Splendor and Spark

by Mary Taranta

  Rialdo saunters on board in his Brindaigelian army uniform, a pack slung over one shoulder. His wife and two young daughters trail behind him, expressions stony.

  Bryn stiffens, and I glance over at her, surprised. Is that concern for her brother, or concern for her husband? We only have magic enough for ten of us to enter the Burn; Rialdo puts us off-balance. He hasn’t trained to fight the hellborne—or himself, should the poison enter his blood—and he will be a stranger among soldiers who have known one another for years. Like me, he is a variable to be viewed with distrust.

  North’s expression remains carefully guarded. With so many witnesses, to deny Perrote’s offer would be an act of hostility, and he can see which way the crowd is leaning. He has no choice but to accept with a tight incline of his chin. Another grateful beneficiary of Perrote’s unparalleled generosity. But, like me, he seems bemused by the offering. What does Perrote hope to gain by sending his son into the Burn?

  “This should be interesting,” North says beneath his breath as he heads belowdecks, leaving Bryn to stand alone, unacknowledged, on the deck.

  Perrote offers her his arm, and she takes it stiffly, eyes locking with mine.

  Her husband, I think. My sister.

  Nobody is safe in this new game of war.

  * * *

  Sailing does not suit me.

  Within an hour of our leaving the harbor behind, the sea turns violent. The Mainstay dips and bucks with a stomach-churning variability that keeps me pinned to the deck as my breakfast taunts me with a game of will-it-or-won’t-it make a triumphant return.

  The only relief is the spray of cold water against my flushed face, but it doesn’t take long for the water to harden into chips of ice in my hair. There’s snow on the horizon, and in my panicked state I imagine it to be an omen of Rook, God Above. Or perhaps punishment from Tell, Goddess Below. We left the earth behind, and she is warning us to go back where we belong.

  My misery is compounded by how little the weather seems to affect anyone else. Chadwick and his men run through training exercises on the crowded deck while Rialdo watches from above, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. Bront, one of Davik’s brothers, is at the helm while Tieg, the other, secures the ropes around the crates of supplies.

  Davik herself maneuvers around the soldiers with a lithe grace that belies her strength. Despite the chill, she only wears a sweater, with the sleeves punched up to her elbows, showing off a map of tattoos and scars wrought from a lifetime of charting her own freedom. I’ve gleaned her story from the few visits she made to the palace to speak with North. She salvaged the Mainstay when she was my age, facing a similar story: younger siblings to feed, dead parents, and no other easy way to make money. But where I found Bryn, Davik found freedom.

  My envy is almost palpable.

  “I never cared for the water.” I stiffen, hugging the railing as North joins me, hands shoved into the pockets of his overcoat. The wind snaps his hair across his forehead, and he absently brushes it aside, only for it to fall forward again. “It doesn’t hold magic at all; it doesn’t seem to hold history. Not like the earth.”

  I hesitate in my reply, not wanting to encourage him in conversation, and yet eager for a distraction from the rolling horizon. Behind me I can feel Chadwick’s disapproving glare burning into the back of my neck.

  Shifting my weight, I search for safer—less personal—topics. Tipping my chin toward Rialdo, who is still watching the soldiers through a haze of cigarette smoke, I say, “Do we know why he’s here?”

  “His father is an optimistic bastard,” North says, almost cheerfully. “Rialdo certainly can’t kill me before I kill Merlock, and he’s not my heir so he can’t do it after I inherit, either. But that doesn’t mean he can’t steal Merlock’s heart and ferry it home to his father. After that, it’s just a matter of Perrote killing you to get to Bryndalin’s blood, killing her, and then killing Rialdo to release the heart. Like magic, he inherits the world.” A wry smile crosses his face. “I imagine at some point he’ll find the time to kill me as well.”

  My stomach somersaults at his flippancy. “Rialdo’s a proxy?”

  “Yes,” North says, surprised. “You know about proxies?”

  I force a smile to hide my guilt. “He’s willing to die for his father?”

