Across the canal, children laughed and broke into mocking songs. Servants stood out in a neighborhood as posh as this one, where the spiral patterns of waves and clouds in the pavement weren’t painted on but were made of actual colored bricks. A shopkeeper stepped outside to reprimand the children, and they fled, their songs echoing in their wake.
Lorres gingerly touched Amara’s scalp. “It’s healed already,” he said out loud, and pulled back. “That’s amazing.”
“Listen to me.” Amara wiped her fingers clean of blood. “It’s. Bad.”
Lorres’s eyes flitted to the marshals as if to check with them.
Amara stepped back. “Ruudde sent you to talk to me.” She took another step back, until the rope binding their wrists bit at her skin. “You do as you’re bid. Right?”
“Amara, I just don’t want you to—”
All around them, the wagon play’s audience burst into applause.
“At least when you pried open my mouth, I knew you were doing it on their orders. Take me back.” She couldn’t sign well with the rope pulled so taut. “I’ll start to run. I’ll dive into that canal right now. I know the marshals will catch me. I also know Ruudde won’t be happy you let it come that far.”
“See? Demanding respect already.” Lorres smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile.
Amara wished there was even a trace of truth to those words.
“Let’s go,” Lorres said, and let her lead the way to her cell.
33
On Wednesday, Nolan skipped school again to go swimming. His parents couldn’t stop him, and he wanted—needed—to get away. Half a week in the palace was driving him mad.
The pool was quiet in the morning, and he crashed through the water with even strokes. He stared through his goggles at the starting blocks. By his side, the steps leading out of the pool flashed past. The lifeguards and Dr. Campbell agreed: he had to stick by the pool’s edge.
He tapped the wall, turned, kicked harder. They needed to know why the ministers needed Cilla alive. Nolan wanted to do something, move forward, to act now that he finally could—but if anyone could think this through, it should be him. Amara might be the planner, but Nolan had all the time in the world.
Could keeping a fake princess alive to kill her at a later time be a blow to the rebels’ morale? No. Too much setup, not enough payoff, and what was the role of the mages tracking her?
Maybe, once the ministers were too old, they’d need someone new to possess, and a fake princess could take over the Dunelands without suspicion? No. Lots of ministers, just one girl, and they’d want mage bodies, besides.
Nolan needed to stop thinking about the princess aspect. Ruudde had said that’d only been a ruse to keep Cilla safe and hidden, for whatever reason, and maybe he’d told the truth.
Nolan wasn’t used to thinking these things through without his notebook. He’d never been able to focus long enough. Now, despite the blinding lightness of the pool around him, all bleached blue and green, wet skin everywhere he looked, chlorine in his nose—yes, he could focus.
But it got him nowhere.
Start from scratch: if the ministers wanted to protect Cilla so badly, she had to be useful to them. (But how? She spent her days hiding in decrepit granaries.)
Look at it from the other side. Forget keeping her alive. What were the consequences to her death? If she died, the curse ended, and …
Nolan paused by the side of the pool. He clung to the edge with one hand. Maybe it wasn’t just the curse that would end. There could be a second spell. If Ruudde hadn’t been one of the mages to place the curse, and hadn’t had an anchor to track—Amara and Cilla had gotten rid of all their clothes and possessions on Olym’s boat—how had he found Cilla so quickly? He couldn’t have known she was coming, and she would have stayed out of sight. Yet somehow, he’d found her within minutes.
If Ruudde and Jorn had cast a second spell, that could explain how they’d tracked her. It’d explain why they needed to keep her alive—to keep that other spell active. It’d explain why the knifewielder and other mages wanted her dead—not because she was the princess, but to end that other spell. It’d explain something else, too: Amara had always thought those mages had screwed up by casting a curse instead of a death spell. What if they hadn’t? What if they’d tried a death spell, and it had mixed with an existing spell, diluting it, warping it?
That worked. All of it worked. Cilla might not matter beyond being a host for their spell. Nolan itched to get out of the pool, dry off, and find his journals, but he made himself slow down. He was still missing one thing. What the hell was that second spell?
He wiped some water from his face. At least he had a theory. He ought to tell Amara. He’d been checking in every few minutes—
—and now she was pressing her face to the bars. Cold metal chilled her cheeks. A marshal was running her way, a gaunt woman with skin like birch wood, one of the few Elig Amara had seen in the palace. Keys clattered against the woman’s side.
“She hurt herself.” The marshal fumbled to get the key into the lock. “You need to get in there—”
—someone’s hand was on his shoulder. When Nolan turned, the lifeguard crouched nearby. “Are you all right?” she asked. Stray locks of hair drooped free from her ponytail. The lifeguards all knew about him. His seizures happened too often to take chances. “Do you need your crutches?”
“I’m good. Taking a breather.” Nolan offered an automatic smile, but— “Wait. I do need my crutches. Please.” While the lifeguard went to get them, Nolan pulled off his goggles and hoisted himself onto the edge—
—heard Cilla’s breathing rasp in and out.
Amara bolted after the marshal into Cilla’s cell. The walls swayed. Stones were shifting, reaching out. Cilla lay on the cot with her back to the bars. Her topscarf lay on the floor. It tangled under Amara’s feet, and she landed by Cilla’s mattress in a dive. She grabbed a bare shoulder and turned Cilla onto her back. The red caught her eye first: flecks on Cilla’s nails, hands, a line that stretched across her chest. Her tattoo pulsed faintly on both sides of that line.
She’d scratched it open.
Cilla looked up with eyes that were red, too. “Don’t,” she pleaded—
—Nolan needed to hurry. He unfastened the flipper from his stump. The lifeguard was already there with his crutches, the anti-slip tips still attached. Bringing his prosthesis to the pool was useless; he’d only damage it, and hopping was dangerous as hell on these tiles.
He grabbed the crutches and swung his way to the changing rooms as fast as he could without risking a fall. People pretended not to stare, and he ignored them, because he only needed another second, just a little more—finally he thumped onto a private changing-room bench. His crutches slammed into the door. He buried himself in Amara’s world and prayed he wasn’t too late—
“—here! Pressure!” Amara kept her signs short and pressed her hands back to the wound to gather more blood, though it was already on her face and arms and even her throat. She had a good view of the wound now, and it wasn’t just one scratch—she counted at least half a dozen in every direction, like the starry spikes that surrounded the volcano in Cilla’s tattoo. Most of the scratches didn’t go deeply enough to draw blood—Cilla’s nails were too short for that. She must’ve gone over the scratch again and again and again.
Amara took Cilla’s blood-stained hands, but Cilla shook her head, tried to pull them back. The marshal forced her still, and Amara smeared Cilla’s bloody hands clean on the bed’s blanket. She couldn’t remove all the blood with the stones already eagerly scraping away from the walls or with Cilla fighting like this—and in the names of the dead, she shouldn’t be fighting!—but she removed the worst of it. It’d have to be enough. Oh, please, let it be enough.