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Chapter 1
Lachlan was dying.
We could hear it in the way he was breathing. Each gasp, ragged and agonizing, broke at the end, a slow hhhhhh-uh. We might have explained it away as pain. Except now, as we carried him through the brush, Lachlan paused between each breath, taking in no air at all. Every one of us knew what that meant.
I suppose it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. We’d watched our friend get run through the gut by a burning sword. The blade had been wielded by the Lady in Red, a fire elemental—a construct made of living flame, bound through magic in the shape of a woman. Lachlan had been burned all over his back, too. When we’d killed the enchanted elemental, it had exploded in a blazing burst. It was a miracle Lachlan was still alive at all.
But now he was fading, and fast. What we needed, then, was a new miracle.
We needed to find something to save him.
The Old Man watched from inside my head. I could almost see him, lounging with his back to one of the trees, filling his pipe as I trudged past. What are the odds of that? he said.
Not good. You think I’m a fool, don’t you? I said silently.
The Old Man sounded amused. If you have to ask that question, then you already know the answer.
I sighed. Because he wasn’t wrong.
He rarely was. It was one of the things I’d always found so infuriating. The Old Man—he’d never told me his real name; I’d just called him “Old Man” from the start, and he’d seemed to like that—had raised me. He’d rescued me from the streets when I was six years old and taught me his trade: how to manipulate people. I’d learned to read their thoughts, their feelings, their hidden intentions, from the way they moved, from the words they said—or the words they didn’t. The Old Man had turned me into a younger version of him: a gaffer, a charmer, a silvertongue—or a con man, a swindler, and a dirty rotten cheat, depending on whom you asked.
The Old Man was gone now. He’d abandoned me half a year ago, after one too many fights between us, when I finally told him I wouldn’t run any more gaffs that might snaffle decent people. But he wouldn’t leave my head.
Good thing, too, boy, he said, puffing on his pipe. You should have at least one person in this skull of yours talking sense.
I don’t need you to remind me, I grumbled. Trying to save Lachlan, with his injuries so severe; it was ridiculous.
And yet. I still led this band of misfit thieves into the trees, away from the smoking volcano Bolcanathair. Deep inside it, in the ancient Dragon Temple, we’d defeated Mr. Solomon, a powerful Weaver of magic, and his elemental. Now, bent over, my back aching, I followed a faintly glowing trail of red that cut through the grass underfoot.
The trail wasn’t easy to see. Would have been impossible, actually, if it wasn’t for the artifact that had attached itself to my left eye socket. The Eye—the Dragon’s Eye, to give it the full name the Weavers called it—was capable of seeing enchantments and the magical energy that powered them: life.
That was what I followed now. The glowing red trail was Lachlan’s life energy, draining out as he died. It was leading us somewhere, to something, though none of us knew what.
On its own, the trail would have been no trouble to spot. The problem was that everything living, plant or animal, had a glow through the Eye, each with its own special color. The grass shimmered with a ghostly green light, and it was almost bright enough to obscure the red we needed to follow. Keeping sight of it took all my concentration.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, I was getting dizzy. Seeing the ordinary world and the magical glow at the same time made my head spin. The longer I kept the Eye uncovered, the worse it got. Even now, I was stumbling.
I’d have gladly handed off the bloodhound duties, but the Eye wouldn’t let go of me. After I’d stolen it from the High Weaver, Darragh VII, the greatest enchanter in the world, the Eye had bound itself to my socket by some strange magic I didn’t understand. Sentient—and completely untrustworthy—the Eye actually talked to me in my head.
Or at least it used to. The Eye’s voice had been silenced somehow by Mr. Solomon, the Weaver who’d hired us to steal the thing. I’d have asked him about it, if he wasn’t already dead.
Meriel’s voice came from behind me. She sounded out of breath. “Could you move a little faster, Cal?”
She had every right to be tired. Meriel, Gareth, and Foxtail had been carrying Lachlan’s unconscious body, trading him off amongst each other'since we’d left the Dragon Temple. She shifted him over her shoulders. “He’s heavier than he looks.”
“Sure,” I said. “If you’d like to have your eye ripped out and the Dragon’s Eye put in your skull instead, I’d be more than happy to trade places.”
“Well, when you put it that way . . .”
She said it lightly, but underneath, I could hear her frustration, fear, and anger. Frustration at our slow pace. Fear for Lachlan. And anger—not for me, but herself.
Like I said, the Old Man taught me how to look deeper into people, to see the hidden messages they gave away without even realizing it. It let me understand the real reason Meriel was mad. Mr. Solomon had hired the five of us because we made a well-rounded team. Foxtail was a second-story girl, a cat burglar, with an uncanny knack for getting in and out of places unseen. Gareth was a book boy, our head of intel, skilled at uncovering information and even more skilled at sleight of hand. Lachlan was a runner, a gopher, a former Breaker with an intimate knowledge of the city of Carlow’s underworld. He knew where to get the tools to do the job.
And Meriel was an acrobat. She’d never told us where she’d come from, and I hadn’t been able to figure it out. She had a subtle accent I couldn’t place, which was odd, because the Old Man had taught me just about every accent in the empire. But wherever she’d come from, in addition to having an otherworldly grace, Meriel was an expert with throwing knives, which she kept hidden in secret pockets all over her dress. She’d clearly been trained to fight.
