The Endless Song

Book 2: Tales of the Forever Sea

by Joshua Phillip Johnson

Genres: Fantasy action & adventure; Coming of Age

Synopsis

The second book in this environmental epic fantasy series delves into the mysteries of a world where ships kept afloat by magical hearthfires sail an endless grass sea.
After setting fire to the Forever Sea and leaving the surface world behind, Kindred Greyreach dives below to find a Seafloor populated by roving bands of scavengers. Among them, Kindred discovers a familiar face working to save the Sea from the continued spread of the Greys and the ravages of the world above. But when Kindred finds herself at odds with them, she and her friends will have to use every power available to them--including their link to the surface world--to forestall disaster.
Meanwhile, above, a boy named Flitch, son of the Baron of the Borders, finds himself caught in a dangerous political crisis as survivors from Arcadia and the Once-City arrive on the Mainland. When Flitch begins to receive messages from someone below the Sea, the denizens of the Mainland see it as a sign that ancient enemies from across the Forever Sea are returning. The resulting crisis forces Flitch and his siblings to flee, as they seek out the truth hidden in old stories.
Above and below, Flitch and Kindred will have to work together to save themselves, their loved ones, and the Forever Sea itself.

Release date: February 14, 2023

Publisher: DAW

Print pages: 400

Sample

The storyteller sits in Twist-that-was-Arcadia and listens to a scream cut the early morning air.

“Sing,” he whispers to the darkness, to the chains heavy against his papery skin.

He is silent and still as questions are asked around the city, as disbelief turns to shock, as decisions are made. The shifting of power from one set of shoulders to another long ago lost any interest for him.

A woman has died, her body become an empty relic. Another will take her mantle and dream her dreams. A race without beginning and marked by endings. A race that, if run, can only be lost.

He packs the book carefully, giving the last half-filled page a final look before stowing it in his bag.

While Twist reckons with the change, the storyteller prepares himself for the end of the tale, the flowering of history into present. He lets the memories rise from where he has buried them, hidden from the slow forgetting that takes more and more of him every day.

Until now, he has told a story that is not his own. No more.

“Sing,” he whispers, for himself now. “Sing, memory.”

A home on the edge of the Sea. A family broken and broken again. A secret held across generations, hidden behind an archway of stone.

All of it returns to the storyteller, but the battles and the struggles and the myths and the magic mean so little to him now. He sifts through it all, an old man letting dirt and detritus fall through his loose, cupped hands to find the few grains mixed in.

A young boy, shoulders hunched against the night and all its terrors, creeping along a hallway, looking for shelter.

That same young boy, head full of stories and eyes pulled to the horizon, dreaming of adventure, of glory, of finding and taking his place in the world.

And later, much later, a voice full of new-dawn hope, saying, “I’ll see you after.”

This, the storyteller dwells on, letting the words weigh on him, as if they might hold down the loose tatters he has become after all this time. He fills in the timbre and melody of that voice, piecing it together slowly. Rediscovering every fragment and facet, relishing the pain as he cuts himself on the jagged edges of remembering.

Here is his gift, the memory becoming as fresh and clear as ever it was, painful and pure.

And here, too, is his penance, riding close behind, payment for a bargain made long ago, yes, but in some way, payment for all of this. For the world this world has become.

Once, he sought the peace Kindred found in all of it, but such peace was smoke in his hands. Gone with the barest breath of hope.

When Praise comes to get him, the storyteller has resurrected teeth and lips and face and eyes and hair—pulled them back and given them life again in his memory.

A new First walks with Praise now, a tall man, young and wide-eyed. He might live into old age. He might not.

Praise says nothing of the change. Death is a close friend here, always nearby. To be surprised by it is weakness, stupidity.

“Did you sleep all right?” Praise asks, a nervous question. Last time, he did not ask, and perhaps it is this change, so slight and unimportant, that helps the storyteller decide.

Penance, he has come to learn, is not something paid alone.

“Of course,” the storyteller lies. They’ll know the truth soon enough, and have forgotten it soon enough, too. No need for complications.

“Are you hungry?” the new First asks, his voice like an echo of one the storyteller has heard before, and though it takes him a moment—a long, long moment—he finds its source.

“Tae. Twyllyn Tae. Does that name mean something to you?” he asks this new First, whose wide eyes grow even wider at the sound of his voice. “A father? Grandfather, maybe?”

