City of Islands

by Kali Wallace

  Mara leaned away from the wall the tiniest bit, so tiny not even a fish could slip between, and looked down. She had come about halfway down the fortress’s formidable wall. She turned carefully, holding on to the stone blocks with one hand, then the other, her back pressed firmly against the stone. Her foothold was just wide enough for her heels to stick on the edge.

  Fog was gathering, but she still could see the water. She couldn’t tell if there were any dangerous rocks beneath the surface. There hadn’t been where she found the tunnel, but she didn’t know if it was the same all around the island.

  She didn’t have a choice. She felt the brush of the gray man’s fingers on her hair.

  She took a deep breath, and she jumped.

  Mara turned into the dive and struck the sea with a slap on her hands and face. Water churned around her in blinding bubbles. For several seconds she was stunned and disoriented, then she kicked to the surface and blinked water from her eyes.

  High above, the tall man was still clinging to the tower, spider-like and upside down, a gray blotch on black stone. Mara didn’t wait to see what he would do. She swam away from the Winter Blade as fast as she could. Away from the gray man, away from the Lord of the Muck.

  Away from Izzy.

  Mara needed to bring help, and she needed to do it fast. With every breath she saw Izzy in the Muck’s laboratory. She saw the delicate lines of his drawing as though they were inked on Izzy’s skin. She saw the jars of preserved fins and scales, the trays of sharp instruments, the table with the cuffs. And Izzy, clever, bright, courageous Izzy, telling Mara to escape.

  Like a coward, Mara had left her behind.

  She swam and swam and swam until her shoulders ached and she was gasping for breath. She was going to bring help. She was not going to abandon Izzy.

  She stopped only when night had fallen and the Winter Blade had vanished in the heavy fog. She treaded water and looked around to get her bearings. She didn’t hear any sounds of pursuit. No shouts, no splashes, no oars slicing through water. She saw no lights, no boats, no islands. She couldn’t even see any stars.

  She was too tired and too hungry to swim for long. She had to go somewhere, find a boat or an island, even a wave-washed jut of rock where she could rest.

  She wasn’t lost. She couldn’t be lost. She could see the city in her mind, not as it looked on Renata Palisado’s map, flat and lifeless, but as she had seen it the day her father had taken her up a winding stone staircase on Greenwood Island. In the hours before dawn they had climbed the tree-choked slopes to a lookout atop a ridge. Her father sang as they walked, his voice booming through the morning with a silly Greenwooder song:

  “Ask the shepherd with her staff if her sheep are well.

  Ask the ranger with her ax for a tree to fell.

  Ask the mason with her chisel why stone rings a bell.

  Ask the digger with her spade if the dead feel swell.”

  When they reached the top, a break in the forest provided a view over the city. They had gazed down on all the islands and ships and ports waking with the day, coming alive with color and motion and light as the sun rose. It remained one of the most beautiful sights Mara had ever seen. She would never forget.

  She knew this city. She knew these islands.

  There was a light in the distance.

  Mara blinked several times. Through the shifting fog, high above the water, there was a line of small sparkling lights. They were so faint they might have been stars, but Mara knew better. They were the lanterns along the bridge between Spellbreak and Cedar Isles, the one shaped like a kraken’s reaching tentacles. It seemed impossibly far away, a delicate necklace in the sky, but the shape was unmistakable.

  She was looking right at the heart of the city. She wasn’t lost at all. She could find the nearest land from here. She headed north and west with long, easy strokes, breathing regularly, not racing. Once or twice she thought she saw a ship on the waves, not too far away, but each time it vanished like a mirage. The current pushed her along. She knew better than to fight it. The sea would always be stronger than one girl.

  She had been swimming long enough to settle into a rhythm when something brushed her foot. Mara kicked in surprise, gulping seawater and coughing, but she didn’t feel it again. Maybe she had imagined it, or maybe it was only a bayfish. They were big and curious but harmless. Nothing to be afraid of.