The rest of us weren’t. Particularly Lachlan, who, at only ten years old, was small for his age, and as good-natured as any thief I’d ever met. So if anyone was going to get hurt, Meriel thought it should be her.
She wasn’t being fair, of course. No one can stop every bad thing from happening. Besides, she was wrong. It wasn’t her fault.
It was mine.
It had been my plan that had led us to rob the High Weaver. It was my foolishness that had lost us the Eye—and my own—when Mr. Solomon had the Lady in Red tear it from my head. And it had been my plan again to take the Eye back from him, then seal the crack in the earth he’d made to tap into the primeval magic under the ground and prevent our world, Ayreth, from splitting apart. So if anyone should be dying, it was me.
The Old Man rolled his eyes. What a tedious thing a conscience is, he said.
How would you know? I said. It’s not like you ever had one.
And I’m happier for it. But go on, punish yourself if it makes you feel better.
Seeing Lachlan healed will make me feel better, I said.
You think that’s what’s at the end of this trail? Someone’s become awfully trusting.
He had a point. I was only following this path because that was where the Eye was leading me. I’d asked it to help save Lachlan, and the red glow trailing from his dying body was what it had showed me.
Before that, however, I’d made a different deal with the thing. The Eye had saved my life in the Dragon Temple, given me the knowledge needed to seal the rift in the world. In return, it had made me promise to, in the Eye’s words, “come for it.”
I hadn’t the faintest idea what that meant. But now, deep inside my mind, I thought I could . . . feel something. A hint of an emotion, a vague sense of urging
(forward go forward follow follow follow)
and the only thing I knew was that this feeling wasn’t coming from me. It was the Eye, trying to communicate past whatever binding Mr. Solomon had used to silence it. It wanted me to keep going.
And that scared me most of all.
I didn’t know what to make of the Eye. I didn’t know where it had come from, I didn’t know what its purpose was, and I didn’t know why it was pushing me forward. The one thing I did understand was that the artifact didn’t care a single sept for any of us. We were nothing but tools to it, pieces in some grand game, to be used—or sacrificed. So I was sure that whatever the Eye wanted, I wasn’t going to like it one bit.
Anyway, all of this meant it was entirely possible that we’d find nothing when we reached the end of this trail. Assuming we even got there. My head was really spinning.
See? the Old Man said. What did I tell you?
I sighed and headed into the woods.
I made it another ten minutes. Then the glow of the forest floor brightened beneath my feet.
I stared at it. The glow looked like it was coming closer—
WHUMP
—because it was coming closer. I planted my face in the ground.
“Mmlffgh,” I said.
Small fingers fumbled about my forehead, pushing my eyepatch down to cover the Eye. The artifact hidden, the lifeglow of the forest vanished, so I could see nothing but the ordinary world. Strangely, the urging I’d been feeling
(follow follow follow)
faded, too. In its place came a vague sense of frustration, just for a moment. Then it vanished along with everything else.
I rolled over and spat dirt. The Eye’s vision might have disappeared, but my dizziness hadn’t. Overhead, the forest canopy whirled. And bizarrely, among the leaves, I saw my own face floating, oddly distorted.
I blinked. My mind was such a jumble that for a moment I thought I was seeing some new magical effect of the Eye. Then I realized what it was.
It was Foxtail. My “face” was just my reflection shining off the girl’s mirrored mask. She kneeled over me, her reddish-brown ponytail hanging past her shoulder. Lantern in one hand, she used the hem of her skirt to wipe the dirt off my cheeks.
Of all the oddities I’d encountered since I’d come to Carlow, Foxtail’s mask was the oddest. Her entire face was covered by a polished steel plate, riveted to her skull around the edge. There were no eye slits, no mouth hole, no nothing. Just smooth, featureless metal.
I had no idea what enchantment had pinned it there, or how she lived with it. We’d never seen her eat. If it wasn’t for the rise and fall of her chest, I wouldn’t have even thought she breathed. How she got air through that mask was a mystery.
The steel didn’t let her speak, either. She communicated instead through gestures. She was trying to tell me something now, but I couldn’t make it out. Her hands were whirling along with everything else.
Gareth hovered behind her shoulder. Tall and lanky, he clutched a long, undulating silver staff: Mr. Solomon’s dragon staff. It was the only thing the Weaver had left behind. The primeval magic had disintegrated the rest of him.
“Lie still a m-moment,” Gareth said. He had a bit of a stammer, which grew worse when he got stressed. “You lost your balance.”
“Is that what happened?” I said. “I just figured the world decided to punch me in the face.”
I could tell by the twinkle in Meriel’s eyes that a joke hovered on the tip of her tongue. She decided not to say it. Too worried about Lachlan, I thought as she laid him gently on the grass and chewed her lip.
I knew as well as the others that we didn’t have time for this. But I couldn’t even stand anymore. “Just give me a couple minutes,” I said. I took a deep breath, trying to ignore the stink of sulfur wafting from the volcano behind us, and closed my eyes to stop the spinning. Foxtail rested her hand on my shoulder. “I’ve never stared through the Eye for so long before.”
But then, I’d never had a reason to push on like this. How long did the Eye expect me to follow its path?
“Cal,” Meriel said.
“That was not a couple minutes,” I protested.
“Cal.”
“Seriously, would you just let me rest—”
“Cal.”
The urgency in her voice made me open my eyes. The world had mostly stopped turning. “What. . .?”
Meriel stared up into the trees. I followed her gaze.
And my blood ran cold.
