“Look at how everyone moves,” Nol said in my ear. “They keep their fronts toward us at all times. They are expecting an attack. Every person in this hall is on guard.”
“Do you think Nautilus—?” I asked.
“There’s no sign of any damage from torpedoes,” he said, turning his head to scan the corridors.
“Perhaps they fear his arrival,” Myo said.
A few merchants shouted to us from their booths, waving wares made from fish bone. A woman jostled me as she moved past, and I felt her fingers graze my belly as she felt for valuables. I whirled to confront her, but she vanished into the crowd of workers, all clad in the same colors, moving at the same pace.
“Pickpocket?” Nol asked, scanning the sea of faces.
We hadn’t spoken of how he’d comforted me during my nightmares the previous night. Every time I looked at him, my stomach tied itself in knots. I wanted to speak about it, but I held my tongue.
Nol caught me looking at him. His face was unreadable, but he reached out and touched my chin. “Aemi,” he said, and stopped. A muscle tensed in his jaw.
“You do that far too often,” I said.
“I do what?” He stepped a fraction closer to me.
“Say my name like you’re saying something else. Like you want to say something else.”
He tipped his head to the side, his gaze sliding down my face. “Do I?”
“You tell me,” I murmured. He was close enough that I could breathe him in, and he smelled like spice and sand, like warm stones and home. I wanted to reach out and thread my fingers in his yellow hair, pull him closer—
“Where’s Myo?” Nol asked suddenly, turning his head, and I realized the Mist member had slipped away into the crowd without a word.
I turned a circle, searching the faces of the people around us.
He was gone.
“Did he mean to lose us?” I said.
Nol scowled. “No wonder he encouraged me to be the one to guard you.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m not exactly at my sharpest when you’re distracting me with your come-hither eyes—”
“Come-hither eyes?” This was insanity. I wanted to laugh in his face. “Don’t be absurd. If I’m saying anything with my eyes, it’s make-up-your-mind, or perhaps don’t-let-me-get-killed-while-you-are-distracted-pining-over-me-but-unwilling-to-be-with-me.”
Nol shook his head and opened his mouth to respond, but then his eyes shifted to something behind me, and he frowned.
I turned to look. A woman stood holding a sign inscribed with the words: SUNLIGHT IS SALVATION. Below it, she had scrawled, What happened to Aemiana Graywater? and Refute the lies!
I froze.
“They say she’s dead, but I don’t believe it! It’s all a conspiracy!”
“What’s that about?” Nol demanded as he drew me aside. “I’ve heard from the others that you have some fame for disappearing and then being found and revealed before the senate in Primus, but...”
The woman raised the sign higher above her head. “Our people should be free! The world above is better than this world below!”
“New Dawners,” I said, pulling the cowl of my cloak across my lower face.
I remembered on Primus, when a crowd of them had nearly attacked Merelus, Tob, Myo, and me as we’d tried to enter the city.
Aemiana, Aemiana, Aemiana, a cacophony of voices shouted from all directions.
“We believe in you,” one of the voices shrieked. “We have always believed in you, Aemiana!”
“They’re from Magmus,” I explained as the woman walked on, still calling out as she carried her sign. “Tob had called them a cult, claimed they believed sunlight gave psychic powers. I think they thought I was the fulfillment of a prophecy.”
That was when I felt the cold touch of metal against my neck. A sharp point, accompanied by a light stinging and the drip of blood trickling down my throat.
“Lift your hands slow-like,” a voice said in my ear, “and nobody gets hurt. Drop your weapons, both of you.”
Two barrel-chested men stepped to our sides. They both held knives that they barely bothered to hide. Nol made a movement for his weapon, but he wasn’t fast enough.
The man beside him grabbed his arm and yanked his wrist back. Nol winced as one twisted his arm behind his back.
The knife at my throat dug a little deeper, and I hissed in pain.
“Now,” the voice at my back continued, speaking as though we were about to attend a ball together. “Let’s move. Quickly, now. My employer awaits.”
Employer.
My heart tumbled. Nautilus?
Who else could it be?
They marched us through the tunnel, and the workers around us parted like a sea before a ship, eyes sliding away from our captors as if they were invisible. I turned my head, trying to catch the attention of someone, anyone, who might be able to help us.
Every eye seemed to see through us.
“Don’t even think about crying out,” the voice said pleasantly.
We turned a corner, entering an alleyway of a tunnel, with steam vents hissing vapor into our faces every few feet and drains clanking beneath our feet. The alley ended against a rusted metal wall lined with pipes.
“Turn around,” I was instructed. “Slowly. You’re wanted intact, and I’d hate to get into a fight and ruin my pretty face.”
My arms still raised, I turned to see a slender young man with shaggy brown hair, one lock of it green, holding a knife at my chest. He lowered it as his lackeys raised truskets at us, and then he grinned, looking more impish than dangerous.
“I remember you. You’re the one with the excellent throwing arm.”
“And I remember you,” I said as recognition dawned. He was the thief from our last visit. “You had blue hair. You stole from my friend, and we chased you.”
