The Storyteller

by Traci Chee

  He thought he saw red lights winking in the deep.

  Then the darkness hit the base of the cliffs and surged upward, spiraling through the air like wisps of smoke. The soldiers on the watchtower cried out in fear.

  Instinctively, Archer pushed Sefia aside as the darkness reached him, spearing directly through the Amulet fused to his chest.

  He gasped.

  “Archer!” Sefia cried. But he could hear her only faintly, as if he were at the end of a long black tunnel. He seemed only partly in his own body, barely seeing, though his eyes were open, barely feeling the tower stones under his feet.

  Instead, he felt them all—all the dead, every one—pass through him like bullets, each taking a little of his warmth, a little of his life, a little of whatever essential substance made him Archer—the boy from the lighthouse, the boy in the crate, the victim, the killer, the chief, the friend, the lover, the—

  “Brother,” someone said, in a voice that resembled his own, in a voice that almost sounded like . . .

  Archer turned. “Kaito,” he murmured.

  The boy—or the shadow of the boy—stood at Archer’s side, like he’d done so many times before.

  And behind him stood Versil, tall and slender, looking almost like his twin, Aljan, without the white patches at the corners of his eyes and mouth that he’d had when he was alive. All around the roof of the watchtower were the dead Archer had known: Hatchet, Redbeard, Oriyah, Gregor and Haku from the Cage—he’d suspected they were dead, yes, but now he knew for sure—the First Assassin, Erastis, a sick girl from back home in Jocoxa, people he might have seen only once or twice in the street, his father . . . looking the same age he was when he died, though Archer had aged thirteen years.

  All the dead he’d ever known were here.

  “I told you to run, girl,” one of them said, shouldering her way past the others. She was short and wide, like a small mountain. Most of her features were hazy, but her hands were well-defined, wrinkled and scarred and strong. “I’m proud that you didn’t.”

  Choking back a sob, Sefia started forward. “Aunt Nin.”

  The phantom held up a hand to stop her. “Don’t cry. You’ve got work to do.”

  Sefia nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Except that wasn’t Nin, not really. That wasn’t his father, beaming at him from the tower stairs. That wasn’t Kaito from the north. They were shades—less than flesh, more than smoke—and they were a part of him.

  Archer could feel every one of their spectral limbs, see himself through each of their crimson eyes.

  “We’re with you, brother.” And Archer wasn’t sure if it was Kaito speaking or his memory of Kaito—the voice melding with dozens of other voices and with his own.

  “Literally,” Versil added in the same blend of voices. “I think we are you. Or you . . . are us?”

  “Both, I think,” Sefia said. “Until Archer sends you back.”

  “Hey, sorcerer.” Versil’s spectral face shivered, his features blurring. Then he grinned.

  She managed a strangled smile. “Hey.”

  “Is that brother of mine still with Frey?”

  “Yeah,” she murmured.

  “Eh, she’s too good for him.” He laughed. “But I’m glad.”

  “We’re here to save them, aren’t we?” Kaito asked, looking out over the bay, where the battle was still raging on. “We’re here for one more fight?”

  Archer nodded. “Just one more.”

  “All right, then, brother. Lead the way.”

  Archer wanted to embrace him, but wasn’t sure if he could. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

  Kaito’s expression went hazy for a moment, but then he was back again, smiling sadly. “I know,” he replied in the voice that was not his voice. “I am too.”

  Arrayed across the tower roof and the cliff below, the dead looked to Archer. He looked so small through their glowing eyes, but in this battle, they would obey his every thought.

  They were his.

  His army.

  “Take care of him, sorcerer,” Kaito said.

  She swallowed, hard. “I will.”

  Archer looked to her, and he saw her not just through his own eyes but through the eyes of all the dead. He’d always known she was beautiful, but for some reason, with the breeze in her hair and the top button of her shirt undone and the glistening in her dark eyes, he couldn’t remember her ever being more beautiful than this.

