The Reader

G
.
P
.
P
UTNAM'S
S
ONS

an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

375 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

Copyright © 2016 by Traci Chee.

Map and interior illustrations copyright © 2016 by Ian Schoenherr.

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eBook ISBN 9780698410626

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Chee, Traci, author.

Title: The reader : sea of ink and gold / Traci Chee.

Description: First edition. | New York, NY : G.P. Putnam's Sons, [2016]

Summary: “Set in a world where reading is unheard-of, Sefia makes use of a mysterious object to track down who kidnapped her aunt Nin and what really happened the night her father was murdered”—Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015039924 | ISBN 9780399176777 (hardcover)

Subjects: | CYAC: Books and reading—Fiction. | Robbers and outlaws—Fiction. | Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. | Kidnapping—Fiction. | Murder—Fiction. | Orphans—Fiction. | Fantasy. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Fantasy & Magic. | JUVENILE FICTION / Action & Adventure / General. | JUVENILE FICTION / General.

Classification: LCC PZ7.1.C497 Re 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2015039924

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Jacket art copyright © 2016 by Yohey Horishita

Photograph of girl Getty Images/ Lumina Images

Cover design by Kristin Smith

For Mom,
who always knew

O
nce there was, and one day there will be. This is the beginning of every story.

Once there was a world called Kelanna, a wonderful and terrible world of water and ships and magic. The people of Kelanna were like you in many ways—they spoke and worked and loved and died—but they were different in one very important respect: they couldn't read. They had never developed alphabets or rules for spelling, never set their histories down in stone. They remembered their histories with their voices and bodies, repeating them over and over until the stories became part of them, and the legends were as real as their own tongues and lungs and hearts.

Some stories were picked up and passed from mouth to mouth, crossing kingdoms and oceans, while others perished quickly, repeated a few times and never again. Not all the legends were popular, and many of them lived secret lives in a single family or a small community of believers, who whispered among themselves so the stories would not be forgotten.

One of these rare tales told of a mysterious object called a
book
, which held the key to the greatest magic Kelanna had ever known. Some people said it contained spells for turning salt into gold and men into rats. Others said with long hours and a little dedication, you could learn to control the weather . . . or even create an army. The accounts differed in the details, but on one thing they all agreed: only a few could access its power. Some people said there was a secret society trained precisely for that purpose, toiling away generation after generation, poring over the book and copying it down, harvesting knowledge like sheaves of wheat, as if they could survive on sentences and supple paragraphs alone. For years they hoarded the words and the magic, growing stronger on it every day.

But books are curious objects. They have the power to trap, transport, and even transform you if you are lucky. But in the end, books—even magic ones—are only objects pieced together from paper and glue and thread. That was the fundamental truth the readers forgot. How vulnerable the
book
really was.

To fire.

To the damp.

To the passage of time.

And to theft.

T
here were redcoats on the road. The gravel path that cut through the tangled jungle was teeming with people, and the mounted Oxscinian soldiers rode above the sea of foot traffic like lords in a parade: their fine red jackets unblemished, their black boots polished to a high shine. At their waists, their sword hilts and gun grips glinted in the gray morning light.

Any law-abiding citizen would have been happy to see them.

“No good.” Nin grunted, shifting the pile of furs in her arms. “No good at all. Thought this town would be small enough for us to escape notice, but that doesn't seem likely now.”

Crouched in the undergrowth beside her, Sefia surveyed the other shoppers, who carried baskets or towed rattling carts with burlap nests for their infants, the parents calling sharply after dirt-smudged children if they wandered too far. In their trail-worn gear, Sefia and Nin would have blended in well enough, if not for the redcoats.

“Are they here for us?” Sefia asked. “I didn't think the news would spread so fast.”

“Word travels quick when you've got a face as pretty as mine, girl.”

Sefia forced out a chuckle. Old enough to be her grandmother, Nin was a squat woman with matted hair and a face as tough as rawhide. Being pretty wasn't what made her memorable.

No, Nin was a master criminal with hands like magic. They were nothing special to look at, but she could slip a bracelet from a woman's wrist with a touch as soft as a breath. She could undo locks with a twitch of her fingers. You had to see Nin's hands at work to really see her at all. Otherwise, in her bear-skin traveling cloak, she looked something like a hill of dirt: dry, brown, ready to crumble in the humidity of the rain forest.

Ever since they'd fled their home in Deliene, the northernmost of Kelanna's five island kingdoms, they'd kept a low profile as they roamed from one land to the next, surviving on what they could find in the wilderness. But in the hardest winters, when the scavenging was poor and the hunting was worse, Nin had taught Sefia to pick locks, pick pockets, and even steal huge hocks of meat without anyone noticing.

And for six years, they hadn't been caught.

