And before Claire could respond, the girl had reached out and yanked. A sound like Velcro ripped across the water as a long strip came reluctantly away from Claire, as though the sticky strands were sad to let go of her warmth.
Claire’s stomach churned. “Take it all,” she croaked out. Raising a hand to her head, she checked her own single braid and shuddered. It, too, was sticky, and she knew it would be a long, long time before she was sure she was web-free.
“Oh my words!” The girl clasped her hands over her heart. “Thank you! Thank you! Tha—!” She stopped pulling the web on Claire’s shoulder. “I’m sorry; I don’t even know your name!”
“It’s Elaina,” Claire said, sharing her middle name. In times like these, better to be safe than sorry, even if the girl in front of her seemed as harmless as a puppy. “Who are you?”
“Lyric,” the girl said, sticking out her hand to shake before noticing a bit of web still stuck to her palm. “Blech, this stuff is gross, isn’t it?” She waved her hand, and the silk undulated like a worm.
Claire’s stomach flipped. “What happened to you, Lyric? How long were you trapped?”
Lyric pursed her lips and looked up at the night sky. “Judging by the constellations, either exactly a year or just since this afternoon,” she said at last. “I’m guessing this afternoon. I don’t think I would have been very … fresh if it had been a whole year I was wrapped up. You know what I mean?” She shook her head in disbelief. “I can’t believe it was only yesterday that I ruined my entire future!”
Claire sat back on her ankles, bemused. Lyric couldn’t seem to sit still. Even when the girl spoke, her hands moved faster than her lips, each word accented by its own hand flourish.
“Ruined?” Claire asked politely, recognizing Lyric’s pause as an invitation to pry. It was a tactic Sophie used when she was trying to get her parents’ attention: say something big and dramatic and wait for people to ask more.
“I completely knotted my audition yesterday,” Lyric continued, “and now I’ll never be sent to court!”
“Audition? Court?” Claire repeated. When Claire first arrived in Arden, every other word from her friends’ mouths had sounded alien and strange. But she’d been in Arden for nearly three months now, and it had been a while since she’d felt so discombobulated. “Aren’t you a bit small to go on trial? How old are you?”
“I’m eight and three-quarters,” Lyric said indignantly, lifting her chin up to be half an inch taller. “And not court as in trial but court as in royal court. You know, Queen Estelle’s new court.”
…
…
…
Claire’s heart stopped. Her lungs did, too. And though she could still hear the rush of the ocean and the rasp of the pebbles shifting beneath Lyric, her ears couldn’t have been working. Because what Lyric had just said, well, no one knew Queen Estelle had returned. No one except for Claire, Sophie, their friends, Woven Root, and the—
Claire’s thoughts broke off.
For the first time, she looked at Lyric. Really looked at the girl she’d rescued. And now, away from the red glow of the cottage’s stove, without the tattered strips of gauzy web coating her clothes, and with Claire’s eyes fully adjusted to the moon’s thin light, she saw not only the yellow thread in Lyric’s hair and the white of her smile but the blue of her torn cloak.
And not just any blue.
It was the same blue Claire had seen that terrible, horrible night an arrow had pierced her sister. The same blue she’d spied through a crack in a secret passage of Starscrape Citadel. The same blue she’d seen in the damp cells of Drowning Fortress.
Royalist blue.
But—Lyric was so young! And wearing it in the open! The Royalists were usually much older and stayed secretive.
“Lyric,” Claire said, her voice sounding weirdly hollow to her own ears, “when you say ‘Queen Estelle,’ I mean …” She smiled hesitantly. “Are you talking about the Queen Estelle? The one from made-up tales and poems?”
“Where have you been?” Lyric asked. Her hand hesitated above the next strand of silk she’d been about to collect, and she peered at Claire. “Your fleet must have been in a really remote run of the Taryn to not have heard the news! The monoliths weren’t destroyed by Forgers or Gemmers like we all thought at first. No—Estelle’s actually returned! For real! Historian Fray confirmed it for all of us!” Lyric’s voice took on a tone of amazement. “The Royalists weren’t just a group of foolish dreamers. They were right!”
