He landed with a squish and a crack. Might’ve broken a leg. No, he was still standing. His right shin hurt. Wood splinters had stabbed him from old furniture. Hard to say what the woody mess had been before someone had thrown it down there, a chair, a toy. It had been carved with a horse head that stared up at Jerani with a pleading eye, half buried in shit.
One woman called down from above. “That’ll teach you to carry a weapon through the streets.”
Something glinted through the flies, and Jerani jumped out of the way of his falling knife. The ground oozed and squirmed under his feet. He dug around and found his knife. Its obsidian blade had broken. He had carried the rock all the way from the Angry Mother Mountain. He was losing all his past. The knife hadn’t even been a real weapon. He had left his club and spear at the safe house.
Jerani had only brought the knife and the crystal flowers. He slapped a hand against his chest, feeling for the pocket in his robes. It was empty. The flowers had tumbled out. The lady had carved them and trusted them to him and he had lost ’em.
One glittered in the muck beside a puddle with a rat floating belly up. Jerani scooped the flower into his palm. He blew its amethyst petals clean. It hadn’t broken. The lady must’ve enchanted it. She was smart. He would have to find the others.
“Never saw one so dark. Think he could be Strife?” The women above were talking.
“No, just a foreign boy full of piss and curse.”
“We should take a few practice shots at him. To be safe.”
The four women had carried long blowpipes. Were they aiming them at him right now? Jerani squinted up but couldn’t see much past the flies and the sun glare. He heard the hollow puff of a dart being fired.
He threw himself against the wall and its crusty foulness. The women were shouting now. One screamed, maybe in happiness. They would line up another shot if they could. There was an opening beside him, like a cave passage of swarming darkness and reek. He scrambled inside.
Once his heart stopped thudding, he listened. No sound from above. Things behind him came closer in the darkness with the sounds of wet thudding. They were likely only men, and that was bad enough.
Jerani crept back into the buzzing pit. No sounds of blowpipes above. He scrounged for the crystal flowers. Things wriggled against his fingers. Would he ever be clean again? Five flowers, six, and seven, those were all she had given him to buy the sailcloth. He could leave.
Part of the wall had been broken off or collapsed, and he climbed up the stair of bricks. He slid his hands over the top of the pit. Jerani lifted one eye to street level. No sign of the guardswomen and their red sashes. The only movement in the alley came from a big beetle dragging away a dead lizard.
Jerani hopped out and dropped straight into a crouch. Something wasn’t right. He should jump back down. His back crawled, and it wasn’t just the flies. He was being watched by a killer.
A giant cat gazed down from the rooftop. Blackness speckled its gold coat. Whiskers splayed from its face like spines. It had to be a jaguar. No wonder the guards had run off.
Jerani slapped at his own arm, found the bracer of the Obsidian Jaguar. Was he seeing a god? The creature had a presence of timelessness and doom. Those weren’t animal eyes looking at him. They were full of orange keenness.
“Did you protect me?” Jerani asked. “Now and back in the jungle?” Someone must’ve watched over him in the battle of the grove. His spear had moved with a god’s sureness.
The jaguar didn’t reply. It wore jewelry on its foreleg, a bracer with a green skull.
“What do you want from me?” Jerani’s ears were full of roaring, but it couldn’t have come from the giant cat. It hadn’t opened its jaws.
The jaguar leapt away over the rooftops and was gone. It hadn’t made a sound.
Jerani hopped and caught the edge of the roof and pulled himself up. Flowers spread before him, no sight of the giant cat. Maybe that hadn’t been the Obsidian Jaguar, just one of his cat warriors. Or Jerani might’ve imagined the whole thing. Poison from the pit could’ve gotten into his head. He reeked of shit and not the healthy grassy kind from cows. He was splattered with city filth.
He had to get clean. No good trying to buy cloth for the dragon’s wings when he stank. Jerani moved across the city from rooftop to rooftop. This was safer than the streets. Not too many women were out tending their gardens so close to noon. The canvass that shaded the flowers kept him cool enough. He stayed low, ducking down into the beds of pink and blue petals when he had to. The jaguar had shown him the way.
