Otherbound

24

Cilla smiled broadly as Amara climbed through the sidescuttle. “This is Captain Olym’s sitting room. She left spare clothes for us.” She gestured at the winterwear draped over a nearby stool. Thick, rich-colored, far too big for Amara, but—oh—dry. Amara’s limbs felt so numb she was surprised she’d been able to climb up. “Throw your own clothes overboard in case there’s an anchor on them—I did the same. I threw out my other supplies, too. Captain Olym will replace them. Then dry yourself off and come on deck.”

“Won’t the passengers suspect something?” Amara signed.

“We’ll say you were sleeping belowdecks.” Cilla held up an off-brown towel. “Do you … are you all right?”

The wind blasted through the still-open hatch, cutting Amara straight to the bone. “Just need to dry off.” She stepped clumsily forward and took the towel.

“They’re waiting for me upstairs. I should …” Cilla nodded at the door and went back up.

Amara’s first instinct was to wrap the towel around her, soaked clothes and all. One step at a time, though. You can leave now, she told Nolan. Even in her mind, her words felt slight. She couldn’t make herself thank him.

She pricked her index finger to confirm he’d left. She stuck her head out the sidescuttle to wring the water from her hair, shivered at the wind, and shut the hatch as quickly as she could. Given the smile on Cilla’s face, they were safe. Still, Amara rushed through undressing, drying off—the towel was softer and warmer than she could remember any towel being—and slipping into Captain Olym’s wear, which was too loose around her chest and waist and everywhere else. She rolled up the pant legs and adjusted the lacing, knotting it in the small of her back and along her thighs and ribs. The boots fit just as awkwardly.

Amara tossed her old clothes out the sidescuttle as instructed and took a look around the cabin. Gaslight illuminated polished hardwood and intricate drapes, which made it look like midnight even with the sun finally rising. The room felt cozy. Safe. A stringed instrument she couldn’t name rested in a corner, and fruit in matching colors sat on a square plate twice the size of her head.

This place should not feel safe. Nothing should. This was not just another trip.

She was running away.

She wrapped her arms around her chest. Her eyes fixed on one of the drapes that had been embroidered with a map of the area. Teschel was on the left, shaped like a tadpole, the tail a protective bay. The rest of the map showed the nearby islands and the ever-recognizable shape of the Dunelands mainland—the dagger, as people called it, with the capital Bedam at the tip. She read the letters slowly, and the names of other mainland towns, and the names of the islands and their cities, too, but reading didn’t—couldn’t—give her the thrill it had before.

She tried to recall the maps Cilla had shown her over the years. She imagined the lines of the mainland stretching farther east, the Dunelands’ dagger growing broader until it bled into the Continent: the Collected Cities, the Ohn and Dit mountains, the State of Jélis, the Andan Kingdom, and a dozen other territories, so much larger than the Dunelands and so far away Amara couldn’t comprehend it. And the south—Eligon—was farther still. The maps always colored it white, for the snow.

Amara imagined that same snow crunching underfoot, a hundred days away from Jorn on that island behind her, a hundred days away from the ship swaying under her feet.

If she went on deck, people might ask questions. If she stayed here, people might come find her. If she went on shore, she’d be caught, and if she went back, she’d be caught, and Maart was dead no matter what. She wanted Nolan back in control of her body so she wouldn’t have to steer it, since there was nowhere to steer to that didn’t make her tremble at the thought.

She swallowed to clear her throat, which felt as if fingers were clenching it shut.

Cilla had asked her onto the deck. Amara clung to that. She left the cabin and went up the stairs, and if the cozy heat downstairs had dulled her, the wind up top woke her up again. She whisked her topscarf higher as cover, wrapping it around the tips of her hair to shield her neck better. She breathed in the salt air, letting it burn away her fears. She was still obeying her princess’s orders; she hadn’t abandoned her duties.

No one else would see it that way, but it calmed her, regardless.

Captain Olym sat on the deck, talking to a crew member, and she gave Amara a small nod. The captain was a short, round woman, her arms all muscle, her face weathered and lined, her hair cropped to near nothing. The rising sun threw pinkish rays over her face and tinted the air a gray that hovered between yellow and blue, painting the clouds colors Amara couldn’t find names for. The cold pricked at her arms, but she didn’t mind.

