Breaking into North Waveborn was much harder than leaving East Waveborn had been.
Her first clue that the way was booby-trapped was a slightly higher pile of silt on the floor in front of her. Jes tapped it carefully with one foot, then sprang back as an axe came out of the wall just in front of her. There was a smiley face painted on it.
That’s a nice welcome. She moved around the axe carefully and studied the path in front of her with more respect. Her second torch was getting low, and she ought to be getting close, but if the torch went out …
Jes pulled the third torch from her pack and lit it from the second. With one in each hand, she could see more clearly. Hopefully, she wouldn’t drop both of them.
There were no barnacles on the stone to her left. Jes scowled, looking at the wall. She had seen sections without barnacles during her journey, but on the tunnel wall to her right, they were clustered quite thickly. She looked carefully at the blank wall, inching forward.
She heard a tiny creaking sound, and then knife- sharp barnacles shot out of the right-hand wall toward her. She ducked instinctively, and a pit in front of her opened up. She crouched on the edge, rocking back and forth between the floor and whatever lay below her in the pit. The smaller torch dropped from her hand into the pit. Before the torch went out, the light showed sharpened sticks and another drawing of a grinning face at the bottom.
Jes pushed herself back from the brink and swore. She tried out every phrase she had heard, and by the time she ran out of curses—after “Son of a one-eyed newt!”—she felt a little better. Amalia and I are going to have a talk about this. It had to be Amalia, her cousin. Aunt Anya and Uncle Phineas wouldn’t have added insult to the injury of the traps.
There were a few more traps on the way. A couple of darts impaled her torch, and during the upslope, she avoided an oil patch designed to drop her on fist-sized jacks with sharpened ends. By the time she got within sight of the stairway out of the tunnels, she had been through her list of curses twice.
She sidestepped a net trap, ducked beneath a falling sword with a banner proclaiming OUCH!, and regarded the stairs up with suspicion. They were stone, so unlikely to give way beneath her. The walls could have been modified, however, and she poked carefully with a stick she’d taken from the pit trap.
She almost missed the motion sensors on the left, the response was so subtle. The third step triggered something she couldn’t see, then the ninth step caused a sweeping metal rod to come out from the right.
“She has to be able to come down here,” Jes muttered to herself. She waited for the trap to reset, then triggered first the ninth step then the third step. Nothing happened. She waited for the quick click that meant the trap had again reset, then hit the ninth step again. Still nothing.
“I can’t believe she’s patient enough for this.” Jes waited, triggered the ninth step, and walked up past the third to the sixth step and waited. After the click, she took a deep breath and walked up the rest of the stairs.
The trapdoor at the top had the same latch as her own, and she eased the door open a careful inch, listening. She could hear the clink and splash of dishes being washed. People were talking, too far away for her to make out any words. The scent of roasting chicken and baking bread made her stomach growl. She inched the trapdoor up just enough to scramble through. Her last torch was nearly dead; she blew it out and threw it back down.
She was in a storeroom that smelled strongly of vinegar. Jars of pickled vegetables filled the shelves, and the barrels were crusted with brine. Light came dimly from a high window and more brightly from the half-open door. Jes slipped behind a barrel and checked that the trapdoor was closed behind her.
Whom to trust? Was anyone here involved with the conspiracy? Jes chewed her lip and decided that even if no one else was involved, anyone who saw her could give her away. She had to find one of her family.
She’d been to North Waveborn before. She closed her eyes briefly to picture the layout of the castle. From the sounds, she guessed the storeroom she was in was just off the kitchens. The main stairs were too visible, so Amalia preferred the servants’ staircases. She’d shown them to Jes on the last visit.
Jes crept to the door. Footsteps were moving away, and she took a breath before scooting through. The nearly hidden stairs were on her right, and she scurried up them, grateful for the silence of her boots.
She paused in the shadows at the top of the stairway and held her breath. It was quiet except for the sound of her heart beating. She looked both ways, then sprinted down the hallway. She paused in Amalia’s doorway and put her ear to the door. Nothing.