Jerani snuck past a palace with petals painted around every window. He reached the sea. No dark shapes moved through the water, so he would chance it. A dash into the waves, a thrashing in the water, and out again before anything finned could gobble him up. The cut on his shin stung. Along the beach, men were towing a boat with ropes and poles. They stayed well clear of the surf.
The sun blazed him dry. Now Jerani was sandy and sticky with salt. Much better. He crept back toward the safe house. Celaise would be up soon and start worrying about him. On the rooftops there still wasn’t any seeing the jaguar.
The throb of bees returned to the air. The worst of the noonday heat had passed. Children also adventured back onto the streets. Most ran free of clothes. Girls traded flower petals. A boy padded by with a bright beetle in a jar. How many years until they made him lug water through the filthways with the men? Jerani had to wonder. One girl carried a babe on her back only a little smaller. When Jerani couldn’t risk looking down to the street, he could still hear the children. Their shouting and laughter rose above the buzzing as a second drone.
Jerani closed his eyes and saw his sister. Anza had cried out in happiness when listening to the gurgling of cow bellies. She had pressed her ear against their sides and followed them all morning. And once, Jerani’s brother had been that young. But that was years ago and far away.
Jerani found Cinchweed Street again by the saffron bursting from signpost pots. From there, all he had to do was jump to the roof garden with white flowers. The jasmine petals were closed, and the bees ignored them.
He climbed down the ladder into the house’s coolness. A shadow leapt out to clutch at him. Her fingers were icy zings on his back.
“You shouldn’t have left,” Celaise said. “Why did you go?”
He hugged her back. “Wanted to buy the lady’s sailcloth.”
“She asked me to do that. I should’ve done it.”
Only, Celaise hadn’t. She hadn’t left the safe house all yesterday, and Jerani had to do something for Celaise. Now she could brush her own hair, make her own meals with her new hands. He rubbed her beautiful fingers, so fine and sharp. She could tend the llamas all by herself. She didn’t need him.
“I would’ve gone out today.” Celaise cringed at the beams of light falling from the trapdoor. She edged around Jerani. “Did you buy the canvas already?”
He shook his head. Heat prickled over his chest and face.
“Oh! Someone hurt you?” Celaise leaned down to his leg. She traced around the cut, and her finger sent spirals of keenness up his thigh.
“Some stingers threw me into a pit.”
“Into the filthways? Didn’t you show them your bracer? No, I guess they wouldn’t care about the Obsidian Jaguar.”
Until they had seen the god leaning over them ready to pounce.
Celaise brushed her lips against the cut, but she didn’t just kiss it. She sucked and licked. Her tongue searched the hot hurt of the wound and left it numb. Jerani gasped, and his whole left side tingled.
She spat his blood in a corner. “You should talk to the lady about that.”
Below them, the voice of Miss Barrows punched through the floorboards. She had to be yelling at her daughter. “You’re treating this just like home. Nothing’s clean.”
Celaise glanced back up at him. “Miss Barrows could buy the canvas. She goes out anyway, and we wouldn’t have to leave.”
; “You could go out.” Why was he telling Celaise this? Once she knew how strong she was, she would tell him to go forever. “The stingers wouldn’t bother you.”
“The sun dragon would see me.” She kneaded her left hand that had once been a claw. “He’d curse me again.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, and have you heard? They believe in curses here. Different ones.”
Jerani had to not say the wrong thing now or she would turn as prickly as an acacia. Celaise thought the sunlight had twisted her bones somehow. She believed she was herself at night, that it wasn’t just her magic but truth. “Celaise, daylight won’t hurt you anymore. I think the lady stopped the curse for good.”
Celaise peeked out a fist-sized window. Its glass was drippy green. Outside, a group of two boys and three girls stood near the filthways, daring each other closer to the drop.
