by Traci Chee
Shots burst through the door. Frey cursed as one of them took a chunk of her ear.
Ripping the blanket from the bunk, Sefia used it to hold the lock while she tinkered with it. A few seconds later, it clicked, releasing Aljan from his restraints.
He stood as Frey tossed him a knife.
“How are we going to get out of here?” Frey asked, retreating from the door, which was beginning to bow inward under the onslaught from the corridor.
But before anyone could answer, the door flew off its hinges. Sefia and the bloodletters ducked as wooden shards exploded into the room.
There, in the doorway, was Tanin.
She was a vision, with her silver-streaked black hair cascading around her shoulders.
She was a monster, rising from the depths of the sea, her skin pale as sun-bleached bones.
“Kill them,” she rasped.
Sefia’s mind raced. She had to do something. At her side, the rucksack was heavy with the weight of the Book and the bottles of acid.
There was the click of hammers being drawn back.
In a single movement, Sefia leapt in front of Frey and Aljan, raising the rucksack like a shield.
“Wait!” Tanin cried.
At her command, the candidates stopped. Sefia let out a breath. But she still had to get Frey and Aljan away.
“Is the Book really in there?” Tanin asked, her ragged voice almost sweet. “Have you brought it to me after all?”
“What do you think?”
“Sefia, what are we going to do?” Frey whispered behind her.
She didn’t know. Without her magic, she didn’t stand a chance. She blinked, but the lights of the Illuminated world were faint and fading even quicker as she skimmed through the currents, searching for a way out.
She had to get them out. She had to get them somewhere safe.
“I think I could kill you all without damaging whatever’s in that bag of yours.” Tanin lifted her hand.
For a second, Sefia pictured Nin’s death all over again. A twitch of Tanin’s fingers. A broken neck. An empty body.
Not again.
“Hold on to me!” Sefia cried. She felt Frey grasp her around the waist and pull Aljan toward them. He stumbled, grabbing Sefia’s leg as she waved her arms.
The candidates fired their weapons. They flung their knives. Flame and steel flashed in the darkness of the cabin.
The walls of the room flickered. The floor seemed to drop from under Sefia’s feet. For a second, she could feel a fresh breeze on her cheeks.
But her magic faltered again, and she, Frey, and Aljan were back in the cabin with Tanin.
Long enough for Sefia to see Tanin’s gray eyes widen with surprise and triumph.
Long enough for the bullets to strike them.
Pain lanced through her shoulder, her thigh, the side of her scalp.
No! Sefia thought, wrenching them back through the Illuminated world.
They appeared on the Current of Faith, under clouds like smoke in the black night. Aljan collapsed beside her, clutching his chest as blood seeped through his slender artist’s fingers. Frey flung herself down beside him, crying for help.
Sefia staggered back, her wounded leg going out from under her. She struck the deck as the crew of the Current gathered around them.
“Sefia? Sefia, you’re hit.”
“Is that Frey and Aljan?”
“Doc! Doc!”
Ignoring them, she blinked. The Illuminated world sputtered once and left her. She blinked again, tried to summon the golden world that had once come so easily to her.
But her magic was gone.
CHAPTER 7
Powerless
Sefia spent hours cleansing her hands of Tanin’s poison, rinsing them, washing them, scrubbing them until the stitches in her shoulder pulled and she began to bleed through her bandages. But the poison had done its work. The Illuminated world was closed to her. For the first time in years, she was in the dark.
Pale and sweating with exhaustion, she flexed her fingers, staring at her bleeding cuticles, the raw patches on her palms. She couldn’t stop bullets. She couldn’t teleport.
“Scarza and the bloodletters will be waiting for us,” she whispered. They’d be on the Brother, listening to the sounds of the rain, waiting for her to appear with Frey and Aljan. They’d think she’d failed. They’d think she’d abandoned them again. Keon would never forgive her now. “But we won’t come.”
“Then they’ll come to us,” Archer said, climbing onto the bunk beside her. “You told them where Haven was.”
“But we have over a month until we reach the Trove. Who knows when we’ll head back for Haven? And what if . . . what if something else happens?”
The Alliance could attack. Already today, as they sped northeast toward Liccaro, the Current and the Crux had been forced to run at the sight of blue ships on the horizon.
The bloodletters might be caught.
Who knew what fate had in store for any of them?
Sefia still had the Book—it lay in her rucksack across the room, the acid rig dismantled and the bottles tucked into well-packed boxes—but the Book hadn’t warned her about the poison. The Book had wanted her to lose her powers.
Which meant this was part of her destiny. She’d always thought her fate was contingent on magic—that was why her father had forbidden her from learning it—but maybe demolishing her enemies with a wave of her hand didn’t refer to Illumination but to a command. A flick of her fingers and a word of attack.
Kill them.
Sefia shuddered, remembering the chill in Tanin’s voice.
She had known Tanin was her enemy. Tanin had tortured and murdered her father. Tanin had killed Nin. Tanin had betrayed her to get at Archer. But she had only ever wanted Sefia for an ally, for a friend, for family, and deep down, Sefia hadn’t thought Tanin would really try to hurt her.