  Fool, he chided himself. She was this beautiful the first time he saw her, a slender silhouette against the firelight as he crawled out of his crate. She was this beautiful in the Trove, sleeping in the crook of his arm. Every time he looked, she was this beautiful.

  “I love you,” he told her. “We’ll make it.”

  She nodded.

  As the phantoms began their march down the cliff, Archer knew he was more them than him now. He was more aware of their limbs of smoke than his own body, more aware of the waves splashing at his many ankles, the breeze cascading from his many shoulders.

  Ahead of them—ahead of him—the battle waited. The Barbaro and the bulk of the Alliance fleet storming the harbor. Serakeen and the Amalthea cornering the rest in the northeast.

  Only faintly did he sense Sefia taking up a stance beside him, watching over him, protecting him. The way she always did.

  CHAPTER 41

  The Fracturing of the World

  As the Resistance crumples—

  As the dead walk across the surface of Blackfire Bay—

  As Archer and Sefia make their stand on the watchtower—

  Somewhere across the ocean, at the western edge of the world, where the place of the fleshless and the place of the living nearly touch, something happens that I did not expect.

  The Resurrection Amulet was only ever supposed to summon one soul from the world of the dead.

  When Archer put it on, he summoned hundreds.

  Hundreds of ghosts rammed into the invisible barrier between the living and the dead, surging back into this wonderful and terrible world, this world rife with contradictions and inconsistencies and magic, and where they came through, the barrier cracks.

  It’s a fine break—a bone that doesn’t need setting; a paper cut so clean, at first it doesn’t even bleed.

  But it’s a break, and slowly, the souls of everyone who has ever died—every single one—begin to reenter Kelanna.

  They leak through the fracture like ink in water.

  Like smoke in a white sky.

  They spill across the pages of this world—more and more of them, faster and faster. The crack splits, spiderwebbing, as if in glass or a sheet of ice.

  Unlike Archer’s phantoms, which have been given life and form by his beating heart, his living body, these ghosts form and re-form like wisps of fog—there and not, here and gone.

  It’s a slender figure that finally shatters the barrier between the worlds of the living and the dead. She’s strong and desperate and determined, scrambling through the break until at last the divide splinters into millions of fragments, and the dead pour from the black place beyond the edge of the world.

  She pauses while they flood past her. She looks over her shoulder, and her shadowy hair is pulled into a knot at the base of her neck.

  Is it Mareah?

  And there, behind her, is it Lon? The darkness flowing about him like oversize robes?

  They take each other’s hands, as much as they can with their ghostly fingers.

  And they leave the place of the fleshless behind.

  They come to the deep blue, where the whales sing their sad songs and starving sharks swim for miles in search of prey. They stream by squid, sea turtles, clouds of shrimp, schools of shimmering fish, and enter the vivid turquoise world just below the surface. The white flashing underside of the sky and the sun s
triking the water.

  Like spears they burst into the air. They remember how bright the world is, how the waves sparkle, how the sky is so unforgivingly blue.

  And as they dissipate, burning away like mist in the sun, they remember.

  This world.

  This wonderful and terrible world of water and ships and magic.

  And their daughter.

  They have returned.

  CHAPTER 42

  Of Heroes and Kings

  There had always been little hope for the Resistance, but now that they were down to their last defenses, Eduoar could not help but wonder if they should have surrendered. Many would have been killed—the rebel redcoats for mutiny, the Delieneans for defection, certainly his own life would have been forfeit—but so many more would have lived.

  When the Barbaro and the Alliance fleet began attacking the harbor defenses, Eduoar and the Red Hare led the remainder of the White Navy to their aid. But they were no match for the blue beasts of the Alliance. Many of the Resistance warships had gone down under fire. Others had been boarded and captured.

  Lac and Hobs had been on one of those ships. Ed still didn’t know if they’d made it.