She backed away. “No, it’s not worth trying,” she said. “I won’t be broken again.”
“But wasn’t it the fall that hurt you? You told me they pushed you off a cliff.” Her first family had been even worse than her new one.
Celaise stared at him with her night-sky eyes. He worried she would scream at him. Push him away. Tell him to leave for good.
“You don’t have to worry about the sun.” His tongue was dry, his mouth chalky. His heart beat faster now than when the jaguar had scared him. “We could go out together.”
“Yes, but later tonight.” She winced at her faded poncho. “When I have my True Dress.”
“Celaise.” Jerani stroked her arm. He reached around and pulled her closer. “You don’t need the dress for people to see you.”
She leaned back, shoulder blades digging into his arm. “You never would’ve noticed me without the dress.”
“But I know you now. I mean, even at day you—”
“I’m more beautiful in the dress. Admit it. I’m more strong and more everything.”
Oh, no. What could he say to that? “Maybe not everyone has to be beautiful.”
Celaise ripped herself from him. Shadows swelled around her, and she flickered away. All at once, gone. Now she sat on the far side of the room on a windowsill. A patch of green-tint sunlight fell near her hips. She edged from it.
Jerani punched his side. He should’ve told her something else. Now he would have to shout. There was too much distance between them. The center of the room had turned into a chasm of darkness.
The only real light came from the trapdoor. The fox skipped beneath it with tail up and flag proud. He carried a roach in his mouth.
“I’ve news of your family,” Celaise said, facing the window.
Everything in Jerani tightened into braided coils. Another Feaster must’ve visited his tribe then told Celaise about it. “Are the Great Hearts well?”
“The Choker says your brother is a warrior now. He has his scars, like a tree over his face.”
A Feaster had prowled through the Great Hearts. Jerani couldn’t ask if anyone had been choked to death. But his brother was a warrior now? Warmth breezed through Jerani, and his insides fluttered. “Did Wedan flinch getting his warrior marks?”
“I don’t know.”
He likely had winced from the Holy Woman’s knife, but he would’ve held on and finished the rite. Or maybe he had kept his sacred calm the whole time and done the family proud. Wedan might not be the same pudgy clod-head at all. Could a younger brother change so much?
Jerani took two steps into the darkness toward Celaise. “And Anza?”
“Your sister can milk cows by herself now. She bows her head against them while she’s doing it and closes her eyes.”
“Ha! She still loves listening.” Jerani leapt and slapped the ceiling. He landed in the center of the room. He could cross the rest of the distance to Celaise. But what if she only slipped further away? “Did you hear about the Great Heart cows? Does Gorgeous still lead? How have Gem’s horns grown out?”
“No, didn’t hear.” Celaise drifted through the shadows toward him. She and he were together again, and everything was right. “I’m sorry. You should be with your tribe.”
This was it. Now she would tell him to go. Jerani felt stuffed with the scraping sharpness of spear grass. They sawed through his chest and poked at the inside of his skin.
Celaise clung to his arm and pressed her head against his shoulder. She was taller now that she could stand straight. “Staying with me will get you hurt, and I can’t bear it.”
“Please,” Jerani said, “don’t push me away.”
“I’m not.” Her fingernails dug into his arm. “You’re the one who’s going to leave me.”
“You don’t need me anymore.”
“The night doesn’t need the stars, but she still loves them.”
“You can do anything now.” Jerani tried to back away but ended up holding her closer. “You can take care of yourself.”
“I love you more than I ever needed you, Jerani.”
That didn’t make sense. To need was to love. “Let me stay with you to the end of their wedding,” Jerani said. “You have to agree to that.”
“Are you leaving because I’m a Feaster?”
“Celaise, I’d love you whatever you were. Dress or not. Magic or no.”
She coiled her arms around his neck. “Never leave me, even if I tell you to.”
24
“If your gender is hated then the only option is to pretend to be the other.”
“Unless you have an iota of loyalty to your identity as a person.”
