City of Islands

by Kali Wallace

  “Almost free,” she said. She opened the last cuff and helped him sit up. She wanted to throw her arms around him, but he looked so shaky she was afraid she would knock him over.

  “Londe may not be here now, but I’m sure he’ll be back soon.” Bindy was making a slow circuit around the laboratory, peering curiously at the Muck’s experiments. The little winged lizard followed her with chirping, hopping steps.

  Fish Hook started to say something, flinched in pain, and pointed instead.

  “That’s Bindy,” Mara said.

  “But she’s—”

  Mara interrupted before he could hurt himself. “Supposed to be dead, yes.”

  Bindy laughed. “I’ve always found it so very tiresome to be what everybody says you’re supposed to be.”

  “She wants the fortress,” Mara said to Fish Hook. “That’s why she pretended to be dead. She’s wanted the Winter Blade all along.”

  From the corridor outside came a thunderous THUMP. The room shook. A cage full of parakeets squawked in panic.

  “We have to go,” Mara said. “Izzy and the others are already out. I’ll explain everything later. Can you walk?”

  Fish Hook slid down from the table and gave Mara a shaky nod.

  “Then we’re leaving,” Mara said.

  “Not until you hear what I have to say,” Bindy said. “You’ll like it, I promise.”

  Mara dragged Fish Hook toward the door. “I’m not listening. You lied to me about being dead and you lied about wanting to help people. You lied to me about everything! I’m not listening to you anymore.”

  Bindy only smiled. “Mara, don’t you see? All of this is ours now. I’ll make you a proper apprentice, now that you’re ready for it.”

  That brought Mara up short. “I’ll be your apprentice?”

  “Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?” Bindy said.

  For as long as Mara could remember, she had wanted to learn magic. When she was little and her parents were still alive, she would make up playful songs, pretending they were spells. She had never heeded her mother’s warnings that magic was not the solution to all problems. She would demand to hear stories about great mages over and over again; her mother, laughing, always complied. Even when her parents were gone, when Bindy was gone, when she was living on the streets, when she was toiling in the fish market, through every challenge and change she’d faced, she had never given up the dream of learning magic. When she had dove into the inky black water at the base of the Winter Blade only a few days ago, she had been driven in part by the Lady’s promise.

  It had always been magic. That had never changed. She didn’t think it ever would.

  But she had changed. She wasn’t five years old anymore, so desperate for a home she would believe anything Bindy said without question.

  “Why?” she asked.

  Bindy looked at her. “Why?”

  “Why do you want me as an apprentice?”

  “Don’t you want to learn magic?” Bindy asked, baffled, as though Mara was speaking nonsense. “Hasn’t that been what you’ve wanted all your life?”

  “I know what I want,” Mara said. “But you could have made me your apprentice at any time. You could have come back for me. And you didn’t.”

  It was another chance—not for Mara, but for Bindy to explain herself. Mara stared at Bindy so hard her eyes felt hot. She was on a precipice, a strong ocean wind pushing her toward the edge. All she needed was a sign that Bindy was sincere, and Mara could say yes.

  There was another ominous THUMP from the hallway.

  She only needed Bindy to answer.

  “We haven’t time for this, Mara,” Bindy said. “Stop playing games. Are you with me or not? If you know any useful songs, now would be the time to use them.”

  Mara had not thought her hopes and her heart could crumple any more than they already had. Bindy didn’t want an apprentice. She didn’t want Mara. It had only ever been the song.

  In the end, Mara did not find it such a difficult decision after all.

  “I am never going to work with you,” Mara said to Bindy, then she grabbed Fish Hook’s hand. “We have to go!”

  She ran, Fish Hook right behind her, but she knew even before they reached the door that it was too late. A shadow filled the doorway, just beyond the reach of the candlelight. It stood there for a long moment, agonizingly still.

  Then slowly, slowly, as though reaching deep for great effort, it moved forward.

  THUMP.

  The stone man stood in the doorway like a sentry. His broad-shouldered bulk blocked the entrance completely.

