Sophie knew she shouldn’t be letting him hold her like this. That it was giving Hort the wrong idea. But it was glacial out here. And Hort was wonderful at spooning, soft in all the right spots. Plus, with Agatha hunkered with Tedros, either she nested with the weasel or slept alone by the camel’s buttocks.
But there was something else, of course.
The way he’d saved her.
Not just that Hort had rescued her from death, but also that burn in his glare, that red-hot ardor, as if the boy had molted into a man. She’d always thought him a weenie, a lovestruck sop, but now she’d seen the alpha wolf inside, the one who commanded her love and didn’t back down. She’d never admit to being aroused by the thought; she’d plotted the death of any boy or beast who dared to claim her . . . Yet here she was, letting this one touch her, even though his fingers smelled of smoke and fish.
She rolled over to Hort. “What did you and Tedros talk about up there on the stymph? Every time I looked, you two were deep in conversation.”
Hort and Tedros exchanged glances.
“Fitness tips,” said Hort.
“Rugby,” said Tedros.
“Ah,” said Sophie.
Liars.
“Maybe this is the real second test, though,” Agatha wondered, finally freed from Tedros’ lips. “The more I think about this tournament, the stranger it is.”
“Here she goes again,” Tedros said. “Thinking.”
“A revelation to you, I imagine,” said Sophie. “Aggie, what do you mean?”
“The tournament is a race. Three tests. Whoever stays ahead wins,” Agatha reasoned. “If Tedros or Japeth swallowed the pearl, one of them would have had a head start on the next test until the other figured it out. So how did Arthur know neither of them would win? How did he have that second test prepared?”
Tedros sat up. “I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t,” said Sophie. “But Aggie’s right. Arthur’s ghost is speaking from the dead. And yet, he was ready for the case that neither you nor Japeth would win.”
“My dad is thorough,” Tedros defended. “He would have readied for all possibilities.”
“Or he knew all along killing Agatha would be the second test,” said Sophie. “Because he’d planned for Agatha winning the first.”
“You think my dad wants me to kill my future queen?” Tedros mocked.
But Agatha was still looking at Sophie. “That line when he announced the tournament. ‘The future I have seen has many possibilities . . .’”
“Somehow he had a view to the future,” Sophie said, finishing Agatha’s thought.
Tedros scoffed: “My father wasn’t a magician. He couldn’t have seen the future.”
“And yet, he knew we would be at his archive, looking for the first answer. That’s why he had Sader leave clues for us there,” said Agatha. “Either Arthur made a lot of lucky guesses . . . or your father saw ahead, even when August Sader couldn’t.”
Tedros’ face changed. “But who would have told him? Who would have helped him see the future?”
“You’re asking the wrong question,” said Hort.
They turned to him.
“The question is whether that person was on your side,” said Hort.
Sophie and the others fell silent.
Together, they gazed at Merlin, who seemed to have developed command over the fire, summoning magical shapes out of the flames: a tree . . . a cave . . . a sword . . .
“Mama, Mer-Mer is a wizard!” he said, hopping around. “See, look, Mama!”
“I’m looking, Merlin,” said Agatha, seemingly both relieved that he had his magic and disconcerted by how fast Merlin was growing. In the last day, he’d become unpredictable: in touch with his powers and still weeks away from knowing his potential.
“So many things we don’t know,” said Tedros. “Why Dad hid that riddle . . . how the Green Knight and Snake are connected . . . whether my future is fated or within my control . . .” The prince petted the sleeping camel. “Trust better be the way, Sir Camel. Because it’s the only way we have left.”
“Sir Camel is a ‘she,’” said Agatha.
Princess and prince drifted off to sleep.
Hort, too, began to yawn, leaving only Sophie to keep watch as the sun rose, tinting the docks with wintry light. Soon, Uma returned with a scanty stock of fish and fell asleep with the others, while her stymph flew back out to sea. Merlin, meanwhile, was still babbling and pitching things into the fire, conjuring random shapes. But in time, even the wizard child had enough, and after Sophie fed him the next drop of potion, he went down between her and Hort.
Sophie forced herself to stay awake, her eyes pinned on the sea for any incoming ships. Her lids heavied, her focus blurring back to the fire. The flames seemed to heighten, glowing unnatural colors, yielding new shapes, as if Merlin could control them even in sleep, a view into his unconscious. First, a blue butterfly . . . then a black snake . . . then a green, headless man rising from the fire, his neck a bloody stump . . .
But he had a head, Sophie saw now.
He carried it under his arm.
Tedros’ head.
“Peekaboo!” Tedros said.
Sophie bolted awake to a wash of sun.
The fire was out, the ashes long cooled.
Merlin was sound asleep, snuggled on Hort’s chest. Agatha and Tedros, too—
But something was different.
The camel, Sophie realized.
It was gone.
Sophie lifted her eyes.
A ship was at the docks.
Sails, red and gold.
Across the stern, carved letters spelled its name.
Shazabah Sikander
Shadows cast over Sophie and her friends, as if clouds had cloaked the sun.
Only there were no clouds, the sky a vacant white.
Slowly Sophie turned around.
Her blood chilled.
“Aggie?” she croaked.
Agatha stirred, following Sophie’s eyes. She jerked upright, snatching Tedros awake. Hort and Uma roused too, with the weasel grabbing Merlin.
At least fifty soldiers glared down at them, wearing red-and-gold armor, wielding curved sabers and spears.
They had the camel, collared and wrapped with chains.
But the camel didn’t resist. It wasn’t fighting its captors at all.
It was smiling.
Grinning at Agatha and Tedros, as if this was the ship it’d been waiting for all along.
It grunted calmly, the same sounds again and again.
Sounds Sophie had heard before, the camel’s guiding phrase.
Trust is the way.
Trust is the way.
Trust is the way.
But as guards came towards her and her friends, sabers raised, suddenly Sophie understood.
The camel never meant “trust.”
The camel meant something else.
“Trust” and “death” were the same word in Camel.
And they had gotten it wrong.
16
THE COVEN
The Knights of Eleven
“The queen,” the attendant sniffed in his pink-and-yellow uniform, standing tall at the door to Castle Jolie. “I’m to believe the queen sent for you.”
Hester, Anadil, and middle-aged Dot blinked at him, the three witches in filthy black hoods, held at the necks by a pair of guards.