In my dreams, I heard the sharp cry of a seabird.
My dreams were unclear, nothing but murky shapes in the dark, momentary dots of brightness, a sense of floating in thick air. That bird cry was the only moment of lucidity.
It happened again, louder.
Again.
The murk brightened and cleared away. I felt the ground beneath me, rough and cold, and I smelled pine. In the distance, someone sighed, over and over.
I pushed myself up to sitting and blinked, trying to clear out the shadows. Slowly, shapes formed: a march of trees in the distance, smooth gray pebbles underneath me, the ocean. That was the sighing, I realized. The ocean, rolling in along a shore.
I was on a shore. I was dry, by some gift of my ancestors, and I was alive.
I stood up, my legs shaking. The tide was out and dark seaweed dotted the beach in clumps.
There was no warship anywhere.
Relief flooded through me and turned to hysterical laughter that echoed up and down the beach, blending with the rush of the waves. I turned in place, taking in my surroundings. I didn’t see the warship, didn’t see any hint of the Mists at all—but I didn’t see Kolur either. Or Frida. Or the Penelope.
“Shit,” I whispered. A wind blew in from the north, tousling my hair. I turned left and right, trying to decide which direction to go first. We must have washed ashore Juldan, protected and unharmed—there had been that surge of magic before the world went dark. It wasn’t borne by the wind, so it wasn’t Frida’s. It had been borne by the sea. Kolur? I couldn’t imagine it. Of all the explanations of his behavior, the idea that he was a powerful wizard was the most absurd. I just couldn’t accept it.
Following some instinct burning inside of me, I went left. The wind pushed me along. I still wasn’t entirely in my right mind; everything was trapped in a pale haze, and I stumbled over the unfamiliar beach, afraid of what I would find. Or of what I wouldn’t.
I didn’t know how long I walked. Everything on the beach looked the same—the trees, the seaweed, the stones. Despair crept up on me, worse than the cold.
Maybe I wasn’t alive at all. Maybe that’s why I was dry. This wasn’t a blessing from my ancestors at all. I stopped walking and stared down at the ground, and tears welled up in my eyes. I’d never felt so empty, so alone.
And then I saw it. A piece of broken board. Smooth, polished birchwood.
The same as the Penelope.
I bent down and picked it up. It was damp with seawater, but other than that, it was just a broken splinter of wood. Seeing it gave me a shuddery feeling like I was too cold.
I tucked it under my arm and kept walking.
As I walked, I found more hunks of wood, all that same polished birchwood as the Penelope. That shuddering turned heavy and settled in my stomach, and I walked as quickly as I could. It didn’t take long before I saw a dark lump farther down the beach. It didn’t look like a ship, even a wrecked one. I stopped and stared at it, still holding that first piece of wood close to my heart. The lump looked like a much larger version of the clumps of seaweed that had washed ashore.
The north wind blew. I moved forward.
The lump was a towering mass of seaweed, dark and stringy and swaying back and forth from the wind. It was taller than me. As tall as a fishing boat.
The sick feeling intensified.
“Hello?” My voice sounded small. “Kolur? Frida?”
I edged closer to the mound of seaweed. The air crackled with leftover sparks of magic. This was the Penelope, I was certain of it, but she’d been transformed. Magic can do that, when you use too much at once. It changes the ordinary into the extraordinary.
I reached out my hand, the hand wearing my bracelet, and ran my fingers over the seaweed. It made a chiming noise, and the blood in my hand jolted. Beneath the sweep of seaweed, I could make out the dark wood skeleton of the Penelope.
A boat was one thing. But if Frida and Kolur had still been aboard when this happened—
“Kolur!” I shouted, louder this time. My voice carried on the wind. “Where the hell are you?” I whirled in place, feeling wild and out of control and alone. The whole world was empty. “Kolur!” I screamed. “Kolur!”
“Quiet, girl. You make enough noise to wake the dead.”
I thought I imagined his voice at first. It seemed to come from everywhere. But I realized that was just the wind, and when I whirled around, kicking up sand, I saw him shambling toward me. He was pale and his face was ragged, but he didn’t seem hurt.
