“He won’t be mad. Though I’d take an angry Julian over a magically possessed Julian any day.” Noa hadn’t thought she’d ever be grateful for Mite’s habit of accidentally blowing things up when she got upset, any more than you could be grateful to have a volcano for a next-door neighbor, but she had clearly saved them all. Mite was a dark mage, too, and could speak two magical languages. Even more unusually, they were oppositional in nature: Worm, the language of earth, and Spark, the language of fire. This made her volatile, and while Julian had been teaching her to control her powers, he would likely be happy to learn that he hadn’t succeeded yet.
Noa patted her awkwardly. “It’s going to be all right.”
“You said that before,” Mite said. “And it wasn’t.”
“Fine,” Noa said, annoyed. “It might be all right, and it might not be. Either way, there’s no point moaning about it. Now be quiet and let me think.”
Mite nodded. She didn’t look in danger of crying anymore. “That sounds more like you.”
Noa huffed. Tomas stumbled over, rubbing his head.
“Oh, Tomas!” Noa said. She had forgotten he was there. “Are you all right?”
“I think so,” he said, though he sounded a little put out. “I hit my head, but I don’t think anything’s broken.”
“Why are you holding your wrist like that?” Mite asked suddenly.
“Forget about it.” Noa pulled off her backpack, but a lash of pain stopped her. “Actually, help me. Please.”
Mite opened the backpack and placed the Chronicle in Noa’s lap. “What’s in there except a bunch of stuff about what the weather was like last month?”
Noa treated her to a dignified silence. She opened the Chronicle, savoring the familiar smell of parchment and iguana leather. Her neatly organized columns and charts soothed her immediately. She pressed it open to today’s entry, creasing the pages just the way she liked, then allowed her mind to drift.
She traced the sketch she had drawn of the mysterious island. It had been large—large enough to conceal the king’s warships. But it had been an illusion, and illusions were incredibly difficult magic. That made it likely that some of the king’s most powerful magicians were on those ships. But the poison in the mangoes was so dangerous that it was a risk to have them transported with such important people. If the mangoes burst or exploded, which could happen when ordinary objects were imbued with magic, they could have infected Xavier’s soldiers. Noa’s thoughts drifted to the bakery, and the strange steam the mango had given off, which had turned clear the moment it was immersed in water.
“Bring me some water,” Noa said.
Mite looked around. “There might be some left in one of those buckets.”
“Not seawater. Get some from the tap.”
Mite didn’t ask questions. She dashed into Julian’s bathroom and returned with a half-full cup. “Is this enough?”
“Let’s hope so.” Noa knelt next to Julian. Summoning her courage, she threw the water in his face.
He hissed something in a voice that wasn’t his own, and his body twitched. Then he let out an odd sort of sigh, and was still again.
Noa gingerly pushed back one of his eyelids. A twilight-blue eye stared sightlessly back at her.
Mite let out a cry. She sat on his chest and began patting his cheeks hard enough to make his head loll back and forth. “Julian! Julian!”
“Don’t you start that.” Noa drew her off. “He’s hurt worse than I was. He needs a blood mage.”
Tomas gaped at her. “How did you know what to do?”
“It’s obvious,” Noa said, trying to sound nonchalant as her insides danced with relief. “The poison in those mangoes is so dangerous that King Xavier would have wanted the antidote to be easily available, just in case someone on his side accidentally came in contact with it. He wouldn’t care that we might figure it out, because he didn’t need the poison to be foolproof—he just needed it to infect enough of us to distract Julian and make us all run amok for an hour or two. Then he’d march in with his soldiers and take control. Speaking of which—” Noa darted to the window. “The king’s boats have almost reached the beach. The waves keep pushing them back—maybe one of the salt mages is at it again.”
Mite leaped to her feet, her eyes shining. “We can cure the others!”
“We need to get to the prow before we worry about curing anybody,” Noa said. “We have to get the island moving. Come on.”
She turned and almost ran into Tomas, who was still staring at her. “How did you figure all that out?” he demanded, a note of helplessness in his voice.
“Noa always figures things out,” Mite said in exasperation, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Stay here and look after Julian, all right?” Noa said to Tomas. “Lock the door and don’t let anyone in until we get back or he wakes up.”
They ran out, leaving Tomas staring after them.
Ten minutes later, they were clanking and sloshing along the path behind the castle.
“Hurry up,” Noa called over her shoulder.
Mite’s face was a brilliant red. “They’re heavy!”
“Dump out some water, then.”
They had stopped in the kitchen on their way out of the castle, grabbing the first things they saw that could hold water and filling them to the brim. Consequently, Noa held a stewpot with her uninjured hand, while Mite had two saucepans, one under each arm, and a cookie tin that was already half-empty, given that she had forgotten the lid.
Panting under the weight of the brimming pot, Noa was beginning to regret her idea. It was hot, and a bead of sweat trickled down her back. They hadn’t encountered any corrupted mages so far, and the pots and pans were certainly slowing them down.
No sooner had she had that thought, though, than she heard a twig snap in the brush. She whirled and caught sight
