Chapter Three
Out in the canals, it was no longer silent.
Marin heard screams in the distance, as well as the clash of steel on steel. Agitated, Perri twisted and flailed, knotting himself within the narrow space between the sailboat and the wall of the canal. She knew how he felt—the sound of distant fighting made her want to flee back to the open ocean.
But it was distant.
And she had no reason to think it would draw any closer to where she was.
Alyssium was a large city—undoubtedly there were crises and acts of violence that popped up somewhere in the city every day.
It made statistical sense. Her best guess was that the protests had turned to riots, and the people were resisting arrest. As much as she hated to think that there were ordinary people out there being brutalized, it still didn’t mean she was in any direct danger.
Or that Dax was. So long as he stayed inside, which he said he would, he’d be safe.
Twisting, she looked behind her. She couldn’t see the conservatory from this angle, but the strains of students practicing were still carried in the air. Whatever was happening elsewhere in the city hadn’t engulfed the entire capital. She told her heart to quit pounding so fast.
“It’ll be okay,” Marin told Perri. She sang a soft trill of notes at him, and he echoed them back.
“We’ll make our library delivery and then leave.
If we feel unsafe at any point, we skip the delivery and bring it back later.
” It was a crate of books. It wasn’t produce that would spoil.
She could steer clear for months, if necessary, and all she’d lose was a little of her reputation for reliable deliveries.
Still, she didn’t think it was going to be an issue.
“Whatever’s going on isn’t near us. So long as we don’t get involved, we’ll be fine. ”
She wasn’t sure if she was reassuring Perri or herself.
Marin continued to pole through the city canals. Above, she heard and then saw a contingent of guards rush across a bridge. Her skin prickled.
Closer to the Great Library, she spotted more boats in the canals.
“Dive below,” she instructed Perri. The last thing she wanted to do when the city was …
unsettled … was draw any attention to either herself or her friend.
She was too deep in now to flee quickly.
Their best strategy was to pass unnoticed. Panic always drew too many eyes.
There were no leisurely gondola trips in the canals today. Every craft she passed was moving quickly, with purpose. She momentarily toyed with calling out to one, asking what was happening. But no, it was better to stay unnoticed.
Keep moving. Don’t draw attention. That had to be her mantra.
She thought of Dax. Had he realized those drumbeats weren’t any kind of instrument?
If she had to guess, she’d say they sounded like sorcerer blasts.
She’d witnessed such blasts once when an avalanche had dumped rocks into a harbor—a traveling sorcerer had used magic to obliterate them and free the boats.
It had been both effective and, frankly, terrifying.
The farther in she went, the more she realized: there was something deeply wrong in Alyssium.
Make the delivery. Get out. She thought of Dax again.
His grandmasters had clearly downplayed the situation, but they were right that he’d be safe inside the conservatory—it was as distant as it could be from whatever was happening.
She wished she and Perri could have stayed there with him. She felt far too exposed out here.
Every muscle felt tense as she poled through the canals. Ahead, she saw the Great Library, its towering spires rising above Alyssium, and she felt herself able to take a full breath for the first time since leaving Dax.
The Great Library of Alyssium was always her favorite sight in the city.
Many stories tall with multiple wings, multiple towers, and multiple spires, it was a work of art made of carved stone and bejeweled with stained glass windows.
Where the conservatory was a sugar-spun cake, the library was a jeweler’s masterwork.
Each spire’s windows represented a different time of day: the eastern spire was the pink and lemon of dawn, and the colors cycled from there, through midday blue and white to the rich hues of sunset, all the way through the blue-black velvet of midnight in the southernmost spire.
She entered the tunnel beneath the library, and the unsettling sounds of the city faded into a muffled memory.
“You okay?” Marin asked Perri.
He stiffened his tail and then relaxed it.
He was fine but unhappy.
“Me too,” she said. “We’ll be out of here soon.” She had other pickups scheduled, as well as other possible jobs they could take, but if Perri needed open water or wanted to travel to a distant island, she could make that work too.
