City of Thirst

by Carrie Ryan

  Annalessa stayed silent throughout it all, two lines furrowing the spot between her eyes as the group boarded the Kraken. Coll, perched atop the stair to the quarterdeck, stopped inspecting his tattoo and did a double take. Behind Annalessa’s back, Ardent gave him a vigorous thumbs-up.

  “Took you long enough,” the Naysayer grouched, lumbering forward and depositing Karnelius in Marrill’s arms. It wasn’t like the ornery old beast to hand over Karny so easily.

  “Everything okay?” Marrill asked, worry tightening her chest.

  The Naysayer’s only response was a grunted “Business meeting” as he swung a leg over the railing and rather awkwardly dropped to the floating docks.

  Marrill caught Fin’s eye. “Did he just say ‘Business meeting’?” she mouthed. But he looked just as lost as she was. With a shrug, she lifted her cat to her shoulder and trotted to join the others.

  “Serth’s gone,” Annalessa sighed, sinking onto a chair. “I can’t believe it. I failed him.”

  Ardent waved a hand sharply. “No. I failed you both. I should have listened to you when you told me he’d resurfaced. I should have helped you track him down. I should have tried to save him.”

  A moment of darkness flitted over Annalessa’s eyes as she pressed her lips together. As friendly as they were now, Marrill got the strong feeling that her last meeting with Ardent had not been a pleasant one. “Perhaps,” she agreed. “But he was probably too far gone already, if all of this happened in the few months since we last spoke.”

  Ardent stopped cold. Marrill shifted uncomfortably. As far as she knew, Ardent had been looking for Annalessa for way longer than that.

  “Months?” Ardent said. “Anna, it’s been years!”

  Annalessa’s eyes flared with surprise. She clicked her fingernails against her teeth, pondering. “No,” she said. “It’s just been a few months since I told you about the rumors. If you’ll recall, I asked you to come help me search for Serth.…”

  “Years,” Ardent said softly. He crouched in front of Annalessa’s chair and took her hands in his. “That’s how long I’ve been searching for you. I’ve scoured half the Stream.”

  Annalessa seemed shocked by this, but then a smile lit her face. “You have?”

  Normally Marrill would have enjoyed the touching moment. But she couldn’t. Because something was clearly very wrong.

  Why would Annalessa think months had passed when it had really been so much longer? Marrill’s attention slid to where Pickled Pate sat, seven thousand years old but not looking a day over forty. And hadn’t both Fin and Ardent remarked on the supposedly extinct creature ambling around the docks?

  “Time is different here,” Marrill mumbled, absently running a hand down Karny’s back.

  The wizards looked at her with amusement. “Beg your pardon?” Ardent said.

  Now that she’d said it out loud, it totally made sense. “No, seriously! Time is different here. That’s why Pickled Pate is still around, even though he should be thousands of years old. That’s why Annalessa thinks months have passed when we know years have! This place is, like, out of time.”

  Everyone stared at her for a long moment. Marrill felt the heat of a blush creeping up her neck and onto her cheeks.

  But then Annalessa smiled and let out a rich, deep laugh that made Marrill feel like all was right in the world. “Of course!” she said, popping up to her feet. “Oh, you clever, clever girl! How could I have missed it? The creatures that should be extinct, the people from kingdoms that fell before I was born… that explains it all.”

  Ardent chuckled. “Yes, I suppose it does.”

  Coll and Remy exchanged a meaningful glance. “Does it?” Coll asked.

  “Quite. If you stop thinking that time moves the same everywhere,” the old wizard explained. “Once you enter the whirlpool at the heart of the Shattered Archipelago, it seems, you’re on Monerva time.”

  “Right,” Marrill said, getting into it. “Like, for the rest of the Stream, Pickled Pate entered the whirlpool thousands of years ago and left right after. But the guy we met thinks he arrived just a few months ago, and he still hasn’t left. The same for all the other folks here!”

  Remy shook her head in confusion. “Wait… so… a day out on the Stream could be, like, a week here?”

  “Perhaps,” Annalessa said. “Or a year. Or a decade. Why, time might not even pass on the Stream at all while we’re in here.”

