The next morning, Captain Ellsworth held a brief memorial service for Destry and the five fallen mariners. Of the six dead, they only had three bodies.

The Dear Lady’s churning engine had broken down at last, leaving them dead in the water. The morning was cool, bright, and windless, the sky the same sharp blue as Destry’s eyes. The remaining mariners stood in a crescent around the three bodies, and it took every bit of Sepha’s courage to stand with them when she ought to be hiding in shame. But the dead were dead because of her. She owed it to them to stand, and watch, and remember.

Standing with several mariners between herself and Ruhen, Sepha watched as Ellsworth gave the order for the fallen to be tipped into the sea. The swaddled bodies slipped off their boards. An empty moment, and then three sickening splashes.

The mariners stood at varying levels of attention, facing out to sea. Ms. Elos, who stood beside Captain Ellsworth, murmured something only Ellsworth could hear.

Ellsworth swallowed and nodded. Turning to face his crew, he said, “Back to work, then.” He fixed his eyes on Ruhen, and said, “If you would.”

“Of course,” Ruhen said. Now that he didn’t have to hide his magic, the Dear Lady would be back in working condition in no time. Ruhen’s eyes flicked uncertainly to Sepha before he turned to follow Captain Ellsworth belowdecks.

The rest of the mariners scattered, shooting dark looks at Sepha as they left. When she was alone, she took one deep breath and released it in a huff. There was something she had to do, something she’d been putting off.

She had to talk to Henric.

She found him a few minutes later on the main deck, aft, staring out over the water. His holsters were empty, his shirt rumpled and untucked. His hair was unkempt, his arms were crossed, and he was quiet. And he was never quiet.

Henric turned to face her, his eyes shockingly red against the green of his irises. They looked at each other for a quiet moment, and it was as if Destry’s absence took up space between them, a physical object that was too heavy for them to move.

Sepha nodded, the barest acknowledgment of a loss much greater than her own, and they both returned their gazes to the sea. They were both too tired for anything but blunt and dry-eyed observation.

“Destry is gone,” Henric said, his voice reduced to a gravelly murmur.

Sepha looked sidelong at him. “You weren’t at the memorial.”

Henric’s head drooped. “I couldn’t go,” he said. “If I’d gone, that would’ve meant it was real. That she really died. And if she’s dead, that means I have to be the next Magistrate. The moment my mother dies, my name will be expunged. I’ll be Monseigneur Magistrate, not Henric.

“You got me wrong, Sepha,” he said. “I never wanted this, not even for a second. All I wanted was—well, not this.” He shook his head. “Maybe she isn’t dead. Maybe we should circle back. She could’ve climbed one of those rocks, maybe.”

Sepha sighed and scanned the horizon for pursuing ships.

None.

“She’s dead, Henric.” Her voice was flat and unyielding, because she’d had to tell herself the same thing. “I saw the cleptapods get her.”

“I can’t believe that, Sepha,” Henric said, fixing her with a desperate look. “She was too good for that. It had to have been one of the magicians, Ruhen or that other one, the homunculus. Don’t do Destry the disservice of saying she got killed by a godsdamned octopus.” He squared his shoulders, faced her head-on, and asked, his voice cold, “Did Ruhen kill her?”

“No.” Sepha felt hard, as if she were full of broken stones and sharpened metal and shattered glass. “He tried to save her.”

“Or maybe he only wanted it to seem like he was trying to save her, did you ever think of that?” Henric came closer, so that they were face to face. “He didn’t kill her, but he let his friend do it for him.”

“Gods, Henric!” Sepha took a few steps away and leaned one hip against a giant spool of rope. “The other magician isn’t his friend.”

Henric’s eyes narrowed. “You know something.”

The lie tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop it. “No, I don’t.”

“Tell me,” Henric snarled. “Destry is dead, and you’re hiding something. I’m going to be the Magistrate, and you’re an alchemancer, in case you’ve forgotten.”

