Otherbound

38

Amara spent the night huddled behind the harbor mill in Teschel. She awoke with a chill deep in her bones. With clumsy hands, she pulled off her topscarf, then rewrapped it around her head and neck, mimicking what she’d seen on Jélisse girls. She needed to keep her tattoo hidden. If there were servants on these islands, they worked on farms and had no business wandering around town. She checked her reflection in a stained window, tucked some hair back, and strode toward the boardwalk. There was no market today, which made the street look twice as wide as when she’d been hunting the stalls for a glimpse of the Dit mage.

Still mulling over the information Nolan had shared that night—Naddi? Two spells on Cilla?—Amara walked forcefully, though every odd look people gave her made her breathing pause. She stood out too much, but she couldn’t slow down. People might recognize her. Between being carried into a bar covered in blood and getting chased by marshals in the harbor only days later, she must’ve left an impression.

The sweet scents of sugared batter poffs drifted through the street and made her stomach ache. She pretended not to hear the operator of a lavishly decorated street organ calling at her, or the rattling of his money can, going straight for the market center instead. The last time Amara had seen the pub, she’d been upside down and half dead. She had no idea how to recognize it. She knew the market center, though; from there, Jorn had carried her to the boardwalk, through the market stalls … She found the pub on the corner of an alleyway and almost broke into a run in her relief. She yanked at the door. Locked. Teeth gritting, she cupped her hands to see through the glass. Inside, all was black. Not the black of dark furnishings and no light—the black of char, of burned tables and crumbling chairs. The fire hadn’t gotten far. The counter was mostly intact, as were the windows, which had even been cleaned.

She knew one thing, though. The pub wouldn’t be opening anytime soon.

“Are you looking for Edo?” a voice asked. “The owner?”

Amara turned with a thumping heart. The woman wasn’t familiar. Dit, elderly. Slowly, Amara nodded. She repeated the name to herself. Edo.

The woman motioned toward the boardwalk, at a weather-beaten pub sign extending over the street. “Find him there. Went from serving beer to downing it.” She laughed. “That’s what you get, huh? I swear, if he didn’t have friends in high places, the marshals would’ve done more than just torch this place. Alinean bastards.”

Edo had helped Amara twice. Of course the marshals couldn’t let that slide. And now she dared ask for more help?

She nodded a second time, then took off toward the other pub. Good thing she was Elig. People expected them to be quiet. Quiet and frail and distant.

But good at surviving.

Amara found Edo sitting at the bar. He stiffened when he saw her, then slid off his stool and left his drink untouched. “Let’s head out, eh?” he said. His breath stank of beer.

They walked to a quiet spot in the dunes where she could sign unnoticed. There were no diggers on the beach this late, just bugs, spiders, terns, sandpipers, and other shorebirds she didn’t recognize, scouring the sand with long beaks. Dune grass tickled Amara’s hands. It felt almost soft, nothing like the razor grass from before, but she still felt the hairs on her arms prick upright.

“What happened to the princess?” Edo asked urgently.

She died. As a toddler. Smothered to death.

“Ruudde has her at the palace. I escaped.” Amara paused. “I’m sorry for what happened to your pub.”

If Cilla’s capture shocked him, he didn’t show it. “I knew the risks. What can I do?”

“I need to find mages. Ones not allied with the ministers.”

“That’s a good number of them. The ministers don’t exactly abide by their oaths.” He glowered. “I think I know exactly who you’re looking for. She’s not far.”

Amara crushed a fistful of dune grass. “When can I meet her?”

That afternoon, Amara sat at Edo’s dining table and gawked at the woman across from her. Thin braids. Rings in one nostril.

“You’re alive,” Amara signed.

The Dit mage fingered an odd-looking bracelet. Occasionally, she looked around the room as if admiring the wall drapes or sculptures, but mostly she just seemed to avoid Amara’s eyes. “About what happened at the market—I thought I was protecting the princess! I’d never have touched her if I’d known she was telling the truth. Do you understand? You do, don’t you?”

“I assumed Jorn—J-O-R-N—had killed you.”