The First swallows and casts an anxious look to Praise before responding.

“My grandmother’s grandfather.”

Had the storyteller air in his lungs to sigh, he might have. He could have shaken his head and looked about, noting the passage of time like a river running ever on or a plant growing ever up. Shock and vague sadness might have curled his lips and darkened his countenance.

So long. It had been so long.

Instead, he nods and says, “A good man. A wonderful sailor.”

I’ll see you after.

Now that he has resurrected that voice, the storyteller cannot stop the memories from rising in him, specters of a past embodied in his every movement, his every word. What is he if not a plant grown in that old graveyard soil, fed by those long-ago waters, reaching for the light of a sun pulling ever farther away?

The First has spoken to him again, and Praise, too.

“What was that?” he asks, pushing the memories down, knowing they will return. He needs to resume the story

now.

“Are you hungry for anything?” this descendant of Twyllyn Tae asks again.

“No, thank you,” the storyteller says.

Praise unlocks the chains and leads the three of them back out of the house, back through the overgrown streets of Twist, back to the fires and the dais and the listeners, all of them hungry and waiting.

“We have all had a challenging morning,” the First says, speaking with growing confidence to those assembled. “What better to soothe our hurt than the completion of a promised tale?”

He gestures to the storyteller, who mounts the dais and lets his eyes rove the audience, ringed again around their fires. One by one he finds their eyes, noting those who look away in shame and those who stare back, angry and proud.

At the back, angriest and proudest of all, is Praise, and when the storyteller finds this man’s eyes, he does not look away.

Yes, he will be the one. A fitting payment for a tale well told.

“Did the fires consume the whole Sea?” someone shouts.

“Did Kindred make it to the Sea floor?” another asks.

“What happened to the pirates and to Arcadia?”

“Did she find the Marchess?”

They have chewed these questions all night, working and wondering at them. They expected a story, neat and tidy and complete. An escape.

The storyteller accepts an offered cup of water from one of Praise’s men, and after letting the water touch his lips, he steps forward. A raised hand quiets the questions.

“My tale thus far has asked many questions, some still on your minds, I see. Today, you shall have answers,” he says, letting his eyes drift to the youngest among the group, children with no idea of his mistreatment, no sense of what the leaders of Twist have done and will do again to hold on to even the smallest protections.

In the faces of these children he finds again that wry, clever joy, the suspense and wonder found only on the precipice of a story soon to be sung.

I’ll see you after.

“I have told you already of Kindred Greyreach, first among the hearthfire keepers of Arcadia, who, through trickery and manipulation, took her ship and its crew out past safe grasses and into the Roughs, where monsters from the deep and pirates of the surface dwelled. I have told of her grandmother, the Marchess, who was said to disappear from her ship into the Sea, stepping down into the black below. I have told of Kindred finding the Once-City, home to those pirates. I have told of the mysteries there, and the

banal realities, too. A struggle for water, a struggle for power, and Kindred at its center.

“When last I spoke, Kindred had escaped the crumbling Once-City and set fire to the flattened grasses of the Sea around Arcadia, creating a temporary barrier between the pirates and the island itself. In a boat made of grass, Kindred, now a captain, along with Ragged Sarah and Seraph, sailed below the Sea, down toward whatever waited below.”

The listeners had shifted forward, most without realizing it, their eyes on the storyteller, their breaths slowing and evening out against the rhythms of his telling. Soon they would all breathe together, a chorus of silent voices, held completely in his power.

But not yet.

I’ll see you after.

He is caught for a moment in the memory of what comes next, the threads of past, present, and future knotting together in him.

“First,” the storyteller says, holding up a finger and grinning down at the kids, who watch him with greatest interest, unguarded and honest, “let me tell of another. Hold on to the burning Arcadian Sea for a moment, and to Kindred’s joyous dive beneath, and instead see a boy. Young, like some here. Dreaming of adventure, of heroism, of great deeds done by his own hands. Dreaming, too, of a family that was and might be again. If Kindred’s name should be known by all, sung in every language, revered and loved, then let this boy’s name be a forgotten curse. Let it dribble from the corner of your mouth in dreaming, lost again upon waking. A bare memory, already disappearing.”

The storyteller pauses, not to draw out the tension nor to stoke the fires he sees in every eye watching him.