Claire’s heart began to pound again, twice as loudly and twice as fast. So it was all out in the open now. Estelle was no longer in hiding … which meant she must have grown even more powerful since Claire had last met her.
Keep calm. Sophie’s voice cut through Claire’s frantic thoughts. Don’t give yourself away!
“Have you actually seen her?” Claire asked, pretending this was all brand-new information to her. “The queen, I mean?”
Lyric sighed deeply. “No, not yet. But Historian Fray arrived a couple weeks ago with a message from the queen. Her Majesty has invited the guilds to join her at Hilltop Palace for the Starfell holiday, and asked that they bring with them all their unicorn artifacts and their quarter of the Crown of Arden.”
Crown of Arden? The little triumph Claire had pulled from the Spyden turned into dismay. She knew she needed to make a queen, and she’d thought that it would be easy enough. After all, to be a queen, one needed only a crown, and Claire had made plenty of crowns before, out of both construction paper and flowers. But the way Lyric had said the words “Crown of Arden” with such importance—and knowing that Estelle wanted it—Claire began to suspect she couldn’t just make a crown but would need to find the crown.
She wanted to interrupt, to test her theory, to ask any of the thousands of questions that had exploded within her, but Lyric kept talking.
“Not everyone can go to the re-coronation, of course, though a handful of Spinners will be attending so that they can perform for Her Majesty, and yesterday …” For the first time, the girl faltered. “Yesterday, I was cut from the troupe. Which is why I had to see the Spyden, to ask if there was a way I could get another chance, but”—Lyric stared meaningfully at the ball of web now collected in her palms—“that didn’t really go according to plan, either.”
She sighed, and the sound was surprisingly heavy from someone so small. “I know I’m not the best dancer, but I don’t want to be a dancer—I want to be the youngest Historian ever! And the only way for that to happen is if I get a chance to witness this incredible moment! I want to see history being made as the guilds crown Estelle our queen for all time, and then”—Lyric’s voice took on a dreamy quality—“magic will flourish, the unicorns will return, and the wraiths will be vanquished, once and for all!”
Claire’s breath came fast and shallow, but Lyric continued to talk, oblivious to what her words were doing to Claire.
“I’m still trying to decide what I’ll call my historical account,” Lyric rambled on, “but I’ve already chosen my historian’s name! Lyric the Lyrical, Youngest Historian of the Last Queen, Teller of Tales Both Dreadful and Glorious, and Master Witness for the Crown!” She raised an eyebrow in Claire’s direction and said, rather smugly, “It’s good, don’t you think?”
But Claire could hardly get her lungs to suck in oxygen, let alone think.
“Well?” Lyric asked, demanding an answer to her question.
Claire nodded. “Yeah, it’s good. Sorry, this is just …” She trailed off. Just terrible. But she didn’t say the last part aloud.
Lyric frowned. “I really can’t believe this is the first time you’re hearing about all this,” she said. “Grandmaster Bobbin sent word up and down the rivers and sea for all fleets to return to Needle Pointe for preparation.” She tilted her head. “What fleet did you say you belonged to again?”
Claire hadn’t said. Most names in Arden usually reflected the guild, but Claire didn’t know the firs
t thing about Spinning! Panic darted through her, startling away any words that could have helped. “It’s … I’m with—”
But she was spared having to answer as Lyric gasped and clapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh, Elaina,” Lyric said, “I think your thoughts have been Gathered.”
Claire blinked. “I— What?”
“It’s what Spydens do.” Lyric’s hands fluttered in concern. “They can pull out memories so they have them for themselves. But not to worry!” she added hastily. “Your memories will grow back in time. Or, at least, they should.”
Nausea swept through Claire. “But I thought they gave answers?”
“They do that, too,” Lyric confirmed as she took a bit of gauze off Claire and began to wrap it neatly around her hand in a figure eight. “Back when magic was still strong and the Guild War was just beginning, the Gemmers crafted all these terrible stone wyverns and the Tillers and Forgers teamed up together to craft the very first chimera. Spinners wanted their own war creatures. Some of them became convinced that the only way they could protect themselves was to integrate their skills with those of true spiders. But they made a huge mistake.”
