by Callie Bates
Nothing flattering, obviously. “They might still be watching your apartment.”
“I know. That’s why I stayed at T—at a friend’s last night.”
I look at him. So we’re at the point where he won’t even share the name of his lover with me. We used to dare each other to go talk to the girls we liked. The first time one took him home, he told me everything about it. But we were sixteen then. Callow. Even after what had happened to his father, even after what Madiya did to me, we still had a kind of innocence.
Now I seem to look at him across a gulf I can’t bridge. A gulf of my own making.
“You needn’t have risked yourself to bring me a loaf of bread,” I say lightly. “I was fine starving.”
But if anything, this seems to make him angry. “It didn’t have to be like this, Jahan.”
If I had come back looking for him, he means. “You could have contacted me. You could have told me what you were planning, instead of assuming I’d intuit it—”
He throws up his hands and strides away. I stalk after him through the dim rooms, out into a sunrise far more beautiful than it has any right to be. He stops by the stone wall. The sun is rising over the sea, a molten ball silhouetting the ships moored in Naval Harbor and the collision of roofs where the city spreads below us. Gulls cry and bells toll as the hour strikes six. Even the battlements of the Frourio, the distant prison, are limned by the morning light. All this glory seems wrong when El is gone.
But it’s not only the beauty that catches my eye. Three ships are sailing into the harbor, reefing their sails. The sunrise catches their portholes in perfect silhouette. I can count forty on this side—an eighty-gun ship.
They’re joining the black ships already gathered in the harbor. The imperial navy, preparing for war with Eren. Preparing to carry Euan Dromahair to the throne he’s coveted for so long.
The idea steals over me, sudden. Inevitable. Perfect. A funnel for the anger in my gut. For revenge. “How many sorcerers are there in your underground society?”
He looks at me. “I have no idea. It’s not as if we keep a roster.”
That ought to rebuff me, but I have nothing more to lose. “A dozen? Two dozen? More?”
Pantoleon gives in. “Two dozen, perhaps. Why?”
“I want to meet them. Do they have much skill?”
“Whatever you’re thinking, the answer is no.”
“Not enough, you mean. But they’ve kept themselves hidden under the witch hunters’ noses. They’ve survived. That takes a certain talent.”
“Jahan, they don’t respect you. They’re not going to go along with whatever mad scheme you’re concocting just because you’re the Korakos—”
“I wasn’t aware that infernal nickname had anything to do with this. Your sorcerers want a revolution—you keep telling me so.”
Warily, he nods.
“And have they taken any steps to achieve it? Or have they simply given lectures about it?”
His stone-faced silence is answer enough.
“Then it’s time for them to begin. For us to begin.” I nod at the harbor. “That’s the fleet Emperor Alakaseus is sending to Eren. We destroy it. With sorcery.”
He blinks fast. “That would bring the witch hunters down on us.”
“We can deal with the witch hunters. It’s time to show the emperor we’re not afraid of him, or them. It’s time to tell him we want our rights. Tell him we want an alliance with Eren. Not war.”
I watch him frown at the distant ships. He’s thinking, mulling the plan over. The anger pulses in my head. It’s hard to wait for Pantoleon to reply. If I’ve lost Elanna, then let it be for something. Let me fight in her memory. Let me do this one thing for her, even if she can’t see it. Otherwise my anger is going to burn me into coals, and I think, after all Madiya’s experiments on me, this is the thing that will send me mad.
“All right,” he says at last, and the pulsing in my head eases. “But it’s not for me or you to decide. It’s Diodia. There’s a meeting tonight. I’ll present your plan to everyone.”
I draw in a breath. The anger pulses through me, demanding I act. “Or I will.”
He blinks at me.
“I’m not going to stay up here communing with the pigeons! It’s my plan. I want to make sure you do it right.”
