Chapter Twenty-Eight
As much as Kiela wanted to endlessly kiss Larran, it simply wasn’t practical. She had books and plants to protect. She cradled his cheek with her hand. “Larran . . .”
He kissed her palm.
Thinking about how to say goodbye, she felt as if someone had reached into her rib cage and yanked out all the squishy bits. I don’t want to leave. She wished she could say she didn’t have to, that it would all be okay, and that there was nothing to worry about, but she couldn’t. Instead, she said, “There are more tomatoes about to ripen on the vine, if you want them.”
He leaned his forehead against hers softly. “Don’t leave.”
“I have to check on Caz.”
“I’ll go with you.”
She wanted that, but she shook her head. “It’ll draw too much attention. Do you ever leave your herd this time of day?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he asked, “Will you come back?”
She didn’t know. “I’ll try.”
“Did you eat lunch? You should make sure you eat. And stay hydrated. Do you want some water before you go? Or tea? I can make tea. And sandwiches.”
Kiela laughed, even though she felt like crying. She gently shoved him toward the water. “Feed your merhorses. They need you.”
He turned back toward her. “I need you.”
“You don’t need me, and frankly I’d be a little uncomfortable if you did. We just met. You like me for unfathomable reasons.”
Larran smiled. “Fine. But I like you a lot.”
She blushed. “I like you too.”
Kiela forced herself to cross the beach to the stairs. Glancing back, she saw Larran wading into the water—a half-dozen merhorses bobbed in the waves just off shore. He likes me a lot.
She climbed the stairs and walked through the greenery. She was no closer to a solution to her problems, but a piece of her still felt like singing. She didn’t, though. Obviously. Even as deliriously distracted as she felt, she was aware of the need for caution. She settled for humming softly as she reached her cottage and then strolled beyond it—just a casual walk in the woods for an ordinary shopkeeper or a jam-maker in need of ingredients.
Only when she was as certain as she could be that no one was following her did she make her way back to the cave with the painted flowers.
“Caz,” she whispered as she slipped in between the rocks.
She waited an instant for her eyes to adjust to the dimmer light.
A little louder: “Caz? Meep?”
Why aren’t they answering? She felt fear creep up from her stomach and clutch her throat. She crept deeper into the cave. The air was cool and damp on her skin, and she tasted salt with every breath. Water lapped at the walls, echoing, and as her eyes adjusted, she saw the painted flowers flickering above.
The library boat was here, a shadow in the water. But where was—
She heard a muffled shout.
Hitching up her skirt, Kiela ran through the shallows toward the sound. Ahead, she saw a figure thrashing on the rocks in the far corner of the cave. Shadows flailed on the wall.
And she heard Caz: “Hold her down! Almost got it—Meep, don’t poke her!”
On the ground, wrapped in line from the boat, was the imperial investigator. Her red hair stuck out at all angles, and a wad of cloth—it looked like a ripped piece of sail—was shoved in her mouth.
“What did you do!” Kiela cried.
“Kiela! You’re here! Help us!”
They couldn’t tie up an imperial investigator! This was a terrible, terrible idea. “I’m so sorry.” Kiela dropped to her knees and yanked the bit of sail out of Radane’s mouth.
“Did the mermaid find you?” Caz asked at the same time as Radane shouted, “Release me this instant, or you’ll face the full force of imperial wrath!”
Meep stabbed the cloth with their prickles to pick it up, and then they shoved it back in Radane’s mouth. Her shouts became muffled.
“We can explain,” Caz said to Kiela.
“Meep,” Meep agreed.
He repeated his question: “Did the mermaid find you?”
“She didn’t,” Kiela said. “I came to check on you.”
“I sent her to—Never mind. You’re here now. We caught Radane”—he gestured to the bound woman with his leaves—“sneaking into the cave. She said that nasty man, Fenerer, had seen us in the boat. We must have sailed right past his house, and he saw us and told her that we were acting suspicious and where we went, so she came here and—”
Kiela shook her head. “Please tell me you didn’t attack an imperial investigator.”
“We didn’t attack an imperial investigator,” Caz said, and held up his tendrils as if swearing an oath of truth.
“Then why—”
“Because Radane is not an imperial investigator.”
