Drake

Drake was surprised to be alive, but that was no different than normal. He was past the point of tired, but residual adrenaline from escaping Granpulpo was staving off the sleep that would catch up to him if he stopped moving.

Their enthusiastic guide bounced them along toward what she called the temple. After some discussion, Rosaliy had decided she could do the most good there, as it was packed with magical objects. She was hoping to find the stone. Suddenly he was remembering that weapon Daniella had mentioned. She had been so vague, and he would rather not discuss it in front of Zaphia. Only the Seer really knew what they were walking into.

A nagging feeling prickled, one of those instincts that was likely to get him in trouble. “I should go to the prison,” he suggested.

Rosaliy wanted to object.

“To get an idea of the layout and see where they’re keeping the Seer,” he clarified. “What can I do with magical supplies?”

“Iketa has been hauling prisoners into the prison for days,” Zaphia informed them. “Terrans, and the High Sorceress was just brought in, and the Seer, obviously. She’s been there since the beginning. They just brought in an older Terran woman with important information or something like that, but she won’t tell them anything.”

The girl said more words, including something about horses, but Drake was stuck on the ones about the mystery prisoner and her interrogation. Even if the mystery woman was not the person he suspected, an older Terran woman with information important to the Flifary sounded like someone he needed to talk to. She definitely sounded like someone the Flifary did not need to be talking to, anyway. His instincts dipped further into trouble depth.

“I know a lot about the prison,” Zaphia offered. Great. If there was one thing he liked less than prisons, it was dealing with wild cards on their home turf. Zaphia very well might be working for their Flifary enemies, biding her time while she tried to uncover information about the divination stone. Who was this enthusiastic about dealing with foreigners dragged ashore by a malevolent, mythical octopus?

Rosaliy seemed eager to trust Zaphia, but Rosaliy also seemed to enjoy Drake’s company, so her ability to judge character was in question.

Rosaliy chuckled under her breath. “That look on your face—it’s hilarious.”

“There is no look on my face,” he disagreed.

“That’s the hilarious part,” she giggled. “It’s that look where you’re not saying what you’re thinking.”

Wouldn’t that be his face all the time? It was good to see Rosaliy smile again either way.

“I bet you and Dmitri could have a whole silent conversation with blank, cynical stares,” she decided, dodging some springy foliage snapping back into place after Zaphia’s passage. Rosaliy’s smile faded, and she tugged on Drake’s shirt to slow him up a step. Zaphia zoomed ahead. “She did save your life,” Rosaliy whispered.

That only made Zaphia look more suspicious. What did she want from them?

Zaphia glanced back, realizing they had fallen behind. She stopped and stared at them with wide eyes of concern. “You two look like you’ve lost a fight with an angry bandincitano,” she pointed out. “Do you need water? Food? Clothes?”

Clearly.

“I’d like to complain about being hungry,” Rosaliy admitted, “but Drake has been awake all night and probably hasn’t eaten in longer than I have.”

She would be right.

“I brought a snack for the day shift,” Zaphia announced, digging through a bag slung across her body. She located and handed over a leaf-wrapped bundle. “A CFJ, which I guess would be a PBN to you, and some goats’ milk.”

The PBN was a pineapple, bacon, and nut butter sandwich, an odd but not unpleasant combination. Normally, he would decline food from a too-convenient foreign stranger; however, Drake was incredibly hungry, and he did have a weakness for yellow fruits.

Zaphia led them at a slower pace through increasingly thick jungle. Startled wildlife hopped and slithered out of their way. She could be leading them into the middle of the jungle to be eaten by giant snakes, but letting a giant octopus kill them would have been faster, Drake supposed.

“Ok, Quita,” Rosaliy complained, tearing off a nut-slathered chunk of sandwich for the monkey. “Stop jabbing me with your little claws.”

“Belt’s not working at all?” Drake asked.

Rosaliy shook her head. “The venomous barb seems to have been the end of it.”

“Shhh,” shushed Zaphia, waving her hand at them for emphasis. She had ink drawings all along the back of it. “We’re close to the temple.”

She led them to a tight cluster of leafy palm trees and pointed at the back side of what must have been the temple. It was ringed by intricate columns wrapped with vines and pressed up against the sun-smothering jungle foliage that had grown up around the temple. Or maybe the temple had grown up out of the thick jungle. Either way, this place would have been impossible to find without a guide. Drake had to give Zaphia a begrudging amount of credit for being necessary. He was nowhere near ready to jump to trustworthy.

