Fallen Thief Read online

  “It looks like it’s been ransacked,” Mira said.

  Kay stopped swimming and squinted across the room.

  “Do you see that?” he muttered.

  Mira followed his gaze, but all she saw was the rough stone wall of the tower. “See what?”

  Kay swam forward and stopped in front of the wall, still staring straight ahead. Mira followed uncertainly.

  “It’s like a little pinhole in the wall where there’s light shining through.” Kay tilted his head from side to side. “But it’s not in the wall. The light’s coming from a spot right in front of it.”

  He reached out with his webbed fingers as if feeling around for something in the water that Mira simply couldn’t see.

  All of a sudden, Kay yelped and drew his hand back as the water in front of him swirled outward. He bumped into Mira, and before she knew what was happening, she clutched onto him as the swirling current whipped their hair into their faces. But, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the water stopped spinning, and all was calm.

  Kay broke away from Mira, his eyes wide. He reached out a hand towards the wall again. Mira was about to tell him to look out for the strange current when she gasped, her eyes wide.

  She blinked rapidly, sure that her eyes were tricking her.

  But no, there Kay was, extending his hand towards the wall, but his fingers had disappeared. He moved forward, and soon his entire hand was gone, right down to his wrist.

  “How are you doing that?” Mira whispered.

  “It must be a portal,” Kay said, his eyes round with wonder. He pulled back his arm, and his hand reappeared. “See the rippling in the water, here?” He traced a wide circle in front of him. “Almost like a curtain. I think I opened it when I touched that spot of light—it leads somewhere else entirely. The water on the other side feels different.”

  Mira frowned at the spot where Kay was pointing but didn’t see what he meant.

  “But—but I swam around this spot twice and didn’t notice anything!” she sputtered.

  “Come on, try it,” Kay said, grabbing her hand. He pulled her forward, and her trembling fingers brushed something in the water that her eyes couldn’t see, but suddenly the water felt warmer to the touch. When her fingertips disappeared into nothingness, Mira exclaimed and pulled back her hand, pinching her fingers to make sure they were still there.

  “That’s impossible!”

  “I think the sorcerer must’ve used it,” Kay said. “We have to go through!”

  Mira’s protest caught in her throat as her brother swam forward and vanished entirely, from his head to his fins. Stunned, Mira stared at the spot where Kay disappeared, afraid that she would lose it the moment she blinked—or that the portal would close and she would lose her brother. She gulped, closed her eyes, and swam straight forward.

  When she opened her eyes again, her surroundings were entirely different. The room was larger, and there were statues, stacked boxes, and ornate chests everywhere she looked. The flattened ceiling of the wizard’s tower was replaced by a dome that was decorated with the most intricate mosaic art Mira had ever seen, showing the stars and planets arranged in mesmerizing constellations. The glossy black and silver tiles seemed to blink as if the dome were a window to the sky.

  “Kay…” Mira began but couldn’t quite find the words she was searching for.

  “We’re in the sorcerer’s secret lair,” Kay said with a smile that lit up his eyes. “We found his hideaway!”

  “The story was true!” Mira let out a laugh in relief.

  “I think we’re in a completely different lake,” Kay said, swimming to one of the windows on the curved wall. “Look, there are no houses here.”

  Mira followed him to see that, indeed, the lake beyond the sorcerer’s secret room didn’t have another building in sight amidst the snake-like plants that grew up towards the surface.

  “And there’s no door,” she noticed, scanning the walls.

  “Except for the portal,” Kay corrected her. “Come on, let’s see if there’s anything here that’ll help us find the Grimmir.”

  They swam around the room, opening the boxes and chests. Mira didn’t know what she was looking for but rummaged through the sorcerer’s belongings all the same. There were multiple vials filled with gems and sand and even minuscule shark teeth, and an entire chest filled with dried pieces of coral.

