The Storyteller

by Traci Chee

  The pirate captain chuckled. “That does have a ring to it, doesn’t it? The Crux will be with you.”

  Reed raised an eyebrow. “Quite a turn from your piratical ways.”

  “It’s my own fault, for spending so much time with you.”

  “Count me and Bella in,” said Adeline. “If you can use a couple old girls like us.”

  Dimarion bowed to her, low, like he was a vassal instead of one of the most feared outlaws on the Central Sea. But she was the Lady of Mercy. Archer supposed that was only her due.

  * * *

  • • •

  After Sefia and Archer had packed their things and said their good-byes, the crews of the Current, the Crux, and the Brother gathered on the beach to see them off.

  With his ruby-handled cane, Dimarion beckoned to two of his sailors, who brought forth a lacquered chest. Red tassels dangled from its handles. “A gift for the Rokuine sovereign,” he said, lifting the lid with one of his large, bejeweled hands.

  Sefia gasped. Inside, in a nest of crimson satin, was the biggest diamond she’d ever seen—bigger than a skull, shining in the morning light like a star—the diamond that used to sit in the hands of the Crux’s wooden figurehead. According to the stories, Dimarion had once been a captain in Roku’s Black Navy, but he’d been obsessed with tales of dragons living in the littlest kingdom’s volcanoes and the diamonds they collected, and when he’d gotten the chance, he’d killed Roku’s last dragon, taken its largest diamond, earning his reputation for strength, savagery, and avarice, and been forever banished from the littlest kingdom’s volcanic shores.

  “Ain’t you full of surprises,” Reed murmured.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Dimarion said. Then, to Sefia: “Tell Ianai it’s a token of good faith. If you present them with this, they might agree to hear what you have to say. After that, your survival’s up to you.”

  “The sovereign’s that tough, huh?” Sefia asked.

  “Tough is an understatement.”

  Solemnly, Archer took the chest, balancing it against his hip.

  “Thanks, Captain,” Sefia said.

  From his great height, Dimarion stared down at her, his face in shadow. “Thank me when I see you again, in the ruins of the Alliance fleet.”

  She smiled. Excising entire ships wouldn’t be easy. But she had three weeks to learn. Three weeks to change the future.

  “Now, speaking of surprises . . .” The captain of the Crux pivoted to Reed and, with a flourish, pulled a brass mallet from an inner pocket of his brocade coat. It was ancient looking, but through the crust of verdigris, Sefia thought she could see images of stormclouds.

  Captain Reed stared at it a moment. “That what I think it is?”

  “You didn’t think I was going to leave treasure at the bottom of that maelstrom, did you?”

  The maelstrom. That was where Reed had gotten the Thunder Gong six years ago. Where the water had told him how he was going to die. Where he decided he was going to sail for the edge of the world because no one had ever done it before.

  Sefia blinked. Because of his time in the maelstrom, he’d gone to the place of the fleshless. He’d passed into the world of the dead and back out again.

  The whole thing had a touch of destiny that made her shiver.

  Reed snatched it out of Dimarion’s hands, holding it to the light. “You bonesucker! You had it all this time?”

  The pirate captain shrugged unapologetically. “It’s hard to part a pirate from his treasure.”

  “Then we’d better get out of here,” Sefia said.

  “Ha!” Reed laughed. Dimarion looked dour.

  She blinked. Gold light swirled across her vision as Archer clasped her waist. She skimmed the tides of gold, in search of their destination—in the deep south, across blue stretches of ocean, in the old lava tunnels on the side of a long-dormant volcano—the castle at Braska.

  “I never get tired of seein’ this,” Reed said with anticipation.

  She lifted her arms, parting the seas of light, and teleported her, Archer, and the chest through the currents—away from the beach, through the stone pillars outside Haven, over the ocean and past Roku’s outer islands, black and volcanic, into the castle at the base of the volcano, its windows glinting like jewels.

  Then they were through the walls, stumbling to the foot of the dais where Ianai Blackfire Raganet, Sovereign of Roku, sat on their obsidian throne.

