CHAPTER 17

Honestly, That Could Have Gone Better

A sick feeling shot through Marrill, worse than Remy and Coll wobbling beneath her feet. It was true. Back on the Stream, the Iron Ship had entered the whirlpool after them. But in Monerva, it had come out years before the Kraken arrived.

Continuity cannot be guaranteed.

The Master of the Iron Ship was here, now. And he’d gone to the Wish Machine.

“He must have found the Syphon and kicked it into high gear,” the tall lady, Talaba, added from under her rag canopy. “It really started pulling in the Stream water after he showed up. And then the gears really started turning. Which has been quite exciting, as you can imagine. Lots of fresh building material coming in on the tide.”

The little man on his pedestal nodded enthusiastically. “Look at this great new stuff!” He pointed down to where several cranes struggled to lift an entire warehouse. “There hasn’t been a haul like this since the time of the Salt Sand King himself, when the Syphon sucked in some poor little backwater world and ripped it to pieces.”

“The Shattered Archipelago,” Marrill whispered. Once again, Ardent had been right. It had been a world like hers, drawn onto the Stream and torn apart by its raw magic. Drawn in, she now knew, by the Syphon of Monerva.

A world like hers.

“Marrill?” Fin said, circling around her. “Are you okay?”

Everything seemed to spin. Her eyes unfocused, sliding up the smooth surface of the Wall to the gnarled tower at its top, to the plumes of smoke and orange fire rising up from whatever lay on the other side.

First, there’d been the flash flood back in Arizona, and the mysterious message on the stop sign. Then Roseberg’s. Now this warehouse.

The Stream will touch your world again. But if it’s close enough for you to stumble upon, something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.

“Oh no,” she whispered. “Oh, oh no.”

Remy clamped a hand on Marrill’s leg. “What? What ‘oh no’?”

Marrill clutched her hands to her chest. A tear formed in her eye. “It’s our world this time, Remy,” she said. “The Stream is leaking into our world. Arizona, Boston—all of it!”

“That’s it,” Remy ordered. “Put us down, Coll. Team meeting!”

Coll grunted. “With pleasure,” he said as he lowered them to the ground. Fin landed on the platform next to them.

“Explain,” Remy said. “Now.”

Marrill swallowed, trying to keep her voice from trembling. “It’s the Syphon,” she said. “The Master of the Iron Ship is already here. He did something to make the Syphon suck in Stream water faster, and now it’s going so strong it’s sucking our world onto the Pirate Stream. The magic will tear it apart, just like it did to the world that became the Shattered Archipelago!”

Remy stumbled, grabbing onto Coll’s arm to steady herself. “Okay, now I’m really sorry I asked.”

Fin touched down next to them. “I hate to step on your tails when they’re already drooping, but is anyone else worried about what the Master might be wishing for?”

Marrill dropped her head into her hands. Things just kept getting worse. “The Iron Tide,” she muttered.

“That’s my guess,” Fin agreed.

“Okay.” Remy clapped her hands. “New plan. First, we stop the Wish Machine from pulling our world onto the Stream. Second, we stop the iron dude from making his evil wish. Third, we get the Salt Sand King’s wish granted so everyone can leave, fourth we all go home and never look back. Everyone on board?”

Marrill nodded. A weak smile played across her lips. Remy was right. They had to find a way. “So how do we do any of this?”

“I vote we use the Map to figure out the quickest way up to the Wiverwanes’ Tower,” Fin suggested. “We find the Syphon ourselves, and put this all to rest before it gets any worse.”

Coll laughed, but there was no humor in it. “And just hope the evil wizard ghost-captain is fine with that? Listen, kid, I don’t know you, but you don’t look like a wizard to me. I know I’m not. We wouldn’t last two seconds against the Master. We need to find Ardent and Annalessa before we do anything else. They’re the only ones who can stand up to him.”

Marrill nodded. She’d been thinking the same thing: They needed to call in the big guns for this one. “Coll’s right. We’ve got to get Ardent. He’ll be able to stop the Syphon in time.”

“That’s great and all, but we don’t exactly know where Ardent and Annalessa are,” Remy interjected. “They went off this morning to follow some lead on the Iron Tide and they didn’t say where.”

“Then we’ll just use the Map to Everywhere to find them,” Marrill said, holding out her hand toward Fin.

Fin clutched at his thief’s bag, taking a step back. “No need to be hasty, bloods,” he protested. “Let’s think through all the options here.”

“Our only option is to stop the Syphon from powering up all the way,” Marrill said firmly. “And we need Ardent and Annalessa to do that.”

“No, we don’t.” Fin pointed toward the Wiverwanes’ Tower. “Look, we’re almost there!” He pulled the Map from his jacket. “We just need to use the Map to figure out how to get up the rest of the way.”

Marrill shook her head. Frustration bloomed hot in her chest. This had to be the third time today they’d fought over how to do things. “Look, we can’t do this on our own. There’s too much at stake.” She reached for the Map, but he danced backward, holding it out of reach.

“We can’t stop now,” he urged. He glanced toward Remy and Coll. “Right?”

“I vote we do whatever gets us out of Monerva fastest,” Coll suggested, his voice raspier than usual.

Marrill couldn’t believe Fin was being so difficult. “Fin, this is my world we’re talking about. My home.” Her voice cracked as she took a trembling breath. “This isn’t just about the Iron Tide anymore. We have to stop the Wish Machine before my world ends up like the Shattered Archipelago.”

“And if we get to the Wish Machine, we can fix all of that,” he argued. “We can wish everything back into place.”

