CHAPTER 21
The Power of the Scribes
Three weeks. That was all Sefia had to master excision, an extinct form of magic, with nothing to guide her but a Book she could not trust. Could she do it before the Book caught her in one of its snares, entangling her more deeply in her destiny? Could she do it before thousands died in the defense of Roku, and the Volcanic Kingdom fell to the Alliance?
She just had to be faster, smarter, stronger than the Book. She had to.
At night, she laid the Book in her lap and studied her father’s progress with excision or practiced hand motions by her window while boats ferried back and forth between Braska and the outer islands. There were three entrances into Blackfire Bay—one to the east, one to the west, and a narrow channel to the north between two smaller islands. With the other entrances covered by the remains of the Black Navy, the north channel would be the most logical point of attack for the Alliance invasion fleet.
Sovereign Ianai had ordered the towns along the channel to be completely given over to the Black Navy and the volunteer militia, so nonessential citizens were being moved behind capital walls for safety.
Sefia pressed her forehead to the glass. Below her, the districts of Braska were separated by deep trenches that would channel mudflows when the volcanoes erupted, sending the blistering rivers of lava and rock safely into the bay. The stench of sulfur permeated the capital, muted only a little by the pans of sage and flowers that burned beneath the lampposts.
When she finally crawled into bed each night, she slept little, tossing and turning on the uncomfortably stuffed mattress. Every time she closed her eyes, she pictured the Illuminated world—bright and immense—trying to drown her.
After a few hours of fitful sleep, she’d pull on her cold-weather layers, take the Book, and leave the city before dawn, hiking up the cliffs that overlooked the capital to the high mountain plains, where geysers steamed and smoke from hidden volcanic vents went drifting over the brittle grasses and windswept trees.
Archer remained behind, hauling sandbags, stocking gun turrets, ushering evacuees to temporary housing, doing whatever Sovereign Ianai and the Black Navy required.
Alone in the dry cold, with the black cones of Roku’s volcanoes in the distance, Sefia practiced what she learned of the Scribes’ power.
To excise something without causing a ripple of consequences, you had to cut the threads of light that connected it to the rest of the world. A single stone could have dozens of influences: the rocks it had chipped on its way downstream, the grasses it smothered, the insects and tiny rodents it sheltered, the miners it tripped as they stumbled home from the quarry.
In the Illuminated world, Sefia would sever the pulsing streams that linked the stone to these other things, so even if the stone disappeared, the chips, the smothered grasses, the stubbed toes remained. The insects and field mice survived. But there were gaps in their history—like the architectural wonders and technological innovations the Scribes left behind when they erased writing from the world, for though people could use them, no one could remember when or how they were created—and someone, taking off his boots at night, might wonder at a particular bruise on his foot, having no recollection of where he’d gotten it.
The days passed, but her progress was frustratingly slow. Again, she wished her father was actually with her, instead of just in the Book. Together, they could have conferred. Together, they could have made faster progress, more breakthroughs.
But every so often, instead of turning to the page she wished, the Book would remind her: Lon was in the place of the fleshless, beyond the dome of the living world, with Mareah and Nin. He was a specter of the person he used to be. Even if she could have talked to him, she wouldn’t have recognized him.
“I know,” she said once, snapping the covers shut. “But I need him. Show him to me.”
When she opened the Book, it willingly parted to a scene of her father erasing skipping stones on the beach below the house. But she had to excise more than that. She had to excise ships. The people of Roku were depending on it.
On her.
She had to move faster.
With her father’s progress to guide her, she began excising leaves from gnarled branches. She took boulders. Then entire trees.
When she returned to the city at dusk, the construction would still be under way. No matter how late the hour, people were at work on the walls and batteries, erecting watchtowers on the cliffs.
At the end of every day, Archer was exhausted but satisfied with the work.
Helping. But not fighting. Not killing. Though that didn’t stop his nightmares.
“They’re all counting on me,” Sefia said, touching their window.
Archer came up behind her, smelling of sweat and dust and rain, though they hadn’t seen rain in months. “I couldn’t think of anyone better to count on.”
“I’m scared. How many of them are going to die if I can’t do this?”
“No one is going to die.” He turned her around, away from the window. “I believe that because I believe in you. More than anything else in the world.”