  Immediately, the guards drew their black-and-gold spears, closing in around Sefia and Archer like a noose.

  “The throne room?” he muttered.

  “We wanted an audience, didn’t we?” she said as they backed toward the windows. “Sovereign Ianai, I’m sorry for the interruption but—”

  “You don’t know what it’s like to be sorry,” Ianai replied, rising from the throne. “But you will.”

  Neither man nor woman, the sovereign was a younger person than Sefia had expected—Reed’s age, minus a few years—and tall, almost as tall as Aljan, with short brown hair and cold eyes like pools of obsidian. Dressed in the black livery of a Rokuine soldier, they could only be distinguished from their guards by the crown of golden scales and the haughty expression on their high-cheekboned face.

  “Please, Your Majesty, just lis—” Grabbing the chest from Archer, Sefia let out a cry as one of the guards prodded her in the shoulder with a spear, cutting her sleeve, drawing a thin line of blood.

  Beside her, she felt Archer go for his weapons. She felt him tense for the jump.

  “Don’t fight,” she whispered. “Fight, and they’ll never listen.”

  “Sorry,” Ianai mocked her. “Please. You should’ve collected your manners before you appeared uninvited in my court.” They nodded at the guards, who seized Sefia and Archer by the arms. Dimarion’s chest fell to the floor, where its varnished lid cracked. “I don’t know who you think you are, but you’ll learn your place in my dungeons before you speak to me again.”

  But Sefia would not be silenced. “The Alliance is coming for you!” she shouted as the soldiers began to haul her away. Blinking, she summoned her magic and flipped the lid on Dimarion’s chest. “They’ll be here in three weeks! Look! We’re your allies! We’re telling you the truth!”

  There was a collective gasp as the enormous diamond tumbled onto the polished black floor. Sefia felt the grip on her arms loosen, though the soldier did not let go.

  Sovereign Ianai lifted an eyebrow. “You appear like enemies. You bear the gifts of friends. You’re obviously a sorcerer, and you claim we’re under attack. Who are you?”

  Dimarion had been right—the diamond had at least gotten Ianai to listen. Now Sefia had to get them to believe.

  “It’s a long story, Your Majesty.”

  “Then start at the beginning, and make it quick,” said the sovereign. “If you’re right, we don’t have time to lose.”

  Sefia couldn’t help but smile. A story to save their lives and the lives of thousands of Rokuine citizens?

  That was a story she could tell.

  “Believe me or don’t,” she began, “but this is how it happened . . .”

  CHAPTER 20

  Red Hearts Can’t Be Broken

  On the journey through the Cloud Pillars and across the Oxscinian mainland, Ed, Lac, and Hobs encountered tides of other refugees fleeing from the coast. Over cups of tea brewed from scavenged bark, Ed heard stories of the Alliance punching through the Royal Navy defenses at the Bay of Batteram. In voices hoarse with smoke, the evacuees described fierce battles between flaming ships, circling one another on the whitecaps while Oxscini’s onshore batteries emptied their cannons at the monstrous Alliance warships.

  Delienean warships, Ed thought with a twinge of guilt. But then he’d remember the fleet he’d seen at Broken Crown and he’d tell himself, for the fifth, the twenty-first, th
e thirtieth time, that if Arcadimon hadn’t joined the Alliance, the Delieneans would have been evacuating like these Oxscinians, sooner or later—uprooted, afraid, beaten.

  Ed did what he could as they slogged through the Vesper swamps toward Kelebrandt, the Forest Kingdom’s capital, and Queen Heccata’s protection. He organized foraging parties. He helped reconnect lost family members. He did his best to keep them fed and sheltered while, every few days, convincing Lac that they could not abandon the caravan to join the fight in Batteram. The trek through the bog wasn’t a glorious battle, but it was where they were needed.

  To keep Lac busy, Ed assigned him to the laundry, while Hobs scurried back and forth between sections of their caravan with messages, stories, and odd jokes. And whenever Ed felt his sadness creeping up on him like a cold tide, he took time out of his days to care for the horses. How he’d missed horses! And dogs! He loved spending time with the refugees’ dogs, the cats, the goats and hogs and water buffalo.