Water lapped at the walls of the cave. Kiela stared at Caz, then at Radane. But . . . She’d said she was. She’d acted like one. Granted, there was no proof, but she had been in a shipwreck and lost all her belongings, so how could she have proof? “How do you know?”
“She wasn’t trying to confiscate the spellbooks; she was trying to steal them.”
“Meep,” the cactus agreed.
Radane thrashed and mumbled through the gag.
Again, Kiela asked, “How do you know?” If Radane sneaked into the cave and was poking around the boat . . . wasn’t that the action of an investigator? What made him think she was trying to steal them rather than—
“She tried to do a spell,” Caz said.
Oh.
Kiela looked at Radane. Yeah, that wasn’t something an investigator would do. Certainly not an honest one. She removed the gag. “Would you like to explain yourself?” she asked politely.
Spitting bits of fuzz onto the cave floor, Radane started babbling. “You can’t possibly believe that. It’s a plant! You can’t take its word over mine. I have been granted authority—”
“You see why we gagged her,” Caz said.
“Caz prefers ‘he,’ and Meep is ‘they,’ ” Kiela said. “And I haven’t heard anything that says you weren’t casting a spell.”
Radane glared at her, which was less effectual given that she was lying on her side, squirming like a trussed-up chicken. “He and they are mistaken. I was checking to see if it truly was a spell. I didn’t want to act without full knowledge.”
“You confiscated my parents’ cookbook without any hesitation,” Kiela said. Radane would have no need to read aloud any of the spells to know these were spellbooks. The word “spell” was literally in half the titles. Plus, open any of them, and she’d see the First Language. The spellbooks didn’t try to hide what they were, which was why she’d kept them in a crate hidden beneath a tarp on the boat and quilts in the cottage. Kiela asked Caz, “Which spell did she try?”
Meep scurried over to the boat and returned with a book, open to a page three-quarters of the way in. Kiela thanked them, took it, and read. “Invisibility?” She had disregarded this volume because it wasn’t nature-related. Looking closer, she saw it was more of a stealth kind of spell, to dampen one’s footsteps and make clothes, eyes, and skin less reflective. It had a list of ingredients, including a very rare and expensive gem. Checking the spine, she saw it was aimed at hunters. The spell was designed to make it easier to sneak up on their prey. “Among other ingredients, she’d need a ruby with no inclusions, three carats, for it to work.”
“See!” Radane said. “I wasn’t casting a spell. I was merely reading out loud when your monstrosities jumped me—”
Caz reached toward her neck with a tendril, and Radane flopped onto her stomach. Meep butted against her bare wrist with their prickles. Radane yelped and flinched, and Caz used the moment to seize a necklace around Radane’s neck. He pulled it out of her shirt to show the ruby pendant. “Well, look at that. Exactly the specific ingredient for the spell. What a coincidence.”
Radane pressed her lips together and glared so hard that Kiela was half surprised that lightning didn’t spark out of her eyes.
It was a highly improbable coincidence that Radane had chosen the one book in the collection with the one spell that used the very jewel she wore around her neck—a very expensive jewel that an imperial investigator had no business wearing in the first place. “Who are you?” Kiela asked her.
“I am an imperial investigator charged with—”
Caz leaned closer to her face. “Kiela is a nice person who doesn’t think about extreme solutions to any situation. It didn’t occur to her that the revolutionaries would throw the emperor out a window. Or that they’d allow anyone to burn the library. Or that anyone would really come after us. Yet here you are. I would like to point out, though, that if you are who you say you are, an imperial investigator who crashed on our island, then no one knows you are here. You could have drowned in the storm.”
“The islanders know—”
“But they don’t like you,” Caz said. “They want you to leave, and if they think you left on your own after finding nothing more suspicious than a cookbook owned by a jam-maker, do you really think they’d ask questions?”
Kiela frowned. She wasn’t certain what Caz was getting at, but it sounded an awful lot like he was about to threaten Radane with something dire. “Caz—” she began. The cactus poked her in the ankle.
He loomed closer to Radane’s face and spread his leaves wide. “You’ll note the water here is deep. Your body wouldn’t even wash to shore. If we attached a few heavy rocks—”
Radane’s eyes widened.
Appalled, Kiela said, “Caz!”
“I’m just explaining options to her,” Caz said.
