Such a Daring Endeavor Read online

  Cortney Pearson

  For Anna, my sister and friend.

  For never giving up.

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Thirty-eight

  Thirty-nine

  Forty

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Aut viam inveniam aut faciam.

  I will either find a way or make one.

  – Latin Proverb

  The soldiers’ boots clatter on the boardwalk. Their breath exhales in one communal puff, and Shasa presses her back harder against the rough bark of the feiberry tree to avoid being seen.

  Stars glimmer above, spectators to the patrolling soldiers. Shasa purses her lips until they pass, complimenting herself at such a resourceful hiding spot. Even the owl hooting softly above in the latticework of branches doesn’t know she’s concealed here.

  Waves push one another around on the sand to her left. The steady rush of their movement sends a calm stream into Shasa’s raging nerves. This will work, she tells herself. This is going to work.

  Tonight, she’s going to get Jomeini out.

  The shed is the last in a line-up of newer buildings. New to Shasa, at least. They weren’t here when she first came to Valadir in search of Talon three years ago. Two stories tall, the shed is unassuming and ordinary; wooden, square and long. The roof points up into a V. The shed has two main entrances, a smaller door for pedestrians, and a larger door that folds up to allow larger pieces of machinery through. In this case, boats.

  She spoke with Jomeini only last night, when she accompanied Solomus Straylark to slip a bottle of poisoned wine to his granddaughter through the door. According to plan, Jomeini should have found a way to accidentally administer the wine to their captor, and if everything went well, he would be nullified before the night was through.

  Accidentally was the key. Neither Jomeini nor Shasa can purposefully harm Arthur Craven. That’s why Solomus Straylark poisoned it before handing it over to Jomeini—Shasa tried, but it was like stabbing herself in the heart the minute she tipped the poison to the wine bottle’s opening. The same thing would happen to Jomeini if she gave it to Craven outright, but if Jomeini set it somewhere Craven would drink it by accident…

  Shasa tenses. If Talon were here, they wouldn’t have to resort to this ridiculous gamble. But she can’t think about him now, not with this worry rotting in her chest.

  The moon hangs lower than the last time she checked. Curse it. Once the sun rises, this place will be crawling with Arcaian soldiers. She’s been waiting all evening for the sign that Craven drank the poison. For her magic to spill through her, to take her breath at its reentry into her bonestream. But it hasn’t happened yet, which means—

  “Anything?” Solomus whispers. His limping feet disturb the bark in the flowerbed surrounding the cove of trees, and she holds back a snarky comment to shush the old man.

  He’s hunched over, his dark skin blending him into the night that much more. Shadows cast over his eyes and bring out his nose. His silver hair seems to float over the dark shirt and trousers he wears.

  “Nothing,” Shasa says. She rubs her arms, acutely aware of the emptiness in her bones, like a river run dry.

  “There is still time. Craven always stayed up late. If he’s tired enough, maybe he’ll stumble across the bottle and—”

  “Shh,” Shasa commands, whipping her arm out in the wizard’s direction.

  Craven’s gravelly voice carries through the shed’s wooden boards—indistinct and rising to a shout. Impatience buds within Shasa’s chest, and she leans out just enough to take in the moon’s position. It’s waxing, sinking lower to the east. Not much time.

  “Sir, what if we went in and—”

  “Out of the question.”

  Shasa huffs. Every time she suggests the wizard confront Craven himself, Solomus shoots her down without reason.

  The owl overhead hoots once more. Waves crash from the shore, and the Triad Palace lights glow like floating lanterns across the training grounds that separate these sheds from the colossal structure.

  They can’t just stand here, doing nothing. Shasa rotates around the tree trunk, staying out of sight as the voice within the shed magnifies. The shed door opens, spilling orange light from within.

  “Figure it out,” Craven barks in a final slur before slamming the door behind him

  “Follow him,” Shasa snaps under her breath. Solomus mutters acquiescence, tottering after the other old man.

  Shasa presses against the trunk’s rough bark once more, watching Craven trudge off in his same long gait. He no longer wears the overlarge coat he wore in her first days as his captive, but a shorter jacket, stopping at the waist. His deep set eyes appear hollow in the night’s shadows, and he tucks his chin down while walking toward the belly of the city, away from the lapping ocean.

  Looks like it’s Plan B.

  Shasa doesn’t hesitate. She grips the pouch at her side, silently thanking the banshing powder within. If she hadn’t been dissolving it into her water for the past six months, Craven would have sensed her; he would have forced her to remain. But this time she enters his latest hiding place of her own accord.

  Shasa glances over her shoulder before pushing into the too-warm room. The stifling air plugs her lungs, causing her to open her mouth for a breath. The distinct smell of fish swirls as well—probably from the set of large nets dangling from hooks to her right.

  A single bulb lets off constricted light from wooden beams high above her head. Cobwebs span the upper rafters. Several life vests dangle from a line of hooks. Large aluminum boats take up most of the space, their front ends propped up by a jack resting on a board.

