“Tell them how long Xavier has been searching for the Lost Words, Thadeus,” Julian said.
“Since the spring harvest,” the man intoned in a voice that wasn’t his own. It was Julian’s voice, Noa realized with horror, only twisted and wrong, as if Julian had stepped inside the man’s head and was pulling out information like papers from a cabinet. “He sent out his spy ships last month.”
“You see?” Julian said with a cold smile that Noa didn’t like one bit. “He’ll tell you anything.”
“What’s happened to him?” Asha said, her hand over her throat.
“I don’t exactly know,” Julian admitted. “I wanted more information from him than he was giving to Renne. So I decided to experiment with a truth spell I’ve been working on.”
“You experimented on him?” Noa repeated. This was how Julian had learned about the Lost Words?
Julian nodded, perfectly calm. “After that, he was very cooperative.”
“Well, sure,” Noa spat. “You turned him into a zombie.”
Julian blinked. “How else was I supposed to get him to tell me Xavier’s plans?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Noa said. “Offer him gold? Charm him into joining our side? I can think of a few ways, and so could you if you bothered to think at all, instead of just throwing magic at things you don’t like.”
A little silence followed this speech. The councillors shuffled their feet and tossed nervous glances at Julian. He blinked, and Noa thought she saw a flash of hurt in his eyes, followed quickly by annoyance. “I had to be sure I was getting the truth. Thadeus gave me a lot of information about Xavier’s plans, some of which we already knew from our spies. I have no reason to disbelieve the rest, including everything he told me about the Lost Words.”
Asha stepped forward and waved her hand in front of the mage’s face. Her initial, horrified reaction seemed to be changing to fascination. “I’ve never seen a truth spell produce such a powerful effect. They’re usually too easy to throw off to be of much use.”
Noa’s heart thudded. “Will he get better?”
“Let’s hope not. I like seeing Xavier’s mages this way,” said a tall, auburn-haired woman with an unpleasant smile. It was Esmalda, Julian’s least savory councillor, one of several criminals who had joined him over the last year. She’d been their mother’s councillor once, until she’d been thrown into prison for working as an assassin. Esmalda said she’d been falsely accused, and maybe that was true, but something about the weather mage made Noa’s skin crawl. Also, Esmalda often encouraged Julian’s worst instincts.
“He’s cooperative, is he?” she added, prodding the man’s shoulder. “Why not make him dance?”
“I think you’ve made your point,” Renne said. He alone among the councillors looked squeamish; the others were regarding Julian with varying degrees of bewilderment and awe.
“You have me convinced,” said the red-nosed ambassador. He looked awed, too, but also like he wished he was far away from the shadow-eyed mage. “But what if we spend months searching for these magics, only to come up empty-handed?”
“I can put your mind at ease,” Julian said. “There are two places where Xavier is looking for the Lost Words—one is an island called Evert. We can reach it in a few days.”
“This sort of spell will be enormously useful,” said a blood mage, peering into Thadeus’s vacant face. “Tell me, did you base it off Pizarro’s Theorem?”
Julian launched into a complicated account of the truth spell, but Noa didn’t hear any of it. She couldn’t stop staring at Thadeus. He could have been staring back at her, as they faced each other across the table, but Noa knew he couldn’t see any of them. He was gone, an empty shell. It was worse than being dead.
Noa didn’t offer any more opinions for the rest of the meeting, and Julian didn’t ask her to.
9
Noa Doesn’t Figure Things Out
Noa hugged her knees to her chest, savoring the salty breeze on her face. The stars peeked through windows in the clouds, which framed the crescent moon like white curtains. The mast flapped cheerfully, as if it was enjoying the night, too.
Fortunately, the iguanas were asleep, so Noa didn’t have to worry about having her toes tickled during her shift at the prow. She listened to the lava crickets singing peacefully along the basalt shoreline and nibbled at the cake she had brought with her—plum, with an oozy jam filling that turned her fingers the color of twilight. The cakes were still flooding into the castle, to the dismay of the servants, who had taken to storing them on windowsills and rafters and using the less popular flavors, like spiced nettle and toasted seaweed, as doorstops.
Usually Noa loved taking a shift at the prow. But tonight she was too distracted to appreciate it. She hadn’t spoken to Julian since the council meeting that morning—he hadn’t come to dinner, as he’d been too busy meeting with his scouts and with Kell and her mates. Noa didn’t know if he had come to say good night, because she had left to go to the prow before then, even though her shift wasn’t scheduled to start for another hour.
She didn’t know what to do. On one hand, the council meeting had been a success. She’d helped Julian get the councillors on his side, and now they were searching for the Lost Words, which was what Noa had wanted. On the other hand, Julian had never seemed more like a dark mage than he had at that meeting—the kind of dark mage that parents throughout Florean told stories about to frighten their children into behaving. Noa could still see the man’s shadow eyes staring at nothing.
Well, you’re still on the council, she reminded herself. After pestering Julian about it for so long, it was a victory. So why didn’t it feel like one?
“You’ve changed course,” said a voice behind