“Oh, sea and sky, you’re alive.” I slumped with relief. “I thought I was alone here. I thought I was dead—”
“Not so lucky, I’m afraid.”
I scowled at him for making such an awful joke. But he only squinted up at the Penelope. “Shit,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Will Frida be able to fix her?” Was Frida even alive? “Or are there wizards in Juldan—”
Kolur glanced at me, frowning. “I don’t know. Probably have to get a new one.”
“A new—” The air escaped me. A new boat? “We can’t afford that, can we?” Did Kolur have money? Why hadn’t he sent me home in Skalir?
Kolur shrugged. “Depends on where we are. Not every transaction requires money.”
“Depends on where we are?” I blinked and looked around, at the sea and the trees. “Aren’t we in Juldan?”
Kolur looked over at me. “There was magic involved in setting us free,” he said after a moment. “Surely you felt that. We could be anywhere.”
Frida. Or maybe Isolfr. He could swim in the frozen ocean; perhaps he could channel enchantment through it as well.
“We need to find Frida,” Kolur said. “I take it you haven’t seen her.”
“You mean you haven’t?” My sick feeling returned, stronger than before. Isolfr might have sent us here, but Frida would be the one to get us home. That was the whole reason Kolur had brought her aboard.
“She’ll be around her somewhere.” He walked out past the remains of the Penelope and gazed down the shoreline. “This way.” He pointed to the left.
“How do you know?”
“Just a feeling. Come on.”
I joined him, and we walked down the beach in silence. The old magic radiating off the boat muffled the air around us, muting everything. I hadn’t noticed how drained the colors were until I saw the Penelope. Now I couldn’t not notice.
We hadn’t been walking long when I spotted a streak of brown against the gray expanse of the rocks. “Look, there.” I pointed. The streak wasn’t moving. “You think that’s her?”
“Might be. Too far off to tell.” But Kolur broke into a jog and I followed along behind him, cold air burning in my lungs. When I was close enough to see it was Frida, I began to run.
She didn’t move.
I knelt down beside her and pressed my fingers under her nose. Still breathing. Kolur’s footsteps crunched over the stones. He wasn’t in much of a hurry.
“Frida!” I shook her arm. She had all the magic; she would be able to get us to safety. “Frida, wake up.”
Her eyelashes fluttered. I shook her harder. By now Kolur had joined us, and he said, “Frida, open your damn eyes.”
She did.
“Well, that was exciting,” she said. “You know I hate the water, Kolur.”
Kolur laughed. “We do what we have to do.”
“What?” I said.
They both ignored me. Frida sat up and shook out her hair. Then she patted it with one hand. “Dry,” she said. “Thank you.”
I swiveled to look at Kolur. There was no way he’d done this. Kolur bought his charms from shops in the capital. He made me do all the magic on board the Penelope. He was a fisherman, not a wizard.
But Kolur didn’t respond to Frida’s thanks, just stuck out one hand to help her to her feet. She accepted it and, once standing, put her hands on her hips and glanced around.
“Where are we?”
“Don’t know,” Kolur said.
“The Penelope?”
“Damaged,” I said. “Magic-sickness.”
“Figures.” She took a deep breath, clearly less upset by this situation than I was. Both of them were, but Frida’s nonchalance was more frustrating. Kolur never told me anything. But Frida was a witch, a real witch. She had been to Jandanvar; she had seen the magic at the top of the world. And all the little charms she’d taught me aboard the Penelope didn’t make up for the fact that she kept Kolur’s secrets for him.
I was worked up enough to demand an explanation when Kolur said, “I figure we should keep walking west. Bound to run into someone sooner or later.”
“How do you know that?” I said. “How did any of this happen? How are we all still alive?” Questions tumbled out of me, one after another. “And that warship! What happened to it? Is it going to come after us?”
“Oh, it’s still out there,” Kolur said. “But we got some time before it comes after us again.”
