A shadow was moving over the plum orchards beyond the palace wall. Makhi looked up, expecting to see an airship, but the skies were clear. The shadow kept growing, spreading like a stain, speeding toward them. The trees it touched toppled, their branches turning black, then vanishing, leaving nothing behind but gray earth and a curl of smoke.

“What is this?” Yerwei gasped.

“Akeni!” the queen screamed. “Akeni, get down from the tree! Come away from there right now!”

“I’m picking plums!” the girl shouted, laughing.

“I said right now!”

Akeni couldn’t see beyond the walls, this black tide of death that came on without a sound.

“Guards!” the queen yelled. “Help her!”

But it was too late. The shadow slid over the palace wall, turning the golden bricks black and descending over the plum tree. It was as if a dark veil descended over Akeni and the gardener’s boy, silencing their laughter.

“No!” Makhi cried.

“My queen,” said Yerwei urgently. “You must come away.”

But the blight had stopped, right on the edge of the fountain, clear as the mark of high tide on the sand. All it had touched lay gray and wasted. All that lay beyond was lush and green and full of life.

“Akeni,” the queen whispered on a sob.

Only the wind answered, blowing in off the orchard, scattering the last, faint tendrils of shadow. Nothing remained but the sweet smell of flowers, happy and unknowing, their faces turned to the sun.

2

NINA

NINA TASTED THE SALT AIR on her tongue, letting the sounds of the marketplace wash over her—the call of vendors hawking their wares, the gulls in the Djerholm harbor, the shouts of sailors aboard their ships. She glanced up to the cliff top where the Ice Court loomed above it all, its high white walls gleaming bright as exposed bone, and she restrained a shiver. It was good to be out in the open, away from the cloistered rooms of the White Island, but she felt as if the ancient building was watching her, as if she could hear it whisper, I know what you are. You do not belong here.

“Kindly shut up,” she muttered.

“Hmm?” said Hanne as they made their way down the quay.

“Nothing,” Nina replied hastily.

Talking to inanimate structures was not a good sign. She’d been cooped up too long, not just in the Ice Court but in Mila Jandersdat’s body, her face and form tailored to keep her true identity secret. Nina cast another baleful glance at the Ice Court. Its walls were said to be impenetrable, never breached by an attacking army. But her friends had breached it just fine. They’d blown a hole in those grand walls with one of Fjerda’s own tanks. Now? Nina was more like a mouse—a big blond mouse in too-heavy skirts—nibbling away at the Ice Court’s foundation.