by Heidi Heilig
“Good thing you’re such a skilled sailor.”
“Promise me you’re not going to jump.”
“Just bring us around!”
Slate chewed his cheek, looking for a moment like he was going to refuse, but at last he took the helm and brought the ship in toward the tower. We hove to about ten feet out. Bee was the one to drop the anchor; she threw it over the side like a body. Her eyes were stony as she stared at Crowhurst, and though her voice was soft, I heard what she said. “He better hope there’s no need for revenge.”
But Crowhurst didn’t seem to notice the promise in her eyes—or perhaps he was always brave in the face of danger. He had strolled up to the edge of the wall, and he didn’t even look down. “Hello again, Nix!” He gave a cheery wave. “It seems you have something of mine, and I have something of yours! Fancy a trade?”
I bit off a curse. Behind him, Blake and Dahut huddled close in the lee of the tower, trying to avoid the wind. I narrowed my eyes; Blake was not carrying a torch, but Kashmir’s little glass lamp, and at his belt hung the knife Kashmir had been carrying. And there was something dark on his sleeve—a stain. Ink? Or blood?
It was only with great difficulty that I stopped myself from launching across the water to strangle him. My own blood pounded in my veins, and I slammed my open palm down on the railing. “What did you do?” My voice seemed high in my ears, too delicate to contain my anger. “What did you do to Kashmir?”
“Nothing permanent—yet.” Crowhurst pitched his voice to carry over the hush of the swirling waves. “We made him comfortable in the treasury. Aside from the manacles, of course. Just bring Cook back and I’ll set Kashmir free.”
Relief eased the pain in my chest. Kash was alive, at least for now. “That’s not much of a bargain,” I called back to Crowhurst. “Considering that back in Al-Maas, Kash would have died without me!”
He only shrugged. “He still might.”
I clenched my fists, trying to keep a grip on my anger. But I couldn’t let Crowhurst get to me. Manacles? There was no lock that could hold Kashmir, not if he didn’t want to be held. A grim smile touched my lips. “I very much doubt that,” I said, but my bravado evaporated when he drew something familiar out of his pocket.
“Here, then. Blake gave me these, but I’m sure Kash would prefer you have them.” Crowhurst tossed the bundle toward me, underhand; it landed near my feet with a clink. Kashmir’s pick set. My heart sank. “Something to remember him by.”
A hole opened up in my chest, like a burn through a page. Beside me, Bee slapped the rail. “How could you betray your brother?” she cried, but her voice was lost in the wind.
Still, Blake understood. In the light of the lamp, I saw his jaw clench, but his shame wasn’t enough. I wished I had a basilisk’s gaze, to strike them all down dead. My blood boiled like venom in my veins; I spat my words like poison. “After all that about the blood of innocents, Blake? This won’t scrub clean so easily!”
There was misery in his voice. “Are any of us truly innocent, Miss Song?”
Crowhurst laughed. “Don’t be angry, Nixie. You’ve been a worthy opponent. But it seems I’ve won the game.”
“A game?” I stared at him—but that’s what he’d written in his logbook. Moves and countermoves. If this was a game to him, I had to be smart. Lin was right. I had to think it through. Cure Cook. Save Dahut. And Kashmir too, of course.
But how? Every move I made, Crowhurst was already ahead of me. How could I play against him if he held all the cards? He’d been planning for months, he’d said. At least since New York.
No . . . not New York. Boeotia.
Damn the man. He’d given me the hint last night. He’d told me himself: he’d met another Navigator there.
I spun on my heel, striding back across the deck. “New plan.”
“Good,” Slate muttered. “This one wasn’t going so great.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I said drily. “Can you give Bee the wheel? I’m going to need your help.”
“With what?”
I knew what I had to do, but it was hard to say aloud. “I have to go to Boeotia.”
He stared at me, shocked. “You’d leave without Kashmir?”
The pain at his words was physical—like a punch to the gut: it took my breath away. “I’m coming back. And I’ll need you to stay here. I’ll have to Navigate to the ship when I’m done.”
“To the ship! You haven’t got a map, Nixie.”