“Can't stay here.” Nin sighed and hefted the pelts in her arms. “We'll unload these in the next town.”

Sefia felt a twinge of guilt in her stomach. It was her fault, after all. If she hadn't been so cocky two weeks ago, no one would have noticed them. But she'd been stupid. Overconfident. She'd
tried to steal a new bandanna for herself—all viridian with gold paisley, much finer than her faded red one—but the clothier had noticed. At the last second, Nin had slipped the bandanna into her own pocket, taking the blame so Sefia wouldn't have to, and they'd left town with redcoats on their heels.

It had been too close. Someone might have recognized Nin.

And now they had to leave Oxscini, the Forest Kingdom that had been their home for over a year.

“Why don't I do it?” Sefia asked, helping Nin to her feet.

Nin scowled up at her. “Too dangerous.”

Sefia plucked at the topmost pelt in Nin's arms. Half of these were kills she'd brought down and skinned herself, enough to help them pay for passage out of Oxscini, if they ever got into town to trade them. Nin had kept them safe all these years. Now it was Sefia's turn.

“It might be more dangerous to wait,” she said.

Nin's face clouded. Though the old woman had never explained exactly how she'd met Sefia's parents, Sefia knew it was because someone had been after them. They'd had something their enemies wanted.

And now Sefia had it.

For the past six years, she'd carried everything she owned on her back: all the tools she needed to hunt and cook and camp, and at the bottom, slowly wearing holes in the leather, the only thing she had left of her parents—a heavy reminder that they had existed, and now were gone. Her hands tightened on the straps of her pack.

Nin shifted her weight and glanced over her shoulder, into
the thick of the jungle. “I don't like it,” she said. “You've never gone in alone.”

“You
can't
go in.”

“We can wait. There's a village a five-day journey from here. Smaller. Safer.”

“Safer for you. No one knows who I am.” Sefia lifted her chin. “I can go into town, sell off the goods, and get out of there by noon. We'll be twice as fast if we don't have these pelts to lug around.”

Nin hesitated for a long moment, her shrewd gaze darting from the shadows in the undergrowth to the flashes of red on the road. Finally, she shook her head. “Be quick,” she said. “Don't hold out for the best price. All we need is enough to hop a ship out of Oxscini. Doesn't matter where.”

Sefia grinned. It wasn't every day she won an argument with Nin. She wrested the heavy stack of pelts from Nin's sturdy arms. “Don't worry,” she said.

Frowning, Nin tugged on the red bandanna Sefia used to tie her hair back. “Worry's what keeps us safe, girl.”

“I'll be fine.”

“Oh, you'll be fine, will you? Sixty years of this life, and I'm fine. Why is that?”

Sefia rolled her eyes. “Because you're careful.”

Nin nodded once and crossed her arms. She looked so perfectly like her grouchy old self that Sefia smiled again and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. “Thanks, Aunt Nin,” she said. “I won't let you down this time.”

The woman grimaced, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “I know you won't. Sell the furs and come straight back
to camp. There's a storm brewing, and I want to get going before it breaks.”

“Yes, ma'am. I won't let you down.” Turning away, Sefia glanced up, noting the moisture in the air, the speed of the clouds as they crossed the sky. Nin always knew when the rains were coming, said it was the chill in her bones.

Sefia stumbled off, hefting the furs in her slender arms. She was almost at the edge of the trees when Nin's gruff voice reached her again, quick with warning: “And don't you forget, girl. There's worse than redcoats out there.”

She didn't look back as she struck out from under cover to join the other people on the road, but Sefia couldn't stop herself from shuddering at Nin's words. They had to avoid the authorities because of Nin's reputation for thievery, but that wasn't the reason they lived like nomads.

She didn't know much, but over the years she'd gathered this: Her parents had been on the run. They'd done all they could to keep her isolated, safe from some nameless, faceless enemy.

It hadn't been enough.

And now the only thing that kept her safe was her mobility, her anonymity. If no one knew where she was or what she carried, no one would find her.

Sefia shrugged her pack higher on her shoulders, feeling the weight thump against the small of her back, and weaved seamlessly into the crowd.

By the time she reached the edge of town, Sefia's arms were aching with the weight of the furs. She tottered past the docks, where a few small fishing boats and merchant ships were
moored to the tipsy piers. Beyond the cove, the crimson hulks of Oxscinian Royal Navy ships lay at anchor, decks spiked with cannons.

Five years ago, a handful of patrol boats would have sufficed, but now they were at war with Everica, the recently united Stone Kingdom, and they'd tightened the restrictions on trade and travel. Sefia and Nin could no longer get to the embattled shores of Everica, and even the stretch of Central Sea between the two kingdoms was rife with at-sea skirmishes and bloodthirsty privateers. To ordinary citizens, the sentinel ships might have been protectors, but to Sefia, who had never been ordinary, they were prison guards, barring her escape.

