by Heidi Heilig
But this line of questioning was useless—the answers were not to be found within. And while Crowhurst might cloak his secrets in grandiose claims, Dahut seemed far more practical. There was a crack there, between them—one I hoped I could slip through. Her condition complicated matters, but Nix had mentioned a diary. I wrinkled my nose. A girl’s diary wouldn’t be the worst thing I’d ever stolen, though it would come close. But my honor was the least of my worries.
Gathering myself—the energy humming in my fingers, the anger simmering at the base of my skull, and the queasy bubbles in the pit of my stomach—I pulled them all tight into a knot in my chest and breathed in deep. It left me as I exhaled.
Then I threw back my shoulders and went boldly down the middle of the hall.
Although I would have preferred to be safe on the Temptation, being an invited guest in the castle did make my search easier. The servants I saw deferred, nodding to me, not meeting my eyes. I wandered as I walked; the castle sprawled, very large for such a small island. Finally, outside a wide door to the south wing, I was stopped by a guard with waxed blond mustaches. “Where do you think you’re going?”
The smile I gave him was genuine; a guard was a sign I was moving in the right direction. Besides, I’d come prepared. “I need to see the princess.”
His jaw worked. “Pardon?”
“She dropped this,” I said, pulling a silk handkerchief from my pocket, edged in lace, threaded with gold. “I want to return it.”
The man rocked back on his heels, somewhat mollified. “I’ll bring it to Her Highness.”
“You don’t understand,” I said, cocking my hip just a little. “She dropped it in my lap.”
Cold radiated from the man as from a frozen statue. It was a gamble. I would have preferred something from the king—after all, the princess was just a girl—but the only thing he’d had on him was that massive necklace and something that jingled in his pocket, a set of keys, most likely. Nothing that could be construed as a token.
And I’d seen the way the servants looked at Dahut. I recognized the scorn, the suspicion, though it had a new spin—the ugliest type, that men reserved for women alone. It was there now, on the guard’s face. After a moment, the man turned on his heel. “This way.”
He led me through the royal wing and to the base of the southeast tower—a tower for a princess, how typical. But when he started up the stairs, I dismissed him. “I can find it from here.”
“As you wish,” he said with a barely concealed sneer. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the man make the nah, with his thumb poking out between his fingers.
My back stiffened. It was a disgusting gesture, but I’d seen men do the same in the tavern when talking about sorcery. Did it mean the same thing here as it did where I was from? As I climbed the stairs, I withered inside. Stolen handkerchiefs were easily returned; not so stolen reputations.
But shame was a luxury I couldn’t afford—the safety of my friends was at stake. Steeling myself, I continued up the stairs. At the top, a door, unguarded, unlocked . . . but there was more than one way to make a prisoner. Under the crack, dim light glowed and flickered. The fire in the hearth was dying. Surely she would be asleep by the time the flame went out.
I sat in the dark to wait. A chill seeped up from the stone; I did pushups on the landing to warm my blood. No sound came for an hour. Two. The light under the door was lower now, nearly gone. I stood, stretching my legs slowly. Then I opened the door just a crack, slow enough it did not squeak.
“Father?”
Inside, I cursed, but I painted embarrassment on my face as I poked my head into the room, waving the silk square like a white flag. “No. It’s Kashmir. Please forgive me. I was trying to put your handkerchief under the door. I must have pushed it open.” My eyes flicked around the room: a soft chair, leaded windows, and a table beside the bed holding a guttering candle and a pen—but no diary. “You dropped it earlier. In the excitement, I forgot I had it. I’m so sorry to intrude.”
“It’s all right.” She was sitting up on her bed, her hair falling across her shoulders in black waves. The candle reflected in her eyes, as though there was nothing behind them. My body wanted to shudder; I stopped it. “Thank you,” she added.
“A pleasure,” I said, giving a little bow from the doorway. When I straightened up, I gave her an apologetic shrug. “I guess I couldn’t sleep.”