“How do you know that?” I shrieked, but I knew I wasn’t getting answers from either of them. They were already walking down along the waterline, heading to the west.
I hated them both. I was glad they were alive, but I hated them more than I ever hated anyone. Even Isolfr. He had at least warned me about the Mists. Not that I’d been able to do anything about it.
I ran after Kolur and Frida, stumbling over the stones. They both trudged along in silence. We followed the gentle curve of the beach, not passing any houses or boats or people or animals. No signs of civilization. Uneasiness peeked through my anger, and I thought about the chains of uninhabited islands, places where no creatures could survive.
“How do you know we’re going in the right direction?” I asked when I couldn’t stand the silence anymore. “There’s nothing here but trees.”
Kolur glared at me. “I know, girl.” He jerked his head off to the west. “We landed a bit farther off than I expected.” He turned away and took to walking again. Frida did her best to ignore both of us.
“Than you expected?” I caught up with him. “So you can do that kind of magic, then?”
Kolur grunted. “Plenty of people can do that kind of magic.”
“Sea and sky, I am so sick of you not answering my questions.”
“Stop, both of you.” Frida stood a few paces ahead of us, pointing at the sky. “There’s smoke.”
She was right; a thin gray twist curled against the sky.
“Ah, finally.” Kolur took off again. I glowered after him. I’d every intention of returning to that conversation, even if I had to make him listen to me.
Seeing the smoke did give me hope, though. There were others here. We weren’t stranded on one of the empty islands.
It didn’t take long before we had circled around the bend and come across a round fabric tent. Smoke drifted out of a hole at the top of the roof. There was no garden, only hard frozen soil, but the rocks had been arranged like a path leading to the tent’s opening, and that gave it a feeling of permanence.
“Huh,” Kolur said. “Don’t look Juldani, does it?” He glanced at Frida, but she only shrugged.
I had no idea what a Juldani tent looked like. My anger with Kolur flared again, that he’d lived the sort of life where he would know that, and he chose to keep it a secret.
Kolur walked up to the door and tugged a rope attached to a metal bell. A few moments later, an old woman answered. Her hair was knotted up in a brightly embroidered scarf that made her face look perfectly round.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Kolur said, speaking with a sharp, prickly dialect I didn’t recognize, “but would you mind telling us what island we’re currently on?”
The woman scowled at him. “Lost your way, did you?” Her dialect wasn’t the same as the one Kolur spoke, but it wasn’t much closer to the Kjoran way of speaking I was used to.
“I imagine this must happen to you frequently,” Kolur said. “Weary, confused sailors finding their way to your door.”
This didn’t sound like him in the slightest. He was being polite, for one. I didn’t like it. I snuck a glance at Frida, but she had her arms crossed over her chest, looking bored.
“No,” the old woman said, “it doesn’t. Because most sailors aren’t so stupid as to get blown off course.” She poked her head farther out the door and looked at each of us in turn. “Not much of a crew.”
“They’re better than they seem,” Kolur said.
That really didn’t sound like him.
The woman made a scoffing noise. “You’re in Tulja,” she said.
Tulja. The name was foreign and unfamiliar, and I was struck with a flurry of panic that it wasn’t Juldan, or even Jolal, which was only a day or so farther north. Tulja? I couldn’t even remember it on Papa’s carved map.
“Rilil is up the road there, if you’re looking for sailing work.” The woman scowled at us again. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have business to attend to.”
She yanked the curtain shut. Kolur turned to face us, and before I could start in on him, Frida did it for me.
“Tulja!” she said. “You brought us to Tulja?”
There it was again, the idea that Kolur had done magic.
“Didn’t mean to. It’s farther north than we were, though.” Kolur grinned. “Let’s see what we can find in Rilil, shall we? I hope someone’s selling a boat.” He breezed past us and made his way to the frozen dirt road the woman had pointed to. I hung back with Frida.
“How did he bring us here?” I asked her.
She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. “I’m not the one to answer that, I’m afraid.”
“Gods! No one will tell me anything.”
