THE WORLD WAS NOT AS large as it had once seemed.
Between Northern Arrod and Brayshire, there was an expanse of the North Sea turned black in the darkness of night. Somewhere over that expanse, consumed by the roaring September wind, Wil slumped against the railing of the dirigible and disappeared.
It was a dream of drowning in ink. Of silence. Of nothing. She had fallen into the rapids after all.
She was jolted awake in the morning when the dirigible touched down in Brayshire, where the harsh winds gave way to tepid air. Dawn painted the sky pink, and silhouetted against it were the shapes of a market square still sleeping. Everything was mobile—carts and tents. There were flowers blooming wild along dirt paths, trees that went on forever.
Brayshire: Wanderer Country.
She forced herself to stand. Even the fiery sunrise was dull, the world ashen and quiet.
Find Pahn, she reminded herself. The thought made her walk. Find Pahn and cure this curse. There was no other choice.
On the morning Wil was born—a cool October day splashed with color—she had been a frightening thing, so she’d been told. With thin, translucent skin and bones where babies were supposed to be healthy and fat. When Owen took his first look at her, to him she had resembled one of the monsters in his book of Western folklore. Undead creatures that crawled back up through the earth and demanded blood and souls. She balled her fists and let out a feeble roar of a cry, as though she meant to frighten him. He had only laughed. A future king, and a little monster in a lace-trimmed gown.
Now, stepping forward onto foreign land, Wil was born for the second time in her life, a different sort of monster. Or perhaps, the monster she was always destined to become.
A horrible feeling came all at once, after days and days of nothingness. After nights of dreamless sleep and weightless breaths that didn’t feel like breathing at all. But on the last day of September, Wil awoke on the floor of her tent with a fistful of emerald grass digging into her skin.
It was scarcely dawn, the sky still hesitating to bloom.
Far in the distance, a train rent the world in two like the pull on a zipper. The ground shook.
She sat up, blinking at the bits of fractured green in her palm. She did not remember dreaming anything that should have set her heart beating fast in her sleep, but that was no matter. She had been worrying about this day since she’d set foot on the dirigible, and her heart knew it.
Today was Gerdie’s seventeenth birthday.
He would spend it mourning Owen. Mourning her. If he slept at all, he would awaken in a castle whose mirrors would be covered by black gossamer.
What would this do to his health? It had been a solid two years since he’d had a relapse that left him bedbound, but his Gray Fever hovered around him like an apparition, trying over and again to take him. For the first time, Wil wasn’t there to be the thing that scared death away. She left Gerdie in that castle with Baren. Baren, who told Gerdie nature had selected him to die, and only their father’s money and influence had saved him. Baren, who was now the heir to the world’s most influential kingdom.
Because of her.
If her family thought she was dead, it would be less painful for them than the truth.
The funeral was long over by now. In Arrod, families wasted no time in their grieving. The first sunset after a death, each member of the family lit a candle and set it adrift on a length of wood. And when the water extinguished the last one, it meant the souls were at rest.
After that, the true mourning began. As Wil was out in the world somewhere, she knew that her bed and Owen’s had been covered in black gossamer. Addney had pinned an oleander to her dress, covering her heart to keep the memories of her beloved in place.
It had surely taken the queen all day to cover each mirror from the castle walls, but she would insist upon doing it herself—that was her place as the one who most believed in rituals. Barring reflections for the first month would keep her dead children at peace, so she wouldn’t hear them screaming for her on windy nights.
There would be days and days of silence. Nothing but heartbeats and clock hands.
Heartsick and heavy, she dropped the gems into her rawhide bag, pulled on her gloves, and climbed from her tent.
Most of the people traveling through Wanderer Country were friendly, kind, and welcoming. Wil had kept her distance, saying little and smiling in lieu of conversation. Since her brother’s death, smiles had become Wil’s easiest lie. She could look human and whole by simply upturning her lips. No one could know that behind those lips were secrets, that they quivered with sobs when she was alone.
