Three Dark Crowns (15 page)

I
t is better when there are no carriages or carts and she can travel by the roadside. At least the air is open there and she can see a patch of unobscured sky. Mirabella looks up at the fading light. It has been two whole days of walking since she fled Rolanth, separated by a few uncomfortable hours of dozing against this broad trunk or that. The country to the south is not meadows and sheer cliff sides. It is made up of denser forest and softly rolling hills. So many trees. Even in winter, without their leaves, they box her in. She does not understand why naturalists love the woods so.

She picks up her skirt to step over a mostly thawed puddle in the ditch, trying to preserve it even though the priestess's cloak that Elizabeth loaned her is edged with dark watermarks and mud. The journey has not been easy. Her legs ache, and her stomach is empty. Yesterday, she used a bit of lightning to stun a trout, but she is not skilled at hunting
without the priestesses and their hounds.

She misses Bree and Elizabeth. Luca and Sara. Even Uncle Miles and excitable little Nico. But she will bear it. She cannot stop for too long in any one place, and she cannot go often into cities. Soon though, she will have to trade for new clothes and a meal with a vegetable in it so her teeth do not fall out.

Mirabella steps quickly up the ditch as something approaches on the road. Whatever it is sounds large. Several carriages perhaps. A search party from Rolanth?

She will have to get far into the trees to keep them from seeing her and her from seeing them. The sight of poor Luca pressed against the window would break her heart.

When she is deep in the woods, she stops and listens. Only one carriage passes. Probably a rickety wagon headed for Indrid Down, perhaps carrying a load of wool, or sheep's milk and cheese. Not long ago she smelled sheep fields and guessed that she was passing through Waring and its many farms.

But she is not certain where she is. She has studied maps since she was a child, but the island looks much smaller on paper, and she has not seen a sign since passing one for North Cumberland early this morning. By now, with the sun setting, she must be at least as far as Trignor. Perhaps even Linwood. Another few days and she will have to skirt the boundary of Indrid Down.

Where they will catch you, you silly girl
, Luca says in her head.

Mirabella brushes black hair out of her eyes. Somewhere
to the east, thunder rumbles. Tired as she is, she does not even know if she is the one who called it, but she craves it all the same and turns farther from the road to follow the scent of the storm.

She walks faster as the cliffs and open sky call. Above the trees, rich black clouds roll in until she can no longer tell what time of day it is or whether it has crossed into night.

She breaks through the tree line. For a moment, she fears that she has somehow walked in a wide circle. The cliffs she stands on are so like the Blackway of home. But it is not the Blackway. A flash of lightning shows the cliff face in white and pale gold, softer stuff than her beloved black basalt.

“A little more,” she says to the wind, and it races around her and squeezes. It blows the ruined cloak back off her shoulders.

Mirabella steps to the cliff edge above the sea. Lightning illuminates the water in greens and blues. There must be a path down. She wants to wade out and be soaked to the waist.

The only way she finds is steep and lined with wet rocks. It is treacherous, but she takes her time, delighting in the wind and rain. Tomorrow, the people who live here will speak of this as a Shannon Storm, named for the queen whose mural decorates the largest portion of Rolanth Temple. They will talk about it over breakfast tables. It will damage roofs and leave downed trees to clear. People will sing the song of Shannon and tell of how she could summon hurricanes and send them out like pigeons on errand.

They are only tall tales, perhaps. One day, they will call
great fires a Mirabella Flame and say that she could scorch the sun. Or they would have, had she not run away to disappear.

Mirabella looks out to the sea and takes down the hood of her cloak, so the rain can slick her hair. Then the lightning flashes, and she sees a boat topple down.

“No.”

The craft is small and the waves rough. Perhaps the storm tore it out from its slip. No one could be unlucky enough to be caught in the middle of such a monster, in a boat as tiny as that.

The boat rolls itself and rights again. The sail has come loose and blows, wet and flapping. It has not been abandoned or dragged unmanned out to sea. One lone sailor clings hopelessly to the mast.

Mirabella looks in all directions, but there is no one down the beach, no town, no glow of friendly fires. She screams for help back toward the road, but it is too far.

The boat will roll again, and fail to come upright. It will sink down deep and be tossed in the restless currents until there is nothing left.

Mirabella holds up her palm. She cannot stand there and do nothing as the sailor drowns. Even though she is weary and water has always been her most difficult element.

“Use the wind,” she says to herself, but she has never used the wind to move anything but her own body or a few small belongings. Luca's scarf or Sara's hat.

Mirabella studies the water. She can try to push the boat
back out, far enough into the sea perhaps, that it might escape the storm.

Or she can try to bring it in.

