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  Moppe’s eyes went suddenly wide, fixed on something over my shoulder, farther up the mountainside. She slapped a hand across my mouth, silencing my last word.

  Behind me, a woman’s voice echoed. “No, please, do go on. It’s been ages since I’ve had anyone to talk to.”

  I turned slowly, keeping my lips clamped tight, remembering Aya’s warning. Take great care what you say in the creature’s presence. We didn’t know exactly how the Speakthief stole voices. Maybe just speaking in her presence was enough.

  Moppe’s shoulder pressed against mine so close I could feel her shivering. Or maybe I was the one shivering. The sight before us was very much like something out of a nightmare, only this time we couldn’t wake up.

  The Speakthief was a woman. Sort of.

  She wore a pale, sleeveless tunic that trailed down to the forest floor. Long, moon-white hair flowed past her shoulders, reaching nearly to her waist. Her face was a creamy oval, perfectly proportioned.

  But she had no eyes. No nose. Instead, she had mouths. Hundreds of them. They rippled across her skin. Down her arms, across her collarbone, large and small. The red-lipped, sharp-toothed mouths covered her body like sores.

  One of the mouths on her shoulder spoke, the voice deeper now, with a gravelly edge. “So few survive their nightmares. And then all I have left are their screams.…”

  Several of the smaller mouths opened, filling the air with a chorus of pitiful wails. The Speakthief smiled then, over her entire body. It was fascinating and horrifying and made my stomach flip.

  The creature tilted her head. Two of the larger mouths were set exactly where her eyes should have been. They opened, then closed, in a terrifying mockery of blinking. “Well?” said a high-pitched, childlike voice. “Who are you? Why have you come?”

  I glanced sideways at Moppe. Her eyes were huge, her lips tight. She remembered Aya’s warnings too.

  But I had to say something. We had come here for answers. Maybe if I just said as little as possible, I would be safe.

  “The crown,” I said.

  The words were tugged from my lips, as if a cold breeze had blown over them, tearing them away.

  “The crown.” My own voice echoed from the Speakthief’s lips.

  I shuddered. Was it as easy as that? Had I already lost my voice? Or just those words? My lips felt frozen.

  She laughed, a booming, hearty rumble, and continued in a man’s voice, rich and melodic, with a strange foreign twist. “You aspire to claim it?”

  Moppe gave the Speakthief a vigorous nod.

  “Oh, my poor dears. So frightened,” rasped an old man’s crackling tones. “You need not worry. They may call me thief, but I take only what is freely given.”

  Moppe and I shared a dubious look. She started to open her mouth, but I squeezed her hand hard, giving a small shake of my head. I’d already spoken. I had to find out what it had cost me.

  “The crown,” I said. Once more the chill breeze snatched at my lips. The words sounded fainter, hollowed out and faded. But they were still mine, for now. “We’ve come for the crown. We’ve passed your tests.”

  “Mmmm.” The noise was noncommittal. It might have been agreement, disapproval, or simply an appreciation of how juicy and tasty we looked. The Speakthief’s lips curled in another hundredfold smile. “But there are so many more delicious fears to explore. Guilt. Envy. Loss. Custard.”

  Custard? I looked at Moppe, quirking a brow.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she whispered. “It’s all jiggly and oogly and disgusting. It looks like someone sneezed in a bowl.”

  The Speakthief drifted closer, licking her many lips. “Jiggly and oogly,” she whispered back, in Moppe’s voice.

  Moppe gave a tiny moan.

  “The crown,” I said fiercely.

  “Are you certain that is all you seek?” the Speakthief asked in a young man’s vivid, resonant voice.

  A voice that stabbed me through my heart, making me gasp in wonder and fear.

  A voice I knew well but had thought I’d never hear again.

  “That’s my brother’s voice!”

  “Ahhh,” said the Speakthief.

  “He came here?” I demanded. “When? Why?”

  “I don’t recall.” Her voice turned childlike again, lisping faintly. “Perhaps if you gave me his name?”

  “Florian,” I said instantly, just as Moppe cried, “No, don’t!”

