by Kali Wallace
There were dozens and dozens of books about magic, in every language Mara recognized and many more she did not, but nothing that looked like Bindy’s journals.
Most of the books were dusty and old, some so brittle they looked like they would crumble at a touch. Before long Mara was sneezing and rubbing her eyes, but she didn’t stop searching.
On the wall at the far end of the room hung several shelves that contained no books, but instead held a collection of mirrors. Some were small and round, some large and square; others were set in crude wooden frames like what a fisherman might use for shaving. A few were polished and gleaming, but most were made of warped glass so dirty Mara wanted to wipe them clean. The mirrors hummed with magic, all in tune with one another, the same charm echoing over and over again.
She leaned closer, trying to hear the spell-song more clearly. Her nose was just inches away from one mirror when something moved in the reflection.
Mara jumped back and spun around.
There was nobody behind her. The library was empty.
She peered at the mirror again. She hadn’t imagined it. There was something moving in the glass.
A man in a brown apron stood at a high workbench. He was pouring steaming liquid from one flask to another. Wire spectacles perched on his thin nose; his hair was long and tied back at his neck. His lips were moving. She leaned closer, and she could hear, very faintly, a whisper of song.
The mirror was looking into another mage’s workroom. It was charmed by a spying spell.
She watched the mage for a minute or two, fascinated. The flasks made her wonder if he might be one of the Sumanti alchemists in the Greensmoke Quarter, or a healer on Quarantine Island mixing up potions and tinctures in preparation for the coming winter.
She turned her attention to the other mirrors. Those that were clear showed mages in their laboratories and workshops. She even recognized a few: she spotted Tulen the Storm-singer in her drafty garret, the High Mage himself visiting a bearded man in what looked like a Glassmaker Isle workshop, and the Lady of Spellbreak’s eldest daughter reading a scroll by candlelight. Some of the mirrors were so cloudy Mara couldn’t see anything at all, but she studied them nonetheless, watching for any glimpse of motion.
She couldn’t tell if any of the clouded mirrors peered into Renata Palisado’s tower laboratory. Did the Lady know the Muck could do this? He was watching mages all over the city. Most of them probably had no idea.
Mara hadn’t even known this kind of magic was possible. She knew mages spied on each other all the time, but not like this. Even Bindy, suspicious as she was with her spelled candles and secret journals, had only ever worried about another mage hearing her songs. She had never worried about somebody watching her in the privacy of her own home. The very possibility made Mara’s skin crawl. Had the Lord of the Muck been watching yesterday when she coughed and stumbled into the Lady’s laboratory tower? Had he been watching all those nights when Bindy told Mara a story to ease her to sleep while storms raged outside? Did he watch the High Mage when he met with students in the Citadel fretting before their exams? Did he look at these mirrors and laugh to himself about how easy it was to look down on the entire city from his towering fortress, how they underestimated him, how they couldn’t hide a thing from him, how they would never know what he could do?
Mara turned away, her stomach twisting with anger and guilt. The mages in the mirrors didn’t know they were being watched. One was an old woman scratching her nose and preparing for bed, not doing any kind of magic at all.
She had to find the Muck’s laboratory. She didn’t have time to search the entire library for Bindy’s journals. She had already stayed too long.
Mara was heading back to the library doors when a book in a tattered red binding caught her eye. It was a big volume, four inches thick, nearly two feet on edge. It was set up on a book stand, apart from the shelves and piles that swallowed all the others. Most of the title had long ago worn away, but she recognized the words Greenwoodland and Chance Islands and, most interesting of all, Founders. Greenwoodland was an old name for Greenwood Island; the main road in Gravetown was called Greenwoodland Way. Mara had never heard the city called the Chance Islands before, but sailors sometimes called it the Lucky Rocks, joking about how they had to be just as lucky as the original Sumanti explorers to find the islands in the great wide ocean. Luck and Chance were not such different things.
Mara turned to a page near the beginning and found a drawing of an underwater tower of gleaming black stone. The colors whirling around the tower were bright, but the ink was smudged in places. Fish circled the tower’s apex, and seaweed and kelp grew at its base like a garden. A long green serpent curled through a window in one turret. Mara traced the serpent’s length with her finger. The paper was as smooth as silk.
“It’s a lovely book, isn’t it?”
Mara froze.
“Very rare, as well. It might be the only one of its kind.”
Mara took a deep breath, then another.
“What are you doing here, child? Turn around. Don’t be rude.”
She curled her shaking hands into fists, and she turned.
10
The Lord of the Muck
Before he had become Lord of the Winter Blade, the Muck had lived in a crumbling, leaky, rat-infested row house on Quarantine Island. But you would never know it if you saw him sweeping through the markets and shops, dressed in the finest tunics and glittering jewelry, with his black hair oiled and his nose lifted above the stink of the streets. Bindy would tease him when he came into her shop, bowing and gesturing grandly, claiming that she could never serve such a fine mage, oh no, his exalted lordship must have the wrong shop. The Muck had never laughed at her jokes. Mara had never laughed either. She didn’t like to see Bindy trying so hard to elicit a response from a man who grimaced every time he stepped through the doorway.
