The Storyteller

by Traci Chee

  When the Kelannans finally figure it out, I suspect customs will change. Maybe one day, when you die, they’ll mark your resting place with a stone. Maybe every year, on the anniversary of your death, they’ll visit you there, bearing overflowing bunches of white flowers, and they’ll speak to your grave, because they’ll believe you’ll hear them.

  Maybe one day, to send you to rest, they’ll burn stacks of paper inked with your fondest memories like a long, true bedtime story.

  Maybe one day, they’ll get messages from the dead.

  Who knows? It’s a new world, with new rules.

  Once there was a world called Kelanna, a wonderful and terrible world of grief and magic and ghosts . . .

  All the Things He’d Never Get a Chance to Say

  Sefia didn’t know how long she remained on the watchtower, holding Archer’s body, but when she looked up again, the sky was ribboned with fire—scarlet and tangerine and gold in the light of the sunset.

  The tower was mostly empty now. The flags no longer flew.

  The defeated candidates were gone. Tanin was gone, only a bloodstain marking where she’d died. The Black Navy soldiers who’d defended the ramparts were gone.

  Only Sefia and the bloodletters remained.

  Scarza was there, sitting beside Sefia with his chin on his knees, his gaze never leaving Archer’s body. Frey and Aljan were there, perched on the parapets, her head on his shoulder. Many of the others were there, on the watchtower, talking or crying quietly.

  But not all of them had made it. They’d been nineteen in number. Now Sefia counted only fourteen.

  Among the missing was Keon.

  She remembered seeing him by the tower door, defending Griegi, crumpling under the candidates’ onslaught like a sapling under an avalanche.

  She didn’t ask what happened to him. She didn’t think she could handle hearing it.

  Not now.

  Not after this.

  Not after Archer.

  In the hours since his death, he’d gone stiff and cold in her arms, so he didn’t even feel like Archer anymore. But if she laid him down, if she let him go, she knew she’d never have the chance to hold him again.

  Scarza touched her shoulder. “Are you ready, sorcerer? We should take his body soon, before it gets dark.”

  At his words, the grief doubled her over again, fresh and painful. Her hair, which had come loose from its clip during the battle, fell across her face. Tears spilled from her eyes. “I’ll never be ready,” she said.

  Scarza said nothing.

  In the silence, a breath of wind, smelling of dust and thundershowers, brushed a stray lock of hair from her forehead.

  The movement was so familiar it made her shiver.

  She lifted her head, looking for someone she knew wasn’t there.

  Because he was in her arms.

  Because he was dead.

  But as she searched the damaged battlements, the stricken faces of the bloodletters, the colors fading from the sky, she felt something else.

  A kiss—tender and strong—that echoed her first kiss, under cloud-swept skies, with the moonlight skittering across the waves.

  A kiss for all the things he felt for her.

  For all the things he’d never get a chance to say.

  “Archer?” she whispered.

  There was no answer.

  But he was there, somehow, against everything she knew to be true, against all the laws of life and death. She’d never touch him again, not really, never see the light in his golden eyes or hear him speak her name. But he was there, somehow.

  With her.

  In the only way he could be.

  Wiping her tears, she kissed his forehead one last time and, folding her first two fingers, one over the other, laid her warm hand over his. “Always,” she said.

  As if responding to some unspoken signal, the bloodletters—the ones who had survived—gathered around them. Kneeling, they bowed their heads and crossed their tattooed forearms, and, in broken voices, they murmured, “We were dead, but now we rise.”

  The Survivor King

  When the shadow soldiers withdrew and the Alliance finally surrendered, there was much work to be done.

  There was Captain Reed’s storm, roaring off the coast of Roku, to dispel with the Thunder Gong. There were prisoners to take. Ed tied Arcadimon’s hands and escorted him into the custody of the Black Navy. “I’m sorry,” Eduoar said. “I have to.”

  Arc squeezed his fingers and attempted one of his winning smiles as the Rokuine soldiers took him toward the castle dungeons. “I know.”

  There were wounded to treat, like Lac and Hobs, who seemed to take great pleasure in showing off their injuries and retelling the story of their heroic rescue of the Delienean king.

  And there were casualties to be counted as the dead were pulled off the black beaches and plucked from the tides. Volunteers brought back body after body—Evericans, Oxscinians, outlaws, Delieneans, Rokuine and Liccarine soldiers—and took them through the winding streets of Braska to the crypts inside the cliffs, where they would be prepared for burning.

  Though he was heavy with grief, Eduoar moved with more confidence than he’d ever felt, conferring with Resistance leaders, directing rescue efforts, planning for the funerals, which would take place three days hence. Little by little, he heard stories from the battle—Captain Reed destroying the Amalthea, Archer summoning the phantoms, the assault on the watchtower by the Director of the Guard and dozens of branded boys who had been taken and trained by the impressors.

  Someone told him the bloodletters had returned to the watchtower to fight by Archer’s side. They’d killed the Director and taken her soldiers captive. But they hadn’t been able to save their old chief.

  Ed dashed tears from his eyes. He’d been wrong. Sometimes a curse was just a curse. Sometimes death was just death—cold and permanent.