At the entrance to the town square, she paused to study the layout of the market, searching for alleys she might use if she needed a quick exit. Around the perimeter were rows of shops easily identified by the crests over their doors: a cleaver and a pig for the butcher, an anvil for the blacksmith, crossed wooden peels for the baker. But it was the cluster of covered stalls in the center of the square that drew the crowds. On market days, traveling merchants and local farmers came from miles around, selling everything from bolts of cloth to scented soaps and balls of twine.

Sefia wove among vendors hawking mangoes and passion fruit, sacks of coffee and catches of silver fish. Through the throngs of shoppers, she spied loose clasps on bracelets and jackets bulging with coin purses, but now was not the time for thievery.

She passed the newsstand, where a member of the newsmen's guild, a woman in a short-billed newsman's cap and brown
armbands, greeted her with more news of the turmoil abroad: “Another merchant ship lost to Captain Serakeen off the Liccarine coast! Queen orders additional naval escort for ambassadors traveling to Liccaro!” At her feet, the collection tin rang with the
plink! plink!
of copper coins.

Sefia shuddered. While Everica and Oxscini warred in the south, the sweltering desert kingdom of Liccaro had problems of its own: Serakeen, the Scourge of the East, and his fleet of brutal pirates. He terrorized the seas around the poor island, pillaging coastal cities and extorting others, attacking traders and supply ships bringing aid to a kingdom that hadn't had a king in generations. She and Nin had barely escaped one of Serakeen's warships when they'd left Liccaro over a year ago. She still remembered the bursts of fire from distant cannons, the explosions of water on either side of the ship.

As she made for the furrier's stall, elbowing her way past people dressed in work shirts and old trousers, long cotton dresses and pointed coattails, a flash of gold caught her eye: a light no bigger than a puddle, rippling beneath the boot heels of the crowd. She smiled. If she looked too closely, it would disappear, so she contented herself with knowing it was there, on the edge of her vision.

Her mother had always told her there was some hidden energy to the world, some
light
simmering just beneath the surface. It was always there, swirling invisibly around her, and every so often it would bubble up, as water appears from a fissure in the earth, a golden glow visible only to those who were especially attuned to it.

Like her mother. Her beautiful mother, whose copper skin
would tan to bronze in the summer months, who had given her the same slender build, the same unusual grace, the same special sense that there was more to the world than its physical forms.

When Sefia had brought it up with Nin, her aunt had gone sullen and silent, refusing to answer any questions or even make casual conversation for a whole day.

She'd never mentioned it again, though that didn't stop her from seeing it.

As the little pool of light began to ebb away, a man crossed in front of her. Stiff black hair flecked with gray, a stoop accentuated by an oversize sweater. She looked again.

But it wasn't him. The shape of his skull was wrong. The height was wrong. He didn't share her straight brows or her teardrop eyes, dark as onyx. Everything was wrong. It was
never
him.

Her father had been dead for six years, her mother for ten, but that didn't stop her from seeing them in complete strangers. That didn't stop the ache in her heart when she remembered, again, that they were gone.

She shook her head and blinked rapidly as she approached the furrier's, where a harried-looking woman was pawing through chinchilla furs with one hand while gripping the arm of her young son with the other. The little boy was crying, her hold on him so tight her fingers puckered his pink skin.

“Don't you ever leave my sight again! The impressors will get you!” When she shook his arm, his entire body wobbled.

The furrier, a plain woman with spindly arms, leaned over the counter, digging her hands into a stack of fox pelts. “I heard
another boy disappeared this week, just down the coast,” she whispered, glancing sideways to see if anyone was eavesdropping. Half-hidden behind her armful of pelts, Sefia pretended to take a greater interest in the paper envelopes of goods in the next stall, each one painted with a picture of the spices inside: cumin, coriander, fennel, turmeric . . .

“See?” The mother's voice rose in pitch. “This is impressor country!”

Sefia's pulse quickened.
Impressors.
Even the word sounded sinister. She and Nin had been overhearing bits of news about them for a couple of years now. As the story went, boys were disappearing all over Kelanna's island kingdoms, too many to be runaways. There was talk of boys being turned into killers. You'd know them if you saw them, people said, because they'd have a burn around their neck like a collar. That was the first thing impressors did—brand the boys with red-hot tongs so they'd have that exact scar.

The thought of the impressors made Sefia hunch her shoulders, suddenly conscious of how exposed she was in this sea of strangers, these watchers and whisperers. Checking behind her, she caught sight of a flash of crimson among the stalls. Redcoats. They were headed her way.