Thirty-Nine The Serpent and the Stars

THIRTY-NINE

The Serpent and the Stars

MARY

B y midnight, the halls were quiet. Tane and I waited, poised at my door as the last footsteps of a guard on their rounds faded and silence reigned.

Are you ready? I asked Tane in the quiet of our mind.

In response, a wash of traitorous indigo light rushed down my hands and into the door, which promptly swung open and almost struck me in the face.

Two figures peered inside. Halfway through grabbing a chair to brandish—tottering dubiously as I did—I froze.

"Olsa?" I croaked. My eyes darted between the two. "Illya?"

"Hello, Mary." Olsa gave the room a practical sweep, naked sword in hand. They both looked whole, if tired, Olsa with her blond hair raked into a practical tuft and Illya… well, Illya frequently looked as if he'd just walked out of a storm, so today was no different.

"You are alone?" Olsa asked.

"Yes," I said, perplexed. "What—How did you know I'm here? I asked about you, but…"

Illya lifted the chair from my hands and looked me over. "What happened to you?"

I was reminded I was still in my infirmary shift and a bandage, and, though I was by no means prudish, I was without even stays.

"I was shot in the leg, and they took my clothes."

Illya tsk ed and put an arm around me. He doubtless intended only to hold me up, but my frayed nerves sensed an embrace. Before I knew what I was doing, I'd wrapped my arms tightly around his neck. A sob stuck in my throat.

Illya hugged me back, firm and warm, and patted my back with the ease of a veteran father. He, at least, was unbothered by my state of undress.

"Olsa saw you arrive," he explained, putting a more practical arm around my shoulders. "So we decided it was time to make our escape."

"That's fortunate." I squinted between the two of them, still in denial of my tears. "I was just about to leave too."

Olsa smiled, warm but distracted. "I know. But other Sooths may too. We must hurry."

I nodded but held up a hand. "The High Cleric said they could heal Samuel. Can we risk speaking to them? Searching their library?"

"I did try." Olsa gave me a tight, apologetic look. "I knew of Samuel's hope for a cure. We have discussed it many times. I found a book on the topic last week while attempting to recover the papers Jessin Faucher gave us. They were seized when the ship was taken."

"The papers?" I repeated, momentarily at a loss for what she was talking about and why they mattered. "Did you recover them? Where is the book?"

"Not the time for this," Illya broke in.

"The papers were in locked in an office—a very well-guarded one. We nearly escaped with the book on corrupted mages, though. That I found in the library."

"Now the book is gone, you are here, and time is running away," Illya cut in. "Let us go ."

I grasped at one last hope. "Can we take the Cleric then?"

"That is too great a risk," Olsa said firmly.

The need to protest assailed me, but I knew she was right. Just because the Cleric had been relatively kind did not mean they would come easily, and they seemed to be involved with Enisca.

That left me feeling ill and disheartened, and my strength abandoned me. The importance of Faucher's papers was still vague to me, and our lives, I thought, simpler without them—however much Samuel might disagree.

But Samuel's cure was another matter entirely.

"Then there's no hope for him," I summarized, overwhelmed.

"Only if we are dead," Olsa said.

"Fine," I managed, walling off my fears. "But there's a man two doors down, he must come with us. He has a way out."

Olsa hesitated—evidently, she had not foreseen that—but only for a moment. She nodded and we set off, I limping but determined.

A stolen key in the lock of Maren's door and there he was, dressed in coat and hat with a heavy-laden satchel over one shoulder. His eyes went round when he saw my companions, but he joined us without a word.

I held up my wrist and its manacle meaningfully. Maren produced a key and clicked it in, pulling the manacle away from my reddened skin with gentle maneuvering.

My power rushed back in, and I sighed in relief.

"Also, you must take this." Maren held out two talismans on a single fine, golden chain.

"Against Sooth and Magni," the Mereish man explained and reached under his own collar to tug out its mirror image. He glanced at the Uknaras. "I did not expect company, but I will secure you talismans before we leave. Many of the guards are Magni—we must be prepared."

We set off. I was exhilarated, nervous and determined—a heady concoction that only faltered a little as we passed more and more locked doors. Every one of them marked another possible prisoner, another mage like us locked away and awaiting Saint knew what.

If we try to save them all, none of us will escape , Tane reminded me, giving voice to my own pragmatic side.

Samuel would probably try , I remarked, the thought of him compounding my guilt. Furthermore, if our roles were reversed, would he leave without a cure for me in hand?

