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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

LORE

We will be known throughout the world, Our power undeniable.

T hey stared at each other. Then Lore bolted for the door.

“Wait!” He held up a hand, willing her to stop. “I’m not going to hurt you; I just want to ask some questions!”

“Right,” Lore snarled, gripping her lockpick so tightly it cut into her palm, the weighted ball in her other fist as she raised her hand to shove the door open. “You find me stealing, and you just want to ask questions.”

“You’re welcome to steal that one.”

Great. A fifty-fifty chance, and she’d ended up in the wrong fifty.

“It’s useless,” Raihan continued. Now that he’d made her stop her mad dash to escape, he seemed loath to move, still standing in a semi-crouched position with a book in his hand as if afraid he’d startle her into flight again.

“Only Mount-mined silver can find the lines. That one must have come from somewhere else. There’s barely any Mount-mined instruments around anymore, but it seems like the ones still in existence are being used as Burnt Isles paperweights, so I make the prisoners bring me things just in case.

” He paused, studying her. Then, “You of all people should have been able to tell what was Mount-mined.”

Her engagement ring was Mount-mined. That had to be what he was talking about; somehow, the Ferryman had found out who she was. Fear suffused her, then calculation. She could use that.

“I have a proposition for you,” she said, placing the apparently useless instrument back on the table, where it swung twice and then came to a stop.

“You give me one of these things that actually works, and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know about life in the Citadel, the color of the Sainted King’s chamber pot, any sordid detail you can think of. ”

Raihan furrowed his brow. “I’m sorry. The Citadel?”

“Isn’t that what everyone wants to know?” There was a chair in the corner of the room, next to the pile of books; Lore collapsed into it. “It’s not all that great, but I understand the curiosity.”

“I don’t think we’re on the same page,” Raihan said, finally completing the arc of motion she had interrupted and placing his book on the table with the silver weights.

“I have no interest in the Citadel.” He cocked his head, amended: “Well, no interest in the chamber pots, anyway. If you have any information on Church artifacts, however, I’d be all ears.

The Mount-pointers that aren’t on the Isles are probably there. ”

“Mount-pointers?”

The tips of his ears flushed. “That’s what I call them. No reason to make up a flowery name when you can just call them what they are.”

But Lore was less concerned with what he called his silver things than with what he’d said before. “Who do you think I am?”

The Ferryman shrugged, looking as confused by the turns of this conversation as she was.

“I truly have no idea, other than that you must have recently come into contact with quite a lot of energy from the Fount, since you made all my instruments freeze up. I had my suspicions on the ship, and you just confirmed them.”

Shit.

“I don’t have any questions about the Citadel,” Raihan continued, “but I’m more than willing to answer any questions you might have about the island and the lines, if you could help me out with a few experiments. I assume that you’ve drawn close to the Golden Mount recently.”

That was a better answer than that she’d recently been the unwilling vessel of a goddess and still had the ability to channel god-power. If he’d known she was the Queen, he would have known she was magic. Letting him think she was nothing more than a courtier who’d angered the King was much easier.

“I can’t imagine how , though, since you were a prisoner on the Second Isle.” He gave her a quizzical look with deep-brown eyes. “Care to enlighten me?”

She might not have turned out to be a good spy, but Lore was a great liar.

“Not the Mount,” she said. “They opened up a new mine on the Second Isle. I guess the magic from the Godsfall was stronger in there.” A flimsy story that wouldn’t hold up to any scrutiny, if he decided to ask any new escapees.

But with any luck, she’d be long gone by then.

If Raihan didn’t buy it, his face was as good a liar as she was.

“Interesting,” Raihan said. He gestured to the instruments on the table.

“These are drawn to high concentrations of power from the Fount. As best I can tell, they point toward the Golden Mount when offshore, but I haven’t actually tested the theory successfully.

The few times I’ve gotten close—at least, I assume I have—they’ve start spinning again, like the entirety of the landscape around the Mount is infected with magic. ”

Infected. That was sure what it felt like.

Lore eyed the delicate instruments. It was incongruous to see them here, where everything was emblematic of living off an unhospitable land. “Where did you get them? Other than as payment; I assume you knew what they were before you started asking for them.”

