His eyes clouded, and his sharp questions ceased. Alba’s eyes snapped to me, widening. The guardsman began to speak, but his voice looped on itself, as though his mouth were full of overcooked porridge, and he tripped as he stepped toward us.
“Go,” I said to Alba. “Now.”
Her face blanched but impassive, she grabbed my arm and we ran toward the harbor. She navigated between warehouses and crates in teetering piles to a small office, more a shed of weather-beaten clapboard than a proper building. A shingle with a Fenian name and an anchor was nailed beside the door.
“Foolish girl!” she hissed. “Now they’ve all but proof you’re a caster—and casting curses beyond that!”
“We were going to be arrested,” I answered. “And I didn’t mean to use a curse.”
“Didn’t mean to?” She banged on the flimsy door. “For all the—How long will he stay muddled?”
I swallowed dry air. “I’ve never exactly experimented on humans before.”
“Then best to presume he’s already recovered his facilities.” She smacked the door with her open hand, growing, for the first time, visibly desperate. “Erdwin! Erdwin, get up!”
A frowsy-eyed, diminutive man answered the door moments later. He squinted at us, recognized in me a non-Fenian, and cursed in Galatine, “What in the depths of hell—oh, Alba!” He beamed. “Evenin’, dear. Fancy a drink?”
“Enough of that, Erdwin, move,” she ordered, shouldering him aside and yanking me through the door after her. “I’m going to need that favor now.”
9
ERDWIN TYSE WAS A FENIAN MERCHANT. HE REFERRED TO HIMSELF as a “private vessel operator.” Alba called him a mercenary. Either way, he had a ship headed for Galitha with space for us.
“A contract load of iron ore and shoes and various sundries for the glorious cause of Galitha,” he said as he showed Alba the ship’s license.
“Which glorious cause?”
“Does it matter?”
“It does to us,” Alba replied. “We’re not exactly welcome in some ports.”
“The glorious Reformist cause,” he replied. “The common men and their Rebel Prince.” I winced—I didn’t like the term, which made Theodor sound more like a usurper than an adherent to the law. Alba shook her head at me. Erdwin hadn’t guessed who I was, and she preferred to keep it that way.
“Very good,” Alba said.
“She leaves tomorrow morning.” He raised his little finger as he sipped his tea laced with Fenian whiskey. “I take it you’re not precisely on the up-and-up with the local authorities?”
“Am I ever?” Alba winked. She tasted her tea, then added another splash of fire-like whiskey. “It’s nothing to concern yourself over.”
He laughed, then burst into a spate of coughing. “Do I want to know? Better you not tell me. Then when the Decency Police drag me up by the thumbs, I can solemnly swear I knew nothing about your underground brothel or gambling ring or the fifteen pounds of Equatorial dimweed you smuggled in—Creator above, don’t tell me you smuggled in dimweed.”
“I did not smuggle in dimweed.” She sipped her tea. “This is better than your usual swill.”
“I’ve been making good profits lately,” he replied, ever so slightly defensive.
“War increases your business, I suppose?” Alba set her cup down. “At any rate, best we board tonight. The Night Guard hasn’t come sniffing around down here yet, but at some point they may decide to make a search—”
“You miffed the Night Guard, too? Creator’s arthritic kneecaps, Alba.”
“It was unavoidable.”
“This one doesn’t talk much,” he said, switching subjects so abruptly that I sloshed a bit of tea onto my saucer. The porcelain was finer than I would have expected, with gaudy gold vines painted on it.
“She doesn’t have to talk to you,” Alba said. “Seems to me we learned that lesson last time I came here, didn’t we?” She drummed a finger on the scratched table. “Sastra Orvline still insists we should have levied charges.”
“I only talked,” he grumbled.
“And the courts would have believed that.” She shook her head. “It seems to me you tried to sell her shares in a ship that didn’t exist.”
“Speculation, Alba! Shares on speculation of a purchase!”
“I don’t think she saw it the same way. I didn’t report you for shoddy business practice, and you’re going to do me this one small favor.”
