Chapter Seven #3
Within the tunnel of the conservatory, she couldn’t hear the shouts as well or smell the smoke as badly.
It was as if they’d entered a pocket of the world where the chaos was distant and unreal.
Maybe he’s all right. She tried to remind herself that he wasn’t her responsibility.
He was a grown man who could take care of himself, and he didn’t need her to swoop in and rescue him. Except what if he did?
Perri lifted his head out of the water. Snaking his head forward, he peered at the dark stairwell that led up into the conservatory and trilled a question.
“It doesn’t mean anything that he’s not here,” Marin said firmly.
“He’s not expecting us.” She could go up into the conservatory to search for him, but separating from Perri and Ree and her sailboat was the worst idea.
Second worst, after the decision to come to Alyssium in the first place.
She considered the stairwell for a moment.
If he was still here … “Sing,” she told Perri.
“As loudly as you can. So loud that if he’s here, he’ll hear it. ”
Raising himself higher, the sea serpent trumpeted. It echoed off the walls of the tunnel, magnifying itself.
“Louder,” Marin said.
He trilled, the notes cascading and then echoing back, filling the tunnel with music that swelled and soared.
It sounded nothing like a human chorus. The sea serpent was capable of hitting notes both higher and lower than any human vocal cords could, and he could sing multiple notes at the same time.
She’d never heard him sing like this, insistent and loud, as if he were trying to erase all sound in the city, every scream and every cry, and replace it with chords that shrieked and soared and ricocheted off the mosaics around them.
Closing her eyes, she listened and let the music fill her. It was glorious: full of hope and joy and pain and fear in its trilling notes and discordant chords and soaring melodies that were swallowed by harmonies and then dissolved into a mishmash of noise.
When Perri fell silent, the silence felt as musical as the sound.
Marin opened her eyes to see the dock was stuffed with people, all of them staring at Perri and at her. “Dax?” she called.
Beaming delightedly, Dax squeezed his way to the front. He looked fine. Better than fine. He wore ivory silks, and his hair was woven with silver beads. “He can sing!”
Relief flooded through her veins, and her knees felt like liquid. He’s all right. She hadn’t realized how worried she was until she saw him here, unharmed and just as clueless as always. “You have to come with us,” Marin told him. “It’s not safe here.”
“You never told me he could make music.” Dax reached up to stroke Perri’s snout. “I’d heard him trill a few arpeggios, but I didn’t know he could do that. I need to write down those harmonies—” He pivoted toward the stairwell, which was blocked by a clump of people, also in silken tunics.
Scowling, Marin stepped onto the dock and caught his arm. “You need to get on the boat. The city is burning. Didn’t you smell the smoke?”
“It’s far away,” Dax said dismissively. “We’re safe here.”
The others on the dock—a half-dozen men and women—were whispering to one another.
Marin focused only on Dax. He was the one they’d come here for, and given that he was still here in Alyssium while the city burned, she didn’t think his friends were doing such a spectacular job keeping him safe.
“You were safe, but you aren’t anymore,” Marin told him.
“Flames don’t care if you’re in a military barracks or a concert hall. ”
Ree waved his branches in the air. “The city is on fire. You’re flammable.”
“Oh! You have a new friend!” Dax said. “Hello.”
“Come with us,” Marin coaxed. “We’ll bring you back as soon as it’s safe.
Just … let’s go, okay? You need to come with us.
” She added, “Perri won’t leave without you.
” I won’t either. It was sweet how he trusted his friends or fate or whatever to keep him safe.
She’d rather he trust a sturdy boat and a strong wind.
Perri emphasized that with a trill.
One of the coiffed men beside Dax put his hand on his arm. “Daxicend, you should take their offer. Get yourself to safety.”
Dax frowned at him. “If it’s so dangerous, then you need to escape too. What kind of friend would I be if I just saved my own hide? No, if you’re staying—”
Ugh, this is infuriating. Didn’t he have any sense of self-preservation?
She didn’t have time to convince him and his three brain cells to recognize the danger.
Marin cut in. “Just bring them.” She waved at the others on the dock.
“Come on, people. Everyone into the boat.” She could drop them off at either Varsun or Iva—both were nearby, and neither island, as far as she knew, was on fire.
As Dax’s friends buzzed, whispering to one another, a woman with hair and eyes both as vibrantly gold as the sun stepped forward. “I have relatives on the island of Eventrid who would take us all in. Would you be able to bring us there?”
Marin ran through the map of islands in her mind.
Eventrid wasn’t on her usual route, but she knew where it was.
She calculated the cost of transport before she realized she couldn’t charge them for this.
You didn’t charge for a rescue. Gritting her teeth, she said, “Yes. But only if we leave right now.”
“Do you have a wind-speaker in your crew?” the woman asked.
Did she think Marin was stowing a spare sorcerer on Silver? Did she look like she was dripping in jewels? “I have a wax myrtle and a sea serpent.”
“That’s not…”
“We can get you there,” Marin said.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ree puff up his leaves at the word “we.”
“Are you serious?” Dax asked his friend, then he looked from face to face. All of them wore matching grim, worried expressions—they knew what was happening outside their walls, even if Dax didn’t. “The fighting is under control. You told me—”
A sour-faced man with feathers instead of hair huffed loudly, just as exasperated as Marin felt.
“Daxicend,” he said testily, “don’t you ever look out a window?
Nothing is under control. The grandmasters just didn’t want you distracted with worry about things you couldn’t do anything about.
” He turned to Marin. “Is there time for us to pack?”
“I have no idea if there’s any time left at all,” Marin said, but Dax looked so distressed that she relented.
“I can give you five minutes. In five minutes, we leave with whoever is on board and whatever you want to bring. I’m not risking my crew or my boat because you want to fold all your outfits. ”
Dax’s friends sprinted for the stairs.
“Five minutes!” she shouted after them. She leveled a look at Dax. A half-dozen emotions were flitting across his face. “Your friends clearly love you. As does my sea serpent.”
Dax flashed a grin at her. “And how about you?”
“I think you’re utterly lacking in common sense, but I still don’t want you dead. Grab whatever is essential and get back here.”
“You like me,” he announced.
Despite the seriousness of the situation, Marin felt herself grin back. “Go.”
He ran for the stairs.
It was eight minutes, and Marin counted every single second.
She wished she’d told them to come right now, never mind their belongings.
She worried that the fire had spread, the fighting had spread, and the chaos had spread and would clog the canals.
Pacing back and forth on the deck, Marin wondered who was winning.
It was impossible to tell from the little slivers of catastrophe she’d seen.
Certainly ordinary people were losing, whoever was victorious in the end, and they’d lose even more if the revolutionaries failed.
She thought of the body in the canal and then she made herself not think about the body in the canal.
The fact that it had been left to float …
No, she wasn’t going to think about it. She was going to do her best to make sure that she, Dax, and whoever else wanted to come didn’t turn into the corpse in the canal.
She’d take them wherever they wanted to go, and then she wasn’t coming back to Alyssium for a long, long time.
Not until she was sure it was over, and maybe not even then, depending on who won.
If the revolutionaries didn’t win … Well, she didn’t want to witness the empire’s retribution.
She thought of Terlu and how she’d been transformed into a statue for breaking the law.
Marin didn’t want to think about how the empire would punish those who rose against it.
It would insist on extreme actions, in order to exert power, and so many people would suffer.