Ignite the Sun Page 5

  But Yarrow had raised his Runepiece, and he closed his eyes as it glowed blue again. “Still in place,” he muttered. “We’re still disguised. But it flickered. Something was attacking it.”

  “This magic,” the naiad said, her voice tense. “It will allow us to pass out of the city, yes? Even if the soldiers block the gates?”

  “Only if it holds.” Yarrow’s expression was as taut as Merrall’s voice.

  The word magic reminded me of the obsidian band I had seen around Merrall’s arm, which I now realized was gone. But before I could ask how she had removed it, the carriage gave an ominous, woody creak and the walls began to shiver as if giant hands were shaking us. Yarrow closed his eyes again, but looked up almost at once, his expression wild.

  “What?” Linden demanded, but Yarrow merely shook his head and muttered something under his breath, gripping the Runepiece with white fingers. No light came from it this time.

  Merrall sat up.

  “Iyzabel’s blocking it,” snarled Yarrow.

  “How?” Linden demanded.

  Yarrow shook his head again.”

  Without your magic—” Merrall began.

  “Don’t you think I know that?” Yarrow snapped. He massaged his forehead, making his wiry gray eyebrows stand out in every direction. The wild look in his eyes hardened into something grimmer, and he pushed his spectacles firmly up the bridge of his nose. “Siria,” he said, “if we get stopped before the edge of the city, we’ll have go on foot. In that case, you’ll go with Linden and Merrall, and I’ll draw off the soldiers.”

  Despite all my anger at him, panic bloomed inside me. “Yarrow, no.”

  “We’ll meet outside the city in the Wasteland, in a dead ash grove called the Skeleton Trees. Linden knows—”

  “No! Surely there’s—”

  Just then there was another shout from the street, and our driver bellowed a few incoherent words that sounded like curses. The coach rattled, picking up speed. How close were we to the edge of the city? Would he be able to get us out before—

  The carriage swung sickeningly to the right, taking a turn with the speed of a chariot. At the same moment something rammed us hard from the left. Outside, the horse screamed. The blow shuddered through the cabin, shifting our momentum too far into the turn—and I knew what was going to happen before it did. The carriage listed hard to the side, tilting upward onto its two right wheels, where it balanced, suspended, for an endless moment.

  And then it began to fall.

  11

  CHAPTER

  We toppled over each other like rag dolls. The sounds of splintering wood and breaking glass reverberated endlessly around the cabin. Something struck the side of my head very hard. When I found myself lying on someone’s legs on the overturned side of the coach, I could not immediately remember how I had gotten there.

  I pushed myself up, cutting my hand on broken glass from the window, and found that it was Merrall beneath me. The candles had gone out, but there was enough faint green light from the streetlamps to see vague shapes. Linden was cutting a hole in the carriage’s canvas roof with his knife, and Yarrow crouched beside him, mumbling something.

  Outside, the driver seemed to be arguing with whoever had crashed into us. I’d begun wondering whether the collision had been an accident when a deep voice bellowed, “Passengers, present yourselves, in the name of the queen!”

  Yarrow shot me a warning look, and my heart seemed to lodge like a bubble in the back of my throat, full of pleas for him to stay. But I could not risk speaking, and he hitched up his cloak and ducked outside.

  My hands shook so badly I had to press them into my lap to keep them still. I could feel blood pooling inside my left fist, and my pulse throbbed in the cut. The constriction around my chest was so tight I could barely breathe.

  “Where’s the girl?” the deep voice demanded, and Merrall reached for my wrist in the dark, apparently afraid I might run out and turn myself in. The fact I’d had no such impulse sent shame prickling through me.

  “What girl?” came Yarrow’s infuriated reply. “You’ve just wrecked my carriage over some runaway, and you didn’t even bother to make sure you were following the right person first? You’re lucky I wasn’t injured!”

  “Enough, old man.” The soldier sounded annoyed. “Out of the way while we—” He broke into a roar of surprise as the whisk of metal sounded, followed by a horrible, fleshy thud. Shouts of rage came from the other men.