  There was no way out.

  The candlelight caught the yellow gemstone eyes, twin bright sparks blazing in his dull gray face. Fish Hook gasped in shock, and Bindy’s jaw dropped.

  “Gerrant,” said Bindy, her voice oddly strangled. “You—are you—all this time?”

  Mara had never heard Bindy sound like that. She had never seen her gaping at something with such wide eyes, so utterly at a loss for words. It was so unfamiliar it took Mara a moment to understand what was happening.

  Bindy was scared.

  “Mara,” Bindy said softly. Her voice shook; she sounded like somebody else entirely. “What have you done?”

  Fish Hook made a soft, surprised noise. Mara looked to see where he was pointing. When Bindy realized where they were staring, she turned as well.

  In the large upright mirror, thick smoke was swirling and billowing. The smoke parted and thinned, and Mara’s breath caught.

  The mirror spied into Renata Palisado’s tower laboratory, but the room looked as though a storm had passed through. There were bones scattered over the tabletop and on the floor; a few of the smaller ones had been crushed. A bench had been overturned, vials shattered and jars toppled, books and scrolls strewn about wildly. There was no sign of Feather or the Lady. The horned skull, the first Mara had found, lay in a puddle of rainwater on the floor.

  Fish Hook made a sound in his throat and squeezed Mara’s hand.

  The glass shimmered like water. Something moved at the side of the mirror, almost out of sight. The edge of a sleeve, the bend of a knee. A hand appeared. The fingers were long and stained with ink.

  “Curious,” said Bindy, her voice soft.

  The hand tapped the mirror from the other aside. The glass rippled like a puddle disturbed by a raindrop. The hand became an arm, the arm a shoulder, and the Lord of the Muck came into view.

  He reached into the mirror from the other side. There was a sound like a splash, but slower, droplets falling one after another to strike the stone floor. The Muck’s arm broke through the surface, and the mirror shattered. The glass changed to water as it fell, melting and liquefying just before splashing to the floor.

  He stepped through the rippling glass with one foot, then the other, hunching his shoulders through the frame. Glass broke all around him and turned to water in a sudden, brief cascade.

  The Muck shook droplets from his sleeves. “Hello, Belinda. It’s good to see you again.”

  21

  The Battle of Water and Bone

  A pool of water spread across the floor at the Muck’s feet.

  “That’s a neat trick,” Bindy said, the tightness in her voice belying the casual words. “Bit messy, though.”

  “Thank you,” said the Muck. “I’ve not had a chance to test it before. I wasn’t quite sure it would work. It used to be quite common, if the history books are to be believed. Can you imagine how tiresome that must have been, mages splashing through each other’s chambers like seals any time they fancied a visit?”

  Water sloshed around his shoes as he stepped forward. With another step the water began to harden, and by the time he had taken a third, the puddle was solidifying into glass again.

  “I don’t recall inviting you into my home,” he said. “How did you—”

  The Muck’s mouth dropped open in shock when he spotted the stone man.

  “How—what—what
is he doing here?”

  Bindy raised a single eyebrow, but there was obvious unease behind the casual expression. “You don’t know? Was it not your spell that trapped him?”

  The Muck’s mouth worked, lips opening and closing. “I didn’t—the fortress—the founders—how can he move? He’s never moved!”

  “Ah. Not your work after all,” Bindy said tightly. “I suppose you haven’t had time to learn all the tricks your new home has hidden away. Too busy betraying a friend. Stealing her songs. Leaving her for dead.”

  The Muck drew his gaze away from the stone man to glare at Bindy. “Don’t be petty. I seized an opportunity. You would have done the same if only you’d thought of it first.”

  “Ah. Well.” Bindy’s lips curved into a slight smile. “You’re not wrong about that.”

  Mara’s skin prickled all over. They were only talking, talking and watching each other warily, like seagulls eyeing the same dead fish. But the air crackled between them like storm clouds before the first strike of lightning.

  “It was reckless to come here,” the Muck said. “When I have succeeded, and I am transformed, the city will be mine to command as I please. Do you truly believe you can stand against me?”

