I wasn’t so sure.
“And you’re just going to waltz into this Azure place and take it?” Garren said.
“No, we’ll have to bring Aemiana there. We can’t risk removing the information. It’s too heavily guarded, and doing so—if we were successful, which I find highly unlikely—would likely trigger Azure to retaliate,” Myo said.
Retaliate. The word sent a scuttle of fear through me.
“Sounds like a trap,” Garren grunted. “A scheme to steal the key to finding Perilous.”
“Not a trap,” Dahn said. “And you don’t have to go, Dron.”
“I go where she goes,” Garren said, jabbing his chin my direction. “She’s the key to the lost city of Trulliman.”
“Why hasn’t this been tried before?” Nol interrupted, with a protective glance at me. “Why now?”
“Until now,” Myo said, “we didn’t know we had Aemiana’s memories, and without them, it wasn’t worth trying to infiltrate. It’s risky, and even if we found information that might lead to Perilous, we didn’t have anyone to interpret it. And this Mist had other priorities. But now that we have Aemiana... if her memories could be stimulated...”
“Is this facility in Arctus?” I asked. “We’ve been inside an Azure facility in Arctus.”
“No,” Myo said. “Far more remote than the ice city, located in deep water.” He looked at Dahn to explain.
Dahn said, “The facility is located at the bottom of a small trench, shielded between two small volcanos. Sensors line the rock walls, and I couldn’t get closer for fear of triggering them.”
Garren muttered something unintelligible, and Dahn paused before continuing. “The problem is going to be getting in. The facility is equipped with dozens of sensors that will detect the approach of a ship or any kind of mechanical device, and weapons to annihilate any intruder. Your team could sneak around these sensors, but the distance is too far for a diver to swim unassisted.”
“We might be able to help with that,” Olis said.
“Can the Dron swim for miles unassisted? Perhaps you are monstrous fish people like the legends say,” Valus said with a rude smile.
Olis ignored him. “We Dron have other methods of getting around besides ships. Don’t worry. We’ll get you into that facility.”
Myo nodded. Judging by his expression, he’d been hoping for such a statement. “I want you to collaborate with Dahn to plan it out. He will assist you with maps he’s drawn, and he can answer any questions as you plot our course.”
“Not coming?” Garren sneered. “Too dangerous?”
Dahn laughed low and short. “I’m a treasure hunter, not a revolutionary. I’ll happily leave this task to you.”
After that, the meeting was over. As I stepped toward the staircase bathed in blue light to leave, Nol caught my arm. He brought his lips close to my ear, and his breath tickled my skin, making me shiver.
“We need to talk,” he said.
I drew back and looked into his eyes, and the memory of our recent kiss rushed over me. I knew what he wanted to say to me. He stared at me fiercely, and the defiance and life in him reminded me of sunshine and seagull cries. My chest ached for home, but the Village of the Rocks was burned. My throat tightened.
Slowly, bit by bit, ever piece of my world was being burned.
“Nol—”
“Aemi,” he countered in a whisper. His eyes held mine, refusing to let me go. His shoulders were a wall, straight and strong, his body blocking me from moving past. The energy in him could light me on fire.
I waited for him to speak, to set me free with a confession, to give me some kind of direction with what we were, with what he wanted.
But instead, he brushed past me, taking the stairs two at a time with long strides. Olis and Garren followed.
CHAPTER THREE
“A MEMORIAL IS being held for you today,” Annah told me as we stood together before a wall of glass, me watching sea lions play among the waving, vivid-green and bright gold stalks of kelp that cast shadows like trees across our faces and the floor behind us, her stretching out a hand to feel the ripple of the sun. The sea lions chased each other, bodies sleek as they zoomed and dove above our heads.
A memorial. I felt strange at the idea. They thought I was dead, but it wouldn’t be me that my mother and sister mourned, but that girl who had vanished when I’d been kidnapped. The girl who’d never returned even when I did. I’d never really been the Aemiana my family had wanted. I was too loud, too bold, too outspoken. I wasn’t the Graywater they had imagined.