  I gasped and teetered where I crouched, but Merrall redoubled her grip on my wrist and slapped her other hand over my mouth. The clamor outside became indecipherable, but mixed now with ringing clangs of steel, which had to mean Yarrow was alive. I heard a clatter of hooves. More shouts, then the hoofbeats faded out of earshot and one of the men bellowed, “Get after him! I’ll check the carriage!”

  My heartbeat was deafening and erratic inside my head as footsteps hammered toward us outside the carriage. Linden crouched, still and catlike beside the rent in the canvas that had become our door, and when the footfalls stopped just outside, he jumped up like a tripped spring.

  Merrall’s palm muffled my scream—she gripped my face and shook it hard, jostling my throbbing skull. I shoved her off in fury, scrambling after Linden. At the same moment he gave a cry outside the cabin. Merrall snatched at my ridiculous ballgown and caught a handful, but there was so much fabric I still had enough slack to reach the canvas and push back the flap.

  Linden was grappling with a soldier, holding the man’s sword hilt away from himself even as he tried to inch his dagger closer to the guard’s neck. His arms were shaking.

  “Run!” he barked at me. “Merrall, protect her!”

  Pulse raging, I threw myself out of the carriage, tripped over my skirts, recovered, and broke into a sprint with Merrall just behind me. We raced into an alley. I was shaking badly, and my insides felt like they were being boiled inside a kettle. A melee of shouting followed us, and then a sound like crashing water, and I burst out of the alley into the green light of a residential lane, its streetlamps hazy in the mist coming off the canal. The black water cleft a quiet avenue between stone mansions, but the banks were empty of all but private canal boats, which bobbed like sleeping ducks beside their moorings. A man in a silk hat was climbing into one, though he stopped dead at the sight of us.

  “Guards!” he cried in a thin, terrified voice, and I realized my hood had fallen back. “Guards!” he shrieked again, leaping into his boat.

  I yanked my hood forward as three soldiers pelted into view from the next street, drawing swords and bellowing. At the same moment, Merrall hurtled out of the alleyway, reedy hair and tattered skirts streaming as she sent jets of water from her palms at our pursuers, her skin glowing blue. The soldiers split off, one chasing her, the other two running at me and Linden, who had burst into the lane behind Merrall. For a moment all was chaos as we scattered, but then I heard Linden yell, and I whipped around just as Merrall veered toward me and snatched my wrist. She hauled me toward the canal. “No, Merrall!” I shrieked.

  One of the soldiers had caught Linden’s arm and spun him around so fast he was pinned with the sharp edge of a blade against his throat before he could even draw his knife.

  The world narrowed to a screaming point where cold metal touched soft skin. The heat inside me roared, and a kind of poisoned terror filled my chest and spread, hot and swift, all the way to the ends of my fingers. I jerked away from Merrall, and as I did, the boiling inside my body burst into sudden, raging flame. It tore through me from head to foot, so intense I thought I might actually break apart.

  I heard Merrall’s intake of breath—heard the guards cry out—as a brilliant golden light exploded out of nowhere, blazing in every part of my vision. The soldier holding Linden faltered, and Linden seized his chance. Twisting away, he sprinted flat out toward me.

  Relief shot through my limbs, but I was still so hot and the light was everywhere. I looked wildly around for the source .
. . and then I caught sight of my own hand.

  The skin—my skin—glowed fire-bright, as if lit from within by a hundred minuscule candles. Even beneath the black cloak and hood, I bathed the street in light. My mind reeled, and I registered as if from a great distance the sound of Linden’s voice, shouting something as he charged toward me.

  He was usually a head taller, but now we were somehow eye to eye—until he hooked me about the waist and pulled me down through empty space. Down? With a hard bump, my slippered feet connected with the uneven street cobbles.

  My brain wheeled and I flailed, tripping backward over my dress and grasping at Linden’s neck for balance.

  He grimaced, pulled me hard against him, and threw his weight over the edge of the dock, plunging us both into the icy water of the canal.

