Shimmer and Burn Read online

  Rubbing the top of his head, he smiles again, easier than before. “What were you looking for?” he asks.

  “Nothing, really,” I say. Then, “Why hasn’t Prince Corbin ever tried sending a convoy to Brindaigel for magic? I mean, I know we were enemies, but—”

  “We’re enemies?”

  “Our king supported Corthen during the war,” I say. “We gave him men and supplies and he gave us a touchstone.” And it still stands in the castle courtyard today, a ten-ton granite obelisk that’s nothing more than a landmark now, all its magic drained and hidden away so people like my mother can’t grab it. “But if you needed magic, why wouldn’t you look for it where you knew it would be?”

  North makes a face, nonplussed. “Where’s Brindaigel?”

  I stare at him, skin prickling. “You don’t know?”

  “Is that one of the new territories in the Northern Continents? I confess my geography has lapsed since I left the monastery, but I thought they traded magic for a republic after they executed their empress.”

  Is he joking? Anyone who’s spent four years searching for magic should know the name of the kingdom that still has it. Anyone who serves the prince should know the history of his enemies—especially when those enemies share his border.

  North gives me a sideways look before his eyes fall to the spell around my wrist. “Maybe I know it by another name,” he says. “A lot of things changed after the war. Like I said, New Prevast used to be called Gorstelt.”

  “Maybe,” I say with a forced smile to hide my unease.

  “I have more maps in the wagon,” North says as Darjin stands on his hind quarters, paws on North’s thigh, begging for attention. North begins to rub his back. “Maybe after dinner, we could look them over together.”

  His arm knocks into mine and I jerk back, alarmed. How did I let him get so close? We’re mere inches apart, less than the span of the map North still holds pinned to the wall. He can’t remove the spell around my wrist, but if his fingers brushed mine, there’s nothing to stop him from taking the stolen magic meant for Prince Corbin.

  This is wrong. If I have any chance of saving my sister, it’s by keeping North at a distance.

  Trust no one.

  “Excuse me,” I mumble, quickly folding the map and cramming it back in my book. I hurry around the side of the wagon, chased by Darjin and the itchy feel of North’s eyes on my back.

  Bryn scowls from the doorway of the wagon, her knife laid across her knees. “Where have you been?”

  I shake my head in reply, approaching Tobek hunched over the campfire, morosely poking at vegetables with a stick. “Can I help with something?” I ask, eager for movement, some sense of control.

  Tobek bumps his shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “Can you cook?”

  “I can poke things with sticks,” I say, and he glances over, cracking a smile.

  As I supervise potato cakes turning golden over the fire, my mind retraces my conversation with North like Thaelan mapping his tunnels, searching for a path that leads to a logical conclusion. If Thaelan found a way out of Brindaigel, Corbin could have found a way in. Unless he believes us to be dead, the way we were told Avinea was. Is that why Avinea never invaded us before, not because Perrote has kept us safe, but because he’s kept us secret?

  Can one man be that powerful?

  But more than that, if Prince Corbin has no idea that we exist, he has no idea who Bryn or her father is. Will he agree to an alliance based on the strength of a binding spell, a story, and a vial of stolen magic? My life—my sister’s life—depends on it.

  But who would risk their own kingdom by agreeing to fight for one that no one’s ever heard of?

  Fourteen

  OVER THE NEXT TWO DAYS, I learn the rhythm of the road, the gestures and nods between travelers that hint at what lies ahead and what was left behind. A tragedy unfolds in between the sweeping fields of crops and the stretches of scorched earth where nothing can grow. We pass villages razed to ash and villages that seem to thrive. The only constant is the wary eyes and forced smiles of the people we pass, weapons cradled in their arms.

  I avoid conversation with North and try to displace the constant fear of Perrote’s men by spending the interminable days and sleepless nights scrubbing the wagon from top to bottom, or paging through North’s mountain of books while Darjin dozes in my lap. But North communicates around my silence, leaving books on the table that he wants me to read, or coins on my pillow so I can buy a new dress from the caravan of merchants who shared our campsite for a night.