  “Most of these are empty,” Kay said as he closed the lid of a frosted glass jar and returned it to its shelf on the wall. “Or they’re filled with random junk.”

  Mira’s eyes fell on a solitary box on the stone table across the room, and she nodded to it. “Have you checked that one yet?”

  Kay shook his head, and they both approached the table. It was a simple bronze box with no lock. Kay took out the dull kitchen knife he had tucked under his bracelet and made to pry open the lid, but Mira knew he wouldn’t need it. It made her think of the music box she had once come across at the boarded-up store in Aindel, the box that had no lock but could only be opened by the right people: merrows. As Kay stuck the tip of the knife under the lid only to find that it swung open easily, she wondered whether the sounds of singing merrows would soon fill the room.

  But they were only met with silence. Inside the box was a single conch shell, spiked around the spiral top, white all around except for the bright red of the inside. Kay took it out and turned it over in his hands.

  “I’ve seen these before, at the fishing docks. Never these colors before, though.”

  “What do they do?” Mira leaned in to look.

  “Nothing, really,” Kay said, pressing the shell against the side of his head. “When you hold it up to your ear, you hear the ocean. Not sure if that’s how it works underwater, though.”

  “Let me try,” Mira said.

  She took the shell, and as she touched its smooth, glossy surface, she was struck by how light it was. She held it up to her ear and shook her head when she didn’t hear anything. Still, she had a hunch that it held something secret in its twisting chambers.

  “We should try it above water,” she said.

  “We’ve got to,” Kay agreed. “It’s the only thing on the desk, in a box of its own. It must’ve been important to the sorcerer.”

  “Let’s take it up to show Peter, then,” Mira said.

  Kay nodded and looked around the room.

  “Where…” he began.

  Mira spun around, knowing what her brother was thinking.

  “We lost the portal!” she exclaimed.

  “No, no,” Kay said weakly, swimming around the room. “I think it was somewhere around here.” He held out his arms. “It must’ve shrunk. I just have to find the speck of light—”

  “I don’t remember where we came in,” Mira said, panic blooming in her chest. She clutched the conch shell tightly and looked around at the stone walls and small windows. There was no other way out of the secret room. If they couldn’t find the portal…

  “It’s got to be here somewhere,” Kay said, turning his attention to another part of the room. Mira detected a trace of worry in his voice.

  “Kay,” Mira muttered. “What if it closed completely?”

  “It can’t have closed!”

  “Then where is it?”

  “I’m looking for it! I know we can find—”

  He stopped mid-sentence. Mira gasped, for a current had just rushed out from Kay’s outstretched hands. It was as if a small whirlpool was beginning to form in the middle of the room, slowly expanding until it was several feet wide. The rush of spinning water formed into a hoop, leaving the water in the middle of the whirlpool strangely calm.

  “What are you doing?” Mira hissed.

  “I—I’m not sure,” Kay stammered. He lowered his shaking hands slowly, but the whirlpool remained in front of him. “Mira, I think I made a portal.”

  Mira slowly swam over to her brother’s side and stared into the center of t
he swirling water. All she saw was the other side of the room, but at least this time she could see the wide circle outlined by the swirling water Kay had summoned.

  “Let’s try it out,” she finally said, though her heart was thumping hard against her ribs.

  Kay nodded and grabbed Mira’s hand. They swam swiftly forward through the whirlpool. Mira closed her eyes at the last second, but she didn’t need to see to realize that they had, indeed, left the sorcerer’s secret lair.

  Chapter Six

  The Long-Forgotten Voice

  W

  ith the conch shell in one hand and her brother’s hand in the other, Mira opened her eyes. There they were, back in the empty room of the sorcerer’s tower. She loosened her crushing grip on his fingers, and they spun around to see the portal that Kay had made slowly shrink until it disappeared completely.

  “Kay,” Mira said breathlessly. “You made your own portal!”

  Kay let out a chuckle of relief. “I did, didn’t I?” He turned to the wall and pointed. “But look, the other portal’s still there, in that little light. It never closed—not completely, anyway.”

