Chapter Sixteen
Trees. White waves against black sand. Winter. Not a dusting of snow, but the full force of it. Mosaics of fractured ice. Waterfalls. Sunsets. A hive of bees built high in the branches of a broken oak. A scraped knee. A dark and churning sea. Lightning. Not a single flash, but full forks that split the sky and fell into butterflies, raindrops, anger. Secrets balled like fists. And fish…thousands of them, silver bodies glinting under a fat, full moon.
I paused, the pen hovering above the page and shaded a spike of lightning, the same flashing forks I’d seen in Kaspar’s illusion. Below the lightning, a sketch of bees, and the words, Reykr, Skygge, Sooth.
I’d burn this when I was done, kill the chance of being caught, but writing had always helped me puzzle things together, and here, alone in my tent, there was no risk. I turned the lamp brighter, the wick hissing.
E—Potential tributary? Two types of magic. Best at reykr.
Wind snapped the canvas fabric. Shadows skittered across the walls.
S—
I hooked my stockinged feet and underlined the letter twice. I hadn’t learned much about Signey. She’d stayed away from the men, had taken her dinner and sat alone on a rocky outcropping.
W —
The weapon. I hadn’t learned anything about that, either, not where it was or what it did. Potential ideas to find W?
A droplet of water landed on my journal, running down the page. I swiped it away and sketched one of the silver-bodied fish Kaspar had shown me.
Being friendly seemed to work with Bo. The rest of the men didn’t care, but maybe I could win them the same way I’d won the stewards. Everyone wanted something.
Two more droplets drummed the page.
I squinted up at the blot blooming across the tent canvas, water whiskering like a rose. I pushed myself onto my knees and swiped it with my thumb. Was it raining? It couldn’t be raining because there was only one blot, one black blossom. Unless Erik had somehow given me a defective tent.
I wouldn’t put it past him.
Then water, cold as ice, dumped over my head, soaking my hair, my papers, my bedroll. The oil lamp fizzled out.
And laughter.
It flitted around me like ghosts. Five? Six? Seven men? No, this wasn’t Erik. At least, not directly.
My nostrils flared. I pulled the flap back. “You—”
But I stood on the precipice of a cliff, the star-flecked sea churning beneath me. Waves beat angry against the rocks.
If I took one step forward, I’d teeter over the edge.
More laughter. Laughter all around, howling, skipping, singing like zephyrs. I turned in a circle, trying to pinpoint the source, trying to pinpoint them , but they were everywhere—the air, my ears, my teeth.
“Stop this,” I said.
“Stop this,” they taunted.
I whirled and the tent was gone, the camp was gone, everything was gone, and in its place, a black and gaping nothing, a black and stretching maw.
I groped through the air where I knew the tent should be, but my hands caught nothing. This wasn’t real, it couldn’t be real.
Water dripped down my back. Wind screamed in my ears. I clawed for my tent, I grasped air.
What was happening? Where was the tent?
“Please stop,” I snapped.
More snickers. “Please stop, please stop, please stop.”
I scrubbed my eyes, but I couldn’t turn it off, couldn’t lift it. What if it wasn’t an illusion? What if this was real, and they’d somehow taken me here to die? Is this what they did to Hans before they slit his throat and dumped his body in the tide pools? Is this how they got him to the tides?
Then—
“What are you doing?” A familiar voice, an angry voice. “Stop that right now.”
The precipice, the cliff, fell away, revealing three men, one short, one fat, one tall. Each had tattoos knotted across their knuckles, one had tattoos across his cheeks. And behind them—
“Bo.”
My hero. My savior.
Bo crossed his arms. “Torturing the guide? Really. That’s low, Bengt, even for you.”
My heart roared. Gooseflesh pebbled my arms. A few beads of water dripped down my neck.
I glanced at my hand, outstretched and groping.
My fingers hovered inches away from the tent. I must have tangled through the fabric. Why hadn’t I felt it?
The short man—Bengt—took a step back and opened his palms in supplication, moonlight playing in the hollows of his cheeks and the space where tongue met teeth. “Come now. Surely our guide doesn’t mind a joke.”
