City of Thirst

by Carrie Ryan

  Fin’s pulse jumped, but he tried to keep his hope in check. He knew better than to trust this creature. “But you said you wouldn’t help us.”

  The fire cackled. “I said I wouldn’t help the wizards, and indeed I won’t.”

  “And I would again point out that the Master of the Iron Ship is a wizard,” Fin said.

  “Exactly why I need you,” the fire replied. “I helped the Master because I had no other choice. Someone had to power the Syphon. Someone had to wish. THAT is the price the Dawn Wizard set for me. I made my final wish—but it will not be fulfilled until I grant the wish of another.”

  Fin smacked his hand against his forehead. “‘To get what you want, you must give what you have.’ It was talking about your final wish!”

  “Such an easy price,” the Salt Sand King sputtered. “And yet here I’ve been, trapped for all this time, with no one but bitter beetles for company. They hate the Machine too much to use it and hate me too much to wish for anything other than my demise. When the Master came to me, it seemed like my only chance to put things right. But now I have another option. You are different. You, I understand.”

  “I’m listening,” Fin said.

  “The Master of the Iron Ship has set everything in motion. Even now the Syphon gathers power, faster than even I thought possible. Now we must stop him from using it, and prevent whatever destruction he seeks to unleash. You will be my spy. You will wait and watch. And when it is time for a wish to be made, we will ensure that you are the one to make that wish.”

  The Salt Sand King strode closer. “Just imagine. Once my lands are united again, we will find my army. Your people. Where you belong.”

  A bright spark of hope lit in Fin’s chest. He swept a hand through his sweat-soaked hair, thinking over the Salt Sand King’s offer. It was everything Fin had ever wanted. He’d be reunited with his mother. He’d have a place to belong.

  And if he got to make a wish, he’d be remembered by everyone.

  A cold fist of doubt squeezed around the hope. What about Marrill? He bit the inside of his cheek, torn. If he helped the Salt Sand King, it could mean the end of Marrill’s world. At the same time, though, it would mean stopping the Master of the Iron Ship from using the Syphon.

  It could mean preventing the Iron Tide, and wasn’t that the whole reason she’d come back to the Pirate Stream in the first place? Really, if he thought about it that way, he’d be helping her by going with the Salt Sand King.

  Everyone would win!

  One question lodged in Fin’s mind. “So… what is your third wish, anyway?”

  The rag-wrapped figure dropped back to the embers. A flame blazed where he’d stood. “Simple. That no world shall EVER be beyond my reach.”

  The flame flickered and twisted, resolving itself into a dragon bellowing smoke to the sky.

  CHAPTER 23

  The Tower of the Wiverwanes

  As Marrill stared down at the expanse of the Burning Plain, a wave of anger crashed through her. She couldn’t believe the Salt Sand King had refused to help them! He’d even seemed to understand how desperate the situation was, and what the consequences would be. He just didn’t care.

  She ground her teeth. “There has to be another way,” she growled under her breath.

  “Another way to get Plus One back?” Remy asked, brightening.

  Marrill frowned. “Plus One?” She shook her head. “No, to stop the Syphon.”

  The babysitter’s face fell. “Oh. Right. That.” She let out a long sigh.

  “It’ll be okay,” Coll said, sliding down in the bowl next to Remy. “He seemed a capable sort. Resourceful. He found us after all, didn’t he? I’m sure he’ll be fine. Whoever he is.”

  Marrill clutched at the rim of the bowl. “Everything in pairs,” she mumbled to herself, thinking back through what the Salt Sand King had told them. She turned to face the others. “What do you think he meant by ‘everything in pairs—two doors, land and sea’? Think that actually means two physical doors to the Syphon?”

  Coll shrugged. “If you’re willing to trust a giant insane ball of fire, that’s how I’d interpret it.”

  “And maybe he meant there’s one on each side of the Wall,” she continued. “That would make sense, right? One on the land side, one on the sea side?”

  “Seems reasonable,” Annalessa offered.

  Marrill chewed on her lip. “So, the Salt Sand King said only three people know the trick to finding the Syphon, right?”

