Chapter Twenty-Eight
It was the singing plants that decided her.
Marin walked into the rose greenhouse for the Winter Feast, and the plants were crooning in harmony and she thought, Dax would love this.
He should be here.
It didn’t take any longer than that. It wasn’t anything more profound or climactic. There was no grand screaming-crying-heartfelt conversation or any near-death experience to cause an epiphany. It was just this: Dax had never heard a chorus of singing plants, and he would have loved it.
Ree was right.
Perri was right.
Dax did love music. He loved the conservatory, full of centuries of song. But he also loved the sea, full of wonders and its own kind of music. He deserved to make his own choice with the full knowledge that it was a choice.
Wrapped in the music of the singing plants, it felt so clear.
Perri’s splash hadn’t snapped her out of it.
Ree’s lecture hadn’t done it. But a wordless song cracked her open.
While she was feeling as if she’d been turned upside down and shaken, everyone else was feasting.
Rijes was chatting with one of Marin’s refugees, the elderly lady with faded tattoos of flowers on her cheeks, and the refugee child was running around happily with one of the gardener’s relatives.
Terlu was beside her reclusive gardener, who looked torn between being incandescently happy and wanting to flee.
Above, a winged cat with gray fur and emerald wings perched on the rafters, and tiny dragons swooped between draped ribbons.
Over it all, the music swelled and soared with joyfully discordant enthusiasm.
Marin picked her way across the greenhouse, ducking under fat roses with a scent as fragrant and rich as any of the meals being carried out and laid on the table.
She found Ree, surrounded by his family.
He was regaling them with tales of the giant dragons of Ilreka and how one dragon in particular loved music.
“Ree,” Marin said. “The wind has shifted.”
He broke off his story. “It has?”
“If you want to stay with your family and finish the solstice, I’ll understand.”
He hopped toward her. “Are we going back to Alyssium?”
“Yes, the winds have shifted that way.” Now that she’d decided to go, she didn’t want to delay even another minute. She knew exactly where Dax would be five days from now. She needed to be there too.
But her loyal myrtle only said, “Then let’s go, Captain.” He didn’t ask why the change of heart or say I told you so. She was grateful for that. She felt as if she was vibrating with the need to go right now with no further words and no further delay.
“Ree, you just got home,” one of the other plants complained.
With gusto, Ree sang, “The sea calls to meeeee, for she, she is my home—” He hopped out of the greenhouse, and she followed as he sang, “The blue-blue sea, she calls to meeee…”
Perri was swimming by the dock with a flock of seabirds circling overhead, as well as a few tiny dragons. He was tossing tiny minnows to the dragons, but he stopped as Marin and Ree made their way down the dock.
Belatedly, she wondered if she should have said goodbye to Rijes, but no, she was certain that Rijes would understand.
She thought there might be quite a lot that the former head librarian understood.
She also doubted that Terlu would mind, given the way she and the gardener were staring at each other.
She probably wouldn’t even notice that Marin and Ree had left.
Marin asked Ree, “Are you sure you’re all right with leaving so soon?”
“Family should spend the solstice together,” Ree said.
“Exactly. I could pick you up when I return for the next delivery—”
Ree laid a branch on her ankle to cut her off. “I don’t mean my birth family. I mean our family. Minus the cat, but he’s with his other family.”
It could be that their time together—as a family—was over, and if it was …
She’d mourn it, but not until then. Dax deserved to have the choice of whether to stay or sail, and she needed to tell him …
oh, all the things she hadn’t said out loud!
At the very least, he should know that he was welcome to sail with them, if he wanted.
She wasn’t sure she’d ever told him that specifically.
He’d bargained to sail with her for a while, until it was safe to return to the conservatory, but he might not know she wanted him to keep sailing with them.
He deserved to know that before he decided.
He didn’t have to continue in the life that other people had planned for him.
He could choose the sea, if he wanted. “Dax wanted us to come back and hear his opus. And then it’s up to him what he wants to do.
” He’d said he wanted to talk about the future; he deserved to have that conversation. So did she.
“He’s still part of our crew, though, isn’t he?”
