CHAPTER 11

To Pass on a Secret

Wielding the Book proved even more difficult than Sefia had expected; the amount of information was so massive and so little of it was what she needed. But she would not be deterred. She began scavenging scraps of paper from their supplies, filling the pages with names, numbers, details, dates. She kept a record of previous crews, how many candidates they’d captured, which boys were killed and by whom.

The impressors had started out small over twenty years ago, kidnapping a boy here or there, leaving their branded bodies to be found rotting in the mulch halfway across the kingdom. Since then, however, they’d gotten organized, and grown in size—hundreds of boys dead, bystanders executed, loved ones filled with grief and guilt—until impressors had become a word you used to threaten misbehaving little boys. The damage they’d done in Deliene alone was vast, and every story she read was another reminder of what she owed to Archer, Frey, and the boys, for what her parents had done.

Soon after their run-in with the bandits at the traveling show, Sefia was sketching a rough map of the Northern Kingdom when Versil came to peer over her shoulder. “What’s this?” Without waiting for an answer, he shook his head. “No, no, no, you need my brother. Our pop was a mapmaker, did you know that? Aljan was his apprentice. Hang on, lemme get him—Aljan! Aljan!”

As they waited for Aljan to arrive, Versil flashed her a grin. “Pop used to say he was born with a brush in his hand. You know, he was painting before he ever said a word? When we were little, I used to talk for him. ‘Aljan wants another candy.’ ‘Aljan hates asparagus.’ Stuff like that. You couldn’t blame him, though. Who likes asparagus . . .” His voice trailed off until it went completely silent. Then: “Oh, hey, Aljan.” For a moment, Versil looked confused and embarrassed, like he knew he’d forgotten something but didn’t know what. “We were just talking about you.”

Aljan tried to smile, but it was like he was trying to lift something too heavy for him to carry. “You wanted something?”

“Oh, right. The sorcerer needs your help.” Lightly, Versil bounded off again, leaving his brother looking dully after him.

When Aljan remained still, Sefia studied him for a moment. Unlike his twin, he was strangely subdued, like a rabbit awaiting the approach of the fox.

Tapping him on the arm to get his attention, Sefia extended her paintbrush. “I heard you were a mapmaker.”

He took it from her, testing its weight and balance with the same quiet care he’d used with the Book the night of the ambush. His resigned expression showed a flicker of life. Then he dipped the brush . . . and everything changed. His eyes brightened. His movements sharpened. A smile tinged his lips.

Without much prompting, he soon began sketching out a map of Deliene. The paintbrush flew across the paper, creating shorelines curling with whitecaps, mountains splashed with shadow, provincial crests exquisitely detailed with miniature bears, harpoons, bulls, and sheaves of wheat. The act of painting so transformed him that Sefia felt like she was seeing a part of Aljan she hadn’t known existed.

“This is beautiful,” she said.

The boy glanced at her with a hesitant smile, as if he were just remembering his sense of humor. “Paper and ink are my weapons too,” he said.

The next morning, after writing down the names and last known locations of the three crews currently in operation, she asked for Aljan’s help with the map again. He seemed entranced with her notations, his gaze roving over them with such intense fascination he’d forget he was drawing, until the map was stained here and there by small pools of ink.

“These were in the Book too,” he said, tracing the W in one of the impressors’ names. “What are they?”

“They’re letters.” Her face twisted as she took the brush from him, rinsing it in a cup of water. That was how the Guard had found her before, by following the scribblings she’d left all over Oxscini like breadcrumbs. She’d been so foolish. But she hadn’t known.

“Are they the source of your power?”

“No.” She’d been able to sense the Illuminated world long before she’d learned to read. But reading and writing had sharpened her gift, turned it into a tool she could use. “But they’re powerful on their own. That’s why Serakeen’s kept them a secret all these years.”

Thoughtfully, Aljan traced a W on the edge of the cart where they were sitting, embellishing it with swoops and dashes that made the letter almost unrecognizable. “Would you share that secret with me?” he asked softly.

Sefia hesitated. Sometimes it felt like her whole life had been a secret: her room in the house on the hill, the Book she’d carried on her back for years, the past Archer was still keeping from her. Secrets were as familiar to her as her own reflection.

But they were her parents’ secrets—the Guard’s secrets—and they’d already caused so much pain.

Bitterly, she smiled, knowing her father would have said it wasn’t safe, knowing Tanin would be furious if she found out. But this was Sefia’s secret now, her weapon to wield, and she would use it to defy the Guard and everything they stood for.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ll do it.”

•   •   •

When they began moving again, Sefia sat beside Aljan on one of the carts and explained the alphabet while he drove. Every so often, she wrote a letter on a scrap of paper and held it up for him to study, the wet ink dripping, and he’d trace them over and over on the seat of the cart: the Ħs, the Ās.

