Carousel Seas

CHAPTER ONE

MONDAY, JUNE 26

12:06
A.M.
EDT

I put my palms flat against the unicorn’s gilded saddle, and stepped Sideways. This was the tricky part—well. And not burning down the carousel in the process.

The unicorn, in Side-Sight, was a void, a blankness, nothing but a carved wooden animal, with neither wit nor soul about it.

Exactly what you’d expect, right?

Right. Except if you happen to be looking with wizard’s eyes at the Fantasy Menagerie Carousel in Archers Beach, Maine.
Then
, what you’d expect to see in Side-Sight would be two things:

One: a binding spell enclosing the entire animal, woven with interlocking cords of forgetfulness, immobility, and sleep.

Two: the faint red gleam of a soul, ensorcelled and unaware, barely visible between the binding cords.

The fact that this wasn’t what there was to be seen by those with the ability to see such things . . .

. . . was very,
very
bad.

Which was why I was standing on the carousel at midnight-oh-six with my hands on the unicorn’s back, raising just the tiniest, rosiest smidge of power, pinching it off, and placing it into the hollow wooden body.

I withdrew my will, and watched as the mite of power settled into its new home.

“Does that,” I asked aloud, though without stepping out of Side-Sight, “look convincing to you?”

“You’re doing fine, Katie,” Mr. Ignat’ said from his lean against the utility pole. Let it be said that Mr. Ignat’—the Ozali Belignatious, formally—is my grandfather. He’s also my spellcraft tutor. Which means he can run circles around me, magically speaking, and by rights ought to have been the one doing the detail work, except . . .

. . . well . . . it’s complicated.

See, until very recently—by which I mean a little under twenty-four hours ago—five of the twenty-four animals and one chariot that comprise the company of the Fantasy Menagerie Carousel had been . . . prisons. Prisons for people from other Worlds—criminals so badass their own people had given them over to the council of beings called the Wise—sort of an inter-World court of last resort. Who had, in their—dubious, in my view—wisdom bound those criminals into the carousel in the hope—
even more
dubious—that the natural forces at work in the Changing Land would do . . . something . . . possibly beneficial to them.

Oh. This place here, that we like to call the Real World? The citizens of the other Worlds call it the Changing Land, when they call it anything at all; the last and the least of the Six Worlds.

So, a little less than twenty-four hours ago, all five of the prisons had been breached, all five of the prisoners unbound, awakened—and freed. After which—and very naturally—they’d run off.

Except the two who were dead; they had just . . . evaporated.

I’d like to say that nothing about this rather comprehensive mess was my fault, but unfortunately, the only truthful thing I can say is that
not all of it
was my fault.

I’m Kate Archer, Guardian of the Land of Archers Beach, carousel-keeper, and Ozali-in-training. And, no, I’m not making
any
of this up.

“All right, then,” I said to Mr. Ignat’. “Onward to step two.”

This was the easy part: a simple matter of reweaving the shredded bindings. I had the binding spell down cold, having watched my grandmother weave it every Season and end-of-Season since I was even shorter than I am now. In fact, I’d put the previous set of bindings in place at the beginning of this current summer Season, Gran having been busy elsewhere, and that . . . was the reason that
I
had to place the decoys. My magical signature was all over the bindings—as it should be. If anyone—no, let me be specific—if any of the Wise happened by and looked with Ozali eyes at the carousel, they would therefore and correctly see my signature everywhere.

That might, according to Mr. Ignat’, buy us some time. And there was a chance—granted, a
very small
chance—that whoever was doing the looking would be fooled into thinking the prisons were still occupied by prisoners.

The reason
that
was important is that the . . . let’s say, the
major architect
of the jailbreak had been after the liberation of one, specific prisoner. One, specific,
wrongly imprisoned
prisoner. Having recovered that prisoner, his sovereignty, his life, and the life of his recovered lover stood at forfeit, the moment it was discovered that all the prisoners were free.

So, I was covering for a jailbreaker. Say my sense of justice was offended by the imprisonment of an innocent. Hell, say that I was tired of minding a jail, a job I hadn’t signed up for—and I was pretty sure Gran hadn’t, either. The Wise had just sort of . . . decided that we had volunteered.

The Wise being what they are, it’s really better not to protest these little whims of theirs.

Now, it’s true that I had no idea why the remaining four individuals bound to the carousel had been imprisoned—and at this point, I didn’t care to know. The carousel was dangerous enough, being as it also was the official Gate between Worlds, without the added danger of pissed-off magic-using criminals escaping to ravage the countryside.

I
am
the Guardian of Archers Beach; I take my duty to the land—belatedly, I admit—seriously.

If the Wise wanted a prison, they could damn’ well build their own, out ’tween-Worlds someplace.

The bindings were in place. In Side-Sight, the unicorn looked precisely as it ought.

More or less.

“Well done, Katie!” Mr. Ignat’ called. “Only four more to go!”

“Piece o’cake!” I said with a heaping tablespoon of false bravado.

Then I walked down the curve of the carousel, to the next empty prison.