CHAPTER 1

Fine as Gossamer, Hard as Iron

Sefia sat up in the shadows of the sick bay, startled out of some half-remembered dream.

The ship rocked and plunged beneath her, making the jars of ointment and bottles of tonic rattle on their shelves. Outside, rain spattered the portholes, blurring her view of the waves, high as rolling hills.

A storm. They must have come upon it in the night.

Sefia shivered, hugging her knees to her chest. In the four days since she’d returned to the Current with Archer, she’d had the same dream again and again. She was back in the house on the hill, and ink was seeping—no, flooding—from the secret room in the basement where her parents had kept the Book, the dark waves reaching across the floor to grasp them by the ankles and crawl up their calves. In the dream, Lon and Mareah scooped her up. In the dream, they shoved her out the door. But they were always too slow to save themselves, always too slow to escape the growing pool of ink that drew them, screaming, into its black depths.

Destiny. Her parents had been destined to die young, their futures recorded in the Book with everything that had ever been or would ever be, from the flicker of a mayfly’s wings to the life spans of the stars overhead.

Somewhere in the Book was the passage where her mother got sick.

Somewhere were the paragraphs that described her father being tortured.

It had been written, so it had come to pass.

But they’d fought it. They’d betrayed the Guard, the secret society of readers to which they’d sworn their undying allegiance. They’d stolen the Book, the Guard’s most powerful weapon, to protect their daughter from her own future. They’d run.

They’d lost, in the end, but oh, how they’d fought.

As Sefia had to fight now. Fight and win, or she’d lose Archer to destiny too.

Beside her, he lay curled beneath the blankets, hair tousled, fingers twitching in his sleep. He always slept so little, his dreams haunted by memories of the people he’d killed.

He felt fractured, he’d told her. At all times, he was the same small-town boy he’d been before the Guard’s impressors took him, and yet, at all times, he was an animal, he was a victim, he was a killer, he was loud as thunder, he was the boy from the legends, with a bloodlust that could not be slaked.

Lightning forked in the distance, pulsing like veins in the restless sky.

As if in response, Archer’s body spasmed. He let out a wordless gasp.

Sefia shifted out of his way. “Archer. It’s okay. You’re safe.”

His eyes opened. For a moment, he seemed to have trouble emerging from his dreams, seemed to have trouble recognizing where he was, who he was.

But the moment would pass. It always did. And then—

The smile. It spread across his face like dawn racing over water—his lips, his cheeks, his golden eyes. Every time, it was like he was seeing her for the first time, his expression full of such hope that she longed to see it again and again for the rest of her days.

For a second, the storm abated. For a second, the ship was still. For a second, Sefia’s whole world was light and soft and warm.

“Sefia,” he whispered, tucking her hair behind her ear.

She bent closer, drawn to him as a hummingbird is drawn to a flower, her mouth gently landing on his.

He leaned into her kiss, responding to her lips and wandering hands as if her very touch was magic, making him moan and arch and yearn for more.

He laced his fingers in her hair, like he needed to be closer to her, like he couldn’t get enough of her, but as he tried to sit up, he let out a sudden hiss of pain and reached for his injured side.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be.” Propping himself up on his elbows, he grinned. “I’m not.”

Her cheeks warmed as she pulled aside the blanket to examine his bandages. Doc had stitched and dressed the wound twice now: first when he’d arrived, half-conscious, with the gash below his ribs black and nauseatingly deep, and a second time when Archer had torn his sutures trying to help Cooky dump a pot of potato peels overboard. Sefia would never hear the end of it if Doc had to redo the stitches again.

“I’m fine.” Archer tried batting her away.

“You almost died.”

“Only almost.” He shrugged. He’d told her about the fight with Serakeen. There had been the smell of cordite and blood. A gust of magic that had swept Archer’s lieutenants, Frey and Aljan, into the wall of the alley before dropping them, unconscious, onto the cobbles. The resistance of bone as Archer severed Serakeen’s hand at the wrist.

“I should’ve been there,” Sefia said, not for the first time. If she’d been there, she could have protected him. She had the same magic as Serakeen—a magic the Guard called Illumination— she might have even matched him in a fight. After all, she thought bitterly, I’m the daughter of an assassin and the most powerful sorcerer the world has seen in years.

No. She didn’t want to believe in that future. She wouldn’t become a weapon in some war for control of the Five Kingdoms. She wouldn’t lose Archer, the boy she loved.

“You’re here now. That’s what matters,” Archer said quietly. “Without you, we wouldn’t be able to rescue Frey and Aljan.”

His bloodletters, his friends, had followed him into the fight with Serakeen, and Serakeen still had them. The Guard’s Apprentice Soldier, known to Sefia’s parents as Rajar, had once been Lon and Mareah’s friend and collaborator. Together, they’d orchestrated the war that was supposed to claim Archer’s life.

