Chapter Three

Three

Darkness settled heavy between the walls of the Yevanverte.

Lorelei sat on the roof of her parents’ house, nursing a cup of coffee. Sleep eluded her so often, it had become something of a habit at this point: to keep watch as the moon poured its light over the single narrow street she called home. The coffee had dulled the sharpest edges of her headache—although it had done nothing at all for her fraying nerves. In no more than an hour, she would board a ship and leave this city for the first time in her life.

She had wanted this. That was the worst part about it. She had wanted this so desperately, yet she couldn’t find a shred of happiness.

Yevanisch viper.

She’d never regretted her reputation before. It made her life easier to encourage what they said about her. No one bothered her when they knew how sharp her tongue was. Few were openly hostile to her when there were rumors—false, regrettably—of how she had the power to tear a man’s blood from his veins. For so long, she’d believed her thorns would protect her. That if she spoke their language and rose in their ranks, she would be safe, maybe even accepted. How na?ve she’d been.

Yevanisch thief.

With shaking hands, she took a gulp of coffee. It sat like venom on her tongue. Before she could think better of it, she dashed her mug on the ground. It rang out, brittle and harsh against her nerves. Somewhere down the street, a dog howled. Lorelei squeezed her eyes shut and blew out a breath. She needed to…Well, first she needed to clean up this mess and dispose of the evidence. After that, she needed to compose herself. Someone would be arriving at any moment to escort her to the harbor.

And yet, she could not let it go.

Why had Ziegler done this to her? Her dreams realized suddenly felt like a terrible curse, indeed. She’d transcribed enough folktales to know that happy endings were for girls like Sylvia. Ones in pretty stories about peasant girls who kiss frog-princes, whose tree-mothers give them slippers embroidered with moonlight, who defeat their most wicked tormentors with wit and sweetness and grace. Then, there were stories for girls like Lorelei. The worst of them went like this.

Back in the days when wishes still held power, there was a boy, the most loyal and clever of his master’s servants, who met an elf in the woods. In exchange for the three ducats the boy had saved, the elf gave him a fiddle that compelled anyone who heard it to dance, a blowpipe that never missed its mark, and the power to be granted any favor he asked. Later that day, the servant stumbled upon a Yeva admiring a bird perched above a bramble thicket, its feathers as vibrant as flame, as brilliant as diamond.

If only I had a voice so beautiful, the Yeva sighed. If only I had a coat so fine.

If that’s truly all you want, said the servant, why don’t you go and get it?

He shot the bird with his blowpipe. Just as the Yeva crawled into the brambles to fetch her prize, the servant said, You have bled people dry long enough. Now the thicket shall do the same to you.

He began to play his fiddle. Ensorcelled by its magic, the Yeva danced among the thorns until her blood painted the thicket red, until she offered her entire purse of gold in exchange for mercy. But as soon as the servant took her money and freed her from the enchantment, she coldly plotted her vengeance. She went to the nearest town and prostrated herself before the judge.

Oh, anguish! she cried. I have been attacked. My skin is cut to ribbons, my clothes are in tatters, and what precious little I own has been stolen from me.

When the judge had the servant brought before him, the servant protested that the Yeva gave him her gold of her own free will.

You must think me daft, replied the judge. No Yeva would ever do such a thing.

As the servant was led to the executioner’s block, he asked for his dying wish to be granted: to play his fiddle one more time. Despite the Yeva’s protests, the judge, compelled by the elf’s magic, granted him his last request. As the clever servant struck up a tune, the entire town began to tremble like water in a struck glass. As the servant’s song soared higher, they danced, whirling and leaping like marionettes, until they were breathless, until the judge offered the servant his life in exchange for mercy. The servant accepted the bargain—on the condition that the Yeva tell the judge where she got her purse of gold.

I stole it, the Yeva said, while you have honestly earned it.

And with that, she was hanged as a thief.

Lorelei almost admired the cruel, stark justice of those fairy-tale worlds. There was good, and there was evil. Those who were rewarded and those who were punished. But she would never be the pitiable girl in the blood-red cape or the golden-haired orphan who charms a prince with her fragile beauty. She would always be the goblin forcing maidens to spin straw into gold. She would always be the Yeva in thorns.

