The Voyage to Magical North (10 page)

The
Onion
sailed on, watched by a million, million uncaring stars.

*   *   *

Dawn flooded the sky in a turmoil of pink and blue. Far away, other sails skimmed the horizon while, closer, dolphins played around the ship, their slender bodies glistening like silver. The crew crowded together on deck to eat breakfast, talking quietly. Ewan Hughes never quite let go of his sword, Brine noticed, and several of the others kept staring at the deck as if they could see through the planks to their unwelcome guest in the brig below.

Trudi sucked the last piece of shrimp from a skewer. “What do you want to see when we get to Magical North?” she asked. “What does it mean, anyway, seeing the whole world? Is it like a map? Do we get to fly over the world and see everything, or what?”

She looked at Peter as if she expected him to know the answer.

“It's no use asking him,” said Brine. “He's only an apprentice magician, really. He doesn't know a lot.”

Peter's cheeks reddened angrily, but Trudi's thoughts had already moved on, and she didn't notice. Her face took on a dreamy, faraway look. “I wouldn't mind seeing my ex-husbands again. They've probably all married other people by now, but you never know.”

“Ex-husbands?” asked Brine. “How many have you got?”

Trudi blushed. “Three or four. They only loved me for my cooking.”

“When I get to Magical North,” said Bill Lightning, “I'm going to look for my kids. The youngest one will be twelve by now.”

Tim Burre sighed. “I knew a girl once, back in the west. I always wondered what became of her.”

Ewan laughed. “And while you all are standing around looking at the world, I'm going to be picking up gold. Even if I have to fill my boots to the brim and walk back barefoot.” He turned as Cassie came out on deck. “What about you, Captain? What do you want to see when we stand on Magical North?”

Cassie smiled, but something in her eyes looked strained. “I haven't said we're going there yet.”

“The
Onion
's been sailing north since yesterday,” said Ewan. “Northish, anyway. And I can't help noticing that a certain magician is still alive in the brig. If we're bound for Magical North, you might as well tell us.”

Cassie looked down at the deck. Her expression changed: a sudden release of frown lines as if she'd just gotten rid of something that had been troubling her. She clapped her hands. “Gather round, everyone. We are going to make a plan.”

Ewan blinked. “A plan? Since when do we have plans?”

“Since we needed them,” said Cassie crisply. “Marfak West will turn on us, but we beat him once before, and we can do it again. As long as we keep his starshell out of his hands, he can't use magic, and that makes him almost helpless. That's the first part of the plan.” She paused, as if waiting for someone to disagree. No one did. “Right,” she continued, “our trading in Morning didn't go quite as well as we'd hoped.”

“You're telling me,” muttered Ewan.

Cassie ignored him. “So,” she continued, “we still need supplies. We'll stop off at a few islands and see what we can do. And then I want to know exactly what we're getting into, and there's only one place, short of the inside of Marfak West's head, where we might be able to find out.”

The crew groaned. Zen let out a little mew.

“Barnard's Reach,” said Ewan. “I knew it.”

 

C
HAPTER
11

They say there are three kinds of people in the world: those who listen to stories, those who tell them, and those who make them. Barnard's Reach is home to a fourth kind: those who keep them. The library island is little more than a jut of land at the southern mouth of the Gemini Seas. It is accessed only by appointment, and never at all if you are a man—the libraries are for women only. There, the Book Sisters collect and record everything that happens in the world. Nobody knows what drives them to spend their lives in the company of books, but when a story begins with “they say,” you can bet your boots “they” came from Barnard's Reach.

(
From
ALDEBRAN
BOSWELL'S
BOOK
OF
THE
WORLD)

For the next week, the
Onion
zigzagged her way north between islands. At each one it was the same: They stopped, Cassie did a lot of talking, and they sailed on, taking with them an extra barrel or crate of dried goods while the islanders scratched their heads and wondered why they'd just traded a whole load of valuable supplies for a bucket of slightly old chopped octopus.