“Most of them were here when I arrived,” Raihan said.

“Nearly twenty years ago now. It was harder to get to the Harbor, then, and there were far fewer of us here. Someone was researching all this long before me. I’ve found some things on this island that made them stop, but never as intensely as they have for you.

A few places deeper in the forest, where the scars from the Godsfall are more evident.

” He waved a hand at the books in the corner.

“Those, too, though the effect has worn off.”

Lore eyed the books next to her chair, not quite willing to touch them. Malcolm had her well trained at this point. “So they don’t have… power-residue anymore?”

He seemed as unimpressed by her word choice as she was, though he was one to talk, with his Mount-pointers .

He shrugged. “So it seems. These were brought to me when they were found in another hut, farther in the woods than our settlements have reached. It appeared they hadn’t been touched since the Godsfall.

Honestly, it’s a miracle they’re still intact.

” He went to the pile and chose a book from the top, opening it carefully and tipping it her direction. “Too bad no one can read them.”

The text swam before her eyes. She recognized where she’d seen it before now. The prophecy under glass in the belly of the Church. The language Nyxara could read.

Well, fuck. This was probably helpful information, so of course it would be in a language she didn’t know. Once again, she felt bereft at the loss of the goddess.

But she was still a receptacle for power. Spiritum, if not Mortem, not anymore.

Even without Nyxara’s presence, she felt herself tugged backward in her mind, following instinct.

A flare in her vision, like she’d looked directly at the sun. Flashes of golden thread, and black and blue and green and orange, as if she were seeing the underweave of the world, everything that made up everything.

A line in the book resolved, right at the top of the page. Quick and simple. Scrawled instructions.

Valley between two highest peaks. Burnt tree.

Then the language was incomprehensible again.

Lore gasped, bracing herself on the arm of the chair. Raihan stared at her, mouth agape.

All the silver instruments that had been pointing to her had moved, drawn into her gravity, spilling themselves on the ground as they drew close. They clustered around her feet like an advancing army.

“What, exactly, did you just do?” Raihan asked quietly.

She straightened, shaking, hands held like surrender. “I’m not entirely sure.” Her mind worked quickly, fitting pieces together. “But I’ll help you with whatever you want, if you give me one of these.”

The Fount piece was here, on the island. She knew it like she knew the shape of Gabe’s mouth, the feel of Bastian’s skin. Intrinsic, second nature.

Raihan’s forehead furrowed, his eyes narrowing. “I’ll give you one,” he said. “But whatever you’re doing with it, you have to take me with you.”

“Done.” At this point, if he’d insisted she strip naked and do a court dance before taking one of the silver instruments, she would have asked which waltz he preferred.

Lore grabbed one of the silver balances on the floor, the pin on top of the pyramid pointing directly at her even as she fumbled it into her hand. “Come on.”

Necessity made fast friends. Raihan gathered up a battered notebook and pen as he hurried after Lore, clearly planning to document whatever was about to happen.

She should be concerned about that, maybe, but there was no time.

This was the only chance she’d get at finding the piece of the Fount, and if he wanted to write about it, why should she care?

It wasn’t like his notes would get to anyone outside of the Harbor.

Valley, burnt tree. If she could find that, she could find the Fount piece.

One step closer to making it whole and casting all this magic back where it belonged.

The singing she’d heard earlier got louder as she walked, Raihan trailing behind.

All she had to do was keep following instinct, let the power and the singing lead her.

They cast semi-suspicious looks at each other as they walked out of his hut and into the night-dark woods.

Raihan had a lighter, the flicker of tiny flame just enough to illuminate their steps and keep them from breaking an ankle on the char-black tree roots.

If the moon was shining somewhere, it was hidden behind the ash.

“If you’re planning on murdering me,” Lore said, the lockpick in her hand, “I would advise against it. I can defend myself quite handily.”

“I don’t doubt you can,” Raihan said, raking a hand through dark curling hair. “I can’t necessarily say the same, but hopefully you find me charming. Won’t be the first time that’s saved my hide.”

“You’re far more charming now than you were on the boat, at least. Talking will do that.”