An errant gust of wind forced Sepha to take a step backward, and her magic roiled up beneath her skin. “Is that supposed to be a threat?”

“It’s just a fact,” Henric said, moving closer to her. Too close. Her magic was uncoiling and spiraling outward, smoke in a stopped chimney. Sepha forced herself to ignore it, to glare up at Henric as he said, “Another fact is that magicians began attacking Destry as soon as you came into her life.”

Sepha gritted her teeth and said, “I already told you I’d never harm Destry, and I’m not telling you again. Either you believe me, or you don’t.” Henric scowled and looked away. “The magician-homunculus has been wreaking havoc in Tirenia. Maybe he attacked the boat so he could kill Destry. She’d’ve been a formidable Magistrate.”

The light in Henric’s eyes flickered, and he seemed to wilt. “More so than me.” He turned away and plunged both hands deep into his long, curly hair. Then he whirled around, looking utterly miserable. “I’m sorry, Sepha. I didn’t mean to—but you understand.”

Sepha twisted her mouth to one side. All she understood was that Henric had been the Magistrate’s heir for less than two days, and he was already using his status to make threats. To an alchemancer, no less.

There was a small shuffling sound. She looked down and saw Fio climb onto a nearby barrel.

“Morning, Fio,” Sepha said, and started in surprise when he rasped back, “Morning.”

She gaped from Fio to Henric, who was frowning out over the sea. Henric seemed not to have heard Fio. Who had talked. In all of the—everything—she had forgotten he could.

There was a loud bang from far below. With a slight lurch, the boat began to churn forward. The motion picked up a small breeze, and Sepha’s eyes flickered closed as it teased the hair around her forehead. “He fixed it,” she said, mostly to herself.

“There’s no getting out of it, I suppose,” Henric sighed, seeming not to have heard Sepha, either. “I’ll have to contact Mother once we get to the Sanctuary.”

Sepha’s heart swooped. She knew that Destry had planned to contact the Magistrate from the Sanctuary, but she didn’t like the idea of Henric doing it. Not even a little. “I thought we were hoping she wouldn’t know we were there.”

“It won’t matter,” Henric said, shoving his hands into his pockets. “She can’t go there without violating the treaty. Anyway, she’ll be too busy being disappointed that I’m her successor to give chase.” He snorted and shook his head. “Wish I could see her face when she finds out.”

Sepha’s lip curled in distaste. But then she remembered how hard it was to talk about her father Ludov without letting bitterness spew out of her like acid. How she was always afraid people would think she was a liar if she talked about how he’d treated her.

Maybe the Magistrate was Henric’s Ludov.

“What did your mother do to you, Henric?” Sepha asked.

Henric turned just enough to look at her. His eyes narrowed, and Sepha didn’t know quite what to make of it when he said, “Nothing. She did nothing.”

“All right,” Sepha said, wincing as her tether flickered out and in. Ruhen was suddenly much farther away than before. “Sorry. I thought you might—but never mind.”

Henric shrugged and turned away. He was silent for so long that Sepha thought he was thinking of Destry again. But then he said, “Not every mother wants to be a mother. Not every mother wants all of her children. Not every mother cares enough to pretend she does.”

I’m sure she wanted you, Sepha almost said, but she swallowed the words. She was quite sure Destry had overshadowed Henric in every way. The broken and sharp and shattered bits inside Sepha ground together as she said instead, “She’ll have to want you now.”

“Yes,” Henric said. There was almost a smile on his lips. “I suppose she will.”

 

 

 

 

Several days later, seven weeks after the night in Cell Two-Seven, Sepha found herself again on the main deck with Henric and Fio. The Dear Lady, thanks to Ruhen’s magic, was making record time and was set to arrive at the Sanctuary on the southern coast of Tirenia within two weeks. The journey from Port Balarat to any of the southern ports normally took over a month.

Bored to the point of distraction, Henric had enlisted Sepha’s help. He’d drawn a large transformation alchem on the back of a map and set Sepha hurling knives over it. He wanted to continue his research, which was suddenly important to him.

