by Evie Manieri
“I want to tell him myself,” she said, moving around him. She skirted the platform and went to the door, stepping over the heap of gray cloth that had been tacked up over the inscription. She looked up before she went inside. The swirls and dots were vaguely familiar to her—she’d spent a lot of time lying on her cot in the ashadom, staring up at the ceiling—but she had no idea what they meant.
Daryan was sitting at the back of the large, open room, with his arms resting on the table in front of him. A cloth-wrapped bundle lay between his hands: his manuscript of the history of the Shadar, which he had spent precious hours painstakingly recreating after the original had been destroyed in the temple. Wax tablets and slates had been set out on the tables in carefully spaced order, in readiness for students who had obviously not come. Daryan was all alone.
“Isa.”
The disappointment in his eyes came close to breaking her heart. She wished he would lose control and give vent to his fury; that just once he would curse every setback and failure, rail against every disaster. Instead she had to listen to the dejection in his voice as he said, “I built them a school, and they ran away. I just can’t seem to reach them. There has to be some way to make them understand.”
“Daryan, I know why the ashas aren’t coming forward,” she said.
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” said Daryan. The light dimmed as Omir stepped in through the doorway. “You heard what Binit said the other night. They’re afraid. They don’t want to change.”
“No, that’s not it—not at all.” Isa swallowed. She felt like a bird’s egg had lodged in the middle of her throat. “Someone is murdering them.”
“What?” Daryan’s stool fell over as he jumped up from the table.
“There was a girl—a girl with a yellow scarf…”
She told him everything she’d seen, and what the little boy had said about people with covered faces coming to take away the dead—and she described the broken jug with the writing on it. She expected Daryan to rush out and summon his guards, but the expression of alarm on his face slid into something else even before she had finished.
“You said you heard the family talking when the girl went inside.” Daryan frowned as he came around the table toward her. “How long after did you go into the house?”
“Not long. I only spoke to the children for a moment.”
“And the man you saw leaving the house—he just walked away like nothing was wrong?”
Isa rocked back until she felt the edge of the table behind her against the back of her legs. “Yes. But I saw him toss something aside.”
“It doesn’t make sense, does it?” Daryan asked, glancing up at Omir as if looking for support. “How could anyone kill all those people that fast?”
“Poison. I told you,” said Isa. “I smelled something in the steam from the kettle. The poison could have been in the jug I found outside. He could have poured it in the kettle.”
“I wish you’d brought the jug back with you,” Daryan said, pressing his knuckles against his lips.
“I didn’t think of it.”
“Still, if it was something in the kettle, and it killed everyone that fast, why didn’t it kill the man who left?” Daryan asked. “Or you, when you went into the house?”
Isa couldn’t answer because she was afraid she might cry.
Daryan’s mouth twisted up as he watched her, but he said nothing.
“The resurrectionists.” Omir spat, darkening a spot of the dirt floor to the color of Shadari blood. “We’ll find them.”
Isa remembered the young resurrectionist standing next to her at the dedication. She remembered his light hair and dirty hands, but mostly she remembered the smell of him. Even in the open air, the smell of old death—of wormy dirt and moldy cloth, of forgotten names and fleshless faces—had been strong enough to bring tears to her eyes. She had walked through that family’s house and smelled sweat and unwashed clothes, cooking oil, and the baby’s soiled wrappings, but she had smelled nothing like that resurrectionist, nothing at all.
“We have to go back there, right now,” Isa said, appealing directly to Daryan. “Whoever did this may come to take them away.”
“Even if any of this is true, they can’t carry off all those people in broad daylight,” said Daryan. “Omir, get some of our people together. Do you think you can find the house from what Isa told you?”
“Yes, Daimon,” said Omir, and turned to go.
“Stop!” Isa cried out, infuriated by the inference that she did not know what she had seen. “I’ll take you there myself. I’ll prove it to you.”
“Binit has been waiting for something like this,” cautioned Omir. “If he finds out, he’ll use it to get more people on his side.”
“Damn Binit!” Daryan exploded. He ground the heel of his hand into his eye, as if trying to expunge any hint of tears. “But you’re right. And if he finds out Isa was anywhere near this—whatever this turns out to be—he’ll just have one more thing to use against us. Go on, Omir. I’ll be right there.”
“Daryan—” Isa began the moment he was gone.
“No,” said Daryan firmly, “no, you’re going back to the ashadom. I can’t have you getting any more involved in this.”
“I can’t go back to the ashadom,” Isa told him, straightening up and walking away from him toward the door.
“Why not?” asked Daryan.