“Jorn? Is that the mage who attacked me at the market? No, no, even mages can’t get away with killing each other that easily.” She seemed to relax now that she saw that Amara didn’t plan to push her about the slap. “I got away, but the next day, the marshals tried to arrest me. The ministers or that Jorn must’ve set them on me. I’ve been in hiding since then. Edo’s been helping me. When he explained what’d happened at his pub, I realized that your friend really was the … was Cilla.” The mage took pride in that word. Amara tried hard not to avert her eyes at the sting of guilt she felt over making the woman say a dead toddler’s name.

The mage prattled on. “I was quite surprised to notice marshals were after me, because mostly they let us mages handle things on our own, you know, but—oh, of course you know. You’re a mage yourself. And an escaped servant, to boot. I didn’t say it at the market, but that was very brave of you. These ministers, they don’t respect the notion behind Alinean servants …”

She went on for too long, talking too quickly, and Amara got the odd feeling she was being buttered up. Was this what associating with a princess was like?

The moment there was a pause in the mage’s speech, Amara jumped in to sign, “Do you have many contacts? Mages have been working together to kill Cilla. I need to find them.”

“Princess Cilla,” Edo corrected, returning from his kitchen. He offered them each a small cup of tea.

“Aside from the ministers themselves, who would want to kill her?” Amara went on.

“Certainly not mages! Most us have a deep respect for the Alinean monarchy, you know. Their take on oaths is particularly—well, of course, there are exceptions among even Alinean mages, but …”

“These people are definitely mages. I’ve counted at least a dozen. They cursed Princess Cilla as a toddler and have been tracking her ever since the coup.” Amara saw no sign of recognition in the mage’s face. Would it help if she explained that Cilla wasn’t the princess at all? No—she couldn’t risk losing the mage and Edo’s help. “I have descriptions, if it helps, and names. Only three.” Nolan had overheard the mages shouting at one another years ago. Amara didn’t even remember the incident. “One Dit man, short. Shorter than me. His name sounds like K-IE-R-S-T.”

The mage sounded out the name and shook her head. “No, no. I can ask around, though.”

Amara tried the next name. Chire. It sounded Alinean, though she couldn’t be sure, and it didn’t matter—the mage shook her head a second time.

Amara hesitated before the final name. “Alinean,” she said, “a woman. Tall. Thin. She carries a hooked blade. I-L-A-NN-E.”

The mage’s face lit up. “Yes! I’ve heard of Ilanne—here’s the sign for her name, by the way. She’s near Bedam. Not many Alinean mages are willing to use their magic so freely, you know. She’s, ah, one of those exceptions I mentioned. Sometimes I wonder what her oath said, ’cause it’s nothing like mine, I can assure you.”

Amara swallowed. The image of the knifewielder—no, Ilanne—lanced through her, as it had so often. She didn’t want to ask this next question. “Can you help me find her?”

“Anything to help one so dedicated to serving.”

I’m not serving, Amara wanted to shout. It’s not about that.

“Thank you.” She took her teacup in both hands, a good excuse not to speak further and to banish the image of Ilanne from her mind.

“We need more servants like you. You know, wanting to do the spirits’ bidding, put the Alineans back on the throne.” The mage winked. “But we’ve already talked about you and spirits, of course. Did your spirit ever come back?”

Amara sipped her tea, ignoring the question. “The signs of possession you saw in me … Did you see those in any of the ministers?”

“Yes, in one, but that was a long time ago. It’s probably gone.” The mage’s brow furrowed. “My mentor said Ruudde has acted as a vessel, too, if you can believe it.”

“What about other possessions?” If there were other travelers like Nolan—ones not possessing the ministers—they might give her more information. Having more healers on her side might even help her stop Naddi.

“Oh, I don’t know. My mentor rarely spoke to people while their spirit was present, sadly, but the stories they told afterward …” The woman’s smile stretched as if she was recalling a particularly fond memory. “The spirits touched them with the gift of life. They healed in the snap of a finger. Some of them even communicated—beyond just through the roar of the sea or the spinning of the winds …” There was that wistful look again. “The spirits want to try a mortal life, you see. If they’re going to help us, they wish to know what it’s like to be us.”

Amara mentally repeated the words, wading through the talk of spirits to reach the core truth of the travelers. By now, she doubted spirits used vessels at all—these possessions the mage talked about must all be people like Nolan. “Can I talk to a vessel?”