He didn’t succeed a single time. Each failure only sent him deeper into focus, settled a frown more permanently over his green eyes.

After an hour or two of watching Henric fail, Sepha took a turn.

“This might be a waste of time,” she said to Henric as she walked toward the alchem. “This really isn’t what alchemy is for.”

“Yes, well,” Henric said, “soon it’ll be up to me to decide what alchemy is for, and I say transforming projectiles in motion has too damn much potential for me to give up on it.”

Sepha sighed. He did this at every opportunity: used Destry’s death as an excuse to go on doing what he wanted. Because he knew it would work.

Sepha’s tether stretched as she walked. Ruhen was deep in the belly of the ship, far enough away to be ignored, for once. He’d fallen into the habit of lurking just within eyesight, and from the way the mariners shied away from Sepha, she suspected Ruhen was lurking for their protection, not hers. As if she were some dangerous beast, liable to explode at any moment.

If anything, Ruhen’s unreasonable lurking was making things worse. His constant, smothering presence irritated Sepha to no end, making that roiling something bubble up and burst out of her. Then Ruhen would leap into action, using his steady magic to undo the damage her wayward magic had done. And she was left standing there like an idiot, pretending it didn’t bother her that she had no control over the magic she’d never wanted.

She was more prone to unexpected blasts of magic when she was tired or emotional, she’d found.

And seeing Ruhen made her feel too much.

She’d tried to forgive him, but every time she talked to him, the snide voice sang, Ruhen’s a magician, and Destry is dead. Every time it did, something inside her shrank.

“Fine,” she said to Henric and knelt beside the alchem. She’d barely settled onto her knees when Henric hurled a knife straight at her. Before Sepha could place her hands just so, before the knife had even reached the alchem, that roiling something bubbled up beneath her skin. It burst out of her without her telling it to, and the knife ricocheted off the air and landed on the deck several yards away.

“What in all After …” Henric began.

“That was me,” she said, looking at the knife and then frowning at her hands.

Henric looked at her hands, too, grimacing as if he’d just had a distasteful thought. “Damn it all, Sepha,” he said. “I’d nearly forgotten you weren’t an alchemist, and then you go and do something like that.” He jogged over to pick up the knife and said, as he walked back, “You should stop using your magic. Learn how not to use it. It’s better that way.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Sepha muttered. She set her fingers just so along the alchem’s rim. “Just give me warning next time.”

“Warning,” he said, and threw the knife at her.

This time, she was ready.

As it always had been before—and as it hadn’t been with her homunculus problem—the solution was immediately clear to her.

All it required was a slight shift in focus.

And suddenly the alchem wasn’t just a flat pattern drawn on paper. It was power in three dimensions, an enormous portal that formed an upward-facing cone.

The moment the knife crossed into the cone, there was a pulse, followed by a metallic thud.

Sepha had transformed the knife into an ingot. In one try.

There was a moment of silence, and then, simultaneously, Fio let out a whoop and Henric shouted, “Gods, Sepha!”

Henric rumpled his hair. “How did you do that?”

A slow grin spread across Sepha’s face. She pulled another ingot from her holster, tossed it into the alchem, and placed her hands just so. With a pulse, she transformed both ingots into knives. “Do two this time,” she said.

Hours later, the sun had set, but Sepha and Henric were still at it. By now, they’d drawn a crowd, and Henric’s smile was growing more manic by the minute. The mariners had a lot less to do now that Ruhen had rescued them from their most difficult work, and Sepha could hear snatches of bets being wagered.

Several mariners now stood, knives in hand, waiting for Henric’s go-ahead to throw. From the way the idiots had oriented themselves, their fellow mariners were likely to be impaled if Sepha failed to transform any of the knives.

All the more reason not to fail.

Sepha rocked back onto her heels, turning to make sure no one had decided to throw a knife from behind her. She reached up to hook a stray strand of hair behind her ear and heard Henric shout the go-ahead.