He pauses because this is the moment the forgetting will commence. When he utters that single syllable, the name he carries with him always, the slow wash of oblivion will begin to slacken mouths and glass over keen eyes. All will slowly be lost save for the barest memory of him, a hollow remembering for a hollow man.

And when he speaks, a being out in that darkness beyond Twist will turn its vast attention toward him. It will cock its head, listening as he spills out this story, and then it will approach, skimming and sliding through the endless night, unhurried.

It has done this before. It will do this again.

The storyteller pauses in the last moments before the end.

“As we begin our story, this boy is sitting with his family on what will be one of his last good days. One of his last happy moments. His name is Flitch o’ the Borders. A boy, nothing more, searching for his story.” 

 

Chapter 1

 

“She set the Sea on fire!”

“On purpose?”

“That’s what they’re saying.”

“Who is saying that?”

“Everyone! Just look at the smoke!”

“I heard only five or six birds were able to make it through the smoke to deliver reports. Only five or six!”

“Father said the King’s casters have been working all day and night to keep the flames back from our grasses.”

“Aren’t Mainland grasses protected by magic?”

“All flattened grasses are protected by magic, you child.”

“Don’t call me child.”

“Then don’t ask silly questions like a child would, child.”

“Both of you shut up! This person—Kindred . . . Greylights or Greyscare or something—released the flames from a hearthfire. The basic spells in place to keep the grasses flat and free of fire were no match for it.”

“But if the King’s casters have been working to protect our grasses, then it’s okay, right? It’s going to be okay?”

“Why would someone do something so stupid? All those lives and livelihoods just so she can . . . what?”

“That’s the best part! She’s getting chased by pirates sailing the Once-City—”

“Wait, that’s real?”

“No way, that’s a kids’ story.”

“Then I’m surprised you don’t believe it, child!”

“I said don’t call me that, Aster!”

“Wait, how were they sailing the Once-City? I thought it was a city.”

“It was a floating city! Just one big ship.”

“That sounds impossible. This can’t be true.”

“What would you know about true, child?”

“Would you two knock it off and let me finish?”

“Yeah, be quiet—you, too, Zim—I want to hear this.”

“So, Kindred is getting chased by this whole floating city full of pirates, and there’s Arcadia ahead of her, teeming with people who don’t like her either, and so she sets fire to the whole Sea and dives down below. She’s the daughter or granddaughter of some famous captain who jumped off her ship in pursuit of whatever was below, so this woman, Kindred, had to follow, I guess.”

A silence—the first of the morning since the siblings had sat down to breakfast—followed. The four of them sat or stood around the enormous oval table, the gleam of the polished wood reflecting their faces where it wasn’t covered in heaping plates and bowls of food. Charred green snout and red-rye spread and sliced root salad; gleaming slices of apples, bowls of raspberries and blusterberries, and clutches of moonfruit; glasses of every juice a body could crave and cups already half-drunk nearby; filleted starve-a

nt cooked three ways; broiled landhawk seasoned with sage, with callinae, with silver salt; breads of all different kinds, shapes, and colors, in slices or yanked away in thick hunks.

It was a feast.

It was breakfast in the Borders Baron’s house.

Idyll, oldest of the four siblings—a group often called the Borders Brats among other barony nobility and in the King’s court—sat upright and still, speaking only occasionally, and listening much more. They were tall and narrow, with serious eyes and long black hair. A small smile hovered perpetually on their face, and they wore faded robes in the colors of the Borders barony: black and gold.

Next to Idyll sat Aster, second oldest, standing to reach one long arm across the table to refill her plate. She wore the loose-fitting garments of a caster, already having been out training that morning before her other siblings had cracked their eyes on the new day. She was in her final year of study at the King’s academy, and her arms showed the shifting muscles of serious practice, her fingers and hands the scarred-over burns of many mistakes at the casting fire. Aster’s wolfish smile grew wider as she tormented her younger sibling Zim, appending “child” to nearly every sentence meant for him.

Zim, barely touching the food carefully arranged on his plate, sat upright like Idyll, but whereas Idyll’s lines were those of someone who had carelessly mastered gracefulness, Zim struggled for it. He wore the high-necked, stiff clothing—jacket and pants—of the bookkeeping office where he worked, though he had not yet found comfort in them. Even as he snapped back at Aster, only a year his senior, Zim fiddled with the scratchy collar of the jacket and shifted uncomfortably against the belt and boots. He’d recently begun to grow in a beard, and it, like all of his attempts to be old before he was old, was only slightly successful.

