Across the Darkling Sea Read online

  “It’s a grimoire. A book of spells most oft, but for you, a book of memories.”

  “I don’t understand,” Evelyn said, flipping the front cover open and shuffling through the blank pages.

  “This book will be your memory. Every day, write what happens to you, and begin every day by reading what you wrote the day before. Through its pages you will remember.”

  Evelyn’s fingers trembled with excitement as the idea took root in her mind. She could remember each day if she was careful to write everything down. It would be hard, but it was the only way. “What if I run out of pages? Or ink?”

  “You won’t, my dear child. This book is a thing of magic, as you are. The ink will never run dry, and you’ll never want for pages. It won’t burn, the ink won’t run if it gets wet, it will seek you out if lost, and it will not open for anyone but you.”

  Excitement and dread warred in her chest. With this book she could remember every day. It would allow her to leave, to seek out Grag the warlock and get him to reverse the curse. But if she left, would she ever return?

  “Thank you,” Evelyn said, wrapping her arms around Witch. She couldn’t think of words that could communicate how grateful she was for the grimoire. That book meant freedom. The freedom to search out Grag and force him to unmake her.

  Witch returned the hug warmly. “Don’t hate them too much, Evelyn. We are all products of the places we’re from.”

  Evelyn pulled back. “I don’t hate them, Witch. I hate myself, for what I am and for what I’ve done to them. All of them.”

  Movement caught her eye from outside Witch’s front window. Hanner, creeping slowly as if he feared a trap at every turn.

  Witch turned and followed her gaze. “He’s got more guts than I thought. The others won’t be far behind. Come on.”

  Witch pulled her back into the kitchen. Evelyn shoved the book into the hard leather pouch and looped it around her chest. Witch tossed food, water, and a warm blanket into a pack and hustled Evelyn toward the back door.

  Evelyn paused. “Why did you settle here, of all places? Why settle in a place where you are despised for what you are, for where you come from?”

  “All people fear things. It’s what they do with that fear that matters to the rest of us. The people here fear magic, but it’s enough for them to outlaw it and push anything that even resembles it as far out of sight as possible. It’s not the same everywhere you go, girl,” she said, sidestepping Evelyn’s question.

  “What is it you’re trying to tell me?” Evelyn asked. She could hear the creaking of wood beneath heavy feet coming from the front of the cottage. She could see more shadows moving through the heavy foliage beyond.

  “We tried to find him, Evelyn. Rudy and your father sought him for years. They found nothing. No leads, no hints. They returned as empty-handed as the day they’d left,” Witch said, again sidestepping Evelyn’s question. “But they didn’t go to Dreggs.”

  Dreggs. Magic existed everywhere in the world outside of Brielle, but it was said it gathered as thickly in Dreggs as the water gathered in Meuse after a spring rain.

  “Warlocks are not like the rest of us. To everyone outside of Brielle—the Bremen, the Vosh—to all of us, magic is something we are born with. It’s like breathing. It’s something in our touch or in our voice. The magic moves through us the way a breeze moves through tall grass. But it’s different with warlocks. They are born just as we are, Bremen or Vosh or even one of those from Brielle, but to earn the status of warlock, they must learn to dominate magic. To forcefully bend it to their will. They learn this in Dreggs. When they are given the title of warlock, their name is added to the Registrary. If you have any chance of finding him at all, it will be there.

  “But think carefully before you go, Evelyn. The stories are not all false,” Witch said.

  The tales about changelings were not the only stories to come out of Dreggs. Boatsmyn talked. Natural storytellers, every one of them. No one she’d ever met had set foot on Dreggs themselves, but they all had stories. Mostly they were about the warlocks themselves, the things they could do, the power they wielded. But some were about something else altogether. Creatures, somewhat human but mostly not, that lived deep in the interior of the mysterious island. But boatsmyn were a superstitious lot. You could never tell which of their stories were real and which were fiction. Most didn’t believe the stories about Dreggs, but Witch’s words gave her a deep chill.