  “His father is willing to kill him, and Rialdo can’t argue.” He taps his chest, above his heart, where Rialdo—as a member of Perrote’s army—wears the same loyalty spell that Alistair does, linking him to his father’s every command. The idea of so much murder is a chilling prospect, and I shiver, unnerved by the cold ambition so rampant in their family. Then again, Perrote had seven children, and he only needed one heir. All the rest are redundancies, and they know it.

  North leans against the railing and studies me with a slight smile. “Don’t fear for me, Miss Locke. If I die a king, it will be at my wife’s hands, not her father’s. And fortunately, she has no reason to kill me, not while she still has bargaining power.”

  Me. He means she would use me as a bargaining tool against North’s magic.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I never intended to be such a liability.”

  “Don’t apologize,” North says with a hint of bitterness, shaking his head. “It was my decision alone that put us in this position.”

  “Sir.” Chadwick clears his throat, and North turns toward him, eyebrows raised in question. Chadwick’s eyes cut toward me. “It’s time,” he says.

  North nods and straightens, glancing back toward the diminishing city behind us. “All right, Miss Locke,” he says. “The hunt begins.”

  Eleven

  CHADWICK LEADS US BELOWDECKS, THROUGH a narrow hall hung with nets and ropes. His soldiers eat in the galley kitchen to the left; our bedrolls lie waiting in the cargo hold on the right. But we bypass both and reach the captain’s quarters, where he knocks once on the heavy wooden door, before it swings open in invitation.

  It’s a small room, but cozy, with a built-in bed that reminds me of the bunks in North’s wagon, a narrow desk, and a bureau. Even without windows to see outside, I feel the water levels rise and plummet. My stomach follows suit.

  Davik stands at the desk, studying a map that’s laid out and weighted down by navigational equipment. Sofreya sits perched on the edge of the built-in bed while Chadwick closes the door behind us and takes his usual stance, arms crossed.

  “Merlock was in Prevast when you saw him with your mother’s spell,” says North, approaching the map and tagging the capital. “But the Burn stretches from the sea back to the Kettich Mountains. We need to know where he is now, to know where to dock.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Of course.” My eyes stray toward the door and the thought of miles of water around us, with no access to the Burn to ignite my mother’s spell. With North still ignorant of my ability to find Merlock by encouraging my own vices into action, I tentatively ask, “How . . . ?”

  North grimaces and runs a hand through his hair, spiking it as Sofreya flinches and stands, forcing a smile. She holds out a small jar full of rocks.

  Black rocks.

  My heart thumps painfully in my chest with leftover fear from the night before. I look to Chadwick in accusation: It’s his fault that North doesn’t know another way. “Oh. You’re going to poison me.”

  North won’t meet my eyes. “Only a little. It’ll be localized. I’ll transfer it into you, because Sofreya has never been infected. But then she’ll excise it immediately, using a buffer. It’s risky, but Avinea is huge; we need to narrow it down as much as possible.”

  My eyes fall to his wrists, hidden beneath the sleeves of his coat. “Does the council know you’re performing magic?”

  “The council isn’t here.”

  What am I afraid of? I knew to expect this; it’s why I came. And North isn’t asking me to cut out his father’s heart, only to pinpoint Merlock’s location. Yet fear lingers, like cold fingertips pressed against my spine. Perhaps it’s not fe
ar, but shame that North is willing to sacrifice so much for his kingdom, and I’m not.

  “Miss Locke, you are not obligated—”

  “I know,” I interrupt. I meet Chadwick’s gaze in challenge. Shrugging out of my coat, I fumble to unbutton the collar of my soldier’s uniform and expose the clean black tunic underneath. Sofreya directs me to the bed, and I sit, briefly closing my eyes as the boat bucks again.

  “So how does this work?” Davik asks, inching closer. “Will you magically vanish into the Burn?”

  I force a smile to hide my growing unease. “It’s almost like I become two people. One stays behind and one wanders off.”

  “It’s a scrying spell.” North takes a seat beside me. The bed is narrow, and there’s no room to be polite; our legs collide as he angles himself for a better position. “Only instead of needing water, it requires poison to work.”