The moment she let down her guard, everything she’d fought for would be taken from her. This place had made Lorelei into a viper, and if she should go down, she would go down hissing like one. Until that day when they inevitably turned on her, she would guard what was hers, no matter who she had to bring down with her.

“Lorelei?”

She nearly fell off the roof from shock. When she opened her eyes, there was Sylvia, peering up at her from outside the front door.

She looked more like herself than she had at the ball. Her hair was incorrigibly wild as ever, but she’d traded her gown for a loose linen shirt tucked into trousers. She wore no cravat, no waistcoat, not even a jacket. But, of course, her saber was strapped to her hip. The basket handle was a coil of serpents engraved in a fine filigree pattern. The blade gleamed in the dark, as sleek and pale as a blade of moonlight—and just as impractical, too. It was made of pure silver. Effective against the wildeleute, perhaps, but it was virtually useless against any human opponent’s steel.

Lorelei reminded herself to stop staring, but her mind refused to process it. Sylvia von Wolff, here, witnessing the bare facts of her life. She wanted to throw herself from the roof and tear the protective scroll from the doorpost. She wanted to set her father’s starveling herb garden aflame.

“What,” she hissed, “are you doing here?”

Sylvia glanced over her shoulder, as though Lorelei must have addressed someone else so rudely. “I’ve come to return the favor of fetching you.” She paused, and a smile tugged at the corner of her lips. “Although I confess, I didn’t expect I’d have to scale a wall to do it.”

Lorelei glared at her. How anyone could be in such a jolly mood at this hour was beyond her. She’d expected Ludwig, maybe even Adelheid, to be saddled with the burden of fetching her. Really, she resented that it had to be anyone at all. By law, all Yevani had to be within the gates of the Yevanverte between sundown and sunrise, unless accompanied by a citizen of Brunnestaad.

“Keep your voice down—and don’t climb anything, for God’s sake. I will be…” She trailed off. Sylvia was already climbing the rickety old trellis. With any luck, it would collapse beneath her. “…with you in a moment.”

Lorelei considered the wreckage of her mug and decided, for expediency’s sake, to sweep the shards into a neat pile. As long as Sylvia—and her mother—did not see it, no harm done.

Sylvia swung herself onto the roof and settled beside Lorelei. She gazed out over the Yevanverte, with its haphazardly stacked houses and cramped alleyways. Lorelei expected pity or disgust. But Sylvia only smiled softly and said, “What a lovely view you have.”

She tried not to let her surprise show. Lorelei could see little of note from here, apart from the wall—and an occasional glimpse into her neighbors’ windows, which was not what she would call lovely . She didn’t have any polite responses for her, so she held her silence. The starlight found Sylvia, even in a place like this. She had an infuriating knack for looking utterly at home or at peace anywhere she went.

“So, did you draw the short straw, or have you come on Ziegler’s orders?” Lorelei asked.

“Actually, I volunteered.”

“And why would you do that?”

Sylvia had the nerve to look offended. “I wanted to congratulate you. You ran off before I got the chance.”

“I did not run off .”

Sylvia gave her a meaningful look, which Lorelei decided to ignore. In all fairness, she had hidden on a balcony until Ludwig coaxed her into his carriage at the end of the night, but she would not concede the point.

“Congratulations, then.”

Lorelei braced herself for a caveat or a challenge, but none came. Very suspiciously, she said, “Thank you.”

“You worked hard for it,” Sylvia continued. “I confess, you inspired me to push myself, even—”

“Flattery, von Wolff?”

“No!” she protested. “I do mean it. Truly.”

Lorelei averted her eyes. “I find myself skeptical that you’d need any encouragement to push yourself. You’re relentless.”

Sylvia smiled uncertainly at her. “I will choose to take that as a compliment.”

“As you like,” Lorelei said, feeling oddly flustered. “That’s really why you came? To exchange pleasantries?”

Sylvia hesitated. “No, I suppose it isn’t.”

Of course not. Lorelei hated that she felt even a pang of disappointment. She never should have expected anything different. “Out with it, then.”

Sylvia cast a fretful look at the edge of the roof. “Perhaps we should get moving first. I will meet you outside.”