  Now the resisters were scattered. Some had been corralled by Serakeen and the Amalthea in the east. Others, like Eduoar and the Hare, were making their last stand in the harbor while blue-uniformed soldiers began storming the city walls. On the ramparts, Ed could see Adeline, the Lady of Mercy, firing into the Alliance ranks, taking out enemy after enemy with the quick, clean shots that had made her a legend. Beside her, another old woman, with curly, graying hair, reloaded weapons faster than anyone Eduoar had ever seen and tossed them to Adeline, who caught them in midair and continued shooting.

  But they were all being overwhelmed. Reaching the top of the wall, an Alliance soldier struck the second woman in the head with the hilt of his sword. She crumpled. The Lady of Mercy whirled on him, but she, too, was knocked aside.

  The Barbaro cornered the Red Hare against the eastern arm of the harbor, pummeling them with broadside after broadside, filling the air with smoke and the screams of men.

  This was the end.

  Instinctively, Ed looked to the north. Toward Corabel. Toward Arc. Toward home.

  He wished he could have seen them all, one last time.

  But as he turned back to face the enemy, he spotted men—no, not men, shadows, hundreds of them—marching across the bay, their footfalls sinking only a few inches before the water buoyed them up again.

  As they reached the nearest Alliance ships, they began crawling up the blue hulls, swarming the decks. From this distance, Eduoar couldn’t see what was happening, but over the din of cannon fire, he could hear shrieking.

  And the silence that followed.

  Abruptly, the Barbaro’s assault halted. Her guns went quiet.

  Beside Ed, the captain of the Red Hare held a glass to his eye. “What in the blue world is happening?”

  Ignoring the Resistance fighters, the phantoms moved on to other Alliance vessels. Blue-uniformed soldiers began pitching themselves into the sea to escape them.

  Eduoar shook his head. “I don’t know. But whatever those things are, I think they’re on our side.”

  The captain clapped him on the back. “Then let’s take advantage of them. Come on, Your Majesty, it’s time for your first boarding.” To his crew, he roared, “Ready the grapples! Boarding parties, to arms!”

  There was a flurry of activity as the helmsman brought the Red Hare around, Delienean soldiers stuffing their belts with axes and extra bullets. The wind filled the sails as they turned, coming alongside General Terezina’s flagship.

  Across the harbor, the phantoms amassed on another Alliance vessel.

  The Barbaro loosed a broadside. Chunks of the Red Hare exploded. Shards of wood soared through the air, striking Delieneans as they dove for cover.

  The shadow soldiers may have been an unwelcome surprise, but General Terezina would not go down easy. From the fighting tops, riflemen peppered the resisters with gunfire. Powder kegs dropped and exploded in blazing spheres of heat. Ed and the crew of the Red Hare were pinned to their own deck. None of them could get near the Alliance ship.

  Until the phantoms appeared over the rails of the Barbaro.

  Bullets, swords, cannon fire, all passed through them as if through fog. With arms of smoke, they seized enemy soldiers, who shrieked and flailed, their faces going slack with shock and fear, until their voices lapsed into muted whispers and their bodies went limp and lifeless.

  With a roar, the Delieneans charged over the rails. Ed launched himself onto the deck of the Barbaro, wielding a boarding ax, same as the rest of them. It was chaos. The shadow soldiers were relentless, ducking and moving as if the battle were a complicated, deadly dance.

  Ed blinked. He knew those moves, didn’t he? He’d been taught them with the rest of the Resistance as they fled from Oxscini two months ago . . .

  The phantoms caught hold of the Alliance soldiers, who could not fight an enemy they could not touch nor hurt nor kill.

  An unstoppable army.

  These were Archer’s fighters.

  Where was Archer?

  But as Eduoar scanned the melee, he thought he spied someone else, the last person, really, he expected to see.

  Arc?

  Ed had to look twice.

  Arcadimon Detano, on a battleship? In a blue Alliance uniform, his face smudged with smoke, his hair mussed, blood and grease on his hands?

  But Eduoar would have known him anywhere, no matter what disguise he wore, no matter how many days or decades had passed between them.