  “Florian,” said the Speakthief, in my own voice. “What a lovely name.”

  It was as if I’d plunged into the icy waters of a mountain lake. I gasped, then clapped a hand to my lips. I removed my fingers, forming his name in my mouth, pushing the air past my tongue and teeth.

  It came out as a hush. A breath. No word. No name.

  I’d lost my brother’s name.

  “Thank you,” said the Speakthief, her voice scratchy, high-pitched and sour. “I haven’t had a new word in ever so long. Florian,” she sang, off-key and ear-twisting, “Florian, Florian, Florian.”

  “Stop,” I croaked. I should have been happy to find I still had other words, but how could I be, when that horrid thing was speaking my brother’s name? Taunting me with what she had stolen?

  “I tried to learn his name,” she went on, “when he came to ask me about—”

  I leaned forward. “What? Why did he come here?”

  She blinked her hungry-lipped eyes. Her voice smoothed into a soft tenor. “But I thought you wanted to know about the crown?”

  “Yes,” said Moppe, giving me a hard look. “We do.”

  The Speakthief sighed, her voice turning weary and monotone, like a bored shopgirl. “Seeing as you’ve given me a gift, it’s only fair I give you one in return. But only one. So, which will it be? The crown? Or Florian?”

  Again, my own voice echoed out, repeating the stolen word, a word I couldn’t even hold in my mind, couldn’t even speak silently in the quiet of my own thoughts. A savage yearning tore through me. Why had he come here? Aya said the Speakthief was a prophet. Had he come to learn his future?

  Moppe pressed close against my side. She leaned in, her breath tickling my ear.

  “I could give it something else,” she said. “Another word in exchange for the crown, so you can still ask about Florian. I could give her custard. Or sardines.” She wrinkled her nose.

  I managed a wan smile. “I don’t think it works that way. She wants words that mean something. Whatever she takes, it’ll be… important.”

  “Fine,” Moppe said. “Then I’ll give her something important.”

  A lump lodged in my throat. “No,” I said. “Thanks. But it’s too dangerous. Besides, F—” Air huffed out, and I had to try again. “My brother is dead. Whatever he came here for, it doesn’t really matter now.”

  I took a step forward. The Speakthief tensed, hundreds of small tongues darting out, licking hundreds of lips in anticipation.

  “The crown,” I said, forcing determination into the word. “Give us the crown.”

  “Are you certain?” Her voice crackled with age, like an old smoky fire.

  “Yes,” I said. Moppe reached for my hand, pressing it tight. I squeezed back.

  “Oh,” said the Speakthief, sounding disappointed. Her voice developed a drawl, mellowing into a baritone. “I cannot give you the crown. I don’t have it. But I can tell you what I told Terwyn when he came to me.”

  “What?” Moppe said. “What did you tell him?”

  “Terwyn asked me where the crown would be safest. A place it could await the day the true heir came to claim it. And I told him.”

  “Where?”

  “In the keeping of the daughters who dwell between the head of the bear and the tail of the lizard.”

  Moppe and I stared at each other. “Some sort of chimera?” Moppe whispered.

  The Speakthief snickered. In the wispy voice of a young child, she said, “And here I thought you wizards were clever with words.”

  “It must be some
sort of riddle,” I said, frowning as I turned the strange phrase over in my mind. There must be some trick to it. I just had to look at it the right way.

  Moppe groaned. “Haven’t we done enough?” She scowled at the Speakthief. “Just tell us where to go!”

  “Where to go.” Hundreds of mouths whispered the words back in a ghost of Moppe’s own voice, then smiled.

  Moppe growled in frustration. “What else do you want, you disgusting creature? Do I need to give you a word too? Fine, how about—”

  I tugged Moppe’s hand. “Wait! I’ve got it! It’s the letters. The head of ‘bear’ is B. And the tail of ‘lizard’ is D.”

  “Then we’re looking for the daughters who dwell between B and D?” Moppe frowned furiously. “In the… C?”

  “Exactly! The sea. Mermaids!” But my triumph poofed away like a blown-out candle flame as I realized what that meant. My stomach tightened. “We have to go into the water?”

