Chapter 9
SARDINIA’S SHADOWS
Ria collapsed to the floor as Finneous shut the door. His warning about not leaving cut through Ria's insulating shock. She fell sobbing to her knees. As the door clicked closed, Lavinia sank to the floor to comfort her friend. Niri stood watching, feeling detached from them, her own body, this town, and what she had done to Causis.
“I don’t want to be here. I want to go home.”
“It’s okay, Ria. I’m here, I’ll protect you.”
Ria pulled her hands from her face enough to give her friend a scathing look of disbelief. Lavinia’s face infused with color. She hesitated a moment before placing her arm back around Ria's shoulders.
“Ty,” Lavinia started, clearing her throat. “Ty will protect you. You know how much he cares about you.”
“Hah,” Ria choked. “Your brother is nothing more than a thief and a liar. What has he told you about where he has been? He certainly didn’t learn to put knives to people’s throats in Mirocyne or his apprenticeship, Vin. He isn’t who you think he is.”
Niri’s breath came quicker, pumping her chest as if the air was too thin. She stumbled backwards until she felt the blinds of the arched windows under her hands. She held on to the wooden slats with all her strength.
Lavinia’s expression was crushed. She shook her head as if to knock out Ria’s words. “How could you say that? He saved your life today!”
“If this gift was anything useful, he wouldn’t have to! I would have killed Causis myself.” Ria stood with the explosion of her words, rocketing into the depths of the house. With tear-stained cheeks, Lavinia followed at her heels.
Niri’s gut wrenched. Each word added to the spinning in her head. She stumbled blindly toward the sound of falling water, seeking the comfort of her element. Tripping, Niri found herself on a stone bench in the inner garden of Finneous’s house. Water fell in sheets from the roof of the arcade to narrow pools lining the inner courtyard. Sunlight glimmered on the protecting enchantment created by an Air Elemental which spanned the open roof like a glass ceiling, intensifying the fragrant smell of garden flowers. One thought filled Niri’s mind, cutting off the beauty around her: What monstrous thing was she?
When Ty came upstairs as evening’s shadows swallowed the inner garden, Niri’s thoughts had not improved.
Ria and Lavinia, exhausted and then satiated after Jistin’s arrival with plates of spiced meat and rice, had fallen asleep on settees in the front room. Ty stood watching them a moment before glancing around and spotting Niri alone in the garden. He walked out and slouched onto the bench on the other side of the path, leaning against a jasmine tree. The scent of evening flowers showered on both of them as the tree took his weight.
Ty's silence roused Niri from her thoughts. She looked up to see Ty’s half-closed eyes on her. He appeared spent with his hair lank and the angry fire absent from this eyes.
“How did it go?” Niri asked, her throat burning so that she had to whisper. She swallowed, trying to moisten it.
“All right; most is gone.” The weariness drained even Ty’s usual scathing temperament toward her, although he watched her closely. “And here?”
“Ria is doing better. She was upset but sleep and food helped. Lavinia is good at keeping her calm.”
Ty waited a moment. “And you?”
Niri met his gaze. He wasn’t mocking her. Unexpected tears flooded her eyes. She looked away. Ty moved swiftly to the bench next to her, placing one hand on her forearm as he had in the bazaar after ...
Niri’s mind shied away from the thought and then rushed back. The words started tumbling from her lips before she could catch them.
“I don’t know what I am. I can’t take it. I’m glad, so glad to have saved Ria. But what she said today, after what I did. But I didn’t mean to! And I stopped. Perhaps the Church is right. The best place for us is there. My skills need rules. They kept me from using them. I didn’t harm anyone ... just the children I took from their parents the way I was taken. Taken back to the Church to have rules beaten into them. But don’t you see? That is the only reason I didn’t take Ria today or at the ceremony in Mirocyne. I can’t take this, not being a Priestess, not being able to stop myself. But I can’t go back without Ria, and I can’t take her back to die. She had a right to be that angry at Causis.”
Niri finally paused, her eyes still held in Ty’s blue. He wiped the tears from her cheeks.
“I really don’t understand what you just said,” he said, trying to be serious but laughter hovered on his lips. It choked off her sobs, welling up from her lungs so that they both coughed a laugh. Sober again, Ty stared at her, although not unkindly. “Other than saying you thought of taking Ria and didn’t ... you won’t, I hope.”