“Oh,” Lorelei said darkly, “this should be good.”

With that, she climbed back through her bedroom window. A candle still burned low on her writing desk, the flame whispering just above a pool of wax. By its guttering light, Lorelei collected her traveling cases. Her family would have wanted her to wake them, but it was far easier to vanish. She could stomach neither tears nor the prospect of her two worlds colliding.

Sylvia leapt to attention as soon as Lorelei shut the front door behind her.

“Allow me.” Before Lorelei could protest, Sylvia snatched one of her traveling cases from her hands. She made a surprised little sound as she hefted it. “Saints, Lorelei, this is heavy! What have you got in here?”

“Nothing,” Lorelei snapped automatically. “Put that down at once.”

“Why?” Sylvia looked alarmed. “Is it something dangerous?”

“Of course not.” Lorelei paused, pretending to consider it. “Just don’t make any sudden movements.”

She did not like to be separated from her valuables: a set of ivory-handled pens her mother had gotten her for her eighteenth birthday; a collection of leather-bound notebooks filled with her folktale transcriptions and illustrations; a sedative in the strongest dose Johann was willing to compound for her; and her battered copy of Tales of the Tropics, the one sentimental indulgence she allowed herself.

As a child, she had run wild through the streets of the Yevanverte. She’d collected vials of water from the river for study, stuffed her pockets full of clippings from the neighbors’ gardens. She’d collected insects, tucking beetles into her mouth for safekeeping—until one had secreted acid onto her tongue and put an end to that. She had sat on the roof and watched ships in the harbor, a black forest of masts and sails bobbing and shifting in the wind. She’d driven her parents mad filling the house with her collections, until one day, her father came home with a book: Tales of the Tropics by Ingrid Ziegler. A book, he said, written by the most famous woman in Brunnestaad.

She had lain awake deep into the night, devouring every word until the candle went out, puddled on her windowsill. It painted a picture so exquisite, she’d wept from longing. Now, having read Ziegler’s later works, Lorelei knew it was a piece of juvenilia. But that book had cracked her world open like an egg. It was a place full of wonder, of adventure. And for the first time, her yearning had a name: naturalism. That far-off dream contented her at first. But as she grew older, she realized that girls from the Yevanverte didn’t get to leave it.

She had no money to buy equipment. No influence to persuade anyone to finance an expedition. No legal documents that would allow her to travel. It had been an impossible dream until Ziegler answered her silly, girlish letter. Training as a folklorist had been her ticket into the university. But without the king’s favor, come graduation, she would be cast out of this world again. She would be nothing and no one.

Sylvia adjusted the case in her arms very carefully. Then she set off down the street. Lorelei took one long stride forward and fell into step with her. They followed the narrow street to the northern gate, a rotting wooden door set into a low archway. The stone walls enclosing the Yevanverte were unadorned and overgrown with moss. They reminded Lorelei of gravestones slumped together. Sylvia set down Lorelei’s trunk just long enough to unlatch the gate and let them through. Lorelei breathed in the damp air, marveling at the silence. The storefronts lay dark, the construction sites empty. At this hour, the city still dreamed.

It never failed to strike her just how simple it was to leave. There were no guards, no complicated locks or wards, no dogs primed to chase them down. No one who lived here would willingly walk into the dangers outside these walls, and no one in Ruhigburg particularly cared if anyone snuck in.

They certainly did not care what happened once they did.

Lorelei closed her fist around that familiar rush of anger. “So. What is it you wanted?”

“Right.” Sylvia sighed fretfully. “I have come to ask you to reconsider accepting the position. I worry that Ziegler’s decision was shortsighted.”

Lorelei stiffened. “Is that so?”

“Please, listen before you immolate me,” Sylvia protested. “Wilhelm is in over his head. In title, he is a king, but at heart, he is a soldier. He has a brilliant mind for strategy but no stomach for policy. He has done what his father set out to do, but he has no real vision from here.

“His ancestral lands are small and sparsely populated. The administrative burden of acquiring so much land in such a short period of time is—well, I shall not bore you with the finer points of governance. What matters is that there has been a great deal of upheaval over the past few decades, and it is the common people who pay the price.”