  Bindy opened her mouth. Mara expected another sharp comment, an insult or a jest.

  Instead, Bindy began to sing.

  The Muck spun around to face her. “Belinda. Don’t be rash.”

  Bindy’s voice rose, her song growing stronger. Mara heard familiar words from an old funeral song—“Sail, sail away my love, across the darkest sea”—mixed in with words from the founders’ language. It set to a repetitive chant she didn’t know, but she thought it might be a rowing chant. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t elegant, but it was powerful, and when Bindy changed the words—“Sail, sail to me, return across the darkest sea”—the air began to quiver. Mara felt every note in her teeth, in her bones.

  She heard a splash behind her. She turned to look.

  On a high shelf against the laboratory wall, a large glass specimen jar began to rock back and forth. The fat black eels inside, dead and dissected only moments before, were slithering now, turning and wriggling. On another shelf, fish eyes rolled around and around in a jar, looking in every direction at once. From a table by the window a vase toppled and shattered; a spidery mass of birds’ feet scrabbled over the wreckage.

  Bindy’s voice rose sharply: “Sail, sail to me, my children, leave this mournful sea.”

  The eels thrashed against the glass, tipping the jar from the shelf. It shattered on the floor. The Muck took a startled step backward. His eyes were wide, his mouth open in surprise.

  Another jar crashed on the stones, and still Bindy was singing: “Sail, sail to me, my children, return your light to me.”

  Mara had never seen such magic before. She had watched Bindy sing to skeletons of mages to learn their secrets, to bones from creatures to borrow their instincts, to sharks’ teeth and whales’ bones and human skulls. But she had never seen this.

  Bindy was waking the dead.

  All throughout the laboratory, in the specimen jars and glass tanks, across the shelves and worktables, dead things were sloshing and splashing in answer to her voice. The commotion rattled the living creatures: the little winged lizard scampered around the room frantically, chirping and fluttering its wings. In its tank the lonely octopus stirred, white suckers pressing against the glass, arms lifting the lid as it searched for escape. Birds squawked angrily in their cages, loosing clouds of downy feathers.

  “What do we do?” Fish Hook whispered.

  “I don’t know!” Mara admitted helplessly.

  They couldn’t get past the stone man, and there was no other way out of the laboratory. She considered wild, dangerous, stupid ideas—breaking the windows, swimming for the surface. They would never make it. The water rushing into the chamber would crush them. Mara looked around and around, searching for anything that could help, any ideas at all.

  The Lord of the Muck hadn’t moved when Bindy’s song began animating the dead specimens. Now, as he watched, his expression twisted from surprised to calculating. His hands hung idly at his sides. His lips moved. He tilted his head to one side. He took a breath, and he muttered something. To Mara it sounded like “aahgraal mmumgraal,” grumbling syllables from the language of the founders, words she couldn’t even begin to understand. The spell wasn’t very loud, but the notes shuddered through the air, and Bindy stumbled.

  It was so slight Mara nearly missed it. Bindy didn’t fall or trip, only swayed a bit before catching her balance. The Muck’s voice rose to sing the powerful spell-song—those same syllables again and again, with slight variations each time. A new sound joined the sloshing and rattling of the dead things: the gentle scrape of glass on stone.

  Bindy looked down.

  The shards of glass on the floor softened into droplets, the droplets gathered into larger globs, the globs into puddles. The Muck kept singing, his voice rising and falling with an easy, rolling melody. In the tanks and jars that had not yet toppled, liquids of every color began to churn rhythmically in time with his song. It was water magic. The Muck was singing to the water all around them, bringing it under his control, just as Bindy was doing with the dead creatures.

  Bindy narrowed her eyes. She began to sing again, louder than before: “Sail, sail back to me, and leave the darkest sea.”

  The wriggling knot of preserved eels crept across the floor toward the Muck, leaving a trail of pungent green liquid. A bucket of crabs tipped over and skittered noisily after them.

  “Sail, sail to me, my children, and leave the dead seas empty!”

