Mite had already been put to bed, on account of her being only five, and several lavasticks had been left glowing on various tables in her room. She started to scream when Noa dragged her roughly out of bed, but Noa clapped a hand over her mouth.
“It’s me,” she hissed. “We have to find Julian. There are—there are bad people looking for us.”
Mite’s eyes were wide. Her dark hair stuck up, and there was something smeared on her cheek that Noa suspected was chocolate, because Mite was an expert at sneaking food into her room. “Bad people? Are they librarians?”
“Um—yeah,” Noa said. Their mother had been in a long-standing spat with the librarians at the royal library, who had bitterly protested her habit of borrowing books indefinitely, even though every library in Florean technically belonged to her. “Mean, angry librarians. I heard them say you forgot to return something.”
Mite gaped. Hans, the head librarian, had once scolded her for getting fingerprints on the card catalog, and she now lived in fear of him and all librarian-kind. “But I didn’t!”
Noa dragged her out the door and down the hall. “Don’t worry—Julian will sort it out.”
They ran down the staircase, which was strangely deserted. Where were the palace guards? Where were the turquoise-clad servants? How had the assassins managed to reach Noa’s room in the first place? Dread coiled her stomach into knots. They needed Julian. He was sixteen, and even better, he was one of the most powerful magicians in Florean—or he would be, if he ever bothered to practice his spellwork.
Noa stopped at the bottom of the stairs, pushing Mite behind her. There was a terrible clamor coming from the banquet hall, shouting and clashing swords. What was going on?
“Let’s try the throne room.” Noa still felt nauseous, and she prayed she wouldn’t faint. She led Mite down a quiet servants’ corridor. Mite was barefoot and kept tripping on the hem of her nightie, but at least she wasn’t crying. They took the shortcut through the gardens—night was falling, and the sky was a deep purple curve like the inside of a mussel shell.
A black-cloaked figure came racing into the courtyard, and Noa’s heart faltered, but it was only Julian. His cloak was singed, and he had a cut on his cheek. Noa leaped into his arms with a cry of relief.
Her brother drew back, and they examined each other. Most people thought Julian was handsome, so handsome that some bards had even written fawning songs about it, full of awful metaphors about his eyes that gave Noa no end of material to mock him with. He had the same olive skin and overlarge ears as her and Mite, but his eyes were blue like their mother’s. He seemed fine, apart from the blood, though his gaze was cold and glazed over, like ice, and he was gripping Noa too tightly. “You’re all right. You’re both all right.”
“What’s going on?”
Julian didn’t answer. He dragged them back into the servants’ corridor and they found some oversized cloaks that the servants used while cleaning the chimneys. They smelled of soot and burnt cheese. Julian had to tie the bottom of Mite’s cloak around her waist and the sleeves around the back of her neck. His hands were shaking.
“What’s going on?” Noa repeated. “Julian!”
“It wasn’t a fever that killed Mom,” he said in a too-calm voice. “She was poisoned. Xavier was behind it.”
Noa felt weightless, as if she’d become an echo of herself. Xavier Whitethorn had been on Mom’s council. Noa remembered him as a pale and quiet and thoroughly dull grown-up, even by councillor standards.
“Xavier,” she murmured. She should have felt angry, but since Mom’s death, she’d been unable to feel things when she was supposed to. “Who told you that?”
“Xavier’s assassins. Mages. They were waiting for me in the throne room.”
“We didn’t see any assassins,” Noa said with a meaningful glance Mite’s way. “But a couple of librarians dropped by. We must owe a pretty big fine.”
Julian gave her a sharp look, but he didn’t ask for an explanation. That was the best thing about Julian—he always understood what she meant, even when nobody else did. “I’ll make sure they get it,” he said. “We have to go. Xavier’s turned most of the council against the Marchenas. He spread all kinds of rumors about Mom. That her power had corrupted her, that it was turning her mad, and that I was heading in the same direction.”
Noa stared. “But that’s ridiculous. How could anybody believe him?”
Julian looked ten years older. “Because we’re dark magicians. That’s how.”
Noa let out her breath. Most magicians could speak only one of the nine languages of magic—they were born knowing how; it wasn’t something you could learn. The common ones were Salt, the language of the sea, and Worm, the language of earth. Magicians who could speak more than one magical language could weave them together into complex spells, which was dark magic. Dark mages were rare, though no one knew exactly how rare, for many lived in secret—most people distrusted their gifts. Their mother had been the first dark mage to rule Florean.
Noa herself couldn’t do any magic, dark or otherwise. She’d always thought that people hated dark mages out of jealousy, which she could understand, as she was jealous of Julian constantly. But it was true that a few dark mages had eventually gone bad—it was more common among them than regular mages. There was something about having all those kinds of magic inside you that corrupted some people, like fruit trees that rotted from too much water.
“The royal mages are on Xavier’s side, and half the guards,” Julian said. “I can’t fight them all. It’s a coup. They’re taking over the palace as we speak.”
“What’s a coo?” Mite asked.
“It means Xavier wants to be king,” Noa said. She felt a spark of fury, but it