  Marrill hugged Karnelius tighter. “And we know we can get out, because Pickled Pate does in the legend!”

  Annalessa laughed. “Your apprentice is on a roll, old man.” This time, the blush totally reached Marrill’s cheeks. “Exactly so—if that’s the Pickled Pate who sailed in according to legend, then one day, he will sail out again. All the sailors here will. And we, my dear, will be with them.”

  Marrill spun to her babysitter, beaming. “Remy, don’t you get it?” From the look she got back, Remy clearly did not. “If time doesn’t pass here, no one’s missing us! We can stay in Monerva as long as we want!”

  On the stairs, Coll let out a low growl of disapproval. Remy, oblivious, leaned forward, her voice urgent. “Wait. Seriously? As in, my parents might not even know I’m gone yet? As in, I don’t have to freak out about them being worried?”

  Ardent shrugged. “Freaking out is a personal decision. I have no idea how time here relates to time elsewhere. But sure. Why not?”

  Marrill nodded enthusiastically. “And my parents won’t be worried, either!”

  “Oh yeah, mine either,” Fin interjected. “Because I am also a crew member who has at least one parent, and you all know me and like me, incidentally. Quick question—what about the Iron Ship? I mean, it was right behind us when we went in the whirlpool. Doesn’t that mean it could still be coming?”

  As if to echo the point, a rope from the rigging snapped sharply in a sudden breeze. Light waves lapped in, rocking the docks and the Kraken with them. Karny struggled against Marrill’s grip. When she set him down he bolted belowdecks. She crossed her arms and shivered, not just because the breeze carried a chill.

  “I suppose so,” Ardent said. “At any time, really. Why, for all we know, it’s already here. Who’s to say things happen in the same order here as they do outside?”

  Coll coughed and gestured to the marsh around them. “I may be a little slow, but I’m pretty sure we’d have noticed if there were a floating death ship about.”

  Marrill smiled. At least the sailor still had his sense of humor.

  Annalessa tented her fingers together. “Which brings us to the reason we all came here, myself included. The Iron Tide.”

  “Oh, right.” Marrill slumped back against the mast. She’d been so caught up in being able to stay here without worrying her parents that she’d forgotten why she’d returned in the first place. “Any idea what it might be?”

  Annalessa shook her head. “Unfortunately, no. Only that it’s mentioned in the Meressian Prophecy, in the very first verse.” She took a deep breath and recited:

  The Lost Sun of Dzannin is Found Again

  And as in the beginning, so it will end.

  The ship drowns in the bay.

  The guides thought true betray.

  The city that slides, the ships collide,

  The storm will rise the Iron Tide!

  Annalessa stopped there, but Marrill mentally added the last few lines, which she’d left off. The Key to open the Gate. The Map to show the way. And when Map and Key come together with me, the Lost Sun dawns, the end is nigh!

  “Needless to say,” Annalessa continued, “it’s deeply troubling that the Iron Tide is so prominently mentioned in the same verse as the Lost Sun.” She waved a hand toward the Wall behind them. “And this would be the city that slides, I’m sure of that. Yet no one here seems to know a thing about the Iron Tide. And now… with this Iron Ship of yours and all this business about the wishy-washiness of time…” She let out a sigh. “I’m afraid more than ever that the Iron
Tide may be less something that is and more something that will be.”

  “But all that other stuff already happened,” Marrill protested. “We already stopped Serth from freeing the Lost Sun. And the Meressian ship sank in the bay of the Khaznot Quay… Rose betrayed us… the Iron Ship and the Black Dragon collided.…”

  Ardent’s expression turned grave. “The Iron Ship sank, and yet that did little to stop it from chasing us a few hours ago. Things are not always as they appear, and words often have more than one meaning, young Marrill.” He fiddled with the tip of his beard between two fingers. “Pickled Pate and all the others did come home raving of the Iron Tide; I assumed it was something in the past. But the Meressian Prophecy is, well, a prophecy. If no one here knows about it…”

  “Then it will happen,” Annalessa finished. “And it stands to reason the Iron Ship is likely involved, if not the cause.”

  “Shanks,” Fin whispered.