For two years Mara had been picturing him exactly like that, only more so. She had imagined that his clothes would become fancier, with gold brocade and elaborate embroidery. His fingernails would have grown longer, his jewelry would gleam brighter, and his sneer would have deepened until its creases overtook his entire face.
But the man who stood before her wore wool trousers, a tunic with no ornamentation, and an apron covered with ruddy-brown stains. He was thin, with sloping shoulders and a high brow. His feet were bare. His graying hair was cropped short and mussed as though he had been running his hands through it. His long brown fingers were stained with splotches of ink.
He looked like any other man. Ordinary, even. Shorter than Mara remembered. He was not sneering. His eyes were dark and alert.
“It’s a translation, of course,” said the Lord of the Muck, inclining his head toward the great book on the stand. “The original was lost centuries ago. The author never saw the wonders he drew so beautifully, so it is of limited use. The artistry is its chief virtue. Can you read, girl?”
Mara couldn’t answer. She couldn’t breathe. He was only ten feet away. He had killed Bindy. He had taken away Mara’s home, her guardian, her future as a mage, everything. Now he stood between her and the door.
He took a few steps closer, without the least sign of hurry. He cocked his head to one side as he examined Mara. There was an assessing glint in his gaze. He recognized her. Her throat felt raw.
“You’re Renata’s little diving girl, aren’t you?”
Mara blinked. That was not what she expected him to say.
“I’ve seen you out on the water. You were the one who found my garbage dump.”
He didn’t recognize her as Bindy’s old servant, only a diving girl for the Lady of the Tides. But what did he mean by garbage dump? He had to mean the bones on the seafloor—so he had sunk them after all!—but they weren’t garbage. They were fantastic and valuable. She couldn’t make sense of anything. Her thoughts kept tripping over themselves. She had to get away. She couldn’t be captured.
“I imagine Renata be
lieves a bit of housebreaking is respectable if she’s the one ordering it,” the Muck said. “But I’m afraid whatever it is your Lady wants, she will remain unsatisfied tonight.”
Mara finally found her voice. “I’m not! I don’t know who that is. I was only— I only wanted—”
The Lord of the Muck raised his hand and crooked two fingers. “Whatever lie you are about to tell me will have to wait until morning. I’m in the middle of an important experiment, and it cannot be delayed to hear your fibs and excuses.”
At his gesture two men came into the library. One was tall and the other was short, and they both wore servants’ livery marked by stains and tears. They moved stiffly, like arthritic old watermen, and winced away from the flickering candles as they passed. Their faces were a sickly gray, their eyes a murky green. Mara stared at them in horror, unable to draw her gaze away from their sagging skin and stringy hair.
“We have an intruder,” said the Lord of the Muck.
The words broke Mara from her shock. She grabbed a small leather-bound book from a stack and flung it at the Muck; he grunted in surprise as it struck him in the stomach. Mara darted to the left, ducked around him while he was still recovering, and sprinted for the door.
She was fast, but the tall gray man was faster. She didn’t even realize he was beside her until he was already grabbing her arm. Mara twisted and pulled, but she couldn’t break free.
“Let me go!” she shouted, squirming and kicking. “Let me go, let me go!”
The tall man didn’t speak. He made no sound at all except for a rasping, gurgling breath.
Mara batted at his hand, his arm, his face. “Let me go!”
He had such an iron grip on her arm it felt like his fingers were digging into bone, and with his other hand he clamped a hand over her mouth to quiet her. Mara bit his hand as hard as she could; his fingers were cold and damp and tasted of fish. She gagged and tried to spit, but he was covering her mouth again. She had to get away. They were going to kill her. The Muck would turn her to stone like Gerrant of Greenwood, or worse, and nobody would ever know what had happened to her. She had to escape.
“Take her away,” said the Lord of the Muck. “Put her with the others. I’ll decide what to do with her tomorrow.”
The tall gray man didn’t say a word. He swung Mara easily over his shoulder, finally removing his hand from her mouth.
“Hey!” she shouted, pounding on his back with her fists. “Hey, put me down! Put me—”
Mara stopped, her words choking off in surprise.
In the man’s neck there were long slits like gills. The skin fluttered near Mara’s face, opening and closing, opening and closing. She was too startled to scream.
The tall man carried her out of the library. He had no light to find his way through the tower, but he didn’t seem to need one. Mara had left her murk-light behind; she couldn’t see a thing. She counted two staircases down and a single turn into a long, sloping corridor—this had to be the tunnel beyond the vertebrate-stone arch on the first floor—but after that she lost track. She only knew that he carried her down and down and down, until they were so deep in the tower they had to be below the sea surface. Mara squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to think about it, all the darkness around her and rock pressing in from every side.
“Where are we going?” she asked. Her voice was small in the overwhelming darkness. She tried to get free again, wriggling like a fish on a line because she didn’t know what else to do, but he was holding her too tightly. “Please? Sir? Where are we going?”