  12

  CHAPTER

  My body seized as frozen cold attacked from all sides—yet the heat within me barely flickered. Murky blackness contrasted with the light blazing stubbornly from my skin, and Linden’s arms clamped me in an iron grip as we sank like a pair of boulders toward the canal bed. I inhaled a mouthful of water and choked, air leaking out of me quicker than we were sinking. I squeezed my eyes shut.

  What had just happened? How had I left the ground?

  My lungs cried out for air, and I writhed against Linden. But then I felt small, slender fingertips coming to rest against my temple, and miraculously—inexplicably—oxygen expanded inside my lungs.

  I nearly opened my mouth on reflex, ready to suck in another deep breath, before I caught myself. The breath began to burn in my chest, and I let out a small stream of bubbles to relieve it.

  Then a voice filled my head—Merrall’s voice. And my eyes flew open as I remembered what she was.

  We must go lower, she said, her husky tones urgent inside my mind. They might still see the light from above. Sunchild, can you draw it inside yourself, contain it?

  But I couldn’t answer, couldn’t even think, because by the light coming off my skin, I could see Merrall well, and underwater she was an entirely different creature than she had been on land. I’d known this in theory; everyone knew naiads changed in water. But seeing it was a different matter.

  Merrall’s legs had become a tail—a long, violet fishtail of glittering scales—and her hair had turned a shocking, dazzling violet. Her face was no longer plain: every feature, line, curve, and eyelash was stunning in its perfection. Her skin glowed pale blue, though flushes of fuchsia and turquoise showed in her cheeks and lips.

  I expelled a cloud of bubbles, and Merrall’s touch sent another breath of air through my lungs as my slippers sank into thick mud. Her face, I realized, was not just beautiful; it was also furious.

  Contain the light! her voice cried inside my head.

  A mess of bewilderment and nerves, I turned all my concentration toward the heat still thrumming inside my body and willed it to become smaller. I imagined it withdrawing from my skin, receding inward like a flame burning to embers. I imagined throwing water to extinguish it altogether.

  The heat flickered once or twice, but it did not do as I wished. I started to shake with panic, and Linden’s arms tightened around me.

  My terror for him had sparked this insane light; what if that was what kept it alive? I told myself we had escaped, that he was safe—we were both safe—beneath the waters of the canal. I even lied to myself that Yarrow was safe, that he was strong and hardy, that he would meet us again and we would all be together.

  Repeating these thoughts like a mantra, I tried to compress the heat within my body. It seemed to take hours, my shoes sinking ever lower, but finally I succeeded. The warmth remained fixed deep inside me as if it belonged there, though when I opened my eyes the water was murky and dark.

  I groaned, exhausted from the effort.

  Merrall sent another breath through my lungs. We must move from this place, she said. We cannot resurface here, so we must swim. I cannot keep the connection between us if I remove my hands, which means every ten strokes, we will stop for air.

  The idea of moving at all was horrible, and swimming blindly through the freezing water of a soldier-patrolled canal was almost the worst thing I could imagine, but Merrall had already removed her hand from my temple and taken me by the shoulders.

  Her fingers grazed my face—gentler than I knew I deserved—and I heard her voice once more: Stay as low as you can. Try to propel yourself downward. Let us go.

  I had never been a good swimmer, and being drained of energy didn’t improve my skills. Yarrow taught me before I went to Gildenbrook, although we had only used a cold, shallow forest stream, and I hadn’t had much practice.

  Lights were popping behind my eyes by the tenth feeble stroke, and just when I thought my lungs would surely burst, Merrall’s fingers touched my face once more, and a blessed rush of air filled my chest.

  Again! she said. We repeated this process over and over, my limbs growing weaker with every clumsy stroke. The ballgown billowed and tangled around me like a great fishing net, and I longed to shuck it off and leave it in the mud to rot. Eventually, Linden found my hand and pulled me along, probably worried I would drown. I held it tight; I would not soon forget the hideous fear of losing him.

  After more oxygen refills than I could count, Merrall said, I think we can climb out here. We have nearly reached the city’s edge, and the canal grates will be shut.

