Summer Island soon anyway.”

  Fish Hook shook his head. “She wouldn’t just leave you, you know.”

  Mara looked down, embarrassed at having her fears read so easily.

  “She wouldn’t,” he insisted. “She wouldn’t go away without saying good-bye. There must have been something she had to do.”

  “Maybe.” Mara wanted to be convinced, but it was hard when she had so many other worries crowding her mind, and she couldn’t tell Fish Hook about any of them. “Can you find her when you get back? Just to make sure she’s okay? She goes to the candlemaker’s shop on the Street of Two Hundred Stairs, the one that’s halfway up—”

  “I know where it is,” Fish Hook said. “I’ll go. Of course I’ll go. You can even come with me, if you want?”

  “I can’t,” Mara said. “I’ve got to— The Lady needs me for something tonight.”

  “For her party?”

  “No, it’s . . .”

  Mara looked at his familiar brown face with its long scar, his brown eyes filled with concern, his curly hair escaping in spirals from the tie he’d used to push it back. He didn’t even know Izzy very well, but Izzy was Mara’s friend, and that was enough for him to want to help.

  She couldn’t tell Fish Hook the truth, but she didn’t want to lie, so she said, “I’m supposed to tell everybody I’m giving the Lady’s foreign guest a night tour of the city so she can see it all lit up.”

  Fish Hook raised a single eyebrow—an expression he used to practice when he thought nobody was looking. “It’s going to rain later.”

  Mara hoped Fish Hook understood how hard she was trying to be honest with him. “She’s from Sumant. She likes the rain because it’s so strange to her.”

  “Right,” Fish Hook said slowly. He didn’t believe her, but his wry smile meant he wasn’t going to push. “Well, be careful. Watch out for One-Eyed Bennie’s masked pirates.”

  “I’ll be with Driftwood. We’ll be fine.” She couldn’t tell Fish Hook anything else, but she didn’t want him to worry about her, only Izzy. “Just tell Izzy everybody’s asking about her.”

  “I will,” he promised. He ran back to the blue-and-yellow boat.

  Mara climbed the narrow stairs to the girls’ dormitory to rest, but sleep was impossible. She watched the gray light outside the window sink into twilight while she ate dinner. The flatbread and fried fish churned in her stomach, but she made herself finish. She had to dive tonight. She needed her strength.

  When it was time to leave, Mara changed into her swimming clothes, then pulled on a shirt and trousers and cloak to hide them. She had been going over the plan again and again in her mind, the same way she planned dangerous cave dives, but she could only get so far before she ran into the unknown. She packed an oilskin sack with two murk-lights, then took them out and picked two others, then switched them back before scowling at herself for being ridiculous. The murk-lights were all the same. She was only stalling.

  She couldn’t help but feel that no matter what happened, no matter what she found inside the Winter Blade, everything would be different tomorrow. This was bigger than diving for ancient artifacts, bigger than working as Bindy’s servant. This was ancient magic and powerful mages and secret fortresses, and Mara was at the center of it.

  There wasn’t anything left for her to prepare. She went down to meet Driftwood and Professor Kosta on the docks.

  Thin fog wrapped around the islands like a gossamer shawl. The Hanging Garden was brilliant with cascades of white and gold light, and the palaces on Glassmaker Isle glinted like jewels. The arched bridge between Cedar and Spellbreak islands was a delicate necklace of torchlight. Even floating Outcast Island was a yellow glow in the distance, soft as a sunrise. Far to the northwest, the windows of the Citadel on Obsidian Isle shone like pinpricks through a black cloth; the magic students were late at their studies. Mara stared at those lights with a nervous fluttery feeling in her chest.

  “The city is beautiful at night,” said Professor Kosta. She was wearing a cloak for the rain, but she had pushed the hood back to better see the city.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Mara.

  “I am not your master, child,” the professor said, gently chiding. “I am only an old scholar far from home. Please call me ‘Professor.’”

  Mara couldn’t see Professor Kosta’s expression in the darkness, but she didn’t think the woman was upset. “Yes, Professor.” Because she thought the professor would not mind, she asked, “If you please, Professor, a scholar of what?”

  “Ancient history and myths,” said Professor Kosta, “like your city’s lost sea dwellers in their underwater realm. You know, the first explorers to come to these islands were from Sumant.”

  “Yes, Professor,” Mara said. Everybody knew that. “They landed at Gravetown and made a village there.”

  “Indeed they did. They were the first humans to learn spell-song as well. The songs are such a curious form of magic. It’s delightful that any blacksmith can learn a song or two to make her life easier, but at the same time it seems impossible for anybody to achieve what the founders could do.”

  Mara glanced at the professor. She might as well be wondering why a whale couldn’t climb a mountain or why a horse didn’t have gills. The founders weren’t human, and humans weren’t the founders. Their magic would never be the same.