“Favor that could land me a ticket to the cliff colonies.”
Alba shrugged. “In your line of work, transportation is always a risk. Now. To the ship?”
Erdwin threw back the last of his tea, and we followed him into the wharf’s narrow alleys. His ship, moored in the middle of a long dock of small vessels, was a thick-masted schooner with a gull carved into the prow. “The Buoyant Gull,” he introduced her, smacking her thick sides with an open palm.
“I presume she has your usual… modifications?” Alba said.
“Of course. And payment?”
“You can expect payment when we arrive in Galitha with our hides intact,” Alba retorted. “Payment. You should be so lucky.”
He tossed our wallets over the side and helped us up the rough rope ladder onto the deck. “They’ll be boarding before dawn and leaving Rylke Cove as soon as the port authority opens up to stamp their paperwork.” He nudged aside a barrel with his boot, and prized up a thin sliver of wood. Underneath was a cord; he tugged it, and a trapdoor opened. “Until then, hide out down there.” He stopped. “Don’t light any candles, fair?”
“Fine,” Alba said. “You’re going to let your crew know you have passengers, right?”
Erdwin paused. “Of course. Of course I am.”
“And that they won’t be paid unless we remain unharmed?”
“The usual precautions, all of that, yes.” He scanned the wharf, nervous. “Now let me get back to my usual habit of late rising lest I rouse suspicion of the Night Guard, eh?”
Alba acquiesced and we descended into the hidden hold.
I waited until the echo of his boots’ tread on the dock faded, then turned to Alba in the thin glow that a sliver of moonlight granted us. “Where on earth did you find him?”
“He found us. Thought that the good sisters would be an easy mark for one of his shills.”
“And you trust him?”
“He’s a businessman. In a sense,” she amended. “This is business. Besides, I know he won’t go to the port authority or the Night Guard or anyone else to report us.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“He said not to light any candles,” she replied. “This hold is stuffed with black powder, like as not, off the books. He’s probably trying to skip paying the export taxes on it.”
I shrank away from the crates pressing into my back. “Comforting.”
“Not quite as upsetting as whatever it was you did back there with the guardsman. Care to explain?”
I recalled with some trepidation how I had encircled the man, how he had reacted with the confusion I had cast on him. “There isn’t much to explain.”
“What made you think to try it?”
“I didn’t think to. I drew the curse accidentally along with a charm for us—it happens sometimes, ever since—” I sighed. Ever since the Midwinter Revolt, ever since I learned to cast curses, ever since I thought my brother was gone forever. Ever since my life had grown tangled and complex. “It happens sometimes. Sometimes when I’m startled or tired, more often than when I’m focusing.”
“And the charm for us? You drew that rather quickly.” I couldn’t see Alba’s face well in the soft blackness, but her voice had the cadence of a patient, long-suffering teacher. “I’ve never seen anything written about directly cursing or charming another person.”
“It’s what the Serafans do.”
“With music,” Alba countered. “And you didn’t use music. Or a needle and thread. I didn’t see you writing anything on a clay
tablet, either.”
“You know that I don’t need those things,” I snapped. “I still have to use some kind of medium to embed the charm. It’s in your cloak. Not incorporated very well—it’s already almost gone.” The faded golden haze clung like thin lint to our shoulders, quietly slipping back into the ether.
“In that case,” she said slowly. “There are opportunities here—I ought to have thought of this before. You could develop casting to its logical conclusion.” She paused, waiting for me to pick up the explanation. When I didn’t, she sighed and continued, “If you don’t need to use anything to create the charm or the curse, why would you need a medium to transfer it?”
“Because it fades as quickly as it’s cast if it’s not anchored to something.” I thought of something else. “The light or dark, it wants to go back where it came from, whatever that means. Like the Serafan musical casting. It only lasts as long as they’re actively pouring magic into the music.”
“But you can pull it directly and embed it that quickly. The curse magic. That is something. Something, perhaps, to counter the Serafans if it comes to it.”