  “Correct,” Annalessa said. “One being the Master of the Iron Ship. Presumably the other two would be himself and the Dawn Wizard.”

  “Well, the Master’s out—no way is he helping us,” Marrill grumbled. “Can we find the Dawn Wizard?”

  Ardent tugged on one of the ropes leading up to the balloon, letting out a puff of hot air to level them off. “I fear not. Like all the Dzane, he died long ago, or at least that’s the conclusion most everyone who knows anything has come to.”

  “Well, everyone except Marravellio,” offered Annalessa.

  Ardent waved a hand. “Marravellio is a senile old gossip who likes drama. I said anyone who knows anything, which rules him out.”

  Remy pushed herself up straighter. “Don’t you guys have, like, a magical map or something that can show you everywhere?”

  “Excellent point, sailor!” Ardent said. As he patted at his robes, his forehead furrowed. “I could have sworn I put it here.…”

  Marrill quietly slipped her hand into her pocket, hoping she could get the Map out without having to admit taking it in the first place. But as her fingers closed on the parchment, she realized it didn’t matter. The Key was gone. And the Map was no good without it.

  Her stomach churned. She was going to have to confess. She took a deep breath. “I’ve got the Map,” she whispered. “But it won’t work… because I lost the Key.”

  Ardent’s eyes widened with surprise. “What? But I had both of them, I’m certain—”

  “We took them,” Marrill said quickly. “We thought it would be okay.…”

  “Who’s ‘we’?” Coll demanded.

  Marrill opened her mouth to respond but suddenly didn’t have an answer. “Uh… me and… um…” She could have sworn there was someone else with her. She pressed her fingers against her temples, trying to focus. Stealing the Map just didn’t seem like something she’d do on her own.

  “You and Plus One?” Remy offered.

  Marrill snapped her fingers. “Yes, exactly. Me and Plus One,” she said, relieved to have figured it out.

  “You stole them from me?” Ardent pressed. He sounded very, very unhappy. More than that, he sounded disappointed.

  A flush crept up Marrill’s neck. Tears pricked her eyes as she dropped her head.

  “Now’s not the time for that, Ardent,” Annalessa shushed. Her voice softened as she knelt in front of Marrill. “Now, Marrill, what did you do with them?”

  “We used it to try to find the Syphon,” she mumbled. “We asked where the Syphon was, and it showed us the Wiverwanes’ Tower. That’s why we were climbing up there. But you said the Wish Machine wasn’t there…”

  “No, definitely not,” Annalessa said firmly.

  “Well, what about the Key itself? Where did you last see it?” Ardent pressed.

  She swallowed. “We used it at the top of the Wall—that’s when we accidentally opened the Gate. And then—”

  “Opened the Gate?!” Ardent interrupted.

  Marrill cringed. “It happened by accident?”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know,” she confessed, her voice barely audible. “I was struggling with someone and… it just happened.”

  Ardent practically vibrated with unspent energy. If they had been back on the deck of the Kraken, he’d probably have been pacing furiously. But up here in their little bowl, there was nowhere for him to go. “Well, this changes things, doesn’t it?”

  Marrill hated the disappointment that dripped from
the words. Biting her lip to keep from crying, she slumped back against the curve of the bowl. A deep ache spread through her chest. Everything had become so overwhelmingly complicated and difficult all of a sudden.

  For the first time, failure didn’t just seem like a big possibility, but inevitable. Everything she cared about was on the line and she’d screwed up. The Map had steered them wrong. She’d lost the Key, and now they’d never find the Syphon. It would continue sucking in water until it pulled her entire world onto the Pirate Stream, and everything she’d ever known would be ripped to pieces. And then the Master would make his wish and unleash the Iron Tide.

  Marrill would never be able to save her mother, much less her world. Even the Stream—her safe haven, and her friends’ home—would be lost to the Iron Tide.

  She’d disappointed everyone, in the end.

  Tears blurred her eyes. She swiped at them with the hem of her shirt, recoiling at the stench of smoke. She took a cautious whiff of her hair. Everything smelled like fire, including her skin.