  The Muck paid no attention to Bindy’s song. He just kept singing his own spell, that rolling muddle of syllables and piecing high sounds, the language of the founders, angrier and more commanding than Mara had ever heard it. The Muck had not transformed himself yet, but he sounded as though he believed it inevitable. The certainty in his spell-song chilled Mara to her core.

  In a fish tank to his left, the water sloshed from one side to the other, back and forth, until the Muck sang out two ringing words—and these Mara understood perfectly.

  “Seize her!”

  The water froze momentarily at one side, then it twisted and stretched and reached out of the tank, forming into a long-fingered hand of shining, greenish liquid. The hand grabbed the shelf and tipped its own tank over; it smashed to the floor.

  The Muck’s song changed, shifted back to the language of the founders, and took on a storm-swift energy. All across the laboratory water rose into a rolling wave. Knee-high and roaring, the wave swept over the eels, over the crabs, over the flopping, slipping, struggling creatures, before it crashed into Mara and Fish Hook, knocking them over, and slammed into Bindy’s legs. She didn’t lose her footing, but her song faltered. Before she could even take a breath, the wave gathered again on the other side of the room.

  Fish Hook helped Mara to her feet. They needed an escape. A plan. Anything. The only way out was the door, and that was still blocked by the stone man. Bindy’s bone magic hadn’t moved him. The Muck’s water magic had no effect.

  The scrambling crabs reached the Muck and nipped at his ankles. He swept them away, but even as he stepped out of reach a slither of eels surrounded him. He kicked at them clumsily, trying to shake several crabs free from his trouser cuffs. His mouth twisted in a disgusted scowl. Bindy’s song fluttered briefly with laughter, and she danced through the puddles, snapping out a bit of spell-song. The wired-together bones of a sunfish stirred above the Muck’s worktable, scraping across the shelf, bone dragging on wood. The big skull, pushed along by its inching spine, nudged a stack of books over the edge of the table. Mara recognized them: Bindy’s journals, the ones the Muck had stolen, her cherished handwritten record of all of her bone magic.

  Bone magic. Water magic.

  A man of stone.

  “Oh,” Mara whispered.

  Fish Hook looked at her, his m
outh forming the silent question: What?

  Mara began to whisper the words to herself. It wasn’t going to work. She wasn’t even a real mage. You have to be bossy, Bindy had always said, and Mara felt anything but bossy. She felt trapped, with two powerful mages battling around her, Fish Hook hurt and scared at her side, water moving with a mind of its own, dead things dancing to Bindy’s spell, and just one idea for how to get out.

  It was only a song, an old sailors’ song, but it was all she had.

  She began to sing: “Over the sea and under the sky, my island home it waits for me.”

  The noise in the laboratory was deafening and chaotic: crashing bones and sloshing water, wet dead creatures and angry living ones, and voices rising in ever more urgent songs. Neither Bindy nor the Muck spared Mara the slightest glance. They were singing so loudly they didn’t even hear her. But it didn’t matter. Her song was having no effect. The stone man remained a statue. All she was doing was throwing empty words into the cacophony. Her voice would never be stronger than the voices of two trained mages. She hadn’t even meant to call to the stone before, so how would she ever be able to convince it to do what she wanted—

  But that wasn’t what she needed to do, was it?

  Mara stopped singing. You have to be bossy, Bindy always said. To make dead creatures scurry as though they were alive again. To make puddles of spilled water gather into hands and whirlpools and waves. To make elements and creatures and objects obey.

  Mara didn’t want the stone to obey her. She wanted it to remember.

  Somewhere deep inside, the stone knew it wasn’t supposed to be stone. It wasn’t a statue blocking their escape; it was Gerrant of Greenwood, a powerful mage, caught and trapped by magic so ancient nobody knew how it worked.

  Stone remembers: that’s what Bindy had said. Gerrant was a part of the fortress now—and the fortress had responded to Mara’s song. Even broken pieces of it, chipped away and drowned in the sea, they had heard her song, and they had answered.