“Because you’re young and ignorance will better serve you. Come, before Kolur leaves us behind.”
I couldn’t believe she’d said that to me. I stood in front of the old woman’s tent, watching Frida hurry to catch up with Kolur. Ignorance would better serve me?
I thought of Isolfr then, and Gillean. Isolfr had tried to tell me about Lord Foxfollow, and Gillean had died for it. And look at all the good it had done. The warship still attacked us. We were still trapped here on Tulja—wherever Tulja was.
I realized Kolur and Frida seemed in a mind to leave me. “Wait up!” I shouted, and ran up the road to catch up with them. Panting, I said, “So where is Tulja, exactly?”
“North,” Kolur said. “A bit longer of a sail than I expected.”
“How long?”
He didn’t answer.
“How long, Kolur?”
“Nothing you need to worry about. We’ll be in the town soon.”
I fumed. My anger was like magic, propelling me along the slippery, miserable road. I gave up trying to ask questions, because I knew it would just leave me angrier than I had started. My mood did not make for a pleasant walk.
After a while, we began to pass more signs of life. There were round white tents, and a handful of little stone huts, and fences that held in great shaggy horned creatures that stared at us with the doleful eyes of deer and caribou. Every now and then, we’d pass someone standing outside one of those houses, and they studied us like we were a danger. That sense of hope I’d got from the smoke seemed ridiculous now. So there were people. What if they refused to help us? Or mistrusted us enough to attack us?
Civilization suddenly seemed more dangerous than the wild.
The ground was patched with snow, and ice daggers still hung from some of the fences. We were much farther north than we should be.
Eventually, the tents and grassland gave way to something like a proper town, although the buildings were really just mounds dug out of the earth, some of them augmented with stone or grass roofs or scraps of that same thick fabric that had made up the old woman’s tent. Everything was crammed in close together. The roads remained unpaved, and the signs hanging next to the doors were painted with unfamiliar letters. Pictures, really. I squinted at them as we went past, but I couldn’t read them.
Kolur could, however, because he stopped in front of a sign jammed into the ground next to one of the larger mound-buildings and said, “We need to eat. Get up our strength.”
I wasn’t hungry. But Kolur and Frida both ducked inside, and I wasn’t about to let them leave me alone.
It was a mead hall—the sort of thing, in Kjora, you’d find standing alone in the wilderness. It was odd to see one in a town, even as small and semi-permanent a town as this one. Faces turned toward us as we walked in. Mostly men, their hair long and plaited. They turned away from us just as quickly. It was a relief to know we weren’t of interest.
Kolur led us to a table in the back, one that was shoved up against a stone-lined wall, underneath a sprawling set of antlers. “Sit here,” he said. “I’ll tell the mead master we’ll be wanting some food.”
I hadn’t realized how exhausted I was until I sank onto the hard, rough-hewn wood of the bench. My legs seemed to dissolve away from me, and every joint in my body was filled with a dull, distant ache.
“He’s right, you know.” Frida peered at me in the smoky candlelight. “We need to rest. Gather our strength. That magic took a lot out of us.”
“The magic,” I said. “It wasn’t yours.”
“I won’t give you your answers.” She tilted her head. “Ask Kolur.”
“Kolur won’t tell me anything.” I glared down at the table. Voices rose up in waves, laughing, shouting lewd remarks at one another. It was the sort of place Mama would love but wouldn’t let me go; the sort of place Papa would hate, and not on my behalf, either.
I missed them.
“They’ve got eel pie on the menu today.” Kolur’s voice boomed out behind me, and he slid into place on the bench, depositing a trio of mugs filled with frothy dark ale. “Drink up. You too, Hanna.” He nudged the mug toward me. I just stared down at it balefully.
“How did we get here?” I asked.
“We walked.”
I lifted my face to him, my cheeks hot with anger. My hands shook. “You know that’s not what I meant.”
“For the grace of the ancestors,” Frida said, “just tell her.” She sipped at her ale. “This whole thing hasn’t exactly been the quick errand you promised me, either.”