How fortunate he is not here .

Maren took the lead, guiding us past a spattering of unconscious guards and through a concealed side door.

Two flights of stairs and a circular passage later, Olsa murmured, "There is someone up ahead. A ghisting?"

Maren nodded tightly. "I know, but I must fetch something from that room, including more talismans. Hurry."

Illya made a discontented noise, but Maren was already pushing open one side of a huge set of double doors.

I slowed as we passed inside, gaping at the enormous space. It was hexagonal like the other chambers, but larger and, I sensed, more central. The hub of the wheel.

Raised platforms stood here and there at various heights. Starlight filtered through hundreds of glass panes in the domed ceiling, illuminating our path as we circled the room. It glinted on metal instruments, perched atop the platforms—great spyglasses like the one I had glimpsed at the Oruse. Captured light glinted in the myriad glass scales of a great globe formed of thousands of pieces in an artful cage of wire.

"This is a Dark Observatory," Maren explained, already halfway across the room. I trailed behind, hobbling as he descended on a desk and fumbled a key into a lock. "Where the Ess Noti look into the Other. Those spyglasses are made with ghisten wood, though only the central one has a living ghisting. He is old and slow, but cruel. We must be wary of him."

Olsa and I looked to the spyglass in question. It was enormous, wood braced with brass and silver and perched on a tall tripod. Its body was longer than I was tall, and another small platform stood under one end, for an observer to peer through its narrow sight.

Maren clattered a drawer open and began to grab stacks of sealed documents and loose papers and shoved them into his satchel. Illya, meanwhile, patrolled the periphery of the observatory, passing through patches of milky starlight and murky shadows.

"These are records, calculations and predictions." Maren nudged the drawer closed and opened another.

"And why are we risking our lives for that?" Olsa said.

"Because otherwise the Mereish will become the singular power upon the Winter Sea." Maren pulled the entire drawer out, popped a false bottom, and drew out a collection of talismans, one of which he handed to Illya before he pocketed the rest.

"You do not want that?" Olsa asked. "Your people's supremacy?"

Maren gave a short huff of a laugh. "I left for good reason. Knowledge should not be used to subjugate, so I must share it. Let us go?"

We fell into step again.

"How is a Dark Observatory possible?" I asked, eyeing the great looking glasses again. "Can they truly look into the Other?"

"They can, by way of Sooth's blood and ghisten magic," Maren explained lowly. "Adamus Faucher was considered mad for many years, working in seclusion with remote monasteries, disrespected by the broader world. It only made him more determined. When he took control of the Ess Noti and their resources, he changed Mere overnight."

Maren's voice died in a thin breath. I cast a hasty look over my shoulder as ghisten light swelled, and there, between the great looking glasses, a ghisting materialized.

He watched us with sea-glass eyes in a broad, serpentine face. His body was coiled and scaled and three times taller than Illya, by far the largest manifestation of a ghisting I had ever seen. He sat heaped in the center of the chamber, spectral blue in the filtered light of the stars.

Brother , Tane greeted.

Trespassers , the serpent hissed. Its angular head tilted to one side, matte eyes following our path. You should not be here.

"Go." Olsa prodded Maren. "Now."

Maren didn't question her. He preceded us into an alcove and reached for the handle of a door. We hastened after him, crowding in.

A frustrated clatter echoed around the chamber. Maren fumbled with his cache of keys, then dropped them entirely. He crouched, fumbling to locate them in the shadows and glancing fearfully at the serpent ghisting.

Trespassers.

Tane nudged me, taking partial control of my limbs and prompting me to turn.

The serpent had begun to uncoil, his movements utterly silent, but I somehow felt them—through the floor, through the air, like ripples in water. No, there were ripples in water, black water that lapped around my ankles and hid the keys from Maren's searching hands. The sound of splashing was muted, distant and distorted, but I heard it as clearly as I heard Olsa's sudden intake of breath and Illya's low curse.

"What is happening?" I whispered. The serpent weaved through the instruments on the platform, delicate despite its massive size, and the eerie pallor of its light filled the room.

Maren cursed and Olsa dropped down to help him search.

The first Black Tide is coming in , Tane replied, her ghisten form beginning to shift across my skin as she prepared to manifest.

The serpent's head dropped down towards the floor—the Dark Water, somehow transposed—and its coils began to follow, lengthening and bunching as it lifted high out of the water and prepared to strike.

