The Storyteller

by Traci Chee

  “Hobs!”

  He kept seeing Fox making the leap across the deck of the Fire-Eater. The nauseating drop. He kept seeing Fox going limp in his hands.

  Not Hobs too.

  Bullets struck the fighting top as Lac crawled to the edge of the platform, searching for his friend.

  Hobs was dangling twenty feet below him, tangled in the rigging. Looking up, he gave a wide grin.

  Fox had grinned too, right before she was shot.

  And Hobs was an easy target, hanging over the melee below. Gunshots shredded the ropes around him. On the main deck, the enemy set fire to the rigging.

  At the stern, a blue-uniformed soldier seized one of the chase guns and turned it on the fighting top. A fist-size ball of iron slammed into the platform, scattering the redcoats.

  Ignoring the height, Lac scrambled off the platform and after Hobs, who was struggling with the ropes now, the flames climbing swiftly toward him. Lac had almost made it to him when the rigging frayed.

  Midshipman Haldon Lac felt his stomach rise into his throat as he and Hobs were dropped onto the decks.

  A sharp pain lanced through Lac’s ankle as he landed. An Alliance soldier raced toward him, boarding ax raised to strike.

  Lac fumbled for his sidearm.

  He was too slow. He was too clumsy. He’d never get his gun out in time.

  But he had Hobs. As the enemy reached them, Hobs shot him in the chest.

  The boarder collapsed on top of Lac, who yelped. He tried to squeeze out from under the body, but the decks were hot and slippery. It was so loud! There was a dead man on his chest! People all around him were fighting and shouting and dying.

  Cradling his wounded shoulder, Hobs helped push the soldier’s body off of Lac and, leaning on each other, they got up again, shooting, slashing.

  They cut. They stabbed and punched and dodged, always coming back together in the battle, driving off the Alliance soldiers that came at them, swinging.

  Dimly, Haldon Lac wondered if all that practice with Archer had made them better fighters. Certainly, they weren’t doing too poorly, injured as they were.

  But they were being driven toward the rail. The enemy was overwhelming the Fury.

  Lac ran out of bullets first. He struck someone with the butt of his pistol as he heard the click click of Hobs’s empty sidearm.

  They were pinned against the gunwale with nothing but their swords. There was nowhere left to retreat to.

  Blue-uniformed soldiers closed in around them, raising their weapons.

  Smoke and flame shot from the barrels of the Alliance guns.

  “Hobs!” Lac flung himself at his friend, taking them both over the edge of the ship as the bullets passed through the air.

  As the three gun decks flashed past them, Lac wrapped his arms around Hobs, who hugged him back, and they plunged into the cold water together.

  CHAPTER 39

  The Few or the Many

  From the watchtower, Sefia could see the whole stretch of water, witness the whole carnage of the battle. The Alliance had captured most of the onshore batteries on the north side of the bay. The Barbaro was leading the charge on Braska’s harbor while Serakeen and the Amalthea cornered the remnants of the outlaws and the Black Navy in the east.

  In the fire and smoke, she’d lost track of both the Brother and the Current. Tanin’s ship, the Black Beauty, was nowhere to be seen.

  A few more hours, and it would be over.

  “We have to get down there,” Archer said, checking Lightning’s cylinders as he strode toward the tower steps.

  Sefia grabbed him by the arm, pulling him back from the stairs. “You’ll die.”

  “Our friends are dying.” His golden eyes were wide and frightened.

  “There’s nothing you can do. We’d need an army to—”

  For a second, an idea flickered to life in her mind.

  They didn’t just need an army. They needed an unstoppable army. They needed—

  “What about the power of the Scribes?” Archer interrupted.

  She hesitated. The last time she’d tried to influence a battle—here, on Blackfire Bay—she’d mutilated hundreds of people. She’d massacred them. “I don’t think . . .”

  “You know more than you did then. You won’t make the same mistakes. Come on. We have to do something.”

  He was right.

  She was better than she used to be. She was stronger and more skilled. She couldn’t stand by and do nothing.

  Taking a breath, Sefia summoned the Sight, and the Illuminated world flooded across the bay. Cascades of gold drenched the islands, the ships, the flames.

  But she knew it was hopeless even before the tide of gold had finished coming in.

  The bands of light connecting the ships and the embattled soldiers were too bright. They connected the Alliance, the Resistance, the city, winding up the black cliff to the watchtower like climbing vines, piercing her own heart—and Archer’s.

  “I can’t,” she said, blinking as her eyes filled with desperate, frustrated tears. “Even if I tried, it’s all too connected. I’d end up taking our friends with our enemies. I’d end up taking you. All of us would be erased or half-gone.”

  Archer cursed and lashed out with his sword, shearing one of the flagpoles on the ramparts.

  “We’re too late,” Sefia whispered.

  Too late to intervene.

  Too late to save anyone except themselves.

  They’d chosen the few over the many, and this was the cost.

  Would it have made any difference if Archer had agreed to fight? What were they supposed to have done? Why had the storyteller pushed her toward the Resurrection Amulet if it was never going to help them anyway?