“Yes, yes, I understand your point,” Lorelei said impatiently. She was admittedly surprised to find she hadn’t disagreed with Sylvia outright—and that Sylvia spared a thought for commoners beyond an abstract sense of duty. “Where are you going with this?”

A small measure of relief softened Sylvia’s expression. Pressing her advantage, she went on. “Wilhelm is ill-prepared to rule during peacetime. I, however, have prepared my whole life to manage a vast territory. After the success of the expedition, I’d intended to ask to be appointed to his retinue.”

Now Lorelei saw the shape of it. Sylvia’s bruised ego was masquerading as noblesse oblige. And yet, the passion in her voice…She spoke as though she believed every word. In the end, that was what rankled Lorelei the most. What did Sylvia of all people have to prove? She and Wilhelm were friends—and there were other methods a noblewoman could employ to ensure her place in court.

“You will be. Perhaps you’ll be heartened to know that the Ursprung isn’t in Sorvig. He may marry you yet.”

Sylvia sighed exasperatedly. “I have no interest in marrying Wilhelm.”

“No? You already bicker as if you’re wed.”

“Healthy rivalry is, by his own philosophy, the instrument of progress.”

“Is that right?” Lorelei asked dryly.

“It’s different when it’s between equals,” she huffed. “Wilhelm needs to be challenged. But you slink and scrape for him like a beaten hound, just as you do for Ziegler. How can you ever hope to be of use to him that way?”

Her words struck like a slap to the face. So that was it. Sylvia didn’t think Lorelei deserved it. Perhaps she did not have a grasp on the finer points of governance, but Wilhelm had a veritable army of advisers to steer him true. Perhaps she was not bold enough to challenge him, but Sylvia would never understand what it meant to make yourself less than you were. If she had nothing else, she would always have her name—and all her stupid pride.

There was nothing else to do. Lorelei laughed. By now, she knew it was not a pleasant sound, low and what Heike had once described as sinister . A shiver, barely perceptible, passed through Sylvia.

“What’s so funny?” Sylvia asked, clearly distressed.

What’s funny is that you’ve been given everything , and you can’t even see it. It would be so simple to say it, to watch Sylvia’s temper go up like a wildfire. But for once, Lorelei found she had no will to pick a fight—at least not at five in the morning.

Instead, she said, “Why, nothing at all,” and contented herself with Sylvia’s visible disappointment.

When they arrived at the harbor, the riverboat loomed above them: a three-tiered monstrosity carving a black silhouette into the mist seething at the waterline. The vessel’s name was painted on a placard above the paddle wheel in decisive crimson lines: Prinzessin. Beneath it was the motto of Ruhigburg University: amoenitate veritas . In beauty, truth. It took every ounce of Lorelei’s strength not to roll her eyes.

Moments after they boarded, a footman materialized to take Lorelei’s trunk from Sylvia. Sailors bustled around them, loading the last of their supplies into the boat. It boggled the mind, just how much stuff they had. There were barometers and thermometers, microscopes and telescopes, sextants and compasses, vials for seeds and soil, all of them tucked into velvet-lined boxes. Someone’s poor footman was struggling with a stack of them. They teetered dangerously in his arms. A scroll of paper fell off the top and went sprawling across the docks, unraveling like the long train of a wedding gown.

“Be careful,” Lorelei snapped. “Those instruments are worth more than your life.”

It was hardly an exaggeration. If any of them broke, they couldn’t afford to fix them, with the expedition’s limited funding. The footman gave her an anguished look. “Yes, sir! Sorry, sir!”

“You cannot hope to win respect through fear,” Sylvia chided. “A good leader—”

“Surely you have something more important to do than follow me around.”

“Why, yes,” Sylvia said, as if it had just dawned on her. “I should finish setting up the wards.”

And with that, Lorelei was blissfully alone.

Ash curled from smokestacks as if from the mouth of a pipe, twinkling orange against the dark stretch of sky. The cinders rained softly onto the deck and tangled in Lorelei’s curls like snowfall. It made her feel ill at ease, inhaling the smell of burning wood mixing with the damp, silty smell of the river. Most smaller ships these days were propelled by magic—and for good reason. Steam engines were the most efficient and least expensive form of travel, but their boilers often burst from the pressure. She didn’t care to think of how many ships lay sleeping beneath the void-like depths of the river. Their budget, however, hadn’t allowed for a crew large enough to propel the ship with magic, and Ziegler did not have the patience to accommodate rest stops.