  I try to ignore his efforts, convinced an inevitable demand is waiting to be made in exchange—nobody is kind without caveat—but he never asks, and I finally realize: He never will.

  I don’t need a friend, I tell myself after I find a book on plants waiting on the table with enough candles to see me through another night. I need Cadence.

  But it’s a tempting alliance in a kingdom I don’t know, where Bryn is my only other option. What harm could it do, I rationalize after I pour North a cup of tea and he gives me a warm smile that strikes at something buried inside me. In four days, I’ll never see him again. And in the interim, it’s gratifying to be seen and deemed worthy of someone’s attention, to not be immediately discarded as a servant or another rat in the Brim.

  We’re only a few hours from our halfway point, carefully marked on my mother’s map, when the wagon shudders to an unexpected halt. I’m curled on the top bunk, reading a history of Avinea while North studies notes in his leather book at the table below me. He looks up, as if waking from a dream, before his eyes land on me in unspoken question.

  I shake my head, nerves firing with adrenaline as I peer out the small window above the bunk. Empty road stretches behind us, but smoke rolls across desolate fields, flecked with ash.

  Tobek pushes open the upper portion of the stable door, face full of anticipation and dread. “I—I’m not sure,” he says, “but I think . . . I mean, I feel like . . . maybe . . . ?”

  North closes his book and stands. He reaches for his crossbow, slinging the quiver over his shoulder. “It’s worth a look,” he says.

  Tobek nods, relieved, opening the lower half of the door as North ducks outside.

  “Now what?” Bryn growls from the bottom bunk. Unlike me, she sleeps easy every night, and I resent her for it.

  “I don’t know.” I climb down the short ladder of the bunk and lean out the door.

  A village lies in ruins ahead of us, all rubble and smoke and shattered glass. Only a simple, two-story farmhouse remains standing in the distance, wilting into the debris around it. Ash streaks the walls; smoke clings to the eaves. Every window is broken, and fat birds drift overhead, looking for lunch. Not shadow crows, I realize with a lurch of relief. Vultures. Even the fields beyond the village have been destroyed, the crops broken beyond salvage.

  North and Tobek stand at the head of the road, crossbows cocked and raised into position. There’s no movement, no sign of life, and I lean out with a frown. “What’s wrong?” I call.

  North looks back, holding a hand toward us. “Stay in the wagon.”

  Bryn snorts, elbowing past me and jumping down. “Wood doesn’t hold wards as well as stones do,” she says drily. “And I’m not sitting in an unguarded wagon while my escort takes his weapons and goes for a walk.”

  And I’m not going to be the only one left behind. North and Tobek exchange tight glances but don’t bother arguing. “At least stay close to one of us,” North says. His eyes meet mine before sliding away. “Doesn’t matter who.”

  I hug myself. Ash drifts lazy through the air, settling on our shoulders, in our hair. “Was it the Burn?”

  “Scorchers,” he says. “Religious fanatics who feel like the world is better off burnt to the ground, who don’t think Merlock is doing it fast enough.”

  Bile floods my mouth as I survey the spill of houses and barns collapsed into each other. “Were there people in there when they burnt it down?”


  “I’m sure they already left,” he says with little conviction. “Most people have moved closer to the few cities with any shred of defense. It’s not worth the risk to stay behind, not with people like Baedan roaming free.”

  “Looking for magic?”

  “Looking for slaves,” he says flatly. “You get someone with clean blood addicted to the Burn and then withhold the next high until they’re willing to do whatever they have to for another taste.”

  A chill skates down my back. “Can’t anyone stop them?”

  North looks at me, expression inscrutable. “There’s nobody left,” he says. He takes a deep breath and holds it, chin dipping toward his chest before he releases it softly.

  “This way?” Tobek looks to North for confirmation.

  “I’ll follow you,” he says.

  “Where are you going?” I drop my arms, alarmed.

  North pauses, almost guilty. “There’s still some magic buried somewhere.”

  “But what if the Scorchers are still here?”

  “Then we’re in luck,” he says grimly, hefting his crossbow in hand. “Scorchers are still human. A bolt will suffice.”