“Falkar wants to kill me.” A surge of pain ripped through the stump of her left arm as she stared out at the sand, straining to hold back the tears that would be the crowning touch to her humiliation.
Daryan made a guttural noise in his throat. “What happened? Did you do something? Did you say something to set him off?”
“‘Set him off?’” Isa cried, turning on him with anger burning like fire in her throat. “You think I had to do anything? He hates me for what I am—for my missing arm. They all do. They always have. They’ll kill me if I go back.”
“But Eofar made them swear to leave you alone before he left,” said Daryan. “I thought you were fine there. Why didn’t you tell me before now?”
“I didn’t want to worry you.”
“Worry me? Isa, are you joking?” Daryan cried, with an ugly little laugh. “You make me worry about you every day, all the time, when I should be figuring out how to keep my people from turning on each other. Every one of their grudges, every unpaid debt, every unhappy romance of the last thirty years is somehow my problem now.”
“I know that—”
But he couldn’t seem to stop. “You don’t want to worry me? That day in the temple, with your arm … I can face just about anything, but not that, not again. I don’t think you understand what it would do to me if something happened to you. I’m doing my best to make a place for you here and keep you safe at the same time, but I’m not going to pretend that anything you’ve done has made it easier for me.”
A new kind of fear blossomed in Isa’s chest. “Maybe it would be better if I wasn’t here at all.”
“Stop it. Just stop, please,” Daryan pleaded angrily. “I know I’m being unfair. I know you have no place else to go.”
Isa took out the folded sheet of paper she had been carrying in her pocket for weeks and tossed it down onto the table among the smooth tablets and unmarked slates.
“What’s that?” Daryan asked stiffly.
She didn’t answer but watched silently while he unfolded it.
“This is a map,” he said, staring down in confusion at the lines and dots.
“King Jachad’s caravan route,” Isa told him. “I asked him to make it for me.”
“I see,” said Daryan, his voice catching. “Why?”
“So I would know where to find my sister.” Isa felt a strange relief at no longer having to wait for the inevitable. “I’m leaving. I’m going to get Lahlil.”
Daryan reddened. “What for?”
“We need her help finding whoever’s killing the ashas.”
“Finding them?” Daryan
cried, pounding his fist down on the map and making Isa jump. She hated the scraping, straining sound of his words as he spat them out. “Do you have any idea the kind of chaos it will cause if Lahlil comes back here now? Do you understand how weak it will make me look? Finding them? I don’t need your sister to help me find people who want me to fail. All I need to do is walk down any street, close my eyes and point.”
“Daryan…” Isa said, then tailed off miserably.
The two of them remained stuck in the same postures, neither looking at the other. Isa could not make herself move or speak. Her mind had gone blank.
“I didn’t mean all that,” Daryan said finally, straightening up.
Isa wanted to respond, but she didn’t know how.
“Now that I know why no one with the asha powers has come forward, I can do something about it myself. There’s no reason for you to go, Isa.”
She stared down at the ground, struggling to keep an avalanche of feelings from sweeping her away.
“You just need to give me more time. I am going to make the Shadar whole again, I swear to you. We will be together some day, without all the hiding and the lies. I’m going to make it happen.”
“You won’t,” said Isa. “You can’t, and you never will.”
The words hung in the air between them. She wanted to take them back—her jaw ached to do it—but her blood was as sluggish as an ice-choked stream and she was too numb to do anything but listen to the slow thump of her heart.
“You’ve lost faith in me,” said Daryan. His arms dangled limply at his sides.
Isa could not stand to be there another moment. She took the map back and walked out of the school.
The wind had picked up and was blowing around the building with an eerie whine. Men in fluttering red robes had gathered together on the far side of the yard and Omir was giving them instructions. The sun had just begun to cross the line of the peaks in the distance and the facing slopes had already taken on shadows.
Isa finally remembered to breathe.
Daryan followed her outside and she looked back at him just long enough to see the flush that had risen to his cheeks draining away. The pain in her arm surged back, even worse than before. She still had a few of the pills left and she dug them out while she walked.
He followed her around the broken walls to where Aeda waited, lying in the shade with her head between her clawed front feet, and stood behind Isa as she began the methodical process of checking the seams and buckles on the triffon’s harness. From a stand of palm trees came the jeering cry of a jay, and the melodic sound of bricks being stacked up on the scaffolding around the new buildings. She had always liked that sound. Now she would have to think of the torment of this moment every time she heard it.