“Not yet. But I’m guessing you still have some needles?” I watched as understanding dawned on his face. My father wasn’t a cartographer, but he’d done dozens of tattoos.
“Yeah. Okay.” He scrubbed one hand through his hair and sighed. “Come to the cabin.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
He called to Bee and handed off the wheel while I went down to the galley to get a canteen for the Mnemosyne water. Then I climbed back above to find Slate, but I stopped dead when I ducked inside the cabin. Lin was there too. The sight of her still brought me up short, especially here on the ship.
Had she ever stood on these boards? Lin had never sailed with Slate—I knew that much. Joss had forbidden it. But though she looked out of place in my eyes, she seemed completely at ease. I went to the desk, to try to study the map of Boeotia, while Slate rummaged in the bottom of his sea chest, handing her materials. But I could feel her eyes on me, and finally I turned. “What is it?”
She smiled a little. “I think you’re a fighter and a lover.”
“Come, Nixie.” Slate folded his long legs and sat on the floor, arranging his tools beside him—a bottle of India ink, a pen, a pencil, and a needle and thread. I shrugged off my cloak and sat cross-legged before him. Rolling up the sleeve of my shirt, I exposed the soft flesh of my inner arm.
“Do it here,” I said. “Where I can see it.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to just draw?” He pushed the back of the needle into the eraser and started to wind it with thread.
“You don’t just draw, Dad.” I glanced at his hands, at the ink peeking out from under his sleeves. “This is my way home. It has to be right.”
“Okay.” He wet his lips. I could tell he was nervous, but he uncapped the pen and laid my arm across his lap. “Top down? How big?”
I held my thumb and forefinger about three inches apart. He nodded and bent his head over my arm. The pen tickled my skin as the outline took form: an almond shape, graceful, with circles for the masts and a square for the hatch. The Temptation, in simple lines, clean and clear. My father’s hands were surprisingly steady. I grunted, pleased. “This is good.”
“Good. That was the easy part.”
Slate popped a match to life, heating the needle till it gleamed. As the smoke danced snakelike in the air, Lin took a bottle from her pocket. “Here,” she said, uncorking it. “I took it from Rotgut.”
“What is it?” I said, wrinkling my nose.
“He said it was like gin.”
“Good,” Slate said, reaching for the bottle, but Lin yanked it back. “For my hands, baby,” he said, wounded. “Christ.” She narrowed her eyes, but she gave over the bottle.
He poured it over his hands, and then splashed some over my arm. Finally he handed it to me and I took a swallow. Whatever it was burned like fire. “That is not gin,” I wheezed, looking at Lin. She only shrugged.
“He said it was like gin,” she reminded me, but already the fire in my throat had faded into a warmth in my stomach. I lay on the floor with my arm across Slate’s lap; my other hand found Lin’s. My father uncapped the ink, placing it down beside him, fussing with the position of the bottle. His preparations seemed to take forever, and as I waited, a fear crept in. What if this didn’t work? What if the map wouldn’t bring me back to the ship, and I never saw any of them again? Not Slate, not Lin . . . not Kashmir . . .
I had been dreading the pain, but when the first spark of it lit up my arm, I was grateful for the distraction. In the silence of t
he cabin, I could almost hear the skin—my skin—breaking with a little pock. Tears squeezed out the corners of my eyes; the motion of the needle was sharp and snappy. The gin didn’t seem to be helping much at first, although after a few minutes, the pain ebbed a little. I sighed, and Slate barked a laugh.
“What?”
“Endorphins? The natural high. Nothing. Sorry.”
“It’s fine.” There was shame on his face, behind the humor. I squeezed his hand; it was so warm. The fear was creeping back, nestling against me like a cat. “Dad . . . if this doesn’t work . . .”
“It will.”
“How do you know?”
“It has to.” He spoke with the surety that always used to infuriate me; why was it comforting now? “You love him,” he said then, and I did not deny it. “And he loves you. I can tell. I know what love looks like.”
I grimaced at his old refrain, but he didn’t see my expression—his eyes were on Lin. He gave her a crooked smile, and she leaned into his shoulder. I saw it then. The look of love.