Quita leaped from Rosaliy’s head and dashed to the temple, scrambling up one of the columns wrapped with vines, then leaping from column to column with purpose. Within minutes she was diving headfirst into a banana tree.

“There aren’t any magical barriers around this place?” Rosaliy asked Zaphia.

“There are workers in and out all the time, so no special magical boundaries I know of. Just a couple guards. That window there is where I’m supposed to be keeping watch over the tracker. Nobody should be in that room but me. Except not me, because I’m right here. You won’t run into me.”

“It’s near Dalor’s laboratory,” Rosaliy clarified.

“Right,” Zaphia agreed. They had this conversation earlier.

Rosaliy turned to face Drake. She was torn and streaked with dirt from head to toe, although her tied back hair was as orderly as always. Her good humor had fled, and her pursed mouth tightened into a tense frown. “I feel like…” she murmured, then sighed. “Will you promise me something?”

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He probably would, which startled him. “I never makes open-ended promises to women,” Drake objected with a teasing tone that was more defense than felt, “especially the magical type.”

Her seriousness cracked a bit. “Just promise I’ll see you again. That you won’t leave without saying goodbye. I don’t want you to disappear on me.”

What an odd request. He had no idea what to make of it. “How am I supposed to leave the island without you?”

She cocked her head, her blue eyes trying to read his. “You’re just doing reconnaissance, right?”

Maybe she was good at reading people.

“Right,” he agreed. “Looking around the outside of the prison. Making a plan. Reconnaissance.” Plus getting more information about Zaphia’s mystery prisoner. The timing of her arrival was not sitting well with him.

“I just have this nagging feeling…” She sighed. “Hey, is that you promising or distracting me from the fact that you’re not promising?”

He laughed. “It’s as close as you’re going to get. What if I get killed?”

“Then I’ll be furious with you,” she promised.

“I can’t exactly control what I get killed by.”

“You said you’re good at making it through these sorts of situations,” she argued, gripping his arm in Kianne farewell. “And try not to get yourself locked up in the Flifary prison. I don’t see talking you out as an option this time around.”

“Noted,” he said. “Avoid incarceration.”

She was still holding on to his arm.

“Are you worried about me?” he asked.

“Of course I am!” she exclaimed softly.

“Well, stop,” he told her, although some small part of him did appreciate the novelty of being worried over. “You’re the one walking into Magical Catastrophe Central.”

She eyed the temple. “How do you say ‘good luck’ in Bayselle? Something fish-related?”

“Favorable winds,” he answered.

“I like it. Favorable winds.” She finally released his arm, an unpleasant sensation. He could feel the absence of her long after she had clambered up the massive vines and over the windowsill high above them. She disappeared for a moment, then reappeared in the window to wave her success.

Drake watched the empty window a moment longer than he needed to. “Lead the way to the prison,” he told Zaphia.

“We’d better go the jungle route,” she said. “It’s probably a bad idea to be roaming the streets with you.”

Probably?

The jungle route was full of more hopping and slithering things, and it was not the best path for bare feet. Flifary Island had not made a good impression so far. If Drake tried to traverse the jungle on his own, it would have taken days of hacking out a path, but Zaphia knew a narrow, winding route that eventually spit them out onto a wide sand road lined with pillars and the occasional statue of a serpent or watchful jaguar. Everything seemed worn by sun and wind, more an indication of age than care, if he had to guess.

Zaphia looked left, then right, then left again. Just as she was about to brave a step onto the wide road, the sound of voices knocked her back. She abandoned the street crossing and took cover behind a vine-draped tree. Drake followed suit.

A pair of men sauntered by, chatting in their foreign tongue.

Zaphia crept forward when the voices faded into the distance. “They didn’t see us,” she whispered. “They were just whining about the heat and how dull the day shift is.”

Who could blame them? Drake was roasting. This was a sticky, wet heat that crawled inside a person’s bones—nothing like the dry, sweat-sapping heat of the desert.

Zaphia took off across the road, not slowing until she was safe under cover on the other side. The road twisted, and Zaphia kept them parallel to this main thoroughfare, ready to hide at the sight of any more patrols. She was a jumpy little thing, but she knew the way. It was eerie how quiet things were, but the more time he spent outside, Drake could appreciate the necessity for sleeping the sweltering day away. Zaphia veered them to a pile of precarious boulders at the base of a crumbling cliffside.