  The Resurrection Amulet was never supposed to keep a person from dying. It was supposed to bring one soul—and only one soul—back from the dead.

  A shadow of the person you knew in life.

  A phantom, deprived of warmth and breath and memory, unable to get it except by draining the living.

  No one could break the laws of the dead.

  Kelanna was a world rife with magic, inconsistencies, exceptions.

  Sefia looked up suddenly. Maybe there was a way to help their friends. Maybe there was a way to save them all.

  And, a little voice inside her said, maybe I can see my family again.

  “I have to go,” she said.

  “Where? Why?”

  “The Amulet. I think I can change it. I think I can get us the army we need.”

  “How?”

  It would cost her, she knew. It might cost her own life, if whoever summoned the phantoms was the one who died at the end of the war.

  But still . . . she had hope. She was rewriting the world. She was changing fate. Anything could happen.

  She pulled Archer into an abrupt, clumsy kiss, his lips surprised and soft on hers. “I think I can save you,” she whispered, and before he could reply, she teleported out from his embrace to the deck of the Current of Faith.

  All around her were the sounds of cannons, gunfire, shouting. The decks were slick with blood and spiked with shrapnel.

  Captain Reed looked surprised to see her. He was crouched behind the gunwale, his upper arm and thigh neatly bandaged. In his smoke-smudged face, his blue eyes sparkled. “Hey, kid!” he cried, grinning. “What are you—?”

  But before he could finish, she grabbed him, and in the blink of an eye, they were gone.

  They reappeared in the great cabin, where Reed stumbled away from her. “In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re in the middle of a . . .” His voice trailed off as he saw her grim expression. “Sef?”

  “I need the Amulet,” she said, almost choking on the words. “All of it.”

  The captain’s hand went to his chest. His tattoos. She’d
have to extract all of his tattoos but one. The first one. “I thought we agreed—”

  “We did. But something’s changed.” She paused as he took a step back, his hand poised over his holster. “I’ll take them, if I have to.”

  “You can try.”

  For a moment, they stared at each other, and Sefia saw their friendship strung out between them like a bridge: the story she told to earn a place on his ship, the name she scrawled on a scrap of canvas, the battles they’d fought together, the treasures they’d found, the home he’d given her after years of wandering.

  She flung out her hand.

  He went for his gun.

  If he hadn’t hesitated, he might’ve shot her. But they were friends, weren’t they? He hadn’t wanted to hurt her. And Sefia had been counting on it.

  She pinned him against the glass cases, flicking the lock on the door and barricading it with the heavy oak table where Doc had stitched up Archer their first night on the ship.

  Captain Reed fought her grasp, but he couldn’t buck loose.

  “This is the way we save everyone,” she said.

  By taking his stories.

  By betraying him.

  By breaking their friendship.

  She hoped he’d forgive her, one day. But she didn’t think he would. Not after this.

  In one swift movement, she ripped off his shirt, exposing his wounded arm—which began bleeding freely, dripping off the point of his elbow—and the tattoos he’d spent a lifetime collecting.

  “Sef,” he said in a voice she’d never heard from him, a voice laced with fear. “Sefia, don’t. Don’t.”

  She focused her Sight on the tattoos, finding each layer of ink in his skin like bands of color in sandstone.

  “Don’t take this from me, kid. Not today.”

  She lifted her other hand, feeling the webs of light tickling her fingertips.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “This is going to hurt.”

  And she took his tattoos: the sea monsters, the winged fish, the man with the black gun. She siphoned them from the pores of his skin like she was extracting mold from a paper page.

  He tried to resist. He squirmed in her grasp.

  But as she took the stories of the Lady of Mercy, the Rescue at Dead Man’s Rock, his love affair with Lady Delune, he began to beg.

  “No. Stop. Please. Sefia. No. No!”

  Every word was a wound, a cut, a punch in the chest.

  But she didn’t stop.

  “Cap?” Someone began pounding on the door, but it held fast. “Cap!”

  She took Captain Cat and her cannibal crew. She took the floating island. She took new stories about her and Archer and the Trove of the King.

  Until at last she laid bare the first tattoos he’d ever gotten, the tattoos her parents had given him, the tattoos that told her where she’d find the last piece of the Resurrection Amulet. Had they known she’d need it? Or had they simply done it because the Book had told them to?

  She memorized them quickly and let him fall, gasping, to the floor. Tears squeezed from the corners of his eyes.

  She almost asked for his forgiveness. But she knew she didn’t deserve his forgiveness.

  Breaking one of the glass cases, she summoned the Amulet to her. It flew across the room and landed, cold, in her palm.

  “Get off my ship,” Reed growled.

  Sefia cringed at his words. For a moment, she wanted to say good-bye, wanted to say thank you for all he’d done for her, wanted to say she loved him. In case destiny caught her.

  “Go!” He drew the Executioner.

  She’d known the day he holstered that weapon in front of her that if he drew it on her again, he’d kill her.

  With one last glance at him, she lifted her arms . . . and teleported away.

  * * *

  • • •

  After the uproar of the battle, the clearing was so quiet, it seemed almost deafening.