  Marrill agreed. The cold metal visage of the Master of the Iron Ship thrust its way into her mind. A being so powerful he had nearly beaten Ardent in a wizards’ duel. And now he’d cheated death… if he’d even been alive to begin with. She couldn’t imagine what lay behind that cruel, faceless mask. But she was certain anything the Master unleashed would be terrible beyond imagining.

  Ardent nodded. “Shanks indeed.” He spun around to face them, kicking aside the hem of his robe. “Regardless, I think we know our course of action. Step one, figure out what the Iron Tide is so we can move on to step two, which is figuring out how to stop it. And if that doesn’t work, then it’s on to Plan B.”

  Marrill wasn’t sure she wanted to ask, but someone had to. “Which is?”

  “Figuring out how we get out of Monerva without the Iron Tide getting out as well.” He straightened, flipping the tip of his floppy purple cap over his shoulder. “But never fear! We now have two wizards on the job. And I suspect there are few dangers in the world that two wizards can’t best. Right, Anna?”

  Up until this point, Annalessa’s face hadn’t lost its eager smile. Now it fell completely flat. So flat, in fact, it gave Marrill the heebie-jeebies. “Let’s hope so,” Annalessa said. “For the sake of all of us, let’s hope so.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Things to Do While Wizards Save the World

  Annalessa’s apartment danced on long wooden bird-legs, forever hopping and skipping along the edge of one of the great turning gears that jutted out from the Wall. Halfway between the floating docks of the Grovel and the sparkling city above, it was just high enough to look out across the three and a half moons that now rose over the marsh.

  Being in the apartment had to be the most amazing experience a kid could ever have, Fin thought. Which made it even more frustrating to be looking up at it from the deck of the Kraken.

  The wizards had left everyone else behind while they headed up to Annalessa’s dancing cabin, supposedly to “find a way to fight off the Master of the Iron Ship,” and to “hunt down a solution to the mystery of the Iron Tide.” Fin had spent enough time around Ardent to know that was wizard-talk for “stare at old books and rub your chin a lot” and “shout phrases like ‘intratemporal contemporaneity’” as though they mean something.

  In other words, boring stuff.

  Coll apparently understood this, too, because he and Remy, the acting adults-by-designation, had quickly agreed that waiting on the ship was vastly preferable to watching old people read books and argue.

  But Fin hadn’t planned on sitting around doing nothing while the wizards saved the world. Not with the Wish Machine out there somewhere, and the connection between his mom and the weird circle-mountain-dragon symbol left unknown. He’d planned on sneaking off into the city the second no one was looking to hunt down answers. And being stuck on the Kraken made that plan way harder.

  It was time, he decided, for a jailbreak.

  He made his way over to where Marrill lounged in a hammock strung between two masts. Karny was curled in her lap, and her sketchbook was propped on her knees, the pages filled with details from the Wall stretching above them. Somehow, with only candlelight and the glow of the Stream to draw by, she’d managed to capture the chaos of it all. The workers pulling apart buildings, the gears spinning, all of it constantly sinking.

  She was an amazing artist. But right now, the pencil lay limp in her hand. And from the way she stared at the Wall forlornly, he knew her thoughts were in the same place as his. He slipped closer, a grin stretching across his face.

  “Sooo…” he said. “Who’s up for tracking down a wish machine? Anyone, anyone? No one? Nobody at all?”

  Marrill pushed her sketchbook aside. “Oooh, me!” she said. “I do! Choose me!” Excitement lit her eyes. But then she fell back with a sigh, pulling Karny onto her stomach. “Not that we can. We don’t even know where to start looking.”

  Fin laughed. He was way ahead of her. “Sure we do. We’ll just use a little something called, I don’t know, the Bintheyr Map to Everywhere?”

  Marrill twirled Karnelius’s tail through her fingers. “I wish. Ardent will never let us borrow it. He’s supersensitive about that whole ‘capable of ending the world’ thing.”

  Fin smirked, loving how well she’d set him up. “He totally won’t let us borrow it,” he agreed. He quickly checked around to make sure the coast was clear.