Occasionally, some of the others would ride alongside them, asking about the markings, but for the most part she and Aljan were left alone.

That night, they sat by the fire and began their work in earnest: their pen, a sharpened stick; their blank page, the dirt at their feet.

By the firelight, she passed him one letter after another like plates of delicacies, and he sampled them all, the Ts and Is, the Ss and Ẅs.

He’d string together letter after letter in nonsensical combinations—Ř, I, T—until the whole ring of the campfire was encircled by a complex tapestry Sefia could never have imagined. They were meaningless, as far as words went, but they were enthralling—these explosions of serifs and swashes and versals, like fireworks, full of joy and wonder.

As he wrote, he seemed to come into focus, gaining definition, color, detail, as if he’d finally found a part of himself he’d been missing his whole life and only now—through writing—was he complete.

“Where’d you learn this?” he asked, his wide-set eyes gleaming.

Sefia bit her lip, remembering her mother spelling out her name in wooden blocks. Her mother, who’d taught the impressors to sniff out killers like bloodhounds. “I kind of . . . taught myself.”

A half-truth, at best. But she couldn’t bring herself to tell him the rest. She didn’t know how, without hurting him.

If Aljan suspected her of keeping something from him, he didn’t show it. He beamed at her and twirled their stick once before offering it to her. “Can we try the kay again?”

The next day, they continued their lessons while Sefia worked on the map, until a sudden wind whipped the paper out from under their hands and sent it, flapping like an injured bird, across the campsite.

Crying out, Sefia darted after the map with Aljan on her heels, but before either of them could reach it, Frey looked up from where she was practicing with her switchblade and, with the smooth striking movement of a rattlesnake, snatched the paper out of the air.

“Nice catch!” Sefia cried.

Frey flicked her blade closed. “You learn to be fast when you’ve got three older brothers.”

Aljan averted his eyes, like the girl was too bright to look directly at.

“I don’t have any siblings,” Sefia said, taking the map.

“They’re a real pain, but I wouldn’t trade them in for anything. Right, Aljan?”

The mapmaker smiled shyly.

Frey sighed, tucking an errant lock of hair behind her ear. “I’m going to get you to talk to me one of these days, if it’s the last thing I do.”

He just gave her another of those little smiles.

As he and Sefia returned to work, she asked, “You’ve never talked to Frey? Not even once?”

Aljan shrugged. “No words ever seemed good enough.”

•   •   •

Every night, after lessons with Aljan and searching the Book for the impressors, Sefia looked for Lon and Mareah. Sometimes she even read passages aloud to Archer, stories of her father’s life as a fortune-teller in Corabel and of her mother’s time in Everica, before she was inducted into the Guard.

“My mother’s parents were doctors,” she said once. “My grandparents were doctors. I didn’t . . . It never occurred to me that I might still have family out there.”

Archer’s fingers trailed up and down her arm, sending ripples of heat over her skin, but he said nothing.

He’d told her more, now, about his two years with Hatchet. He’d told her about Oriyah and Argo and other boys he’d known and fought and killed. But he hadn’t said a word about who he was before the impressors. Or why he didn’t want to go home.

“If you did have family out there,” Archer said quietly, “would you want to find them?”

Sefia shrugged. “They wouldn’t know me from a stranger on the street.”

Archer touched the count the impressors had given him. “After all this,” he murmured, “I don’t think they’d want to know me.”

Reaching up, Sefia traced the furrowed line of his brow. “I want to know you,” she said.

His golden eyes glimmered, and for a moment she thought he’d kiss her again, the way he had two weeks ago, on the water. She leaned toward him, willing him to close the last bit of distance between them.

But he pulled away.

As Archer got up to patrol the clearing, Sefia tried to hide her disappointment, looking down at the Book again, blinking to bring the words into focus.

She’d been reading about a crew of impressors led by Obiyagi, a woman with unruly white hair and a toad-like face. They’d been somewhere to the south in Corabelli Land with seven boys, but recently they’d turned north, traversing the mountain passes of the Ridgeline. If Sefia could find out where they were, or where they would be soon, Archer and the others might be able to intercept them.

Consulting her map, Sefia flipped through the pages of the Book, skimming them for landmarks that would tell her where and constellations that would tell her when.

She wasn’t as powerful as her parents had been. She wasn’t as skilled or prepared. But with the Book, she could repair some of the damage they’d done to the world. To Aljan. To Archer. And to their daughter.

Then she looked up, searching the sky for the moon—a waning crescent among the sugar-fine stars.

A triumphant smile crossed her face. She could use the Book against the Guard. She could help Archer. And maybe if she did that, he would no longer pull away.

Tilting his head, Archer put his fingers to his temple. What?

“I found them,” she said.