3
Mangoes Lead to Disaster
Noa made it as far as the beach, where she flopped down on the sand. The waves lapped at the tips of her toes and then, a few minutes later, her ankles. She didn’t move.
The tortoise sunning itself on the pumice rocks eyed her suspiciously. After a moment of consideration, it shuffled into the sea, as if it could sense her black mood.
There were now half a dozen magicians on the beach. They murmured to the currents, trying to rock the island free, their speech incomprehensible to Noa—the languages of magic could only be understood if you were a magician. To her, the language of Salt, which allowed you to speak to the sea, sounded like gargling bubbles.
She stared moodily at the horizon, which was speckled with tiny red islands only a few yards across. The last time Noa had visited the Untold Sea, Mite had been a runny-nosed toddler trailing at Mom’s heels. Julian had been ill the entire trip—Julian had often been ill in those days, pale and small for a boy his age. Sickliness was common among magically gifted children; their power was like a living thing that ate them up from the inside. Noa had curled up beside him in the ship’s hold and read to him, adding little details that weren’t in the book to make him laugh. Back then, with their mother busy ruling Florean—and with a baby—it had often felt like it was just the two of them. Noa sometimes found herself guiltily missing the days before Julian had mastered his powers and grown strong and healthy.
It wasn’t that Julian didn’t listen to her. It was more like he didn’t trust her, not the way he used to. She was just his little sister now—someone to protect, when they used to protect each other. As he became more powerful, Julian seemed to move farther away from her, as if they were on separate Astraes traveling in opposite directions.
Noa played with her bracelet. The charms were all blue whales—Julian had bought it for her after they captured an island with a jewelry shop. She wondered how she would have convinced Mom to listen to her. Mom and Julian were a lot alike, though Julian was flightier than Mom, who had been about as flighty as a bag of rocks. But they had the same laugh, the same twinkle in their eyes, and they looked so much alike that on her sad days, the days Noa missed Mom the most, she found it hard to look at Julian.
Noa sprang to her feet. Several figures were making their way across the causeway that connected the two islands, one dragging a cart. Julian’s soldiers ran to intercept them. There was some gesturing and waving, and then, to Noa’s astonishment, the sound of laughter. The soldiers motioned for the strangers to come ashore. They unloaded their cart, accepted a purse from one of the soldiers, and then ambled back across the causeway.
Noa hurried over. “What in the thirteen seas is this?” she demanded, trying to sound coldly foreboding, the way Julian did when he was mad.
The soldiers turned from the sacks they had been hunching over, then snapped to attention. “Princess Noa,” said Matias, the closest one. “The villagers have been kind enough to sell us their best mangoes.”
He held out one of the sacks, revealing several dozen perfectly ripe fruits. The smell made Noa’s mouth water.
She forced her gaze back to Matias. “Villagers? What ‘village’ did they come from?”
“On the other side of the island,” Matias said, gesturing vaguely. “Said they noticed we were stuck and thought we might be hungry. Good thing they didn’t see what King Julian did to their fishermen, else they might not have been so hospitable.” The soldiers laughed heartily.
Noa pressed her fingers against her eyes. She forced herself to speak slowly and deliberately. “If any normal person saw Astrae on their shores, they’d run in the other direction, not come and give us fruit. People around here know Julian’s reputation.”
“Maybe they’re not normal. One of them did have quite the twitch.” He mimicked it, which got everybody laughing again. Clearly, the soldiers didn’t have high standards when it came to wit.
“And you didn’t bother to ask any questions?” Noa demanded. “What if those mangoes are poisoned?”
“Who’d try to poison King Julian?” one of the men said, looking bemused. Noa’s heart sank. Most of the people in Julian’s service thought he was invincible. Usually that was a good thing—it made them fiercely loyal, despite Julian’s tendency to toss people to Beauty when he lost his temper, or, on one memorable occasion, turn them into a tree. But Noa realized this also made it impossible for them to believe that a group of humble villagers would dream of attacking him.
“There’s nothing to fret about, Princess,” Matias said mildly. He handed her one of the fruits. “See? They’re just mangoes.”
The soldiers gathered up the sacks and moved away, leaving Noa alone at the water’s edge.
“You want me to do what?” Tomas said.
“Dissect it!” Noa thumped the mango down on the table for emphasis. “What’s so confusing about that?”
“The fact that it’s a mango,” Tomas said, “not a science experiment.”
Noa gave him such a glare that the boy hurriedly added, “But I can certainly do my best.”
Noa had gone straight to Tomas with the mango. He was a baker, after all—or at least, he was a baker’s son, and so should know his way around a suspicious fruit. Astrae’s village had few shops, and fewer still that had remained open after Julian turned the island into a traveling lair. While the islanders had supported the old queen, not everyone was thrilled with their new living situation, and some had set sail for more stationary shores. But Tomas’s father was a distant cousin of the Marchenas
