WIL RAN FOR AS LONG as her body would allow her, before the blood from her wounded side began to seep through the leather coat.
She knew that she had gone into the thick of the woods that bordered Brayshire, and judging by the sun’s position as it began to rise, she had gone west. She tried to remember the maps that were posted throughout town. Cutting through the woods meant she’d reach the ocean in about five miles. Only a few hours’ walk if she could keep going.
She slowed to a careful pace, lifting the flap of her bag as she went. Her tent was a lost cause now, left behind in the camp set up by the wanderers, but no matter. Everything else was here, including the branch of crystallized blossoms she’d grabbed in her haste. She pulled her data goggles onto her head and blinked once so that the time would appear in the lower right lens: 7:15.
It had been two hours. Two hours since she’d gotten too close to that boy. That strange, lovely boy with the deep sad eyes and tattoos he kept hidden like words that went unsaid.
Loom.
Stop it, she told herself. It would do no good to think of him. The mistake of falling into his touch had gotten her caught. He would be awake by now, and he would be in pursuit. Or worse, he could have told someone what she had done. He could have allies hidden somewhere in Brayshire, and they could be coming for her now.
Her knees threatened to buckle, and at last she relented when she reached a thin, babbling stream. She sat on a giant rock beside it, cringing as she shed her coat. The leather clung to her wound for a second before it fell away.
The stitches held. They were deftly placed, she noted, running her fingertips across their surface, but blood from the constant motion and adrenaline had seeped through.
With her gloved hand, she pulled at a tuft of thin feathery flowers growing wild among the fallen leaves. Spring sprigs. She rinsed a rock in the stream and used it to grind the flowers into a mushy white paste. It would help prevent infection, in a pinch. Gerdie had taught her that.
The paste was cool as she dabbed it over the blood, even soothing.
Breathing hard, she shed her torn, bloody tunic and began shredding it into scraps to use as a makeshift bandage. If she was going to find a boat to take her out of the country, no captain would take a fare who was bleeding through her clothes. She couldn’t imagine how she must have looked just then. Her bare stomach was pale as a root, her skin so wan it looked like a paper lantern devoid of light.
She bound her wound and pulled a fresh tunic from her bag. It was the only other piece of clothing she owned, loose fitting and made of red cotton, with baggy sleeves that tightened at the wrist, so that they belled out and looked full of wind. It had been slightly more expensive than the others for sale at the vendor’s cart, but the gold-embroidered lions and thorns at the hem had reminded her of her dresses back home. The dresses she’d only worn to please her mother—the dresses she didn’t know were a part of her identity until she’d been forced to leave them behind.
Her vision was blurring, exhaustion washing over her like a wave. “Focus,” she whispered. “You’re wind. You’re everywhere.”
But when she raised her eyes to the trees, she could not imagine herself hovering above them. She could not imagine the world beneath her, reduced to neat patches of land and sloping river lines. Instead, she saw her wardrobe full of dresses, so rich with colors. She saw herself as a little girl, spreading her hands and embracing those dresses, gathering them into her arms and falling into their softness, their silk, their smooth cool beads and ruffled hems.
She heard her brothers, their voices echoing down the hallway and hitting every stone in the walls. She couldn’t tell if they were laughing or calling for her. It didn’t matter. Just for a little while, it didn’t matter. They were safe, and the world had turned warm and soft.
She awoke with a start, the screech of a spawnling jolting her back into the woods, where the sun was now higher in the sky. She blinked into her data goggles: 10:15.
“Winds,” she cursed.
Her side was not aching as much when she pulled herself to her feet, but that was little consolation, given how much time she had lost dozing in the middle of nowhere.
This time, as she walked, she was more mindful about not aggravating her stitches. But she did not slow her pace. Every snapped twig, every rustle of leaves against the mild wind felt like Loom following her.
It was highly unlikely, she tried to convince herself. If he was following her, these woods went on for miles in all directions. She would be long gone, on a ship out in the ocean, before he caught up.
The thought of him caused her heart to beat just a little faster.
Stupid, she told herself. Because of her carelessness, she had to flee the country. She forced herself to think about that instead.
