Chapter Seventeen

Seventeen

By the time they made it back down the summit, the sun was a bloody thumbprint against the horizon. Its light stained the snow a livid red. They nearly missed Ludwig’s shelter. It was half-buried, protruding from the snowdrifts like the wreckage of a ship.

“Stop!”

Before Sylvia even brought the mara to a halt, Lorelei slid off its back. Almost immediately, she crumpled to her knees with exhaustion. Just how long had they ridden for? It couldn’t have been more than a few hours, but she felt as though she’d swum for days without surfacing for air.

“Are you all right?” Sylvia hopped down beside her. She landed soundlessly, with the grace of someone who’d indeed done it a thousand times before.

“Fine,” Lorelei snapped. “Hold on to that thing.”

The mara looked quite offended, until Sylvia scratched its withers. In the darkness, its eyes glowed like embers.

Swearing under her breath, Lorelei ducked under the tarp of the lean-to. The air within had thickened with the sweet, autumnal smell of decay. Ludwig was propped up against his backpack. His eyes—now a verdant green—roved over her face. Burning within them was a familiar, terrible awe. He looked as though he were staring at the face of someone long dead—or maybe at Death himself. Rahel had often looked at her like that in the throes of her fevers.

“Ludwig? Can you hear me?”

He groaned in reply.

Guilt soured her stomach. She never should have agreed to Sylvia’s ridiculous antics. She never should have let herself grow so weak that a smile was all it took to make her abandon all sense. But with night falling like a blade and the exhaustion settling into her bones, the mara might very well save their lives.

Damn you, von Wolff.

Lorelei crouched beside him. The bark had clawed its way to his chin, and a fine layer of moss had grown on his shoulders. She did not know if she had the stomach to check the roots that had begun pushing through his skin like soil. She racked her brain for something that would pass for comfort, but there was little she could offer that wasn’t a lie. “Can you stand?”

He hummed noncommittally, which Lorelei decided to take as a no. Which meant they’d have to haul him down this godforsaken mountain. Just her luck. They’d have to abandon his tarp; it was too cumbersome to bother with. It could stand as a grim memorial to this disastrous expedition, for all she cared. His backpack, however, might have something worth salvaging.

Lorelei rifled through its contents, tossing aside empty vials and ones filled with mysterious, half-rotted specimens. The shard of ash tree she removed and carefully set aside. She couldn’t be sure if it was a catching curse, and she didn’t care to find out.

After pocketing a few medical supplies and rations, she slipped the vasculum from around his neck. It couldn’t hurt to see what he’d gathered so far. It was lighter than she expected, a large, sleek cylinder made of iron and painted with ivy. Inside were plants pressed flat between delicate sheets of cloth, gorgeously arranged and painstakingly preserved. As she thumbed through them, she paused over one sheet, which seemed more brittle than the others. When she pulled it out and lifted it to the light, she could do little but stare at it with a hazy sort of disbelief.

It was covered in Ziegler’s handwriting.

There was no mistaking it. Ziegler often wrote like a woman possessed, with her tidy scrawl going every which way. You’d need a magnifying glass to fully appreciate its organized chaos: how she would write in both Javenish and Brunnisch, sometimes in the same sentence; how she would cut out and paste passages from other books into her own notes or press leaves into its pages. It was both intimate and staggeringly violent to see a stray page from her journal like this.

All the papers in Ziegler’s room and the war room had been destroyed on the night of her murder—or so Lorelei had thought. She’d been certain to check the pages of every book and rummage through every drawer.

“Where did you get this?”

“Found it,” he said blearily.

She was not in the mood to play this game. With Ludwig, it was impossible to tell what was a result of delirium and what was him being deliberately obtuse. Grabbing him by the collar, she gave him a shake. “ Where? ”

Sylvia’s face appeared beneath the lean-to’s opening. “Is everything all right?”

With a growl of frustration, Lorelei thrust the scrap of parchment out to Sylvia. Although she looked bewildered, she took it without question and scanned it. There was nothing especially noteworthy about its contents, but its existence vexed her. Either Ludwig had kept a document from when he’d disposed of her papers, or he’d found a cache of her writings the killer had not. She sorely hoped it was the latter.

“Where did he get this?” Sylvia asked.

“He says he found it.”

Sylvia hummed pensively. “I suppose he must have.”

Lorelei’s life had spiraled entirely out of her control. Her temper spiked impotently in response. “Obviously!”

Sylvia primly folded the page in half. “Yelling isn’t going to help anything.”

“He deserves to be yelled at,” she said spitefully. “I wish he could understand how unimpressed I am with him. Perhaps we should leave him here to die.”

“Lorelei!” Sylvia gave a look of pure reproach as she ducked beneath the tarp. Kicking aside the mess Lorelei had made of Ludwig’s belongings, she grabbed his arms and pulled. “Get out of the way, please.”