They’d dumped water in my tent. They’d made me think I was standing on the edge of a cliff. I wouldn’t call that a joke.
Grass swished around my ankles, a gentle shh, shh . A bird arced over the moon.
Bengt took another step back, his hands still raised. “Until next time,” he murmured, then turned and left.
“Thank you,” I said when they were gone.
Bo shrugged, the gesture quick and boyish. “I know how they can be. With reykr.”
“Have they done that to you?”
“Dumped water in my tent? No. Hazed me? Yes. They used to do it all the time until Erik made them stop. He lets them do it to each other, but I’m off limits.” A pause. “You could talk to him. Ask him to make you off limits, too.”
I squinted at Erik’s tent, a wash of orange light against the heathered sky. “He’s kind of scary. You know that, right?”
Bo ran a hand through his hair and laughed. “Erik? Oh, he’s terrifying. I would never want to be on the opposite end of his sword. But,” his shoulders softened, “he won’t hurt you. Promise. Just go in forceful and be confident. He respects that.”
“And you think he’d actually make them stop?”
Another shrug. “I think it’s worth a try. Otherwise, you’ll have to deal with that sort of behavior the entire trip.” Bo must have read the expression on my face because he added, “Yeah. It’s terrible. Just remember. Forceful. Confident.”
My heart still pounded from the incident with the tent and the cliff. “And you’re sure he won’t hurt me?”
“Isabel, we’re going in circles. I’m positive. Now, go on.”
Okay. Forceful and confident. I could do that.
I trudged up the hill and stopped outside his tent. The pound, pound, pound of my heart grew faster. Bo said he wouldn’t hurt me, but did I actually trust that?
“Hello?” I called.
No response.
I tried again. “Hello?” Wind rattled the grasses.
Still nothing, which was strange. I was pretty sure he was in there. I edged the flap open…
Erik sat cross-legged in front of a map, shirt untucked, sleeves rolled, wheat-blond hair ruffled. Two silver beads hung on a cord around his neck. He tugged at them, keeping his attention on the map unfurled in front of him, the corners weighed down with stones picked from the riverbank. Smaller pebbles scattered the coastline—Cobble Cove, North Beach, the farthest point of Saeby.
He gritted his teeth and rearranged the stones, scattering them in different increments down the coast. More in Saeby, less on North Beach. A pause, a frustrated sigh. He snatched up the rocks and—
Forceful and confident. Here we go.
I pulled the flap wide and said, “Hi.”
He jumped. “Augh! How long have you been there?”
The map and blankets disappeared, and he stood in front of me, his hair fixed, face stern. Canvas flapped in the wind. Stars, hot and wild, peaked through the cracks.
I blinked hard, blinked again. No, this wasn’t real.
“Do you ever knock?” he snapped.
I squared my shoulders. “Your men attacked me. They dumped water on my tent and made me think I was going crazy.”
He gave a sardonic twist of the lips. “So?”
“They ruined my things.”
“And look at you. You’re fine.”
“I’m not fine.”
“Yes, you are. Come see me if something actually happens.”
I was doing exactly what Bo had told me to do, but Erik didn’t seem to be listening. If I couldn’t convince him, I’d have to deal with those men. Every. Single. Night.
The water, the snickering. Until next time .
Tension sparked between my teeth. “Let me be clear. I am a representative for my country. If I don’t come back, there will be war.”
Liar . The word scraped through my brain. I wasn’t worth going to war for. I wasn’t worth saving. I was here because I was expendable.
A rush of upward smoke and Erik was ten feet away, pouring a glass of brandy from an amber bottle, his expression carefully neutral. “They’re teasing you, Isabel, not trying to kill you. It means they like you.”
“They listen to you.”
He clucked his tongue and swirled his glass. “I’m their commanding officer, not their mother. If you don’t like it, you can always, I don’t know, leave?”
“You’re brutes.”
His eyes dropped from my face, to his cup, then back to my face. The corner of his mouth quirked. “At least we know how to use cups.”