No—

She whipped her head around and saw, as if in slow motion, the mariners’ arms arc forward. Saw the knives fly from their hands, spiraling toward her through the air.

Then the knives were inside the cone and her hands weren’t just so and if she didn’t do something, they’d hit her or someone else, and—

The roiling something erupted from her so forcefully that she was thrown onto her back. It burst out with a sound like a howling gale. The mariners were screaming, and she didn’t know what her magic had done—

One scream distinguished itself from the rest. It was a roar of anger and agony, and Sepha knew she’d hurt someone.

Sepha scrambled onto her feet. The mariners were huddled around someone lying on the ground, but they scattered when she approached.

Because she was the most dangerous person on this boat, too.

When she saw what she’d done, her breath froze in her throat.

Henric was on the ground. There were large scores across his abdomen, as if some great, taloned beast had slashed him deep. There was blood pouring from his belly, and he was emitting a wordless, agonized moan.

Sepha dropped to her knees. “Henric! Henric, I didn’t—”

“Get away from me!” Henric shouted, and swung his arm toward Sepha. At the last moment, she saw the moonlight glint off the knife he hadn’t thrown. She lunged backward, but the tip of the blade caught her shirt. There was a ripping sound. She scrambled away from him, and he swiped again, bellowing, “Get back! Magician!”

Sepha turned and ran. Dimly, she saw Fio, Captain Ellsworth, Ms. Elos—but there was only one person who could help, one person who could undo what she’d just done to Henric.

She followed the pull of her tether.

“Ruhen!” she screamed, when she caught her breath. “Ruhen! Help!”

The words had barely left her lips when the tether cinched tight. Ruhen burst through an open doorway, looking frantic. “I hurt Henric!” Sepha gasped. “It was an accident, but I hurt him. He’s bleeding, and I hurt him, and—”

“Where is he?”

“That way!”

Ruhen turned and sprinted to where the mariners had reformed their circle around Henric. Sepha followed, falling behind as she felt a sharp stitch in her side.

“Out of the way!” Ruhen shouted.

Behind the wall of mariners, Henric moaned, “Stay away from me, magician!”

And the mariners weren’t moving and Henric had a belly wound and he was going to die and she’d killed both of the Magistrate’s heirs and—

“Everybody move!” Captain Ellsworth bellowed. The mariners obeyed, scrambling to clear a path for Ruhen.

Ruhen made to walk toward Henric, but Sepha surged forward and grabbed his wrist. He looked back at her, and she said, “He still has a knife.”

Ruhen’s eyes flicked down her body and up again, and something in his expression went hard. He strode over to Henric and knelt. Henric went very still, and Sepha wondered if that was by Henric’s choice or Ruhen’s.

There was a quiet moment. Then Ruhen muttered something unintelligible but powerful, words that rumbled through the air and knitted Henric’s gaping wounds back together. Where the long scores had been, now there were silvery scars.

Ruhen leaned closer to Henric and whispered something in his ear. Henric’s eyes widened, and then his face contorted in fury. He shot a look so full of loathing at Sepha that she took a step backward.

Ruhen stood up, and Ellsworth was immediately at his side. “There’s no defense against this,” Ellsworth said, glaring at Ruhen as if he was to blame. “I can’t have an out-of-control alchemancer on my ship. Take care of it. Tonight.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Ruhen said, casting a swift look in Sepha’s direction.

Sepha was a liability. If these mariners died, it would not be the undead magician, but she, who’d done it.

Sepha didn’t wait for Ruhen. Without looking at anyone or saying a word, she turned around and walked away. After a few steps, Fio appeared beside her, trotting to keep up. Ruhen fell into step on her other side, huge and silent and so very familiar.

They walked until they couldn’t hear the mariners anymore. Ruhen steered her into a gap between two huge shipping containers. He led her to the end of the narrow corridor between the containers, where the corridor widened into a small free space beside the rail. No one would see them here. Sepha felt a flicker of gratefulness. He’d known she’d want to be out of sight.