Last, youngest, and loudest, was Flitch, baby of the Borders Brats, only sixteen. He had the same dark eyes, the same light brown skin, the same long nose as his siblings—a gift from their mother—but while the rest of them wore the clothes of their station—even Idyll who had not yet selected a formal role in the barony, wore the family colors—Flitch wore the plain clothes of youth. They were nice enough to gesture at his status, of course, but several years old and perfectly mended whenever possible instead of replaced, as was the expectation among the nobility.

And this was the secret etched in the lines of the old wood and stone of the Borders family home, in the tangled wilds of the woods growing on their lands, in the hollow sockets on the shelves of their libraries, in the faded colors of Idyll’s clothes and the small, careful stitching of Flitch’s—the secret, known to all and carried like a weight around each of the Borders Brats’ necks, was that their family had been great.

Borders had once been strongest among the baronies, most favored by the kings and queens of old, its children accepted into and at the head of the best schools, the most secretive and elite groups. Borders ships once dominated the Mainland ports and grasses, its sails myriad among the crown’s own fleets. The Borders Baron once sat at the place of honor on the royal council.

Once, Borders was mighty.

Once, Borders was grand.

Once.

Now, hunched and lurking behind every smile and in the shadow of every joyful word uttered by these siblings was the heavy truth that they were the last hope of a fading, failing dynasty.

“So, that’s where all this smoke on the horizon is coming from,” Flitch said, turning from the massive windows of the dining room, which faced east toward Arcadia and showed a hazy, fuzzy sky, the Sea chaotic in the heavy winds of the m

orning.

While the others sat at the breakfast table, Flitch had spent the morning peering through the longsight, scouring the eastern horizon for any sign of a ship emerging from that haze of smoke. A vessel bringing news. Or survivors.

Despite the few crow-callers who had managed successfully to get their birds back after sending them into the haze, no real information about the state of the Sea or Arcadia was known, at least not that Flitch had heard. The smoke was too thick, they said. The fires too aggressive and their spread too fast.

“I wonder if it has anything to do with the increase in mid-Sea creatures coming to the surface,” Idyll said, propping their chin up with the long fingers of one hand, sharp elbow pressing into the wood of the table. “Two wyrms almost came ashore last span, and apparently more of the King’s ships have been repurposed to deal with the beasts from below.”

“But that all started before the news of the fire, right?” Flitch tried to remember exactly when the strange tidings about the Sea began, whispers from their barony’s sailors, fear and uncertainty in the eyes of captains known to be brash, confident, and capable.

“Maybe we’ll find out what’s really going on at the King’s meeting this afternoon,” Aster said. It had been her bit of news that sparked the conversation that morning. She’d

been practicing her casting forms out on the north deck of the estate and had overheard their father, the Borders Baron, talking with one of his sibilants. “All the barons are invited, along with their advisors and staff, after all.”

That stopped the rest of them for a moment. How long had it been since their father had been invited to the castle for anything beyond the occasional pleasantry and individual meeting? This King gathered sobriquets like a child gathering leaves at the turning of the seasons: the Warring King, the Loveless King, the King in Shadow, the Unruled King, Faineant the Luckless, Faineant the Widower, the Unaging King—but his most recent felt truest among the siblings at the table: the Fickle King.

King Faineant’s love and favor shifted quicker than the wind, but neither ever seemed to touch on their father, oldest and most forgotten of the four barons who controlled the areas surrounding the Mainland capital.

“Maybe he’s finally going to give Father a real seat at the table?” Zim said, though even he didn’t seem to believe it.

“More likely he’s going to take additional vessels from our fleet,” Idyll said, tipping their head to the side as they mimicked King Faineant’s voice. “For the good of the kingdom.”

“What are we if not servants to our greater cause?” Aster said, adding her own impression. Even Zim laughed at that.

Flitch couldn’t stop smiling as he turned back to the window and squinted once more through the longsight, He felt restless and excited, like a child again, back when all of his siblings were always around and the substance of their lives had been only this: talking and laughing and joking and snarking at one another. Creating their own mischief and games on days that felt rich with possibility and purpose, their imaginations racing one another, making mainsails out of trees and stretches of sea out of grassy fields, monsters out of shadows and heroes out of themselves.

It had been like a play where Flitch had always known his lines, always understood and cherished his part and the purpose it gave him. He’d known who he was with his siblings around and had loved them for it.