She cocked her head. “Me either.”
“Oh?” I laughed a little, as though I hadn’t already figured that out. “Why not?”
Dahut pursed her lips, and for a moment, I thought she wouldn’t answer. “I had to write down everything that happened today,” she said at last. “So I can remind myself later.”
She tucked her hair behind her ear and then rested her hand on the stack of pillows behind her; her body language told me just where she’d hidden the diary when I’d opened the door. But how to get across the room without alarming her? And if I took it from under the pillow, how quickly would she realize?
“You do that every night?” I said, to draw her out. But the look of concern on my face was not hard to fake; the idea of forgetting terrified me.
“I can’t sleep until I do.”
“It must be frightening,” I said. She tensed: too much. “I try to read every night, myself,” I added, looking down at my feet as though embarrassed. “To practice. I’m still learning how. But all my books are on the ship, so here I am, wandering the halls.” I lifted the handkerchief again, like I’d just remembered the reason for my visit. “May I?”
“Oh. Of course.” She gestured. At last I stepped into the room, walking not toward her, huddled in her bed, but askew, to the table at her side. I folded the handkerchief and placed it down neatly, giving it a pat.
“There. Well. I’ll let you sleep.” I started to leave, trying to think of another excuse to stay, but when I was halfway across the room, she spoke.
“What keeps you up at night?”
I turned back—but slowly, so she didn’t know how grateful I was for the opening. “That’s quite a personal question.”
She took a little breath. “I’m sorry.”
“No, no, don’t be.” I put my hand on the back of my neck and sighed. “It’s . . . Well. Sometimes I think about my own past. Where I came from. What my life was like before the ship.”
“Do you miss it?”
“Never,” I said. “Then again, I remember it. Or I think I do.”
Silence from her.
In the hearth, the ashes settled. The room was drafty, despite the rug on the floor. “May I build up your fire, princess?”
“Please.” She wrapped her arms around her knees as I knelt near the fireplace, snapping sticks and arranging them carefully. I blew on the coals, whispering the flame up from the embers. “Call me Dahut,” she added.
“Of course. Dahut,” I said. “Interesting name.”
“So is Kashmir. Is that where you’re from?”
“No.” I faltered. “I . . . I’ve never seen the place I’m from on any map.”
“Why not?”
“Well. I’m told it’s because the place I’m from is a fairy tale. Much like this place.”
She tilted her head. “Was it?”
“Not to me.” I smiled a little. “You look disappointed.”
“Well. Fairy tales aren’t so bad,” she said. “Quests and elixirs and finding your long-lost parents. I have no idea where I’m from.” She cast the words out, too freely, to make me think she didn’t care how they landed.
I couldn’t keep the surprise from my face. “You weren’t . . . born in Ker-Ys?”
“I’m not sure. My father says so, but . . .” Her lips twisted a little, half a smile, half a grimace. “I don’t exactly fit in here.”
I returned her look. “I know the feeling. They make it plain.”
“And it’s not just the . . .” Her vague gesture took in her dark skin, her black hair—different from my own dark skin
, my own black hair, though not in the eyes of the people of Ker-Ys. “My accent is more like my father’s than anyone else’s. And no one else in Ker-Ys does this.” She opened her hands, showing me the design on her palms. “I must have learned it somewhere, but I don’t know where that would be.”
“Doesn’t your father know?”
“I think he does.” Her fingers knotted in the coverlet; the fire, brighter now, limned her hair and blackened her eyes. “What was your own past like?” she said then, unabashedly changing the subject.
My smile faded, and my answer was not manipulation. “Lonely. But I have a friend now.”
“You mean Nix.”
“Yes.” My answer was soft; it was too hard to mask the feeling there. But Dahut leaned forward, eager for the story.
“How did you meet?”
The memory rushed back as though it had been hiding close by—the guards with their shamshir, the girl with her ship. “I needed to escape,” I said simply. “So I climbed aboard the Temptation, and there she was.”