“I am not a man. I am ambition. I am adept. I’m hypocrisy and reckless glee. Gender is for those without their own flair.”
“If that is so, would you have proposed to me were I a man?”
“I have a confession. I’m only marrying you for your power, your taste in clothes, and your ravishing mind.”
The Carnivorous Garden was a spot of darkness in the worst part of the city. Hiresha coasted between two towers with windows flickering with fireflies. She landed on the garden wall. The night’s fog prickled against the erect hairs of her arms and legs; the mists flowed into wraithlike shapes stretching white fingers toward her then dissipating.
Excellent! Tethiel must’ve arrived at the meeting place before her for once.
He waited beneath a tree hanging with pitcher plants. They reached down like dismembered fingers. Beside him, fireflies plinked against the glass of two vases. They flickered in unison in a simmering yellow.
Tethiel had best deliver a deft apology. Hiresha decided to demand one. By lying to the Purests about his gender, he had left Hiresha in an untenable position.
He clamped a hand over the stopper of each firefly vase. He opened them. “I forgive you, my heart.”
Hiresha narrowed her eyes. “I’m certain you meant to say, ‘I ask for your forgiveness, and I’ll pay Purest Elbe the vast sum owed for the refined glass.’”
“I only gave the matriarchs a beautiful truth, the one they wanted.” His lace cuffs lit in moldy light as the fireflies flew past.
“I see, and I was the ruinous one for breaking your lie? Am I the scourge of misinformation then? The murderer of ignorance?”
“Honesty is a fault that cannot be long tolerated even in the best of friends.”
The jewels in her clenched fists scraped against each other. An enchantment kept them from scratching, and that was well, for Tethiel’s sake. He had some impertinence, voicing her own concerns.
Possibly she shouldn’t have told Purest Elbe the truth, if truth it was. Elbe had a dangerous persuasiveness to her.
“As I said, you’re forgiven for stepping on my scheme.” Tethiel spoke in the darkness. The fireflies had winked out at the same time. They blinked back together. “I like to think that once we’re married, we’ll have transcended the need to ask forgiveness.”
“What you’re saying is that you’ll never apologize for anything.”
“I make no apology for my perfection.” His coat glowed with a
light all its own, and the flytrap plants behind him lit up with crimson mouths gaping around long leaflet fangs. One snapped closed on a firefly.
“At this point, the wedding is a large presumption,” Hiresha said.
“Not at all. I have every confidence in you and our plan.”
“Is this another of your ‘beautiful truths’?”
His smile was a twitch in the spindle corners of his lips.
Leaving his useless self for the moment, Hiresha examined her vat of purple lotuses. Their roots had strangulated twelve leeches, and the extra nutrients had allowed her creations to flourish. As she had anticipated, more leeches had hatched, and those smaller ones were all dead at the bottom. The lotus toxin had killed them. Her plant had successfully inhibited the vermin’s lifecycle at two points.
Amidst all the nonsense, she could continue to do good works. Next she would have to design a better way to distribute the lotus seeds. She also needed to secure her position via the wedding. Otherwise, the hordes of Dominion warriors may not be amenable to her tinkering with horticulture.
Hiresha turned back to Tethiel. “I’ll settle for knowing more of your plan.”
“I’d not tire you with details which already must be obvious.”
Tonight he was being more insufferable than average. That too might be part of his plan. His hesitance to speak of what he expected of her was also telling. Hiresha needed the cooperation of Purest Elbe. The surest way to secure it would be to break off the engagement with Tethiel. At least Hiresha had to appear willing to do so.
She thought Tethiel was making it all too easy with his deliberate inconsideration. Or maybe Hiresha was giving him too much credit. Either way, she had concocted something to put him on the defensive.
Six vials floated from her sleeve. Opalescence filled them, and they trembled with power. The vials circled her wrist with their crystal ends pointing outward.
“Distilled wild magic,” Hiresha said, “enough to break your habit of Feasting.”
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