But now Aster and Zim were away daily for their duties, her to school and training, him to the bookkeeping offices near the capital, both more and more often sleeping away in their apartments in the capital, going spans without returning home. And Idyll, too, spent greater portions of their time in the royal library, researching and writing their stories, preparing themself to become the next leader of the Borders barony.

They were all leaving Flitch behind, and he couldn’t run fast enough to catch them or the ghost of what they had once been together.

But today felt different. The time had come and gone that should have seen Aster leaving for her classes, and both Idyll and Zim should already have been preparing for their journey into the capital for the day.

Instead, some quiet magic held them all there, each sibling falling again into the old patterns of speech, their old roles as peacemaker or instigator, oldest or youngest. For a moment, everything felt right again, and Flitch thrummed with joy.

“You’re sure no one has returned from Arcadia yet?” he asked. Through the longsight’s grimy glass, he watched one of the King’s vessels, Glory’s Bellow, cutting across the harbor, casting fires ablaze, royal casters ready to send errant beasts from the deep back to the darkness.

Flitch adjusted the dials on the longsight to bring the masts of the ship into focus, smiling a little at the flare of runes inscribed there, the handiwork of Borders carvers. Without their hold on mast-building, Borders would have crumbled away to nothing long ago. Other baronies had robust and growing trade spread around many different goods, while Borders was left behind, still keeping its miser’s hold on the secret work of mast-building, but with little else to pad its fortunes.

Zim’s work responsibilities had him attempting to address this problem, but to hear him describe it, it was a little like starting a footrace a day late and with stone shoes.

Flitch pushed all of that aside and instead let his mind roil with the possibilities and potential of a day like this. If fate truly existed, it had finally, finally turned its golden eyes toward Borders. All the siblings were still in the house, and mysterious news swept like a wildfire along the lines of their imaginations.

“We’d have heard if someone made it back,” Aster said. “Although every barony—us included—have ships out there trying, and I heard Father saying someone should have returned by now.”

Flitch continued to scan the stretch of Sea that had served as the siblings’ source of inspiration and imagination as children, the Borders estate having been built many generations before, on the cliffs at the edge of the Mainland, close enough to spit into the Sea from the edge of their backyard.

“I don’t see any ships out there,” Flitch said, one eye squeezed shut as he continued looking. “It’s just the King’s vessels patrolling for deep-Sea threats. I heard one of Father’s sailors say that some of the creatures seemed to be

targeting some boats over others. Some are saying it seems to have something to do with the size of the hearthfires or the amount of captains’ bones they’re carrying. Oh! It looks like one of the ships just found— Wait! There’s something out further!”

“What is it?”

“A ship? Is it a ship?”

“It might be,” Flitch said, leaning forward until the edge of the longsight met the glass of the window with a soft clink. “The smoke is so thick; it’s hard to tell.”

“Well, look harder!”

“That doesn’t even make sense, Aster. How could he—”

“You don’t even make sense!”

“Enough, you two.”

“Yes!” shouted Flitch, sending his voice up through the susurrus of his siblings like a bright flower emerging from the green mess of the Sea. “It’s a ship! Coming from the east!”

“What are their colors?”

“Whose ship is it? One of ours?”

“The King’s?”

The other three siblings launched a volley of questions at Flitch, and as he squinted to see, they abandoned their places at the table to jostle around, each squinting out at the harbor and the smoke-veiled Sea beyond. The ship was a speck in the haze to the bare eye, and soon they were fighting over the longsight, a chaos of limbs and laughter.

“Give it back!”

“I have the best eyesight, though!”

“I’m the oldest!”

“Hey, Flitch! Give it!”

“Ouch, Aster! Not my ribs!”

“Hey, no tickling!”

They were a jostling mess, closer than they had been in years, and when Aster finally took control of the longsight, cackling in victory, the Borders Brats stayed entangled as she narrated what she saw.

“It’s a three-master, huge hull! That has to be one of the widest ships I’ve ever seen. Two generations old, maybe, returning but badly damaged—either that or it’s being sailed by someone with Zim’s ability at the helm.”

“Hey!”

“Shhh!”

“The ship’s listing hard to port, burns along the hull, sails are . . .”