  Shasa tiptoes around discarded barrels, fighting the fish smell turning her stomach. She peers toward the larger overhead door where a pair of fishing poles have been flung haphazardly against the boxes and containers covered in dust.

  The place would never look this rundown if wizards were still ruling here. It’s clearly been neglected for some time now, if Craven has taken up residence.

  “Jomeini?” Shasa calls softly. Her heart pounds as she waits. Listens.

  Waves rush outside. A hollow wail weaves in between cracks in the wooden boards above, and something small scurries nearby.

  “Jo?”

  “Up here,” a voice finally replies.

  Shasa glances up at the nearest aluminum boat. Propping a hand on the metal, she climbs up the wheels of its trailer and hurls herself over the walls.

  Threadbare towels are stuffed below the bench along the boat’s walls; hooks and lures dangle from discarded fishing line, and a cooler lies open displaying a collection of packaged meat and dried fruit. Peaches, from the look of it. And near the helm, behind a vinyl chair smeared over with Shasa doesn’t want
to know what, on a folded blanket as filthy as everything else in here, sits Jomeini.

  Dark hair drapes down in clumps, blocking Shasa’s view of Jomeini’s face. Her slim, bronze hand cradles a pencil, scratching it across a thick parchment on top of an upturned crate like a makeshift desk.

  “Hey,” Shasa says, kneeling at the girl’s side. “What are you doing in a boat?”

  Jomeini lets the pencil hover over the paper before lifting her head. Though Shasa knows she’s fifteen, Jomeini looks closer to twelve. She’s just so…tiny. Regardless of her size, her delicate bones give Jomeini a regal presence. It’s the way she holds herself, even after all this time of being a prisoner.

  She explained it to Shasa once, how she was being raised to one day rule Itharia. The irony of the girl’s nobility has never been as stark to Shasa as it is in this moment, with the filth clumping Jomeini’s black hair together and the smears of dirt on her scarred cheek.

  “I told you not to worry about coming back for me,” Jomeini says.

  “And you know how well I listen,” Shasa replies. “What happened with the wine?”

  Jomeini shakes her head. “You would know if it worked.” She continues scratching away at the paper, sadness marring her face like she’s mourning a recent death.

  “We’ll find another way. You’re always telling me not to get upset. See how perfectly calm I am?” Shasa forces a grin in attempt to win one from her friend

  Jomeini sniffs.

  “What has he done to you?” Shasa asks with a hopeless sigh, sinking back against the crates.

  “It’s not just him. I’m…I’m not…” The words fade away. Jomeini’s pencil treads harder on the page until black marks stretch over its surface. Her expression hardens, and she bares her teeth, fisting the pencil like a weapon. She slashes at the parchment now, over and over.

  Shasa grips her wrist, stopping the frantic scribbling. “Stop,” she says. “What are you talking about? Are you—?”

  At Shasa’s touch, Jomeini drops the pencil. She strokes her hairline, rubbing at a spot above her ears with trembling fingers. A slight chinking sound joins the movement, though Shasa can’t figure out why.

  “I can’t set them free,” says Jomeini. “But I can’t keep them caged any longer.”

  “Jo—” But Shasa’s words cut off. There it is again, that chinking sound. She pries the girl’s black hair up away from her shoulders.

  Jomeini—her sweet, innocent Jomeini—has a thick, metal collar engulfing her throat.

  “What is this?”

  Jomeini’s fingers fly to the metal collar as though she forgot it was there.

  “No,” Shasa says, tugging on the chain, following its lead link by link until she finds the eyelet it’s attached to. She licks her lips and pulls at the chain, desperate to rip it free, but that only draws out a cry from Jomeini.

  “He smelled the poison. He knew what I was trying to do.”

  “No,” Shasa tells her, flustered. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

  “Shasa—”

  “No!” She draws out her pouch and thrusts it toward Jomeini. “This is how I’ve stayed away from him. I planned on using this to get you out once before, but…”

  All senses of power over the situation slip from Shasa’s fingers. Of all the things she had tried to think ahead and plan for, Jomeini being chained like a dog was never one of them.

  “How does it come off?” Shasa asks, prying at the metal, tilting Jomeini’s head this way and that gently, though she wants to tear the thing apart as quickly as she can.

  Jomeini winces, pulling at Shasa’s hands. “It doesn’t. Ow, please stop. It won’t come off. Not unless Craven wants it to.”

  “So there’s no key?”

  “My magic is the key,” Jomeini says. “And he has it.”

  Shasa feels like punching the glass over the boat’s dashboard. Shattering it. This is not how the rescue was supposed to go. Craven was supposed to stumble across the poisoned wine. And if that didn’t work she would sacrifice the last of her banshing powder for Jomeini. She was supposed to get her out . Now Solomus and Craven will return, and it will be too late for either.

  Wait. Solomus.