  That night, from a cell in Sovereign Ianai’s dungeons, Eduoar and two court recorders heard Arcadimon’s confession. Sitting behind a set of iron bars, his blue Alliance uniform rumpled, Arc told them his story, insisting he start from the beginning: from his induction at age fourteen to his knowledge of the Guard’s plans, all their grand ideals of creating a more stable Kelanna, the things he’d done for those ideals—bribery, blackmail, threats, murder—and the pride he’d taken in doing it.

  Because he’d liked being a part of something greater than himself.

  Because he’d been good at it.

  “But . . .” He inhaled deeply, his blue eyes never leaving Ed’s. “That all changed when I killed Roco. I didn’t do it with my own hand, but it was I who ordered the poison to be put into his drink.”

  Through the prison bars, Eduoar watched him sadly. The longer Ed had been gone from Deliene, the longer he’d been out of Arc’s intoxicating presence, the more he’d begun to suspect that the boy he loved was responsible for killing his cousin, their childhood companion, who used to dog their heels as they capered across the castle grounds.

  But now Eduoar knew for sure.

  He shouldn’t love a traitor and a murderer.

  But he did, and that felt like a betrayal of its own—a betrayal of the Resistance, of everyone they’d lost in the battle against the Alliance, of Archer and Sefia, of Roco.

  How could Ed hold all these things inside him at once? Guilt, love, loathing, duty? The desire to kiss Arcadimon through the bars, the desire to set him free, the desire to see him imprisoned for the rest of his days.

  But, Eduoar soon learned, that wouldn’t be a problem. It was well into the night when Arc finally revealed the nature of the poison General Terezina had mentioned. Only the Administrators knew exactly what it was and how to use it, he said, and now that they were dead . . . withdrawal would kill him by noon.

  And that, at last, would be the end of the Guar
d.

  “I’m sorry,” Arcadimon said. He was weeping now. “I’m so sorry. I don’t expect you to forgive me. But I wanted to tell you. I’ve hidden half of my life from you, whom I love most, and in the end, I wanted there to be no more secrets between us.”

  Eduoar was on his feet before Arc finished.

  His hands were on the bars.

  He didn’t want Arcadimon to die. Not like this, in a Rokuine cell, so far from Deliene. Not like this, when they’d just found each other again.

  “There’s still one person who might be able to save you,” Ed said.

  * * *

  • • •

  Eduoar found Sefia aboard the Brother, which had been sailed into the harbor beside the other ravaged outlaw ships. Scarza, the chief of the bloodletters, was on watch and, even knowing who Ed was, refused to let him see Sefia until he’d explained why he wanted her.

  As Eduoar told him about Arcadimon, Scarza watched him with serious gray eyes. Then he leaned in and, in a low voice that brooked no protest, even from his own sovereign, said, “This better be the last thing you ask of her, King. She gave up everything to save the Resistance. We don’t deserve more from her.”

  “And if you try anything,” added one of the other bloodletters on watch, who looked remarkably like she could have been Sefia’s taller sister, “you’ll have us to answer to.”

  Eduoar waited on the main deck, twisting the signet ring on his finger. He’d worn it every hour of every day for twelve years, after his father died, but this was the first time it felt like it fit.

  It seemed to take hours for Sefia to appear, as the sky lightened to a charcoal gray and the seconds Arcadimon had left trickled away like sand through Ed’s hands.

  When Sefia finally appeared in the hatchway, the stars were beginning to go out. Silently, she accompanied Eduoar to the dungeons, where she stood before Arcadimon’s cell, fidgeting with the piece of rutilated quartz she now wore around her neck.

  “So you’re the Apprentice Politician,” she said dully.

  “Not anymore.” Arc’s gaze met Eduoar’s. “And never again.”

  Sefia nodded at Ed. “He wants me to save you.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “Maybe.” She paused. “But I don’t know if I’ll try.”

  Eduoar took a step toward her. “Sefia, please—”

  “Why do you get to live? Why do you get to live when so many others had to die? Is it because you love him?” She pointed at Eduoar. “Is it because he loves you? Because that isn’t enough. Love isn’t enough. I loved him, and he loved me, and he still died.”

  Her shoulders were shaking. Clenched at her sides, her fists trembled.

  “I do love him,” Ed murmured, “but that’s not the only reason I want him to live. I want him to stand trial, back in Deliene. I don’t want the Guard’s poisons to punish him. It’s my people who deserve to do that.”

  Sefia glared at him as tears spilled down her cheeks.

  Then she turned away. “Be quiet,” she said. “And let me work.”

  She stood across from Arc, watching him while, through the high and narrow window, daylight touched the far wall of the cell.

  Dawn.

  If Sefia couldn’t cure him, he had only a few hours left.

  But she simply stared at him. Reading him. Examining the events of his life like scenes in a play.

  Judging him, Ed thought.

  Then Arcadimon began to sweat and shake, his breath coming faster and faster in his chest, like he couldn’t get enough air, no matter how hard his lungs worked. Ed glanced at Sefia.

  Her pupils were like pinpoints of darkness in her brown irises.