Maybe Cilla had called her up to see this. The view from inside the cabin couldn’t compete with something so beautiful.

“Look!” Cilla said.

Amara’s eyes stayed fixed on the clouds. “I haven’t seen a sunrise from the sea in ages.”

“No,” Cilla said. She touched Amara’s shoulder, turning her around. “Look.”

At first, Amara thought Cilla meant for her to see the Teschel harbor in the distance, maybe a ship headed their way. Then she spotted the stretch of beach that made up Teschel’s tail, curling at the horizon. Round shapes scampered over the sand in fits and starts, and Amara didn’t need to think before signing, “Diggers!”

Her record was seeing three at once, and one of those she hadn’t been sure of. Now—oh, she couldn’t begin to count the dark shapes dotting the sand. The more she looked, the more diggers she saw, some in the water, others scurrying through the dune grass, visible only by the way the grass swung counter to the wind.

From here, she couldn’t see the way their stick-thin legs practically danced over the sand, or the way their pointed snouts would swing left and right in an endless search for bugs, or how they’d slide into the water, legs wide—but she didn’t need to. She could imagine.

“Apparently morning is the time to go digger-watching.” Cilla beamed.

“You knew I liked them,” Amara said. They stood turned toward the beach; as long as she kept her movements minimal, no one on the ship would see her sign. “The servant before—before—told me diggers weigh less than you’d think. That’s why their legs are so thin. Their bodies are round, but only because they contain a sack of air that helps them float in the water.”

“I’d forgotten that!”

“They breathe in extra before they go into the water and store the air on their backs. If you puncture the skin there, they’ll drown.”

“That’s … really sad.” Cilla frowned.

Amara fell silent. Her eyes followed the shapes skittering across the beach.

“Just because it’s sad doesn’t mean you should stop talking.” Cilla bumped her shoulder into Amara’s.

“I’m sorry,” Amara said automatically. “I don’t know much else about diggers.”

“No, I mean …”

Amara knew what she meant.

“Did you only run because I said I wanted you to?” Cilla asked.

Amara didn’t know either answer: the real one or the one Cilla wanted. She tried to keep her thoughts on the beach, but the diggers had lost their appeal. She couldn’t see them anymore, anyway. The ship moved too fast.

“I meant … I thought running was best for you. You can answer me honestly. Except if I have to tell you that, it rather defeats the point, and—” Cilla threw up her hands and laughed feebly.

“Told you it’s not that simple,” Amara said. Maybe nothing was simple. The world had come close to simple before, doing whatever Cilla and Jorn asked. Now, Amara second-guessed every thought; Cilla probably second-guessed every word. Every formerly innocuous question turned into something more.

Good, Amara thought. Cilla should know that her words meant something.

“You can joke about it?” Cilla said.

“It wasn’t a very good joke.”

A smile played at Cilla’s lips. She looked at the beach, even with the diggers too far to be recognizable. Her hands wrapped around the railing. They looked soft next to the polished wood. “Amara, I know we’re not friends, but you’re all I have. Jorn is … It’s complicated.”

“Jorn’s always protected you.” Amara’s signs had a hard edge to them. They came choppier, like Nolan’s. She wiggled her toes just to make sure she still could. “It’s OK to care for him.”

It wasn’t, but Amara still understood.

“I don’t know if I do. I don’t want to.” The wind took Cilla’s hair, playing with it, and Amara’s first instinct was to smooth it down as she’d done with her own. Cilla had no need to hide her neck, though. “Sometimes he was kind. Sometimes he wasn’t. But I wasn’t allowed to be alone, and with him, I didn’t have to be so careful. Maar—he hated me.”

No point in denying that.

“I know you hate me, too.” Cilla turned briskly. One hand stayed on the railing. The wind brushed her hair into her face in a way that was wild and beautiful and did nothing to hide the uncertainty in her eyes. “I understand. I wanted you to know that: I understand, and I’m sorry. I should’ve stayed behind.”

“If you weren’t with me, you’d die. I don’t want you to.”

“I’m still sorry.”

“I know.” Before she could change her mind, Amara said, “I just don’t know if it changes anything.”