Thanks to Loom, she knew, at least, that Pahn wasn’t a myth. But either way, he wasn’t here. He might be in the Western Isles, she thought. It was a neutral territory with open borders, and from what Owen had told her, it was a good place to hide. Nothing exciting happened there. It was self-sufficient, with few imports and virtually no exports of note.
But more importantly, the people of the Western Isles were highly superstitious. Most shanty songs and fairy tales and folklore could be traced back to them. If Pahn wanted to blend in, he could do it in a place where everyone seemed to have a mysterious past.
Or, he might want to avoid a place like that altogether.
Frustration returned, and she tried to fight it away. If Pahn wasn’t there, someone would know more about him, she told herself. Someone would have to.
It seemed like an eternity before she heard the water in the near distance. She could almost believe that she had wandered all the way back to Northern Arrod. The ocean sounded and smelled the same anywhere.
On this side of Brayshire was the Ancient Sea. It had featured prominently in her mother’s tales from her life as a wanderer. “Do you know how it earned its name?” her mother had whispered one night, when Wil was a child, her lids heavy with sleep.
“A thousand years ago, countless soldiers died embattled in its waters. So many were lost at sea that the tides were red for days.” The queen had played with Wil’s hair, but her eyes were somewhere far, as though she wasn’t telling the story to her daughter at all. She was whispering it into the walls, further filling the castle with her secrets. “The water is filled with ancient skeletons and spirits. Sailors claim to hear the spirits moaning on days when the winds are at their loudest. Some have claimed to hear voices of people they’ve lost.”
A few yards later, Wil broke free of the woods and immediately found herself within a city. Flecks glimmered in white stone sidewalks that branched out like arteries in all directions. Shops and carts and roads. It was past noon now, and the sidewalks were full. Boats bobbed along the water’s surface, tethered to their docks.
On the deck outside a seaside restaurant, a band was playing brass music that filled the streets with life. She allowed herself to be calmed by it. The songs were ships scattering out into the seas of her blood, and for just a few moments, for the first time since leaving home, she felt as though she was still alive.
While she had been worrying over what the boy had seen her do, the world had gone on, oblivious to any of it. She was no one here. She was normal. And finding a ride out of the country should be easy.
There was a dirigible docked on one far end of the shoreline, but it was already crowded. She opted to explore the smaller ships that lined the docks; they usually charged less than the larger ones, anyway.
“Are you looking for a ride?”
Wil turned to face the voice that had called to her. It belonged to a woman. Young, only a year or two older than Wil, and astonishingly beautiful. It was the kind of beauty that was sharp as a blade, sudden as an attack. Her copper-brown skin was shimmering under the bright sun; her hair was a contrast of darkness and light—streaked with glossy silver, as though it had been dyed, and true black. She had light-brown eyes framed by heavy lashes.
A tattoo coiled around the woman’s lean upper arm, a serpent with jeweled eyes and tiny suns for scales. Above that, two moons in the sky of her skin, accented in shimmering silver, were overlapping; it was a popular Southern wedding ceremony tattoo, Wil knew from Owen’s books. But if the woman was married, that spouse was nowhere in sight.
“Where are you headed?” Wil asked. The woman was standing before a modest ship, the kind commonly owned by families who might have room for the occasional fare. The shape of the deck was customized, just slightly longer than standard trade and passenger ships, which meant it was likely once owned by a royal family. The woman could have been from a royal family herself, but more commonly these ships were stolen, artfully repainted, and sold to the untrained customer; this was more likely the case. Wil saw the thin, reflective sheen of solar panels on the roof of its cabin and knew it was one of the more modern, digital models. Expensive and exclusive. She saw them often in Northern Arrod. Had even boarded a few larger ships when she and Gerdie snuck into parties.
“West,” the woman said, and flashed a smile filled with shining white teeth. “Is that where you’re going?”
“Yes,” Wil said, doing her best not to betray the flare of pain in her side. “How much are you charging?”
From behind the young woman’s legs, a little boy with long dark hair and light-brown eyes blinked curiously at Wil. The woman patted his head affectionately. “It’s five hundred silver. This is my son. He won’t be any trouble, will you, Ada?” The boy tilted his head up at her. Ada. The Lavean word for sun.
The woman held out her hand. “I’m Zay.”