The door was unlocked, and she darted inside. Practice swords were scattered over a four-poster bed, with two more crossed on a white bureau. Blue curtains the same shade as the bed canopy went to the floor, and Jes darted behind one at a slight sound.
Someone stomped into the room, followed by the more sedate clatter of heeled shoes. Jes peeked out cautiously and saw Amalia scowling up at a taller figure.
“No, I don’t intend to ‘dress’ for dinner, although you are welcome to do so. I’d just like a little quiet time, if you don’t mind.” There was the pause that usually meant that Amalia was going to lie. “I may have a headache coming on.”
Amalia never had headaches, and she’d never submitted to quiet time even when she had a concussion. A feeling of dread settled over Jes.
“Then certainly you must rest, Your Highness,” Lady Umber’s voice answered, and Jes caught a glimpse of her before pulling back behind the curtain. Do they have a second airship? How else could she get here so fast?
The door closed, and Amalia knocked practice swords to the ground and landed on her bed, kicking her heels against the frame.
Jes tapped very quietly on the window behind her curtain, waited a moment, and then tapped again. She heard the bed creak, then the quieter sound of Amalia approaching. Amalia pushed aside the curtain, a practice sword in one hand.
“Oh!” Amalia tilted her head, looking her over. “Jes, what are you doing here?”
Amalia was brown skinned and brown haired, like her father, and full of such life and energy that Jes often felt like a ghost next to her. “Shh! I need to talk to your parents. Something terrible is going on.”
Amalia snorted. “Tell me about it. My parents got called to some important thing on the mainland, and King Gregor sent that woman to be my regent while they’re gone. She’s just awful!”
Jes nodded. “I know. Lady Umber showed up just after lunch. When did she get here?”
Amalia shook her head. “Mine is Lady Grey, and she’s been here since mid-morning. This is the first I’ve gotten away from her all day.”
Jes frowned. “But it’s the same woman. Same face, same voice. Twins, maybe?” She shook her head. “Anyway, that’s not the important part. I overheard mine talking with her secretary. They’ve shot down my family’s airship, and she plans to rule as my regent. And she said if my island didn’t cooperate, they’d just sink it.”
Amalia stared at her a moment, then dropped the wooden practice sword and lifted a real sword from the wall. “Over my dead body.” She leapt up to her bed and lifted the sword high so that it almost touched the blue canopy. “We’ll fight them all!”
Jes sighed. “I don’t think your parents would advise a frontal assault right now.”
Amalia looked disappointed. She lowered the sword and hopped back down. “Espionage?” she asked hopefully.
“Remove potential hostages first,” Jes said firmly. “That means us.”
Amalia sighed. “Fine. Let me ring for a tray for supper and then ask not to be disturbed. Then we can head out. I’m bringing my sword, though.”
“Of course.”
Jes hid behind the curtain again while the tray was delivered. They shared the meal, which worked well since Jes wouldn’t eat meat pie and Amalia didn’t like chicken. Amalia packed up her essentials—two daggers, a flask of oil with a fire-starter, and double handfuls of marbles and smaller jacks—she called them caltrops—in their own bags. Jes got her to add a change of clothes, and they were off.
Amalia was prepared. A rope ladder was hidden behind her bed just in case she was ever locked in. They were discussing whether to use it or sneak down to the kitchens when Jes heard a sound through her earring. She held up one hand and concentrated, but she only heard a door open, a few steps, and then the door closing again.
“This thing is incredible,” she murmured.
“What thing?” Amalia asked, examining the rope ladder for weaknesses.
“My—Alex’s earring.” She explained briefly. “I think we’ll be less noticeable on the servants’ stairs than trying to break back into the castle, don’t you?”
Amalia tossed the ladder back behind her bed. “It should be late enough. I’ll go first, since there’s no trouble if I’m caught.”
They reversed Jes’s earlier trip with Amalia in the lead, but the kitchens were empty, the fires banked. The jars of pickles looked like they might contain scarier things in the near darkness, and Jes imagined disembodied heads floating, watching them. She changed the mental image to Lady Umber’s severed head and immediately felt better.