  Mira tried to see what he meant, but she shook her head. “I can’t even see that one. I never could. It would’ve been a miracle if we found it in that secret room!”

  Kay looked down at his hands and smiled. “Yeah, that was pretty cool.”

  “Come on, let’s get out of here. We have a lot to tell Peter.”

  They found Peter at the edge of the lake, skipping stones. He dropped the rest of the stones he was holding and ran over to them when he saw them emerge from the water with the conch shell in hand.

  They showed him the shell and took turns listening to it. Over the distant sounds of birds and the light breeze rustling the trees around them, Mira heard the rushing sound of water. She smiled at the noise and passed the conch shell over to Kay to listen.

  “It’s the sound of the ocean,” Kay muttered and held it out to Peter. “But that’s it.”

  Peter pressed the shell to his ear. “So the sorcerer kept this hidden in his tower, and it’s just like any other conch shell?”

  “It can’t be,” Mira said, taking the shell back. “And it wasn’t actually in his tower.”

  She explained how they had found the sorcerer’s lair and the way Kay brought them back into the tower. When she finished, Peter stared at Kay with his mouth open.

  “You…created a portal in the water?” Peter said slowly, plopping down onto a boulder. “I didn’t know merrows could make portals. I mean, I’m not surprised it existed, to begin with. Maybe those are the channels through the lakes that Alexandra used to talk about. They were actually portals that the Shadowveils took to get to different places so quickly.”

  “I’m not sure all merrows can make them,” Mira said. “I couldn’t even see the first portal at all. I wouldn’t even know where to begin to make one.”

  They looked at Kay, who shrugged. “I didn’t really think about it. It just sort of…happened.” He looked down at his hands, touching his fingertips together.

  “Well, you’ll try it again, won’t you?” Peter said eagerly. “Both of you?”

  “I’d never know where to start,” Mira said with a shake of her head.

  “It only happened by accident,” Kay said.

  Peter crossed his arms. “Tonttu wouldn’t just leave it at that. He’d make you both try it. If the Shadowveils can do it, so can you.”

  “So you’re training us now, are you?” Kay raised his eyebrows.

  “I suppose I am.”

  Kay grumbled under Peter’s steady stare, but he and Mira agreed to give the portals another try while Peter examined the conch shell.

  To Mira’s astonishment, Kay could make portals that took him from one end of the lake to the other. He disappeared and reappeared in the blink of an eye. He quickly realized he could only make them into places he’d been in before.

  “I can’t make one under the waterfall,” he said as he pointed at the bubbling water in the distance. “But look—I can make one to the building close to it. Must be because I’ve been there. I have to see myself there, remember what it feels like—even tastes like—to be there, and it’s almost like I can open a window right to it.”

  Mira watched him move with awe, which quickly turned into frustration when she tried making a portal of her own.

  No matter how much coaching Kay gave her, she couldn’t do it. She managed to make swirling currents of water, but none of them led anywhere.

  After what felt like the millionth attempt, Mira dropped her hands.

  “It’s useless. I can’t do it.” She was silent for a moment, her disappointment suddenly turning into sadness. “I feel lost without Tonttu and Alexandra, and we can’t even be sure that they know enough about all this to be able to help us with these things. Perhaps Aristide could help since he’s a merrow. But—” She hesitated and looked up at Kay, who was watching her attentively. “Don’t you ever wonder if our parents—our real parents—had these sorts of powers? That they could have told us exactly what to do, how to use them?”

  Kay swam closer to her, nodding slowly.

  “Yeah. Maybe they could make portals or protect people’s minds like you can.” He pointed to his head, and Mira understood what he meant. She could protect people’s minds from anything that tried to invade them, which Kay had never managed to do.

  “What do you think they were like?” she murmured. When Kay shrugged, she added tentatively, “What do you think happened to them?”