  “I hate to point this out to a wise and powerful wizard,” Remy said, breaking the silence. “But aren’t we going the wrong way?”

  Marrill snapped her head up, glancing over the rim of the bowl. Sure enough, the Wall was slowly growing more distant.

  “Hmmm…” Ardent looked from the balloon overhead to the rapidly receding fire below. Drawing a deep breath, he raised an arm and said, “Okay, wind, I know we’ve had our disagreements, and I know that last time I said it was the last time, but I’m seriously serious this time: I’ll only ask of you this last thing—to be taken back to the Wall.”

  For a moment, there was nothing. “Afraid you’re still on wind’s bad side,” Coll muttered. Ardent scowled and dropped his arm.

  “Perhaps I should give it a try?” Annalessa offered.

  But before she could, a great howl grew in the distance, intensifying as it approached. Marrill felt the touch of a breeze rustling through her ponytail. Then the tips of her hair lifted, and strands drifted around her face. The balloon slowly reversed course and began coasting back toward the Wall.

  Ardent smiled, pleased with himself. “See, I knew—”

  He didn’t have time to finish. A wall of wind hit them with such force it sucked the air out of Marrill’s lungs. The bronze bowl jerked first one way and then the other, throwing them into one another. Above them, the tattered sailcloth looked as though it had been punched.

  The balloon screamed across the Burning Plain toward the Wall. The wind whipped at them, snatching words from their mouths the moment they tried to speak.

  In seconds, the Wall loomed ahead of them. The balloon jerked up. Marrill’s stomach dropped down to her toes as they slingshotted into the sky.

  It was like they were a toy caught in a puppy’s mouth as he tore around the yard, flinging them from side to side. And this puppy looked nowhere near done playing with them.

  The crew tumbled over one another in a pile of arms and legs, elbows and knees flying. The bowl was perpendicular to the ground, so close to the Wall that the poor ’fleer was practically running up as they crested the top. The Tower of the Wiverwanes filled Marrill’s vision.

  She thought again about what the Salt Sand King had said: Only three people knew how to find the Syphon. The Master and the Salt Sand King would never help them, which only left the Dawn Wizard. But as far as anyone knew, he’d been gone for ages.

  But not his memories, she realized. Not the memories of the Dzane. Those lived on in the Wiverwanes.

  “Of course,” she whispered. Remy looked at her strangely as she clutched the rim of the bowl, hair flying out behind her.

  “The Map didn’t steer us wrong; we asked the wrong question!” Marrill had to shout to be heard over the roaring wind. “We asked how to find the Syphon. Not where. And the Map showed us!” She pointed at the Wiverwanes’ Tower, now rapidly approaching.

  In a heartbeat, they’d be past it. Flung out across the marshes, and who knew how far beyond that.

  Too far to make it back in time to stop the Syphon—that much was for sure.

  She threw a leg over the rim. “What are you doing?” Remy screeched, reaching for her. But she was too late.

  Marrill had already let go. Suddenly, she was falling. It was both horrifying and thrilling at the same time.

  The top of the Tower grew closer and closer and closer.

  All too quickly, it became clear she’d jumped from too high. Her momentum was carrying her too fast. She was falling far too hard.

  The impact would kill her. The realization sent her heart into overdrive.

  “Do this for me, wind!” she heard Annalessa cry.

  A silken cushion of air rose up around Marrill, cradling her. Slowing her. She struck the peaked roof with her shoulder. She scrabbled, raking her hands across the slate tiles as she slid down the slope.

  And then she was airborne again. The air grasped her tighter this time and she landed on the top of the Wall with a teeth-rattling “Oof.”

  For a moment, she could only sit, stunned, gasping. She wasn’t dead.

  She searched the sky for the balloon. Far, far in the distance, she caught sight of it, slowly drifting downward while a dark storm brewed beyond.

  “Thank you,” she whispered to the air, knowing it was persnickety enough that it could have ignored Annalessa’s order if it had wished. The wind picked the words up from her lips, sent a breeze through her hair, and then was off, leaving Marrill alone to face the Wiverwanes.