“What is going on?” I shouted, loud enough that it caused a momentary pause in the surrounding chatter. Kolur ducked his head and looked down at his ale. I was too angry to care. “An errand?” I snarled at him. “And the Mists are after us—I know who was behind that warship. Lord Foxfollow.”
I was hoping Isolfr’s spell wouldn’t work when we were on land, hoping that it was tied in some way to the Penelope. And for a moment, it looked like my hopes might pay off—Kolur’s eyes flickered with confusion. “How did you—” He stopped himself. “Drink your ale, Hanna. Food will be here soon.”
He was still blocked. I slumped down and took a long drink in frustration. The ale was bitter and thick, like soil. Drinking it made my stomach woozy.
How did you, Kolur had said. How did I what? How did I know? Was he familiar with Lord Foxfollow?
“The Mists,” I said. “Lord Foxfollow. Why are they after us?”
Kolur and Frida stared at each other across the table, Frida glowering at him like she wanted to scold him.
“We’ll be gone months,” she said.
“Months?” I squeaked.
Kolur looked at me then. He swirled his ale around in his cup. “She’s right,” he said. “I should tell you.”
I didn’t believe he would. This whole conversation was piecemeal anyway, what with how he couldn’t hear half the things I had to say.
“The Mists are after us,” he said.
“I know!” I slammed my cup down. “I’ve been saying—”
“Specifically, they’re after me. I thought I’d be able to avoid them while I took care of things, but—” Kolur scratched at his head. “I haven’t been entirely honest with you.”
Frida gave a snort of laughter, but I just glared at him. “I noticed.”
“I don’t mean just in the last few weeks. I mean—well, pretty much since I met you. Since I met your mother.” Kolur drained the last of his ale and wiped his upper lip dry. “I ain’t a fisherman. At least, not by training. I’m a wizard. A waterwizard. I learned my trade on the seas of Undim, in the far north—”
“Almost to the top of the world.” I was suddenly too dazed to be angry. The magic during the battle had belonged to him. And if he trained on the Undimian sea, that put him in a very special class of wizards indeed. Most people do magic. But only some people can do magic, can do it well enough to make it their calling. Those people learned at the Undim citadels. That was where I’d always wanted to learn.
“Then why—”
“It’s a stupid story.” Kolur laughed a little. “There was a woman. A, well, a queen. The queen of Jandanvar.”
“The what?” I squawked, loud enough to draw stares.
“I met her shortly after I finished my training. She came out to see all the new wizards, in this big glass boat, the sunlight sparkling everywhere—”
“Get on with it,” Frida said.
Kolur shot her a dark look. “Fine. We met. Fell in love. You know how it is.”
I didn’t really, but I didn’t say anything.
“But the problem with falling in love with a queen is there’s a certain expectation that you’ll be king.” He grunted and turned toward the center of the hall, where a big clump of sailors was singing old drinking songs. “I didn’t want that. I didn’t even want to live in Jandanvar, much less rule it. I tried to convince her to run away with me, down to the south, the far south, to the Empire. But she wasn’t going to do that. We were at a bit of a stalemate.”
“A stalemate,” Frida said. “You’re both stubborn asses; that’s the problem.”
“What does this have to do with anything?” I said. “You’re this great wizard and you’ve been living as a fisherman for the last ten years? All because you didn’t want to be king? Who doesn’t want to be king?”
“Anyone with half a thought in his head.” Kolur leaned back. “I went to the citadels because they recruited me. I had the touch, they said.” He wriggled his fingers. “But I’d always wanted a simple life.”
I rolled my eyes.
“I was a fool,” he said, “to leave her the way I did. I got scared. But that’s why we’re out here, to set things right.” He glanced at Frida, glanced back at me. “We’re going to Jandanvar.”
I stared at him. His admission rang in my ears. I knew it.
“When I called on the favor of the sea, I asked her to take us as far north as she could. That brought us here, to Tulja.” He coughed. “We’re about three months’ sail from Juldan.”