  “Your grandfather,” Shasa says in a blaze of inspiration. “He’s here with me. Maybe he can get this off.”

  Jomeini goes so still, her eyes so wide, Shasa wonders if she isn’t going to cry again.

  “He can’t come in here.” Jomeini’s voice breaks. Her quaking fingers touch the bumpy scars on her left cheek. Her skin was burned so badly that day. “You know what happened the last time he tried.”

  “That’s why he didn’t come in with me. But he will, if I tell him what happened.”

  Twice now she’s left Jomeini behind. She won’t do it a third time.

  Jomeini shifts, sitting flat on the towel’s dingy surface. She smoothes a hand over her wool skirt. “You know I can’t leave, Shasa. Not just because Craven commanded me not to. He chained me to the boat so I’d be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Craven…he’s taking me to Arcaia.”

  Shasa freezes. “He’s what?” She glances around at the boat, at the pathetic provisions; the preserved meat and fruit, the chain locking Jomeini to the bar along the boat’s walls, the filthy blankets.

  Craven can’t possibly think he can cross Hollin’s Strait in an aluminum fishing boat. Shasa herself has never attempted crossing the Strait, but from what she understands the creatures between the two countries don’t like boats. A wussy little thing like this one will never make it.

  Jomeini swallows, fingering the collar with slender, dark fingers. “I had another vision after…after the last one you witnessed.”

  Shasa hangs her head down with several nods. She doesn’t need Jomeini to elaborate. Shasa already knows she’s talking about the vision. The one that caused her to break through her grandfather’s magical barrier. The one that made her cry.

  Shasa still doesn’t know what Jomeini Saw, or what she drew about it afterward. And if Craven knew about it, they sure wouldn’t be sitting here now. He would have taken the tears that came as a result of it. That vision was exactly what Craven demanded of Jomeini for so long; it was the reason he took her in the first place—for Jomeini to See a way to overthrow Tyrus and for Craven to get his revenge. Too bad the old man was as deranged as a bat, Shasa thinks, or he might come in handy.

  “And Craven knew about this one?” Shasa asks.

  Jomeini chews her lip. “I Saw Tyrus crossing an ocean.”

  “And you told him that? Lie to him, maiden! You should know better than to tell him the truth! You can’t give in. What’s he going to do with you now that he’s gotten a vision about Tyrus out of you?” Drag her around like a pathetic dog?

  On that note, Shasa doesn’t want to think about what Craven will do to her now if he catches her here. Craven kidnapped her as a companion for Jomeini, an attempt to get Jomeini to have the vision he craved so badly. Now that Jomeini has finally had one—especially since Shasa wasn’t here for it—will he think she’s no longer needed? He has her magic, and he probably won’t want to give that up. But Shasa isn’t about to wait and find out.

  Jomeini inhales. “He thinks it meant the Wending Ocean; he thinks it meant Tyrus is going back to Arcaia.”

  Shasa scoffs in incredulity. “So he’s determined to go and beat him there? Tyrus isn’t going anywhere—not without finishing this war he’s concocting here in Itharia. Has Craven always been this idiotic?”

  Jomeini pauses before her face breaks into a timid smile, her brows slightly lifted. A snort escapes from Shasa, and then the two girls laugh in spite of the seriousness. They both know what the answer to the question is—a resounding yes.

  Shasa fingers the edges of the blanket, one of the few spots not soiled by dirt. “You’ve told him time and again how those visions work. Did you draw him anything for this one? Do you know what it really means?”

  Jomeini clears her throat an
d pulls out a single card from her pack beside the upturned crate. She hands it to Shasa.

  It’s a sketch, stenciled in magical lead from the Seer’s pencils. A star bursting across the sky, drawn with surges of light streaking in its wake. Shasa isn’t sure how this ties in to Tyrus sailing away.

  “And this means…?”

  “The visions don’t always tie directly into the drawings. Before I met you, my grandfather was teaching me how to use wizard’s bleakfire. I had just touched one of my favorite plants and accidentally withered it because of the fire in my blood, and I was feeling heartsick. I was sitting alone in my room after that when a vision came.”

  Shasa is surprised to hear this. Jomeini never mentioned it before.

  “In the vision, I was sitting on a bench,” says Jomeini, her eyes distant. “The sunlight beat warm against the stone I sat on, but the wind that blew was brisk and harsh. A storm rode on that wind, a storm I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop. Afterwards, I drew this.”

  Jomeini pulls another card from beside the others and hands it to Shasa.

  “It’s a coat,” Shasa says, confused. She traces a finger over the handless, headless trenchcoat, drawn as though it’s blowing in the very wind Jomeini claims she felt during its vision.

  “I assumed it meant that I wouldn’t be comfortable in my home much longer, that I would need protection from whatever storm was riding on that wind. I assumed it meant that Grandfather was taking me from my refuge, my home in Xavienke, and that I would need to find protection in Valadir. And it did, in a sense. But the drawing was also literal. Whose coat do you see?”