Gradually, the days grew longer and colder. Peter was used to Minutes, where the seasons followed the same pattern every year and you always knew what time of day it was by the position of the sun in the sky. Everything changed so much faster at sea that he wasn't even sure what the time was anymore, never mind the date. He knew he ought to be practicing magic, but everywhere he went on board, at least two members of the crew seemed to end up watching him, sometimes with grinning anticipation as if they expected him to do something spectacular any minute, but more often with stares as sharp as a cutlass point. Not so long ago, Peter had believed that getting a spell wrong in front of an audience was the worst thing that could possibly happen. Now he'd found something worse: getting it right and being stabbed by superstitious pirates.

The three pieces of starshell caused their own problems. They were too big to carry around all the time. Marfak West may have done it, but he must have had pockets lined with gold or something. Peter was afraid of breaking them if he kept them in his pocket, but he had nowhere safe to leave them. He'd tried taking them off their chain, and just carrying one piece, but that still meant he had to find somewhere for the other two. In the end, he kept all three wrapped in a bundle of rags hung up by his hammock, and he checked on them several times a day to make sure they weren't eating their way through the cloth. It wasn't ideal, but it was the best he could do.

Meanwhile, to his annoyance, Brine was looking more and more like a member of the crew. Coming back on deck one day after checking on the starshell, Peter saw her halfway up the rigging. She was wearing borrowed trousers, the legs rolled up to fit her, and her wiry hair was tucked inside a yellow cap.

“Hi,” said Peter, looking up at her.

“Hi, yourself.” She slid down off the rigging to join him. “Did you want something?”

“No, I…” He didn't know what to say; he just knew that he needed to talk to someone—someone who wouldn't look at him like he was some sort of exotic new species. He scuffed a foot back and forth. “Cassie's determined to take us north, then.”

“I guess so.” She flashed a grin at him. “It's exciting, isn't it? We're seeing the world at last. And we'll get to see the libraries at Barnard's Reach.”

“
You'll
get to see the libraries,” said Peter. “They don't allow men, remember, and I'm pretty sure boys count as men.”

“Oh. Sorry, I keep forgetting.”

She didn't sound sorry. She sounded pleased, as if she was glad she'd found something she could do that he couldn't. Peter turned away from her and looked up at Tim Burre, who was clinging to the top of the mainmast, mending the crow's nest. “What do you think about Marfak West?” he asked.

“I don't know. You're the magician—you tell me.”

Peter didn't know whether she was serious or not. He decided to pretend that she was. “I think he's leading us into a trap. He's supposed to be the world's most powerful magician, and yet he wasted all his magic and let himself be captured. Why?”

“Maybe he wants to stand on Magical North and look for starshell,” said Brine. “I don't know. Why don't you go and ask him?” She took her cap off and put it back on the wrong way round. “You worry too much. Cassie knows what she's doing. Just practice your magic and leave the rest to her.”

Practice magic. That was easy for Brine to say. The only practice Peter had ever done was copying spellshapes over and over, hoping he'd get enough of them right that Tallis Magus wouldn't hit him.

“Maybe if you helped…,” he began tentatively, but then Ewan Hughes shouted to Brine across the deck.

“Got to go,” she said. She ran to join Ewan, leaving Peter standing alone. A few minutes later, Brine and Ewan were practicing sword-fighting together. Peter put on a face that was supposed to say fighting was far too dull for magicians to bother with and scratched at the black spot on his palm where the starshell had burned him. The skin seemed to be healing over, but it looked like he was going to have a permanent mark there.

“… And then you twist like this,” said Ewan.

Peter got up and slid away unnoticed by either of them, which felt unfair. People ought to notice him: He was a magician.

He hadn't entirely decided where he was going—just somewhere he could get away from everyone. He climbed down the ladder to the mid-deck, but he could hear Trudi banging about in the galley, and she was bound to come out and ask him to help. For a moment he stood, then he opened the hatch to the lower deck and climbed down.