  “Perhaps. Does that frighten you?” The Speakthief’s eye-mouths smiled at me knowingly.

  “No,” I lied.

  “Can we go, then?” Moppe asked, eyeing the Speakthief with loathing.

  “So soon?” lamented a chorus of voices. “Without even a last word? Perhaps one you might someday wish you’d given away?”

  Moppe frowned at the creature. “What does that mean? No, wait, don’t answer that. You’re just trying to trick us again!”

  Several of the Speakthief’s mouths pursed horribly, almost as if blowing us kisses.

  “Ugh. Let’s go.” Moppe started backing away down the trail, tugging my hand.

  I hastened to follow, stumbling only when my brother’s voice floated after us one last time. “Farewell.”

  12

  WE LEFT THE MOUNTAIN the next morning. As we made our goodbyes outside the cottage, I stole quick glances at Moppe, wondering if she’d slept as miserably as I had. My dreams had been full of birds with sharp silver beaks and my brother’s voice calling to me from some far place I could never reach. Even though we’d left the Forest of Silent Fears behind, my nightmares traveled with me.

  Had I made the right decision? Now I might never learn the truth about what my brother was doing in the Forest of Silent Fears. And I’d never speak his name again, not even in the quiet of my own thoughts.

  But he would have wanted me to choose the crown. He loved Medasia. He used to beg our grandfather—the dye merchant’s son who had charmed my Regian grandmother at that fish market long ago—to tell him stories about Queen Meda and her heirs. I only remembered them dimly. Tales of moonlit hunts, magical pools that reflected only truth, wise kings who sent their daughters on perilous quests to prove their bravery and strength. Mother, of course, would shush him at once, the moment she caught him “prattling on” about fairy tales.

  My brother had even performed with some of his actor friends at the old amphitheater in the hills above Port Meda. They’d put on a set of short plays in the old style, using the same grotesquely beautiful masks the first Medasians had worn in their sacred theater.

  It only made the broken-glass feeling in my chest more piercingly sharp, knowing that someone who loved Medasia had been murdered by the Liberationists who claimed to be setting it free. No, I had made the right choice. My brother wouldn’t want the crown falling into the hands of Captain Porphyra or any of her vicious band. I had to make sure I got it first. Then we could set everything back to rights and prevent any further bloodshed.

  “Best go straight down the south road,” said Aya, as she and the two little girls prepared to wave us off. “That will take you to Mermaid Rock.”

  “I always thought the merfolk were just a story,” I said.

  “You mean like voice-stealing monsters and enchanted echoes?” said Moppe.

  She had a point. I certainly hoped the merfolk were real, considering they were our only lead on finding the crown. But the thought of having to go into the water…

  There was no sense worrying about it until we were there. Right now, I needed to focus on getting down the mountain again in one piece, and without being petrified by another of those cursed statues. Whoever had sent the others would not have given up. They’d still be hunting us. They might even follow us here, to Moppe’s family. We had to get moving, and soon.

  “Stay strong, Agamopa,” said Moppe’s grandmother. She pressed her thumb lightly to her granddaughter’s forehead, tracing a line along her bare brow. She folded Moppe into her arms for a long hug, whispering something in her ear I couldn’t make out, then finally released her and turned to me.

  “Thank you for everything—” I began, only to falter, my breath huffing out as she hugged me just as tightly.

  I tensed, startled by the unexpected embrace. I wasn’t used to being hugged. Master Betrys certainly wasn’t the hugging type. And Mother… The last time I’d tried to hug my mother, she twitted me for mussing her ruffles. She’d been on her way out to a Council meeting, a month after my brother died.

  But this was… nice. Moppe’s grandmother might be old, but her arms were as strong as bands of iron, and for one brief moment I let myself be soft within their strength. It must be nice to have someone to keep you safe. To love you no matter what.

  Enough. I had work to do. I pulled away. Moppe had just finished hugging her little sisters. She tossed a spiny artichoke to the goat. “Try not to eat the whole house,” she told him. “And keep an eye on the girls.”

  The goat bleated, and all four of them watched us as we set off down the mountainside, heading back to the sea.