  Openmouthed and reeling, I stare at him. He offers me a tired smile before he turns to follow Tobek’s lead into the village, kicking up plumes of ash that veil the sky.

  Bryn looks at me, hands on her hips and eyebrows raised.

  Wordlessly, we follow.

  Our footsteps are swallowed by an eerie silence. Animal pens stand empty, fence posts burned down to the stone foundations. Half walls remain here and there, framed with furniture or peeling wallpaper. I kick a teacup out of the ashes; a broken carriage wheel sits abandoned on the road. My eyes skim past everything but settle on nothing. I don’t want to know what I might not be seeing.

  Tobek reaches the farmhouse first and steps onto the paint-stripped porch, nudging the front door open with his boot before he settles his weight back and aims his crossbow to the shadows inside. When nothing comes barreling out at him, he lowers his weapon and looks to North for direction. North nods and, face set, Tobek steps inside. After a beat, North waves Bryn and I to follow before he brings up the rear, scanning the road behind us before he too enters the house.

  The floors creak in warning as we huddle in the foyer, eyeing our options with some trepidation. A staircase or a parlor.

  Swallowing hard, Tobek moves for the stairs, but North hangs back, ducking into the parlor full of broken glass and overturned furniture. A bookcase hugs the far wall, its contents spilled across the floor save a few trinkets and porcelain saints that were spared destruction.

  North continues into the next room, a kitchen, but I linger behind, approaching a heavy desk sticky with spilled ink, covered with papers whose edges have curled from heat. A map hangs on the wall above the desk, also warped, and I flatten it back with one hand.

  Avinea. Its previous owner marked the places where the Burn has taken the kingdom, much like North marked mine, but where my map lacks specifics, this map lays everything out in minute detail beneath an overlay of grid lines, to include Avinea’s proximity to all the lands that converge in the Havascent Sea.

  North returns, joining me at the desk, moving papers aside, paging through the books. Books are his weakness, he told me once, because nobody prints them anymore.

  When he sees me still staring at the map, he pauses. “Looking for home?”

  I don’t answer; I can’t. My eyes retrace the entire western border of Avinea where Brindaigel should sit.

  There’s nothing there but water.

  North watches me another moment before turning his attention back to the books. “Where did you dock?” he asks lightly.

  “What?”

  “Your ship. What harbor did it sail into?”

  “We didn’t come by boat,” I say.

  “Then how did you get here?”

  “We fell from the sky,” says Bryn.

  I jump, spinning to see her standing in the parlor doorway, arms folded across her chest.

  North’s smile turns strained. “Like the giants.”

  “The giants?” I repeat, bemused.

  “When the gods went to war, they destroyed everything in their battle for dominance. Nothing survived except”—North reaches into his pocket and retrieves a small rock, pinching it between his fingers for emphasis—“a single seed that a farmer found buried in the ashes. But it couldn’t grow without sunlight or water, so he went to the gods and he made them an offer: If he could defeat their strongest warriors, they would call a truce. Tell would rule the earth and Rook would rule the sky, and neither one would be more important than the other. They would be balanced.”

  “Farodeen the First,” I say.

  North smiles, pleased that I know his mythology. He wouldn’t be so pleased if I told him the rest of the story we’re taught, that Farodeen was sacrificed by his more powerful brother, Overen, the king of Brindaigel, and that Avinea was a consolation prize to his heirs. They would be destined to be farmers like their father.

  “Farodeen wrestled Rook’s giants out of the sky,” North continues, “and they damned Tell’s volcanoes, ending the war. To reward him, the gods threaded their magic through his veins: starlight from Rook and fire from Tell, so if they ever went to war again, man could fight too.”

  “Shimmer and burn,” I murmur with a chill.

  North looks at me, expression unreadable. “But the gift came with a caveat,” he says. “Farodeen’s heirs would have to kill the gods’ greatest warrior to prove themselves worthy to inherit their magic.” A wry smile crosses his face. “They would have to kill their father.”

  That, at least, is shared between our kingdoms: The gods love sacrifice.

