Given the distance from the palace in the west side of the city to the conservatory on the east side, as well as the sheer bulk of the edifice itself, it was the safest place in Alyssium for him to be. Plus there was simply no reason for anyone to attack a music school and concert hall. Far better to target the palace, the government buildings,and the guard barracks. She wouldn’t want to be anywhere sorcerers lived and worked either, and that included the Great Library—it was packed with spellbooks, making it an obvious target to anyone who wanted power and control of the city. Rijes Velk was correct to be concerned, and Marin hoped she’d done the right thing in letting the librarian stay.
She snorted at herself.What was I supposed to do? Kidnap her?It was enough that she was skirting the law by transporting a… statue? A criminal?
Exactly how much danger had Marin just put herself in?
She couldn’t afford to be targeted by imperial investigators, not when her parents were relying on her to repay the family’s debt. She still had three payments and less than a year to make them. It was going to be close enough as it was.
Marin drew the letter from Rijes out of her pocket and studied the seal. It was a glob of red wax, imprinted with a stamp that depicted a stack of books. It didn’t appear to have enchantments printed into it like some official documents did, but she couldn’t be certain just by looking at it. She sang a cascade of notes to catch the sea serpent’s attention, then asked, “Perri, could you keep us on track?”
Singing back at her, he positioned himself besideSilver. He couldn’t adjust the rudder or the lines—no hands—but he knew how to watch the sails for any sign of luffing and could nudge the hull to steer. Perri was the one who’d figured out the technique after he noticed how badly she would drift off course while she slept. In the beginning, she’d protested—he was her friend, not her crew, and he shouldn’t have to work while she slept. He’d thought that was so ridiculous that he’d drenched her. She hadn’t argued since.
After checking to be sure no other boats were near enough to worry about a collision, Marin went down into the enchanted cabin. She’d learned all sorts of valuable skills in that frantic, horrific time when she’d discovered her ex-fiancé, Iovar, was trying to sabotage her family business. One skill was unsealing and resealing letters.
She went to her galley. She’d outfitted it with a tiny stove, a sinkthat produced fresh water (another enchanted gift from her parents that they could barely afford), and her favorite: a collection of spices from throughout the Crescent Islands Empire.
If it was an empire anymore.
She wondered briefly if the revolutionaries truly had a chance of winning. They had successfully assassinated the emperor, which had to be an important first step. But the imperials had the navy, as well as trained sorcerers. She thought again of the blasts she’d heard.
If the revolutionaries did win… A fresh chance for the people of the islands. Think of it! There was so much good that they could do, if they had the opportunity. There was so much that needed fixing—an end to the restrictive laws on magic use, relief from the onerous tariffs that benefited no one, help with the magic storms that plagued the outer islands. She wondered if she dared hope for any of that.
She selected the sage and salt, spilled a little of each in the palm of her hand, and blew it over the wax seal as she said,“Liakis,”which a slightly disreputable ex-sorcerer had once told her meant “reveal” in the First Language. The wax didn’t fizzle, which it would have if the seal had been enchanted. She selected a flat knife.
If the revolutionaries won, that simple little spell would no longer be a crime to cast. That alone would be an improvement.
Sitting on an array of pillows, Marin began the meticulous task of wiggling the blade under the seal. It wasn’t a particularly mysterious process, but it did require practice and patience. She had both.
In a few moments, she’d loosened it. She carefully unfolded the letter, then glanced at the wood statue before she read the elegant script. At the top was a note addressed to the Head Gardener of Belde, Yarrow Verdane. It referenced a letter he’d written, requesting assistance. And then it followed with a cryptic sentence:I hope to provide a solution to multiple problems at once.
What was written beneath the note, though, wasn’t cryptic at all. It was a spell.
She’d glimpsed enough of them to recognize the format, even ifshe couldn’t read the ancient language, plus it was followed by what was obviously a list of spell ingredients. Marin felt her stomach sink. While transporting a statue and delivering a letter weren’t crimes, casting a spell to reverse a legal ruling absolutely was.
Granted, the letter didn’t explicitlysaythat’s what the spell was designed to do, and Marin didn’t know how to read the language of spells, but what else could it be? She marveled at the head librarian’s guts, first for smuggling out the statue and second for writing down a spell without knowing exactly who would read it and cast it.
Under Emperor Mevorin, the current (recently splatted) emperor, it was highly illegal for a nonapproved sorcerer to cast a spell, even a minor one like her simple reveal-enchantment cantrip. Under his rule, the law had become more and more strict, with the list of “approved” sorcerers becoming narrower and narrower to include only university-trained and emperor-reviewed casters. Before the last two years, Marin wouldn’t have cared if someone wanted to violate that ridiculous law in such a flagrant way. In fact, she’d have cheered—it was an unnecessary and dangerous law that never should have been made. She knew how much damage that restriction was causing in the outer islands, both with their harvests and with the rise of unpredictable and unchecked magic storms. But lately, she had a lot more to lose with her parents so dependent on her income. So this letter, the statue, on top of the uncertainty of a revolution, was at best an unwanted mess and at worst a disaster.
It’s not my problem.
That realization felt like an intake of fresh sea air.
The letter wasn’t written to her. She had zero access to any of the ingredients on the list—half of them were plants she’d never even heard of, much less knew where to find—and Rijes had had no expectation that Marin would read the letter, much less act on it. She had one job, and she’d been paid to do it. No one could fault her for that.
Besides which, they’d have to catch me.
She lit a candle and carefully melted the edges of the wax seal just enough to affix it to the letter, not enough to disturb the imprint of the stamp. When she finished, it looked as if it had never been opened. “Your secret is my secret,” she told the statue.
She wondered what the gardener would do when he read the letter. Yarrow Verdane. She hadn’t known his name before, and she reminded herself to continue to act as if she didn’t know it, since she only knew it from reading the letter. She’d only met the man once—he had a reclusive hermit vibe, but that didn’t tell her whether or not he’d break the law and cast a spell. She was fully aware she had lousy people sense.
“I assume you’re worth the risk,” Marin said to the statue.
The statue didn’t reply.
Happily, it looked like the risks to her and Perri were minimal, which was all she cared about and the reason why she’d pried into the contents of the letter in the first place. It also meant she didn’t have to disappoint Rijes or return the payment—all excellent news.
Opening the pouch that the head librarian had given her, Marin poured the coins into her hand and her eyes widened. Rijes had said she was paying for her discretion as well as the delivery, but this… it was double her normal delivery fee. Double! Well, that clinched it. Of course she’d complete the job.
She ogled the coins in her hand for a moment more, feeling their weight and inhaling their lovely metallic scent. This amount… it meant her family could make the next payment to the sorcerer while enabling her to steer clear of any Alyssium jobs.