She sounded delighted. I felt slightly nauseated.
“Have you ever tried it before?”
I chewed my lip. I had embedded curse magic in the water of a vase and accelerated the death and decay of the flowers in it, but only once.
“Not on people,” I answered. Maybe it was wrong to withhold some of what I knew from Alba, since she was an ally—but she was an ally with her own motivations, too.
“Until tonight.”
“And as you said, I don’t think it was a wise idea.” I had no idea if the man was still muddling in a cloud of manufactured confusion. I didn’t think so—my casting had been sloppy, meant to control rather than embed the curse, so I guessed it would melt away fairly quickly. But what did the aftereffects of a curse feel like? When I began casting curses, I felt ill every time. Guilt gnawed at me for the guardsman who might be experiencing something akin to a nasty hangover.
“Perhaps so, perhaps not. It unsnarled that particular snag for us.” I heard her settling against the crates. “Best to try to sleep a little,” she said. “We’ll be underway before long.”
10
IT TOOK ALMOST A FULL DAY BEFORE THE CREW OPENED THE HOLD to check the cargo and found us. Erdwin, apparently no stranger to smuggling human as well as explosive cargo, had outfitted the hold with some jugs of stale water, a large package of indestructible sea biscuit, and a bucket. By the time the full sun bore through the ceiling above us in narrow slivers, I was grateful for all three.
When the ship’s mate cracked the hold, Alba was ready with a calm smile and her hands folded as though in complacent prayer, like a Kvys meditation statue.
The mate cursed loudly, and Alba quietly addressed him, explaining her arrangement with Erdwin. At the mention of money, the mate grudgingly allowed us on deck.
“Does he know about the black powder?” I asked.
“Most certainly, though the rest of the crew, perhaps not.” Alba watched with laughing eyes as he slipped into the secret hold. She glided away on silent feet to the rail and settled her gaze on the far-distant smudge of gray that was the rim of Fen’s outer islands.
I, however, was tired of ships. Tired of the slow passages and the miles of open ocean, of the bracing wind and scent of salt. Each voyage meant time out of commission, time I wasn’t helping the efforts of the Reformists, time I had no chance of hearing from Theodor. Miles and days stretched on ahead of us in the inky-blue northern waters.
I could practice casting, but I was tired of rote maintenance of my skill. What I had done on the streets of Rylke suggested that I had the potential to develop new skills, but I wasn’t quite ready to touch those possibilities yet. At any rate, my charms’ contribution had ceased when we’d left Fen. I might cast superficial charms on equipment already at the Hazelwhite encampment, but the bulk of our charmed investment was en route now, from Fen.
Instead, I rested. I hauled a small barrel to a tucked-away corner of the deck, even though the salt spray was biting cold, and watched the waves beat ahead of us and the sea birds fight the wind above us. I sewed, mending tears in my petticoats, knowing that these two worsted wool skirts and the jacket I wore would have to serve for a long time. I took a length of linen from the hold—it was, I reasoned, for the Reformist army and I was part of that army—and sewed a spare shift for myself. I sewed long seams, turned raw edges over and felled them carefully against fraying, hemmed in narrow, tight lines. No charms, even if that might have been wise. Just the rote motions of sewing soothing me until my hands grew too cold and my fingers too stiff to continue.
The sailors noticed me, quietly sitting for long hours every day, often with a needle in hand. One wearing a dark blue jacket carefully patched with red-striped linen finally approached me with a length of torn sailcloth and a thick needle. I assessed the damage and accepted the unspoken and likely unpaid commission. He sat next to me and took up a rip on the other end.
Exactly like a morning in the atelier, except on the deck of a ship with a ragtag sailor and a length of heavy linen sailcloth in hand instead of silk. Still, it felt strangely right.
The meditation of needle and thread ended abruptly as the mate shouted something in Fenian and the sailor dropped his end of the cloth like it had burned him and rushed toward the rigging behind us. I gathered the cloth and carefully worked his needle into the weave, ready for him to pick up again when whatever urgent task he had been set to had been completed. Then I noticed how every sailor around me had jumped to attention, not only my sewing companion, and stowed my needle, as well.