Most of Brayshire and its passing wanderers spoke Nearsh, and Wil only spoke when she needed to barter for food, and to try to learn about Pahn. Some had heard of him, while most insisted he was a myth. But no one knew how to get to him, or even what he looked like. The common rumor was that he was in King Zinil’s mountain palace, and Wil hoped that wasn’t true. The Southern Isles had completely closed off their borders in preparation for the potential war. No imports. No exports. No word.
South of Wanderer Country, there was Brayshire’s capital city, called the Reeds. It had once been home to Brayshire’s hierarchy before it was overthrown. In the absence of that hierarchy, the Reeds had become a sort of hub for artists and scholars. It was a half mile from here, and Wil knew that she would arrive just in time for the shops to open. If she got there before the rush of morning shoppers, she could sell the emeralds without drawing attention.
They hardly resembled grass, and she could pass them off as shards from a broken pendant. They would be worth a few silver pieces, at least. Fare for travel, once she had a solid lead on Pahn.
The walk cleared away the thought of the gloomy castle, if nothing else. She thought instead of Gerdie’s sixteenth birthday last year, when they’d snuck onto a boat carrying a wedding party. It circled the Port Capital until well after midnight, and the party was so extravagant, the crowd so lavish and full, nobody knew that Wil and Gerdie were strangers to the newlyweds.
Gerdie had removed his monocle and hidden it in his pocket. He’d even found a girl to dance with, with long red hair that spun around her like a fire when she twirled.
Wil had found someone too. A tall boy with dark skin and a permanent grin. He’d wrapped her hair around his finger when their dance faded to a gentle sway. And then he’d kissed her—her first and only kiss—and it was so easy to get lost in it, to be someone else. He asked if he could see her again, and she told him that in the morning she would be on a boat headed east.
The lie had been as exhilarating as the kiss, because he had believed it.
Now, she tried to imagine her brother sneaking over the castle wall, losing himself in the Port Capital, away from the grieving castle. Maybe he could find some happiness, for a little while.
Maybe he didn’t even believe she was dead. Maybe he sensed that she was alive. She would find a way to contact him, but not before she’d sought Pahn’s help and she was rid of this curse. She didn’t deserve to be near anyone she loved. Not while this awful thing was brewing inside her.
She arrived at the Reeds as the day began to brighten. Window shades were opening on storefronts like eyes and mouths.
At the heart of the market square, there was a jeweler. She’d been to him only once before, with a sapphire beetle with diamond flecks in its open wings. It looked exactly like a brooch, and she’d said she’d found it. No questions were asked—not in a land of people from all around the world who might have been anything from peddlers and swindlers to murderers and thieves. Or just a girl with a secret.
Little bells on the door handle chimed when she stepped inside. The old man at the counter brightened when he saw her.
Behind her, the cobbled square was all but empty, save for a few university students seeking out pastries and coffee and tea before their classes.
“If it isn’t the girl who finds treasures,” the man said. “What have you got for me today?”
She reached into her rawhide bag, counting each of the emerald blades to be sure she had them all, and then she laid them out. There they sat, the glass counter making it appear that they were floating over tiny hills of steel rings and glass beads.
The man blinked. “Emeralds this time.”
“They’re real,” Wil said, and removed the orange data goggles from her head so that he could see for himself. But the man shook his head. That wouldn’t be necessary.
“I suppose you found these as well?” He slid them around with his fingertip. “What peculiar shapes. I’ve never—”
The ground shook with the force of an explosion. The emeralds rattled.
Wil spun around to see that the windows were darkened by soot and ash.
“Marauders,” the man gasped. “Come with me to the basement—we’ll be safe there!”
“Mar—” The question was still on Wil’s lips when the second explosion came. Through the grit on the windows she saw a burst of flame.
The man was shouting for her to follow him, to hide. But she ran for the door instead and threw it open. The calm market square was ravaged by orange and gray and red, fractured by screams and sobs.
When she looked over her shoulder, the man was gone, the steel door that presumably led to the basement pulled shut.
