I didn’t lie to her. I’m not going to take stupid risks.
I’m going to take necessary ones.
Also, I’m not a scout.
Tamsin
My thumbtack is starting to die. The point has blunted to a rounded nub. I’ve tried sharpening it on the wall, but the adobe just crumbles. Instead I take to wiggling the second metal band on my waste bucket. After much clawing and cursing, I manage to loosen a second thumbtack. It’s born from the wood brand-new and virile, its end hard and pointy.
I move to the door again to start on the fourth letter.
H
I
R
Lark
Rose has a fever.
In the time since the wagon disaster, she’s gone from being in constant pain to living in a drifting stupor, her skin fiery hot to touch. Sedge will barely leave her side. He changes the bandage on her knee twice a day, making guesses as to when to elevate it and when to let it air. The ragged end is a sickly black now, crusted with pus and blood that won’t stop leaking.
Lila, too, has been especially attentive, mopping Rose’s forehead, trickling water into her mouth, and helping change the wrappings underneath her when they get soiled. Her face, often arranged into cool disdain, is creased with worry. She might be in love with Rose, too, come to think of it.
I jog up the final slope of the grassy drainage at the base of Three Lines. Rat trots at my heels—he tweaked a paw in the chase with the oxen, but already he’s moving normally again. From my fist swings a skinny jackrabbit, the only game in any of our nearby traps today. It’ll make a poor stew, gamey and tough, but at least the bones should make a good broth both Rose and the little ones can drink. I’d make the longer trek down to check the deadfalls along the river, but I’m hesitant to leave the others in camp that long. For the thousandth time in the last hour, I release a breath I’ve been holding in.
I shift the bundle of wood on my shoulder. I wouldn’t have even made the trek down to the drainage this morning, but with the ax head still buried in the stupid pine block, we need the firewood, and the half-mile radius around our camp is picked clean. I’ve given up thoughts of taking the ox to drag one of the cottonwoods up from the river, at least for the moment. Even if I thought I could leave camp that long, the others are in no shape to help me. Sedge can’t bring himself to leave Rose’s side. And Saiph . . . Saiph is grieving Pickle hard. They were closest in age, and they’d been friends for years. Now he wanders around camp like a ghost, doing things I ask him to in a hazy, silent stupor. I’m not sure he could focus on hitching up a fallen tree, or whether he’d just drift uselessly along beside us. I haven’t had the time to sit him down and talk about what happened because I’ve been running around to supply camp and care for our newest member.
Moll.
I have no idea what her real name is, because she hasn’t uttered a single word since she arrived. Not one. We’ve called her that after the four letters printed on her dirty cornmeal sack, probably the beginning of mollin’s milling service. She won’t part with the sack—Lila and I gently lifted it off her to sponge her down, but when we tried to take it away, she clutched it to her chest and wouldn’t let go. I asked her if we could call her the name printed on the burlap. She didn’t answer, only sat and shook from head to toe like an aspen in a high wind.
We dressed her in Pickle’s spare shirt—it hangs off her little shoulders like a tent. She’s a tiny thing, less fragile than Whit but even smaller. Her massive eyes are jewel green and set in a round, copper-skinned face. At some point, someone cut her dark brown hair off in hanks, but it’s grown out to hang unevenly by her chin. My guess is that she might be Paroan, which makes my spirits sink even lower—if Cyprien is far away, Paroa might as well be the moon. And she’s so little, there’s no telling if she can recall anything of her family, or where on the coast she’s from. If she ever decides to talk to us at all.
I know she can speak, at least a little, because she does it in her sleep, mumbling and crying. But she won’t answer any questions—not where she’s from, or what she remembers, or if she’s hungry. So we’ve been caring for her like we’ve been caring for Rose, spooning broth and corn mush and water into her mouth. I’ve tried to take her with me a few times, to get her to walk up to the seep, or down to the horses, or even just over to the cookfire, but she clings to Pickle’s old sleeping mat like a tick. So I’ve had to just leave her, charging Whit with checking to see if she needs water and whether she’s peed on her blanket. I have noticed she shakes less when Rat sits beside her, but he whines if I take off somewhere without him. Which is why I’m now jogging back up the drainage, chased by the worry that I need to get back in camp as soon as possible. Rat lopes along with me.
