“I bet it smelled better, though.” The humid potpourri of mildewed rope and fetid water momentarily overpowered him again.
Sora wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, it did.” She began to explore the hold, looking for a place they could hide more permanently. “Anyway, before I got on the ship, I overheard a girl called Virtuoso teaching one of the new ryuu how to use their magic.”
“Learn anything useful?”
“Maybe. I couldn’t see what they were doing because I was inside a barrel of oranges, but I have an idea, in vague terms, of how ryuu magic can work, at least on a beginner level.” She frowned at the boxes around them. “There aren’t any good places to hide that won’t be exposed by a ryuu just walking through here.”
Daemon pointed at a collection of trunks and an old armoire along the back wall. They’d been obscured by netting, usually used to hold cargo against the walls in the case of turbulent seas. “I wonder if any of those are empty?”
They shoved past the nets. The wood on the trunks and armoire were molded and nibbled at the corners.
He opened the first trunk slowly, trying not to make too much noise with the rusty hinges. “Damn. It’s packed full of rope and broken buoys and other junk.”
Sora pulled on the door of the armoire. Once. Twice. Three times. “This one’s jammed.”
“Leave it. I don’t want us to get stuck inside a closet.” Daemon moved to one of the trunks they hadn’t examined yet. He opened it and found this one only half full of water-damaged books in another language. This must have been a merchant ship from a kingdom on the mainland.
“We could stack those on the floor,” Sora said, behind him now.
He shivered at the feel of her breath so close to him. But when he turned around, Daemon had control of himself again. “Good thinking. You can finish telling me about ryuu magic while we move the books.”
Sora caught him up on what she’d overheard. It seemed that the ryuu didn’t need chants or mudras to cast spells; focused thought was enough to command the green particles of magic floating in the air.
Daemon chewed on his lip, thinking about it.
“Can all ryuu do the same things with the magic?” he asked as he set down the last of the books. “I assume commanding the particles to make little hands to lift things is basic, since that’s what Virtuoso had the recruit do. But what about the ryuu we’ve already seen in action? Do they get to choose if they like bugs or fire or whatever?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they do get to choose. Or maybe they have a natural inclination or talent for something.” She looked inside the trunk. “That’s going to be a tight fit for both of us.”
Daemon thought of sleeping pressed up next to Sora.
It was suddenly very hot on this part of the ship.
He shoved up his mental ramparts and tried to think about ice. No, not just ice, but dunking himself in an entire bathtub full of it. No, wait, glaciers. Swimming in a frigid, glacial pool . . .
Sora looked at him with her mouth twisted. “Are you okay? You look like you just ran headlong into a forest ogre.”
“Hmm? Oh, yeah, I’m fine, never better. Great. Fantastic.”
Sora’s stomach growled. Daemon’s rumbled in return.
Saved by our bellies, he thought.
“Hey, now that we have a place to hide out, why don’t I try to find us some food,” he said.
Her stomach agreed loudly. She laughed. “That sounds like a smart idea. I’ll come too.”
“No,” Daemon said, perhaps a little too quickly. But he needed to put some distance between them, just for a bit, so he could cool down. Thinking about glacial pools took him only so far. “You stay here.”
“And do what?” She crossed her arms.
“Um . . . try to see those green ryuu magic particles?”
“I don’t have Sight.”
“But you’re good at magic.”
She shook her head. “As a taiga, not as a ryuu.”
Daemon frowned. “Well, unless you’re planning to knock on the Dragon Prince’s cabin door to turn yourself in, which I doubt, we need to find another way to learn about their magic. Prince Gin might grant Sight to the recruits, but he had to have discovered the particles the first time, right? What if it’s possible to use ryuu magic without Sight, but it’s just harder than with it?”
“You mean, if knowing the magic is there is half the battle?”
“Maybe.” He shrugged. “To be honest, I’m making it up as I go along.”
Sora nodded. “Me too.”