The gray man didn’t so much as grunt in response. She couldn’t see his gills in the dark, but she knew they were there. It gave her an unpleasant feeling to know those flaps of skin were fluttering with every noisy breath he took.
“Can you even talk?” Mara asked. “Are you even allowed? Hey!” She beat helplessly at his back. “Can’t you say anything?”
Down in the bowels of the fortress, the man finally stopped. Mara’s bravado vanished under a new wave of fear. Keys jangled as he opened a door, and a candle flared on the other side. The man flinched away from the light. Mara took the opportunity to twist for a look, but she couldn’t see anything except a crooked floor worn smooth where the door had scraped a groove into the stone. The air was dank and sour, like an animal pen.
A few steps more and she saw the iron bars.
Then she heard quiet coughing. Gasps of surprise. Soft whispering voices.
There were people behind the iron bars. Behind the locked door. Trapped in the dark.
It was a dungeon.
Mara began to struggle anew, beating at the man’s back and kicking her legs wildly. It didn’t do any good; the man barely seemed to notice. He carried her between the rows of cells, farther and farther into the darkness. The cells looked very old, the bars crusted with rust, the locks massive and bulky. Whispers rose as she passed.
“They’re back already?”
“So soon after the others?”
“Ask her if anybody knows we’re here!”
She couldn’t tell how many people there were. A foot here, a hand there. A man with a braided beard leaned against the bars, watching with narrow eyes. She glimpsed a twist of dark hair as a woman ducked away. Another man with tattoos on his face. A pale-skinned woman with straight gray hair. She couldn’t see all of them. The whole empty fortress above, hundreds of locked rooms and dark corridors, and the Muck was keeping prisoners in his dungeon.
The light from the single candle grew dimmer and dimmer. Mara could barely see when the gray man finally stopped and dumped her onto the cold, hard floor. She scrambled to her feet, but the gray man had already slammed the iron door shut. He turned a key in the lock and shuffled away, his shoes scraping noisily.
Mara shook the door as hard as she could, but she couldn’t budge it.
“Hey!” she shouted.
The gray man was no more than a silhouette blocking the candlelight.
“Hey! You can’t leave me here! Hey!” She knew it was no good, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. The prisoners around her murmured and muttered, so many people she couldn’t even see. “You can’t do this! You can’t just lock us up!”
But of course he could, and he had. The gray man didn’t even turn around. When he left and slammed the dungeon door, the candle sputtered, winked, finally blinked out, and everything went dark.
For a long moment, all Mara could see were the spots of light dancing before her eyes. All she could hear was the sound of her own ragged breath and her heart thumping in her ears.
Then, a quiet voice: “Mara? Is that you?”
11
Voices in the Dark
Mara shut her eyes and swallowed back a whimper. She could feel the darkness all around her. It was darker than the black stone, heavier than the island. In that moment she was five years old again, alone and lost in the crypts of the Ossuary. She was waiting for her parents to find her. They would find her. The storm would subside soon and they would swim to shore. Mum would be so worried but pretending not to be, and Dad so scared it made him gruff, and soon, any minute now, their voices would ring through the catacombs. Every howl of wind twisting through the ancient crypts became an echo of her name. A hundred times her heart stuttered with hope, and a hundred times her hopes dissolved into tears, until she had no more hope, and no more tears.
Alone in the dark, there was nothing left to do but hug her knees to her chest and sing a comforting old song to herself. Her mother’s favorite song, a sailors’ song about missing home, one that felt like cozy blankets on cold winter nights and embers glowing on the hearth.
“Mara? Is that you?”
The whisper seemed to come from everywhere all at once. Soft, so very soft, swallowed at once by the dungeon.
“Mara? Say something! Please?”
A spark of confusion broke through her fear. That wasn’t right. Nobody had said her name in the crypts. The voice that had found her, after an interminabl
e night, had slithered through the darkness like a sea snake winding through coral: “Little girl, where are you? What a pretty song that is. Let me help you. What a pretty little song.”
Mara had been convinced the voice was coming from the ancient skulls embedded in the walls. She hadn’t believed her eyes when she saw the first glow of a murk-light shining in the darkness. The person calling for her was not a crypt-dwelling ghoul or rattling skeleton, but a woman in a patched smock with ink-stained fingers and a kindly smile.
It wasn’t Bindy’s voice whispering to her now. This wasn’t the Ossuary. The air around her smelled not of seawater and ancient stone, but of unwashed people, refuse, and fear, all together creating a thick, choking stench that filled her throat.
Mara was in the dungeon of the Winter Blade, and somebody knew her name.
“Who’s there?” Mara said. The words were barely a rasp, caught in her sticky-thirsty mouth. “Who is that?”
“Mara? It’s me! It’s Izzy!”
“Izzy?” Mara’s eyes snapped open, but there was nothing to see except darkness. “Izzy! What are you doing here?”
Izzy let out a soft laugh, one with very little humor in it. “I was about to ask you the same thing. Please tell me they didn’t grab you when you came looking for me.”
“No, I— What do you mean? Who grabbed you? What happened?” Mara asked.