Alba intercepted the captain, who forcefully shoved her aside before remembering himself with a senior member of the Order of the Golden Sphere and tersely barking a few words of explanation. She set her mouth in a thin line.
“We’ve a bit of trouble with what may be a Galatine ship, I fear,” she said.
“Galatine?”
“Royal Navy.”
“Royalist navy, you might say.” I peered across the waves toward the ship, and could just barely discern the blue and gold of the Royalist battle flag.
“In any case. They’re intercepting vessels bound for Galitha.”
“Fenian vessels?” I asked, shocked. “Couldn’t that lead to an international war?”
“War is international,” she snorted. “But yes. Anyone carrying cargo for Galitha, boarded and searched and questioned, and if the vessel is bound for the Reformist army, the cargo is captured as a prize.”
“Why am I only hearing about this now?” I exhaled through my nose.
“I ought to have guessed. But I hadn’t gotten any reports from Galitha, and neither had you. The captain seems aware of the problem, though, and didn’t deign to tell us. Neither did Erdwin, that rat. And we can have a nice long talk over tea later if you’d like, but for now I’d like to avoid capture.”
“Back in the hold?”
“I’m debating. You see, if we’re in the hold, we’re certainly hiding. What sort of people hide? Fugitives, spies, highly valuable enemy passengers.”
“Yes, I see,” I said. “So we stay on deck? Hope for the best?”
“If we’re boarded, they may only take the valuables. They may not bother with the ship itself—they probably won’t bother hauling this broken-down old barnacle back to port.” She softened. “If we were recognized and caught, it’s you who stands the most to lose. They might send me home—they probably would. You…”
“Captured most certainly, probably executed.” The salt air I inhaled was cold and painfully bracing.
“And so much for what you can do for Galitha.” She hesitated. “Not that I don’t value you, very much so, but I know you undervalue yourself. You are most certainly not expendable. Still. It is your life. So I won’t pretend to make the choice for us.”
Alba had made most of our choices thus far, guiding me past my inexperience and ig
norance. I took one slow, steadying breath—the last time I could be slow, deliberate, until this ordeal was over, I acknowledged. “If we’re on deck,” I said, grudging the words I knew were necessary even as I said them, “I could cast.”
11
DESPITE THE FENIAN VESSEL’S ATTEMPTS TO MANEUVER AWAY FROM the privateer, we were not nearly as swift and maneuverable as the Galatine ship. Alba was right—the Fenian ship was old, and though her broad belly was a pragmatic hold for goods, it made her slow under sail.
“She’s maneuvering to intercept, I think,” Alba commented, almost conversationally. Meanwhile, my heart was racing. “Not necessarily a position to destroy us—that is, I believe her priority will be capturing our cargo, which is good for our chances of survival. She won’t much want to damage her prize.” She could have been chatting about the weather, or choir rehearsal, or hedgeberry pie.
“How are you so calm?” I demanded. “We could be dead within the hour.”
She barely flinched. “I suppose I’m quite assured of my mortality,” she replied.
I blanched. “That is not helpful.”
“How so? It is only logical to be aware that this corporeal vessel of mine will rot away—not unlike this ship already appears to be doing. The creation is mortal, the Creator immortal, and there is nothing unnatural in that.”
I swallowed against a dry mouth. “I really didn’t need the reminder of my own, potentially very rapidly approaching, death.”
“You asked,” Alba said. “Death is merely the natural outcome of life.”
“Can we stop talking about death, please?” I eyed the Galatine ship, sails taut and prow now turning her nose in course to meet us.
“Of course.” She faced me. “Are you going to cast?”
I nodded. My strategy was only half-formed; had I known that we could be intercepted by enemy ships, I could have considered my options better. I could have, but perhaps I wouldn’t, I acknowledged. My understanding of shipboard tactics was shallow at best, and I had thus far resisted every thought of militarizing my magic.
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