Cilla’s shoulders squared, as if she was bolstering herself. “I deserve that.”

Amara raised her hands to speak, then stilled. She’d never thought about these things. There was no point. But she didn’t only think about them now, she said them straight to the princess’s face, and she wasn’t even scared anymore.

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t comfortable. But it was safe. The thought took her breath away.

“Maybe I was wrong before,” she signed. “I don’t think I hate you. I hate what you are; I hate what I am, too. We can’t change either of those.”

“I can. When I’m in power, you’ll get everything you want. I’ll remove your tattoo. You’ll live where you want to. You’ll get however much silver you need.”

Amara laughed. “I’d want books. I want to read books.”

“There’s a library in the Bedam palace. You could take every last book in there.”

“I’d want to live on the beach. I’d see diggers every morning.”

“Yours.”

“I’d want to see Eligon.”

“I’d arrange it.”

It’d be that easy for her, wouldn’t it?

Behind them, Captain Olym called orders. The crew adjusted the sails. “I thought you wanted us to be equals,” Amara said. She’d depended on Jorn for food, shelter, safety. Being dependent on Cilla, instead—that wasn’t freedom.

“But I owe you.” Cilla thought. “All right. Tell me what you do need.”

Why was Amara laughing again? None of this was funny, but she couldn’t help it. The world sank under her feet, and Cilla promised her silver and books and diggers, and she turned them all down. She was turning into Maart. He’d say these same things—or maybe he wouldn’t. He might take all that Cilla offered and say he deserved it. He’d be right, too.

“I need …” The wind tangled Amara’s hair, and the sea stretched out endlessly before her. “I don’t know,” she said, almost dreamily.

“You’re not making this easy.” Cilla’s laugh was a nervous one.

“I didn’t realize a lot of the things you’ve told me,” Amara said. “Like that you had no choice but to spend time with Jorn. Like that we played games together because you weren’t allowed to play with anyone else. I grew up thinking I wasn’t allowed to play with anyone else.” She hesitated. “Like that I’m all you have.”

“Of course you’re all I have.” Cilla’s hand touched Amara’s, sending a jolt through her.

She’d wanted to say something else but was no longer sure what.

Noon had come and gone, and it had taken the sun with it, turning the sky bland and the sea dark, then dangerous. The ship was supposed to arrive in Bedam that afternoon. Instead, it moored at Roerte, a southern mainland town, with Captain Olym repeating apologies a dozen times over. “I can’t risk this weather,” she told her passengers, standing by the plank that led to the mainland. She was shaking in her drenched shirt but refused to get out of the rain until everyone left the ship. “The Gray Sea is too erratic. Listen: I know Roerte well. I can tell you how to travel to Bedam by land, or I can arrange a stay at an inn. We’ll head out tomorrow morning if the weather’s improved by then.”

A thunderclap punctuated her words.

She didn’t say the next part, but Amara saw it written on her face: Damn the ministers to every last spirit-abandoned corner of this planet. Storms never came on this suddenly by themselves.

Amara and Cilla made up the rear of the group, not wanting to risk the crush of people. They’d gone by another two islands before mooring here and had picked up at least twenty more passengers. “You two, please come with me,” Captain Olym said when they stepped onto the plank. “I won’t have you staying at an inn, Princess. I have a farm inland. You’ll be my guests.”

Within the hour Amara and Cilla were drying off by the crackle of a fireplace. In the dining room, Captain Olym and her father, who managed the farm in her absence, conversed in singsong Alinean.

Cilla was touching her lips where the mage had struck her. A small, healthy crust had formed, but it was in danger of falling off after getting soaked by the rain. The skin underneath might not have healed enough yet.

“I know, I know, I’m being careful,” Cilla said on catching Amara’s warning look. “It itches, though. I suppose you wouldn’t know. Aren’t we a pair?”

Amara smiled. As long as she kept smiling, the world couldn’t crash down on her. Maart was dead, and she was in an unfamiliar house in an unfamiliar town, with strangers in the next room, yet she could use her signs openly. She hadn’t heard Jorn’s voice in hours. She wasn’t working, and all of that made her feel jittery and so, so strange. She kept hovering between terror and elation and numbness, and she couldn’t decide which was safer.