Flitch flicked through the lists he kept in his mind of ships and captains, crews and casters, fleets and armadas, colors and sigils. He might have been too young to truly begin pursuing his path in the world, but he had it there in his heart. A captain of his own ship, searching the wide Sea

for adventure and riches, fame and glory, sailing always under the proud banner of the Borders barony. Like his siblings, and in his own way, he would return the dignity and power of the Borders name.

“Deep blue?” he asked, finishing Aster’s sentence for her.

“Yes!”

“That’s Prairie Bounty, sailed by Captain Halfstorm, Paths barony,” Flitch said, speaking in a rapid clip.

“Flitchy!” Aster said, grinning at him and slinging an arm around his neck. “Look at you! Little soon-to-be captain!”

Flitch grinned and felt tears touch at the corners of his eyes, as much in response to that old nickname as the compliment itself. Idyll, still holding Zim in a headlock, smiled at Flitch and nodded. Although they were the oldest and Flitch the youngest, Idyll had always been Flitch’s closest companion in the family. Their rooms were next to one another on the third floor, and some of Flitch’s earliest and happiest memories were of sneaking down the cold, dark hallway during storms to crawl into Idyll’s bed. Idyll would whisper made-up stories in the darkness to distract Flitch from the too-bright flash of the lightning and the bone-deep press of the thunder.

While Aster was loud and energetic, Zim rule-bound and stiff, Idyll had always offered a calm steadiness for Flitch. They were a well of peace, the Sea calmed, a sky banked with endless, fluffy clouds.

When Idyll had grown old enough to gain charge of their own vessel—a gift still offered by the Borders Baron to his children despite his waning fortunes—they would take Flitch out with them, the two siblings whooping and joyous at the prow, wind in their faces, smiles stretched to breaking. Aster often joined them, and even Zim sometimes, too, though the two of them grew increasingly interested in their own studies and pursuits, leaving Idyll and Flitch to sail off around the harbor with the small crew that piloted and worked the vessel itself.

In all things, Idyll was there to show Flitch the right path.

Idyll helped Flitch with his lessons; Idyll showed him the shape of knots and told him their uses; Idyll pointed out the cooks in the estate who would smile at clumsily pilfered snacks and the ones who would use the wooden spoon.

Idyll showed Flitch the secret language of the world, and in return, Flitch gave to them a fierce and loyal love.

A quiet had settled over the siblings, all of them still tangled together. Aster continued to peer through the longsight, but she roved the harbor with it now, lazy as she peered among the grasses. Zim finally succeeded in

removing his head from Idyll’s hold, and he stood with a glare before returning to the table for a forkful of food.

Flitch could feel the beginnings of them pulling back, the possibility and magic of the morning seeping away. He could already hear the slow indrawn breath, the casual glance around, followed by one of them saying, “I suppose I should . . .”

No, came a voice from deep inside Flitch. Not another morning of them all leaving me behind.

“The council meeting isn’t until this afternoon, right?” he said, giving his voice an edge of mischief.

“Right,” Zim said, leaning down to pick up the work bag he’d set next to his chair at the start of breakfast. “I’ll be in the office until then, but—”

“And if that ship is from the Paths barony,” Flitch continued, fixing Zim with a smile before looking at his other siblings, “then it should be returning to their docks, right?”

“That’s usually how it works, Flitchy,” Aster said, peering back curiously at him.

“What are you thinking, Flitch?” Idyll asked, studying him.

“That ship will have news of the Arcadian fire, maybe even information about the pirates and the Once-City,” Flitch said, looking around at them. “It’s too bad it’s not one of ours. Then we wouldn’t have to wait until the council meeting at the castle this afternoon to find out whatever they know.”

“Nothing for it,” Aster said, shaking her head and looking out at the harbor. “Paths are just as protective of their private docks as we are. Without a signed agreement from the Paths Baron, no one rests a vessel there.”

“Gwyn Gaunt doesn’t sign anything,” Zim said, frowning around at them. “My office has been attempting to broker a deal with Paths over a stretch of land that could provide excellent chances for timber production. It’s almost unused right now, and the waterways alone might be our chance to finally leverage some of our remaining political power. The lead negotiators on the project have—”

“Yes, yes, you’re very important and so is your incredibly boring work,” Aster cut in. “We understand. Get on with it.”

Zim offered a huff and glare in response before continuing.

“The project might have gone through formal negotiations and been signed by now, but the famous Paths Baron, Gwyn Gaunt, refuses to attend meetings! She always sends a councillor or staff person, someone who asks odd questions and makes promises to deliver the information back to the baron.”

