CHAPTER 40

The House on the Hill Overlooking the Sea

Although at night Sefia was locked in her windowless room, in the custody of the Administrators, during the day she toured the galleries and corridors, visited the kitchens, which smelled of browning pastries and sauces simmering in pots. She conversed with gardeners and groundskeepers, and explored passageways deep within the mountain.

Sometimes she noticed Dotan watching her from the bottom of a stairwell or the end of a corridor, and though he never said a word to her, she could feel his hatred following her through the Main Branch like a shadow. His Apprentice Tolem, she never got the chance to formally meet.

She was always accompanied by an escort—one of the servants, or June, sometimes Erastis, but more often than not, Tanin—the Second—herself. She was waiting for the return of the First, so she could begin training. “A merciful decision by our esteemed Director,” she said bitterly.

“You’ll get a bloodsword?” Sefia asked.

“Yes.”

“But to earn their bloodswords, Assassins have to kill their family.”

Tanin shrugged. “What family?”

Often, they talked of Sefia’s parents: Tanin recounting their days as Apprentices, Sefia telling her about their life in the house on the hill overlooking the sea.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for Mareah’s last days. I heard she was ill. She probably contracted it before she betrayed us, from one of her victims. It must have taken years for her symptoms to show,” Tanin said once, idly ripping a square of flatbread into soft pieces. “I loved her, you know, even after she turned on us . . . I would have liked to know why she did it.”

“You mean you don’t know either?” Sefia asked.

“How could I? She kept pushing me away.”

Sefia prodded the lumps of rock sugar the kitchen servants served with her mint tea. “Then why would you still care about them? After all they did to you?”

“They were my family.”

“I was their family.” Sefia glowered down at her cup, where the leaves had begun to brown. “You killed one of them. You would have killed them both if you’d found them before my mother died.”

“Perhaps I’ve already earned my bloodsword, then.”

Sefia almost felt sorry for her. They’d spent so much time together over the past week that to anyone else they might have looked like friends.

Tanin swept the pieces of flatbread into a small pile. “Have you ever been back? To the house?”

“No.” Sefia twisted her napkin in her lap.

“Do you want to?” The woman leaned forward, suddenly eager. “I can take you. We can go tomorrow.”

“How long will it take to get there?”

Tanin smiled. “Not long.”

•   •   •

The next day Tanin brought Sefia to the south side of the mountain, overlooking the snowcapped range. Rocks slid into the gorge below as Sefia toed the edge. Granite ranges like this only existed in Deliene’s Szythian Mountains and on the west coast of Everica—so she had to be in one of those places. She filed that information away for later use.

“What are we doing here?” she asked, glancing around. “Are we going to fly?”

A corner of Tanin’s mouth twitched. “Not exactly.” She smoothed her hair away from her face. “Do you remember how many tiers of Illumination there are?”

“Four,” Sefia said. The first two levels, Sight and Manipulation, were commonplace enough among the Guardians, but Transformation was rarer, and the final tier was only attempted by the most advanced Illuminators. “Oh. Teleportation.”

“Teleportation is the most complicated and dangerous form of Illumination. With it, you can transport yourself instantaneously across great distances.” Tanin blinked, and her pupils contracted. Sefia summoned her Sight as well, her vision filling with gold.

“The Illuminated world is like a living, breathing record of the physical world. With our limited senses, we can only see a small fraction of it at a time—or risk losing ourselves—but it’s all there. We could see a city as distant as Braska if we could sift through such a prodigious amount of information.” As if to illustrate her point, Tanin trailed her hand through the swirling currents, which trickled between her fingers like water and re-formed again.

“So you can go anywhere?” Sefia asked.

“Only to locations we know so well we can recall every detail. As with the Sight, if we don’t have a clear referent, well . . . imagine what would happen if someone tried teleporting to a place that doesn’t exist.”

The wind blew over them, cold and smelling of snow. “You mean you’d die?”

“Do you remember what happened to the mold the Librarians were extracting from their manuscript?”

It had disappeared like raindrops in a river. Was that what would happen to her, if she made a mistake in Teleportation? “You knew about that?” Sefia asked.

“Erastis shouldn’t have included you in his little lesson, but Erastis does what Erastis wants.” Tanin opened her arms wide, as if she were parting drapes to let in the sunlight.

Sefia watched her sift through the Illuminated world. “Is this a lesson too?”

“Consider it a test run. You do want proof we’re leaving the boy alone, don’t you?”

She could see Archer. She’d know he was safe. Her heart clenched. She might also see him with Annabel.

But that was better than watching him die.

Tanin’s eyes narrowed. “Take my hand.”

“Why?”

“I’ve found your home.”

Sefia slid her hand into Tanin’s. “You’re not afraid I’ll learn how to teleport too?”

Tanin laughed. “Didn’t I say Teleportation was the most complicated and dangerous form of Illumination? You’re talented, Sefia, but not even your father was clever enough to figure out Teleportation by himself.”

Eagerly, Sefia watched Tanin sweep them forward, carrying them through the turbulence of gold and light. Then her feet touched grass. Sea air filled her lungs. For a moment, Sefia reeled. Releasing Tanin’s hand, she slumped onto the stairs in front of the door. The boards were cracked and covered with grime, but these were the same steps on which she’d stood so many years ago, the morning she’d found her father dead on the kitchen floor.

Tanin looked down at her pityingly. “You should know Lon’s body isn’t here,” she said. “We gave him a proper burning.”

“When?”

“Two days later.”

Long enough for the animals and insects to have found him first. Sefia balled her fists.

