Otherbound

8

They’d arrived on Teschel the night before. Another island. They hadn’t been to the mainland in weeks. This time Jorn hadn’t bothered with an inn. Instead, he’d set up camp in an unused granary across from a run-down farm. The storehouse was blocky and stained from age and weather and had long windows so filthy, they bordered on opaque. Pale trees—the very edge of a forest—pressed up against one side of the building, and abandoned fields stretched out on the others. Weeds sprouted upward, some tall enough to reach past Amara’s hips.

Amara didn’t know what had happened for people to abandon the farm, but Jorn was right about one thing: no one would expect to find a princess here.

Maart was inside, tending to Cilla and preparing their lunch. Amara ought to help. Instead, she sat crouched by the entrance. The low sun cast everything in the pink shade of morning, from the dew on the grass to Jorn’s shape as he crossed the fields. After every determined step, he paused, leaned in to brush his hands over the ground, then took his next step. He kept his head down. A distant whine accompanied his spell.

Shimmery air—as if from heat—trailed behind him, coiling around too-tall weeds and dipping with every dried-out ditch he crossed. Slowly, the tail end of the trail sank and faded as it settled into blades of grass and thick-leaved autumn flowers.

It shouldn’t fade, Amara thought. I’m a mage. I should still be able to see a simple boundary spell.

Amara concentrated, squinted, willed with all her might: nothing.

Frustrated, she glanced back at Maart, who was muttering from inside the granary. He’d been rinsing their kommer leaves in a bowl of cold water, but right now, the water frothed and bubbled.

Backlash. Harmless backlash, maybe, but it added up. That was exactly why she sat in this crouch whenever Jorn cast his detection wards. With her legs getting stiffer by the second, she’d draw a crude temple in the cold-as-water dirt before her, place her hand in its center, and ask the spirits to forgive Jorn for demanding so much of them.

This time, instead of a temple, she drew three lines. Three blackouts. They had one thing in common. She’d been in danger each time. She might’ve called on the spirits without realizing it, like a defense mechanism, instinct.

But why? Danger was exactly when she couldn’t afford to black out.

Movement. Jorn was pulling away from his spell. Quickly, Amara rubbed out the lines in the dirt and backed into the storehouse, but Jorn wasn’t coming their way. He crossed the field toward the forest’s edge. He’d already completed the part of the spell that extended into the forest, though, and he never left without telling them.

Right before he disappeared behind an abandoned shed, Amara saw a piece of glass flicker in his hand, and her eyes widened. Mages used enchanted glass or mirrors to communicate. She knew Jorn and Cilla had people working alongside them. That was how they’d recruited Maart when the servant before him died; that was how Jorn kept their funds up. Amara had never found out who, and she’d stopped asking long ago. If those people included mages, though … mages on their side, without Jorn’s temper, who she might be able to ask about the blackouts …

Following Jorn was stupid under normal circumstances. Jorn’s mood lately made it even stupider.

Amara did it, anyway.

“I’ll get firewood,” she signed to Maart, and ran lightly across the field. A heron stood watch on the shed’s roof, overseeing a ditch below. She slowed the closer she came. She heard Jorn’s voice but couldn’t make out the words. She heard another voice, too. Male.

She pressed herself against the shed and sneaked around one corner, then peeked past the next. Jorn looked as if he was praying, head bowed, one hand to the ground. His fingers rested on the edges of the glass, which flickered in the watery morning light.

A breeze carried his voice with it. “… I can track Cilla if she runs. No, I’m worried about Amara. I can handle her, but these blackouts …”

The wind brushed stray nettles past Amara’s hand, and she flinched at the sting but stayed dead silent. Her heart crept upward and beat in her throat. Jorn knew about the blackouts? She needed to hear every word of this.

“Blackouts? Plural?” The other man swore.

“According to Cilla, yes. She told me out of concern. But it’s not just that the blackouts might put Cilla in danger—”

“Yeah. It’s about what happens if they get worse.” Amara knew the voice but couldn’t place it. She inched back around the corner. Nettles rustled by her ankles. “Whoever’s causing this will catch on and try again. Keep an eye on Amara. If it continues, bring her to Drudo palace. In the meantime, I’ll send one of us to help. I’d go myself, but I don’t know how much Amara remembers. Bracha’s new, though. Those kids won’t recognize her. Maessen is a ghost town, anyway—they don’t need her there.”

Maessen—a Dit-founded mainland city, Amara knew, on the north side of the Dunelands. The servant before Maart had died near there. Jorn then took Maart from the Maessen palace, told him his duty was to the crown, not the ministers, and proceeded to forget all about the servant who’d come before.

Up until a minute ago, that was all Amara had known of Maessen.

Now, she remembered another detail: the name of Maessen’s new minister, Bracha.

One of us, the man had said, and I don’t know how much Amara remembers, and Drudo palace, and—acutely—Amara realized why she knew his voice.

Jorn hesitated. “Let’s wait. I’ll handle it for now.”

“But if—”

“Better than recognizing Bracha.” Jorn’s sudden rise in volume startled a nearby hare. It bolted to safety, diving into the thicket at the edge of the field. “I need to go. How’s Ammelore?”

“She’s a big city—she’s doing fine without you,” the man said. “Hey, I’ll contact the harbor and tell them you need more silver. Keep me informed—and in the names of the dead, stay away from the pubs. We don’t need to clean up more of your messes.”

Amara turned, sidestepping nettles and twigs that might give her away. Behind her, she heard the crack of glass.

She walked faster, disappearing into the trees, far away, farther, as far as she could without crossing Jorn’s detection ward, kneeling to pick up dried branches here and there for firewood. Thorns tore open her skin.

Jorn would know she’d listened in on him. He knew about the blackouts and he probably knew a million more things she didn’t and never would, and that voice, and—and she needed to calm down. Work on collecting firewood. When she returned, Jorn had to believe she’d collected firewood and nothing else.

He couldn’t find out Amara had listened in.

He couldn’t find out Amara had recognized that man’s voice.

He couldn’t find out Amara knew where she recognized it from.

Between the ministers’ coup and being plucked away to protect Cilla, Amara had spent months at the Bedam palace learning its new name and serving its new owner. She’d been a kid with all her early teeth still, used to getting ordered around. The person behind those orders didn’t matter. She’d been more concerned about her friends who’d died in the takeover and the way her elbow had healed after she’d cut it on a rusted nail in the barn.

Still, she’d seen her new boss around. Ruudde was a short man, thickset and draped in Dit gemstones. His voice had been kind but direct and had sounded almost—not quite, but almost—the same coming through a broken pane of glass.

Jorn was working with the ministers.