  Then she felt it a second time: a nudge.

  Her heart, already thumping, skipped in fear. Only a bayfish, she thought, desperate to make it true. It couldn’t be a shark or a hunting whale. No predator would be so careless as to bump her before it attacked. It had to be a bayfish.

  A massive shape breached the surface not ten feet away. It was so long it seemed to go on forever. Its scales shimmered black and green in the starlight.

  Mara was too shocked to swim away. She didn’t even remember to kick her legs until she began to sink.

  There it was again, arching out of the water, so close she could touch it if she dared. Something brushed her back, her knees. Its scales were slick and smooth and warm.

  A sea serpent.

  It was a sea serpent.

  It was impossible. She and Fish Hook had laughed about it just the other day, said Svana’s son had to be imagining things. But the proof was right in front of Mara. Her heart was racing so hard it hurt. She couldn’t catch her breath. It was so huge. The mosaics and statues had not prepared her for how big it was. If it attacked—did they attack people?—if it attacked she wouldn’t be able to do anything.

  The serpent circled her and nudged her feet. It wasn’t an aggressive nudge, just a tap. Mara turned and turned, trying to follow the serpent’s path. It didn’t seem to be trying to hurt her or frighten her. That nudge seemed—almost gentle, she thought incredulously. They were intelligent creatures. There were stories about loyal sea serpents going on adventures with their founders, about returning year after year to where their founders had died. Those weren’t the actions of vicious animals.

  It wasn’t attacking her. It was only letting her know it was here.

  “Hello,” Mara said. Her voice shook. Laughter gathered at the top of her lungs. “Hello.”

  That’s when she saw the second one. It was smaller, not quite as fat around as the first. It drew its entire long body into the water, ending with a flick of its tail. Mara heard a splash behind her and turned. There was a third. She tried to look at all of them at once. They glided around her in lazy circles, bumping softly at her legs, never hurting her.

  One lifted its big head above water. It moved to the side, its dark eyes glittering before it dove, then surfaced a few feet away. It came back to do the same thing again, moving in the same direction. When it did it a third time, Mara felt a spark of understanding.

  “Are you . . .” She paused for breath; she was so tired. “Are you trying to tell me something?”

  She felt a bit silly—it wasn’t like they could understand her—but the feeling vanished when another of the serpents nudged at her back, pushing her in the same direction the first had indicated.

  They were trying to tell her something. They were showing her where to go.

  She looked across the water. Land. There was an island in the distance, just visible through the fog. The sea serpents were pointing her toward land. She had drifted off course. Without their help she would have missed her destination in the darkness.

  Mara laughed again, giddy with disbelief and relief. “Thank you,” she said, breathless and overwhelmed. “Thank you!”

  When Mara began to swim again, the serpents swam with her. They circled her smoothly, bumping her legs when she flagged, sometimes sliding farther away but always returning, always staying near. They were watching over her.

  She was too tired to swim very fast, but before long she heard the sound of the surf dragging on a beach. When she could put her feet down, she stood on exhausted, wobbly legs and turned around.

  All three sea serpent
s watched her with their glittering eyes.

  “Bye,” she whispered. “Thank you. Be careful.”

  Then, one by one, they dove away. Their long, slick bodies glistened before they disappeared into the waves. She watched for a long time, her heart aching with sadness, but they didn’t return.

  After days filled with so much strangeness and a night filled with so much fear, the serpents seemed to Mara both perfectly natural and perfectly magical. She didn’t know why they were here, in the city their masters had abandoned. She didn’t know how it was even possible. She didn’t know why they had helped her. All she knew was that she hoped to see them again.

  Bleary-eyed with exhaustion, she turned away from the sea to stagger up the beach. There were no buildings or docks along the shore. She heard a drift of music, but it came from far across the water. The island in front of her was lit only by scattered candles dotting tiers, terraces, and crooked stone pathways. It was eerie and quiet. Mara recognized it immediately.