  But no matter how much he accomplished, no matter how exhausted he was by the trekking or the hauling water, at the end of the day, Ed never slipped easily into sleep. He’d stare up at the ceiling of the tent he shared with Lac and Hobs, his mind sifting through new ideas for helping the evacuees, until his eyes closed at last and he descended into fitful dreams.

  Every time they found more refugees on the road, they asked for updates on the Red War.

  Serakeen and the Amalthea had taken another Batteram fort, a woman said. The Alliance was pressing on toward the entrances to Tsumasai Bay like a tide crawling up a beach, and they could not be stopped.

  “Tides always go out,” Hobs said helpfully.

  The woman shook her head. “Not this one.”

  Someone else reported that the Royal Navy was putting up a good showing. No invaders had gotten past them before, and not even General Terezina and the Barbaro would get past them now.

  This roused Lac from his despondency at not being able to rejoin the redcoats, and he led the two women from the village near Broken Crown in an upbeat rendition of an Oxscinian folk song, which the other evacuees picked up, their voices winding and flowing through the trees until the whole caravan was singing.

  Oh my lady, lovely lady

  Who is weeping in the rain,

  Dry your tears, my lovely lady.

  Brighter days will come again.

  When they reached the outskirts of Kelebrandt, the refugees began dispersing, searching for housing, medical care, or missing relatives in the encampments Queen Heccata had established for them, until only Ed, Lac, and Hobs remained of their caravan.

  “Well.” Ed sighed as they walked into the city. “We made it.”

  “At last!” Lac declared. His brown curls were long now, pulled into a high knot and tied neatly with a piece of yarn. “I’m dying for a bath.”

  Ed sniffed. In fact, after a month in the jungle, they could all do with a wash. He wondered what Arc would have said, if he could have seen him now.

  The thought sobered him. Arcadimon was in the north, sending Delienean soldiers into the war. Arcadimon was almost certainly a Guardian. They’d probably never see each other again. And even if they did, they’d be enemies.

  As if they could sense Ed’s sadness creeping up on him, Lac and Hobs twined their arms in his, and they marched deeper into Kelebrandt together.

  Soldiers were everywhere in their red-and-gold uniforms. Stevedores hauled kegs of powder and cases of bullets. Messengers in black armbands scurried in and out of the crowds, while war orphans gathered in groups and went scampering over the streets like herds of wild creatures. Everyone seemed to be abuzz with news.

  And fear.

  “What?” Ed asked someone as they ran past, pushing a handcart piled with sandbags. “What’s going on?”

  Lac went out at the knees when he heard. It was only Ed’s quick reflexes that kept him from collapsing in the middle of the gravel street, his arm around his friend’s waist.

  Yesterday, the Alliance, led by the Barbaro and the Amalthea, had decimated the Oxscinian defenses at the Bay of Batteram. Joined by the Rokuine reinforcements sent by Sovereign Ianai, the Royal Navy had retreated to Tsumasai Bay and was preparing for siege.

  “Siege?” Lac echoed as they wound their way through the city toward the Red Navy headquarters. “We should have made our way to Batteram when we had the chance.”

  “We wouldn’t have made a difference,” said Hobs helpfully. “We’re two lowly soldiers and a boy with no last name.”

  “The Alliance won’t make it into Tsumasai Bay.” Ed tried to sound confident. “Kelebrandt is the best-protected capital in Kelanna.”

  Hobs glanced sideways at him. “How do you know?”

  In truth, Ed had been to the other capitals—the dilapidated palaces in Umlari, the Liccarine capital; the districts of Braska arrayed on the shores of Roku’s largest volcanic island; and, of course, Corabel, the city on a hill, overlooking the White Plains and the steep Delienean cliffs—but none of them were as well defended as Kelebrandt.

  “I mean . . .” He swept out his hand, gesturing to the city laid out before them. “Just look at it.”