Lyric cheerfully dropped the wet web onto the beach. And after selecting another scrap, she began to collect again. “Instead of their humanity controlling their arachnidity,” she continued, “it was the other way around. The creatures grew as large as men and women, and human knowledge helped them do spidery things even better. The beasts figured out how to knit themselves a human skin in which to hide.”
Spyden silk all collected, Lyric sat back on her heels and stared at Claire. “Patches, none of this is familiar to you, is it?” She tilted her head and frowned. “We should get you to Needle Pointe.”
Claire froze. The absolute last thing she wanted to do was go to Needle Pointe, especially now if all the Spinners were Royalists. Someone there was sure to recognize her and alert the queen. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said quickly. “It’s too dark to see a path. We might fall. Besides, what about the wraiths?”
“They won’t bother us—not here, anyway,” Lyric said. “Historian Fray said that the queen has already ensured the wraiths will leave Needle Pointe alone forever! And don’t worry about light—I got this.” Lyric reached into her cloak pocket and produced a ball of yarn. “My B.P.S.: Ball of Positioning String,” Lyric said proudly, and began to fiddle with it. In the dark, Claire couldn’t exactly see what Lyric was doing, but Claire thought that maybe she was tying the yarn to her finger in a complicated knot.
“Mama got it for my birthday, since I’m always getting lost. Though I have to admit, I’ve been struggling in my String Theory Class. Heads up!”
The ball of string whistled past Claire’s head to land with a soft thump somewhere in the darkness. Lyric twisted the string on her finger. A second later, a golden glimmer began to shoot along the string, lighting up the darkness. It led to the ball of yarn, which was now bouncing up a nearly invisible path cut into the cliffs: a safe way over the Needles and down to the city and its bay on the other side.
“You see?” Lyric said brightly. “It’ll be as easy as a cross-stitch to get back. And don’t worry. You can stay with my family until your memories grow back. I bet your family is in the city now. It might take a day or two to locate them—it’s been so crowded the last few days with everyone gathering for Starfell—but we’ll find where you belong!”
But that was exactly the problem. Claire did not want to be found. Even the thought of Estelle finding her sent a tremor through her bones. The queen would probably try to use Claire as bait to lure out Sophie, and then—
“Hey, you’re shivering,” Lyric said. “Take this.”
Lyric pressed something soft and thick into her hands, and Claire looked down to see she was holding a Royalist cloak. It took everything within her not to toss it into the water and let the tides drag it down to the coral forest hidden far below.
“That’s yours, isn’t it?” Lyric asked. “I grabbed it from the Spyden’s basket before I ran out.”
The coldness edged away from Claire as a realization suddenly struck her: Lyric was so free with her because even though she didn’t think Claire—or Elaina, as was the case—remembered anything, she assumed that Claire was a fellow Royalist.
Lyric began to follow the glowing string. “We should get going. It’ll take us all night to get back.”
Only a queen can defeat a queen, the Spyden had said. And if anyone knew how to make a queen, it would be this mysterious, secretive society that had spent hundreds of years researching the royal family. There might be Queen Estelle, Mira Fray, and Royalists in the city, but there could also be answers.
“Are you coming?” Lyric called back.
Claire had to defeat the queen. To keep Arden—and Sophie—safe.
She whirled the cloak over her shoulders, and this time when it touched her skin, she didn’t shudder. As soon as she saved Arden, she could start saving Sophie, and then they could go home, where the biggest worry they had was who would get to choose the next song in the car.
“Coming!” Claire replied. But as she followed Lyric and her glowing string up the twisting path, the Royalist cloak around her shoulders felt as heavy as a lie and twice as dangerous.
CHAPTER
7
By the time Claire and Lyric had trudged the rocky path from the beach to Needle Pointe the sun had started to rise, but the morning fog had not yet burned away. It rolled in from the water, adding iridescence to the newly hoisted sails of the ships. In this light, they looked more like butterfly wings than simple sheets.