Either choice is risky. She could shatter the boat against the cliffs. She could lose control of the water and swamp it. Or the hull could be impaled on an unseen, rocky outcropping lurking beneath the surface.

She clenches her fists. There is no more time. She focuses her gift on the water around the boat, working it and shifting its currents to slide the small craft toward the shore. She calls too much wind, and the boat jumps forward like a spooked horse.

“Goddess,” Mirabella says, teeth clenched, “guide my hand.”

The boat pitches sloppily back and forth. The boom wags like a dog's tail, and the sailor makes a grab for it. He misses, and the boom catches him clean across the back. He falls over the side and into the sea.

“No!” Mirabella shouts.

She uses her gift to sift through the water, separating it down deep. She has never done anything like this before. The ocean's layers, its currents, and cold and churning sand move as she commands. It is not easy, but the water obeys.

The boy breaks the surface, cradled in the current she has created. He is smaller than the boat and easier to manage.

When he strikes the beach, his body rolls hard onto the wet sand. She did not know how to be gentle. She has probably broken all his bones.

Mirabella scrambles down the steep path. She slips and crabs her way, cutting her palms bloody against the sharp rocks. She runs across the sand to the boy and presses her torn hands to his chest.

Water drains from his mouth. He is so pale, lying on the edge of the surf. He could be any other sea creature, spit out of the waves belly up.

“Breathe!” she shouts, but she cannot put wind into his lungs. She is no healer. She does not know what to do.

He coughs. He begins to shiver, violently, but that is better than being dead.

“Where am I?” he asks.

“I do not know,” she says. “Somewhere near Trignor, I think.”

She takes off her cloak and drapes it over him. It will not be enough. She will have to get him warm, but as far as she can see there is no cover.

“This was,” she says, and shakes him by the shoulder when he seems to again lose consciousness. “This was not the best place to come ashore!”

To her surprise, the boy laughs. He is about her age, with thick, dark hair. His eyes, when they meet hers, are like the storm. Perhaps he is not a boy at all, but some elemental thing, made by the crashing water and the endless thunder.

“Can you walk?” she asks, but he slips away again, shivering so hard his teeth clack. She cannot carry him. Not up the trail and not down the long stretch of beach that might lie
between them and the next town.

Where the cliffs cut in toward the road, they slant so that the opening is narrower at the top than the bottom. It is not a cave. It is barely an overhang, but it will have to do.

Mirabella slips her arm beneath him and pulls him across her shoulders, dragging him, waterlogged and limp. The sand sucks at her boots. Her already-weary legs burn in protest, but they manage to reach the cover of the cliffs.

“I have to find wood to keep a fire,” she says. He lies on his side, shaking. Even if she gets him warm, he may not survive the night. He may have swallowed too much of the sea.

Pieces of dark, wet driftwood and blown-down sticks from the trees above litter the beach. Mirabella gathers them and arranges them under the cover of the cliffs into a great heaping mess, threaded through with seaweed and errant shells and pebbles.

She is shaking too. Her gift is close to exhausted.

When she calls fire to the wood, none comes.

Mirabella kneels and rubs her hands together. Next to the lightning, fire is her favorite. To have it ignore her is like watching a most loved pet turn tail and run away.

The boy's lips have turned blue.

“Please,” she says, and pushes her gift as hard as she can.

At first, there is nothing. Then slowly, a tendril of smoke rises from the pile. Soon, flames warm their cheeks and begin to dry their clothes. The fire sizzles and spits when the rain from the Shannon Storm hits it, but there is nothing to be done
about that. She is too tired to order the clouds away. The storm will pass when it passes.

Beside her, the boy's shivering has eased. She wrestles him out of his jacket and shirt and spreads them out on the sand, as close to the fire as she can without risk of them catching. She lays Elizabeth's cloak out as well. It will keep him plenty warm, if she can get it dry.

The boy moans. If only Luca were there. She would know what to do.

“Cold,” the boy mumbles.

Mirabella did not drag him up from the depths and across the sand only to watch him die now. She knows only one thing to do.

She unfastens her dress and slips out of it. She lies behind the boy and wraps her arms around him, sharing her heat. When her cloak is dry, she will use it to cover them both.

Mirabella jerks awake. After covering them with Elizabeth's dry cloak, she had begun to doze, staring into the fire, and dreamed of Arsinoe and Katharine until the pieces of driftwood became their finger bones and the knots of wet, steaming seaweed became their hair. They burned and fell apart into charcoal as they tried to crawl out of the sand like crabs.