I crest the rise on the drainage to find Andras drooped on a rock near the grazing ox. He’s been put in charge of the animals for the time being. We’re down a horse—I had to shoot poor Scrub after it took the quarrel. Saiph’s mule, Weed, will probably survive, but he won’t be able to carry loads for a while. Taking the remaining ox from the wagon was as much to get our wounded, ragtag group back to Three Lines as it was to scavenge something from the wreckage. We’ve lost my crossbow—that leaves only two, with Rose’s still acting up. We salvaged some quarrels, though the ones from the guards are too long to use in our remaining bows, and theirs were broken in the crash as well. We were able to collect Pickle’s staff and a few metal bits and pieces from the wagon, but without Scrub and Weed, we couldn’t afford to tote anything else. We bundled Pickle and the other bodies inside the wagon. There was no time to say lengthy good-byes. Rose was already in and out of consciousness. I ushered everybody away from the wagon, shot the injured ox, and set a fire under the entire wreck. It went up like kindling, a blazing torch to my failure.
I watch Andras shoo the ox back up the slope. I’m not sure what I plan to do with the animal. It can carry loads, but until I can get down to the cottonwoods, there’s nothing for it to carry. I could sell it in Pasul, if I can get it there, but that would take days, and I’d have to take someone with me. That someone would have to be Saiph, and it would leave only one horse in camp.
Andras trudges up the slope after the ox, and then he stumbles over a pile of gravel. I bite my lip. He hasn’t seen me coming yet. His eyes are only getting worse, reminding me that Cyprien is clear in the other direction from Pasul. If getting an ox a day’s ride west is questionable, getting a boy a month’s scramble east is getting more and more impossible.
I pick up my pace.
I’d very much like to collapse and scream, but I don’t have the time.
Veran
Iano moves slowly in the darkness, fumbling for the knob on his lamp. He turns it up, throwing his pale face into sharp relief. With a sigh he unhooks his bright capelet, tosses it on the settee, and slumps into the armchair by the fireplace.
“Is this her?” I ask.
He yelps and vaults from the chair, overturning the end table. A book and an inkwell go flying. And suddenly that pretty rapier that’s always on his waist is bare and pointed straight at my chest, steady and extremely real.
He does know how to use it.
I throw up my hands.
He stares through the dim light. “You! What are you . . . how did you get in here?”
I scoot back on the window seat a few inches, putting some space between my heart and that unwavering swordpoint, uncrossing my soft-soled boots. “I walked around the terraces.”
“It’s three stories to the nearest public terrace!”
I point generally toward the floor. “There’s scaffolding on each story, so servants can clean the glass. One of the ladders goes right past your terrace.”
“It’s raining!”
“Yes.”
He recovers enough to be upset. “I have guards.”
“I threw a rock,” I say, still eyeing the rapier. “She went to check the noise. I snuck past.”
“My doors are all locked.”
/>
“I can pick a lock,” I say. Eloise’s uncle Arlen showed us both how before we were ten. I used to do it to get into the scout supply room, to sneak things for clandestine trips into the forest.
“Well, get out,” he snarls. “Before I have you arrested and deported.” He places his palm halfway up his rapier, to steady the drive when he skewers me through the heart. But then his face takes on a wary cast. “What did you say first?”
I hold up the little charcoal sketch, a study, it looks like, perhaps for a full-blown portrait. Though rough, it shows a woman with an almost perfectly round face, her long hair wound into an intricate bun and threaded with strands of jewels. She has a small nose and small, round lips, and she’s looking sidelong at the artist, as if she knows something they don’t.
“Where did you get that?” Iano demands, panic rising in his voice.
“It was propped against the water jug on your bedside table,” I say.