  Unlike the shadow birds or rats that Perrote’s guards used to spy on us in Brindaigel, I project my entire body with the spell—including all its human weaknesses. Shadow rats could still bite. And I could still die.

  Davik shakes her head and rubs her arms, muttering under her breath about defying the gods. She’s Chadwick’s age, and only has memories of what magic can do when left to fester. Like Sofreya, she views magic as a danger.

  I can’t argue with that.

  The spells at North’s wrists have been removed, but this close, I can see the finer details of the spell at his throat, perpendicular lines intersected with circles and dots.

  “What does that one do?” I ask.

  North cuffs his shirtsleeves back. “Gives me strength,” he says.

  “And how does that work?”

  The edge of his mouth quirks into half a smile. “Magic.”

  Sofreya hands him the jar, and the stones click together as he curls one into his fingers. I rake the collar of my tunic back to expose the puckered, stitched skin above my mother’s spell, and he sucks in a deep, steadying breath.

  “I’m so sorry,” he says, pressing the stone to my skin.

  The first time the infection entered my blood, it was amplified through Bryn, and the pain was bright enough to burn the stars from the skies. But like this, with North guiding the poison, it’s more of an ache, like too much wine or too much wanting. The poison calls my vices out of hiding, and a tiny worm of desire inches through my stomach at North’s proximity. This close, I see him for who he really is: barely nineteen, and not nearly as confident as he pretends to be. Same as the first time I met him, he’s in need of a shave, but it suits him, with his serious eyes and his parted lips and his total concentration on the task at hand.

  And then the spell ignites with a flash of warmth and a tug behind my heart, and I’m flying over miles of water, over the jagged coastline of Avinea, past abandoned cities and empty fields and campfires demarking tribes of hellborne surviving in a vast expanse of nothingness.

  But I’m moving too fast to see anything concrete, to recognize any landmark I might be able to match against North’s maps. Panic begins to claw at my chest, digging into my throat, and I fight the spell the way Sofreya taught me, trying to slow it down, to give myself time to breathe.

  As suddenly as I began, I stop, dropping to a dune of ash as tall as the building beside it. I gain my feet, breathless as if I raced here instead of flew. I’m standing in a wide street with the ruins of wealthy townhomes on either side. There are mountains ahead of me, hazy in the distance, and the remnants of an enormous church behind me. The roof has collapsed, and all that remains are arches and walls and the frames of broken windows.

  And a circle of small stones, stacked in offering along one of the rotting sills. As previously, some have turned black while others are varying shades of gray, indicating how long they’ve been exposed to the Burn.

  Bemused, I reach for the one closest to me, slender, pale—warm.

  Something inside the church creaks, and I drop into a defensive crouch, inwardly cursing myself for hiding Chadwick’s dagger deep in my bedroll for the journey, out of reach for practical use. I’m not ready for this, and already the fear of my last encounter with Merlock clouds my thoughts, makes me frantic. Another crack sounds, and as I press myself against the half-wall beside me, one of the remaining arches breaks loose of its moorings and collapses into a cloud of rubble and dust. Shadows flicker; I hear muted voices, as though caught underwater. Two men, arguing.

  Coughing, I back away from the church, eyes watering from displaced ash. One of the voices is Merlock’s, but the other one I cannot place. Does Merlock have an ally here in the Burn?

  Without warning, the ground dissolves beneath me and I’m thrown back into my body on Davik’s cot, gasping as my heart hits my spine and bounces back against my ribs.

  North is there, concern etched across his shadowed face. “Are you all right?”

  I’m sprawled on my back. I scramble to sit up again, only to see the others staring at me as if I’m a ghost. My tunic is soaked with sweat and my chest hurts, as if I were dealt a strong blow from a worthy opponent.

  “I’m sorry,” North says. “I didn’t know how else to bring you back. . . .”

  He’s holding a knife, the blade slick with blood. My blood.

  Still panting, I examine my arm and see the shallow cut he made. “You were in a trance,” he explains, his voice full of self-recrimination. “I thought perhaps pain might wake you up.”