A faint rasping greeted his ears as he groped his way between the packing crates. It sounded like handfuls of shells being rubbed together. Then he saw the iron cage at the back of the hold, and he realized what the sound was. Marfak West was laughing.

The magician was so tall that, sitting upright, his head wasn't far from the top of the cage. His wrists were chained in front of him and his ankles were chained together, but he managed to look as if he'd chosen to sit like that and the cage and chains just happened to be around him.

Peter edged closer. Marfak West stopped laughing and sniffed loudly.

“Do you know you stink of fish?”

Peter scowled. “Mock all you like. I'm not the one in a cage.”

“Are you sure about that? There are more cages than ones made of bars.” Marfak West stretched, making his chains rattle. The black flecks in his eyes drifted in slow circles. Common sense told Peter to leave now. But if he left, it would look like he was afraid, and for some reason, he didn't want Marfak West to think he was a coward.

For at least a minute, they looked at each other. Eventually, Marfak West shifted position. “I presume you're not here to inquire after my health.”

“Why are you doing this?” asked Peter. The words blurted out, as if of their own accord. “Why do you want to go to Magical North at all, and why like this? Aren't you embarrassed to be Cassie's prisoner?”

“Not really,” the magician said. “This ship is taking me where I want to go, and while the rest of you are running about on deck getting hot and annoyed, I can wait here and sleep. I'd say this was a far better arrangement. Apart from the catering.” He smiled. “As for what I want with Magical North, what do you think?”

Peter scratched his hand. “Some of the crew are saying you want to look for starshell.”

“That's not a bad plan. Is that what you think?”

Peter paused a moment. “No. I don't think so. It might be a good plan for someone else, but it seems … it seems too small for you.”

Marfak West dipped his head. “You know what they say about me—my soul is twisted. Magic has corrupted me, and I corrupt everything I touch.”

The space around Peter seemed to grow darker, and colder. His feet carried him back a step. “They say a lot of things that aren't true.”

“So they do,” agreed the magician. “Stories are told by the victors, after all. The heroic crew of the
Onion
defeated the evil magician. That's how it usually goes.” He sat back. “No one ever tells the story of how my pioneering work—work that would have benefited all humanity—was cut short by marauding pirates. And all because I had the misfortune to possess something that Cassie O'Pia can never have.”

“What was that?” asked Peter, forgetting for a moment that he was supposed to be afraid.

“Infamy. It's like fame, but more so.” Marfak West wrapped his arms around his knees and gazed steadily ahead. “That's the thing with stories: They don't just need a hero, they need a villain. Cassie wanted to be a hero, and so she needed to find a villain to defeat. But the good thing about being a villain is that everybody thinks they know you. They put you in a little box marked ‘Evil,' and they never expect you to do anything that isn't bad. And that, believe it or not, gives you a great deal of power—the power to surprise.” The flecks in the magician's eyes drifted inward, making his pupils appear huge. “The answer to your question is yes, by the way. I'll teach you magic.”

Peter's throat turned to sandpaper. The thought had been there in his head all along; he just hadn't dared give words to it. Words made it too real, too possible. He backed away so fast he bumped into a packing crate.

“Why?” he asked. “I'm on Cassie's crew. I'm one of the people who believe you're evil. Why would you teach me anything?”

Marfak West studied his fingernails. “Who knows? Maybe it's because I really am evil and I'm locked in a cage with nothing to do but cause whatever harm I can.” He regarded Peter steadily. “Or maybe because knowledge—especially magical knowledge—should be passed on, and you're the only one I've met who has any inclination to learn.” He eased his boot off and massaged his toeless foot. “You can't perform magic without starshell,” he said. “Next time you come, bring a piece.”

Shaking his head, Peter stumbled away through the maze of crates and climbed the ladder up the decks. Did Marfak West think he was that stupid? The moment Marfak West got his hands on starshell, he'd mind-control everyone and take over the
Onion
.