She studied Cilla’s lip. “If I find my parents, where will you go?” Amara asked.

“I could find the original royal line on the Alinean Islands. If they know I’m alive, they may help me reclaim my throne.”

Cilla knew as well as Amara did that that would never happen. The Alineans had surrendered their claim to the Dunelands years ago. Wars were bad for business. “The Islands are an ocean away,” Amara said instead. “How would you survive a trip that long without me?”

No answer.

Amara hid a sigh as she squeezed her scarf and rubbed her wear dry as well as she could. She didn’t want to undress in a place so visible. Cilla shouldn’t, either. She’d already revealed her shoulders, which was more than royalty ever ought to do publicly.

“What’s that noise?” Cilla asked. Amara stopped her movements to listen. The rain beat on the windows, and the wind tore at the unsheathed, tied-down sails of the mill outside, but Cilla couldn’t mean that. Through all that noise came voices. Distant laughter.

Amara stepped toward the window. She felt exposed without her scarf, showing bony shoulders and wiry arms and that almost hidden tattoo underneath matted hair, but in this weather no one would be looking in.

Lights shone from a small house across the field.

“Servants,” Amara told Cilla, who sat on the carpet and rubbed her toes dry. Their boots stood next to her, heating by the fire.

Sometimes ministers lent servants to help out farmers in need. That kept the farms running, the food production going, and the ministers earned a decent cut. Amara shouldn’t have been surprised that Captain Olym had servants. She and her father alone could never handle a farm this size.

Amara stared at the flickering yellow of the servants’ windows in a storm-darkened world. The laughter rang out through the rain. The servants were probably enjoying the reprieve from work the storm gave them. They’d be drinking or playing games or telling stories, as she’d seen the older servants at the palace do, or perhaps secretly improving their speech, as some servants managed.

Bedam was the nearest big city, so these servants must have come from there. Their tattoos would match hers. Would they remember her? Would they know Lorres, the caretaker? He’d always looked out for Amara.

She turned just as Cilla was gingerly feeling her cut lip again. Cilla would need protection once they parted ways. Finding other healing mages to help, trustworthy ones, seemed impossible. What Cilla needed was someone like Nolan, someone to heal her before the curse even took hold.

Was that an option? Those pills of Nolan’s had changed so much. If he could travel to another world to possess Amara, couldn’t he possess someone else, too?

It would let Amara go free.

Amara pushed herself away from the window. Even if it were an option, it’d be too dangerous. Amara had been lucky to survive when Nolan’s presence mixed with the spell at the harbor; combining it with Cilla’s curse might kill Cilla in an instant.

Three steps into the room, Amara slowed, then stopped. One hand reached for the bed hatch next to her for support. The movement wasn’t hers.

She hadn’t felt Nolan take over—she never did. She no longer blacked out or slumped. His mind didn’t creep in to shove hers aside. The world went on as usual, except suddenly her breaths seemed out of sync and her body moved in ways she hadn’t approved. Invisible strings tugged at her, and she saw only the effects on a dangling puppet and its wooden limbs.

You promised! she shouted in her mind, knowing Nolan wouldn’t hear.

He’d caught her thoughts. He must’ve stepped in at just the wrong moment.

“I’m sorry,” Nolan said.

Cilla looked up at the movement. Nolan took two confident steps and crouched in front of her. The drenched carpet cooled Amara’s knees. A spark from the fire landed on her hand, but Nolan shook it off. “Amara needs to know you’ll be safe,” he told Cilla. “How much risk are you willing to take?”

Amara wanted to scream.

Nolan explained Amara’s thoughts and the risks involved. Cilla said nothing. Amara saw the same look on Cilla’s face she’d seen on Jorn’s, that way of scanning Amara for what lay underneath. Jorn had been trying to find Nolan. Cilla was looking for a sign of Amara.

“You and me, huh, Nolan?” Cilla finally said.

“I know you don’t care for me—”

“Do it,” she said. “Take over.”

“Like I said, I don’t know if I even can switch bodies. If it does work”—Amara’s lips wrangled into a smile that felt nothing like her own—“you’ll be the first to know.”