  * * *

  It started out as a way to distract myself from boredom and fear and the endless downhill trudge. It seemed like a perfect time to give Moppe an impromptu lesson in magical theory, maybe teach her a few more practical spells. But by the time we reached the marker stone for the south road, it had become something far less practical but much more fun.

  “Here, watch this,” I said. “Hair. Color. Blue.”

  The brown braids hanging down my shoulders shimmered, turning the same shade as the waters crashing and rolling over the sandy cove below.

  “Ooh!” Moppe ogled my azure locks approvingly.

  “Wait, there’s more,” I said, and spoke a more complex enchantment that spun a constellation of small pink dots over the blue.

  “Polka dots! You made polka dots in your hair!” Moppe actually halted, bouncing up on her toes. “Oh, teach me how. Please!”

  “It’s not too complicated,” I told her, even though it was actually a tricky bit of wordplay to get the polka dots to come out properly. “Just be careful to put the emphasis on the right syllables or you’ll end up looking like you’ve got the spotted fever.” The magespeak words for skin and hair were distressingly similar. I repeated all the words for her until she had them.

  “And then it’s easy to undo,” I said. “You just reverse it. Hair. Color. Brown.”

  The magic unspun itself as my spotted blue braids reverted to their normal color.

  “I don’t know why Master Betrys doesn’t have a new hair color every day,” said Moppe.

  “Master Betrys doesn’t like using magic for frivolous things,” I said with a twinge of guilt. Here I was, giggling over Moppe’s crimson-dotted green curls, when Master Betrys was a prisoner. When some mysterious villain was sending murderous statues after us. When the Liberation might even now be beating us to recovering a magical artifact of unspeakable power.

  But it was such a relief to laugh. Just to walk in the sun and share something I loved with someone who understood. Because Moppe did love magic too. I could see it in her eyes when we finally worked out a way to do stripes instead of polka dots. That familiar spark of triumph. Like the whole world suddenly shifted into something more true, more certain.

  It was different from talking magical theory with Master Betrys. I loved learning from her, of course, and it was thrilling to hear her conjectures on this or that recent experiment. But right now, with Moppe, I wasn’t tr
ying to learn, I wasn’t trying to impress. I was just… having fun. And so was she.

  “Can we try purple next?” Moppe asked, admiring a tuft of her currently bright-orange-striped green curls.

  “No one knows the magespeak for purple. That’s why our Medasian dye is so valuable on the mainland. They can’t make things purple any other way.”

  “But there must be a word for purple,” Moppe protested. “Otherwise how did the gods make grapes? Or mussels? Or irises and violets?”

  “There is,” I said. “But no one knows it. It’s forgotten. Like the word to undo petrify, or any of the other solitaires.”

  “So maybe someone could rediscover it,” she mused, twirling a green-and-orange curl around her finger.

  “Maybe,” I said. “There are wizards who dedicate their entire lives to tracking down lost words, discovering long-lost grimoires, or going to places like the Cave of Echoes.”

  I thought of the word the cavern had whispered to me. The word that would make me a Master Wizard. I still had no idea how to use it. I had experimented as much as I dared, using it on turnips, rocks, even myself. I had combined it with animate and transfigure and all the standard magic I knew. But it had done nothing.

  “But it’s really rare to actually find one,” I said. “The last I’ve heard of was hiccup, and that was five years ago. They had a gala to celebrate that lasted a full week.”

  Moppe chortled. “Hiccup? And they threw a weeklong party for that?”

  “The Master who discovered it saved the Zolomeni peace accords. The Prince of Zolomen had a terrible case of the hiccups, and she cured them.”

  Moppe had been leading the way along the track, as it zigged and zagged down the final slope to the curve of white sand below. She paused, pointing past a fringe of storm-tattered palms out across the blue. “There it is. Mermaid Rock.”

  I followed her gesture, squinting out at the distant nub of stone. It looked small. And far, far away. I swallowed uneasily. “Do you think we can find a boat?”

  Moppe gave a wave of disregard. “We don’t need a boat. It’s an easy swim.”