Tane stood manifested between us and the looming serpent. A large feline shape joined her, Olsa's Ris, along with a disembodied mist—Illya's Noek—which eddied around their feet.

"Can that… can it hurt us?" I hissed to Illya, resisting the urge to step behind his larger bulk. My inability to run tormented me, and I eased the weight on my bad leg. "Directly? Physically?"

In response, Illya stepped in front of me.

"Ah!" Maren's victorious gasp snapped my eyes back to the door.

The chamber exploded into sound. Cracks and splintering filled the air, followed by shrieking whistles shards of wood—shattered chairs, broken shelves—which sang towards us like canister shot.

Tane flicked one wrist. The first wave of shards went wide, but another was already shattering, tearing through the air, splintering desks and tables in the time it took me to inhale.

Ris vanished, joining Noek in a chaotic barrier of swirling ghisten smoke. Shards fell like rain but more than one broke through, peppering the stone around us and embedding in flesh.

Illya recoiled, twisting as a shard opened up the side of his face, slicing through beard and ear. Olsa turned to take the assault from the side, earning hand-length spears of wood to the hip and thigh. Maren and I, largely hidden by the pair of them, were less exposed, but I still nearly took a shard in the calf.

I turned away like Olsa and, out of the corner of my eye, saw Maren slide a key into the lock on the door. It turned, and the Mereish man threw his shoulder into the barrier.

It did not move. Ghisten light began to spill from its wood at the same time as the serpent vanished. Shadows surged, leaving us in a bubble of light from our own ghistings and the unyielding, possessed door.

"Mar Oke!" a voice shouted.

We looked back as one to see a small figure stride into the room, her challenge directed at the place the ghisting had been. The door glowed more brightly, and other lights began to appear, every shard of wood, every remaining wooden object in the room taking on an ominous illumination beneath the Dark Water.

I felt the movement of the serpent again, though he remained hidden in the wood.

The newcomer continued speaking, this time in Mereish. With Tane manifest and distracted, I had no translation.

Every glowing piece of wood in the room shuddered, casting rivulets of trembling light and shadow through the ankle-deep water, across us, the walls, even up to the ceiling. The Dark Water vanished and hundreds of fragments of light surged together, re-forming into the serpent in coiled, haughty repose on cool, bare stone. Other than itself only the door remained ignited, locked in place as the four of us faced the ghisting.

Enisca Alamay strode towards us, but spoke to the serpent. "Now," she said in Mereish, finally a word my mind could interpret.

The light faded from the door. Maren immediately darted through and held it open for us.

"Who are you?" Olsa demanded of Enisca.

"Go, quickly," the newcomer urged, ignoring the query. "Through the door."

That was all I needed. I limped painfully through, self-preservation driving me, and Olsa and Illya followed. Enisca, to my surprise, trailed us with one last word to the ghisting, then shut the door at our backs.

Tane, Ris and Noek came last, slipping through the now-abandoned wood of the door and back into our bones. With Tane's return, my thoughts tangled, assaulted with a chorus of new images and thoughts and implications, but my relief outweighed them all. The pain in my leg eased.

"What are you doing?" I asked Enisca in Mereish. When she did not look at me, instead starting up the dark passageway, I grabbed her arm. "Are you helping us?"

"I just saved you from the Mar Oke ghisting," the other woman returned, glancing from me to my companions. "I would think that is obvious." With that, her voice changed. She slipped into flawless Usti, her vowels rounding and her posture shifting. She met Olsa's eyes, then Illya's. "I am Enisca Alamay, and I am an Usti spy. If you want to escape, follow me."

I stared from the Uknaras to Maren, who hovered the farthest up the passage, looking as though he were about to abandon us if we didn't move soon.

"An Usti spy?" I repeated. Connections began to weave in the back of my mind, threaded memories of Jessin Faucher and his notions about the Usti, along with the thought of the papers he had entrusted to Samuel. Where were those papers now? Had they been seized along with the Uknaras?

"Or do not escape with me," Enisca snapped, brushing past Maren. "Either way, I need to leave Mere. I was hoping to do that with you, but I can find another way without your ship and crew."

Olsa stepped forward. "Do you know where they are?"

The other Usti woman nodded, holding her gaze. "I have even arranged for your crew to be kept in one place, ready to leave. Should they be rescued."

"Good enough for me," Illya grunted, shooing us on and glancing back at the door. I strained my ears and picked up shouting from the other side, distant but growing louder. "Time to run."