Kash had looked at me like that. Had I watched him with the same longing on my face? It was beautiful, it was terrible—and I knew now, how Slate had done what he’d done, and why. And in that moment, all was forgiven.
I couldn’t watch them too long, so I averted my eyes. Then I caught a glimpse of the flesh of my arm, dotted with ink and blood where he’d gone too deep. My stomach roiled. “Right,” I gulped. “Keep going.”
He did, but now the fear had wrapped itself around me in coils that tightened with each breath, like the serpent Dahn, corseting the world. What would I do if I could not return to the ship with the cure?
We had Cook. If time ran out, Slate could always help him steer the ship through the Margins. At the very least, he could get back to his native time. Perhaps once James was aboard the Friendship, he’d prove a quick learner. And if we all somehow survived, I could meet the Temptation back in my own native time—Honolulu, 1884. Surely my father could find a map to bring the ship there; all I’d have to do to meet him was walk through the Margins at the edge of the map of Boeotia.
But what of Kashmir? His face swam before me, his careless grin at contrast with the intensity of his eyes. If I lost him . . . if I lost him . . .
I could not follow that thought to its conclusion—it was a golden thread through a winding maze, at the center of which lurked something more terrifying than any minotaur. How had it come to this? I had spent so much time trying to escape the monster, but I was already trapped in the labyrinth. Like Theseus, I had claimed my birthright, and the route ahead was fraught with peril.
“It’s done.”
Slate’s words woke me, as though from a dream. My breath hitched in my throat as I sat up and looked at my arm. The skin was raised, but the line was thick and dark, red and black—the ship a part of me, like it always had been. And suddenly, I was certain, at least, about this map. No matter where I was, it would bring me home. “Thanks, Dad.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Wiping his hands on his shirt, he gave me a half smile, but his eyes were troubled as he helped me to my feet. Then, suddenly, he wrapped his arms around me. “I told you the other night I’d do anything to help you,” he whispered into my hair. “I meant it, Nixie. I hope you know that. I hope you know how much I love you.”
The fierceness in his words gave me pause—but though my arm was throbbing, I hugged him back tightly. “I love you too,” I told him, and I could feel him smile.
Finally he released me, and stood alone on unsteady legs. I clenched my fist a few times; my skin tingled, but the sharp pain had already faded to a dull ache. Then Lin pulled the bottle of mercury from the pocket of my cloak and anointed my arm with a few drops of quicksilver; soon enough, even the ache had faded. When we opened the door, the crew turned to look at me. Bee smiled tightly. “Did you flinch?”
Slate put his hand on my shoulder. “She didn’t.”
I took a deep breath of the fresh cold air. It cleared my head. I felt galvanized, strong—but the greatest challenge was still ahead. Morning was not far off. Twilight struggled through dark clouds. The tide had risen; the water licked up the wall. Farther out to sea, the storm was building; the Fool had closed in on Ker-Ys. Could the flood be far behind?
I made my way toward the bow, as far as I could get from Crowhurst, from the city—from Kashmir. But I would be going farther still. I’d studied the marble map closely. Still, I’d never Navigated without the ship propelling me through the Margins, and I did not want to have the time to hesitate, to think of what I might be leaving behind. So I stood on the beak of the prow. Below me, the red-haired figurehead gazed with wooden eyes over the foam-flecked surface of the Iroise: a starry midnight, endlessly deep. The wind cut through my thin shirt, and the sea swirled like a galaxy between the ship and the wall, dashing itself into spray. But I did not look back, and the mist began to glitter in the air like frost.
“Where are you going?” Crowhurst called as the fog rolled in. “You can’t leave! You can’t!”
Ignoring his frantic cries, I faced the wilderness of the sea. Nothing could hold me here. Not even Kashmir. I had to leave everything behind. Everything, everyone. I stared at the dark horizon until my eyes watered; I took a deep breath, and another. The mist was thick enough to choke me; I drew it close as a shawl—or a noose—until I could no longer feel the cold of the northern sea.
On Parnassus, the white lime was shining in the heat of the Mediterranean sun. On the breeze, was that the iron tang of the sirocco? The shush of the waves had faded to the sound of wind in the laurel leaves.