“Lorelei!”

Lorelei glanced up to see Ludwig, the expedition’s botanist, waving at her—and leaning out over the railing of the promenade deck two stories above her. Her stomach bottomed out at the sight of him.

“Be careful, you dolt,” she called. “I’ll be right there.”

By the time she reached him, he’d perched himself more comfortably on the railing. He flashed her a sly smile. “Hello, Captain.”

Lorelei grimaced. “Hello.”

Ludwig von Meyer was the only one of the Ruhigburg Five who treated her cordially. After he’d returned from his most recent expedition, he talked to her persistently enough that she’d been forced to concede they were friends. They’d spent hours holed up in the warren of offices in the natural sciences department, turning their haphazard notes into something resembling manuscripts—and, of course, trading gossip. The amount of knowledge he’d compiled on both aetheric plants and who was courting whom on campus frightened her.

He was a delicate sprite of a man with foxlike features, a placid smile permanently affixed to his face, and brown hair she’d once heard a moony classmate describe as artfully tousled. Today, he wore a green cravat and a silk waistcoat hand-painted with a pink-and-yellow water lily motif. Rings glittered on all his fingers, and a fat sapphire dangled from one earlobe. Even on an expedition, it seemed, he could not abandon his pretensions.

“Well?” he asked. “Are you excited?”

“Are you ?”

“Of course I am.” Mischief glittered in his eyes. “I get to spend time with my dearest, oldest friends. What more could I want in this life?”

She scoffed. “A great deal, I imagine. Surely you will miss…what is his name again? Hans? Or have your irreconcilable differences reared their heads once again?”

“Oh, come now,” he chided. He’d conspicuously ignored her barb. “They’re not so bad once they warm up to you. Half the stories about them aren’t even true.”

Lorelei bristled. He meant well, she knew, but she resented the reminder that she was and always would be an outsider. “And how long did it take for them to warm up to you?”

Ludwig, after all, hadn’t a drop of noble blood in his veins. His father had earned a small fortune as a merchant, and with it, he purchased himself a title and made generous donations to Friedrich’s war efforts. His loyalty had landed him a place in court—and his son a friendship with the crown prince. Still, Lorelei couldn’t imagine they’d ever treated him as an equal.

If she’d offended him, it didn’t show. His placid smile remained fixed in place. “Some advice, Lorelei? Keep them wrong-footed enough to forget why they hated you in the first place. You might try being nice for a change.”

“Thank you for your wise counsel,” she said witheringly.

“Anytime,” he said breezily. “Why not practice now? We’re going to be stuck on a boat together for God knows how long, and you know I don’t like to get in the middle of things, but you and Sylvia…”

“Oh, spare me. Does meddling ever get exhausting?”

“Never,” he said. “You know, I hear she likes the tall and gloomy type.”

Lorelei choked on her own saliva. Pounding on her chest, she barely managed to splutter, “You’re disgusting. I’m leaving.”

He laughed into his sleeve as though covering a sneeze. It was the one weakness she’d ever been able to find in him: an insecurity about the gap between his front teeth. “I’ll see you at the meeting. It should be fun.”

Ziegler had asked them all to meet at seven—fifteen minutes from now—to go over some logistics and to finally share where they were headed.

“Until then.”

Lorelei made her way to the stern of the ship, watching as they pulled away from the docks. The spokes of the paddle wheel restlessly churned the water into froth, and the engine whirred. Past the prow cutting up the water, she swore she could see pale faces—nixies or the ghosts of the drowned—staring up at her. Her stomach turning, Lorelei fixed her gaze on the horizon.

Bit by bit, the city slipped by and the world outside its walls unfolded before her. The wind carded through her hair and sent her coattails billowing. No joy swelled within her at the landscape before her, no awe. Until they left Neide province behind—assuming they were leaving it behind at all—there would be little to see but meadows and marshes. The kingdom seemed to her nothing but a vast, bleak expanse of mud.