She eased onto a wooden crate that butted against one of the shipping containers, and Fio clambered up to sit behind her. Ruhen sat beside her, close, but not so close as to touch her. Her headache lessened.

For a few moments, Ruhen let the air fill with the sound of the Dear Lady’s engine, the wind, and the water churning behind the boat. Then, quietly, “What happened, Seph?”

Sepha swallowed. “We were practicing. He was throwing knives at me. I had to transform them while they were in the air.”

Ruhen clenched his fists. “He was throwing knives at you?”

“Yes, for his research.” Sepha grimaced at the stitch in her side and went on. “I was getting pretty good at it, so some of the mariners were helping. They threw before I was ready. Then my magic did something.” Her hands were tight fists, fingernails slicing into her skin. “I don’t even know what I did, and I almost killed him.”

Ruhen pushed off from the crate and paced back and forth in the small space. The tether stretched and shortened, stretched and shortened. Ruhen rubbed his mouth and muttered, “Godsdamned moron,” before sitting beside Sepha again. Closer this time. Arms crossed. “Henric should’ve known better than to throw knives at an alchemancer. Damn him.”

Sepha had never seen Ruhen so angry. The only time he’d been anywhere close was the night of the cleptapods’ attack, when he’d saved her life. The night she’d found out what he was.

Ruhen’s a magician, and Destry is dead.

“What did you say to Henric?” Sepha asked.

“I told him what I’d do to him if he ever tried to hurt you again.”

Sepha blinked. How had Ruhen known that Henric had pulled the knife on her? She looked down at her shirt and was surprised to see a long rip where Henric’s knife had snagged it. The blood surprised her even more.

“Oh,” she said, lifting her shirt to see the wound she’d thought was a stitch in her side. The cut was shallow but long. It trailed from just below her rib cage down to her navel. Blood dribbled out of the cut, dyeing her white shirt bright red.

Ruhen swore. He slid off the crate, knelt in front of her, and rested his hands on her waist. They were warm and gentle against her bare skin. She took a quick, shallow breath as rightness and relief shuddered through her.

With a muttered word, Ruhen sent his magic out to heal her. Her skin seared as the cut disappeared, leaving behind only a few drops of blood and the long, red gash in her shirt.

Fio scooted out from behind Sepha and craned his neck to look. When he saw the blood, he let out a low whistle. He fixed his eyes on hers and said, “Did Henric do that?”

Ruhen’s head jerked up in surprise, and he looked from Fio to Sepha, his eyes wide. She shrugged. “Yes.”

Fio scowled. “Damn him,” he muttered. He dropped off the crate and stalked purposefully away.

Sepha recognized the set of his jaw and the determination in his stride, and said, sharply, “Leave Henric alone, Fio.”

Fio let out a long, mumbled growl that ended with, “Fine.” He leaned against one of the shipping containers, folded his arms, and made a sour face at Sepha.

Ruhen stared at Fio. “He can talk!” His voice came out in a squeak.

One corner of Sepha’s mouth turned up. “Apparently.”

“But homunculi can’t talk!”

“I know!” she said, really smiling now. “He started with just one word at a time, and he’s been talking more and more, although no one else but you has seemed to notice. I don’t know what to make of it!”

“You don’t think he might be possessed, do you? Like the other one?”

Sepha shook her head. “No. Absolutely not.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know. He’s been changing for a while, all on his own.” At Ruhen’s skeptical expression, Sepha turned to Fio and asked, “Fio, you haven’t been possessed by a wayward spirit, have you?”

Indignant, Fio answered, “I have my own spirit.”

Sepha grinned. “Well, there you are,” she said to Ruhen. “He has his own spirit.”

“That’s what I just said,” Fio grumbled.

Ruhen cocked his head to the side, studying Fio. “Do all homunculi have spirits?”

Fio stiffened. A faint frown passed over his face as he looked from Ruhen to Sepha and back again. “Yes,” he said at last. “Sometimes.”