He crossed his arms and strolled around me. “That might have happened. I steal many things. And my hair has been many colors. But I admit nothing!” He cocked his head to one side and grinned. “And by the way, I agree with him.” He pointed at Nol. “You were giving him come-hither eyes back in the marketplace.”
I flushed red. “What do you want?” I said. “I can pay—”
“Oh, I am well paid,” he said.
“We aren’t alone,” Nol said. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”
“You mean that brown man who abandoned you as soon as you stepped inside?” The thief smirked. “Believe me, I know who he is.”
“Perhaps you should rethink what you’re getting mixed up in,” I insisted. “We have friends in high and powerful places.”
“Hmm,” said the thief, tilting his head to one side. “Rethought it. We’ll proceed.” He nodded at his men, and they gestured at us with the truskets.
“Go on, then,” the thief said. “There’s a good girl.”
He indicated a round door set into the wall. One of our guards opened it, and pointed at me first.
The room was dim, lit by pale violet lantern light that filtered down from the ceiling. A thick round rug covered the floor, masking the sound of my footsteps. I caught a glimpse of a figure standing on the other side of the space, back to me, shoulders slim and covered in a black cape.
Then the figure turned, and shock immobilized me.
“Hello, Aemiana.”
It was my mother.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SHE FACED ME, expressionless as always, her fingertips touching. She was dressed in plain black, wearing nothing to give away her station as a lady or her identity as a Graywater.
The words in my mouth dried up. I could only stand and gape. Why was my mother in a backwater fuel colony? Was the thief working for her? I wasn’t about to be turned over to Nautilus?
The questions created a roaring in my head.
“You’re alive,” she said calmly.
So she already knew.
“Mother,” I said. “I...”
“You look
well.” Her words were measured, as if each one cost her dearly. “Considering that you’ve been dead.”
She was angry. Fiercely angry. I could see it in the way she stood stiff, her arms crossed and fingers clenched around her forearms.
“I thought you wanted me to be a proper Graywater. Deception is our middle name.”
She looked past me through the doorway and nodded at our guards, who admitted Nol and the thief.
Nol halted at the sight of my mother, his face freezing with shock.
“Ah,” she said. “The guest who was the prisoner of the Dron, and always oddly sympathetic to their cause. Oh, but you left out an important detail about him, daughter. He’s one of the enemy. A Dron dog has been staying in my house. Three, in fact, according to my source.”
Nol’s eyes sparked with fury, but he stayed silent.
“Your source?” I asked. My heart pounded, but I spoke with equal calm.
“Is he still your captor?” she asked instead of answering my question. “Has he threatened you?”
Nol bristled, the veins on his neck standing out. “She is not my captive.”
“But she was. You betrayed her, even. Used her emotions against her.”
“I care about her,” Nol snapped. “Something you’ve never done.”
“I can have my men shoot you,” she suggested.
One of our guards waved his trusket at her words, but he seemed more interested in our interaction than being intimidating. Both the guards appeared to be hanging on every word. Even the thief looked intrigued.
“I’m not his prisoner,” I said. “But I appear to be yours.”
She arched an eyebrow. “It seems to be the only way I can get an audience with you since you pretended to die and began traversing Itlantis with enemy soldiers.”
“When did you find out?” I managed.
“That you were not dead? That you were harboring a handful of our enemies in my house? Or that you had embarked on a dangerous mission to find a lost, fabled city?”
I was speechless.
My mother’s eyes narrowed. She looked cold and tall in that round room, like a statue carved from stone.
“I have my ways of keeping tabs on those closest to me,” she said. “I have friends in high and low places in every city of Itlantis, and I’ve maintained those bonds for years. They have served me well. I have a network of informants.”
Graywaters have their sources, I remembered her saying to me once.
“You have spies,” I countered. “Who betrayed us?”
She shook her head and wouldn’t answer. A tendril of dread took hold of me.
“How did you find us here?” Nol demanded.
My mother smiled, a quick flick of the corners of her mouth. “So many questions. You have more fire when you aren’t pretending to be a shivering victim, Dron. As I said, I have a network of informants.”
“Does Annah know what you’ve uncovered?” I asked.
Her lashes fluttered once as her eyes closed to slits. “We are speaking of your mission to find the lost city.”
Always secrets. Always deflection. Always a Graywater.
“And what,” Nol asked, “do you know about the lost city?”
“Quite a bit,” my mother said, “considering that I’ve been there.”
I had the sensation of falling. I put out a hand to steady myself and touched cold, rusted metal.
“You’ve been to Perilous?” The words burst from my lips before I could catch them.
She smiled that Graywater smile. So calculating, so measured. “We did not call it that, though I’ve heard the code name, of course.”
My head was spinning. “So you know where it is?”
“No,” she said. “We were escorted onto the ship. I never saw the coordinates for the journey.”
“We?” Nol said. “Who else traveled to the city with you?”
“Aemi’s father,” she said, and then paused. “And others.”
Aemi’s father.
My father had been to Perilous. No wonder he’d painted it. No wonder he’d whispered about it to friends as we’d discovered on Arctus. Whatever he’d seen must have filled his soul. Had the secret of it eaten at him, begging to be told?