  “I don’t know.” Kay let his shoulders droop. “Amara told you they died in an accident, didn’t she?”

  “She called it a tragic accident.” Mira remembered the Empress’s words clearly, spoken with a false note of sweetness that had quickly turned sour. “But perhaps she didn’t think it was tragic at all.”

  The look in her brother’s eyes told Mira he knew what she was thinking. Amara was so ruthless, so evil, that perhaps their parents’ deaths weren’t even accidental.

  “I don’t know,” Kay repeated helplessly. “All I know is that you don’t need to worry about the portals.” He gave her a small smile. “At least I can make them. All you have to do is stick with me.”

  Even with all the questions that were running through her head, Kay’s gentle words eased Mira’s tense muscles, and she nodded.

  “You’re brilliant enough at it for the both of us,” she agreed.

  She had quite enough of the lake for one day and was happy to swim to the surface. It truly did feel like one of Tonttu’s long training sessions, and as happy as she was for Kay’s wondrous new skill, she couldn’t fully silence the thought that kept nagging at the back of her mind: Why can’t I do it?

  “What happened?” Peter asked when they came dripping onto the rocks.

  “I couldn’t do it.” Mira sighed. “But Kay’s a master.”

  Kay fought a smile as he tried to act casual.

  “Wouldn’t say I’m a master,” he said with a shrug. “Very close, though.”

  Peter rolled his eyes, but he still smiled. “Wish I could at least see what a portal looks like.”

  “Doesn’t look like much,” Kay said. “It’s how it feels when you go through it that’s really cool.”

  “Yeah,” Peter said, looking away at the ground. “That does sound cool.”

  “Any luck with the conch?” Mira asked and pointed at the sleek white shell on the boulder in front of him. She sat by his side and crammed her wet feet into her boots with difficulty.

  “No,” Peter said dejectedly. He squinted up at the sky where the sun was descending over the treetops. “We’d better take it home and see what we can do with it there before it gets dark.”

  Mira stood up and nodded. She considered her soaking clothes and sighed. “We can’t go into town like this.”

  She waved her hands over her pants in a pathetic attempt to dry them. To her surpr
ise, several drops of water rose up from the cloth and rained onto the ground. Of course. She held her hands over her clothes and summoned the water out of them, watching the droplets evaporate into the air. For good measure, she turned to Kay and did the same for him as he gawked at her.

  “That’s a neat trick,” he said.

  “Not as neat as making portals, but it’ll do.”

  She picked up the conch and led the way to Eola. They found the great horse sniffing the ivy near an old fountain. Mira carefully placed the conch shell in the bag that once held the apples for Eola before they helped each other onto the horse’s back, with Peter in front.

  “I’ll lead the way,” he said excitedly. “I want to show you what I saw in the tower when I flew closer to it on Eola.”

  “Oh!” Mira said from behind him. “What is it?”

  “A very old painting,” Peter said. “We can’t go inside the tower—I don’t even know how it’s still standing after all these years—but we’ll be able to see it through one of the broken windows.”

  With a great lurch, they kicked off from the ground and flew straight for the tower in the center of the lake. Peter directed Eola in a big arc around the crumbling structure. They hovered near one of the windows at the very top, where the glass had long since shattered and the stones around the opening had fallen away, leaving a large, jagged hole in the building.

  “Look straight through,” Peter yelled over his shoulder. Mira and Kay leaned over to squint through the window.

  Between beats of Eola’s wings, Mira caught short glimpses of the old painting Peter had promised. It was faded after years in the sun so that Mira could barely make out the face and torso of a man. It was a portrait—of the sorcerer? She guessed it must be. He had light-colored hair and somber eyes that Mira strained to see more clearly, for they peered back at her as if the man knew something he shouldn’t—as if he held back great secrets.

  But that wasn’t the most peculiar part. Scratched right over the chipped and faded paint was a twisting shape that looked like it was carved with sweeping slashes of a knife.