Red lined my vision. To hell with him. To hell with all of them. I’d find the weapon, I’d steal it, and then I’d watch Volgaard burn.
The next morning, when a giant spider fell out of my breakfast bowl, I didn’t so much as flinch. When a seagull pooped on my head, I waited patiently for it to dissipate. When I found a rat in my pocket, I flung it across the field.
A few of the men snickered, made faces of mock surprise. All the while, I could feel Erik’s eyes on me, cool and assessing.
If you can’t handle it, you can always leave.
Once, when I was wrestling Buttercup back from a patch of wild garlic, I caught his gaze and tipped my chin in a challenge that said I could handle it. I could handle anything.
Beasts rose from the grasses. Blood rained from the sky. I watched versions of myself die a thousand different ways—fire, beheading, walking straight off a cliff.
“We’re falling behind schedule,” Erik said when we stopped for lunch. “Kaspar, make sure the horses are watered. Bengt, pack the food.”
“Or maybe you shouldn’t have taken so many people,” I mumbled, reaching for the pot of honey.
A thin line of ants circled the rim. I plastered a smile that showed all my teeth and lifted the honeypot. “Mmm, ants. My favorite.”
“Um. Isabel,” Bo whispered. “Those are actual ants.”
“Shit.” I dropped the honey. “Wait. How can you tell?”
“Because I can see them too, and the only person here who can Send is Erik.”
“Send?”
He tipped the honeypot right side up, brushing off the ants. “Most of them can only show their illusions to three or four people at once. Kaspar and Bengt can both do sixteen, and that’s considered incredibly gifted. Signey can do twenty-eight, which is…almost unheard of. But Erik… He doesn’t have a limit. He can just…open his mind and you’ll see it, I’ll see it. If he makes it big enough, everyone within a hundred miles can see it.” Another shrug. “Sending.”
I rubbed my forehead. “No one else saw the spider in my breakfast? Or the version of me running around without a head?”
“I saw you staring at the horizon, looking mildly disturbed.”
Great. I’d been acting crazy all morning.
“It’s because you react,” Bo added. “It makes you fun to harass.”
At that moment, a naked version of Bengt strolled past. Coarse, black hair speckled his upper chest, a fuzzed trail leading to his—
My cheeks heated. My hand flew to my eyes. “I’m. Not. Reacting.”
“Lunch is over,” Erik said, standing. “Let’s move out.” He gave a pointed look at Bengt and his friends. “Don’t slow us down.”
This was the perfect opportunity to talk to Erik about the route. If I wanted to get updates from the minister, I’d have to make sure we traveled through Esbern or St. Kilda. I hadn’t had much luck with the weapon, but maybe I’d have better luck with that.
“You said you were falling behind,” I said, untying Buttercup and scrambling after him. She snorted and tossed her head, trying to lip a cluster of heath orchids sprouting from a rock. “I can help.”
A muscle ticked in Erik’s jaw. He swung himself into the saddle. “It’s not an issue.”
“If you were to show me the map maybe—”
“You said yourself, you’re just a symbol. A pretty symbol.”
And with that, he spurred his horse, leaving me alone with Buttercup and a naked Bengt.
Wind washed my face, swept over meadows of copper like a pair of massive hands. Birds colonized the hillocks. A pair of sheep grazed.
I pressed my forehead against Buttercup’s neck, her mane snapping against my cheeks. How was I supposed to learn anything when every person here seemed set against me?
Even my horse seemed bent on making things miserable. As if on cue, Buttercup stopped to lip a cluster of yarrow.
“Come on,” I said, dismounting and grabbing her reins. Men parted as if we were a stone in a stream. “We’re going to be left behind.”
Buttercup snorted and skipped over a stem that quivered from the rock face, eating everything but the plant, the petals yellow and variegated, shaped like stars.
I blinked once, blinked again. I swear it hadn’t been there a moment ago, but it was like the hand of the earth unfurled and had given me…a gift.
Ragwort.
Suddenly, I had an idea.