“Don’t go, Isa,” he said, coming around beside her and hanging on to the curved edge of her saddle. “All I need is one bit of luck, one victory: an asha coming forward, getting the resurrectionists on my side; more of the elixir turning up—”
“I can’t wait for luck any longer,” she said, grimacing at the foul taste of the words as they left her mouth.
He grabbed her cape. “You can’t go. I won’t let them take you away from me.”
“Then come with me.” Sudden hope stabbed into Isa’s heart; her hand shook with it. “We’ll go to the Nomas together. We can go anywhere from there. You gave the Shadari their freedom. You’ve done enough.”
Daryan squeezed the fold of white cape in his fist. “You said we could never be happy together if I left. Remember?”
“I was wrong.”
Daryan let go of her cape, but then he unfastened and refastened the bottom clasp, then the one above it, and on up until he came to the one at her throat. He stopped with his hands still gripping the two ends, staring down at them as if they held some mystery to be solved. Then he drew in a breath to speak.
“Don’t say it,” Isa begged him.
“You were right.” He let go of her cape but stood close enough to her that she could hardly bear not to be touching him. His jaw tightened. “There isn’t anyone else. I can’t abandon them to the likes of Binit—I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”
She dropped the leather straps and plunged into his arms. Her missing arm throbbed mercilessly, but the pain paled in comparison to the heat from his hands as they clutched the back of her neck, or the brand of his lips pressing against hers. The shock of it thudded through her as she closed her eyes and kissed him with all the rage and sorrow and love in her heart, kissed him until the pain swept it all into one great bonfire fueled by their passion. She gave everything in that kiss: everything she had went into the flames.
The pain finally forced them to pull away from each other. Then Isa climbed up into Aeda’s saddle, not trusting herself to say or do anything more; too afraid she’d fail to keep back the assurances she knew would be lies and the promises she would most likely not be able to keep. She strapped herself in and was in the air before she had even made a conscious decision to take off. She didn’t allow herself to look back. She’d given that peaceful-looking city with its fishing boats and its little white houses enough of her cold, blood-betraying tears. It wasn’t getting any more.
Chapter 11
Rho leaned back beside the half-open cabin door and watched the mist drift through the pools of lantern-light. He could still feel the sway of the ship beneath him, but the Argent wasn’t going anywhere; she hadn’t moved forward since they’d sailed into the infamous Barrels two weeks ago. The murderous storms for which he had braced himself apparently had somewhere else to be. No stars pierced the fog to provide any sense of direction, and he only knew night had fallen thanks to the ringing of the ship’s bell. The air felt neither hot nor cold; he was beginning to feel like he was made of mist himself.
Eofar struck another hollow boom from the Argent’s immaculate deck as he ran through an offensive set, stomping every time he thrust the black blade through the fog. He wasn’t drilling; he was fighting someone, someone with flesh and bone and sinews to be parted—Ingeld, maybe; or Frea, with her dented helmet crusted with barnacles and seaweed clinging to her wave-worn white cape, or—
—or maybe Rho needed to spend less time staring into the fog.
Eofar came off guard and grabbed the shirt he had left hanging from a spar to wipe the sweat from his eyes.
Rho paced over to the port side of the ship where he could see Dramash and Yara and some of the younger members of the crew sitting in a circle, playing a game with spotted wooden blocks. Dramash flipped over one of the blocks in what was apparently the losing move, sending up a chorus of triumphant laughter from the rest of the players. Rho stiffened as he watched Dramash’s face grow dark, then the boy looked around at his companions and laughed along with them as Yara scooped the blocks toward her to start the game anew. Rho had intended to have another go at making Dramash practice controlling his powers, but he hated to intrude on a moment when he was as happy as any ordinary little boy.
The other sailors were making similar use of the calm. On the quarterdeck just above him, Sabina, the tall second mate, was coaxing a succession of liquid trills from her little harp. A group of older women sitting together in the corner were passing around a clay pipe. The scent of the faint spirals of mauve smoke hanging in the breathless air above them reminded Rho of a spice market.
She went into her cabin and shut the door behind her. Rho waited for the music to start again, but when he looked up, he saw Sabina loosening the last few strings on her harp and then rising with graceful ease. She strolled to Nisha’s cabin and went in without knocking.
Rho spent a long time staring at the closed door with a sharp twinge of envy. Life never arranged itself that easily for him.
“What’s the matter? Never seen a door before?” asked Grentha, appearing from behind the wheelhouse.
“Don’t you ever sleep?” Rho asked her. He could have sworn she had been on the forecastle just a moment ago. She had a way of roaming silently around the ship and then popping out whenever he did something embarrassing, like tripping over a locker or tangling himself up in the ropes.
“When I’m tired.”