Niri shook her head. “No, I won’t consider it again. I realize now that I truly can’t see harm come to her, not by my hand. I know what I did to protect her today ... but that is what frightens me. If I have this ability and I’m not a Priestess ... what am I? I’m afraid I’m far more dangerous now than I ever was under the Church.”
The line between Ty’s brows deepened. “I don’t know what you mean. What did you do?”
Niri’s heart throbbed in her chest. She looked away, saying, “Tell me something first.”
“All right.”
“Jistin gave me this today at lunch when I asked him how he knew you.”
Niri handed Ty the crumpled paper. He smoothed it open. On it in Jistin’s scrawl were the words, “He saved my life.”
Ty closed his eyes briefly, as if the words invoked a painful memory. Instead of answering, Ty glanced into the front salon, toward his sleeping sister.
“She doesn’t know. I didn’t show it to her,” Niri said.
“But you want to know?” Ty asked.“ Then you’ll tell me what you did?”
Niri’s eyes filled with tears again as she nodded.
Ty took a deep breath as he stared at the stones of the path. “I left the ship I had been apprenticed on.” He paused, shoulders squared to hold off the forthcoming criticism.
“I rather guessed that much.” Niri said, her sarcasm surprising even to her. Ty snorted, some of his tension fading.
Ty looked around the garden as if searching for words to continue. “I ended up with those men you saw in Mirocyne for a time. Small-time thieves, so I thought. I didn’t know what I was doing ... Jistin and Finneous were kind to me when we came to Sardinia. The men, they saw that as an opportunity." He peered toward the salon one more time, only continuing when he saw his sister still slept.
"Since Jistin knew me, I was to get him to let me in and then,” Ty's words choked off. He cleared his throat, the muscles of his neck tightening to cords as he struggled to continue. “He couldn’t call for help, you know?”
Niri offered her hand in sympathy. He took it, a smile flitting across his lips before being overrun by internal shadows.
“I couldn’t do it.”
“You warned them?”
Ty nodded. “I couldn’t be a part of it, not that. It meant I couldn’t go back. I had to run again.”
Ty had appeared tired before. After the short confession, he looked like he'd fought in a battle. He dropped Niri's hand as he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs, wrists dangling toward the ground. Niri watched him, feeling like she was beginning to understand a small portion of Ty. It wasn’t what she had expected.
“You did something to Causis, didn’t you?” Niri felt the blood run out of her. “And Ria wanted to do something?”
“I don’t blame her. She felt her power. I think she nearly used it,” Niri sputtered. “I could see it all around her and then ... it was gone. I don’t know what she did. I don’t think she knows what she did. But suddenly she was just a very frightened girl trapped by Causis and there was nothing she could do.”
"But you could?"
“I,” Niri swallowed as her voice wavered. “I wanted to protect her ... and I felt the water in Caus
is’s blood." She paused, afraid to continue and admit what she had done, could do. "I stopped his pulse.”
Shock froze Ty’s face. He pulled away from her, eyes hardening. “Is that what they teach you in the Church? Your method of killing criminals?”
“No! Don’t you see? That is what I mean. All I could do in the Church was purify water, call rain, move water for irrigation. I had no idea, Ty,” She pleaded, feeling lost and confused. “All I ever did as a Priestess was water crops and steal children from their families. I’m lethal now, more than I ever was as a Priestess.”
Ty stared at her, the distance remaining in his expression. It spawned a desire to run. Niri did not need to stay. Not if she was just as dangerous as the Curse. Niri bolted to her feet. Ty caught her hand.
“No, Niri.” She struggled against him so that he had to wrap her in his arms, pinning her against his chest. She sobbed into his shoulder. “Don’t you see? You did stop yourself. You didn’t kill him, and neither did I.”
Niri quieted as Ty’s reason pushed through her internal fog. He relaxed his hold and exhaled a sad laugh. “I’m starting to think neither of us is as bad as we think,” he confessed.
“Hah. What, your return to the streets of Sardinia didn’t make you want to come back for good?”
Ty grimaced, then laughed again. “No, I think I’ve realized how much this doesn’t suit me, actually. I feel older than Finneous.”
A knock sounded at the archway to the courtyard garden. Ty and Niri jumped away from each other, both blushing. At the door, Jistin stood grinning. He motioned for them to follow, laughing silently at the embarrassment on Ty’s face.
Finneous was walking through the door when Ty and Niri entered the salon, while Ria and Lavinia stretched themselves awake, glancing out the windows at the dimming light. Realizing the hour and that her brother was back, Lavinia sat up quickly.