They stood there by the trunk for a minute, contemplating the recklessness of their plan. They could be caught at any minute and either executed or hypnotized into service. Daemon may have been able to fend off Prince Gin’s charm once, but there was no guarantee he could do it a second time, and Sora was certainly susceptible to it.
But they hadn’t really had a choice. Or, at least not a choice that Daemon and Sora wanted to pick. Before the ryuu left the Kaede City outpost, they had destroyed all the taigas’ dragonfly messengers, just as they had at Paro Village. Even if Daemon and Sora had stayed behind, they wouldn’t have been able to communicate with the Citadel. At least on the ship, they could attempt to gather more information so that the next time they landed somewhere with a Society post, they’d have more to share.
Plus, there was Sora’s plan to poison the ryuu. They had originally plotted to target only Prince Gin, but now that they knew how loyal his soldiers were, it seemed wiser to take them all out. And frankly, they were more likely to succeed if they aimed for all of the ryuu instead of specific ones.
He shuddered to think about killing everyone on board. Many of them had been loyal taigas just a day ago. And all Daemon had was the taigas. He didn’t have family. The Society was it.
But he also thought about the rira disks that he and Sora had stashed away. Taigas would rather die than allow themselves to be captured. If the ryuu recruits knew what had happened to them—that Prince Gin had made them prisoners within their own minds—they would prefer Daemon and Sora poisoning them over continuing as mind-controlled tools of the enemy.
Poisoning all the ryuu on board really was the best option for everyone. There was no other way that two apprentices were going to be able to stop them.
Daemon’s stomach interrupted the downward spiral of his thoughts by growling again.
“You were on your way out to get us some food, right?” Sora asked.
“Um, yeah,” he said, coming back to the present. “I’ll go now.”
“While you’re at it, why don’t you break into Prince Gin’s cabin and find out all his plans too?” Sora asked. It was supposed to lighten their mood, but given how much was at stake, the joke came out a bit flat.
Daemon appreciated the effort, though, and tried to play along. “Is that a challenge?” he asked.
She smiled grimly. “Work hard, mischief harder. You break into the Dragon Prince’s quarters, and I’ll find a way to access ryuu magic without Sight.”
He nodded. “Challenge accepted.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sora sat cross-legged on the ground. She was hidden by the cargo nets, so if someone came into the hold, she could dive into the trunk.
How do I find this godsforsaken magic? She stared intently at the air in front of her, brows knit together and eyes narrowed. All she saw was nothing.
Prince Gin had said the particles were everywhere, and the only reason taigas didn’t see it was because they didn’t know the magic was tangible.
But now I know, Sora thought. “Magic . . . come out, come out, wherever you are.” There was a beam of light coming in from a hairline crack in the wall. She focused on it. Maybe it would be easier to see the ryuu magic there.
And then . . .
Aha! A particle!
Sora smiled.
When she looked again at the beam of light, though, the particle was gone. And come to think of it, it had been white, like ordinary dust, not green like Prince Gin had said.
There was an awful lot of dust swirling around in that sliver of light. Sora sighed.
Concentrate, she told herself, squinting harder. Where are you, you little green things?
She stared and stared until her eyes crossed and actually began to ache.
She thought she saw the particles, and she jumped.
Her head smacked into the ceiling. Crow’s eye. Sora rubbed the spot she’d bumped.
She sat down again, allowing her eyelids to flutter closed for a minute.
Think, Sora, think. There must be something.
Maybe she wasn’t looking hard enough.
Or maybe she was looking too hard.
What if I tried a different sense?
People could smell sea salt in the ocean air and feel dampness before a storm. If the ryuu particles were floating everywhere, wouldn’t there be other ways to find them besides seeing them?
Sora inhaled slowly and deeply. And gagged. She’d gotten used to the stench of mold and wet rope and dank air, but a giant lungful all at once was a wallop to her chest.
She took a moment to recover, then took another breath. A smaller one.