  Remy and Coll sat together on the bow, her tongue caught between her teeth as Coll taught her basic sailing knots by the lantern light. Over on the gangplank, the Naysayer seemed to have organized some kind of black-market salvage operation, and was greedily collecting a small mountain of junk from the marshes. Everyone was completely engrossed.

  Fin nudged Karnelius aside and snagged Marrill by the arm, tugging her around to the other side of the mast. With a flourish, he shoved one hand deep into his thief’s bag and pulled out a crystal star. With the other, he produced a tightly rolled piece of parchment. “Good thing I didn’t ask.”

  “The Map!” Marrill squeaked. “The Key! You stole them!”

  Fin bowed, trying to look humble even as his chest puffed with pride. “No need for the bravos and the thanks and all that tralada. I’m a thief; it’s what I do.”

  She leaned around the mast, eyes darting toward the front of the ship. Worry pinched her forehead. “Fin!” she whispered harshly. “You can’t just take stuff!”

  “Sure I can!” Fin laughed. He tossed the Key up in the air between them, then whirled around to snag it behind his back.

  Marrill gave him a strangely serious look. “That’s not what I meant,” she said. “I meant you shouldn’t just take stuff. Like, it’s wrong to take stuff that isn’t yours. You know?”

  Fin squinted at her. He didn’t know. His whole life, he’d taken stuff that wasn’t his. Nothing was his. How else was he supposed to get anything? Besides, it wasn’t like he ever took stuff people really needed.

  “Look,” he told her. “Things only belong to you because other people treat them like they belong to you. The Map doesn’t belong to Ardent. He didn’t have it until you showed up yesterday. And he didn’t even know the Key still existed. Why does he get to say what happens with them now?”

  Marrill screwed up her face. “I don’t know.…”

  “Okay, fine,” Fin said, stamping his feet on the deck. “Stealing is bad for some crazy reason. But we don’t have to steal them. They’re already stolen!” He jangled them in front of her face.

  Marrill tried to look away, but her eyes kept drifting back. He pressed his advantage. “Look, don’t you want to do something? I mean, this is important work! If we find the Wish Machine, we can wish the Iron Tide away! And wish the Iron Ship gone…” He leaned in, knowing what would convince her the most. “And you could wish for your mom to get better.…”

  Her eyes went wide, misting with tears. She swallowed thickly and then nodded. “Okay. Fine. I mean, since they’re already stolen and all. And, I mean, we are kind of here on an awesome timeless adventure. It’s not
like my parents are expecting me home anytime soon.”

  She leaned forward. “But you have to promise we’ll give them back right after.”

  “Oh, promise,” Fin said, as though that had been his plan all along. Which wasn’t entirely untrue.

  He grabbed a lantern and crouched before she could change her mind. With a flick of his wrist, he unfurled the Map. While Marrill poked her head around the mast again to make sure no one could see them, Fin slipped his fingers between the familiar rays of the crystal sun. Carefully, he touched the Key to the face of the Map.

  “Okay, Map,” he whispered. “Show us how to find the Wish Machine!”

  Immediately, the paper burst to life. A surge of energy flowed through and around him, catching his senses on fire. He caught the sweet cherry scent of the color red, felt the taste of salt prickling along his skin. The world rushed at him, rolling like seasickness as images zoomed across the Map, blending together as they went.

  Finally, the blur resolved, and he found himself looking at the Wall, a view from the water, all in dark ink. He recognized the Kraken, bobbing at the base of the city, the mountains to either side. The vastness of Monerva stretched high above.

  The picture tilted, then zoomed up the Wall so quickly he felt his belly turn sour. It finally came to a stop, focusing in on the crooked tower on the very top. Dark smudges of ink fluttered all around it.

  Fin examined the scene for a moment, then nodded. “Crazy, creepy, slightly dangerous. Yep, looks like the place I’d stash a wish machine.”

  Marrill put a finger to her nose in thought. “Totally. But how do we get all the way up there? Someone has to throw a line down, remember?”

  He glanced up, searching for the answer. From above, the distant tinkling of wind chimes filtered down over the creak of the docks and the groan of the falling city. All about, the Stream was a firefly’s belly, soft and yellow in the night. He watched the lines of the current carrying it in, though where the water went once it reached the Wall, he couldn’t say.