  “They were magical,” Mara said. “They didn’t just know magical songs.”

  Professor Kosta inclined her head thoughtfully. “Indeed, but I find it fascinating how the mages of your city have adapted to a magical system they can’t, by nature, ever hope to master. I can wander the wharves and hear spell-songs in twenty different languages, some nearly indistinguishable from perfectly mundane songs, and some so strange they scarcely sound like human voices at all. It’s truly remarkable.”

  “It takes a lot of study and practice to be a mage. My—” Mara stopped herself and bit her lip. She had been about to say my old master. “I’ve heard mages say it can take years and years to find the right combinations of words and pitch and melody to cast strong spells, and even longer to invent new ones.”

  �
��It is the same with most magical traditions, I suppose,” Professor Kosta said.

  Mara didn’t know much about how people did magic in other places. She knew about the Sumanti alchemists, a few of whom had shops on Quarantine Island, and she had heard tales of stomach-churning blood potions of the Pinnacle Isles far to the west, or the rhythmic stone clacking from Roughwater to the north. But those distant magical traditions had never captivated her like her own city’s songs. She couldn’t imagine how blood potions or clattering rocks could ever be as beautiful as an eerie spell sung by an accomplished mage.

  She thought of the songs she used to make up when she was a child, the ones she had pretended and wished with all her heart could be spells. Her mother had always laughed and told her to keep trying; stonemasons took great pride in not using magic, cherishing their strong hands and sharp tools instead. Magic can’t solve every problem, Mum used to say, even if mages sometimes forget that. But Mum had never told Mara to stop singing her made-up spell-songs, and Mara had never forgotten how it felt to yearn for them to be magic.

  Professor Kosta sighed. “Oh, that is a splendid sight.”

  Behind them, Tidewater Isle was lit up like a flame, with golden lamplight glowing in every window. The party guests were arriving in decorated flatboats lined with lanterns, with wooden figureheads in the shape of arched sea serpents or spiny founders adorning every prow.

  They wouldn’t be worried about pirates; they would never believe anybody would dare attack them while they were trying to have fun. That sort of fear was for other people. The Lady of the Glass was coming, along with the High Mage, the Lord of the Summer and all seven of his daughters, the First Harbormaster and her sons, the mistress of the Glassmakers’ Guild, and so many other important and powerful people. The household gossip hadn’t been able to keep up. A select group of the Citadel-trained mages Bindy had so despised would be there, congratulating one another on their latest magical achievements and lucrative commissions. The palace would ring with music and laughter, and the guests would be eating and drinking and dancing until dawn. They would all be wearing elaborate, colorful costumes meant to represent the founders: gowns covered with embroidered scales, fans shaped like bejeweled fins, collars adorned with jewel-covered spines, masks with round painted eyes.

  Professor Kosta drew her gaze away from Tidewater Isle and pointed to the north. “Tell me, what is that dim island there? The one with so few lights?”

  “That’s the Ossuary, ma’am. I mean, Professor. The graveyard island.”

  “A whole island for a graveyard! How fascinating. We don’t inter our dead in Sumant.”

  “Only the rich do here. Everybody else is buried at sea,” said Driftwood.

  Buried at sea, or lost, with no chance of good-bye.

  Mara had vague memories of playing on the steep terraces of the Ossuary when she was very little. Her parents must have taken her along when they were hired to build or repair tombs. It was during the very last of those trips that their boat had foundered in a squall and they had drowned. Only Mara had survived.

  She didn’t remember swimming to the Ossuary and crawling up on the black-sand beach as the waves and rain beat at her. But she did remember hiding from the storm in the catacombs. She had been terrified and shivering, surrounded by walls made from black stone and old bones, humming to herself to chase away the shadows and crying for her parents.

  And she remembered when Bindy had found her. A warm welcome light appeared in the darkness, and a gentle voice coaxed her out of the tomb with kind words and a warm cloak.

  It had taken Mara a long time to understand that her parents were gone for good, and even longer to admit to herself that Bindy, odd and gruff and eccentric as she was, had taken their place.

  Then she had lost Bindy too.

  Mara wiped a spray of rain and seawater from her face. She wanted the professor to keep talking to distract her. “What do you do in Sumant? If you don’t bury people?”

  “We burn the dead on pyres,” Professor Kosta said. “Nothing is left but ashes. That’s how we’ve always done it. Perhaps I will visit your graveyard island, if it is allowed. I should like to see the old graves. Do you hear that? Is that magic being sung?”

  Mara tilted her head to listen. She heard music from Tidewater Isle, drifts of laughter, the ring of buoy bells, the distant moan of a foghorn. Mingling with those usual nighttime sounds was a slow, deep, sad spell-song and another that was higher and lighter, bouncing and chasing like a moth on a sea breeze.