“Always,” Marin said.
In the waves, Perri tossed more fish into the air and caroled as the birds swooped for the flashes of silver. Together, Marin and Ree raised the sails, and they caught the wind away from Belde. She imagined she could still hear the plants singing.
The sail back to Alyssium was the fastest she’d ever done yet felt the slowest.
Marin used every trick she knew to coax wind into the sails.
She aimed for dark patches of water, a sure indication of more wind.
She sailed the long tack and kept a close eye on the telltales.
And when the wind slowed, she called to Perri, and he sped the boat forward until the wind picked up.
She slept minimal hours, alternating with Ree.
In the end, she shaved half a day off the usual trip, arriving two days early for Dax’s performance.
And it didn’t matter. They weren’t allowed into the conservatory to speak to him.
“We’re his friends,” Marin told the guard at the stairwell.
There had never been a guard by the dock beneath the conservatory before, but apparently rules changed for the solstice celebration.
The guard was clothed entirely in silver, with a silver mask over her face and a black baton belted to her waist, as well as a brace of knives.
“His family,” Ree corrected.
Legs spread wide and arms crossed, the guard blocked the stairs. “No entry for non-conservatory residents. You will have to enter the concert hall with your ticket like everyone else.”
Ree whispered, “Do we have tickets?”
Taking Ree with her and leaving Perri to watch Silver, Marin circled the conservatory to check at the ticket booth.
She’d never seen the place from the front plaza, and she had to admit it was impressive: all marble and covered in statues of famous musicians she’d never heard of.
It had multiple pillars carved with musical notes and the entrance was shaped like a golden harp.
“Fancy,” Ree said beside her.
She spotted a few scorch marks on the stone that had yet to be sanded away, and she noted a few of the statue alcoves were empty—the only trace of the recent violence.
She wondered if the events had already been immortalized in song and if they’d be accurate or whether details would be sanded away too.
She thought of Rijes Velk: No one knew the empire tried to burn the library.
Maybe they should.
She wondered if Dax would ever consider writing a song about that. I could ask him. If I’m ever allowed near him. Spotting the ticket booth, Marin approached and confirmed that yes, there were three tickets reserved under the name Captain Mariner.
“Three?”
“Yes, Captain,” the ticket seller said and then frowned down at a piece of paper. “There’s a note that the third ticket is for a window view? On the … canal side?”
Marin smiled. Dax wouldn’t have wanted to leave out Perri. She loved that. “That’s right. Someone will need to open the window so the sea serpent can see.”
The ticket seller swallowed hard. “Of course. It will be done.”
She could tell he had questions. She decided not to answer them. Let him invent his own stories. “We’re family,” she said.
Another gulp. “Wonderful!”
The tickets were good for all the solstice performances, but Marin was only interested in one. She spent the time until Dax’s concert in the plaza with the job postings, scanning all of them, not taking any of them. It didn’t feel right, until she knew what her crew would be.
Would he come with them?
Why should he? What did she have to offer? Only the sea and all the wonders of the Crescent Islands. And a sea serpent, a shrub, and a sailor.
She didn’t know if that would be enough.
Marin had plenty of time for second thoughts and third thoughts, but she didn’t let herself think them.
Whenever she wasn’t pointlessly perusing the job listings, she was on the boat with Ree and Perri.
She wasn’t willing to leave it for long—she didn’t trust the people in the city.
There were plenty who were desperate enough to try to steal a way to a new life.
No one tried, though. She didn’t know if it was because it was the winter solstice and everyone was celebrating or because no one wanted to mess with an enormous sea serpent.
Now that he knew he had a ticket and was officially invited, Perri had no interest in hiding. But it could have been the former.
Despite the upheaval and despite the changes and despite the fear that still lingered in corners where lives had yet to settle into new shapes …
throughout the city, people were celebrating as they had every solstice for centuries, before the rise of the empire and now after its fall.
From the deck of Silver, she heard voices drift down from windows, bridges, and plazas.
Laughter. Singing. Warm voices of friends and family.
Ribbons shaped into flowers were being sold from carts, and the city smelled of warm pretzels and cakes.