Nothing was going as she dreamed it would.

A low caw pulled her from her thoughts. Lorelei glanced over, then quickly averted her eyes with a muffled swear. A nachtkrapp perched on the rail, preening its sharp black feathers. It looked harmless enough, nearly identical to a common raven, but Lorelei knew better.

It was a bad omen.

A few years ago, Ziegler had acquired a specimen to stuff and mount in her office. Lorelei had helped her prepare it. When she’d pinned back its serrated wings on her worktable, it revealed the red eyes set into each wing like fat rubies in the black velvet of a jewelry box. The luckiest who met those horrible eyes were struck dead immediately. The less fortunate suffered a wasting sickness that rotted them slowly from the inside out.

Lorelei shooed it, but it only hopped a few paces down the railing and ruffled its feathers indignantly. It occurred to her that Sylvia would likely have some elegant way of getting rid of it. The thought darkened her mood even more.

“Begone, damn you!” She waved her arms more insistently.

The nachtkrapp let out a deafening scraw before taking flight. Lorelei slumped bonelessly against the railing, grateful no one else had witnessed her humiliation.

“Well done,” said Adelheid.

Lorelei startled at the sound of her voice. Adelheid sat on the deck a few meters away from her, seemingly engrossed in whatever she was doing. With mechanical precision, she measured out long coils of wire and snipped them with a pair of iron scissors. In her wide, steady hands, the blades looked almost fragile. Up close, Lorelei could see the sunburn dusting the bridge of her nose and the premature creases on her forehead and around her eyes.

“How long have you been there?” Lorelei asked.

“Long enough.” Adelheid began to twist the wires together in a complicated-looking pattern. “I was just setting up my equipment. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

Her tone was so polite, it verged on cold. She still had not looked up from her work. Over months of working with her, Lorelei had noticed that she spoke to everyone with the same meted-out distance. She’d chosen not to take Adelheid’s indifference personally. Adelheid worked hard and did not suffer nonsense. Lorelei could respect that.

“What are the wires for?” she asked.

Adelheid raised her eyebrows. “I did not realize you had any interest in thaumatology.”

Lorelei heard the unspoken insult: how surprising that a Yeva would have any interest in magic. She smiled thinly. “Everything that happens on this ship is of interest to me.”

“Of course.” At last, Adelheid raised her dull green eyes to Lorelei’s. “Congratulations are in order.”

Lorelei sensed she was being mocked. Drawing herself up taller, she said, “Whatever it is you’re doing, wrap it up. They’re expecting us.”

Displeasure twitched at the corner of Adelheid’s lips, but she collected her things. Clearly, she did not appreciate being told what to do.

They made their way to the door of the expedition crew’s quarters—one accessible only by magic, thanks to the needlessly complex aetheric lock. Only someone as paranoid as Ziegler could have contrived such a method of torture. Adelheid closed her eyes, her brow furrowed in concentration as she manipulated the water within the mechanism. Her mouth twitched with irritation as she struggled with it. Then, at last, it gave way.

No one would be interfering with their work—or stealing it.

A hallway stretched out before them. The Prinzessin was something pulled from Lorelei’s nightmares, which was to say, tasteless and excessive. But upon closer inspection, it was terribly worn. The delicate splinters in the woodwork, the uneven seams in the damask wallpaper, the way the tiles of marble on the floor fit together like crooked teeth. It was a splendor she could slide her fingers beneath, like a loose tile or a strip of rain-swollen bark. Some superstitious part of her feared what rot she’d find if she peeled it back.

A row of chandeliers illuminated their path, their crystals scattering light onto the floor like handfuls of broken glass. Lorelei led them briskly past their bedrooms and through the double doors to what they’d taken to calling the war room.

Its centerpiece was a massive table, a polished cross section of some ancient redwood imported from across the ocean. Sunlight fell over it in latticed patterns, let in by the narrow windows. The air smelled faintly of chamomile and ginger. Ludwig and Sylvia’s doing, she assumed. The two of them were flitting about busily—and bickering, by the looks of it. Sylvia was gesticulating with a teaspoon.