  Her hands moved through the air, her fingers twining in the invisible substance she and Arc called the Illuminated world.

  Arcadimon slid from his chair. His eyes rolled back in his head.

  “Arc!” Eduoar cried, rushing to the bars. He fumbled with the keys. He didn’t know what Arcadimon was to him, if he could ever forgive him, if they could ever be together, after all that had transpired between them. But he knew he wanted to be with him, if this was the end.

  Before he could make it into the cell, however, Sefia lowered her hands. Arcadimon stopped shivering. His breath came deeply and evenly.

  “You’re welcome,” she said.

  Flinging open the cell door, Eduoar raced to Arc’s side, cradling his head in his lap. “Thank you.”

  “Archer would have wanted me to save him,” she said flatly.

  * * *

  • • •

  For the next two days, Ed was busier than he’d ever been in his life. The political structure of Kelanna was in shreds. The kingdoms of Everica and Liccaro were without leaders. With the Gormani Resistance, Deliene had been through a civil war. There was so much to do, so much to repair and rebuild, as he and the other Resistance leaders began to imagine what the world could look like without the Guard, without the Alliance, without war.

  There were council meetings to attend. Messengers to dispatch. Ships to repair. Defensive walls to tear down.

  And to Eduoar’s surprise, he was good at it. What was more, with the horse stalls to muck out when he needed to clear his head, and a new litter of puppies in the royal kennels to visit when his melancholia threatened to overwhelm him, he felt energized. Was this the king he could have been without the curse? Without Arcadimon’s poison inhibiting him all these years?

  No, that was an unfair question, to himself and to Arc.

  This was the king he was now. And for all he was frightened of becoming the Lonely King again when he returned to Corabel, he’d come so far since he’d left, he wouldn’t let a little fear stop him from being the king Deliene deserved. The king he knew himself to be.

  To fill the gaps left by the dead, promotions were given. Medals were awarded. Haldon Lac and Olly Hobs were made lieutenants of the Royal Navy.

  For saving his life, Eduoar awarded each of them the White Star of Valor, the highest honor he could bestow upon those who were not his own citizens.

  True to form, Lac had the audacity and pettiness to complain that it clashed with the gold bar of his new rank.

  “I can take it back, if you want,” said Eduoar, reaching for the pin.

  “I didn’t say that!” Lac cried, hastily batting him away.

  Hobs laughed.

  They spent what time they could together, when Lac and Hobs weren’t helping with the construction in the harbor and Ed wasn’t in some meeting or another.

  They told him stories they’d heard on the docks. People were feeling sudden chills or waves of peace when they remembered those they had lost. Objects of sentimental value were going missing and turning up in unexpected places. Since Archer had summoned the dead, something was different in the world, and the Kelannans were just beginning to learn what it was.

  “Has anyone seen Sefia?” Hobs asked one day. “Is she all right?”

  From the top of the wall, Eduoar looked out over the city—the smudges of sage being burned on the street corners, the doors draped in white curtains. “No,” he said. “I don’t think she is.”

  You Miss a Man So Much

  When Sefia returned to the Brother after saving the Apprentice Politician’s life, she found a book lying on her bunk. It was a slim black volume, with gold tooling she recognized as Keon’s, and a note clipped to the first page.

  Sorcerer—

  We started work on this after you returned from the Library. He hoped you wouldn’t need it, but He knew how much you wanted to hear from Nin and your parents again, and in case he he didn’t want you to wonder.

  —Aljan

  Her vision blurred as she turned the page. Beautiful black lettering spiraled across the paper—Aljan’s handwriting; Archer’s words.

  Memories from his childhood in Joco
xa.

  Lists of his favorite colors, foods, festivals.

  Adventures he’d hoped to have.

  Catalogues of regrets.

  Letters to his mother, his grandfather, his aunt and uncle, his little cousin Riki, to Annabel, to Scarza and Griegi and Aljan and the bloodletters.

  But most of all, letters to Sefia.

  Ruminations, meanderings, random thoughts. Things he might have said to her while they were washing pots, or conversations they might have had during the early-morning watches, staring out to sea.

  Sefia—

  Did I ever tell you the moment I knew I loved you? It was that day on the Current , after Meeks told us about the Red War. You were sitting on the edge of the quarterdeck, reading, with the wind in your hair.

  You were so beautiful.

  Then a lock of hair flew into your face, and I went to brush it away. I felt so brave, and so scared, so sure you’d pull away.

  But you didn’t.

  And as I slid your hair back around your ear, you smiled.

  I couldn’t remember wanting anything so badly as I wanted to kiss you then. It was like I’d never really wanted anything before then, and now this wanting was blazing inside me like a lamp, bright as a beam from a lighthouse.

  That was the moment I knew.

  I love you.

  —Archer

  She leafed through the pages, trying to avoid staining them with her tears. This was what he had been working on while she repaired ships and fortified turrets. She could have been spending that time with him. She could have had more time with him. But she’d squandered it. She’d always assumed they’d have more time.

  But Archer had known. You have only a short time in this world, such a short time, before you’re gone, and he’d wanted to leave her something before he went.