“Even still,” Flitch said, doggedly holding on to the day’s hope—his siblings together again, one more adventure—“maybe we could sneak onto the dock. We could pretend to be on official barony business. It’s a busy dock, and in the time it takes them to figure out we don’t have the documents to rest our ship there, Captain Halfstorm would have returned, and no one would bother with us anymore in all the excitement.”

It was weak, and Flitch knew it, nothing more than a child’s hope. But he didn’t have anything else. Any moment, Zim would leave for the office, and Aster would say something about needing to practice some of her forms at the school facilities, and Idyll would put their hand on Flitch’s shoulder as they stood to go.

Zim shook his head at the thought of breaking so many inter-barony agreements, but he was always going to be an impossible sell on such a plan. Even when they were kids, Zim was the last to join in their imaginary play if he caught even a whiff of potential danger or rule-breaking.

For their part, Idyll offered only a soft hmm and let their eyes drift once more to the window, the expression on their face unreadable even to Flitch.

Most surprising was Aster, who had always been first to take a leap of uncertainty, to climb a tree or eat a strange bug or jump from a ledge that seemed just a little too high. Brave or reckless, wild or dangerous, free or mad—whatever a person could say about Aster, none would ever accuse her of caution.

But here, she was frowning at Flitch, the look on her face conveying her uncertainty in clear-enough terms that her low “It’s a bit risky for us, isn’t it, Flitchy?” seemed unnecessary.

Looking around at the faces of his siblings, Flitch felt the golden glow of the day fade into grey dullness. They would leave again, and he would stay. Maybe he would sail his ship over to the Paths dock anyway. Just him. Let them go off to their jobs and activities, the lives they led outside of the family. He would—

“I know someone,” Idyll said, their voice quiet and slightly strained. When they spoke, they kept their gaze on the window and the Sea beyond. “From Paths. He’ll be there. I could get us on that dock.”

After a surprised pause from the other siblings, Aster said, “That certainly changes things.” The clouds of uncertainty had cleared from her face, and she looked around now with the bright brashness Flitch thought of as her natural state. “Who is this person you know?”

“No one,” Idyll said, the casual tone of their voice brittle and breaking.

“No one?” Aster said, smile sharpening into a wicked instrument. “I hope he’s more than no one—it’s going to take a higher-up in the Paths hierarchy to get us a spot on that dock. This can’t be some nobody Gwyn Gaunt has working in the library with you, Idyll.”

Idyll turned finally from the window and fixed Aster with a look that said, quite clearly, how easily and happily they would kill her if she didn’t relent.

“He’s an advisor to Gwyn, and I know he was overseeing operations on the dock this morning. I’ve worked with him at the library, and we are on good terms. I believe he will allow us to rest our vessel at their dock for a short while.”

Even the music and fluidity of Idyll’s speech had vanished, and though hope blossomed in his chest at the renewed prospect of their fate-touched morning, Flitch watched his eldest sibling with suspicion. Who was this advisor? Flitch had never heard Idyll speak of the other librarians or librarians-in-training beyond a simple remark here or there—an annoying cataloguer who wouldn’t stop talking or an ambitious noble’s child hounding the head librarians for favors.

A strange and unpleasant thought slid into Flitch’s mind, a bare shred of raincloud portending a storm. He’d known that his siblings had their work and responsibilities, and he’d known that, in spending their days and many of their nights away for those responsibilities, they would meet other people and find their own ways in the world.

But here was the first moment that Flitch understood that all of them, that Idyll—his favorite, his closest sibling, maybe his closest friend—was living a life outside of the Borders home that didn’t include Flitch at all. A life of friends and enemies, goals and successes and setbacks and all the rest, all the things that, once upon a time, Idyll had shared with him.

It wasn’t jealousy or anger that gripped Flitch.

It was a cold shiver of sadness as he imagined a thousand different lives, all full, that Idyll was living without him.

It was loneliness, singing its empty song in his chest, even as his siblings continued their play.

“You’re on good terms?” Aster asked, a mischievous smile quirking one cheek. “You and this gentleman are on good terms?”

“I’m going to throw you into the Sea,” Idyll said, voice flat and eyes dangerous.

“I don’t know about this,” Zim said. “Won’t it take too long to get a crew and vessel ready?” He held his bag in one hand, caught in the space between a decision he should make and a decision he wanted to make. The winds had changed on this conversation, and he knew it.

