“Only slightly,” Noa said. “I thought we could approach the coordinates from the west. It’ll lengthen the journey by a few hours, but we’ll avoid the most dangerous pirate islands, and we can use the northwest current to speed us up.”
Kell thought it over. “Good plan,” she said. “Why didn’t I think of that? You know, you could really be the brains behind King Julian’s operation, little miss, if he’d only let you be.”
“He is letting me,” Noa said, feeling a ghost of pride at the memory. “Didn’t you hear? I’m on the council now.”
“Are you? Well, that’s the first practical thing King Julian’s done in a while, possibly ever.” Kell eyed her. “Is that what you wanted?”
Noa frowned. “It’s exactly what I wanted.”
“Exactly what she wanted! Thirteen’s a shade young to know exactly what you want,” Kell said. “Come to think of it, even seventy-three and a half is a shade young to know exactly what you want! Ha!”
“I want to do whatever I can to help Julian defeat Xavier.” Noa’s jaw tightened, and her hand drifted unconsciously to her charm bracelet. “He killed my mom.”
Kell’s grizzled face softened. “I know, little miss,” she said. “I just meant that I thought you’d be keen to do something other than play King Julian’s spider, at least some of the time.”
Noa’s eyes narrowed. “His what?”
“You know. The brain behind the throne. The person who sits in the shadows and spins webs to trap his enemies and hatches schemes to keep him in power, while he smiles that wicked smile of his and charms the world with his magic tricks and his pretty face. Every ruler who’s ever lived has had a spider. Sometimes it’s a family member. Sometimes it’s just an advisor. But they all have them.”
“I—” Noa sputtered. “They do?”
“Oh, sure. The people who serve Julian would follow him over a cliff. Problem is, without a brain like yours to guide him right, that’s exactly where he’d lead them. He needs someone like you. They all do.”
Noa’s face was hot. “I’m not Julian’s spider.”
Kell shrugged. “All right. So when that brother of yours wins control of Florean, what then?”
“Then . . . then I become one of his royal councillors, for real,” Noa said slowly. “Maybe even a minister.”
“Minister of what?”
“I don’t know,” Noa snapped. “What does it matter? He’s not king yet.”
Kell laughed. “All right. I don’t mean to put a stingray in your bathtub. I’m just saying that with your smarts, you could do anything you want. You don’t have to help King Julian rule Florean just because he’s your brother.”
“That is what I want.”
“Sure it is. But it doesn’t have to be all you want, is my point.”
Noa felt an odd twinge of uncertainty. She never really thought about what would happen after she and Julian defeated Xavier and took Florean back—partly because she didn’t know if they ever would. They were trying to take back a kingdom, after all. When she imagined life as Princess Noa, sister of King Julian and second in line to the throne of Florean, all she saw was a blurry space, like open waters shrouded by morning fog.
“I’m not sure how much help I am to Julian, anyway,” she said. “He barely listens to me.”
Kell raised her eyebrows. “No? Whose idea was it to reassign one of my sailors to guard that wretched snake? Who convinced the king to send a spy to Xavier’s court a few months back? I think he listens to you more often than you realize.”
Noa shrugged, though Kell’s words made her feel a little better. “I want to be Julian’s advisor. Besides, I don’t know what else I would do.”
“Ah, that’s all right if you don’t know yet. Black seas, I was sixty-two and two months before I figured out what I wanted to do with my life! Do you know, I raised eight children all by myself? Husband was no help—that old lout wouldn’t lift a finger, not even to put his shoes away. Oh, I cooked and cleaned for him for years, worked my fingers to the bones. Then, one morning, I opened my eyes and said, ‘Wait a minute. There’s a door right there. I could walk out.’ And that’s what I did. You should have seen the look on his face. Ha!”
Noa knew the rest of the story, but it was a good one, so she listened to Kell tell it anyway. Kell had become one of the most feared pirates in all the thirteen seas. After a decade spent terrorizing merchant ships and royal vessels alike, she had been hurt by cannon fire, losing her leg and the hearing in her right ear. She probably would have kept pirating if it had just been that, but she was also plagued with headaches and sudden dizzy spells that forced her to lie down wherever she happened to be, which was somewhat dangerous if, for example, you happened to be captaining a pirate ship being boarded by the king’s navy. So she had come to Julian, offering her navigational skills and knowledge of the pirate seas, and he had taken her on in spite of the fact that quite a few of the ships she had robbed had belonged to their parents.
“Your shift’s long over, little miss,” Kell said after she had run out of stories. “Don’t you want to head off to bed?”
Noa idly traced a pattern in the sandy soil. “I’d rather stay here, if that’s all right.”
“Suit yourself.” Kell pulled out a battered deck of cards and began assembling a complicated game of Poison Apple. The windy night grew quiet, broken only by the occasional muttered “Ha!”
“Kell,” Noa said. “Do you think that Julian’s . . . well, bad?”
Kell turned over another card. “Bad at what?”
“No, I mean . . . do you think he’s gone bad?”
Kell considered. “I can’t say. You