“Wil,” Wil said. Something about Zay’s breezy demeanor put her at ease. She followed her onto the ship, Ada hopping ahead of them.
The woman was undoubtedly Southern, and the ship had a rich aroma of plants and extracts that Wil couldn’t identify.
Zay boasted about the ship, going on about its state-of-the-art navigation system, how it steered itself, all as she led Wil to her bunk. “Not much of a talker, are you?” Zay said. “That’s okay. This is your bunk.”
It was lavish for a ship’s accommodations, with a lush down comforter and gold sheets. Wil didn’t show her surprise, though. She sat on the edge of the bed, pretending it wasn’t the softest mattress she had encountered since her days as a princess. “It’s wonderful,” Wil said. “Thank you.”
“I’ll give you privacy,” Zay said. “There are some books in the drawer under the bed; help yourself to anything you like. We’ll be leaving at the top of the hour.” And then she closed the door.
It was not Wil’s first time on a ship. She had been on dozens, but they stayed close to land if they left the port at all.
This was the first time she was going to actually set sail, though, and excitement stirred its way through her numbness. The wanderlust in her blood had always overpowered the royalty; though this ship was no castle, she felt as though she was home.
Above the bed, there was a small porthole, through which she could see endless water shimmering with pieces of sun. The world was so vast, a solution had to be out there somewhere. All she had to do was find it. She would start with Pahn, but if he eluded her, or if he couldn’t help, or wouldn’t, there would be another way. There had to be.
Before long, the ship pulled away from the docks.
Zay was standing at the railing when Wil found her, watching Brayshire get smaller in the distance. The ship moved fast—the land was already nearly out of sight.
“How many days will it take to get to the Western Isles?” Wil asked. Though this ship was smaller than the ones she’d boarded back home, its design was superior. She didn’t feel as though they were moving at all.
“Hm?” Zay spun around to face her. Ada was at her heels, playing with a length of rope that had been tied into a sort of ragdoll. “I don’t know. How long would it take to reach the Western Isles?”
In her confusion, it took Wil several seconds to realize that Zay was not talking to her, but to someone who had come up onto the deck behind her. Someone who had moved so silently, she hadn’t known anyone was there. Somehow, even before she turned around, she knew who it would be.
His skin had blanched just slightly, and his eyes were glassy—a side effect of the sleep serum. And the way those eyes looked at her had changed. Where once there had been curiosity, even intrigue, now there was impassiveness. A cut traced his forearm, the blood that lined it dark and dry.
Loom.
Her blood went cold.
“The Western Isles are two days by sea,” he said. “But I don’t see why it should matter. That isn’t where we’re going.”
Wil took a step back, away from Loom. He was immune to her strange power, she knew that much, but she would fight him if she had to. Lean muscles, haughty stance. He would undoubtedly be a match, but he appeared a little unsteady; the sleep serum hadn’t left his senses yet; his reflexes would be slow.
Zay might succumb to her powers and die instantly. But then again, she might not. If Loom was immune, there was a chance she would be as well. Something in their diets? Their genes, assuming they were family? She didn’t know.
Her fists clenched inside her gloves. Zay would be easy to knock unconscious, Wil thought. She didn’t have a fighter’s stance and wouldn’t see an attack coming. Loom might prove to be more of a challenge. He was more alert, as though he’d spent his life dodging arrows.
“Are you sure this is the right one?” Zay said, to Loom. “She doesn’t look like much.”
“It’s her,” Loom said. He was holding her bag, Wil realized, and he reached inside and pulled out a fistful of crystallized alber blossoms.
When Wil snatched the bag from his hand, he let her have it. No matter. The damage had already been done.
“Where are you taking me?” Wil didn’t have to work hard to make her roiling anger sound like fear.
Zay looked at her as though she were a stain on her shoe. When Loom looked at her, though, some of that intrigue was back, although it was veiled now by suspicion, and something more sinister. “We’re on a course for the Southern Isles,” he said.
“That’s impossible,” Wil said. “It doesn’t matter if the Southern Isles is your home; its borders are completely closed.”
“Let me worry about that.”
“Why the South? What do you want from me?”
“Let’s talk belowdecks,” Loom said. “There’s a storm coming.”
As though on cue, a rumble sounded, and the clear blue sky began to darken.