  I didn’t care if we’d reached Abyssum. All I wanted was to breathe on my own again.

  Give me a moment to check that there are no soldiers.

  In less than a minute she was back, and with a last surge of effort I kicked up through the cold water until I felt the surface break and a rush of even colder air burn my face. I sucked in needle-sharp breaths, trembling as I blinked into the green light of streets that now seemed blinding compared to the darkness of the canal.

  Merrall already stood on the deserted bank, dripping and sodden, but unlike Linden and me, not shivering at all. Though she had reverted to her above-water appearance, she still looked very much the naiad with her straight hair and seaweed garments pouring water onto the cobblestones. She helped Linden climb out, then they each seized one of my arms and heaved. My waterlogged ballgown tripled my weight, and even with their help, I barely made it out. Merrall looked over her shoulder every few seconds as I struggled to my feet, but the ramshackle street remained empty.

  Water rushed from the folds of my gown like rivers down a mountain slope, and the fabric hung, heavy and sopping, pulling at me as I struggled to stay upright. I had never felt so drained in my life. My satin slippers were long gone, lost somewhere in the canal, and my corset sloshed when I moved. I hugged myself, trying to stop the shaking.

  I opened my mouth to ask what our next steps would be, but the words didn’t come out.

  Instead the world pitched, darkness poured over me, and I tumbled into oblivion.

  13

  CHAPTER

  Child,” said Milla’s voice from a long way off. “Siria, aren’t you ready to go?”

  It was the day I was to leave home. The day I was beginning my life at school. And despite the fact Phipps and Milla had come home from court for the occasion, I was not compliant in my departure.

  I was twelve.

  “Today is a very exciting day,” Milla said, peering into my enormous bedroom from the doorway. She rarely came inside. “Today you’ll start learning how to be a real lady.”

  “I don’t want to be a real lady,” I said into my feather pillow. I was lying face down on my four-poster bed, wearing an old woven shirt I had once borrowed from Linden and never returned. My Gildenbrook uniform hung pressed and untouched inside my wardrobe.

  Milla’s patience was shorter than her average smile. She clucked her tongue. “Get up, Siria, or I shall call your father.”

  I wanted my mother to come sit beside me, brush the hair back from my forehead, and tell me some reassuring stories about her time at Gildenbrook. The world had been v
ery different then, of course, but Gildenbrook had still been a girls’ school. Any action on her part would help, I’d felt, and perhaps eventually I would be comfortable enough to put on that wretched black dress and leave behind everything familiar.

  From the doorway I heard a tsking sound, and Milla’s footsteps clipped away, back down the manor hall. When she returned, it was not with my father, but with my current governess.

  “Up, Miss Nightingale,” snapped the governess in her sharp voice. “Up and into your uniform right now.”

  In five minutes, she had wrestled me into the dress, a pair of black lace stockings, and some button-up high-heeled boots that made me feel as though my feet had grown horns. Milla watched the whole ordeal from the doorway with her arms crossed.

  “Can’t you make her look any less . . . feral?” Her face was pinched, as if she’d just been made to drink curdled milk.

  “She always looks this way, my lady,” said the governess with a sigh. “All bony elbows and knobby knees, and there’s no making that hair any better. Even if you plait it, she’ll forget and scratch her head, and have it coming down and looking worse than before.”

  Milla pursed her lips. “Well, I hope they can make something of her at Gildenbrook. Siria, look at me. Promise you won’t embarrass me at school. I hate to think what the other women at court will say if their daughters write home and report that Milla Nightingale’s child is a barbarian.”

  “I’m not a barbarian,” I said in my toughest voice, hoping it disguised my hurt.

  “Well then, act like it. Come on, time to go. We can’t be late.”

  “Can’t I say goodbye to Yarrow and Linden?”

  Milla’s manicured eyebrows shot up. “The gardener and his boy? Why on earth would you do that?”

  The governess looked suddenly uncomfortable, and I realized my parents hadn’t known how much time I spent with Yarrow and Linden. Afraid of getting them into trouble, I shrugged as if I didn’t care.