How many of her parents’ mistakes would Sefia have to fix? She’d loved them, but they’d made so many.

“Frey and Aljan will be all right,” Sefia said.

“You really think so?”

She trailed her fingers down his arm, over the fifteen burns that marked his kills in the impressors’ fighting rings, and took his hand. “Yes,” she said.

The plan was to return to the bloodletters, organize a rescue, and meet up with the Current of Faith again at Haven, an island in the unexplored reaches of the Central Sea—one of those places you could get to only if you were told how to get there. Reed had set it up months ago to take in outlaws on the run from the widening scope of the war. If Sefia and Archer got there with the bloodletters, they would all have a place to wait while the fighting—and destiny—passed them by. If they got to Haven, Archer would live.

But first, they needed the Book. Sefia couldn’t teleport to the bloodletters without a clear image of where they were, and only the Book, with its infinite pages of history, could provide that.

She’d hidden it in the safest place she could think of: the Jaharan messengers’ post. The messengers’ guild dealt in all kinds of secrets—delicate packages, incriminating information— and they never broke their trust. They were respected and powerful, and while it was with them, no one could touch the Book.

Not even the Guard. She hoped.

The Current of Faith was on its way to Jahara now; they were only a few days away. A few days, and she’d have the Book back. A few days, and she’d be able to find the bloodletters and mount a rescue. A few days. Frey and Aljan just had to hold on a few more days.

Archer lifted Sefia’s hand to his lips. “What would I do without you?”

“You’ll never have to find out.” She kissed him again, and the kiss was a promise. A promise of high winds and open waters, of lying, legs tangled, on a white beach with nothing but the firmament for a coverlet, of succulent days and hot breath and damp skin and years rich as wine and endless as the sea.

When she drew back, she had the satisfaction of seeing his gold eyes darken with want, with yes—he licked his lips—with forever. He reached for her again.

“You’ll be sorry if you tear your stitches.”

“If I tear them doing what I want to do to you, it’ll be worth it.” He pulled her, grinning, onto the bunk beside him, smothering her laughter with kisses until she was delirious with them.

Then the alarm began to sound.

Archer grumbled and rolled onto his side, pinning Sefia between him and the wall.

“That’s the bell for all hands!” she protested.

He nipped at her collarbone. “I’m injured, remember?”

“I’m not!”

Before he could reply, the door opened, and Sefia let out a yelp as Marmalade, the new chanty leader of the larboard watch, stuck her head into the sick bay. She was in her rain gear, hood pulled over her honey-colored hair.

“Ugh!” she cried as Sefia peered around Archer’s naked shoulder. “Do your canoodlin’ on your own time!”

“I’m trying!” Sefia gestured to Archer, who grinned unapologetically.

Marmalade rolled her eyes. They’d all become friends playing Ship of Fools with Horse and Meeks, and the girl had consistently fleeced all of them but Archer, who at least broke even. “Yeah, you’re tryin’ real hard. Just get out of bed before the mate comes to fetch you, or you’ll be scourin’ pots till we reach Jahara.”

“Fine, fine. I’m getting up.”

“Oh, and Archer?” The chanty leader’s gaze roved along his body, from his chest to his waist, where his pajamas hung low on his hips. “Nice.”

Sefia hurled a pillow across the room as Marmalade ducked back into the corridor and slammed the door, laughing.

As Sefia scrambled from beneath the blankets, scooping up her clothes, Archer followed.

“You’re injured, remember?” she said with a touch of sarcasm.

“I’m not.” He stuffed his feet through the legs of his trousers, wincing as the abrupt movement pained him. “At least, I’m not too injured to help.”

“Yeah, right.” Blinking, Sefia summoned her magic, and in an instant, Archer’s body, the bunk beneath him, the well-worn walls of the sick bay, even the portholes and the rough water outside were overlaid with spiraling golden torrents.

The Illuminated world.

If the Book was a written compendium of past, present, and future, the Illuminated world was the living embodiment of it—an ocean of light in constant motion beneath the world of touch and smell and taste. With enough time and training, Illuminators like Sefia could sift through the shimmering specks to see the events of the past or move objects through the air.

Once, long ago, the rarest of talents could rewrite the fabric of the world itself. But skilled as Sefia was, that power was beyond her.

As she wound her fingers into the fine golden threads, the fibers of the Illuminated world bent and rippled, cascading toward Archer and nudging him gently back onto the bunk.

“Hey!” he cried.

For good measure, she also flung the blanket over his head.

“Stay here.” Shrugging into her oilskin coat, she glanced up and opened her arms wide. Under her hands, the waves of light parted as if they were curtains. Details of her surroundings whirled past as she used her magic to peer through the ceiling to the main deck, the outlaws racing across the ship, the downpour streaming out of the sky, the sails flapping madly in the storm. But she ignored these. For Teleportation, she needed to locate a place she knew so well it had been burned into her memory.