Heike sat with her head resting on the table. Johann was slumped disconcertingly in his chair. His glasses had slid down the bridge of his nose and settled at a jaunty angle, but he made no effort to adjust them.

Lorelei refrained from commenting as she took her seat at the head of the table. Unfortunately, it happened to be right next to one of Ziegler’s favorite pets, an elwedritsche she had taken during her very first expedition. It sat preening on its perch, a fowl-like creature with the horns of a goat and the iridescent scales of a serpent. It cocked its head and regarded Lorelei with one beady yellow eye. “Hello. Good girl?”

No, she wanted to reply. Demonic beast.

Johann startled at the sound of its voice, glaring at it with a mixture of horror and disgust. His hand twitched toward the sword on his belt.

On this one point, they were agreed.

Adelheid pinched the bridge of her nose as she drank in the scene before them. “What is this?”

Ludwig poured boiling water into a teacup. “They’re dying, I’m afraid.”

“Johann is seasick,” Sylvia said exasperatedly.

Adelheid glanced at Heike. “And her?”

“Also seasick,” Heike said, at the same time Ludwig said, “Hungover.”

Heike lifted her head to glare at him but accepted the cup of tea he set in front of her. After taking a sip, she flashed a sly smile at Adelheid. “It was a long night.”

Adelheid looked deeply unimpressed, but the faintest shade of red dusted her cheeks. Lorelei resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

It was the first time they’d all been together without the weight of planning bearing down on them. The folklorist, the naturalist, the botanist, the medic, the thaumatologist, and the astronomer. It sounded like the setup of an elaborate fairy tale—or else a terrible joke.

The doors flung open, and in walked Ziegler. “Good. You’re all here.”

Today, she wore a simple black coat, but her collar frothed with layers upon layers of lace ruffles. It was ostentatious, Javenish in sensibility, and quintessentially Ziegler. The thought almost made Lorelei smile.

Ziegler took stock of them, her hands planted on her hips. “You’re suspiciously quiet. Is something the matter?”

“We’re only eager to begin,” said Sylvia, clearly trying to muster enough cheer for all six of them.

“As am I!” Ziegler clapped her hands together. “Lorelei, why don’t you start us off?”

Every eye in the room snapped to her, all of them but Ludwig’s burning with suspicion or hostility. Heat clawed its way up her neck. She had not prepared for this, but if she showed even a glimmer of weakness, they would never take her seriously.

Slowly, Lorelei stood. “I want to begin by thanking each of you for your work these past few years. Each of you has contributed a piece of the greater whole and made this expedition possible.

“As you know, I have spent the last year developing a categorization system for various Ursprung types.” She surveyed the room. “Ludwig, your notes on the distribution of plant species across Brunnestaad have proven invaluable, as have Adelheid’s measurements of where aether is concentrated in our water system.”

Lorelei’s gaze landed on Sylvia. As civilly as she could, she said, “And your interactions with the wildeleute, von Wolff, have provided much-needed color.”

Sylvia looked ready to argue, but Ludwig laid a hand over hers.

“This expedition was King Wilhelm’s idea, of course, but it has far more important scientific value than he imagined or intended. Over the course of her long and storied career, Professor Ziegler has been working toward a radical new idea of the natural world. Everything is connected, and nothing can be considered in isolation. As she wrote in the first installment of Kosmos: ‘Every plant, every human, every wildeleute, every drop of water, is a thread. Together, they make up the great tapestry of life. If even one stitch is pulled loose, the whole thing will unravel.’?”

She glanced at Ziegler from the corner of her eye. The professor was beaming with something like pride. Emboldened, Lorelei continued, “Magic exists in everything, and all of it points directly to its source.”

At last, Sylvia broke her silence. “Where is it?”

“I am so glad you asked,” Lorelei replied flatly. “Heike?”

Heike looked irked, but she did not argue as she hefted a scroll onto the table. She unfastened the knot binding it shut, then carefully unrolled it. Her delicate fingers were ink-stained and glittering with rings as she smoothed the parchment out, and they were trembling. She gazed down at her handiwork with something like regret.

