“But would you?” His voice takes on a nervous edge. “I mean, now that you know Ailesse? Assuming the soul-bond wasn’t a component, of course.”
I rub an uncomfortable stitch in my side. Ailesse could have killed me tonight, but she didn’t—even though she had Marcel’s knife and her grace bones. “What about you?” I throw his question back at him, and he frowns. It’s a stupid thing to say. Marcel never trained to be the tool of our revenge. Jules and I never wanted him to get blood on his hands.
A dull splash sounds ahead where the tunnel is flooded. Jules has jumped into the water.
I clap Marcel on the back. “We need to hurry. At the rate Jules is going, she’ll cross half of Galle before we even get out of these tunnels.”
We trudge onward, moving as fast as we can. We slip through the cracks of hidden paths and comb at least a dozen routes Ailesse could have taken.
She’s nowhere.
A horrible thought takes hold of me.
Her grace bones are helping her escape.
I don’t know which animals give Ailesse her power, but I do know that most have an uncanny sense of direction—birds, dogs, cats. She was blindfolded when we came here, but she has to have a buried memory of the path we took to our chamber. Her grace bones could have helped her remember.
I come to a sudden stop. “Jules!” I shout. Marcel bumps into me from behind.
Her faint ring of lamplight stills ahead, then slowly bobs back to me. She’s sheathed her knife again. A good sign?
“Ailesse isn’t here,” I say.
Jules arches a brow. “How can you be sure?”
I hesitate. She’ll hate my answer. I give it anyway. “I feel it.” Maybe it’s the soul-bond. Maybe it’s just a gut instinct. Whatever it is, it feels urgent and pulse-pounding.
Jules presses her lips together. She nods with bitter acceptance that borders on ridicule. “So what do we do now?” She tosses her braided hair behind her shoulder. “Ailesse could be anywhere.”
“I don’t think so. Her family is ferrying souls tonight on that land bridge she told Marcel about. She must have gone back to help them.”
Jules rolls her eyes. “Bone magic and eternal soulmates are one thing. But ghosts?” She shakes her head. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
I don’t argue her point. “We need to head for the ravine exit.”
“Whoa, hold on.” She grabs my arm as I rush past her. “How exactly are we going to find this mysterious land bridge? There are over a hundred miles of coastline off the Nivous Sea.”
“I have no idea, but if we don’t find Ailesse tonight, we lose her forever.” My neck flushes with a cold sweat.
“You mean we lose our chance for revenge.” Jules scrutinizes me.
I shift away. “Same thing.”
“Actually, the land bridge might not be so hard to find.” Marcel pushes his floppy hair off of his face. “Ailesse mentioned sea stacks and great rocks that prevent ships from sailing nearby. That narrows the location to seventeen miles along the west coast where the rocky water is. That’s also where you’ll find the steepest cliffs: Ailesse said you have to take a hidden stairway to get down to the shore.”
“Seventeen miles?” I turn to consider him. “But it’s over six miles to even get from the ravine to the west coast. That’s too much ground for us to search in one night.”
“Not if you think a little harder.”
“Think for me, Marcel.”
“Well, it stands to reason that Bone Criers ferry somewhere secluded, for instance a small bay or a lagoon. Then you must factor in the complexities of the land bridge itself, which doesn’t emerge at a normal low tide; it emerges twice a month at an extremely low tide—spring tides, they’re called, though that term has nothing to do with the season—and likely due to the shape of the bay. So the most probable place would be a narrow arm-shaped inlet, and I’ve only seen one such inlet on maps of the west coast.”
I’m a little dizzy trying to follow him. “So can you lead us there?” I try my best to have faith in Marcel’s brilliance. He would have had to memorize an ink trail of tiny squiggles to find the place he just described.
He gives me a lopsided grin. “I know I can.”
24
Sabine
AS THE LAND BRIDGE CONTINUES to surface, I have to force myself to breathe. I gaze at the serene beauty before me, the silvery sea in the embrace