The library tunnel was more cave-like than the conservatory’s—it had been formed naturally, water in limestone, unlike the conservatory tunnel, which had been carved from bedrock—and it was used to store the library skiffs, the boats used by librarians to deliver books to sorcerers on other islands.
She maneuvered Silver to the dock, tied off, and then stepped off to ring the brass bell the librarians had placed to announce deliveries.
Unlike the conservatory, they didn’t have regular workers in the tunnel, due to the fact that most of their supply runs were done by librarians or library assistants.
Marin was one of the few supply runners regularly employed by the library, and she’d only won the position by once locating a rare book that the head librarian had requested.
No one else had been able to fulfill her request for three years, but Marin had been persistent—she’d needed to make the first payment to the sorcerer to repay her parents’ debt, and it was a contract that was open to any runner who wanted to fulfill it, rather than assigned to a specific sailor.
She’d impressed the head librarian enough to be put on permanent retainer.
She waited for someone to answer the bell.
It occurred to her that it was possible no one would come. Whatever was happening in the city could have distracted the librarians. Or involved them. Marin sat cross-legged on the dock. “We can wait here, until things calm down out there.”
Perri lifted his head out of the water and bobbed it, drops dripping off his whiskery chin.
“What do you think is going on?”
He twisted himself into a knot and then untwisted.
“Yeah. Messy human stuff.”
She thought about Dax. It was nice that his friends tried to protect him and looked out for him, even if it had to be frustrating not to get answers to questions.
She wondered what was really preventing him from starting on his opus.
She’d never attempted a major artistic work, but she had begun and completed long journeys, faced storms, and navigated treacherous waters.
Same thing, right? At some point, you just had to hoist the sail and go.
She thought about where to sail next. Perhaps revisit their route through the southern islands?
The less populated ones had a system: they’d raise a flag when they needed a supply runner to take an order.
Whatever runner reached them first—and deemed the pay acceptable—won the contract.
It worked fine and had brought her to a lot of interesting places, and now she’d established it as her route, which meant most other supply runners left those islands to her.
I wouldn’t mind a little less interesting than Alyssium right now.
She rang the bell, waited awhile more, and then decided that was enough. She wanted to be out of the city before dark and well on her way to anywhere else. South, she decided. It was her usual route, and she needed ordinary and predictable. Plus home was south.
Marin was unwinding the lines from the cleats on the dock when she heard the click and whir from the library lift. She retied the boat and faced the lift.
It opened with a screech, and the head librarian herself, Rijes Velk, stepped out.
Marin hadn’t seen Rijes Velk since her first rare book delivery a couple years ago, and the woman hadn’t aged or changed, even though Marin knew she had to be significantly older than Marin’s parents.
The head librarian looked as regal in the rattly lift as she had in her office surrounded by mahogany shelves, brilliant paintings, and antique books.
She wore a golden robe embroidered with silver thread that outlined a map of the islands, with images of sea serpents and kraken between them.
An emerald scarf was wrapped around her neck, and her silver hair was woven with emerald jewels.
Her onyx face was unpainted, except around her eyes, which were lined in silver.
Beside her was a wooden statue on a wheeled pallet.
It was carved from a single piece of wood, incredibly lifelike, clearly done by a master artist, though Marin knew little about sculpting.
You could see the eyelashes and her fingernails.
The sculptor had been able to achieve the effect of soft flesh and curled hair.
A remarkable statue. And not the kind of item that Marin usually transported, but whatever.
It had to be valuable if Rijes Velk was escorting it herself, which probably meant the transport fee would be commensurate.
Marin inclined her head. “An honor to see you.”
“I’m pleased you came, despite the situation.
” Her voice was as elegant as Marin remembered, almost as musical as Dax’s, though his was deeper.
Maybe the fine voice came from talking with nobles.
Sailors and dockworkers weren’t as interested in pretty diction.
It was far more important to be heard over the crash of the sea.
“What exactly is the situation?” Marin asked. “The city seems…” She cast for the right word: Unsettled? Unpleasant? Violent? In the water, Perri splashed with his fin. “Yeah, that.”