  So peaceful, it seemed almost dead.

  Trembling, Sefia looked out through the treetops. She was at the peak of a mountain, with a blue channel and a large landmass to the north, its sides carpeted by verdant jungle.

  She was in Oxscini, somewhere in the southern cluster of islands they’d passed on their way to Tsumasai Bay.

  She’d been so close to the last piece of the Amulet, and she hadn’t known.

  Turning away from the view, she faced the five stones arranged at the other end of the clearing, creating a neat sitting area where you could admire the view.

  The palest of the stones was just left of center, overgrown at the base with moss and ferns. In fact, when she looked closer, it hardly seemed like a stone at all, almost perfectly round, as if it had been made by human hands.

  Summoning her magic, Sefia split it neatly down the center with a swift crack.

  There, nestled inside, was a ring of strange metal. Picking it up, she fitted it inside the Amulet, where it locked into place with a click.

  She could read the symbols, now that the Resurrection Amulet was whole:

  But she couldn’t use it yet. If she put on the Amulet now, she could only summon one soul from the world of the dead.

  And she needed more.

  She needed an army.

  Flexing her fingers, she allowed herself to sink into the deeper seeing of the Scribes. She never would have been able to modify the Amulet with Transformation alone. She needed Alteration to erase some words of the spell and to add her own, changing its purpose . . . and rewriting the future.

  She would control the story.

  And she would save Archer.

  When she was done, she blinked. Most of the inscription was untouched, but not all of it. Not the most important parts of it.

  She would get her army. The Alliance would fall. Archer would live.

  She hoped the first souls she saw would be her mother and father and Nin. After all this time, she was going to see them again. She was going to tell them she was sorry. She loved them. She hoped they’d be proud of her.

  Tucking the Resurrection Amulet into her pocket, she swept her arms wide and teleported back to the watchtower.

  No sooner had she landed than Archer swept her up in an embrace.

  For a moment, she closed her eyes, savoring the sound of his heartbeat beneath her cheek—strong, solid, magnificently alive.

  I’m going to save you, she thought. I’m going to save everyone.

  But as he released her, she caught sight of something silver flashing in his palm—no, over his head.

  She checked her pocket.

  But the Resurrection Amulet wasn’t there.

  It was around Archer’s neck, hanging just over his heart. He gave her a small, sad smile. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t let you do it,” he said.

  And his eyes, his beautiful golden eyes, went red.

  CHAPTER 40

  We Were Dead, but Now We Rise

  Sefia tried to grab the Resurrection Amulet from him, but Archer staggered back, shaking his head. He hadn’t known how or why, but as soon as she mentioned the Amulet, he’d known she would try to use it herself.

  Now, against his chest, the metal disc burned cold, like ice, eating through his shirt to the flesh beneath, where it latched on to him—a dozen pointed talons digging deep into his skin.

  From the metal, there came a low humming, dark as an ocean and deep as a sky. The sound filled the spaces in his bones until he could feel it thrumming—or was it keening? moaning?—in his marrow.

  Dimly, he thought he heard voices—or glaciers cleaving, cliffs crumbling to dust—whispering, chittering, mad.

  Gasping.

  The last gasp of Oriyah, before Hatchet put a bullet through his skull, of Argo, of countless others, and of Kaito—sounds that haunted Archer in the late hours of the night when
the darkness shuttered him in and the cold crept in through the cracks.

  Then Sefia’s voice reached him, like a warm breeze, smelling of salt and sweetgrass: “Archer, the Amulet.”

  He looked down at his chest. In their settings, the stones seemed to glow—no, to pulse—brighter and dimmer and brighter again, like the beacon of a lighthouse.

  When he looked up again, there were tears in Sefia’s eyes. “I wanted to do it,” she whispered. “So you wouldn’t have to.”

  “I know.” Archer touched the Amulet. “But whoever uses this might die. And I didn’t want it to be you.”

  Sefia bit her lip. “This means you’ll have to kill again.”

  His heart felt heavy in his chest. “And if I—when I . . . after all this is over, that’s something I’ll have to figure out how to live with.”

  She blinked back tears as he traced her scarred brow. “We’ll figure it out together. After you help our friends and send the dead back where they came from.”

  “I’m scared, Sefia.”

  “I’ll be with you the whole time.”

  He kissed her then, as sweet as the first time—amid the wind and the black water with the stars wheeling overhead—and every kiss since, every touch, every look, every word.

  “Tell me you love me,” he whispered.

  “I love you.” She nestled her cheek against his palm.

  He’d already memorized the words, already fastened them to his heart. But hearing them again made him dizzy and breathless with desire.

  For her. For life. For all of it.

  “Tell me we’ll make it,” he said.

  Her lashes were starred with tears. “We’ll make it,” she whispered.

  And Archer chose to believe her, even if the fear in her eyes told him she couldn’t believe it herself.

  He kissed her again. Like it was the last time.

  Like it was the first.

  Darkness appeared on the western horizon, spreading through the water like spilled ink. Archer could feel it approaching, drawn to the Resurrection Amulet—to him.