“Others?” I asked.
“Nautilus was among them,” she said.
I stared.
“I see you have many questions,” my mother said. “But this is not the best place for an interrogation. Nautilus has been systematically seizing refueling ports. The people here are on edge. Many have left already to fight for Primus, and those who are left have formed militias and gangs to defend themselves. The colony is hardly stable at the moment.” She paused. “We should go.”
“Go where?”
“Well,” she said. “I have a ship, and an excellent navigation system, and you are trying to find this lost city. You are my daughter, and your safety is being compromised for this mission. I feel it my duty to assist you in completing it if I can.”
“You don’t know the way,” I said, protesting as a way to buy myself time to think.
She smiled in a way that was infinitely gentle, and startlingly un-Graywater. “But you do. I believe that’s all we need.”
Of course she knew about that, too.
“I don’t know how to access the memories.”
“But this man does.” She nodded behind me, and I turned to see Myo being escorted into the room by what must be another of the thief’s thugs. Myo looked between my mother and me, and then he smiled.
“I see we’ve all found each other, then.” He bowed. “My Lady Graywater.”
“You knew she was looking for me?” I said.
“Why, I was looking for her,” he said. To my mother, he said, “I received your message. But this is hardly a polite way to greet me.”
“I’m sorry about the show of force,” my mother replied. “I had to subdue the Dron whelp. He has a bit of fire in him.”
Nol made an angry noise in his throat.
“Now that you’re here, we should discuss what is to be done, because I’m not sure that I’m going to allow my daughter to be put in such danger.”
Was she aware that he was with the Mist? Did she even know what the Mist was?
I almost laughed at the musing. Of course she knew what the Mist was. She was the Lady Graywater. Was there anything she didn’t know?
“Shall we retire to my ship to discuss this further?” my mother asked, as if she were inviting us all to tea.
I pointed at the men who’d brought us to her at trusket-point. “Are we your prisoners?”
She blinked as if astonished, but it was an act. I wondered if she’d ever been astonished in her life. “Aemiana, you are my daughter. Your safety and well-being are of the utmost concern to me. Trust me.”
The memory of an earlier conversation with my mother filled my mind.
“This family has many secrets,” I said. “Perhaps if there was more openness, there might be more trust.”
My mother snorted at the word trust. “The secrets keep you safe,” she said.
“Do they?” I asked, thinking of the attempts on my life, thinking of my capture, thinking of the newest information that had been dropped in my lap less than an hour before. “I think they keep me manageable and weak. Dependent.”
“Are you trying to insinuate that I keep you ignorant to control you?”
I bit my lip. I looked at her without blinking. “We are Graywaters,” I said.
“Trust is an insidious concept. Invest it in the wrong person, and you lose everything,” she replied.
“Refuse to trust and you could lose everything anyway.”
What secrets did my mother harbor now?
She turned and moved for a doorway at the opposite end of the room. Our guards stepped toward us and pointed their truskets, and the thief gestured at it. “Follow the lady who pays me. Really, it’s for the best. My men are very good shots, and they are remorseless criminals.”
&nb
sp; “I think you should talk with your mother,” one of our guards muttered. “She just wants what’s best for you.”
“Nobody asked you,” I said.
The guard shrugged.
“I think,” Myo said, “we’d better do what the people with the weapons say.”
But he didn’t seem remotely alarmed.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE GRAYWATER LIGHTSHIP, the Dolphin, waited in a crag just out of sight of the oil colony. We traveled with my mother in a short-range craft that barely held all of us. I watched through a port as the colony receded into the murk of the water.
My mother sat on one of the gilded benches that lined the chamber of the vessel, regal as a chieftain as we docked. She never looked at me once during the journey, although my eyes kept returning to her face as I searched her expression for any sign of what she might be thinking or planning.
She was as inscrutable as ever.
We docked and boarded the main ship. Guards escorted Nol and I down a hall as Myo and my mother vanished.
The interior was spacious and white, with strips of glass looking out at the sea and amorphous benches lining the walls in curving lines. Ladders led to sleep chambers above and below, and a tiny, green-filled space with a glass ceiling served as a miniature garden sphere.
As the colony of Brinewater disappeared behind us, I found the others already aboard my mother’s ship in a lush common room lined with arching windows. They were accompanied by armed guards who watched us without speaking. Garren looked as though he was moments away from jumping the nearest guard. Keli had her arms crossed as if she didn’t know what to do with herself when she wasn’t at the controls. Kit paced, his face tight with worry, and when he saw me, his shoulders relaxed and he strode to my side to give me a hug, ignoring the guards flanking me.
Valus sat apart from the rest of them.
“Where’s the Riptide?” I asked Kit.
“Stuck to the hull like a barnacle,” Keli said. She squinted at the guards. “They said they work for your mother. What’s going on?”
“I wish I knew,” I said.
“Where’s Myo?” Valus demanded.
I fixed my gaze on Valus.
Had he been the one to betray us to my mother? Was he her informant?
In Dawn and Darkness Page 10