He left her.

“Don’t.” Amara stumbled when her body returned to her, then lunged toward Cilla. “There are other options. What if we can’t find my parents? What if we find another mage? The one at the market—if she’d seen your mark, she would’ve believed you. We can find others! Ones who heal!”

“If this works,” Cilla said, “you won’t have to sacrifice yourself anymore. Sometimes … sometimes layering magic has only minimal effect. We might not notice anything.”

Amara felt Cilla’s stare on her lips, her eyebrows, just like before. Their faces were fingerwidths apart, close enough for Amara to taste the heat of Cilla’s exhales and see a raindrop dangling from her earlobe. They’d toweled off their faces already; she must’ve missed a spot.

Cilla smiled wanly. “You two really are different.”

Amara leaned back to sit on her haunches. “Don’t let him do this. Tell him no. Nolan might listen if you change your mind.”

“He shouldn’t hijack you like that,” Cilla said. “But I like the way his face looks on yours. He looks more relaxed in your body than you ever do.”

No, no, why wasn’t Cilla listening? If Nolan was trying to make this work right now, as they spoke, Cilla might only have seconds left before the spells mixed.

This could be the end of it.

“Now you look even less relaxed,” Cilla remarked. Her voice sounded breathy. Not like her. Everything Cilla did, down to her jokes and laughs, were weighed down by something else. She cared about what she said and did even when she pretended not to. “I don’t mean that I like seeing him in you. It’s just nice to see Nolan be … what you could be.” It was Cilla’s turn to sit upright. She leaned in. Black hair hung in soaked strands along her cheeks. “I’d like seeing it on you far more.”

“Tell him you’ve changed your mind.” Amara’s mind spun. Her knees dug into a soggy carpet she could never afford, and across from her Cilla was speaking nonsense, and she might die right now, or in two minutes or two hours or two days, whenever Nolan figured out how to switch bodies. Amara couldn’t lose her, too. “Please.”

She never said please. Even if a servant was allowed to make requests, there was no point.

“The truth is,” Cilla said when Amara tried to smile, “I like seeing you no matter what.”

And then Cilla’s hand was on Amara’s shoulder, and her lips on Amara’s, and they were hot and full and Amara leaned in before she could stop herself. Her hands found and wrapped around Cilla’s hips. She pressed herself closer.

This wasn’t like kissing Maart. This was soft and desperate and something Amara had wanted so, so badly even when she’d hated herself for it. Her mind whispered stop and wrong and Maart, Maart, Maart. And don’t do it, Nolan, you can’t, don’t and let this work and all the pain she caused and you’ll hate yourself and it won’t last!

But while it did … while the world spun beyond her reach, anyway … Their lips kissed and brushed and pulled and nibbled, and they squeezed each other so closely they heated up even the rain trapped between their bodies.

Cilla’s tongue tickled her lips. Amara parted them to allow Cilla in. She’d never felt this, never once. Her hands held Cilla tighter. And she might be imagining it—might just be wishing—but Cilla tasted like the fennel seeds Captain Olym had given them to chew on.

Fennel and Cilla.

Amara no longer listened to any of her mind’s whispers.

Except she must have, because when Cilla pulled away, Amara was crying. She didn’t realize it until the sudden fresh air cooled the tear tracks on her skin.

Cilla touched Amara’s cheek. “No,” she said. Her hand slid to Amara’s shoulder and clumsily gripped her arm. “No, no no no. Please tell me you didn’t go along with—that you’re not doing this just because I—”

Amara interrupted Cilla by kissing her again. Quick and hot and more.

Interrupting the princess was beyond disrespectful; that would have to be enough of an answer. Any moment Nolan would arrive, to save Cilla or kill her and free Amara either way, and all she wanted was Cilla’s fiery, kissed-red lips. She wanted to taste Cilla’s tongue. She wanted to taste Cilla’s everything while she still could.

The crack of the opening door jolted them apart. They sat there, their breathing heavy, as Captain Olym came in to formally introduce her father.

Fire flickered yellow on the side of Cilla’s face, the silk of her arms, the contours of her chest. It made her so damn beautiful that the pulsing of Cilla’s tattoo in her center stung Amara all the more.