  “It doesn’t matter what they do, Witch. I have to find Grag. I have to make everything right. And don’t call me Evelyn. That name belongs to the girl upstairs. Call me…call me Ling.”

  “Ling.” Witch tried it out. “Very well.” Witch opened a door to a cabinet in the kitchen and pulled down a jar. She took off the lid and pulled out a small stone that was as black as a moonless night. “Now, go. Hurry. I can buy you some time, but not much.” Witch pushed Ling out the back door, following close on her heels and slamming the back door behind them. She stroked the small stone, mumbling quietly under her breath.

  “What is that?” Ling asked as Witch pushed her into the swamp behind the cottage.

  “Run! Now!”

  The back door shuddered as something large and heavy heaved against it. Ling’s heart jumped into her throat. “Come with me,” she said, grasping Witch’s arm tightly.

  “My place is here,” Witch whispered, pushing Ling away. “Besides, you’ll never get away without a distraction. Go!”

  Witch closed her eyes and pressed the black stone to her forehead, her chin, and her heart. When she opened her eyes again they were a deep black, even the whites. She bent at the waist and traced a line along the entire back side of her small cottage.

  “You need to leave. Now.”

  Witch then spoke a word Ling had never heard before. The ground began vibrating beneath her feet, and a wall of solid green exploded from the earth so violently it knocked her to the ground. The back door to Witch’s cottage burst open. Hanner and her mother spilled out with a dozen or so others from town. She saw her mother’s face, twisted with rage and hate, only for an instant before the wall of green blocked it for good.

  Ling spun in terror as she realized what was happening. Witch had magic after all. All those years of doing nothing more than mixing herbs. Of smiling tolerantly at the derogatory nickname she’d been given because of where she’d come from. All that time, she’d had that stone hidden away, her magic hidden away. She would have lived out the entire rest of her life that way, but for Ling.

  She’d exposed herself to give Ling time to get away. Ling shuddered as she ran; her mother would have a new target once she realized Ling had escaped and that they had more magic in their midst. She suddenly wondered if she, or Evelyn, would ever see Witch again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  She had no idea what had happened back at Witch’s cabin, no idea how much of a head start she had on Hanner and her mother. She didn’t even know if they were still following her.

  Not my mother, she corrected herself. Evelyn’s mother, but my enemy. She couldn’t get her head around it, no matter how many times she repeated it to herself.

  She wondered if Witch still lived. She marveled that the old woman had possessed magic all these years, a secret that would have gotten her run out of Meuse at best. Hung, if Witch was right. She never would have believed that her mother—that Laera—would hang anyone for anything, let alone for doing magic. But she was no longer sure of anything. She cried, tearless sobs wracking her body, as she pulled and sank and paused to hang her head limply against intermittent zildeschor trees in exhaustion.

  Except she shouldn’t feel exhaustion. If she didn’t bleed and her bones didn’t break, she probably didn’t have muscles, either. But she felt like she did. Her chest heaved with the effort of pulling herself through the mud. She left a path of large, sucking holes behind her with every boot she yanked out of the grasping mud. If Hanner and Laera were following, they’d have no trouble making out her trail.


  She pushed onward. She had to make it to the docks before her pursuers did. It was impossible to travel overland anywhere in Brielle. She had to find a way onto a ship. It was the only way to get to Middelhaern, and she’d have to go there in order to find a ship traveling to Dreggs.

  She got to the docks just as the sun began to set. She’d been pushing her way through the thick cover of trees and shrubs that lined the Lisse River for the last hour, slowly making her way back toward the town.

  The hardest part would be finding a way to clamber back up onto the raised walkways of Meuse without being seen. Whether they recognized her or not, a figure down in the mud twenty feet below would be cause for alarm.