As if afraid he’d said too much, Fio clamped his mouth shut and squeezed his arms tighter around himself.

Ruhen stared at Fio for a few seconds, then shook his head and breathed a laugh.

“What?” Sepha asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I’m on a boat with a talking homunculus, an alchemancer, and the future Magistrate,” he said, and Sepha smiled. It was a rather ridiculous situation. She half-expected to hear Fio’s croak of a laugh, but when she turned to look at him, he was gone.

Silence fell, swift and sudden.

“About what happened with Henric …” Ruhen started. Sepha tensed. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault.”

“How is it your fault?” He was still holding her by the waist, and Sepha suddenly realized how very alone they were. Her contract thrummed encouragingly, waking up for the first time since Destry’s death.

Her hands itched to rest on Ruhen’s arms, his broad shoulders, but she sure as After wasn’t going to do that. She crossed her arms instead.

“I could tell you hated having me around,” he said, “so I left you alone today. I shouldn’t’ve done it, Sepha, not when your magic’s waking up and you don’t know the first thing about controlling it. Whatever’s happening between us is one thing.” His thunderhead eyes flicked up to meet hers. “But if any accidents happen, you could hurt someone. Badly.”

Sepha swallowed. “So I really am dangerous.”

“Yes,” Ruhen said. He looked steadily at her, his expression concerned but not at all afraid. “You’re very dangerous, and you can’t help it. Not until you learn how not to be.”

Sepha was an alchemancer, and Destry was dead.

“So what do I do?” she asked. Ruhen’s thumbs twitched against her skin, and she flinched. He seemed to remember himself and stood up, jerking his hands away and shoving them in his pockets.

“Sorry,” he muttered. He backed up all the way to the railing, a dark silhouette against the stars’ silver swirl, and said to the ground at Sepha’s feet, “No more life-threatening situations, to start. Now that your magic’s awake, it’s going to protect you if it thinks you’re in danger. You can’t afford for that to happen until you know how to control it.”

Sepha thought for a moment. “But my magic didn’t hurt anyone at the Institute when the Military Alchemists attacked me. Actually, I didn’t feel my magic do anything at all. Their weapons just sort of … stopped.”

Ruhen chewed his lip. “That was the willow, then. The necklace, I mean. And not your magic.”

Sepha’s hand flew to the necklace she’d never taken off. “The necklace?”

“I bought it off a magician in Balarat,” Ruhen said, looking down at his feet. “It was a protective charm. The charm probably got used up at the Institute, though.”

Sepha traced the outline of the willow. “Why did you buy me a protective charm?”

“Because by then I knew you were an alchemancer, and I knew they’d be after you if you had any accidents. Magic is spotty when it first wakes up. It wouldn’t’ve been able to protect you.”

Sepha shook her head. “So how many times does that make it?”

“Times?”

“That you’ve saved my life.”

“I stopped counting. Didn’t have time to keep track while also saving your life every other day.” He let out a short, mirthless laugh that seemed not to belong in their quiet little place. “I’ll have to stick with you until you know how to control your magic. But you’re an alchemancer, and I’m only a magician. You might overpower me by accident.”

“Are alchemancers that powerful?” Sepha asked, surprised.

“You can do more powerful and varied alchemy than alchemists,” Ruhen pointed out. “It’s the same for magic. Your magic has more depth, more capacity. It can do more and do it for longer.”

“You’re talking like my magic is alive.”

“It is,” he said. “Magic is inside you, but it isn’t you. It’s sort of …” He thought for a moment. “I see it as a sort of beast that lives inside me. It feeds off its power source, and when it’s powerful, it’ll do whatever I ask it to. When I’m far from its power source, it feeds off me instead. We both need that power source if we want to survive.”

“What’s your magic’s power source?” Sepha asked.

Ruhen made a strangled sort of noise, then an embarrassed laugh, and scrubbed at his face with both hands. Hiding.