“And she helped you?”
“That’s what friends do, right?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
I stood, coming closer, but still not too close. “We’ll be here at least another day. Perhaps if you write me down in your book, when you wake up tomorrow, you’ll remember I’m your friend.”
She watched me to see if I was lying—and after a moment, she smiled. Guilt twisted like a knife in my gut as she slipped her hand beneath the pillows and drew out her diary at last. “All right.”
The book was a little thing with a hard cover and a cheap lock; as she paged through, I peered over her shoulder as if to help. “It starts with a K.”
“I know.” She stopped on a blank page, but I touched her wrist.
“Wait. Go back.” She frowned up at me, but I flipped past pages covered in her delicate red script, stopping at one that had caught my eye: black ink, the letters crawling like ants across the paper. And there, the awkward space of something missing. “Who cut out these pages?”
“I don’t remember,” she said, but I could tell she had a guess.
I took the book from her hands, tilting it to the light. The story written there was the tale of Ker-Ys—the one Nix had told me. But Grandlon’s name was replaced with Crowhurst’s. “Dahut,” I whispered to her. “This is your father’s handwriting.”
Her jaw clenched; she spoke through her teeth. “I know.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I tossed on the thick mattress, wrestling with sleep. More than once I jolted out of a half dream; without the rocking of the waves, I felt as though I were falling. The bed smelled ever so slightly of lavender, so unlike the brine and the breeze on the wide sea. And the room was too quiet; I could hear nothing of the wind in the rigging or the breath of the ocean or the waves whispering secrets to the hull.
But the silence in the room was a sharp contrast to the thoughts racing around my head: my mother, here and now. The past, changed—though not the way I had imagined. Then again, wishes granted magically had a way of being twisted. There were so many stories about that—the magic fish, the monkey’s paw, the treacherous genie. What would happen when it came time for me to rewrite my own past?
I threw back the covers and clawed out of the hollow formed by the down. Was Kashmir still awake too? In a shifting tide, he was my anchor. Smoothing my rumpled gown, I slipped out into the parlor, resolved to find him and tell him so. I peered at the doors; which room was his? The fire had burned low, and I didn’t see Blake sitting on the chaise until he spoke.
“Hello, Miss Song.” He lifted his face from his hands, and his eyes were dark as the midnight sea. “If you’re looking for Mr. Firas, he’s gone.”
Had I been so obvious? Thankfully, the dim light hid my blush. “Where?”
“He wouldn’t tell me.”
“Oh.” I shifted on my feet, awkward, and toyed with the lace on my skirt. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“I have the same problem of late. Vivid dreams.” He sighed, running one hand through his hair. “Or perhaps they aren’t dreams at all.”
“Right.” I wet my lips. “Kash told me you both remembered the time before Crowhurst was king.”
“That, and other things.” Blake gazed at the coals on the hearth. They lit his face in soft lines—the angle of his jaw, the downward curve of his mouth. “I recognized her.”
“Who?”
“Your mother.”
I swallowed—the word was so strange in my ears. “What do you mean, you recognized her?”
“I knew who she was the moment she came through the door. I . . . It seems . . . impossible, but weeks ago, the day you arrived in Honolulu, I had a dream I still remember. I was calling on the house next to mine. The one in Nu‘uanu Valley. I’d gone to see you there.” His eyes were distant, as though he was watching the memory unfold. “You were my—my dear friend, my confidante. We’d grown up together. In the dream, I was only waiting in your parlor for you to come downstairs. Your mother brought me tea, and that’s when I woke. Later that morning, I rode to town and heard there was a black ship sailing toward the harbor. And when I saw you standing on deck, I recognized you too.”
“What are you saying?” I asked, even though I knew.
Still, he obliged me. “I think . . . Miss Song, I think there might be—in some lifetime, or timeline, in the range of infinite possibility . . .” Blake sighed again. “There may have been a place where your mother and the captain stayed. There may be a time where paradise still exists, the robbery never happened—and you and I never left.”