  The problem was that people simply did not walk around off walkway in Brielle, ever. The mud was far too dangerous and difficult in the dry season, and in the wet season, the rushing water would drown a person in seconds. There were no ladders down to the ground level. Even repairs were performed from above, with workers slung on ropes keeping them up out of the mud. Her only hope was to find an area where the wood had rotted enough to require supports. Fortunately, she knew just the place. Unfortunately, it was closer to the riverboats than she had hoped.

  She paused to watch as the sun touched the far horizon. The glassy surface of the Lisse River looked like it was on fire. The raging yellows and oranges of the reflected sun rippled across the surface. She could see the riverboats from where she huddled, their masts casting long shadows onto the docks and surrounding buildings. Everything carried a warm orange glow.

  Her breath caught in her throat with a soft hiccup. It was the most beautiful thing, the river docks during sunset. She’d painted them a thousand times and would have loved to paint them a thousand more. She could hear the buzz of late evening life going on above her. People closing up their shops, cooking food, or heading out to meet friends for dinner. People she knew, a few she didn’t, going about their lives oblivious to the terror and grief raging in the heart of one lone girl huddling in the shadows beneath them.

  She waited for a lull and then scrambled up the angled supports holding up the platform that Rander’s Pub rested on. She ducked into the deep shadows behind the pub, sought out the water pump, and washed her clothes as clean as she could get them. Wet was better than filthy. Wet was near invisible on a dark cloak, but mud would show against the deep gray.

  She listened as she worked, moving quickly in the deepening shadows. Everything sounded normal. No shouting, no running. It was as if the events of the morning had never happened. They all had to know she’d escaped by now. What did Hanner and Mo—Laera tell everyone? she wondered.

  She thought of her father, the look in his eyes as he’d looked at her that last time. She wanted to seek him out. To tell him it would all be okay, tell him she would find a way to restore Evelyn to him and Laera. Would hope kindle in his eyes then? Would Laera forgive her for the ruin she’d brought on all of them?

  Voices approached the water pump, and she stepped quickly to the side of the building, pulling the hood of her cloak up over her head. They bantered nonsense as they filled a couple of buckets at the pump and headed back into the bar. Ling left her hiding place, merging quickly into the stream of life moving to and fro on the walkways.

  Her heart hammered in her chest, and she couldn’t catch her breath. She forced herself to take in slow breaths to the count of three and then exhale to the count of three as she made her way toward the riverboats as swiftly as possible. The less time she spent out on the walkways, the less likely someone would recognize her. As terrified as she was, though, she couldn’t help taking in the familiar sounds and sights and smells one last time because, one way or another, she was quite certain this would be the last time she would set foot in Meuse.

  She moved through the chaos of the docks, listening as the boatsmyn shouted and grunted, lifting and maneuvering nets filled with crates of goods into or out of the docked boats. They moved quickly, ready to finish with the day’s labor and escape to a round of ale.

  Oxen bellowed as they lumbered up and down the dock, working in their braces to haul the last of the day’s merchandise between the warehouses more than twenty feet above and the docks below. Their bodies steamed in the chilling air, twin streams of vapor jetting from their nostrils as they huffed and pulled.

  The system of docks and pulleys was an ingenious solution to the seasonal rise and fall of the Lisse River, Ling thought. The regular flooding of the Lisse, as well as the Arnhem River, meant the earth here was rich and fertile and wet—the perfect growing conditions for the zildeschor tree that their economy was built on.

  But during the wet season, the river would rise twenty feet or more, and since most people didn’t enjoy muddy river water flowing through their kitchens, the human inhabitants built high. The docklands were a floating maze of walkways and berths that rose and fell along with the river, while the warehouses themselves stood high off the ground, well above flood level, like every other structure in Meuse.

  During the flood season, loading and unloading was easy, the docks floating right alongside or just below the warehouses. But during the dry season, the only way to get the merchandise to or from the warehouses was by using the elaborate platforms powered by the oxen.

  Up where she walked, merchants hawked their wares and captains shouted orders, and exotic spices, the musky scent of the oxen, and the lively smell of fresh seafood chowder all formed a pleasant assault on her nose.