There were people on the ground—wanderers and students—but there were more than a dozen others, running through the melee, shouting in a sharp, hard language Wil didn’t know. Marauders, Owen had told her, often invented their own tongue, so that their captives wouldn’t be able to overthrow them.
They were well disguised, Wil realized, dressed in the local fashion of loose flowing tunics and trousers with belled hems and fitted thighs. She’d surely passed a few of them on her way into the square.
A scream drew her attention. Through the smoke, she saw a man hauling a girl to her feet. Her dark curls bounced frantically in her struggle, but she was no match. He had her back pinned to his chest.
Wil ran into the smoke, her mind playing out the possible scenarios in seconds. She wouldn’t be able to touch either of them beyond her gloves or they’d be turned to stone, and so she’d have to find a way to slacken his grasp.
He didn’t see her coming—he was too busy trying to take the girl. She was quite beautiful, Wil saw once she was closer, and he’d surely get a high price selling her to traffickers.
Turn him to stone. The thought came at once with startling clarity in the chaos. Her skin ached, her heart sped, and her brow dotted with sweat. The desire was primal. Wil forced it away. No time to be startled now.
She jammed the heel of her boot down on the man’s foot, and she felt the toes break. He yelled, and in that half second he was stunned, Wil grabbed the girl’s wrist with her steel gloves and pulled her away.
The girl disappeared beyond her periphery. The man was coming at Wil now, confused, angry. She dodged his clumsy attempt to grab her. He was big, but she learned in that single gesture that he wasn’t skilled. Relied on brute strength and nothing more.
With her gloved hand, she landed a cross punch to his solar plexus. He staggered back and fell to the girl’s feet. She let out a startled yelp.
“Go!” Wil told her. Why hadn’t she fled by now? There was enough smoke and chaos for her to escape. The marauders were everywhere, but Wil couldn’t focus. The world had become too bright and busy. Adrenaline was still running through her, making her arms tremble. She clenched her fists to steady them. Turn him to stone, her body was pleading. She was starved for it. She couldn’t focus.
She turned for an alleyway and ran. If she could make it to the trees and out of sight, she could crystallize the grass instead.
But she didn’t get far. Something hit her ankle, and the world came up around her.
She flipped onto her back to face her assailant, and all she saw was a slender silhouette. Bright flashes throbbed across her vision. Had she hit her head?
There was barely time to form the thought before a white-hot pain lanced up her side. Then someone was trying to pull the rawhide bag that was crisscrossed over her chest.
She clung to it. There wasn’t much in it—just some geldstuk and silver, and vials of sleep serum to refill her dagger—but she refused to let it go. It was a piece of her old life. It was hers.
She landed a kick to her assailant’s stomach. The motion tore at her wound, and she screamed. Her fingers tightened around the rawhide strap.
Then another silhouette appeared, and the marauder’s grip on her bag slackened. Wil touched a gloved hand to the searing pain at her side. It came up red with blood. It was going to rust, she thought dully, and tried to wipe it against her shirt.
Someone was crouched over her. A boy with dark eyes and black waves of hair whose fringes caught fire against the sun.
“Can you stand?” he asked her, in accented Nearsh. His voice was a million miles away.
“Yes,” she said. But when she tried to move, the air itself had grown heavy and was sitting upon her chest. Breathing had become difficult.
Hands pressed against her wound. She saw blood on the sleeves of his long leather coat, and had the distant realization that it was hers.
“Don’t,” she started to say. She could feel her pulse thudding hard in her throat.
The boy reached under her back and her knees and lifted her up. Her head fell heavy in the hollow of his shoulder. She was going to kill him. She couldn’t stop it. Everyone would see. But she could feel her body losing blood, and knew that she wouldn’t live long enough to know what would happen next.
“You’re going to be okay,” the boy said, his voice low and soft against her ear. It soothed the frenzy of adrenaline buzzing electric in her veins.
And for one mad, feverish moment, she believed him.