CHAPTER 7

(Un)Friendly Competition

As the warship bore down on them, Marrill could see the expert sailors moving like clockwork through her rigging. Along her bow, rows of honed warriors stood at stiff-backed attention. The gleam of their daggers didn’t make it seem too likely they’d come for a tea party.

Once the ship grew close enough, another giant stone hand thrust from the Stream, lifting her into the air as its twin had done with the Kraken. The two stone arms rotated around the board, coming to rest on opposite sides so that the ships faced each other like competitors across a table.

“Welcome, player, to my Great Game!” Margaham’s voice boomed.

A lone figure strode confidently toward the bow of the warship, but with the angle and distance, Marrill could barely make it out. From the outline, she could tell it was a woman. From the stance, she could tell it was a warrior.

“I am the Crest of the Rise. I speak the will of our people.” The woman’s voice echoed, clear and loud and calm even across the distance. “Here are our stakes,” she said, holding a crisp white envelope aloft. “We will play the game, and we will not be beaten.”

There was a soft buzzing and a flash of light. The envelope in the woman’s hand disappeared, and three figures appeared on the opposite side of the giant tiered game board. They were too far away to see clearly, but they moved with a confidence that Marrill completely lacked.

“Looks like the Rise have their pieces.” She gulped. “But why are they here? How did they find us?”

Fin said nothing. Instead he spun, skewering a young girl standing several tiles away with a glare. “Yeah, Fig, how did they find us?” Marrill was surprised by the vehemence in his voice, especially to a total stranger.

The girl held up her hands defensively. “Wait—it’s not what you think.”

Fin crossed his arms. “I think you found a way to tell the Rise where we were going so they could ambush us here.”

The girl swallowed. “Okay, so maybe it is a little what you think.”

He shook his head sadly. “And I’m going to guess you told them all about the wish orb, too, so now they’re here to take it?” The girl opened her mouth to protest, but Fin cut her off with a sweep of his hand. “But you feel like you kept your promise to me because you didn’t personally try to steal the orb?”

“Okay,” the girl admitted sheepishly. “Maybe it’s entirely what you think.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Marrill said, interjecting. “What do you mean?”

“The wish orb, Marrill,” Fin explained. “The Rise know about it now. Fig told them, and they’ve come to take it and free the Salt Sand King.”

Marrill inhaled sharply. Of course! What else would a leaderless army want but to free their king? “We can’t let that happen.”

“You’re right,” Fin said. “Which is why we totally have to win.” He actually grinned at that.

“No, Fin,” Marrill said, grabbing his arm. “This is serious. We can’t play against them if the orb’s at stake! We have to drop out of the game.” She drew a breath, about to shout that they conceded when Fin clapped a hand over her mouth.

“There’s no dropping out,” he told her. “They’ve already joined the game. The orb’s already at stake.… We’ll just be giving up our chance to save it.”

He had a point. Marrill bit her lip, trying to figure a way out of their predicament. This was bad. They were stuck on a giant, magical game board, playing by rules they barely understood, with a good dip in the Stream waiting for literally any misstep. And now they had an opponent who was, by definition, unbeatable.

Suddenly, the game seemed more serious than ever.

“We just need to win,” Fin said matter-of-factly.

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Marrill grumbled.

“I prefer Colonel Obvious,” Fin replied, waggling his eyebrows.

“Lion Tamer, go!” Ardent cried from the bow of the Kraken, far overhead.

“Great,” Marrill muttered. “Just great.”

She had no option but to keep playing. With a quick back-and-forth of her finger, she mapped out a course that would take her up to the twelve-foot wall leading to the next layer of the game. But when she reached it, the flat surface towering before her offered no purchase, no way to climb. She pressed one palm against it. The stone was cold and unyielding, an odd contrast with Karny’s warm fluff pressing against her other palm.

A thought jogged through her head. Karny. If she was the Lion Tamer, he was her lion. And wasn’t it in her power to have him find secret paths between rings?

Marrill held her cat up like a rag doll, looking him eye-to-one-good-eye. “Okay, Karn. It’s all on you. Do your thing!”

She set him on the ground at her feet. He strolled lazily over to the next square, and promptly dropped right through it.

“Karny!” Marrill shrieked.

The cat struck the surface of the Pirate Stream with a splash, then shot into the air like a rocket, straight up the wall of the next ring. His feet left a trail of fire zigzagging back and forth up the vertical surface. When he reached the top, he sat and stared down at her, like he was the Cheshire cat.

To the King of Salt and Sand, I leave a wish ungranted, an ambition unfulfilled, an army leaderless, and an orb of gold, its waters as pure and true as the headwaters of the Stream itself.

“Shanks,” Fin called from behind her. “Karny’s still Stream proof! Are we going to get another line of the Dawn Wizard’s will every time he gets doused?”

Marrill shook her head. She didn’t exactly intend to let her cat get doused with Stream water again. But she had to admit, she was curious.

Amazingly, after Karny’s blazing trail died down, it left behind perfect footholds Marrill used to scrabble up after him. When she reached the top she found Karny cleaning himself leisurely, apparently completely reverted to normal catness.

“All right,” Marrill said to herself. “That’s one ring down. Just…” She stopped and counted. There seemed to be several more layers to the game here than when it was flat, she realized. “…a bunch more to go,” she murmured.