These thoughts swirled in my mind like the sea lions before me. I said nothing.
“I like to stand here before the lunch hour,” my grandmother said. “It’s beautiful.”
“But you cannot see the kelp forest,” I said, still distracted by ruminations of my mother and sister, and then I felt a rush of heat over my cheeks. Had I been rude?
But Annah only smiled faintly at my honest remark. “I can feel the subtle heat and cool of the sun and shifting shadows. I can imagine the rest.”
Annah wore a gown of shimmering silver, and around her neck, a tiny orb set in silver glowed. She touched it with her fingers. “A sign of grief,” she said, as if she knew I’d been looking at it and wondering.
“The rest of my friends?” I asked. “When can they be told I’m alive? It seems cruel to keep them grieving. And my family... how long...?”
Did it even matter if my family ever discovered the truth? But I didn’t say that.
“Any grief your friends display should be honest and real, for your safety and for the continuation of our ruse. Cruel? It is for the best. As for the Graywater family...” She paused. “That remains to be seen. There is much to be done, and it will be easiest if there are no family politics to interfere.”
I was silent a moment. “And Tallyn...” I hesitated. “Is he still my bodyguard, given the revelation about his true loyalties?”
“He has done a sufficient job thus far, has he not? He is in our confidence. He knows the key parts of a most delicate situation, and being a part of the Mist does not mean he cannot still be loyal to you.” She paused. “Do you want to replace him?”
A protest shot to my lips. A sufficient job? No, I wanted to say. He lied, and he was the one person I thought I could count on not to manipulate me. I stared hard at the rippling sunlight that played over the kelp. A sea snake wriggled through the current, its scales flashing coral and black. “I no longer want him to be my bodyguard.”
Annah tipped her head to the side. “He plays an important role in this, as a member of the team to find the lost city.”
“Not if we insist that he be ejected.”
“Aemiana, that is the group that was agreed upon with the factions present when we met with the Dron. Hurt feelings are not enough of a reason to change it.”
I blinked, stung. Hurt feelings? Was that all this was, then? “I want him replaced,” I repeated.
“Who else do you trust?”
“Kit.” The name of my childhood friend rose to my lips immediately. “He’s still in your custody. He no doubt received training as a soldier in Nautilus’s army.”
She frowned. “Your friend—”
“Was pressed into service. He escaped as soon as he could. I want him for my bodyguard instead of Tallyn.” I paused, gathering words to persuade her, arguments in favor of my plan. “I’m vital to this entire operation, and yet I’ve been treated like an asset, a child, a pet. Anything but an equal. I’m tired of it. I want to be able to make decisions too. And I want my friend Kit out of his cell and with my team.”
Annah turned to bathe her face in the dappled sunlight once more. She was silent for a few breaths. “And you trust this Kit?”
“I do.”
“I will have him examined to determine if he would make a suitable bodyguard, then,” she said, and I breathed out in relief.
“Thank you.”
“There will be a gathering soon,�
�� she said then, “a meeting of the remainder of the senate to decide the actions we must take against Nautilus as we move forward. We’re calling ourselves the Remnant. Itlantis is no more.” She paused. “I want you to come with me.”
“But everyone believes I’m dead.”
“You will go in disguise, of course. You should know what you are risking your life for, as the one who can find the lost city of Trulliman and continue this tenuous peace with the Dron as we face Nautilus.”
“You believe Perilous will save us?” I asked. “It’s just a legend, something a handful of secret people want to find for reasons we don’t even know.” Even as I spoke the words, I felt like a liar, for I wanted to find Perilous more than anything.
I wanted it for me.
Annah tipped her head to the side. “Peace is our future,” she said. “And for peace, it seems we need this Perilous.”
After she withdrew, summoned by a servant to leave for the memorial honoring me in my faux death, I remained at the window to watch the sea. The sea lions had swam away, but the sea snake lingered, a line of ominous color. Fish darted past, blips of orange and blue.
