If I ever got on my knees for anyone, I would have knelt right there. I would have knelt and begged these two not to help. I didn’t want Rosethorn angrier with me than she already was. I’d messed up. They were complicating it.

“She was seized by the earth’s power.” Because Luvo stood on the floor beside Jayat, it seemed as though his voice came from nowhere. Everyone but Rosethorn glanced around, startled. Rosethorn looked straight at Luvo. “She traced the remains of the earth lines that Jayatin spoke of, seeking their remnants in the soil. Then she found new, greater lines.” With a grunt Jayat set Luvo up on the steps so he could be seen.

I didn’t dare move. Luvo scares me when he’s like this, when he speaks with the age of his mountain within him. In Yanjing, his mountain supports huge glaciers. There are villages and forests on his flanks, and deep, ice-cold caverns in his depths. People worship him as a god.

Luvo didn’t look at me. He was talking to the others. “She followed the earth lines into the heart of this island. She used their power to go far deeper than she could venture with only her own strength. In a chamber full of magma, she met the creatures that inhabit it, the children of the earth’s heart. They captured her. They kept her for hours until Evumeimei escaped. She did so not only with her magic, but with all of the power she had collected over the course of the day, power that had clung to her as she examined the failed earth lines. She did it with the power that made her act so strangely. If she had not had it, she would have perished alone under the earth. I could not help her. I would have been devoured, had I followed her. You mages would not have survived the first thirty feet, even traveling as pure magic, as Evumeimei and I do. The force of this magic would have crushed you. It nearly crushed my young friend.”

Something he had said itched my brain. He said the power clung to me. I sat on the step closest to my rump. My knees didn’t want to keep me upright anymore. What was the idea that had caught my attention? Something about power clinging, and sticking?

I looked up. “I know why the plants and water have been going bad.”

“I don’t believe this!” Fusspot slammed his cup down, slopping tea on the table. “She gets her animate rock to plead her case, she plays the tottering invalid to get our sympathy—”

“Be still.” Azaze spoke with a voice like ice. “Unlike you, she has an idea. You have only tests you wish to perform.” She looked at me and twitched her fingers in a “come on” gesture.

I glanced at Rosethorn. She nodded.

I opened my mouth. Words, an avalanche of them, spilled onto my tongue. “In the gorge with all the dead trees, I felt the skin of the rocks was touched by bad air. There was poisonous stuff in it, chemicals that stuck to the rocks after it passed. Under the ground, the poison was all around the rocks on either side of the crack in the earth—it was left behind when the bad air passed through the crack.” I started to cough. My throat was dry as chalk. Jayat went to the kitchen and brought me a cup of mint tea. I sipped it until my coughs stopped, while Jayat went to stand with the kitchen maids. “When I was in the big chamber with all the magma and the rock spirits, I got adopted by two. I named one Flare, and the other was Carnelian. They didn’t have names of their own. They wanted me to play with them. They dragged me all over the place. Everywhere they went, Flare and Carnelian yanked me up into these cracks. They couldn’t make themselves as thin as me because they were solid magma. They could melt part of the cracks, but they could only force them open so far. They want out of that chamber really bad. They keep saying it like it’s their prayers—they want out. And they keep trying. In the chamber they were surrounded by wavy lines, like you see coming off of cobblestones on really hot days. I think those wavy lines were the poisoned air, and the poisoned air is the only part of them that can escape through the cracks.” I finished my tea. “The last thing they did with me, I think they tried to jam all three of us straight through the top of Mount Grace.”

My hands started to shake. I put my teacup next to Luvo so they wouldn’t see, and tucked my hands in my armpits. “That was…bad. I got away, finally, and escaped through one of the cracks we had tried before. The stones in it were coated with poison. The stuff that’s killing the water and plants comes out ahead of Flare and Carnelian. The rest of the magma spirits can’t get out, not yet, but the poisons in their air can. If they followed Carnelian and Flare, they could kill this whole island.” I opened my mouth to tell them more, but the word avalanche was over. Trembling, I waited for Myrrhtide to start on me again. I could feel sweat trickle down my back. My head pounded.

Fusspot didn’t say a word. I looked up. He was pouring water into a bowl. Once it was full, he wet his finger and wrote signs all around its rim. Then he stared into the water, his pale eyes fixed. He was scrying in the bowl. He’d done so every night on the ship, communicating with Winding Circle, or trying to see what was going on around us. What was he trying to see now—Flare and Carnelian?

Rosethorn came to sit on the step next to me. She put an arm around my shoulders and held me close. She spoke in a whisper. “Are you sure of all this? No, never mind that. You are an appallingly truthful girl. Do you understand the meaning in what you have said?”

I shook my head. My poor stomach lurched.

“You describe the beginnings of a volcano. It makes sense of what’s happening with the plants and water here,” she explained. “Your friends looking for a way out—they will bring lava and gas with them in an explosion that may kill everyone on Mount Grace. Perhaps even all of Starns.”