She let him enfold her in his embrace. “I hope you’re right,” she whispered.
One week turned into two. There was still no sign of the outlaws, who just might make it in time, with the Current to guide them.
Had they been waylaid somehow? Had they run into the Alliance invasion fleet on their way to Roku?
As the days counted down, Sefia began excising weatherbeaten shacks on lonely hills. She erased abandoned mine shafts. She removed a compound of buildings from the bottom of an old quarry.
Could she erase an entire ship?
Two?
Half a fleet of them?
The Alliance invasion fleet arrived at Roku three weeks after Sefia and Archer. It was a few hours before dawn, and the ships glittered along the horizon like a fearsome floating city, drawing ever closer.
The Rokuine defenses had been fortified. The cannons had been stocked with shot. The volunteer militia had been given armaments and been hastily trained. Boats were waiting to retrieve the wounded from the water. They were as ready as they could have been.
The steep ridges of the northern channel into Blackfire Bay had been evacuated and rigged with explosives that Archer found fascinating. You had to detonate the first by means of a wire, but if you placed them correctly, the others would be set off simply by the shocks, one after another, like a cascade. If Sefia failed, the explosives would be detonated, sending the mountainside crumbling into the water, taking out the edges of the Alliance fleet as it sailed into Blackfire Bay.
It was a destructive, desperate measure Sovereign Ianai hoped they wouldn’t have to use, because if Sefia failed, it wouldn’t take out enough ships to save them. But fewer Alliance ships might mean fewer Rokuine casualties.
It was in one of these abandoned cliff towns that Sefia and Archer stood, among the empty shells of houses, doors swinging in the chill winter wind. From there, the Alliance invasion fleet would sail close enough for her to reach it, excising half of their ships before they had the chance to fire a single broadside. In the south, Sefia could see Braska alight like a shining target.
Her gaze passed to the Alliance vessels, now beginning to take shape. She could almost pick out Alliance flags coiling and flapping in the moonlight like gold-blue serpents with forked tongues.
Archer stood by her, his body a shelter from the cold wind. Without a word, he placed a hand on her shoulder.
The warmth of his touch coursed through her.
She could do this.
She would do this.
Because he believed in her. And she wouldn’t let him down.
She blinked. Light unfurled across her vision like a golden veil. In the Illuminated world, she could see all twenty-four ships of the Alliance fleet, and as they inched closer, she could see more—every rusted bolt at the portholes, every strand of rope in the rigging, every beating heart of every soldier.
She took a breath.
And when she exhaled, she felt her Sight expanding. The currents of light separated into filaments of time, into stories both close and distant. The fleet was a dense web of gold, more entangled than anything she’d ever seen, woven through with veins so bright they seemed to throb.
Lifting her hands, she began the work of excision. She sliced through the particles of light. She severed connections. She watched currents of gold go dark.
“Sefia?” Archer asked. “They’re almost here.”
She was running out of time.
She couldn’t find all the connections, couldn’t sever them neatly. She had to act now.
So she slashed. She shredded and tore. She could almost feel the story threads snapping in her fingers, until she held half the light of the Alliance fleet in her hands.
And she extinguished them. The timbers, the sails, the running lines, the anchors and anchor chains, all the history of all the ships dimmed, died, and disintegrated into nothing.
She’d done it.
She’d excised eight ships.
She’d saved hundreds—if not thousands—of lives. Her limbs felt watery with relief.
But then the screams reached her.
Sefia opened her eyes to . . . there was no better word for it than horror.
As expected, some of the Alliance ships had disappeared completely, their crews floundering, bewildered, in the black water. But three vessels had only been partially excised—their sails shredded, their cannons corroded as if by acid, their decks cratered with hundreds of holes.
The timbers of the nearest ship caught fire. Black smoke billowed into the sky as flames licked at the cobweb-like rigging, the splintered masts.
But the ships weren’t the only remnants of her failed magic.
In the light of the blaze, she could see sailors staggering across the listing decks—it was like they’d been half-erased, trailing blood and body parts attached only by raw tendons.
An explosion rocked the darkness as another ship went up in a ball of flame, so bright and hot, Sefia felt it on her tearstained cheeks.
As the small, flailing figures caught fire and fell, shrieking, into the water, she remembered the future the Book had laid out for her: She would demolish her enemies with a wave of her hand. She would watch men burn on the sea.