“What if we fail? What if the Master’s already there? We can’t risk it.” She started to move around him, but he grabbed her hand.

“We can,” he said. “We stopped an evil wizard. We sank the Master of the Iron Ship. We can do this. Together.”

Marrill searched his eyes, her throat tight. All she knew was that she’d been sent back to the Stream to save her world. That’s exactly what she planned to do. No matter what it took.

With a sour taste in her mouth, she nodded. “You’re right. We’ll use the Map to find a way up to the Tower.”

The lopsided grin Fin gave her made her heart squeeze tight, but she forced a smile. She watched as he flicked open the Map, the move more grandiose than necessary. But that was Fin, ever the showman.

He pulled the Key from his thief’s bag and knelt. Holding it just above the surface of the Map, he began, “Show us how—”

Marrill lunged for the sun-shaped crystal. Her hand fell on top of his, tugging it between them. “Show us how to find Ardent,” she quickly spouted.

“What are you doing?” Fin yelped. He tried wrenching the Key away from her, but she held tight.

“I’m saving my home,” she told him through clenched teeth. “I’m doing what’s right.”

“So am I,” Fin argued. He pushed the Key down to touch the Map. “How do we get to the Tower?” Ink swirled up to the surface, bubbling and shifting.

“No, to Ardent!” Marrill corrected. The images on the Map fell away, then re-formed in a jumbled mass. She pulled one way. Fin pulled back. He slammed his free hand on top of hers, pushing the Key down again. She did the same, her hand covering his.

They both opened their mouths at the same time, speaking over each other.

Marrill saying,	Fin saying,
“We have to find a way	“We have to figure out how
to stop the Syphon!”	to get to the Syphon!”

The Map buckled beneath their hands. Marrill’s blood roared in her ears. They stared at each other, their breaths coming fast, their fingers still tangled around the Key.

It was like he was a stranger to her. Like they had never been best friends. Had never cared about what was best for the other.

The sound of squealing hinges rose up through the air. “Uh, guys,” Remy said.

Marrill ignored her. “How could you?” she whispered to Fin. A familiar scent coated her tongue, like the moment before lightning strikes.

“Seriously, guys?” Remy said again, this time more urgent.

Fin’s eyes went wide. “Me? How could y—”

And then Marrill was tossed backward. There was the loud bang of a giant door slamming, and a searing flash of light. Her head smacked into the base of one of the glass pedestals.

She blinked to clear the pain. Coll and Remy had ducked down, covering themselves. Fin lay across from her, practically on the edge of the platform. The Key spun in loose circles beside him. The Map lay curled and blank on the ground.

“What just happened?” Remy asked.

Marrill swallowed, hard. The sound of the door, the searing light—she recognized that from the deck of the Black Dragon, when she and Fin had faced the evil Oracle, Serth. When he’d assembled the Map to Everywhere into a massive Gate and used the Key to open it, so the Lost Sun of Dzannin, the star of destruction, could shine its deadly light out to destroy the Pirate Stream.

Dread pooled in her stomach. Somehow, she and Fin had opened that Gate again.

Slowly, she turned around. A thin line sliced straight through the Wall behind them. In the middle of it, a gear wobbled unsteadily, one of its teeth sheared clean off.

Fin pushed to his feet, holding out a hand to help Marrill. As they stood, the crack widened, pieces of the Wall falling away. “Shanks,” he whispered.

There was quiet, the bustle of Monerva falling silent for once. And then a voice screamed:

“They broke the Wall!”

Everything dissolved into chaos. The three Monervans, who just moments before had been arguing over who was the highest, leapt from their spires and pushed their way down the ladder in a jumble.

“You’re the highest,” the first said, pointing to the second. “You deal with it!”

“Me?” the second said. “You’ve still got that fabulous canopy!”

“They’re coming!” the third shouted, pointing. A dark smudge drifted from the Tower at the top of the Wall. Like smoke, but heavier. More substantial.

The edges of the cloud writhed. The air filled with the sound of beating wings.

Marrill’s heart tripped over itself, hammering against her chest. The darkness coalesced and crashed against the Wall, rushing down it like a melted shadow. Directly toward them.

There was no time to run and no place to hide. Below, the Monervans flattened themselves to the ground. But the Wiverwanes weren’t coming for them.

They were coming for Marrill and Fin. For the two who’d broken the Wall. Fin scooped up the Key. Marrill lunged for the Map, crumpling it into her pocket. And then she was swallowed by dark bodies.

The tips of handless fingers danced across her skin, causing it to ripple. Memories seeped into her, through her.

The King ran his hands across his prize, a raggedy length of black cloth, all covered in frayed ends of fabric from bottom to top, as if it had been worn to threads by wind and rain and vast expanses of time.

The Dawn Wizard eased closer. One of his eyes, the King realized, was noticeably larger than the other. “The cloak you won from me, my lord, is far more than mere cloth. It is memories made real. The memories of the Dzane, my brothers and sisters, who went before and are no more. It’s very precious to me, and me only. But a wager’s a wager, I expect. So I come here looking for another wager, hoping to make myself whole again.”

The King shook his head. “No more wagers. But I can offer a trade. I need your help.”

The Dawn Wizard smiled and bowed. His teeth were black, with just a touch of light blue around the edges. “What could a humble Dawn Wizard like me do to satisfy you, O King? You’ve united all the lands of the Boundless Plains, and here I can scarcely keep from gambling away my own clothes!”

Marrill struggled to fight them, to stay conscious. But it was too much. She was dimly aware of her feet leaving the ground—of a sensation of weightlessness. And then she was lost in someone else’s memories.