A footstep alerted me to the approach of another, and I turned to see Nol descending the curling metal staircase from the upstairs guest wing.
A flush crept up my neck. Words clogged my throat.
He stopped beside me and scanned the visage, and I noted the way the sun and shadow played hide and seek along the planes of his face and made gold out of his eyelashes and the tips of his hair. He didn’t look at me, but continued to watch the sea as he spoke.
“You’re sad.”
I sighed. It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer.
“How is your hand?”
“Better,” I said. “The salve has helped it heal quickly.”
He nodded. His presence made me feel seen, almost exposed, as if every one of my thoughts lay bare for him to peruse. I didn’t know if I wanted to be so known in this moment, when all I wanted was to swim away like the sea lions and leave everything behind. Weariness tugged at my limbs, a bone tired that went deeper than a need of rest or sleep alone.
“What are you thinking?” he asked, and I realized perhaps I was more inscrutable than I thought.
And so I told him, the words coming quiet and fast, how I ached from the wounds of betrayal from trusted friends, how I feared everything that was to come. It was good to spill the words to him.
He listened carefully without comment.
“I’m the key to something everyone wants, and I don’t want to be,” I finished.
Nol turned to look at me, his brow furrowed. I wondered if he were disappointed with my confession. He’d gained such a sense of duty since he’d thrown in his lot with the Dron. He was, in many ways, a different person from the young man I’d known in the Village of the Rocks, the one who stole my fish and laughed in my face when I railed about it.
He didn’t say anything, just reached out and folded me into his arms. I closed my eyes and let the hug comfort me. Tears flooded my eyes and scratched my throat, and I buried my face in his shoulder.
A little time passed that way, and I breathed in the scent of him, clean and strong, and then I drew back and sighed.
“Thank you. I needed to be sad for a minute.”
His mouth quirked in a half smile. “I actually came to ask you if you wanted to attend your own memorial—in disguise, of course.”
Curiosity tugged at me. Who would be there? All the wealthy and elite?
It was risky, but suddenly, I desperately wanted to see what my mother would look like. Cold as always? Making a show of grief? And my sister? Was she sorry I was gone, or glad?
“We’ll have to hurry,” I said.
~ ~ ~
The memorial was held in the Verdusean garden sphere. The light had begun to fade as Nol and I slipped through the streets, my face covered by a scarf the way it had been when I impersonated Lyssia at her studies, or when I’d stolen away to the prison on Primus to interrogate Valus with Tallyn by my side.
Bulbous lights, round as fish eyes, glowed at intervals along the paths that led through the corridors of the city. A few people passed us in the streets, mostly workers in various uniforms. I kept my head down as I kept pace with Nol. We could have taken a rail carriage, perhaps, but this was the most unobtrusive way to sneak from the house.
The scent of the gardens enveloped me as we grew closer. Green, growing things, moisture, earth. Scents from the surface, but they were a false perfume. They lacked the wind and sunshine, and the stale coppery scent of the city mingled with everything, destroying the illusion. Still, I inhaled the taste and smell of vegetation eagerly as I stepped inside the gates for the gardens.
We passed the Volcanus garden sphere, its sign torn down. Someone had scrawled the words BASTARD and MURDERER across the columns. Inside, the plants and sculptures had been removed, leaving a vast, trampled space filled with glowing orbs to honor the dead and fallen. Things from Primus and Celestrus lay in rows, and whether they were a memorial to the dead as well, or there for the living refugees to take, I didn’t know. The reddish lights of the garden sphere gleamed eerily.
A crowd had gathered outside the Verdusean sphere, and we joined it, our hooded heads mingling easily with the mourners, who were all dressed in pale colors with scarves and cloaks draped around their faces, some using the cloth to wipe at their eyes. I wondered—did so many people miss me? Or was this just an occasion to show solidarity and establish connections and sympathies with the Graywaters?