“If you feel any shaking, run toward shore,” she warned him in a whisper.

“What?”

“I’m sure it’s fine.” She shrugged the thin shoulders peeking out of her loose clothing. “Just basic volcano safety. Do you have volcanoes on shore?”

No. In fact, the last mountain he had tangled with had not treated him well. Drake shot another glance at the cliffside. Smoke meandered from the lofty top of the black peak. “Why are we here?”

“We have the best view of the palace from here.”

Zaphia led him around the big rocks to a vantage point looking down on the sprawling palace. There were open courtyards, overgrown gardens, trees poking out of the roof, sections of roof made of woven vines, a turret that looked more like a treehouse with an elaborate crow’s nest at the top, and dizzying spiral stone staircases open to the elements. Those were just the features he could take in on first glance. It looked like the palace had been under constant construction for hundreds of years, adjusting to the whim of the moment.

“Where is the prisoner being questioned?” he asked.

Zaphia pointed. “See that stone tower? It’s close to there.”

“Any windows?”

“Sort of,” she said. “The ceiling is made of vines in that whole wing.”

He could see that.

“So if I cut through—”

He stopped because Zaphia was emphatically shaking her head, making her feathers twirl in a comical dance. “Oh, no,” she insisted. “That won’t work. There are magic barriers everywhere.”

Of course there were.

“Besides, the Seer is at the other end of the palace, and there are more prisoners scattered all over the place.”

As much as he wished he cared about the other prisoners, he was concerned with only one. “We’ll worry about them later,” he said. “Is there a way in to the vine section?”

“You can maybe see into the room,” said Zaphia, looking concerned. “Isn’t that what you wanted to do? Reconniponce?”

He was giving Zaphia too much information and getting nothing back. It would be too hard to hash out the specifics of a plan with someone who should not have the specifics of his plan. He needed to fish for information instead.

He flashed Zaphia a smile. “Absolutely. Just brainstorming a plan.” She relaxed. “So if you were going to break out a prisoner, how would you do it? Just for future planning.”

“Hmm,” she pondered, nodding down at the palace in deep thought. “Hmm.” She pulled a ribbon from her neck. It was laced through a shell. “This lets me get in and out of the palace without raising alarms, but I can only get close to the rooms where the prisoners are, not in them. I’d need different magic to get to where the prisoners are.”

That explained why the palace looked like it had a hundred entry points.

Zaphia was still hypothetically breaking out the prisoners. “Then I guess I’d wrap a blanket around some coconuts or something lumpy to make it look like the prisoners were sleeping and then sneak them through the hallways. Since I was already using magic to get through the special barriers, I could just use magic to make us all invisible. Magic can do that, right? Wait, not in the palace, though. The barriers are also stopping magic. Except, wait, how are magic barriers stopping magic? Wouldn’t the magic barrier stop itself from working?”

He was sorry he had listened to any of that.

“Who has access to the prisoners, Zaphia?”

Her forehead was crinkled in deep thought. “Huh? Who? Only Iketa, Dalor, and the head guard. Oh, oh!” she exclaimed, lighting up and waving her hands. “You could use magic to make yourself look like one of them. That would be neat.”

No. “Would that fool a magic barrier?” he pointed out.

“I suppose not, but it would fool the guards,” she defended her plan.

She sure loved complicated plans involving magic. “What allows Iketa and Dalor to pass through the barrier?”

“They have special conchas.” She tapped the shell on the end of her necklace.

Iketa and Dalor were out, but with all the high value prisoners on the premises, the head guard was sure to be here. Since it was Flifary night, Drake assumed the head guard would delegate the night shift to sleep. Time and the element of surprise were in his favor, assuming Zaphia was being truthful.

“Are you thinking about going in?” asked Zaphia hesitantly. “Didn’t you tell the Sorceress you were just looking around?”

No. He had strongly implied he was just looking, and Rosaliy had correctly assumed he would do something stupid if the opportunity presented itself. “Sometimes reconnaissance involves taking advantage of an opportunity,” he said.

Zaphia blinked and nodded slowly and with purpose. “Let me get something that will help,” Zaphia promised. “You stay here and plan.”

Right, like he was going to sit and wait at the base of a puffing mountain and let her traipse off to go notify Iketa and Dalor about his plans to break into their prison. In his best case scenario, she was going to go procure magic that would change him into a lizard.

“Good idea!” he said.

He followed her at a distance while she traipsed off.