Eyes burning, she turned her face to Archer’s shoulder and cried silently into his sleeve.
“It’s okay,” he murmured, stroking her hair. “You did it. You rescued them.”
“Did I?” Sefia looked up at him. His face was a blur through her tears. “Will Aljan make it?”
There had been so much blood—so much blood—as Horse scooped up the boy in his massive arms.
“Doc says the bullet missed his heart.”
“But will he make it?”
Archer said nothing. The bloodletter still hadn’t awoken. Frey was with him now, in the sick bay.
“If he dies—” Sefia choked on the words. It was like she was back in Tanin’s office beneath Corabel again.
Nin was yelling at her to run.
Tanin was lifting her hand.
Nin’s neck was breaking.
Nin’s eyes were wide. Nin’s eyes were unseeing. She was falling to the floor. She was dead. She was dead.
And Sefia was screaming. Small. Weak. Powerless.
She clenched her red, swollen hands, relishing the sting. “He can’t die. I can’t let someone else die because I couldn’t—because I wasn’t strong enough to—because I—”
Because I’m not enough. She wasn’t enough to save Nin. She might not have been enough to save Aljan. What if she wasn’t enough to save Archer?
He drew her gently against his side. “I didn’t follow you because you were strong. I followed you because you were brave and smart and kind. I didn’t believe in you because you had magic. I believed in you because you were compassionate and resourceful and too stubborn to give up.” He kissed her hair. “I don’t love you because you’re powerful. I love you because you’re a good friend and a better partner and by far the best person I have ever met.” He tilted her chin toward him. “Sefia, you are more than enough.”
She burst into sobs.
He believed in her. He loved her. He
saw so many great things in her, and without her powers, she knew she would let him down.
* * *
• • •
After Sefia had cried herself to sleep, Archer slipped into the corridor to peer into the sick bay. He couldn’t see Aljan except for the shapes his legs made beneath the blanket, but Frey was in the chair by the bedside, dozing. She’d shaved, though bruises still shadowed her jaw, and her ear had been bandaged. She looked worried, even in sleep.
But as Archer began to close the door, she started up, blinking.
“I’m sorry,” Archer whispered. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
Her brown eyes focused on him, and for a second he was afraid she’d strike him. It was his fault, after all, that they’d been captured. It was his need for revenge, his bloodlust.
But when she got to her feet, she embraced him. “I’m glad you’re all right, chief.”
Chief. He smiled.
“Same,” he said. “How’s Aljan?”
With a sigh, Frey released Archer and sank back into the chair. “No change.”
Archer stepped into the sick bay. Beneath the sheets, Aljan looked ashen, like his twin brother the day they’d wrapped him in linen and placed his body on a funeral pyre. There were fresh spots of white at the corners of Aljan’s closed eyes. Frey must have asked for paint.
“I’m sorry,” Archer said again, and this time he wasn’t talking about waking her.
Frey glanced up, giving him a little shrug. “I know.”
For a time, they were silent, listening to Aljan’s labored breathing. Frey began to braid her hair, plaiting it and unplaiting it and plaiting it again as she watched Aljan for signs of waking.
At last, she spoke again: “Doc said we aren’t turning around.”
Archer nodded. He’d wanted to go to Reed, wanted to ask him to return to Jahara, to sail to Epigloss and the bloodletters. But the Red War had begun. If the Current sailed back to Jahara now, or to Oxscini, they might never make it to the Trove.
And Aljan wouldn’t survive if he didn’t have rest and proper medical care.
So they continued sailing toward Liccaro, hurtling farther away from the bloodletters with every passing minute.
Archer’s bloodletters. He knew now that he couldn’t lead them into battle without rekindling that deep desire for violence that was always smoldering inside him like an ember, but he’d hoped he could lead them to safety.
Now he’d just have to hope they’d make it to Haven without him.
“Archer,” Frey said quietly, interrupting his thoughts. “On Tanin’s ship . . . there were candidates.”
He stiffened. Candidates were what the Guard called the branded boys they bought from the impressors, the ones they were grooming to become soldiers, the ones they’d hoped would win the Red War, before Archer surfaced as chief of the bloodletters.
But Archer was going to Haven. They were all going to Haven.
The boys he’d gotten to in time, anyway.
“I fought one,” Frey continued.
Archer pictured the cage matches he’d been forced to participate in. The boys he’d murdered—skewered, decapitated, beaten to death with rocks or his bare fists.
And Kaito. He saw them racing horses across the Delienean Heartland, with the sound of Kaito’s riotous laughter whipping past him. He saw them fighting in the rain. He saw himself shooting Kaito between the eyes like a dog.
He flinched at the memory. “How many were there?”
“At least a dozen that I could see, but it was dark, and the hall was too narrow to fit more than that. Who knows how many more the Guard has?”
Sefia said the Guard had been looking for the boy from the legends since her father first conceived of the impressors nearly thirty years ago. They might have forty candidates. Or over a hundred. To think that they were out there, fighting for the Guard . . . Archer clenched his fists.
Frey traced the words that spiraled up her left forearm: We were dead, but now we rise. The bloodletters’ battle cry.