“We can’t . . .” Kiela couldn’t even say the word “murder.” That was much too far. They should definitely not even be having this conversation.
Caz fixed his attention back on Radane. His leaves were still puffed up, and all his tendrils were vertical. “Kiela is my best friend.”
“Meep!”
“And practically Meep’s mother.”
Kiela startled at that. She hadn’t thought of herself as anyone’s mother. Certainly she’d never acted or felt motherly toward the cactus. Was she supposed to? “I don’t think—”
“If it makes you feel better, Meep says they consider you more of an aunt.”
Okay, that was nice, but . . . Stay focused. Potential murder talk here. “Caz, we are absolutely not going to—”
“ You aren’t going to,” Caz said. “You’re going to sail the boat back to the cottage, put away the books, and then have lunch with your nice handsome neighbor. Meep and I are going to continue our conversation with our new friend, Radane.”
“I’m not leaving if you’re going to . . .” Kiela swallowed.
“Kiela . . .” Caz said.
“No.” She began to tug at the ropes that bound Radane. “I don’t know who you are or what you want, but you aren’t an imperial investigator, and we aren’t murderers. So we’re going to have a conversation like civilized people, and you’re going to tell us why you’re on Caltrey and what you want. I am not letting my best friend commit an act he can’t undo and will regret.”
“Kiela . . .”
“We protect each other,” she told him. “You caught her. Now it’s my turn.” She finished loosening the knots. She met Radane’s eyes. “I am—or was—a librarian at the Great Library. Caz was my assistant. We escaped the fires and came to my childhood home. Since then, we’ve been doing our best to set up a life here. Your story now.”
Radane pushed the ropes off her ankles and then sat up.
Kiela tensed, expecting her to attack. Or bolt. It entirely depended on what kind of person Radane was, and Kiela knew nothing about her except she’d been rude and hostile . . . We’re not murdering anyone. That’s not what librarians do. Bit of shelving, bit of researching, bit of underhanded violence? No.
Radane studied them without either attacking or bolting. Or jumping for the boat and the books. Kiela began to hope she’d made the right choice.
“My name isn’t Radane. It’s Ravandil Etra—”
A wave crashed within the cave, rocking the boat, and splashing into them. Kiela sputtered as she spat out seawater. Radane—or whoever she was—had been drenched. Caz was shrieking and trying to climb the cave wall, and Meep darted for the boat and, using their needles as if they were climbing picks, scurried up the mast.
A herd of merhorses stampeded into the cave. Water flew around them, and they neighed like they were trumpeting. Kiela spotted Larran riding one of them, silhouetted against the light from beyond the cave, looking like a hero from an ancient tale.
“Larran? What—”
The mermaid popped up in front of the herd.
“Oh no you don’t,” Caz said, and Kiela turned to see that Caz had wrapped his leaves around Radane’s ankles. She’d begun to flee toward the cave entrance.
Half the herd beached themselves, blocking Radane’s escape on land with their hooves and powerful tails, while the others blocked the exit by sea. Larran leapt off Sian’s back and swam to the cave’s shore. He climbed out. Dripping wet, he confronted Radane. At the same time, Larran said, “You can’t arrest her! She’s innocent!” as Caz shouted, “We’re not finished here!” Kiela cried, “Everyone, calm down!” while the mermaid sounded a siren-like cry, the merhorses snorted and neighed, and the cactus shrieked, “Meep, meep, meep!”
Radane put her face in her hands and sat down hard on the shore.
Caz loosened his grip.
Larran held up one hand, and the merhorses began to calm. Seawater sloshed around them, but slowly began to steady. Meep quieted.
Radane’s shoulders were shaking.
Was she . . . crying?
She’s laughing.
Shaking her head, Radane looked up. “I escaped the best-trained guards in the entire empire, a violent mob, and every single highly qualified bounty hunter sent to retrieve me, and I’m captured by a librarian, two plants, and a farmer?” She laughed harder.
Kiela said as patiently as if she were talking with a toddler having a tantrum, “Radane. Tell us who you are and why you’re here.”
Wiping her eyes, Radane sobered, straightened her shoulders, and said, “I’m Ravandil Etra L’sari, and I’m the emperor’s heir. And I’m here because I want to be neither empress nor executed.”