She turned and surveyed the tier ahead. Her stomach dropped. The game board squares on this level were decorated with pictures of the elements: flames, lightning, water, and wind. Past the maze of elements, the next ring was suspended in the air above, spinning slowly, with two glass staircases supporting it on either side.

The upside was that there wasn’t another wall to climb. The downside, however, was that the Rise were already almost to their staircase. The other team was winning. By a lot.

“Hey,” Fin called from below. “A little help down here?”

With a defeated sigh, Marrill peered back over the side. Fin was scrabbling at the wall, slipping and sliding each time he tried to use the handholds. For a second, she didn’t get it. Fin was an awesome climber. Maybe the best ever. How could she climb those handholds and he couldn’t?

Then she remembered the rules of the game. The Knight couldn’t move between rings without help.

“Oh, right.” Dropping to her belly, she reached as far down as she could. Fin stretched toward her, and the moment their hands touched, he practically flew up the wall to land beside her.

“That was spiff,” he said. His smile faltered, however, when he caught sight of the Rise and how much farther ahead they were. “They’re beating the pants off us,” he said, sounding incredulous.

“Thank you once again, Colonel Obvious,” Marrill mumbled.

Fin fisted his hands. “We’ll see about that. I’m not finished with my move just yet.” He stepped toward the next square, and the flames painted on it exploded into real ones.

Fin jumped back, straight onto a square painted with the lightning bolt. Marrill grabbed him, pulling him out of danger just as a blast of real lightning arced through the air. “I guess that’s what Ardent meant about the game growing more dangerous the more seriously we take it,” she pointed out.

Fin threw up his arms. “How are we supposed to not take this seriously when it’s threatening to kill us every second?” He slumped, his expression sour. “This game is the worst. I’d rather play Drop Things into the Pirate Stream and Guess What They’ll Turn Into any day. A pepper shaker turning into a kraken is less dangerous than this, and way more fun. At least if we give up, we can do that while we wait for the Salt Sand King to burn the world down.”

Give up… have fun… A lightbulb went off in Marrill’s head.

“That’s it!” she cried. “That’s what we need to do: Give up and have fun!”

Fin arched an eyebrow. “For real?”

Marrill jumped up and down. “Totally! Fin, we’ve been taking this super seriously, and in the end we’re going to lose anyway because the Rise are unbeatable, right?”

He nodded. “Sure looks that way.”

“So if we’re going to lose no matter what, we might as well have a good time doing it!” Marrill poked him on the arm. “We’ve been in crazier places and ended up laughing. This is actually a game! Let’s play it.”

She scooped up Karnelius and jumped onto a tile marked with water. “Race you to the staircase!” she called as a tidal wave lifted her, carrying her sideways across the squares.

“You’re on!” Fin leapt onto a wind square and popped his skysails, swooping in an L-shape. “Heat makes wind go farther!” he yelled, touching one foot downward to tap a fire square. The flames blazed to life, lifting him up to sail past her.

“Oh-ho-ho-ho no!” Marrill yelled, jumping for lightning. The charge shot her around the board, only stopping when she rolled off onto a water square. Electricity surged through her, rattling in her teeth and setting her cat’s hair on end. “Bad move,” she whispered to herself. “Bad, bad move.”

Somewhere nearby, she heard another girl laughing. “You guys!” the girl called. “The lightning tingles!”

They zigzagged and L-walked and slid across the tier, joking and jibing each other the entire way. Finally Marrill found herself at the foot of the staircase, with Fin only a few squares away. She was about to dash up it when she remembered he couldn’t move between tiers without help.

“Gibbering Grove!” she called. That was all she needed to say for him to understand. He leapt onto her back, and she raced up the stairs, laughing (and puffing) the entire way.

Even though she didn’t know the girl at the top of the stairs, she bum-rushed straight into her, collapsing them all into a snorting, laughing pile. “This game is so much more fun when you’re having fun,” Marrill said, struggling to control her giggling as Karny pulled himself free, flashing them a dour look.

She rolled to her feet, taking a moment to steady herself as the tier spun beneath them. They were almost level with the ships now; indeed, the Rise warship was coming up fast. As she took in her surroundings, she realized something was missing. Or rather, someone was missing.

She laughed, incredulous. “You’re never going to believe this, Fin, but we’re actually beating the Rise! They’re still on the second tier!”

When Fin didn’t respond, she turned. “Did you hear me? We’re winning.…” But the words died in her mouth. Fin stood behind her, seemingly anchored in place, eyes wide with shock.

Alarm fluttered in Marrill’s chest. “Fin?” she asked. “You okay?”

Slowly, Fin raised one hand, groping blindly through the empty air. As though he were trying to reach the Rise warship looming closer as their tier spun. “Marrill,” he whispered, “that’s… that’s…”

Marrill peered past him, following his gaze. For the first time she could see the Crest of the Rise clearly. A woman with dark eyes and olive skin stood razor-straight with one foot on the base of the ship’s bowsprit as though she were standing on the neck of her foes. Her fingertips rested on the game board by her side. Not a trace of passion or compassion crossed her face. Deftly, she raised one of her pieces.

Fin glanced back at Marrill. Awe and fear and desperation mingled in his eyes. His outreached hand curled into a pointing finger.

“Marrill,” he breathed, “that’s my mother.”