Her voice was pinched, and her features were twisted in a grimace. Her wound clearly was bothering her. After everything Lorelei had done to ensure it’d heal properly, her carelessness was an insult. “Put him down before you rip your stitches out, you clod. I’ll carry him.”

“I’d rather not watch you snap in half. I’m not so fragile that I can’t bear half his weight.”

Lorelei glared but did not protest. Although she was taller than the both of them, she doubted she could get very far under Ludwig’s full dead weight.

They slung his arms over their shoulders and hoisted him to his feet. He moaned in protest, his head lolling against her shoulder. Her legs still trembled with exertion, but she could manage this much. The real challenge would be getting him onto Sylvia’s demonic mount.

“He’s lucky he is so slight,” Sylvia muttered as she struggled to drape him across the mara’s back. The beast stomped one hoof in the snow, clearly displeased with the extra burden. Sylvia made a frustrated little sound and glared at Lorelei accusingly. “Are you even helping at all?”

It seemed the best remedy for her ill-advised feelings was the very woman she harbored them for. Lorelei had half a mind to drop him, just to spite her. “Shut up and push.”

Once they got him onto the mara’s back, they picked their way back down the mountain. Sylvia held fast to the mara’s mane with one hand, guiding it on foot. Lorelei walked ahead of her, the enspelled lantern swaying at her side. With the snow reflecting its unearthly light, all the world seemed aglow.

And yet, all she could think of was that scrap of Ziegler’s journal. The rest of it had to be somewhere on the ship. Ludwig wouldn’t have kept one meaningless sheet of paper and destroyed the rest. There would be no point to it.

Maybe, she thought, he wanted me to find it.

And she would, even if she had to tear apart the Prinzessin board by board.

In the distance, she spied a fire burning brightly against the night. Three tents stood sentinel over the camp, made imposing in silhouette. By the time they arrived in the clearing, Johann had emerged from his tent to intercept them. His hand rested on the pommel of his sword, and it seemed he did not know who to look at first: Sylvia, in her tattered, bloodstained jacket; Lorelei, sporting a collar of bruises; or Ludwig, unconscious and hanging off a deadly horse like a rag doll.

He looked as though he’d seen a pack of ghosts.

“Don’t just stand there gawking,” Lorelei snapped. “Tend to him.”

The four of them sat around the campfire while they waited for Johann to reemerge, Lorelei and Sylvia on one side, Adelheid and Heike on the other. The flames rose like a solid wall between them, but the hiss and pop of burning wood and sap filled the silence.

After what felt like an eternity, Johann’s tent rustled open.

Sylvia sprang to her feet. “How is he?”

“I’ve given him medication for the pain, but his survival is entirely up to chance.” Johann removed his glasses and rubbed at his bleary eyes. “Either the curse will work its way out of his system, or it will kill him.”

“That is all the esteemed Herr Doktor Johann zu Wittelsbach has to say for himself?” Heike’s tone was as viciously droll as ever. “Incredible.”

“What will you have me do?” He replaced his glasses and leveled her with an impassive stare. “Cutting him open won’t do any good at this point. The roots go deep.”

“I’m sure you’ve done all you can,” Adelheid interjected with a warning look at Heike.

She rolled her eyes. Turning to Lorelei and Sylvia, she asked, “What took you two so long?”

The question was a trap waiting to be sprung. Although Heike spoke with an eerie calm, the days they’d been gone had not been kind to her. Her hair hung limply around her face, as dull as tarnished copper, and her skin was red and chapped with cold. Even Adelheid watched her like she would a wild animal.

Lorelei had been dreading this. The subject of the Ursprung’s location would have to be broached with more delicacy than usually employed.

Sylvia, ever tactful and patient, puffed herself up defensively. “We took a detour to search for the Ursprung.”

Lorelei flinched.

“That is not the plan we agreed on.” Adelheid’s eyes glittered viciously in the firelight. “Your dallying may well cost Ludwig his life.”

So much for delicacy, then.

“And what did you three do while we were gone? Play cards? Walk in circles?” When Adelheid said nothing, Lorelei sneered. “That’s what I thought. We found Ludwig, and we made it to the summit. The Ursprung isn’t here.”

Shock extinguished all of Adelheid’s outrage. For a moment, she stared at Lorelei with her lips parted. She recovered quickly enough, shaking her head. “That’s impossible. All the data we collected led us here.”

“As you said before, our data lead us to a source of magic, not necessarily the source.” As she explained what they had found, Lorelei retrieved her sketchbook from her bag. She sketched what the vision had shown her: an island rising from a vast lake, flanked on either side by two isles. “Do you recognize this place?”

Dread wrote itself across Adelheid’s face. “Unfortunately, yes.”