  It was busy, making it easy for her to hide in the crowd, but it was also so much more terrifying. They would rip her apart if they recognized her. A light drizzle began to fall, and Ling pulled her hood down further over her face. She walked quickly and with purpose, and she held her breath as she walked past the berths of her father’s boats. The boatsmyn here all knew her well.

  She knew the docks like she did the shape of her own house. She’d grown up down here, tagging along with her father from the time she was old enough to keep her feet under her. She knew her way around a riverboat just as well. She also knew the punishment for stowing away on one.

  There was no way she could book passage. Anyone who docked here with any regularity would recognize the daughter of the chancellor and the captain of the largest fleet in town. Meuse was a busy port town, but the residents were a small and tight-knit group, and that included the boatsmyn who regularly docked here. The river routes of Brielle were a posh assignment, and boatsmyn didn’t come and go like they did elsewhere. It was common for a boatsmyn to ship the same boat with the same captain for all their lives.

  She had no choice but to sneak aboard. The thought terrified her.

  Riverboat captains had absolute authority on their boats. Their word was law within the confines of their vessels, and they universally loathed stowaways. If she were caught on board, her journey would end before it had even begun. The dark magic running through her veins may keep her alive, but she’d get no closer to Grag if she were eternally chained at the bottom of the river.

  She began eyeing the boats as soon as she passed the last of her father’s fleet. She watched the boatsmyn, looking for the telltale signs of a careless crew. She only needed one minute of inattention and she’d be aboard. Once in the hold, she could hide easily amongst the crates and packages stored there. Any one of the boats in this area of the docks would get her to the coastal capital of Middelhaern, she just needed to find the right one. She tried to remain calm, keep her eyes forward, but the urge to glance over her shoulder was almost overwhelming. Would Laera or Hanner suspect she’d flee Meuse altogether? They had to realize that would be her only option.

  Two boats caught her eye as likely candidates. Both were in rough shape, with paint flaking or rubbed clear off. But it was the crews that she really focused on. They were disorganized, undisciplined. One of the boats was loaded so poorly it listed away from the dock. The other boat wasn’t carrying enough crating to even come close to filling its belly.

  Her eyes l
ingered on the listing boat—the Scarlet Float, if she was reading the heavily worn wording on the hull correctly. The boatsmyn were a grimy lot. Surly, moody, they swore at one another more than they spoke. They didn’t work well together, and their captain was nowhere in sight. They also had enough merchandise for her to feel she could ferret herself away in the boat’s belly for the duration of the journey. Most important of all, they were shipping out tonight by the look of it.

  The low murmur of the crowd around her swelled, and she heard shouting. She turned slowly, along with everyone near her.

  Please not them. Please let it be something else.

  One glance, and it was clear she was out of time. Far up on the walkways, back among the shops and houses, the crowds of people split like water around a stone. She could clearly see Hanner moving through the crowds. She couldn’t see Laera, but Ling felt certain she was there, lost somewhere in the sea of people. They were coming for her.

  She turned and moved toward the Scarlet Float, looking up at the boatsmyn on its deck. They were casting off lines, readying to push out into the main channel of the river. One of the boatsmyn stood atop a pile of crates lashed tightly to the deck. He was bare from the waist up, long brown hair curling around his brow where it had become sticky with sweat. Ink traced up both arms and across his chest, something she’d seen before but never so extensively. He was tall and lean, well-muscled, and beautiful.

  He stared up toward the commotion, a frown pulling his full lips downward. He turned, and suddenly the two of them were looking directly at one another. His eyes opened wide for an instant, and Ling was certain he recognized her, though she was equally certain she had never met him before.

  He glanced back up at the commotion near the warehouses, then slid into action. He shouted at several boatsmyn around him. They vanished instantly from view, running to do his bidding.

  The Scarlet Float began to drift away from the dock. The sounds of shouting and an angry mob were close now. This was her one shot.