“You would…” He cuts himself off, shaking his head. If I was expecting him to welcome this news with open arms, now that I’m doing what he’s been demanding I do all along, I’d be disappointed. “I’ll have to come back up here. I don’t want to risk being seen…”
“I think I can manage to navigate the city alone,” I say drily. “Tell me where to meet you, and when, and I’ll be there.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I make my way through the dark city. I’ve had hours to rehearse my plan, and it still feels right. Necessary. The only way forward. Although Pantoleon’s right—his friends have no reason to trust me—I’m determined to convince them without using even a whisper of persuasion. Any sorcerer worth his salt would recognize what I’m doing. And for once in my life, I’m seized with the inexplicable urge to be honest, as if somehow it will honor El’s memory.
I’m going to help them. And they’re going to help me destroy the fleet and save Eren. And then, together, we can bring this entire empire down.
Still, as I cut on silent feet through the neighborhood beneath Solivetos Hill, a tension lingers in my shoulders. It’s not just wariness. Even with the rage burning in me, I feel as though I’m missing some essential warmth.
Elanna. Her death still doesn’t feel real. But I’m doing this for her, for her people, for her memory.
I can’t dwell on that, or the fury will overwhelm me. I walk faster yet, letting anger carry me. At least I’ve heard nothing from Madiya since I burned her out of my mind. Maybe I finally succeeded in silencing her entirely.
The spires of the university cut into the sky ahead of me. From two blocks away, I hear the raucous roar of the Den, busy even on Diodia. All the students come here to argue philosophical points and drink peasants’ beer and feel generally subversive.
When I step inside, the racket deluges me after a night spent alone in an abandoned temple. I push through the high tables and crowded bar, where a server is explaining in a patiently exasperated voice that they’ve run out of prawns. The place smells of alcohol and armpits and ink, and somehow it’s comforting, a piece of my youth I never wanted to leave behind. I pass unnoticed through the press of students and professors, climbing the steps to the back booths. Tucked behind the tied-back brocade curtains, some students play dice under the glow of tallow lamps; others argue over the distance between the earth and the sun. I feel a grin pushing up my mouth. This place makes me feel alive.
A narrow door is tucked between the last two booths. No one pays any attention as I open it and let myself through.
I’m at the top of steps, lit by a single lantern. A breath of cool, earthy air wafts up toward me. For a moment, I’m frozen, thrown back to huddling in a cave while someone’s unknown footsteps came down toward me.
I shake off the fear clenching my heart and stride down the stairs.
At the bottom, racks of wine and barrels of beer thrust spikily out of the dark. I can just make out another door hidden between the shelves. Momentary uncertainty grips me. What if they don’t listen? What if they reject my plan?
I won’t let that happen. I stride up to the door and knock.
Pantoleon opens it. He just says, “There you are,” but I hear both the unease and the hope warring in his tone.
“As promised,” I say. “You didn’t think I’d stand you up?”
He snorts and lets me in. The stone room is small, made comfortable by a dozen flickering candles oozing wax onto the table in the center. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that there’s a secret
meeting room beneath the Den. But the two people sitting on the other side of the table do surprise me.
The young man, short and dark with a tasseled black cap, breaks into laughter. “Well, if it isn’t our friend from the coffee shop!”
The woman, however, doesn’t laugh. She’s exchanged her scarlet turban for a dark-blue one, but I still recognize the person who shouldered past me in the coffee shop, declaring Jahan Korakides a sorcerer. Her gaze is assessing, and rather unimpressed.
I offer her a smile. “Tullea, was it? And you’re Felix Tzemines. I’m afraid I never read the pamphlet.”
“Oh, well,” Felix says, still clearly delighted, “you already know it all anyway. Pantoleon, I must say this is a very good surprise! Well done!”
“I take it you already know each other,” Pantoleon says drily. He exchanges a glance with Tullea—a rather more knowing glance than one usually gives one’s colleagues. I look at her. She’s far more formidable than Pantoleon’s usual type, but perhaps she’s his secret lover all the same.
“We merely made a passing acquaintance,” I say. “Jahan Korakides, at your service.”