“Unfortunately?” Sylvia asked.

“That is the lake we call the Little Sea. There are four islands in the center of it. You say you saw a fifth in this vision?”

“I believe it’s what I’ve heard called the Vanishing Isle. It will appear in your Little Sea on the night of the next new moon and disappear again come morning.” Lorelei met her eyes. “You’re certain that’s where it is? We only have one chance at this.”

Adelheid frowned as she studied the drawing. “Yes. It’s a very accurate likeness. I’ve only been once before, but it’s not a sight one forgets easily. All those islands are completely uninhabited.”

Sylvia, evidently unable to resist the promise of danger, perked up. “Why is that?”

“Because the Little Sea is crawling with nixies and shipwrecks. Going there is a death wish.”

Lorelei could not have conjured a worse possible location if she tried. “Oh, perfect. Just perfect.”

Heike laughed. At first, it was soft. But once she got going, she couldn’t stop. She doubled over in full, hiccupping guffaws. “God, you must think we’re stupid.”

Lorelei bristled. “Your point being?”

“Let me make sure I understand this. You somehow managed to make your way through an enchanted forest with no equipment. You conveniently found Ludwig along the way to the summit, where you had a mystical vision of where the Ursprung is. And it just so happens to be on the other side of the country. Is that right?”

When she laid it out like that, it did sound difficult to believe. “That’s correct.”

The sulfuric glint in Heike’s eyes kindled brighter. Lorelei recognized this kind of hateful desperation well by now. In the face of uncertainty and terror, the one thing that could be counted on was the wickedness of a Yeva. “You really have learned how to spin a fairy tale, you snake.”

“Bite your tongue!” Sylvia had drawn herself up, as though she could gain another six inches of height by sheer force of will. Lorelei could not look away from the set of her jaw, the broad line of her shoulders. Sylvia stoked into a righteous fury was something to behold.

“Aw,” Heike cooed. “Did I strike a nerve?”

“Enough.” Adelheid rose to her full height and glared down at Heike. “This behavior is beneath you.”

“You cannot be serious!” Heike had the gall to sound betrayed. “Do you believe her?”

“She has never been to the Little Sea. Even if Sylvia described it perfectly, she could not have drawn it so accurately.”

“What do you suggest?” Johann asked coldly. “We return to him with nothing?”

“Of course not!”

“Or perhaps lie to him?” Johann continued, stalking in a slow circle around her. His fingers twitched toward the handle of his saber. “Present him with this fake Albisch spring?”

Heike’s eyes went round with feigned hurt. “Heavens, no. I’m not suggesting we do anything seditious .” Her voice hardened. “Now, are you going to get your hand off your sword, or will I have to make your handler command you?”

His lip curled, but he retreated a few paces away from the fire. Even Adelheid regarded her warily. “This is for the greater good, Heike. It is worth the risk.”

“Right. The greater good. Our promise. His stupid dream!” The bitterness sharpened with every word. Then, she drew in a shuddering breath and wrapped her arms around herself. For a moment, Lorelei almost believed her sadness was real. Almost.

“I’m so tired of this,” Heike murmured. “Haven’t we done enough? We can try again, can’t we? I just want to go home. Don’t you want to go home, Addie?”

“Home.” Adelheid’s eyes fluttered closed. Lorelei could feel the turn of her thoughts as if they were her own. Blood in the soil. Smoke in the air. The healing, tender fields trampled under soldiers’ boots once again. “And if Wilhelm cannot maintain power while we prepare to set out again? Where will my home be at the end of that?”

Heike clasped Adelheid’s wrist and pulled her hand into her lap. “With me.”

Adelheid pulled her hand from Heike’s. When she spoke again, it was with a terrible chill. “Sometimes, you sound just like him.”

Heike blinked back unshed tears. Just as quickly as she’d put on airs of plaintive desperation, she tossed them aside. A manipulator to the end. “And if we press forward, another one of us will die!”

Lorelei almost laughed. Was that a promise?

Adelheid composed herself into perfect neutrality once more. With her hair shining golden in the soft moonlight and her broad shoulders determinedly set, she looked like a statue of a warrior-queen stirred to life. “It is your decision, Lorelei.”

Lorelei swept her gaze over the group. The firelight cast their faces in harsh shadow, and their haunted eyes were locked on her. She felt as though they were standing in the middle of a lake in midwinter. The ice beneath their feet was crackling, and she didn’t know how the fault lines would divide them. All she knew for certain was that all of them would be pitted against one another until the bitter end.

“We’ve come this far and lost too much to give up now.” She prayed she sounded more assured than she felt. Through the delicate scrollwork of branches, the narrowed eye of the waning moon glared down at them. “We will give him the Ursprung, or we will give him nothing. We’ve no time to waste.”