Ah, yes, there—the edge of the quarterdeck, where she used to read the Book on their first voyage with the Current.

With that image fixed in her mind, she waved her hands and transported herself through the Illuminated world—out of the sick bay, through the timbers of the ship—appearing on deck to the rain on her face, her feet skidding on the slick planks.

Marmalade caught her by the arm. “Seven out of ten for the entrance,” she said.

“Just need to stick the landing.” Blinking, Sefia allowed the world of light to ebb from her vision, leaving her in the dark of the storm with the other sailors. Overhead, long trails of water dripped from the sails like icicles.

The alarm bell went silent as Captain Cannek Reed appeared on deck, looking wild as the sea with his coat flaring behind him and his eyes glinting like sapphires in the shadow of his wide-brimmed hat. As if on cue, lightning lanced through the clouds behind him, crackling as it dissipated.

“Ten out of ten for dramatic lighting,” Sefia muttered.

Marmalade let out a peal of laughter, which she stifled when the chief mate glared in their direction with his dead gray eyes.

“I sensed this wreck in the water during the night,” the captain began in his weatherworn voice. “Thought they might be outlaws, so we came to investigate.”

According to legend, Captain Reed was the only man alive who could talk to the water. It told him all sorts of things about its tides, its currents, its deep-sea creatures. Some people said it had even told him how he was going to die—with one last breath of salty wet air, a black gun in his hand, and a white dandelion floating above the deck.

Sefia glanced over the rail. The water was full of splintered crates and kegs emptied of their contents, scraps of sails, and corpses, their hair rising and falling around their heads like kelp. In the dark seas, their crimson uniforms appeared the same bruised mulberry as Archer’s stained bandages. Among the wreckage were two narrow longboats crammed with survivors.

Redcoats—soldiers of the Oxscinian Navy—there were redcoats in the water.

Once, crouching on the edge of the forest with her aunt Nin, Sefia had been afraid of the Red Navy soldiers. But that was back when she could imagine nothing worse than being apprehended by the authorities. Now she knew there were worse things than redcoats out there—Serakeen, the Guard, war.

“They ain’t outlaws,” continued Reed, “but we ain’t leavin’ ’em out here to die.”

“What of the Crux?” someone asked.

Sefia glanced around, but the great golden pirate ship that had been accompanying them was nowhere to be seen.

“The Crux went on to Jahara to arrange for provisions,” Captain Reed answered. Then, with a nod, he dismissed them. “Go on, do some good out there.”

There was no cheering, no chorus of huzzahs, but Sefia felt a wave of determination go through them as Meeks and the chief mate began sending the crew into the rescue boats.

She ended up on the first boat with Reed and the doc. The oar was slippery in her hands as the waves brought the corpses crashing into the hull.

She wanted to teleport; it would have been faster. But she needed a clear referent—a strong memory or an unobstructed view—and she couldn’t see through the rain and the waves to get a good look.

As they pulled up, one of the redcoats tossed her a line and she hauled them in, lashing the boats together. Brusquely motioning Sefia aside, Doc climbed in among the wounded, bearing her black bag.

The Red Navy soldiers were festering and damp, the smell of sickness clinging to them like a fungus. They must have been out there for days.

“Rotten hulls,” exclaimed the one who’d thrown her the rope. “It is you, isn’t it?”

Surprised, Sefia blinked water from her eyelashes. The redcoat was easily one of the prettiest boys she’d ever seen, with green eyes, a handsome jaw, a curling forelock of hair wet with rain. His features were so striking, he might have even given Scarza, Archer’s silver-haired second-in-command, a run for his money, but for the flabbergasted expression on his perfectly symmetrical face.

“Do I know you?” she asked doubtfully. She would’ve remembered a face like his.

A round-headed boy with narrow eyes popped up beside him. He appeared so suddenly, so comically, it almost made her laugh. Almost. “Don’t think so,” he said. “You were unconscious at the time.”

“I was what?”

“Out cold,” the second boy explained matter-of-factly. “On Black Boar Pier.”

She’d only been at Black Boar Pier, in Epidram, a city on the northeast coast of Oxscini, once in her life. She and Archer had stumbled into a trap. There’d been a fight, and she’d lost consciousness. Later, Archer had told her how Reed and the outlaws had shown up to save them. Had these redcoats been there too?

“Petty Officer,” said the captain from behind her.

Still bewildered, Sefia watched Captain Reed clasp hands with the boys. All their paths must have crossed three months ago, like shooting stars in the night. What a coincidence that all of them would meet again.

Except there were no coincidences, as the Guard was fond of saying.

This meeting wasn’t happenstance—it was destiny. And it was a net, fine as gossamer and hard as iron, closing in on her and Archer with every passing second.

“It’s midshipman now, sir,” said the first redcoat, who managed a handsome, waterlogged smile. “Midshipman Haldon Lac.”