“The Korakos,” Felix says. He’s shaking his head, still grinning.
“Felix is an assistant researcher to Lucius Argyros,” Pantoleon explains. “And Tullea—Tullea Domitros—is a university lecturer. She specializes in the history of Paladius the First.”
The shy smile he gives her tells me I’m right. They are lovers.
“Forgive me,” I say, “but I was under the impression I was attending some sort of underground sorcerous coven. Isn’t that why we’re here?”
Pantoleon sighs, and Felix chuckles. “I’m the leader of the New Republic,” he says.
You’re a student, I think, but I don’t say it. I turn to Tullea, only to find her watching me, her black eyes steady. She must be a few years older than Pantoleon and me, but she still has far too much gravitas for someone so young.
“You are meeting with the ‘underground sorcerers,’ Korakos,” she says. “I manage them. Haven’t you ever wondered who’s been smuggling all those refugees to Eren?”
I can’t say I expected it to be an extremely composed university lecturer, but looking at her, I have no doubts. “You must be a sorceress yourself, then.”
She presses her lips together, then nods.
“And you?” I ask Felix.
“I wish!” he says with such idiotic fervor that I find myself laughing. Tullea snorts, and Pantoleon shakes his head.
“Only someone without a scrap of magic would want to be a sorcerer,” I say.
Felix just shrugs. “It’s always seemed to me that I should be a sorcerer—that it was my fate, but I’ve been cheated of it.”
Well, this is a curious kind of madness. I feel my eyebrows lift.
“My colleagues and I help Tullea with her work,” Felix adds. “We arrange passage on ships and so forth, to safely smuggle sorcerers out of Paladis.”
Tullea clears her throat. She’s sitting even straighter, ignoring the cup of beer in front of her, and I can only imagine how terrifying her students must find her. “The real question,” she says, “is why you are here, Korakos.”
“Yes!” Felix says, eager.
Pantoleon simply looks at me.
I feel myself flattened a bit beneath their eyes. But this is for Elanna. This is what she would want me to do; what I should have done for her all along. “I know I haven’t stood beside Ida’s sorcerers. I know that you have little reason to trust me. But know that I did take in those refugees you sent to Eren, Tullea. I did fight beside Elanna Valtai.” There’s a tightness in my throat at her name, and at what I’m going to say next. I’ve never spoken these words aloud to more than one person, and even though I’m ready to destroy the empire itself, it still feels strange. “I’m a sorcerer.”
I breathe out, though sweat pools on my back. There. I spoke the truth aloud, in front of several strangers.
“Well, we knew that,” Felix says, and laughs again.
Tullea drums her fingers on the table. “We knew that the emperor claimed it. I’m glad to hear it from you.”
I force a smile. “I’m not only a sorcerer—I was raised to it from birth. From what Pantoleon has said, I imagine I know more than most of the sorcerers in Ida. So I have a proposal for you.” I feel my smile turning into a manic grin. “I want to join you. But more than that, I want to offer my help. I want to train your sorcerers so they can actually take action without being cut down by the witch hunters like so much wheat.”
Felix gasps with unfeigned excitement, but Tullea’s gaze is far more calculating. “And what action do you propose we take?”
From her tone, I suspect she already knows; Pantoleon must have told her. This charade of ignorance is for Felix’s benefit, perhaps—but also to test me. To force me to say the words myself.
I can play that game.
“I want to destroy the imperial navy,” I say, and Felix chokes on his beer.
“Oh?” he says. “That’s all? You just want to wander in and destroy the black ships, which have never been defeated?”
I grin and lean forward. Everything feels bright now. Possible. “We’re sorcerers. They’re not. The emperor’s sending the fleet to Eren. But if we stop them, we stop the war with Eren. We ally with Queen Sophy. We let the whole world know that we won’t let Alakaseus Saranon win.”
Tullea watches me guardedly. “But with Elanna Valtai executed…The emperor could still attack Eren.”