I suspected the latter.
Benches were arranged in a circle in the middle of the garden sphere, beneath a silvery white sail suspended between three columns. I saw glowing orbs like the ones I’d seen at the Festival of Lights ceremony commemorating the Cataclysm and the ones in Primus after the destruction of Celestrus. They’d been placed at intervals, and each orb cast a soft and muted glow over the benches and the mourners, creating a texture of light and shadows like a gray and black quilt.
The scent of flowers overwhelmed me, and I saw that stalks and stalks had been brought and placed in piles around the benches. Something about the smell was familiar, and a memory tugged at me, a brief flash of my mother holding a handful of petals with such a scent, crushing them between her fingers as she wept. I blinked, and the memory faded.
Nol and I kept to the perimeter, withdrawn from the benched area lest anyone look too closely at my face beneath the hood. As I watched, Annah appeared, resplendent in her silver gown and glowing necklace, her dark skin gleaming in the light of the orbs, her chin a dark slash, her hair a crown of braids. She walked unassisted to the benches and took her place there. A slender figure draped in silver and white veils stepped from the crowd to join her. Laimila. Tears stained her cheeks, and her mouth trembled as she placed a flower before sitting beside Annah. I swallowed, astonishment skittering through me and mingling with a darker sense of guilt.
I had not expected for her to be in such genuine mourning.
I looked for my mother, but I did not see her.
Nol stepped close to me and breathed in my ear. “I’ll be back.”
I barely heard him as I watched my sister. When I realized what he’d said, he’d already vanished into the crowd, leaving me alone. I leaned against a column as I looked for him, and my eyes met another’s across the crowd. Valus, paying his false respects with the rest of the nobility. He held my gaze for a moment, lifting one eyebrow as if not surprised to see me, and once again that day I felt seen in an uncomfortable way. He held my eyes longer than I’d like, but I was powerless to look away first, as if he were challenging me, and I dared not back down. Then someone nudged him that it was time to move forward, and our contact was broken. I stepped back behind the column, and my feet found a path. Had Nol gone this way? I withdrew into the shadows of the trees to see if I could gain a better vantage point to scan the crowd when I saw her.
My mother.
CHAPT
ER FOUR
MY MOTHER SAT on a bench of carved marble, alone, concealed by the fronds of a giant fern. Her head was lowered, and her dark hair hid her face. One hand braced against the bench, and the other curled in her lap, the fingers tightened into a fist. She drew in a shuddering breath, and I realized with shock that she was crying.
Crying.
My mother, the Graywater of Graywaters.
A sharp, painful prick of emotion splintered inside me. I wanted to go to her, to tell her to stop. I wanted to put my arms around her. Instead, I grabbed onto the nearest tree, as if I needed something else to hold to keep me in place.
As I watched, she straightened and blinked, and her face smoothed over into the signature Graywater expression of calm composure, unflappable and remote. As if she’d donned a mask. She stood, shook out the folds of a silver and white dress similar to Annah’s, inhaled deeply, and walked with sure steps for the other mourners.
I waited a moment to be sure she would not see me and know she’d been observed. My heart pounded at what I’d witnessed, and a tentacle of something vulnerable curled around my heart and lungs, squeezing the air from me.
My mother was human like the rest of us.
A revelation indeed.
Any desire to spy on my own memorial vanished, replaced by a strange grief for the people who were experiencing loss. I had not expected to see them so broken.
I wanted to leave.
Where was Nol?
I spotted him across the green, beside the opposite column, and headed toward him. I almost stumbled into Lyssia and Tob, who were huddled together on one of the benches.
“I’m going to name my finest dish after her,” Tob was saying, his tone morose. “It’s the only thing I can think to do.”
Hastening my steps, I reached Nol as the rest of the mourners drifted toward the benches. Some of them raised their arms, and I heard them murmuring “We remember her.” Some carried glowing orbs in their hands.
It was like the Festival of Lights.
In Dawn and Darkness Page 3