“Even as we were fighting,” she said, “I kept thinking, That could’ve been me. That could’ve been Aljan. That could’ve been any of us, if you and Sefia hadn’t found us first.”
Archer’s fingers went to his throat, tracing the rough tissue of his scar.
The candidates were like him. They could’ve been bloodletters. They could’ve been brothers. But he hadn’t been able to rescue them.
“I know it’s too late,” said Frey, “but I wish there was something we could do.”
Archer nodded.
But what could they do? The candidates belonged to the Guard. And he was bound for the Trove. He was bound for Haven. He couldn’t save them.
And he couldn’t stop them.
* * *
• • •
Over the next few days, they saw signs of the Alliance again and again. In her bunk, Sefia would hear someone cry, “Alliance! Alliance!” There’d be a furor of activity—the drumming of footsteps, the creaking of the ship—and the Current and the Crux would quickly scramble out of sight.
During that time, Aljan awoke, and Archer sneaked Sefia out of her room to see him.
The boy beamed when they entered. His lanky body barely fit in the bunk, but he still seemed so small lying there, his mottled bruises slowly healing.
Setting aside the bowl of Cooky’s seaweed, mushroom, and bone broth she’d been spoon-feeding to Aljan, Frey offered Sefia the chair while Archer knelt at his bedside.
“I’m sorry,” Archer said softly.
“Don’t be.”
“It’s my fault you—”
“I wanted Hatchet too.” Aljan coughed weakly, and Frey gave him a few sips of water from a wooden cup. Before she stood back, she went to kiss his forehead, but at the last second, he lifted his chin, catching her mouth with his own.
She pulled away, rolling her eyes, but her cheeks were pink with pleasure.
Sefia grinned up at her, and Frey let out a flustered little sigh. Then, with deft hands, she turned Sefia’s face away from her and began combing through her hair, fingers twisting and plaiting the black strands.
Aljan settled back on the pillow with a self-satisfied chuckle, but he sobered again as he continued to speak. “Maybe I didn’t want him as much as you did, but I wanted him. After Versil died, I—I wanted all of them, every single one, and you couldn’t have stopped me even if you’d wanted to.”
“But—”
“And if I’d gone without you, I would’ve died. Don’t apologize for keeping me alive.”
Sefia saw Archer swallow a few times. After a pause, he said, “Hatchet’s dead.”
Another smile, this one bitter, appeared and disappeared on Aljan’s lips. “Good.”
The boy fell asleep quickly after that, and Archer helped Sefia back to her own bunk.
With the bullet wounds in her shoulder and thigh still healing, she’d been confined to her room. She spent the days there, listening to the activity on the main deck, trying not to think of the Book in her rucksack.
The Book could tell her how to get her powers back.
If she could get her powers back.
“I never knew how much I relied on it,” she said to the chief mate when he came to visit one day, “how much I was counting on it to—”
He shrugged, feeling along the wall for cracks in the timbers. “You didn’t have much magic when we met,” he said. “You don’t need it now.”
“When we first met, I didn’t know I’d be fighting fate itself.”
Finding a split in one of the boards, he slathered a mixture of wood dust and linseed oil into the fissure, smoothing it gently with a putty knife. “You’ve still got your wits, girl. Or did you lose those too, since you came back?”
Sefia made a sour face.
The
mate wiped his knife and, without turning, said, “Don’t look at me like that.”
She smiled sheepishly. No matter how much time she spent with the mate, she always forgot he could sense things that were happening all over the ship. “Sorry, sir.”
Giving the timbers a pat, he crossed to the door. “You have a good plan. It’ll just take you more time to execute it.”
She bit her lip. “That’s what I’m afraid of. The Red War’s already here. I feel like I’m running out of time to get Archer to Haven.”
“No one on this ship wants anything to do with that war. Besides Haven, there’s no safer place for him.”
Still, she wondered.
As Aljan healed, Archer began to spend more and more time with him and Frey. Sefia could hear them laughing in the sick bay down the corridor. Had the Book wanted to strand them on the Current together?
It was the Book that had steered Archer toward the bloodletters in the first place, had given him fighters who would follow him into battle, and though they were only twenty in number, they were so skilled, so feared already, that tales of their strength and brutality had already spread from kingdom to kingdom.
A great army, like the legends said.
If a small one.
Would Frey and Aljan convince him to lead the bloodletters again? Into what? They had no reason to join the war and all the reason in the world to go to Haven.
The Book could tell her.
Or the Book could trap her again.
She tried to put it out of her mind.
Two weeks passed, and they scurried away like rats at every hint of an Alliance ship on the horizon. Archer’s stitches were removed, and he and Frey were assigned to a watch as the Current doubled their lookouts, cloaked in furs to protect them from the dropping temperatures. Reaching the northern curve of Liccaro, they raced eastward past deserted beaches and crooked coastlines of red sandstone Sefia could only see through the frosted portholes.
She spent most of her hours stewing in her bunk as she recovered from her gunshot wounds. She’d spend hours eyeing the outlines of the Book, where it hung in her rucksack from a hook on the wall.