Amalia led the way into the deeper darkness of the stairs and paused to light a torch once the trapdoor had closed behind them. “I wish I had time to set traps for anyone following us.”
Jes grimaced as she stuck three more torches into her pack. “The traps you have are plenty.”
Amalia shrugged. “Well, you got past them all. After all this is over, you’ll have to show me where I went wrong.”
Jes wasn’t sure if Amalia had realized that there might not be an “after.” She just nodded and let Amalia lead the way until they were clear of the traps.
It felt like she had been walking for days by the time they reached the turnoff for South Waveborn. Jes hadn’t worn a watch, but it had to be getting on to midnight, and she’d left perhaps an hour after lunch. She felt herself starting to lag and was grateful for Amalia’s energy.
“So, after we enlist Chris’s parents, I say we mount a two-pronged attack through the tunnels to free both of our islands,” Amalia proposed. “But do we kill them or arrest them so they can be executed formally?”
Jes was usually a lot less bloodthirsty than her cousin, but she paused to seriously consider the choice. The earring crackled again, and she held up one hand. Amalia fell silent, waiting.
“Nothing about this is going as we were promised,” Lady Umber said. “And no, I don’t want to hear any more of your excuses. I’ve sent a group to take possession of the control chamber, so that at least will be under our power.”
Jes had used every example of “bad language” she knew on her way into North Waveborn. Now, not one of them felt bad enough for this, not even all of them over and over.
“Amalia, she’s sent someone to the control room. As soon as they enter it, it and all these tunnels are going to start to flood.”
Expressions of surprise, respect, and then realization chased each other across Amalia’s face. “I’ll take your pack,” she said. She slung it over one shoulder then took Jes’s hand. “Let’s run.”
When she hadn’t been walking for hours and hours, Jes could manage a short run without difficulty. Games of tag. One flight of stairs, up or down. She had never seen any use in running just to get from here to there, and she’d carefully avoided any punishment that involved it.
Now, as the light of Amalia’s torch flickered off the stone walls, only her cousin’s hand around hers kept Jes going, on and on. The breath started to come from her lungs in painful gasps. There was a stitch in her side, and her legs felt like they were made of lead.
If I stop, I’ll drown. That wasn’t as much motivation as she’d hoped. Jes tried again. If I stop, Amalia won’t leave me, and she’ll drown. Better, but that was wearing down too. If I stop, there’s no one to protect my people.
It felt like forever, and then there was a rumble of stone shifting. Amalia’s hand tightened around hers, and they kept running as the sound of rushing water echoed in the stone tunnels.
The quiet slap of boots on stone was like her heartbeat. When the sound changed, it felt like her heart did, too—splash, slosh. Splash, slosh. The water was up to their ankles. Up to their calves. They could swim, but that would be too slow. Once the tunnels filled, there wouldn’t be any air.
The water was up to Jes’s waist, chest deep on Amalia, when they spotted the stairs. Amalia continued to drag her forward, even though she was almost underwater herself, and then Amalia was above her, pulling her up, one step at a time, and Jes thought they might make it. A wave of water came thundering down the tunnel, filling it, covering her, and her eyes closed in surprise.
The grip on her hand shifted, became two hands, pulling her through the water, up, up, until her head broke free into air. It was so dark she wasn’t certain she had opened her eyes at first, but Amalia was still pulling her up the stairs as the water tried to sweep her away. Her feet settled on the steps, and she was climbing again.
“You—you saved my life,” Jes coughed.
“Well, that’s what friends are for.” Amalia released her hands and patted her on one arm. “Hopefully we can open the trapdoor in the dark.”
They walked beside each other, feeling the walls on either side for controls or openings, until Jes clipped her head on the ceiling at the top. The latch was the same as the other two had been, and they eased it up together, climbing out to stand dripping on the stones.
It was dark, but there was enough light to see the figure in front of them, weapon held out to threaten. “Halt, in the name of the king!”