He shakes himself. “Get out!” he says again, and the swordpoint catches the edge of my firefly pin. “Get out now, and don’t speak to me again.”
I lower the sketch, trying to reassure myself that he won’t actually kill me. My nerves don’t believe me. “Iano, the previous ashoki didn’t die in that stagecoach attack, did she? She’s alive somewhere. And someone’s using her safety to blackmail you.”
He stands very still, but for the first time, the point of the rapier wobbles, as if his hand suddenly shook. His eyebrows snap down.
“And just how do you know that, I wonder?” he asks.
“I followed you into the cedar grove during the Kualni An-Orra the other day,” I say—I’ve decided truth will be the best route here. “I heard you talking to Mistress Fala.”
His face darkens. “You spied on me.”
“You’ve been spying on me,” I point out.
His anger flickers into confusion. “When?”
“You told me on the first day of Mokonnsi—you said you have people watching us.”
The confusion lingers on his face before realization kicks in. “Oh. Right.”
I quirk one eyebrow. “Or was that just a threat?”
“Well . . .” He looks sheepish for the briefest moment before remembering his anger. He readjusts his grip on his rapier. “Even if it was, it doesn’t matter—you just admitted to eavesdropping on my private affairs.”
“I had to do something—otherwise Eloise and I were afraid you’d blame us for whatever this blackmail is about.”
“And why shouldn’t I?” he asks harshly. “What little evidence I have all points to you.”
“What evidence?” I spread my hands. “Why would we exchange detailed diplomatic correspondence for a year, only to stage an elaborate false attack on a person we didn’t know, and then bully your servants into blackmailing you?”
He hesitates. “I admit . . . I haven’t been able to determine what your motive is.”
“There isn’t a motive, Iano. We’re desperate for this diplomacy to go through. And anyway, Fala said something about a big fellow in a cloak—I’m not exactly what you’d call big, and unless he spoke broken Moquoian with a spectacular Cypri accent, I’m not sure who in our party you’re trying to pin this on.”
He glares for a moment, tight-lipped. Then, with a broken sigh, the swordpoint falls. He sets it cockeyed against the end table and collapses back into his armchair like a candlestick in a furnace blast. He grips his head in his hands, mussing hair out of his golden pin.
“I don’t know what to do,” he murmurs.
I move from the window to the fireplace. I slide the sketch into his lap, and he stares down at it.
“What’s her name?” I ask.
“Tamsin,” he says. “Tamsin Moropai in-Ochre.”
“Is that her empty pedestal in the Hall of the Ashoki?”
He nods wearily. “Yes.”
“What was her instrument?”
“The lap dulcimer—an old folk instrument. Her voice is the real marvel, though, and her skill with words.”
“Fala told me there’s been some debate about what lyrics to put on her memorial.”
“There’s no debate,” he says darkly, looking up at me. “I was told in one of the letters to use some throwaway phrase—something benign and harmless to sanitize her memory. But it doesn’t matter, because there shouldn’t even be a memorial—she’s not dead, and I’m determined to keep it that way.”
I move to the second armchair and settle into it. “How long has this been going on?”
“Four weeks,” he says. “That’s when I got the first letter. It told me to appoint Kimela as ashoki upon my coronation, and to follow her advice to the court.”
“Or else?” I ask.
“Or else they kill Tamsin.”
“And you’re sure they truly have her?”
“Yes,” he says. He fishes in his pocket and withdraws a small chain hung with a few keys and one other item—a gold bracelet, set with amber cabochons. “They sent her si-oque back with the first letter.”
“You’re sure this is hers? They didn’t forge one?”
“No.” He turns it over. Next to the clasp, incongruous among the intricate gold and gleaming amber, are three scratched glass beads, similar to the common ones I saw on Mistress Fala’s bracelet—one green, one light blue, and one yellow. “Tamsin was granted the right to a si by my father, but rather than adopt a new one, she kept the childhood color her parents gave her. A jeweler might forge the amber, but they could never exactly replicate the glass chips common folk wear.” He closes his fingers protectively over the bracelet. “And besides that, her signature is on all the letters.”