It had been written, and learning Alteration had not only failed to change it, doing so had ensured that it came to pass.
“What have I done?” she whispered.
Archer tried to take her hands. “Sefia, look at me. How do we fix this?”
Fix this. Yes. She had to fix this. She wrenched out of his grasp. Before he could say anything more, she was summoning the Sight, she was seeking stable landing among the wrecked ships, she was disappearing with a wave of her trembling arms.
Then she was among them.
The sounds struck her first: creaking ships being sucked under the water, crackling flames, the moans of the people she’d only partially excised, their screams and hoarse, pitiful cries.
They were missing arms, legs, fingers, eyes, chunks of their ribs. Some were already dead, and among the corpses she saw scooped-out skulls, black maws where chests should have been. Some survivors were crawling toward her, gasping. One woman seemed to be missing her bones, her body going gelatinous, the dirty blond knot of her hair slipping from the top of her head as all her flesh collapsed under its own weight.
As Sefia hesitated, a man divested of his skin, like a peeled plum, staggered into her from behind, pleading for help.
Sefia felt the man’s hot weeping muscles press against her back.
“Please.” The skinless man could barely form the word with his bleeding lips.
Sefia nodded. She sobbed as she lifted her fingers . . . and snapped the man’s neck.
She hadn’t wanted this. The Alliance soldiers were dying in agony. Hundreds of them. They’d been her enemy, but they hadn’t deserved this.
Blinking, Sefia drew one of her knives and lifted her shaking hands. The blade floated out of her fingers, hovering, for a moment, in midair, the firelight dancing along the steel edge.
The ship was sinking, shifting and groaning beneath her feet as the water claimed it. She didn’t have much time.
In the Illuminated world, she found every person that could not survive after what she’d done, every tortured, half-erased soldier left on the ship, saw their pain in hot sparks of light, like signal flares.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and flicked her fingers, sending the knife flying across the ship. One by one, she found them all—the sobbing, the screaming, the unconscious—and one by one, she killed them.
Her blade tore through the air, striking skulls, slitting throats.
She teleported to the next ship and the next, her knife swift and merciless—or was it merciful?—punctuating the end of every life with a quick cut. Some, the ones who might still make it, she left alive, hoping they’d survive long enough for the rescue boats to reach them.
When it was done, everything was silent but for the snapping and biting of the flames, the sounds of the sea swallowing the corpses. The rescue boats, bearing lanterns and doctors, had almost reached her.
Shivering, she teleported back to the cliff.
To the west, the remainder of the Alliance invasion fleet was retreating. The Black Navy ships were in pursuit.
And there were new sails on the northern horizon. War drums and battle cries.
The outlaws had arrived—the Current, the Brother, and the Crux leading the charge. They sailed in among the Alliance warships like a wedge into wood, making the blue vessels splinter off as they tried to escape from Blackfire Bay.
But the cliff was bare. Archer was nowhere to be seen.
“Archer!” Her voice was thin, stretched taut as a wire.
There was the scrabbling sound of falling rock.
“Sefia?”
She raced to the edge of the cliff, where she found Archer climbing down the jagged stones, his face drawn with worry.
But when he saw her, the fear drained from his eyes. He scrambled up, ignoring the cuts the rocks left on his hands and arms, and caught her as she fell to her knees in the dirt.
“I was going after you,” he said, folding her into his arms.
Of course he was. She should have known. She squeezed her eyes shut, curling her fingers in his shirt.
“I’m sorry it didn’t work.”
“It did work. It just didn’t work all the way.”
“What do you mean, it worked? Was excision supposed to look . . . like that?”
“No, it didn’t work on them . . . but it worked on the other ships.”
“What other ships?”
“The ones I erased.” She pulled away from him, frowning. “How many ships do you think were out there in the first place?”
He looked confused. “Nineteen.”
“No. There were twenty-four. Don’t you remember?” When he shook his head, she continued, “Where did you think those extra thousand soldiers in the water came from?”
“I don’t know. I—” Archer passed a hand over his face, as if that would return the missing ships to his memory. “You really did it?”
Sefia swallowed. She had really done it. She’d rewritten the world. She’d changed the future. But there’d been a cost. One she would never pay again.