  I force a smile. I swallow hard, fighting to control my breathing. “You were right. Thank you.”

  Chadwick clears his throat. “Did it work?”

  “How could it?” Davik looks skeptical as she hands North a clean bandage. “She was here the entire time.”

  “She’s glowing.” Sofreya looks like she might cry. “Look at her, lit up like starlight. It’s a gift from the gods.”

  “So where are we going?” Chadwick asks, moving to the map.

  I press the heel of my hand to my temple as North gently binds my bleeding arm. It is a risky move, to have his skin so close to mine, and yet I’m not in a state to care.

  “It wasn’t Prevast,” I say, watching him work. “It was somewhere smaller. Near the mountains. A village, maybe.”

  “The mountains?” Chadwick exchanges skeptical looks with North. “There are no mountains in Prevast.”

  “He wasn’t in Prevast,” I repeat.

  “Are you sure? It’s a big city.”

  “I’m positive,” I say, seething at Chadwick’s patronizing tone.

  “The mountains are on the southern edge of the Burn,” says North with a frown. “Was it the Kettich Mountains or the Heralds?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We don’t have enough magic to cross the entire Burn looking for him,” Sofreya says. “If he’s moving, we need to know where he’s going, not where he’s been.”

  “What else did you see?” Chadwick demands.

  “There was a church. Or at least, what was left of one.”

  North presses his thumbs once against the bandage, soft as a kiss, before standing and joining Chadwick at the desk. “What type of church?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “It had . . . church things. Arches. Windows. There was a waterfall behind it.”

  “Oksgar,” North says with complete conviction, pressing his finger to the map. He repeats the name beneath his breath. A spark of excitement lights his face, and I stare at him greedily, hungry for more of this forgotten North, where enthusiasm outweighs obligation. “Here. If we dock in Bresdol—”

  “There’s no harbor in Bresdol,” Chadwick interrupts, shaking his head. He points higher up the map. “We’re safer in one of these fishing villages. The hellborne will have no interest in them, with the cliffs preventing the dead magic from seeping into the ground. If Merlock is really strolling through the Burn, we can’t risk sailing too far south or we’ll miss him.”

  “Come on.” Sofreya takes a seat beside me, already armed with a stone buffer to excise the sma
ll amount of poison North transferred into me. “We don’t want that to fester.”

  I turn to face her more fully, and something drops from my lap in the process. North glances over, then startles. “What is that?”

  A stone. I bend for it, then roll it across my palm. “It’s from the Burn.”

  “That’s impossible.” He takes it from me. “A stone this size would be consumed with dead magic. But this is still warm.”

  “There was a whole pile of them, stacked like—” I break off, darting a look to North, whose expression has become impossible to read. “Like the shelves of your wagon,” I finish softly. And the windows of the rooms he once lived in at the monastery.

  Like father, like son.

  “You brought something tangible back from the Burn?” Davik reaches for the stone, and I offer it to her, but North edges away from me as if stung.

  “North?” I start, but he yanks the door open and stalks outside, letting the door slam shut behind him.

  Awkward silence fills the room until Davik clears her throat. “Ben? An explanation, please?”

  Chadwick hangs his head and sighs. “Merlock and Corthen went to war, but they were still brothers despite it all. Whenever one of them wished to speak to the other under a banner of truce, they would leave a cairn of stones.”

  Davik exchanges puzzled looks with me. “So what does that mean?”

  “I can only assume it means Merlock knows we’re coming,” Chadwick says, looking toward the door. “And he wants to talk.”

  Twelve

  THAT NIGHT I FIND NORTH back on the deck, bundled against the cold as the dark coastline unfurls ahead of us. The skies have cleared and stars brighten them, but we’re long past the start of the Burn. Thick smoke hovers against the shore and spills across the water. Fragments of abandoned cities slip in and out of view, along with brighter pockets of gold fire and red embers as the Burn eats afresh through the earth.

  I lean against the railing, finding a star low on the horizon, and fix my sight upon it, a trick Davik suggested, to keep my stomach calm against the battering skips of the prow as Tieg steers us toward the northwestern edge of Avinea.