  Part city, part fortress, Kelebrandt had as many walls and turrets, parapets and battlements, as shops, promenades, gardens, and fountains. Great wooden bridges, spiked with thick stakes tipped with iron, straddled the massive river that wound down to the harbor in magnificent curves. There, right on the water, the castle at Kelebrandt stood: a gleaming hulk of Rokuine stone and black-lacquered Oxscinian hardwood, reinforced with steel. It was not as elegant, Ed thought, as the castle at Corabel, but it was resolute and formidable—a castle built for war.

  Beyond it lay the span of Tsumasai Bay, where stone garrisons and fortified gun turrets were arranged along the waterline as far as the eye could see. On the waves, the crimson ships of the Oxscinian Navy were still streaming in from the east, forming into orderly rows as they entered the bay.

  This was what stood between the Alliance and the heart of the Forest Kingdom. Truthfully, the Oxscinian defenses were so impressive that Ed could hardly imagine them falling to even a force as large as the one he’d seen at Broken Crown.

  But if they did fall, if the Alliance entered Tsumasai Bay and took Kelebrandt, it would not be long before the rest of Oxscini fell too, and the Alliance would have four of the Five Islands under its thumb.

  As they made their way toward the Royal Navy headquarters, Ed, Lac, and Hobs were soon caught up in a rush of people streaming through the city. Pressed together, Ed could feel their nervous energy pulsating from one person to the next, moving away from the shoreline and up Kelebrandt’s hills in a single sinuous mass.

  Soon, the streets became barricaded, with makeshift wooden fences to keep pedestrians on the sidewalks and redcoats stationed along the barriers to keep people from jumping them. In the road, soldiers on stamping horses marched back and forth along the gravel. Soon, the press of people was so great, Ed, Lac, and Hobs could not move in any direction.

  “We must have taken a wrong turn somewhere,” Lac moaned.

  Standing on his tiptoes, Ed could see that they were stranded on a hillside. On the downslope across the street, houses on stilts were built into the mountain, with the city and the bay stretched out below. Behind them, a forested hillside rose steeply on the other side of the guards and barricades.

  “Maybe we’re in line for a parade,” Hobs suggested.

  A young person beside them laughed, their merry blue eyes twinkling with excitement. “The queen’s making a public address! In the amphitheater.” They nodded toward a wooded mountain overlooking the city, where the pale crescent of an amphitheater had been cut into the earth. “We’re all waiting to get in.”

  Lac patted his stained, threadbare clothing uselessly. “We get to see the queen? The queen can’t see me like this.”

 
; Ed tried to smile. He’d only met Heccata once before, when he was a child, and he remembered her like a flagship— imposing, powerful, glittering with danger. She’d reached for his chin, and he’d backed away at the touch of her cold fingers.

  Raking him with a single glance, she’d said, “Don’t cringe, boy. A monarch looks fear in the eye and does not flinch.”

  “Maybe we’ll see her in her carriage as she passes by,” said the person with a sigh, “but with this crowd, I don’t think we’re getting into the amphitheater today.”

  Lac looked crestfallen.

  “Want to wait for the carriage anyway?” Ed asked, to cheer him up. “I don’t think we’ll make much headway if we try to leave now.”

  “For a chance to see the queen? Anything!”

  The sun rose higher. Impatient, a few members of the crowd sneaked—some more successfully than others—past the soldiers and up the wooded hillside, where Ed saw them climbing the trees, only to appear moments later in the branches, their faces eager. One of them, a man in black, hopped the barricade and ducked behind a tree trunk, blending into the shadows as neatly as if he were nothing more than a shadow himself.

  Ed inhaled deeply as the wind picked up. Over the scent of his own body odor, he could have sworn he smelled a strange metallic odor—copper, maybe.

  After what seemed like an hour of waiting, excitement began to ripple through the crowd. “The queen! The queen!”

  First came the foot soldiers, their crisp red uniforms eliciting an envious sigh from Lac, followed by the ones on horseback, bearing Oxscinian flags that snapped and waved in the breeze.

  Lac craned his neck, straining to catch a glimpse of Queen Heccata through the crowd. Hobs peeked over the shoulders of the people nearest him.