Right before the narrow path merged with the main road, Lyric paused to rewind the B.P.S. while Claire studied the layout of the Spinners’ only permanent town. It was a city of crescents; the water from the harbor was carefully guided into a series of circular canals that, even from this vantage point, Claire could tell were crowded with Spinner narrowboats. The Rhona River hugged the city before running out into the sea, making the entire settlement one little island. As far as she could tell, there were no walls or gates or inspectors, but still—she knew Arden had ways of dealing with unexpected guests.
Her hand drifted to the pencil wedged securely behind her ear, and the weight of her Hollow Pack on her shoulder was a friendly one. She wasn’t powerless the same way she’d been when she first climbed up the chimney-well and stepped into Arden. After all, Claire knew how to polish a gem just right so that it could remember how to glow. But even though she knew she wasn’t helpless, she didn’t exactly feel not helpless, either. And she wouldn’t—not until she managed to find out more about this “Crown of Arden.” But to be able to do that, she had to make sure she wouldn’t be caught as soon as she stepped foot inside the city limits.
“Lyric,” Claire said, interrupting the girl’s current monologue on what kind of gown Queen Estelle would most likely wear to her coronation, “what exactly are we telling the inspectors about me again?”
“Oh, don’t worry about them,” Lyric said, waving an airy hand, and Claire suspected that she had never been interrogated on the waterways before. Because if she had, she would certainly know that to not worry was impossible. “We just need to stick to The Story, and everything will be all right.”
The Story, as Lyric put it, was one she’d happily pulled together as they’d followed the glowing B.P.S. It involved a dastardly shipwreck, lost papers, and a daring, dashing Lyric who’d discovered Claire on the beach when Lyric had slipped out to collect early-morning sea urchins. For dye, of course. Tragically, upon finding Claire’s unconscious body, she’d lost her entire morning’s catch.
It made Claire’s head spin.
“What will we tell your mom, though?” Claire asked. “If you’ve been gone since yesterday morning, she’ll know you’ve been missing for an entire night!”
“Ah, yes, well.” Lyric’s expression turned guilty. “I kind of, sorta told her that I was staying overnight with Velvet
ina so we could get in some more studying. But like I said”—again that airy wave—“everything will be all right!”
“LYRIC WEFT, IS THAT YOU?”
Claire jumped at the unexpected sound and whirled around, but no one was there. That made sense, though, because the voice hadn’t come from behind her but from above. Squinting up, she saw a cluster of metal cups hanging in the olive tree above her. Thin red threads had been tied to them, and Claire traced their path all the way down to the rooftops of Needle Pointe before they disappeared.
“Patches and rags,” Lyric muttered before cupping her hands around her mouth. “IT IS, SCHOLAR SYLVESTER, AND I’VE BROUGHT A FRIEND.”
Claire stared curiously at the cups. She’d once tried to do something similar with Sophie, when Sophie was upset that Mom and Dad wouldn’t be getting her a cell phone even though she was about to start middle school. She’d been Claire’s age then, and Claire had been nine—just entering the fourth grade and excited when Sophie told her they could make their own set of cell phones, so long as they had tin cans and a piece of string. She said she’d seen it on an old TV show once. But though they had both tried, neither of them ever heard so much as a peep.
“WHAT WAS THAT?” the voice said, and Claire had the sense that whoever was on the other end of the string must be sitting in the harbor, if not completely submerged under the salt water. “YOU WANT TO PLAY PRETEND?”
“NO,” Lyric shouted back. “I SAID, ‘I BROUGHT A FRIEND’! ”
“I’M GLAD YOU KNOW YOU’LL NEED TO MAKE AMENDS,” the voice, Sylvester, said. “YOUR MOTHER IS FURIOUS.”
It was funny to watch the undertones of pink drain from Lyric’s face. Her hand dropped from her mouth. “Patches,” she repeated and broke into a run while Scholar Sylvester crackled, “LANGUAGE!” at her back.
“Lyric!” Claire called, chasing after her. “Slow down!”
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