I closed my eyes and dove off the edge of the ship.
CHAPTER THIRTY
I fell.
And kept falling, much farther than the distance from the deck to the water.
I had half a moment to worry that I’d fall forever, but then, in a burst of bright white light, I hit the ground.
My shoulder connected first, with a clumsy crunch. I tried to roll forward, like Kash would have, but something in my neck twanged and I would have screamed if I had the air. Instead, I grunted as I flopped onto my back. But I was still falling—sliding in a shower of pebbles down a hillside. I scrabbled at the soil, tearing a nail on a rough stone, digging my fingers into the gravel, and finally grinding to a stop with my hip against a shrub made almost entirely of thorns.
I lay there, panting in the sudden warmth, my eyes turned to the faultless blue sky. Stones still rattled down the slope below me. Finally they found their rest, and there was silence. I coughed as the dust settled at the back of my throat. The heavy air was herbal and syrupy on my tongue, from the plants I’d crushed, and something dead nearby. Far above me, a pale buzzard floated on the updraft. To my right, a tiny amphisbaena encircled an anthill, two tongues flicking out of both heads.
I sat up slowly. My shoulder throbbed and my palms were bloody; good thing Slate hadn’t drawn the ship on my hands.
The ship. With a start that sent another trickle of stones skittering, I pushed back my torn and filthy sleeve, but the tattoo was intact. Next I patted my pocket—the canteen I’d brought was still there. I rolled the shirt back down, letting my hand linger over the ink as I tried to get my bearings.
The slope was dry and steep; bees hummed in pockets of dusty thyme, and where there was grass, it was short and sparse. Behind me, the ground rose toward towering cliffs the color of chalk, shining in the relentless sun. Down below, the slope ended in a copse of green trees from which flowed a silver ribbon of water. In the valley, the Herkyna unspooled through a town where the priests of the oracle presided at the temple and over the pits, where the bones of the sacrificial animals were cast down.
But the pools were in the woods, somewhere near Trophonius’s cave. Gingerly, I pushed myself to unsteady feet and started down the slope.
It was hard not to hurry, even though I knew that time was not passing in Ker-Ys. I took careful steps on a meandering path around scree and scru
b, my eyes half on the shifting ground, and half on my surroundings. Where was Crowhurst? If he was nearby, he must have seen the dust and the gravel of my dramatic arrival, but although there was no cover on the mountainside, I could not see him anywhere.
Perhaps I would not see him. Perhaps he’d only seen me and run. Part of me hoped so as I made my way down the rocky slope.
But why was I afraid of him? When had he begun to loom so large in my thoughts? Here and now, at the beginning of our story, I might finally know more than he did.
The sun rode heavy on my shoulders; I bent under the weight of it, like Atlas under the pillar of the sky. Sweat trickled down my neck and burned in the raw skin on my palms as I slid and stumbled to the bottom, dust still rising around me. Finally I reached the shade of the trees, and the cool air felt like forgiveness.
I slipped between the twisted silver trunks, blinking as my eyes adjusted to the dim. The thin light shivered in the leaves above my head, and the earth here was sewn with roots and studded with acorns. My feet fell softly on the loam, and I could smell the water, clean as mint.
I heard it too, now, the bubbling of a spring. My steps quickened as I flitted from tree to tree, searching the shadows, but I saw nothing until the trees thinned. There, in a sunny clearing scattered with poppies, the pools gleamed in tiered basins of natural limestone. Between them, the dark maw of the cave gaped black. Crowhurst knelt beside it, dipping his flask into the pool on the right.
Dahut was on the ground beside him.
I hadn’t expected to see her, and certainly not like this. She was trussed hand and foot, her cheek against the grass, and as I stared, her own eyes widened. “Help!” she cried. “Help me!”
“Quiet!” Crowhurst whirled, and I pressed myself against the rough bark of a bent oak. Had he seen me? No—I heard his footsteps, hesitant, searching, a few steps one way, and then the other.
“There’s someone there,” Dahut said, her voice ragged. “A girl.”
“Where?”