All the sound went out of the room. My ears buzzed, my heart raced. Three months away. “Were we—have we been out for three months—”
“Oh no,” Frida said quickly. “Only about a day or so. We traveled on the magic.”
I looked at her, and then I looked at Kolur, and then I took a drink. It burned the back of my throat.
“It was quite safe,” Kolur said. “No need to worry.”
I glared at him. “I didn’t even know you could do that sort of magic until just now. Don’t tell me it was quite sa—”
“Three eel pies.” It was the server, a girl in a long brown dress. She dropped the pies on the table along with a trio of dinner knives. The pies smelled salty and rich, and my stomach flipped over a couple of times.
“Ah, that’s better.” When Kolur cut into his pie, steam billowed up into the air, and the smell of cooked eel was even stronger.
“You really ought to eat,” Frida said. “It can make you sick if you don’t.”
I glared at her, but I knew she was right. If we’d been traveling along veins of enchantment, my body would need to fight off that desire for transformation that occurs whenever too much magic gathers at once. I cut off a tiny slice of pie. It was better than I expected, the wild taste of eel tempered by some pungent, savory herb I couldn’t identify. With that one bite, I realized just how hungry I was, and I ate the rest of the pie quickly, hardly stopping to taste. Having a full belly renewed my strength. And renewing my strength gave me even more incentive to get answers out of Kolur.
“So why are we sailing to Jandanvar?” I demanded. Kolur was only half finished with his pie, and he glanced up at me, amused. “What does all of this nonsense you’ve told me have to do with the Mists?”
“Done already? And you’re the one who said you didn’t need to eat.”
“Kolur,” Frida said, making his name into an admonishment.
I pushed my plate aside and leaned over the table, still glaring at him. He sighed and set his knife down.
“It’s not nonsense,” he said.
I waited for him to explain.
“It’s my life.” He laughed, bitterly. “My whole life, that I threw away. The Mists are after us because the queen is set to marry one of them.”
“What?” I said. “Why would she do that?”
“The boundaries are thinner at the top of the world. The Jandanvari have more connections with the Mists.” He shook his head. “She’s the first to marry one of them, though. I don’t know what’s she’s thinking, agreeing to that damn Lord Foxfollow.”
When he said the name, he seemed to speak into a vacuum. There was a dullness to his words.
“Yeah,” I said. “I know who Lord Foxfollow is.”
But Kolur ignored me, as I expected. “I don’t know much about him. He’s powerful, from what I understand. I don’t know why she agreed—” He stopped, and I couldn’t tell what emotion was trying to work its way out. “We’re sailing to Jandanvar to stop the wedding.”
I stared at him. He wouldn’t look at me, only picked up his knife and cut off another hunk of pie.
“We’re what?” I said.
“Going to stop the wedding.”
My ears were buzzing again. My whole body felt hot.
“We were almost killed by the Mists,” I said, quietly and evenly. “A man, an innocent man, was killed for trying to warn us. We risked our lives on the magic.”
Kolur was making every effort not to look at me.
“All so you could win back some queen!” The words erupted. “A woman you abandoned. You had your chance, Kolur. And now you’re bringing the Mists down on me and on Frida and on everyone—just because she’s marrying someone who isn’t you?”
Kolur stared down at his pie. Frida sat off to the side, staying still, staying quiet.
“Well?” I asked.
Kolur lifted his head. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s about the whole of it.”
I screeched in anger and shoved away from the table. The plates and cups rattled. “That’s stupid!” I said. “And dangerous! Why didn’t you just sail off on your own? Why’d you have to bring me with you?”
“I told you.” Kolur’s voice was firm. “I had no idea until we were out on the water. When I threw the bones, trying to find the skrei, that’s when I saw that I was going to lose her if I didn’t—”
“I don’t care.” I curled my hands into fists. “I don’t care about your stupid queen, Kolur. Do you have any idea what you’ve gotten us into?”
“More than you,” he snapped.
I screeched again and stood up. I knew plenty. I knew more about Lord Foxfollow than he did. More about how dangerous he was, more about the sort of weapons he used. And if I said anything about it to Kolur, my words would slip out unnoticed, all because Isolfr had cast some idiot’s spell on him.