  “Yes. Those are fishing songs,” Mara said.

  “They sound very different,” Professor Kosta said.

  “They’re for different things. The fast, high one is calling for slipfish—little bait fish,” she explained when the professor looked at her in question. “You have to sing fast to keep their attention. The other one is for a calm night. That’s why it’s so slow and soft—to soothe the waves.”

  “Can your magical songs do that?” the professor asked. “Renata led me to believe controlling the weather was beyond a human mage’s capability.”

  Mara liked the way the professor said “your magical songs,” as though any servant could sing a spell as well as a mage. “That’s true. Our mages can’t really change the weather. A song like that is telling the sea it’s okay to stay quiet tonight.”

  “Like a mother humming a child to sleep.”

  Mara nodded, happy Professor Kosta had understood. “Yes, like that.”

  “It’s a lovely song, and a little sad, I think,” Professor Kosta said.

  “Weather songs are always sad,” Mara said. “That’s the only kind of song the sea understands. It’s been that way since the time of the Three Sisters.”

  “Oh? I don’t believe I’ve heard about them.”

  “I can tell you, if you like.”

  Mara tried not to sound too eager, but the farther they drew from Tidewater Isle, the more the darkness and the fog closed around them. If the conversation ended and silence reigned, she wouldn’t have anything to do but count the oar strokes and tremble in fear until they arrived. No matter where she looked, no matter how she turned her head, her gaze kept drawing back to the east, where the dark silhouette of the Winter Blade would soon appear in the mist.

  She kept thinking: it’s not possible. The Lady had given her an impossible mission. There was no way Mara could succeed. She would get lost. She would be caught and the Lady would not be able to help her. She shouldn’t be here.

  Professor Kosta said, “I would love to hear it.”

  Mara glanced at the professor to see if she was serious. In her experience adults always assumed there was somebody better to tell stories than a fish girl.

  But Professor Kosta looked sincere, and Mara was relieved to have a distraction. She cleared her throat and began: “A long time ago, there were three sisters. Their parents had been lost at sea when they were very young. They had no family except one another.”

  Bindy used to tell Mara bedtime stories about great mages, her lively hands casting shadows on the walls as she recounted their triumphs and failures. Mara had loved most of Bindy’s stories, but the Three Sisters had never been her favorite. It always made her feel a little bit jealous, a little bit lonely, although Bindy never seemed to notice. Mara would have liked to have siblings of her own, somebody who could tell her what her parents had been like, somebody who could miss them with her. That’s why it stung so much when Izzy teased her about being just like a little sister. A real little sister wouldn’t be left alone when a person married or moved or left one job for another.

  Mara couldn’t worry about Izzy now. Fish Hook would find her. She was fine. In the morning Mara would tell her all about the night, no matter how many times the Lady swore her to secrecy.

  “The sisters became storm-mages when they grew up,” Mara went on. “The founders used to stir up storms to fight each other, and those storms were worse than anything natural. The storm-mages couldn’t stop them, but
they could warn sailors when it was getting very bad. That’s what the sisters wanted to do, because nobody had been able to warn their parents. They went to the Citadel and learned everything they could.”

  “I should like to see one of your city’s terrible storms,” said Professor Kosta. “They sound magnificent.”

  “They’re deadly,” said Driftwood. “Even without magic.”

  “Of course.” There was a note of apology in Professor Kosta’s voice. “Go on, Mara.”

  Mara scratched her chin with the wool blanket. With every stroke of Driftwood’s oars the lights of the city pulled farther away. To the north loomed the slumbering slopes of Greenwood Island, spotted with a few lonely lights winking through the mist. She would have liked to be heading toward those lights rather than away. Her fear was only growing stronger. She was certain the professor and Driftwood would be able to see it writhing beneath her skin if they looked close enough.

  “Then one winter when the sisters were grown, they learned there were two storms coming to the city. One from the east and one from the west,” Mara said.

  “Like two titans clashing,” said Professor Kosta. “Were they magical storms?”

  “Yes,” Mara said. “There were two families of founders battling each other beneath the sea. The eldest sister went west aboard a ship toward that storm, and the youngest sister went east, even though all they could do was warn sailors out of the way. The middle sister stayed home to warn the city. She was still waiting for her sisters to return when the storms joined together and blew for three days and three nights.” That wasn’t part of the original story, but Mara liked the sound of it. Three days of storm for three mage sisters. “She was getting desperate, and scared for her sisters. She went to the emissary to ask for help.”

  “The emissary?” Professor Kosta asked.

  “The person who talked to the founders,” Mara explained. “The founders didn’t like people bothering them all the time when they had more important things to do, so they picked just one person from the city who would carry messages to them.”