  She had found her way to the Ossuary.

  14

  The Graveyard Island

  Mara stumbled along the black-sand beach toward the Ossuary’s single dock. As awed as she was by the sea serpents, and as lonely as she felt now that they were gone, Izzy needed her help. Nothing was more important than that. The momentary calm she had felt with the serpents swimming beside her was gone. She had to get back to Tidewater Isle. She had to stop the Muck before he hurt anyone else.

  She didn’t think there would be any mourners or gravediggers on the island after dark, but she had to check. Her only other choice was to swim the long distance to Summer Island.

  The Ossuary was made of the same black stone as the other islands, but it was a long hump rather than a narrow spire, like a whale lying on its side. The founders had never shaped it with their magic, and it had no towers or palaces, as it had only ever been home to the dead. Here and there spots of light punctured the darkness; mourners brought candles and oil lamps to leave on the graves. The candles were said to help the dead navigate the sea during their long, dark night. Nobody ever seemed to wonder why the dead needed to navigate anywhere if they were trapped safely in their crypts, but the tradition persisted.

  Mara climbed a staircase to the top of a crumbling sea wall and followed a path to the western end of the island. The fog was thickening, and a soft rain began to fall. It was going to be a chilly night. She could barely see the lights of Gravetown, just across the water on the shore of Greenwood Island.

  She didn’t know which of those specks of light was her old home or who was living there now. Another family of stonemasons, perhaps. A father who greeted the dawn with silly children’s songs and fed stray cats with scraps from their table. A mother who loved to walk barefoot on the beaches on sunny days and kept a precise ranking of her favorite sea captains, duelists, and adventurers from history. There might be a tabletop scattered with intricate sketches, a bubbling pot of spicy fish stew, tea in earthen mugs that had been given to them by the potter who lived in the muddy valley above town. There might be a little girl who slept in the warm loft beside the fireplace. Instead of being an only child she would have brothers and sisters all around her, so many there was no chance she would ever be left alone.

  Mara pushed those thoughts away. Feeling sorry for herself wasn’t going to help Izzy.

  A cold wind rose, twisting the fog in wraith-like whirls. The sea was growing rougher; the air smelled like a storm was approaching. It would be hard to swim to Summer Island. Mara didn’t even know if she could make it.

  When she reached the western edge of the island, she leaned out from the terrace for a look down at the dock. Her heart skipped in surprise.

  There was a ship.

  She jumped to her feet and scrambled to a lower terrace. She could beg the crew for passage to Tidewater Isle. She could be back before the Lady finished supper.

  She took in a breath to call out, but the words caught in her throat.

  The ship was a two-masted caravel, smaller than the ocean-going merchant ships but larger, faster, and more agile than what mourners, gravediggers, or stonemasons would use to travel to the Ossuary.

  It was painted black from bow to stern.

  It carried no flag.

  It had no name on its prow.

  Mara lowered herself to the terrace, her heart thumping with fear.

  A black ship, docked on an empty island. It was a pirate ship.

  She had thought she saw a ship while she was swimming, but she hadn’t been sure, then the sea serpents had appeared and it went out of her mind. Maybe it had been so hard to see because it was black. But where could it have come from? None of the usual shipping lanes crossed the waters near the Winter Blade.

  A pirate ship coming from that direction could have come from just one place: the Winter Blade itself.

  The prisoners had been grabbed off the docks by masked pirates. Mara’s stomach twisted with fear. If the pirates were working for the Lord of the Muck, what were they doing at the Ossuary? There was nobody to kidnap here, and there were better places to hide.

  She saw only one figure on the ship’s deck. She didn’t hear any voices. She couldn’t see much from this far away, but it looked like they were battening the ship for the storm. She crept away from the edge of the terrace, then stood quietly and took a step back.

  A hand seized her left arm.

  “What do we have here?” a voice hissed in her ear.

  Mara froze. Something sharp pressed into the underside of her chin.