  She stood, her legs still rubbery from fear. A brief wave of vertigo hit when she took in the view. To one side of the Wall, the Burning Plain extended clear to the horizon. And on the other…

  A chill stole over her skin. Waves pounded the base of the Wall, sending the gears into overdrive. She was so high up that the ships and docks looked like matchsticks, flung about in the tide. She knew that Ropebone Man and the pirats were more than capable of handling storms worse than this, but even so, she hated to think of Karnelius being trapped on board. “At least he has the Naysayer,” she reminded herself. Ornery or no, the two creatures would take care of each other.

  And then she caught sight of something that caused her heart to drop. “What in the…?” Several of the cranes along the top of the city struggled to lift a parking garage, complete with cars. Not far below that was a Ferris wheel from the old abandoned amusement park down the road from her house. There were saguaro cacti, blinking stoplights, a roll of rusted chain-link fencing. More and more of her world was being pulled onto the Stream.

  “Oh no,” she breathed. Heart pounding, she skimmed the gears, looking for one that hadn’t started spinning yet. She couldn’t find one. The Syphon was nearly at full power.

  She could already be too late.

  She ignored the dizziness the thought caused and raced across the top of the Wall to the Tower. There was no door. Cautiously, she hauled herself through one of the thousands of holes that pocked its surface, and dropped inside. She found herself in a large open chamber. The air had the quality of twilight—a soft haze that made everything look like a movie filmed long ago. It reminded Marrill of the massive dovecotes she’d explored during her family’s tour of medieval French châteaus a few years back.

  The walls were rounded, made of stacked stone that curved inward as they neared the peak. Marrill’s eyes trailed up them and she sucked in her breath.

  The top of the Tower was a mass of writhing darkness. Its surface roiled like the underside of a thunderhead.

  The Wiverwanes.

  She took a trembling breath, trying to figure out what her next move should be. Could she just ask how to get to the Syphon? What would they do to her if she did?

  But then a soft sound tugged at her ear, a whispering sort of clicking that seemed out of place. She searched around until she found a small dark shape hunched in the shadows at her feet. It shifted as she moved closer.

  Crouching, she could just make out the hazy outl
ine, like two hands glued back-to-back. A lone Wiverwane. “Hey there, little fellow,” she said softly. “Why aren’t you with the rest of your…” She searched for the right word. “Pack? Crew?”

  Flutter, she realized.

  The Wiverwane inched forward, quivering slightly. Marrill could see immediately what the problem was. One of its fingers was bent unnaturally, the edges of its hand-wing tattered. She sucked in a breath. The creature was injured.

  She’d rescued enough animals in her life to know that a creature in pain could be dangerous. She didn’t even want to think about how that translated into a world like the Pirate Stream. The Wiverwanes were a complete unknown. The smart thing would be to leave it alone.

  But she couldn’t do that.

  Besides, she’d come to the Wiverwanes for help, hadn’t she?

  She held out her hand, moving slowly so as not to startle it, letting the Wiverwane come to her. “It’s okay,” she cooed.

  Cautiously, the creature extended one limb toward her palm. At its touch, her skin rippled. The memory came slowly, haltingly, like an Internet video buffering.

  A shadow fell across the stone floor of the Wiverwanes’ Tower, darker than any shadow had a right to be. It fell from a man clad in black robes adorned with white stars. He reached up, trembling white fingers delicately plucking a Wiverwane free from the cloud swirling over him.

  He ignored the way the creature jerked against his freezing touch as he dangled it in front of his face. A black, wet tear carved down his pale skin. He choked on a sob. “Girl with wings. I knew you would come.”

  Marrill stumbled backward, physically wrenching herself from the memory. She tasted bile. Her heart thundered in her ears. “Serth,” she whispered.

  He was alive. And he was here, in Monerva.

  Not only that, he’d known she would come here, to this Tower, now. He’d been speaking to her directly. He’d known she would get that memory.

  But how could that be possible? Serth was dead! Swallowed by the Pirate Stream.