It was starting to make sense to me, in the senseless way that magic often goes. Isolfr was probably a subject of Jandanvar. They weren’t quite human; everyone knew that. It seemed odd that the rest of Jandanvar wasn’t protesting this marriage, but perhaps they weren’t aware of the extent of Lord Foxfollow’s cruelty. Or perhaps he had most of Jandanvar under some sort of Mists spell. And if Isolfr knew Kolur was coming, through magic or divination, he saw some possible hero. And so he intercepted us, gave me the warnings . . . I still didn’t understand why he was keeping it all secret from Kolur, or why he was forcing me to keep it secret. What had he said—he wanted Frida’s help but he was frightened of her? Sea and sky and the ancestors.
No one would tell me the truth. And I was sick of it, sick of being a puppet they pushed around whenever they needed.
I slammed out of the mead hall and into the freezing sweep of the town, ignoring Kolur as he called out my name. The sky was starting to darken, later than it had in Kjora. Now that I was out of the smoky, rowdy mead hall, my thoughts settled a little. I was three months away from home, and adventuring wasn’t remotely like it had been in the stories about Ananna. I might as well be home in Kjora for all the excitement I was having here in Tulja, and I realized, stalking through the freezing wind, that Kjora was exactly where I wanted to be. Kjora, where spring brought warmth and our houses weren’t mounds in the dirt. But I had no money, no boat. I refused to stay with Kolur, and I refused to help Isolfr at whatever he was trying to do. That did not leave me with many options—the only thing I had to trade was my half-formed magic and my skills aboard a boat.
A boat.
The old woman had said the docks were here, and we were close to the sea besides, having followed the shore to get here. I walked up to a woman sweeping out her shop with a straw broom, the handle wound up in blue ribbon.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Excuse me, how do I get to the docks?”
She squinted at me. “Come again?” Then she frowned. “Empire?”
Her accent was thick. I shook my head. “Not Empire. Kjoran.”
“Oh. Yes.” That seemed enough for her. Kjora was a long way away, and maybe she thought of it as part of the south. “Where would you go?”
“The docks.”
“Oh! The docks. Yes.” She pointed to the west. “That way. Follow the signs.”
“I can’t read the signs.”
She frowned again, like she was puzzling through what I’d said. “Oh, I see. Kjoran. First street on the right will take you there.” She gave a satisfied nod rather than a smile.
I thanked her, hoping that was enough to find my way. I pulled my coat tighter around my chest and walked until I came to the first crossroads. A sign hung from a pole jutting sideways out of the ground, painted with those same unfamiliar letters I’d seen everywhere. I studied them for a moment, but it wasn’t any use. I was too far from home.
For a moment, I was almost knocked out by a dizzying wave of fear. I couldn’t even read the signs. I’d never been on my own before, not even in Kjora.
This was a specific kind of loneliness, I realized. One that was born out of fear.
Then the wind shifted, and I got a whiff of the sea, briny and comforting in the way that it smelled just like the sea at home. I decided to take it as a sign from the ancestors that I had made the right decision. I walked the rest of the way down the road. All the flapping tent-buildings of the village disappeared, replaced with rocky soil and smatterings of pine trees. My fear returned, sharp and sudden as a blade. I wondered if the woman had steered me wrong, if she’d sent me into some sort of trap just because she took me for Empire.
I wished I had a knife, at the very least.
But then I heard shouts, men’s voices calling out fishermen’s cues. I recognized most of them—some things are standard across the islands, I supposed.
I went around a bend in the road, my heart pounding, and came to the docks.
There wasn’t much to them. Not like the docks at Skalir or even back home in the village. Just long slabs of barnacle-encrusted wood jutting out into the choppy water and a handful of rickety boats bobbing in the waves.
My spirits sank at the sight of it.
I’d been hoping for sailing ships big enough to make the journey south, but I knew immediately there was nothing but fishing boats here, most of them smaller even than the Penelope. If I wanted to sail home, or even to the closest island, I wouldn’t be doing it today. Or any time soon, most like.