“What’s wrong?”

With an effort, Ruhen recovered himself enough to talk. “Erm,” he said, not meeting her eyes, “that isn’t something … I mean, you don’t—magicians don’t talk about that. It’s very, ah, private. On the level of … physical intimacy. Rather a bit beyond it.”

Sepha’s cheeks went hot. “Why?”

Ruhen shuffled and looked at his feet. “It’s not difficult to figure out what a person’s source is, if you watch them. But to talk about it—it’s like handing someone a knife that only works on you and your family and asking them to please not use it. It’s a trust beyond anything else.”

The implication—and the truth of the matter—was that they didn’t trust each other enough for this. The thought was like a rock in Sepha’s gut.

“Oh,” she said blankly. “I’m sorry. For asking.”

“It’s all right. You didn’t know.” He paused, then surged on, “You should try to identify your power source as soon as possible, though. It won’t be difficult. You probably already know what it is, on some level. Magicians get their power from all sorts of things: wind, water, metal, light. Those are called aeromancers, hydromancers, duromancers, and lumimancers, respectively. People even get their power from sound or earth or color. Could be anything. But you won’t gain any control over it until you know its power source.”

“How,” Sepha said, still too embarrassed to look at him, “how will I know? With so many options, how do I know which is mine?”

Ruhen was quiet for a moment. When Sepha glanced up, he was studying her. And she had the strangest feeling, the strangest certainty, that he knew exactly what she was.

“Think of the times you’ve felt at peace,” he said at last. “And the times you’ve felt the most alive, the most powerful. That should be a good place to start.”

Sepha nodded. The silence went awkward.

“You won’t kill anyone if I leave you alone to figure it out, will you?” Ruhen asked.

Sepha was half a second from snapping at him; but when she saw his expression, she realized he was only joking. Or trying to.

With an almost sad quirk of his lips, Ruhen explained, “This is something you should do alone. Normally, you do it when you’re very young, and you have a parent to help you. But I …” he swallowed. “I can’t be that for you. You deserve privacy with this.”

Sepha wiped inexplicable wetness from her eyes before answering. “Of course. Thanks. I’ll be fine. No murders.”

Their gazes locked, and the memory of their kiss filled the space between them. Gods, it had been days and eternities since then. Sepha wasn’t sure if it would ever happen again.

Ruhen pressed two fingers against his mouth, as if he was remembering, too; then he let his hand fall to his side. “Be careful, Sepha,” he said, and left. The tether unspooled as he went.

There was wind, and there was starlight, and there was Sepha, and there was no one else.

Sepha’s mind stalled. Her beast, her magic, could get its power from literally anything. Out of an entire universe of possibilities, she had to find the one thing that would feed her beast and keep her alive. And she had to do it alone. Without a parent.

Without Mother.

Sepha’s mind snapped to the magnetic memory of her. Ipha, Mother, of black hair and hazel eyes and the world’s best smile, when she could manage it. Ipha, Mother, strange and sad, and after all these years a mystery.

Tentatively, a thumb on a bruise, Sepha approached her last living memory of her mother.

She and Mother used to play on the roof of their tall, narrow house. They had a garden up there. Roses, heavy and pink, their heads drooping from the weight of so much beauty. Thorny and hard to pluck. Good for hiding beneath, if Mother was feeling well enough for a game.

Mother had strange turns, sometimes. Silent and sad. But when they went to the roof, they could feel the wind tug at them, and Mother would feel better. Smiling her rare smile, Mother would call them the lost queens of the rooftop. Then she would tell Sepha what it was like to fly. To be high in the sky with nothing but air holding her up. Mother was always standing on the rim, teasing Sepha, saying, What if, just for a second, I forget that I’m not supposed to fly?

And Sepha wanted so badly to see her do it.

She was six, the day it happened.

Mother was just coming out of a strange turn that had lasted longer than normal. She was faded, like there was hardly anything left. But she told Sepha she could fly, and Sepha—damn her—had asked Mother to show her.