“May I see the first one?” I ask.
“No,” he says, looking up at me. His voice is hard. “It’s gone.”
“You destroyed it?”
“No, it’s gone. Someone took it. I receive the letters, and I have them for perhaps a day, and then they disappear. Someone takes them away. I thought I misplaced the first one, and I searched for hours. Then the second one disappeared out of my bedside drawer overnight. The third I hid.” He gestures to an elegant quiver on the wall, one of several, with sleek embroidery and a full fleet of blue-and-black fletched arrows. “It stayed there for three days, and then it disappeared. Someone comes in and takes them from my room. My servants have no idea who.” His face is white as a birch. “But not this time. I’m going to sit up. I’m going to wait all night with it in my hand and my sword in the other.” He reaches into his silk jacket and pulls out an envelope, creased in his tight grip.
“That’s the most recent one?”
He nods stoically. “It came during Bakkonso.”
I recall the note he was reading just before I approached him—no wonder he lost it when I prodded him. “May I see?”
He considers for a moment, and then hands it to me. His name is written on the cover in a rough, blocky hand. A water spot has blurred the last few letters. I pull out the parchment. It’s stained, with just two lines in that same hand.
The appointment of an ashoki cannot be undone.
See it through.
And below it, in a different hand, perhaps a bit uneven—
Tamsin Moropai
The M of her last name is scrabbled with a spiky flourish, as if her hand had shaken while writing it.
As if, maybe, she was in pain.
“You’re sure this is her handwriting?” I say, looking up at him. “They’re not forging her name?”
“Yes. No . . . I don’t . . .” He palms his eyes again. “Does it matter? Would I take that risk?”
He seems to be asking himself rather than me. The fire pops in the grate, the dancing flames reflecting off the gold pin in his knot of hair, on the lapis in his heirloom si-oque, on the amber of Tamsin’s bracelet he’s still worrying in his fingers.
“Is she more than just a friend?” I ask.
He’s silent, his eyes still covered by his hand.
“I’ve been a foo
l,” he says.
I look at the letter again, and then back to him.
“Iano. May I speak in Eastern? I need to make sure I have things perfectly straight.”
“Rä,” comes his cracked reply, his Eastern consonant perfectly rolled.
“Et’ûli,” I thank him. “Tell me if I’ve gotten things wrong. This woman Tamsin was the previous ashoki, a truth teller of significant skill.”
“Yes.”
“And you fell in love with her—when?”
He sighs and drops his hand, his gaze on the ceiling. “Two years ago. When I first heard her sing at Sun and Rain, just before she came to the palace to be appointed ashoki. But I kept it quiet, because she was so . . . she made me so . . . kuas . . .” He swears and rubs his face, mussing his hair. “The previous ashoki, the one I’d grown up listening to, sang songs about a powerful Moquoia, a champion of industry, being the greatest nation of the ocean west. My grandmother appointed him before I was born. Then she died, and then several years later the ashoki died as well, so my father appointed Tamsin. And she sang . . . things I had never heard.”
“About the slave trade?”
“Later, yes. The first year her message was more general. Things like the dangers of blinding ourselves with our perceived success, of lying to ourselves, of reveling in our own propaganda. I’d never heard such things. It was like . . .” He passes a hand over his face, mimicking a veil being lifted.
“How did the court take that?” I ask.
“Some, very well. People who deal with businesses in Tolukum, who trade with antislave countries, who provide assistance to the poor in our country, who fund orphanages, shelters—they felt Tamsin was finally speaking a truth the last ashoki had always left out. But others, of course, especially those whose industry relies on bond servants . . .” Minister Kobok flashes through my mind. “She started making enemies in court. Every ashoki has them, of course, but hers started becoming more vocal. I was reluctant to confess my feelings because I didn’t want to—you have a phrase, I think. Sink the boat?”
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