I didn’t see anyone who looked like they might be a dockmaster—figured, in a place this small. So I straightened my shoulders and walked over to a trio of fishermen standing next to a worn-out old cog, the same sort as the Penelope and thus practical for longer trips. They fell silent as I approached, staring at me like I was a ghost.
“Excuse me,” I called out, conjuring up my bravery. “I’m looking for work.”
The fishermen blinked at me. For a blinding moment, I was afraid they didn’t understand me. But then one, the youngest of the three, spoke up.
“Most men around here won’t hire an Empire sailor.”
“I’m not Empire; I’m Kjoran.”
The fishermen conferred among themselves, muttering and grunting, the way men do. I shifted my weight, embarrassed at the thought of them talking about me.
The younger sailor turned to me. “You sound Kjoran.”
“That’s what I just told you. I’ve never been farther south than the Sunbreak Sea.”
He laughed. He wasn’t handsome, exactly, not like the suitors Bryn was always entertaining—too weatherworn, his skin patchy and red from all that time spent out at sea. But his face was friendly, despite him thinking I was some Empire spy.
“There’s not a lot of work around here.” His accent wasn’t as thick as the shopwoman’s, which I was grateful for. “Not a lot of fishermen on this island. Just Geir, who works alone, and Baltasar’s boat, which is the biggest around.” He jutted his chin inland. “Most of Tulja raises yaks. You got any experience with yaks?”
I shook my head. “I can do magic.”
The fisherman turned back to the others and took to muttering again. I strained to listen to what they were saying, but their accents were too thick and their voices too low.
He turned back to me again. “What sort? Sea-magic?”
“Wind.” I held up my hand. “You want to see? I know plenty of protection charms, and I can set the sails so you won’t have to mess with them when we’re out on the water.”
The young fisherman turned to one of the elder ones, a fellow with a bushy yellow beard and rheumy eyes. He nodded, once, and I took a deep breath and concentrated, pushing aside all the turmoil from earlier. The wind was gentle, but it was blowing in from the southeast. Made my job easy.
I closed my eyes and hummed to myself, and the strength of my ancestors rose up inside me, drawing forth the magic inherent on the air. The wind shifted so that it was blowing straight from the south, and it brought with it the scents of home—Mama’s ice-berry pie, the soap for bathing we kept in a little ornamented box, the herbs growing in the garden next to the front door. My hair whipped around my face and my coat whipped around my legs and I opened my eyes and the three fishermen were all staring at me in wonder. Behind them, the sails of the fishing boat rattled and flapped; I couldn’t do anything with them if she wasn’t moving. But I could sculpt a protection spell, and I did, weaving the wind into a blanket that settled over all of us, me and the fishermen. It was thick as smoke.
“Good enough for you?” I asked, out of breath from holding the magic.
The younger fisherman laughed. “C’mon, Baltasar, that’s better than anything Reynir’s ever conjured up.”
The man with the yellow beard harrumphed. “Don’t take much to beat out Reynir. You can stop, Empire girl; I’ve seen enough.”
I let the magic drop. The protection shimmered away; the wind settled and shifted out of the southeast again.
“I’m not Empire,” I said. “My mama was, technically, but she was a pirate, so she never pledged allegiance to the emperor. And my papa’s family has lived in the north all the way back to the time of Helgi.”
The younger fisherman grinned at me. After a moment’s hesitation, I smiled back.
“Please,” I said, and I addressed Baltasar, speaking as formally as I could. “I was washed ashore when my boat was attacked. My captain”—I figured that was better than saying “apprentice master”—“led me astray about why we were going north. I’m just looking for a way to earn money to support myself.”
Baltasar studied me. He tugged at his beard. I held my breath like I was about to drop underwater.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll take you on. Be here tomorrow at dawn. We’ll be catching lisilfish.”
I didn’t know what lisilfish were, but at least I wouldn’t starve here in the north. And maybe, eventually, I’d find a way home.