  Bryn snorts, and North gives her a look of polite exasperation. “Perhaps you know a different version?”

  “I know that gods do not make kings,” Bryn says, dropping her arms. “Men do.”

  “Do you not pray, Miss Dossel?”

  “I kneel to no one,” she says, turning away.

  I listen to her footsteps receding, biting my cheek. In Brindaigel, chapels were reserved for the nobles who could afford time to pray. Those of us in the Brim bought totems and statues of saints who embodied our own lacking virtues in the hopes that their grace might transfer to us while we weren’t looking.

  Here, every night without fail, North prays while Tobek mumbles a self-conscious benediction of his own. Their faith is not so much in Rook and his virtues of ambition and courage and pride, but in Tell and her patience, temperance, and compassion. Perrote would call it the poor man’s religion, praying to the dirt rather than aspire to the sky; and yet, the sky and its stars have only ever inspired my vices: greed and the burning desire to be more than I am.

  I’m beginning to prefer the earth, grounded and certain and well within reach.

  The ceiling creaks as Tobek inspects the second floor, but North doesn’t move, fingers tented on the edge of the desk, leaving tracks in the ash that’s settled there. He stares at the map, expression grim.

  “I need that seedling,” he says. “I need something to plant, Miss Locke. Something to grow, or Avinea will never recover.”

  “I gave you my name so you would actually use it.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  Annoyance colors my voice: “Because that would cheapen its value?”

  “Because it would strengthen its power,” he replies, straightening. “You’ve already threatened to steal my magic and you’ve admitted your king supported Corthen in the war. As a devout loyalist to Avinea and its current regent, I have no choice but to view you and all your actions as a potential threat to Prince Corbin.”

  I frown, watching him from the corner of my eye. I can’t tell if he’s serious. “He can’t be too concerned if he trusts his kingdom’s defenses to a glorified seamstress like you.”

  “One of the best.” His half smile fades, eyes hazy as they linger on my face, before he clears hi
s throat and drops his gaze.

  A splash of warmth fills my stomach and starts to spread. “My father was a tailor,” I offer.

  “Literally or metaphorically?”

  I open my mouth, but pause. “I don’t know,” I admit, even as I wonder, what if? If my mother was a magician, is it possible my father was too? “Magicians aren’t nearly so coveted in Brindaigel as they are out here. If he was a spellcaster, he never told anyone.”

  “Smart man.” Bracing the crossbow against the desk, he rests his hands on the butt of the tiller and his chin on top of them. “But what were you, Miss Locke? Before this, I mean.”

  I hesitate, considering the question. I’ve been a lot of things, and I’m beginning to realize that most of them distill to one truth. “I was my mother’s daughter,” I say at last. A liar and a thief, an insatiable heart that always craved more.

  North watches me, eyes half lidded, and I shift uneasily, looking away. What does he see when he looks at me? An investment, or something more? I know what I see when I look at him: a boy just like Thaelan, risking everything for a world that no one else believes in.

  “I should check on Tobek,” North says finally. Straightening, he adjusts his grip on the crossbow and moves past me, angling toward the stairwell.

  “North?”

  He pauses in the doorway, eyebrows raised.

  “Back home, they added ash to the soil every spring, to keep the ground fertile. Maybe . . .” I pause, feeling foolish, but he doesn’t laugh and I force myself to finish the thought. “Maybe things will start to grow again.”

  Only the recycled ash from hearths across Brindaigel is not the same thing as ash from dead magic. But North doesn’t say that. “Maybe,” he echoes, dark eyes unreadable.

  A shout of panic splits the air and he startles.

  Bryn.

  North runs toward her voice and I’m fast on his heels as Tobek thunders downstairs, nearly falling as he skids on his landing. We find her outside, at the back of the house, framed by a pair of open cellar doors. Bodies are stacked inside, every one of them dead.

  They trigger a flash of memory: a man on his knees, begging for mercy; a girl with a gun who didn’t listen. Heat floods my face and my skin starts to itch with guilt as Loomis’s blood spreads through my mind, coloring everything in shades of red.