It was a painstakingly illustrated map of Brunnestaad—and a work of art. Their young kingdom was vast and wheel-shaped, cradled between two mountain ranges and bisected vertically by the River Vereist. Heike had rendered it in shimmering black ink, with its vast network of tributaries frittering off in shades of pale blue.

In the center was the province of Neide, the drab, waterlogged seat of the kingdom. Heike had sketched it with as little effort as possible. Wilhelm’s gaudy palace, the university, and Ludwig’s properties—a charming townhouse in downtown Ruhigburg and his country estate, both doodled with absent fondness, as though her hand had traced the shape of them many times before—were the only landmarks she had bothered to fill in.

To the west was Herzin, its jagged borders like a weapon in the right hand of the capital. Dark, treacherous forests covered almost the entirety of it; eyes blinked out of a tangle of briars. To the north was Heike’s homeland of Sorvig, a thin strip of land reaching out almost longingly across the sea to their northern neighbor, Gansland. In the water, Lorelei spied a lindworm slipping beneath the waves, curling sinuously around the ships bobbing in the bay.

The easternmost province of Ebul, which was often relegated to an afterthought on most maps, was rendered here in loving detail. She had carefully penciled in the fields of tulips it had once been known for, long before the Wars of Unification, and the fertile valleys and vineyards. All the lines were hazy and soft, more a memory of a place than a depiction of one. Last, spanning almost the entirety of the south, was Albe in bold, angry lines. Between mountain ranges and dark swatches of woods, castles jutted from the countryside like rib bones pushing up through carrion.

The detail—and the feeling behind it all—astounded Lorelei. She was still admiring it when Ziegler jammed a pin directly into the map. It marked a spot somewhere in the frost-backed chain of mountains on the kingdom’s southern border.

“It’s in Albe,” Ziegler said.

Albe? Lorelei frowned, unable to keep the confusion off her face. Based on her own research, that was among the last places she would have placed it.

Heike and Adelheid exchanged a look across the table. Sylvia’s expression, meanwhile, was frozen in horror. She darted her gaze wildly about, as if searching for some salvation, some escape. “That can’t be right.”

“Agreed.” Johann’s voice was tight with barely restrained fury. “I refuse to believe the Ursprung is in some backward—”

Sylvia rounded on him. “Bite your tongue!”

“Johann,” Adelheid said warningly.

“Oh, but it is,” Ziegler said, a little peevishly. “Lorelei had made her case quite clearly.”

Her case? She had only been introducing Ziegler’s methodology, but both of them took the bait. Johann turned his glare on Lorelei. Sylvia had the nerve to look betrayed.

I didn’t know, you fool, she wanted to say.

Then she remembered she’d mocked Sylvia only hours before. Perhaps you’ll be heartened to know that the Ursprung isn’t in Sorvig. He may marry you yet.

“Upon reflection, I suppose it makes sense.” Sylvia laughed, an airy, forced sound if Lorelei had ever heard one. “The von Wolff line boasts some of the most talented magic users in the kingdom. The proximity to the Ursprung must explain it. Now, if you’ll excuse me for just a moment.”

With that, she fled the room. Lorelei wanted to find her dramatics ridiculous, but the words that can’t be right rang incessantly in her skull. Hadn’t Lorelei thought the same?

“How can you all sit idly by?” Johann slammed his palm flat on the table. “Yevani commanding the nobility—and soon we’ll have an Albisch queen! What next? What will be left for us? Wilhelm is leading this kingdom into degeneracy.”

Heike looked positively delighted by his outburst. “Why don’t you write to him? Your frothing rants are always so compelling.”

Johann rose unsteadily to his feet. As he stalked out of the war room, he muttered, “This is a farce.”

“And why,” Adelheid asked flatly, “did you think provoking him was wise?”

“Oh, relax,” Heike cooed. “It’s good for the two of them to be humbled every now and again. It builds resilience.”

Adelheid stared at her with exasperated disbelief. “Fine. I will deal with them myself.”

When she left, the doors slammed shut behind her. After a few moments of silence, Heike and Ludwig looked at each other, clearly doing their very best not to burst out laughing.

“Good girl?” Ziegler’s infernal bird chirped.

Lorelei placed her head on the table. No more than two hours in the field, and already she had completely lost control of the expedition.