  As if he could sense Eduoar watching him, Arc looked up. His perfect lips parted in surprise, relief and joy suffusing his features like the scent of a sea breeze through a newly opened window.

  Ed nearly choked on his own laughter.

  Arc. Here.

  Eduoar started forward. But while Arcadimon watched him, distracted, one of the phantoms reared up behind him and grasped him by the throat.

  Ed lunged forward before he even knew what he was doing, ducking blades and striking enemies, dodging shadow soldiers as they swept across the deck, killing blue-uniformed fighters.

  Arc’s face was losing color, his bright blue eyes going dull.

  The phantom’s wraithlike fingers tightened.

  Shoving Arcadimon out of its grasp, Eduoar immediately felt its hands pass through him.

  He gasped.

  He knew that feeling. It was his life draining out of him.

  For a second, he thought of the white room in the castle at Corabel where he’d found his father’s body, the white room where he’d tried to take his own life.

  Then the phantom released him. It spoke: “Your Majesty?”

  Ed recognized that voice, though it was distorted—it was Archer’s voice, entwined with hundreds of other voices he’d never heard before.

  “You did it,” Eduoar said softly. “But how—?”

  “Sefia.” The shadow soldier’s face flickered and blurred. “You were right. We couldn’t stand there and watch everyone die.”

  As they spoke, there was an explosion to the northeast, where Serakeen and the Amalthea were hunting down the outlaws that were left.

  The phantom wavered.

  “Go,” said Eduoar. “And thank you.”

  All around him, the shadow soldiers began to crawl over the rails and back down to the water, leaving what little fighting that remained aboard the Barbaro to the Delieneans.

  As Ed reached down, Arcadimon caught his hand, callused from months of hard work, and slipped the signet ring onto his finger. “My king,” Arc whispered.

  But Eduoar couldn’t care less about the ring right now. He hauled Arcadimon to his feet. “What are you doing here?” Ed’s gaze passed over
Arc’s face as if the answer would be there, on his brow, his cheeks, his dimples.

  “I had to find you.” Arcadimon’s voice was shakier than Ed had ever heard it. “I had to tell you—”

  But Eduoar didn’t want to hear what Arc had to say—and in truth, he didn’t know if he could trust him. So before Arcadimon could finish speaking, Ed took him by the back of the neck, ignoring—loving—the shock on Arc’s handsome features, and pulled him in for a kiss. Rough lips and a few teeth.

  Arc let out a soft moan, full of longing.

  Despite himself, Eduoar felt his heart flutter at the sound.

  A shot broke them apart, searing Ed’s shoulder as he and Arcadimon sprang back.

  Above them on the fighting top stood Braca Terezina III, the most feared commander in the Alliance. She must have retreated there when Archer’s phantom army arrived, but now she swung down to the deck, her blue suede coat flaring out behind her, brandishing one of her gold-tipped guns. Her boots, cuffs, and scarred face were spattered with blood, though she wasn’t bleeding.

  “Traitor,” she spat at Arcadimon.

  Ed half-expected Arc to come back with a witty reply.

  He didn’t expect Arcadimon to lash out with his hand, sending a wave of invisible force at the general.

  Arc really was a sorcerer, Eduoar thought, bemused.

  Not a great one, though. Braca barely rocked back on her heels as the magic hit her. Calmly, she drew her cutlass from its scabbard.

  Arcadimon grabbed his hand. “Run!”

  Together, they dashed around cannons and fallen bodies. Bullets struck the rails around them as the Alliance general followed, taunting them.

  When they reached the steps to the quarterdeck, Ed spared a glance behind him. Braca was advancing slowly, almost leisurely, stalking through the chaos, cutting down Delieneans with careless grace, hitting targets without even seeming to aim.

  “Come on!” Arc hauled him up the stairs, where they scrambled onto the quarterdeck.

  They’d barely made it past the steps when General Terezina materialized in front of them.