Noa could see Reckoner from her elevated position on the ship, but the mages could not. The lead mage rounded the corner, tripped over him, and went sprawling into the sea in an impressive somersault.
You would have thought that Reckoner would move out of the way. But the dragon just sat there like an enormous green barnacle, blinking his blurry eyes as the mages tripped spectacularly over his thick hide. Eventually, the mages at the back of the mob figured out what was going on and stopped to help the others, but by then Julian’s reflection had escaped to wherever loose reflections escaped to. Maybe there was a special town where they lived, Noa thought dazedly, and walked around with their limbs flapping and their ripple faces grinning at each other. She tried to put the image out of her mind.
“You couldn’t have just swept them out to sea?” she demanded, because if Julian could create a hideous water twin, surely he could handle a simpler—and far less flashy—spell.
Julian blinked. “I didn’t think of that.”
“Of course you didn’t,” Noa groaned.
Once the mages had all gone, Julian called Reckoner’s name. The dragon’s ears pricked up and he ambled over. He tried to jump onto the boat, but Reckoner’s problem was that he never remembered how big he was, and he only made it halfway. He hit the water, sending up such a geyser that it soaked all three of them. Julian was too exhausted from the last spell to cast another, so they had to throw a net around Reckoner’s flailing body and haul him up. It took a long time, and Noa was scared that, in saving Reckoner, Julian would get them all captured. But then she saw how Julian wrapped his arms around Reckoner as he sat dripping and sneezing on the deck, and buried his face in the old dragon’s neck, and she didn’t say anything.
Julian raised the sail and the fishing boat drifted out to sea. Noa helped him—they both knew what to do, for even princes and princesses were expected to learn how to pilot a boat in Florean—and then she sat with Mite until Mite fell asleep with her head in Noa’s lap.
Mite cried a bit in her sleep, but Noa just stared straight ahead, her eyes dry. She’d cried enough. It grew windy as they reached the open sea, the waves stretching and pulling the thumbprint of the moon, and she was happy for the chimney sweeps’ huge coat, even if it smelled like Reckoner’s breath.
She looked at Julian. There was a cold expression on his face that Noa had never seen before. He barely even looked like himself. Their eyes met, and it was one of those times when Noa knew they were thinking the same thing. She felt a rush of relief that she had Julian and Mite, that Xavier hadn’t managed to take them from her, too. We’ll find the little one first. If Noa met those assassins now, she would tear their hearts out with her bare hands.
The dark fishing boat glided on, and Noa watched the palace slip below the horizon. Something inside her hardened. The palace belonged to them, no matter how many banners Xavier strung up. It belonged to the Marchenas, and so did the rest of Florean.
And somehow, someday, they were going to get it back.
Part IAstrae
1
An Island Loses Its Directions
Noa carefully arranged the map upon the sand, weighting the corners with rocks. She pulled two pencils, a ruler, and a compass from her cloak, twining one of the pencils through her long hair to keep it out of her eyes.
She had almost finished the map of Astrae. It had taken her several months—though the island was small, measuring only four miles in length and a mile across, Noa had wanted to be thorough. Maps were always useful. Knowing exactly where things were, and where other things might be, was powerful. Noa squinted at the beach, which was pebbly and dotted with tide pools like scraps of fallen sky, and added another mark.
The island gave a rumbling groan, and Noa’s pencil skidded across the paper.
“What was that?” The island made a lot of strange sounds—it was an enchanted island, after all—but in the two years they’d been living there, she’d never heard it groan. Mite, crouched over something farther up the beach, made no reply. Mite was seven now, and had only two interests, as far as Noa could tell: insects and getting dirty.
“Look, Noa!” Mite held her hands closed in front of her, an ominous sign.
Noa grimaced. “If it’s another spider with hair longer than yours, Mite, I don’t want to see it.”
Mite chewed her lip. “My hair isn’t very long.”
“Go put it in the grass.”
Mite glowered, but she moved to obey, muttering to the creature under her breath. That was the other thing with Mite—she didn’t just like bugs, she talked to them. Noa was certain Mite was going to end up living alone in a forest somewhere, cackling to herself.
Noa eyed the map critically, tracing the familiar contours of the island with a sandy fingertip. At the south end of Astrae was a dormant volcano called Devil’s Nose, dark red and forested with a maze of scalesia trees that were home to hundreds of finches and geckos and lava crickets. The village on Astrae was also called Astrae, and amounted to seven shops and a few dozen whitewashed houses encircling a garden. The eastern side of the island was dominated by sea cliffs, the west by a reddish beach punctuated by little black coves.
Of course, “east side” and “west side” were now useless from a navigational standpoint, because soon after the Marchenas reached Astrae, Julian enchanted it so that the island could move about like a ship. This was exactly as complicated as it sounded, and the early