The mage fingered the handle of her teacup. “I’m not sure where any of them are now. Aside from Ruudde, my mentor hasn’t met any vessels since the Alineans held the throne. What we suspect, see”—she leaned in conspiratorially—“is that when the ministers took over, their abuse of magic made the spirits wary. It would explain why the spirits rarely use us as vessels anymore. That’s why I wanted to talk to you so badly at the air-train.” She smiled ruefully. “How long did you pull the spirit in for, anyway? Hopefully not so long that it scared you. Some of those people who approached my mentor—they were adults, see, educated adults, and they were petrified afterward.”

“How long did it last for them?” Amara frowned. If Ruudde was to be believed, Nolan had the least control of any traveler he knew, and he’d stayed in her body for years without even wanting to.

“The shortest took only minutes. Others, for weeks or even months at a time. Sometimes they left in the middle of conversations. The spirits are, shall we say, fickle.”

“And those possessions stopped after the coup?” Amara’s signs came slowly.

“As far as I know, yes. We talked to other mages about it, and I’m sure they’d have let us know if they encountered new vessels, but of course …” She went off on another tangent, this time about how mages kept in touch, and how often, and the internal politics of it. Throughout, Amara sat numbly in her chair, her fingers hooked in her teacup. Her eyes were on Edo’s orange wall drapes.

Before the coup, travelers stuck around for anywhere between minutes and months, sometimes leaving unceremoniously. Why would any traveler leave in the middle of a conversation?

They’d had no control. They came and went randomly.

They couldn’t have chosen which body they used, either, because Ruudde—Naddi—had talked of this world and its magic with fire in his eyes. He’d said he’d always wanted to try a mage body.

So why hadn’t he found one sooner?

Before the coup: no control.

After the coup: control. The possessions stopped. The travelers chose mage bodies and stayed in them for years.

Something had happened around the time of the coup. Something had changed, giving the travelers control. Something … unnatural. Naddi had gone randomly from host to host, and the second he’d landed in Ruudde’s mage body, he’d made himself and the others stay in their new bodies, using his newfound magic to anchor them to his world …

Anchor.

He’d created an anchor.

They enchanted someone to be a tracking anchor, letting the travelers continually find their preferred bodies in this world—or a more literal anchor, keeping them rooted to the same place—

Amara didn’t even hear the mage’s voice anymore. She still stared at Edo’s drapes, at images of a volcano erupting and swirling, steaming seas, until her eyes felt so dry she had to remind herself to blink. Nolan was right. Cilla did have two spells on her. That was why she was so special. That was how Ruudde could track her. That was why the ministers needed her safe at all costs. The second she died, the extra spell would end and snap them free from their borrowed bodies.

The spell must’ve affected Nolan, too. A traveler so weak shouldn’t be able to stick around so long. Without Cilla’s spell, Nolan might never have traveled here in the first place.

Amara discarded the theories that didn’t fit, probed at the ones that might. Of course Ilanne and the other mages would want to kill Cilla, eliminate the anchor. They’d hate travelers more than anything. Controlling their kin, abusing their magic, invading their world.

So the ministers had needed to protect Cilla. They found a palace mage loyal to them, Jorn, and sent him out with the anchor and a pair of servants, armed with lies of princesses and vengeful ministers …

Amara sipped her tea. It scalded her tongue and tasted of red carrots and kalisse or fennel. She ordered her thoughts, going slowly.

Why would Jorn help the ministers? He couldn’t be a traveler himself. He didn’t heal, and, as Nolan had pointed out, travelers were in the Dunelands for money, power, magic. They wouldn’t want to spend their lives running around the Dune-lands babysitting a fake princess and disciplining her servants.

The ministers might’ve threatened Jorn’s family just like Nolan’s. Jorn had an easy way out, though. Letting Cilla die would’ve gotten rid of the travelers in a second. Perhaps … Amara didn’t know.

She did know, now more than ever, that she needed to talk to the mages who’d cursed Cilla. If those mages wanted the travelers gone, then they and Amara were on the same side.

“Thank you,” Amara said. When Edo and the Dit mage stared at her blankly, she realized she must’ve interrupted them. Servants were never supposed to interrupt their betters.

She pretended not to notice.

“I need to speak to Ilanne. You said she was in Bedam. Can she meet me near the Bedam palace as soon as possible?”

“The Drudo palace, you mean?” the mage mocked. Then she laughed. “I’ll send a message.”