On the main deck of the Dear Lady, the wind went still.

It had gone still that day too, just before.

Mother jumped. Sepha waited. Mother didn’t fly. She crunched, four stories below. Father had always insisted that Sepha pushed her. Three Mills was divided on the subject; some thought it had been a game gone awry, but the ones who’d known Mother had only pursed their lips and shaken their heads.

Which Sepha had, until now, taken as a judgment. A silent disapproval at the thought of a six-year-old killing her mother.

But—

But just now, beneath the wind’s kiss and the silver-strewn sky, far out of reach of Father’s hissed accusations, Sepha wasn’t so sure.

Her mother had been desperately sad and had done her very best for as long as she could. She’d been alone and without help, and had felt, that day, that her only option was to jump. Leaving Sepha, at six, motherless.

But not at fault.

Something inside Sepha, something that over the years had grown brittle, suddenly heated, melted, cooled, hardened. Became something sharp, but strong; something not likely to shatter.

The wind picked up again.

Tears were streaming down her cheeks now, soft and slow. The wind licked across the streams, laying cold tracks down her cheeks.

The roiling something stirred, and Sepha felt an inkling.

Think of when you felt the most peaceful, he’d said.

The River Guterahl, Sepha thought immediately. It had been quiet but for the sound of the water. The cool mountain breeze would muss her hair, reminding her that there was a whole world beyond the confines of Three Mills. Sepha swallowed.

Think of when you felt the most alive.

The cliff overlooking the sea. She’d been cooped up for weeks, and the open air, the ocean’s forceful wind, had let her breathe down to the bones.

The most powerful.

With a pang, she remembered the night of the cleptapods’ attack. The chaos, the fury, the power. The wind.

Wind.

The word clunked into place in her mind, a keystone settling into an empty slot, holding the rest of her in place. Sepha lifted a hand and felt the wind sift through her fingers. Her roiling beast shifted and purred.

And some dark place inside woke up, enlivened, and glowed luminescent.

She was an aeromancer.

Sepha smiled and felt as if she’d never smiled before, not like this. She stood on top of the crate, pulled herself onto the huge shipping container behind it, and stood up into the full force of the ocean wind. She threw her head back and her arms out and let the wind wash over her.

Her roiling beast, that moody and temperamental thing, bubbled up beneath her skin, yowling and purring and rubbing against her shins, catlike and powerful and impossible and hers.

She stood there for a long time, alone but not alone, glorying in the wind and the beast it had so unexpectedly awoken. Unwilling to go back to her small berth and shut herself off from the life-giving wind, she lay down right where she was.

Her thoughts, after a while, turned to Ruhen. He’d said it wasn’t hard to figure out what another person’s source was, if you watched them. And gods, had she been watching him!

It wasn’t observing that was a violation, after all; it was talking about it. And if she could figure out her own source, she could figure his out, too.

When was Ruhen peaceful?

After a few minutes of mulling, she decided he’d been peaceful at the cliffside.

She couldn’t rightly know when he felt the most alive, but she did know when he’d seemed the most powerful: the night of the cleptapods’ attack.

Could he be an aeromancer, too?

No; the thought struck a sour note.

She thought for a long time until at last she remembered the train. The desert. The place where Ruhen had seemed the least alive.

The desert was very dry.

She lifted her head and looked around at the vast, empty sea.

I like the water, he’d said at the cliffside. And he’d said he was heading for the Guterahl, the day of the Willow, to be near the water.

Water.

Ruhen was a hydromancer.

And he’d been dropping hints for weeks.

The realization settled in, rounding out her knowledge of Ruhen, and she smiled. Ruhen was a hydromancer. She was sure of it.

The sky was alive with stars and the waxing light of the moon. The Dear Lady churned steadily through the water. The wind teased Sepha’s hair, slipped through the open slice in her shirt, skimmed along her skin.

She knew where she was. She knew what she was. And she knew what Ruhen was, too. The gods could take the rest.