“But if we stop the emperor from even fighting,” I say, “Eren wins. And then you—we—have an ally. A way to change everything.”
Felix brightens at these words, and I feel my smile widen further. They’re listening. Tullea taps her fingertips thoughtfully on the table. Maybe she recognizes that I’m not exactly operating in their best interests; maybe she sees that destroying the black ships doesn’t completely benefit them. Maybe I am using them, just a bit, to get what I want.
But I will help them. And helping them makes Eren safe. It fulfills the promise I made Elanna, even if I can’t bring her back.
“This is interesting.” Tullea glances at Pantoleon, lifting an eyebrow. He simply looks tired.
Felix says, “Well, I—”
“Felix.” Tullea hooks her finger, and he leans close to her. She whispers heatedly at him, and I pour myself a cup of beer, pretending I couldn’t simply magnify the sound of their voices if I wanted. At first, from the sound of things, I think Tullea isn’t going to agree, that she’s going to accuse me of being a mad, selfish bastard. But she nods when Felix turns around and says, “All right, Korakides. We’re with you.”
My chest feels warm. This is happening. “Excellent—”
“Though the final decision will be up to all of our sorcerers,” Tullea says. She watches me, marking my every move. “I’ll bring them up to Solivetos so they can meet you. So you can show them how to make magic.”
“Ah.” Some of the warmth drains out of me. “All right.”
Tullea actually smiles. Maybe she didn’t think I’d agree, when it came down to it.
“But”—Felix holds up a finger—“we need a demonstration of good faith. There’s no point in destroying the fleet if no one knows who did it.”
The point is to keep the fleet from sailing to Eren and destroying the hope I fought for, I think. But I don’t say it. I offer Felix an interested smile instead.
It’s Tullea who clears her throat and leans forward. “A revolution needs a leader, as you well know…”
“Felix is admirably energetic,” I say.
She gives me a quelling look, even as Felix preens. “Felix is not a sorcerer. And after what you did in Eren, it’s obvious to me that that’s what the people need to latch on to. Someone who stirs their imaginations. Someone who already ha
s a reputation.”
“Elanna was a glorious figurehead,” I say. Was. I nearly gag on the words. “We could fight in her memory.”
Tullea blinks at me, and Pantoleon sighs. “Jahan, stop being so deliberately obtuse. It doesn’t make anyone want to follow you.”
Follow me. My hand has gone, unconsciously, to my scar. The old terror washes over me. Who would follow a man who has lied and deceived his way to the top? Someone who doesn’t remember half his childhood? Who doesn’t know the things he’s done, or been made to do?
Who am I, to lead anything?
“You’re the Korakos,” Felix says eagerly, as if he heard my question. “The people already know you—they’ve written songs about you, by all the gods! Just think—The sorcerer who was cast aside by Prince Leontius and led a rebellion against the Saranons and their witch hunters! The people will love it. I love it.”
“Glad to oblige,” I say reflexively, but my mind seems to have stalled. I touch my scar. Leontius is my friend. I don’t want to see him destroyed, or publicly humiliated and exiled like Loyce Eyrlai. He used to call me his only true friend. That Leontius, the one who let me into his life, is a person I like. A person I don’t want to disappoint. I can’t bear the thought that my truth has been revealed to him so harshly: that his only real friend never shared the greatest truth about himself.
Yet he did nothing to save me when the imperial guards arrested me. Nothing to save Elanna. He’s cast his vote by inaction; it’s obvious what he thinks of me. He’s been angry with me since the moment I announced I was leaving for Eren. Furious since I returned. I still don’t know why. I refuse to believe it’s because he’s just a Saranon like the rest of them.
The others are waiting for my response. I lower my hand.
This is it. The moment to declare myself not only a sorcerer, but an open enemy of the court where I struggled for so long to gain acceptance. The moment to tell the world the truth. And despite the anger concentrated in my chest, I want to hide. I want to persuade them that we don’t need a leader, that their sorcerers don’t need a public face.