As if she realized she’d said something wrong, Tanin plucked at her scarf, looking anywhere but at Sefia—the cliffs and the rocky coast, the chimneys half-collapsed, the garden gone wild with brambles.

Finally Sefia stood. Placing her hand on the knob, she opened the door.

The last time she’d been here, the house had just been ransacked by the Guard. Now it was a ruin. Shards of glass littered the floors. Most of the furniture was missing. The curtains lay crumpled and rotting beneath the windowsills. The pots and knives were gone, the plates smashed, the blankets soiled.

With Tanin behind her, Sefia picked her way through the debris.

“Why’d you bring me here?” She knelt, turning over a piece of a broken vase.

“I thought you’d want to see it . . . ” the woman began uncertainly. “I thought you’d want to come back.”

“There’s nothing to come back to.”

A wrinkle appeared in the center of Tanin’s forehead. “I’m sorry. I thought . . . We can leave.”

As Sefia turned, her footsteps smeared in the dust. She’d almost reached the door when something in the corner of the room caught her eye—a flickering, as if something was hidden there, just out of sight.

She went to the wall, running her hands over the dirt and cracks.

“What is it?” Tanin asked.

Sefia found something round and hard—a doorknob, invisible to the eye. She leaned forward, tracing the carvings encircling the knob.

Words.

Summoning the Sight, she saw them engraved in the wood:

MY LOVE IS INVISIBLE TO PRYING EYES
BUT IT WILL ALWAYS APPEAR TO THE HEART

Invisible.

Entirely invisible. The words brought back memories of darkness and bilgewater, of lamplit nights and cramped quarters, of sleeping next to Archer, knees touching, his breath warm on her cupped hands.

Entirely invisible had been carved into their crate, keeping them safe from the uncanny senses of the chief mate.

Who had done this? Her father? Her mother?

Taking a shard of pottery from the floor, she drew it across the words, scoring them out of existence.

The invisible door flickered once or twice and appeared in the wall, hinges and all.

Tanin gasped.

As Sefia tested the knob, the woman leaned down to examine what remained of the letters. “Lon’s writing. We didn’t know it was here,” she murmured. “We searched . . . We even came back after we found out you existed, but no one ever saw this.”

Then how did I? Sefia wondered.

“Do you have a knife?” she asked.

Tanin slid a blade from her boot and passed it to Sefia, who used it to tinker with the lock. “Clever,” the woman whispered. If Sefia hadn’t known better, she would have thought Tanin was being sincere.

After a few seconds, she opened the door. They both leaned in to see what was inside, what was so precious it had to be protected by magic.

Tears wet Sefia’s eyes.

Inside were all their most valuable possessions: her mother’s jewelry box, her father’s telescope inside its black leather case, packages of dormant seeds, coins from every kingdom, ingots of gold and silver.

Ignoring the currency, Sefia lifted the jewelry box into her lap. Gently, she pulled out each of the little drawers, disturbing the tarnished chains and bracelets of semiprecious stones with the tip of her finger.

After a few minutes of searching, Sefia found what she was looking for, tucked away behind a tangle of glass beads—a silver ring set with sharp black stones.

“Mareah’s ring.” Tanin held out her hand. “May I?”

Sefia almost drew back. Their enemy didn’t deserve any part of them.

But Tanin hadn’t always been their enemy, had she?

She passed the ring to Tanin, who took it in her slender fingers and twisted. The setting unhinged, revealing an empty pocket inside.

“I knew about the compartment . . .” Sefia murmured as Tanin flicked a hidden latch. A tiny blade, no thicker than a spear of grass, popped out from between the stones. “But not the blade.”

“This was given to her by a Liccarine jeweler,” Tanin said. “For poisoning her enemies.” Closing up the ring again, she extended it to Sefia.

“I thought Assassins didn’t have personal effects.” Sefia slipped the ring onto her middle finger.

It fit perfectly.

“I think we both know Mareah was no ordinary Assassin.”

Nodding, Sefia got to her feet and took up her father’s telescope case. Outside, she stood on the steps, listening to the sea crashing against the coastline—a sound woven throughout the whole fabric of her childhood. “So you can travel anywhere in Kelanna with Teleportation?”

Beside her, Tanin raised an eyebrow. “As long as I’ve been there before.”

Sefia touched the ring on her finger. Her parents had hidden the closet from sight. Had her mother done the same with the crate on the Current? The sailors outside had spotted a girl there, someone who’d looked like Sefia, but older. “Could you travel through time?” she asked.

“Why? Planning to go back and stop me from killing your father?”

Sefia’s eyes narrowed. “Could I?”

Tanin sighed. “Theoretically. But the only accurate referents we have are pages from the Book. You see the problem with that, don’t you?”

“Yes.” Sefia’s voice was small. You’d need two pages to teleport through time: one for your destination and one for your return.

But her parents had had the Book in their possession. Hard as it was to navigate those infinite pages, her mother just might have been able to find the exact two pages she needed . . .

“Could you teleport with a Fragment instead of the Book?” she asked.

“You could try.” Angling around her, Tanin descended the steps. “But Fragments are copied by hand, and even the best copyists make mistakes. If they were wrong in even one detail, you’d be lost.”

Sefia followed, murmuring, “But it’s possible.” They clasped hands again, and she studied Tanin carefully as she swept her arms wide. In a whoosh, the magic carried them from the Delienean coast back to the Main Branch. Among the mountains again, Sefia was keenly aware of the weight of her father’s telescope on her back, of her mother’s ring on her finger.

She now had something to remember them by—something she could keep.

“Thanks for bringing me home,” she said quietly.

Beckoning her toward the entrance to the Main Branch, Tanin smiled, and this time Sefia was sure she was sincere.