My breath caught in my throat. I had always feared the price of having my mother back would be my own past, but the reality of the sacrifice was far more complicated. The worst part was: I could imagine it. He and I, best friends—we were so alike. It wouldn’t have been such a bad life. Just not my life. But I had given Crowhurst the map. I had set this all in motion. “I’m sorry, Blake.”
“Why?”
I stammered; I did not want to give words to my own complicity. “You sound . . . sad.”
“Sad? No. Miss Song. Don’t you see?” He smiled at me then—just like he used to. “If there are other possibilities out there, it means there must be a world where we’re all very happy.”
“If there is, I haven’t got a map there.”
“Maybe I could make one,” he said, his voice whimsical. “Of course, I’d need someone to take me there.”
Suddenly, more than anything, I wanted to be back on the ship—among the charts and the worlds where I felt at home. I strode to the door, my dress swishing around my ankles.
“Where are you going, Miss Song?”
“Back to the docks.”
“You can’t go alone.” He stood, and I rounded on him.
“I damn well can.”
He put his hands up, palms out. “Forgive me. I—what I meant to say was, I don’t want to be alone.”
My anger drained away, as quick as it had flooded in. “Come on then.”
We stepped out into the hall side by side, and I picked a direction I only hoped was correct. I had been in a haze when I’d followed the servants to the suites, and now the rippled glass of the rare windows did not allow me clear sight of the stars.
Far away, the bells tolled the changing tide, followed by the low, grinding tremolo of the sea gates closing. I shivered; the halls were drafty, and my cloak was still on the floor in my room. As I considered going back for it, Blake shrugged off his jacket and draped it over my shoulders without a word. I was grateful, not only for the coat, but for the silence—rare for him. But perhaps it was my turn to speak.
“The idea of infinite worlds, infinite universes . . . it isn’t new to me, but it’s not the only theory.” I sighed. “Some people think worlds are stacked thick as books in a library, and each choice you make creates a new story. But others think there’s only one world. One book.”
“And the arrival of a Navig
ator tears out whole pages?”
“Not on purpose. But even the smallest change might have unintended consequences.” I bit my lip. “I don’t know what your dream means—if it’s a memory of a life that might have been, or one that was until I arrived. But my father told me, and my grandmother told him, whenever you try to change something, you sacrifice something else.”
“Every choice has a cost, Miss Song. The real question is whether or not one is willing to pay it.”
“No, Blake. The real question is whether it’s worth the price.”
“I wonder what Crowhurst sacrificed, to be king.”
“We should ask him,” I said. “Though that’s not first on my list of questions.”
“So you do want to know more,” he said softly, and I could not deny it.
At the end of the hall, we found a tower. The stairs curled down inside it like the shell of a nautilus. Blake followed me down—one flight, two flights, three. At the bottom, I recognized the arched doorway. “Do you remember this, from our first visit?” I glanced back. Blake’s brow was furrowed. “The bailey is just through the kitchens.” But crossing through them, I stopped dead in my tracks. Blake bumped into my back.
“Speak of the devil,” he whispered under his breath. There in the kitchen was Crowhurst.
He held a tray, and in the dim light of the banked hearth, he looked as surprised as I felt. But hadn’t Dahut told me? Her father rarely slept. “Where are you both off to?” he said at last, glancing from me to Blake.
“I’m escorting Miss Song back to the docks. And you?”
Crowhurst hesitated, just a moment. “A midnight snack. With all the conversation over dinner, I forgot to eat.”
Blake glanced at the tray he held. It was stacked with dirty plates, including a teapot and two cups. “You must love tea.”
Crowhurst barked a laugh; the sound flitted through the dark like a bat. “I am an Englishman, of course I do! As does my daughter—I was with her.” He turned back to me, concern etching a V on his brow. “But surely your own father wouldn’t want you out in the middle of the night! Aren’t your rooms comfortable?”