“We won’t take one of the big boats,” Flitch said, gaining momentum. “We can take a catboat! I still have the one I was using yesterday rigged up and ready to go!”

“I haven’t been in a catboat since . . .” Aster began, her eyes going soft, one finger tracing the edge of her broad jawline as she tried to remember. Flitch was already thinking of the memory she sought, had been thinking of it most of the previous day as he moved around the harbor in the small vessel, the hearthfire burning steadily around his basic builds.

It had been almost eight years before, Flitch still young enough that he spent the whole of the voyage tied to the single mast so he wouldn’t fall overboard. The four of them, plus their father, had crowded onto one of the catboats and cut across the harbor at speeds that felt impossible to young Flitch, their bow sending up sprays of seedpods and prairie fluff in the thick afternoon light. They sailed without destination or purpose, slowing to investigate interesting flowers and plants or to cast out for bugs whenever they felt like it.

Is this windflower, Father? Idyll asked in Flitch’s remembering, their face—much younger then—tipped toward the tall stem boasting its purple, spiked flowers.

It is, the Borders Baron had said, smiling broadly for perhaps the first time since the baron had passed. We’re lucky to see them; they don’t often make it to the surface of the Sea. Come on, everyone—Flitch, you hold on to me. Let’s pick a few.

It burned and shone like only memory could, brighter for the forgetting, every sharp word and moment of unhappiness lost in the glow of what remained: a happy day. A good day. Flitch’s mother had passed away only a year or two before, and many of the family’s days since had been long, hard ones, feeling and feeling again the loss.

But that day had been a happy one, bright and hopeful and quiet and loving, like a single perfect flower opening defiantly in a dreary field of green.

It was a day Flitch thought of as he sailed his tiny vessel around the harbor, sometimes with a crewmate or two, sometimes alone.

“I don’t know,” Zim said, still unmoving, indecision gripping him. “I really should work this morning.”

“Don’t you want to see the ship when it comes in?” Flitch asked, trying and failing to keep the pitch of desperation from his voice. “Don’t you want to hear the stories from the sailors themselves instead of whatever filtered, shortened version we’re going to hear at the council meeting? Don’t you want to see Captain Halfstorm when she steps off the deck?”

“Haven’t there been increased appearances from deep-Sea creatures in our grasses recently? Won’t it be dangerous?” Zim’s eyes had gone wide.

“That’s what all the patrolling vessels out there are for!” Flitch said, excitement thrumming through him. This was going to happen. “And we’ll stay close to the shore. Even if one came up on our short trip, it wouldn’t be anywhere close to us. Come on! Let’s have an adventure like we used to! All of us, together for another journey! The Borders Brats sail again!”

“Seems dangerous,” Zim said, just as Aster raised the longsight like a sword and said, “Yes!”

With an arch look at Zim, she continued.

“I’m in. And I hope something does come up while we’re out there. What’s the point of being the best caster on the Mainland if I can’t send some monstrosities from the deep back to the Seafloor?” Aster’s cocky smile flared and then faltered. “Except there’s no way Father will let us go.”

Zim nodded and gestured with one hand, as if to say, See? A doomed idea.

“Father won’t know,” Idyll said, standing up. Their long black hair had gotten tousled in the scrum, and they retied it into a tail once more, the motions practiced and smooth. “He was in his study when I came down for breakfast, and he said he was going to spend the morning downstairs.”

Silence blossomed into the conversation as it did anytime anyone spoke of what lay below the Borders estate, the space beyond the archway that none of them had ever seen. The promise and curse of their family, a secret they had all pieced fragments of together from overheard conversations of the baron’s and scraps of paper barely glimpsed in his study over the years.

It was not something they were supposed to speak of, and so, of course, they had spent many lazy afternoons of their childhoods speaking of and speculating about nothing else. The baron had never taken any of the children below, not since their mother’s death, so it remained an open secret between them in those early days.

“I’m not sure—” Zim began, but Aster dropped the longsight and wrapped an arm around his neck, pulling him into his second headlock of the morning.

“Zim and I are both in,” she said, eyes alight with mischief. “Idyll?”

Idyll’s grin matched Flitch’s own, and soon enough the Borders Brats, reunited for a day away from work and school and whatever singular lives they had all begun to lead, were racing each other down to the docks, aglow with all the morning might bring.