The boy lies in her arms. Beads of sweat dot his forehead, and he struggles, but she holds him tight. He must stay warm. In the morning, he will need fresh water. She can probably find some if she goes up the cliff trail back into the trees. Even after
the rain, there will still be ice in the woods, frozen on branches or into logs.

Mirabella adjusts her position and the boy's arm slides around her waist. His eyes open slightly.

“The boat,” he says.

“It is at the bottom of the sea.” Cracked and broken, most likely, given the force of those Shannon waves.

“My family,” he whispers. “They'll have to replace it.”

“Do not worry about that now,” Mirabella says. “How do you feel? Do you hurt anywhere?”

“No.” He closes his eyes. “I'm cold. I'm so cold.”

His hand wanders tentatively across her back, beneath the cloak, and Mirabella's pulse quickens. Even half-drowned, he is one of the most handsome boys she has ever seen.

“Am I dead?” he asks. “Did I die?”

His leg moves between hers.

“You did not die,” she says, her voice breathless. “But I must get you warm.”

“Make me warm, then.”

He draws her mouth to his. He tastes of salt. His hands move slowly over her skin.

“You are not real,” he says against her lips.

Whoever taught this boy to kiss has taught him well. He pulls her on top of him to kiss her neck. He tells her again that she is not real.

But perhaps he is the one who is not real. This boy with eyes like the storm.

Mirabella wraps her legs around him. When he moans this time, it is not from the cold.

“I saved you,” she says. “I will not let you die.”

She kisses him hungrily, her touch waking him up, pulling him out of the dark. He feels like he belongs in her arms. She will not let him die. She will make them both warm.

She will set them both on fire.

J
oseph's mother had a dream. A dream of her son, pulled under by waves. It was more than a nightmare, she said, and Jules believes her. Joseph had a touch of the sight when he was a boy. Such a gift had to have come from somewhere. But others were skeptical until the birds returned from Trignor with word he had never arrived.

Luke pushes a cup of tea into Jules's hand. He has brought a pot down to the pier with a stack of teacups tucked in his elbow.

“Sorry,” he says when hot tea splashes over the edge and burns her knuckles. “And I'm doubly sorry that I didn't have enough hands to carry the cream. But here.” He reaches into his jacket pocket and drops in a handful of sugar cubes.

“Thank you, Luke,” Jules says, and Hank the rooster clucks on his shoulder as Luke moves through the gathering of worriers and rubberneckers, offering cups.

Jules is too anxious to drink. The birds brought with them
word of a storm off the coast, a monstrous storm that swung into the island from the wide-open sea and devastated land from Linwood to the port at Miner's Bay.

Billy steps up beside her and places firm fingers on her shoulder.

“Joseph is a strong sailor, Jules,” says Billy. “It's most likely that he pulled in at a cove somewhere to ride it out and went on like nothing happened. We'll hear something of him soon. I'm sure of it.”

Jules nods, and Arsinoe leans against her on the other side. Camden leans against her legs. Despite words of reassurance, many boats have already left the Sealhead to go out searching, including Matthew on the
Whistler
, and Ms. Baxter said she would take her
Edna
out into deeper waters.

Jules looks out at the cove. From where she stands on the pier, the sea looks vast and mean. For the first time in Jules's life, it looks ugly. Indifferent and unblinking, nothing but grasping waves and a seafloor sated by bones.

She has hated the sea only one time before: the night they tried to escape and it refused to release its hold on Arsinoe. Bobbing against that mist, thick as a net, she had hated it so much she had spit in it.

But she had only been a child. Surely the Goddess would not hold on to that one bitter spell and wait all these cruel years to send it back on her.

“I don't know why we're doing so much,” someone whispers, “for an upstart boy who smells of the mainland.”

Jules rounds on the small crowd. “What did you say?” she asks. Her teacup shatters in her fist.

“Easy, Jules,” Arsinoe says, and drags down her arm. “We'll find him.”

“I won't hear any word spoken against Joseph,” Jules growls. “Not until he's returned. Not until you can be brave enough to say it to his face.”

“Come away, Jules,” Arsinoe says as the crowd backs down from Jules's fists. “We'll find him.”

“How?” Jules asks. But she lets Arsinoe lead her off the pier. “Arsinoe, I've never been so scared.”

“Don't be,” the queen says. “I have a plan.”

“Why does that frighten me?” Billy mutters, and follows them off the docks.

Arsinoe, Jules, and Billy leave Wolf Spring within the hour on three of Reed Anderson's saddle horses. Arsinoe's and Billy's are long-legged and finely boned. Jules's mount is thicker, stronger, so that it can occasionally support the extra weight of a mountain cat.

A change of Joseph's clothes is tucked into a bag behind Arsinoe's saddle, along with a sharp silver knife.