  “Who sent you?” the voice asked.

  Mara lifted her chin a little so the point of the knife—it had to be a knife—wasn’t jabbing into her jaw. She was really starting to get tired of people grabbing her in the dark.

  “Nobody sent me.” Her voice shook, but she went on. “I’m allowed to be here.”

  “You’re watching us.” It was a woman’s voice, made hoarse by the hissing, but through her whisper Mara could hear the musical lilt of the Glassmaker Isle craftsmen. It was a strangely posh accent for a pirate, but then Mara hadn’t met very many pirates. Maybe they were all former glassmakers turned to freebooting.

  “Why would I want to watch you? I don’t even know you.” Mara knew her voice was a shade too loud, but that was better than letting her fear show.

  “It was a mistake for you to come here,” said the woman.

  “Okay,” Mara said. “I’ll just leave. I don’t want to be here anyway.”

  The woman laughed softly. “I don’t think so. Walk.”

  She steered Mara along the rows of wind-worn graves, never once letting go of her arm. Every time Mara tried to see her face, the woman jabbed the blade under her jaw and hissed a warning. They passed crypts carved with elaborate scenes of founders swimming in underwater palaces, sea battles between tall ships, great leviathans being jabbed with harpoons, before finally stopping at a curiously plain mausoleum. The only thing marring the stone door was a small, carved symbol in one corner: a tool with a pickax at one end and a key at the other. Mara didn’t know this particular tomb, but she recognized that symbol as the one gravediggers used to mark their secret entrances to the catacombs. Bindy had taught her to look for it when they were robbing graves for mages’ bones.

  The woman felt around the mausoleum door for a hidden latch. The lock clicked, and the door groaned open.

  “Inside,” she said.

  She nudged Mara forward. There was no light, and there was only one way to go: down.

  The steps were slick and uneven, twisting sharply around corners. Mara kept one hand on the wall for balance. She couldn’t see anything. She stumbled when the steps gave way to flat floor, but the woman’s hand on her arm kept her from falling. A tiny flame appeared in the darkness. It was a single candle tucked into what Mara assumed was a hole in the wall—until she saw that it was actually the eye socket of a skull.

  They had gone down past the neat stone crypts and fancy tombs into the bone-line
d tunnels that gave the Ossuary its name. The candle winked out as they passed, and a second flared several steps later. Mara twisted for a glimpse of the woman. She saw a pointed chin, white teeth, dark eyes.

  “Don’t,” said the woman. “Keep walking.”

  Before long, a glow filled the tunnel ahead. The cloaked stranger steered Mara down a short flight of stairs, through a doorway, and into a room lit by firelight. After so much dark the brightness stung Mara’s eyes. She blinked until the spots cleared.

  The chamber had once been a large crypt, the sort where an entire family might have been buried. All the niches in the wall were empty of bones and coffins now; in one of them a bed had been made up with a colorful quilt folded over a shaggy straw mattress. A few woven rugs were scattered on the floor. A half circle of chairs and wooden benches huddled near a central pit, where a small fire was burning. Smoke curled into a hole in the ceiling—was a draft drawing through the cracks?—but most of it lingered, obscuring the far corners of the crypt in murky shadows. Distantly Mara could hear wind whistling and waves crashing as the weather worsened.

  Somebody had been living in this crypt, and quite comfortably, for some time. There was even a kettle, a tea tin, and a few cooking pots resting on a flat stone by the fire. A single spoon sat atop a jar of sugar.

  The first person Mara saw was a girl of about fourteen. She was sitting by the fire and roasting chunks of fish on skewers. The hot crackle made Mara’s mouth water. She was so hungry she stared at the food for a long moment before she noticed that the girl had wings.

  Mara blinked.

  The girl had wings.

  It wasn’t a trick of the smoke and light. Right behind her shoulders there were two wings jutting from her back. The feathers were black on the top and white underneath, like those of an albatross, but much larger. The tips touched the floor.