“That is the best we can do for today,” Finneous said to Ty by way of greeting. Finneous’s eyes swept over the two girls, whose cheeks were rosy from sleep. “Such beauty and youth! I wish I could have spent the day in your company.” There was a hint of sadness in his eyes, changing the flattering tone into something more poignant.
“I will buy the rest off of you for a reasonable price,” Finneous went on. Ty opened his mouth to protest, but Finneous continued with a chuckle, “Minus my commission, I assure you.”
Ty shook his head. “I cannot thank you enough, Finneous.”
“It is a good deed returned, boy. You should go now, before it gets late.” He handed Ty a bag clinking with coin. It was more than they had earned in Dion and Kyrron combined. Ty slipped it around his neck.
They were downstairs in a hurry after quick hugs for the women from both Jistin and Finneous. Jistin winked at Niri, so that she blushed again. Then they were standing in the nearly deserted road of the bazaar outside Finneous’s store. Ria’s face paled as she looked down the shadowed streets. She leaned toward Lavinia.
“This way,” Ty said, setting off at a fast pace. Lavinia nudged Ria ahead. Niri followed as they wove quickly through the darkening bazaar. Merchants cast furtive glances at them, and late patrons became less and less innocent-looking, hidden in hoods or turning their faces away as they stayed to the deeper shadows. Most barely glanced at them. Those who did let their eyes linger speculatively.
Ty turned down a narrower side alley. He was halfway along it, the girls on his heels, when an arm reached from the darkness of a doorway and grabbed Niri roughly.
“Don’t!” Niri twisted, wrenching the person accosting her into the alley. She stared as she recognized Hahri while her shout resonated through the empty street, halting Ty.
Hahri’s face no longer held the passive distance it had contained during the morning. Twisted with hatred, he glared down at Niri, ignoring Ty and the girls. Ria muffled a scream as she pushed herself into Lavinia. Lavinia stepped closer to Ty, blocking his way to Niri and Hahri. He swore under his breath.
Niri glared at Hahri, not squirming despite his bruising grip. She met his eyes coldly. His look changed to one of disgust.
“Priestess,” he spat.
“I’m rogue,” she answered without hesitation.
Hahri paused, considering her again. “You trained with them. You are one of them,” his voice condemned her.
Niri barked a laugh. “A Priestess of the Church of Four Orders would not have allowed you to touch her, much less be slinking about at dusk with three youths and no escort.”
Doubt passed like a shadow across Hahri’s face. His eyes flicked to Ty and the girls and back again. “You are not here to poison the rest of the wells?”
Niri took a step back in surprise, Hahri releasing her. “What? No! How ... Why?”
Hahri remained silent as Niri’s surprise diminished. He watched her, expression a mixture of amusement and disdain. “Yes, didn’t you know that your compatriots did such things? Poison wells if they did not get the tithes they required? Or burn down houses in the middle of the night? So many things your kind can do.” Hahri stepped forward, his anger tingeing the air around him.
But Niri wasn't looking at Hahri. Pieces of memories stitched together; things she hadn’t understood until that moment and hadn't wanted to. Even she had always returned to Solaire after a ceremony with claimed, gifted children and the ship's cargo full. She'd never questioned why or how. She refocused on Hahri with sick certainty. If he wanted to strangle her, she wouldn't fight.
The warmth of Ty’s hand against her back brought a spark to life in her again. His presence reminded her that she could choose differently, no matter the choices before.
“No, I did not know that,” she replied, voice unsteady.
“My family has had to evaporate seawater to drink for five months,” Hahri growled. With Ty behind her, she held her ground. Hahri’s glare switched to Ty.
“And you! Do you know they are looking for you? That you are a wanted man with a price on your head? They are waiting to overtake you on the way back to your boat. Gaff told some associates of your former friends that you were here today for a cut of the money promised for you. Tell me why I should not call them now and give you to them?”
Ty's warmth disappeared. Niri turned to him, but his downcast eyes slid toward his sister. Niri’s heart pounded as she recognized the plan forming in his eyes.
“Because then I cannot purify your well,” Niri said quickly before Ty could speak. Both men stared at her in surprise. “I am a naiad. I can purify water. I can help, but only if you do not let them harm any of us.”
Hahri opened his mouth and closed it again. He gazed over his shoulder down the alley toward the barely visible gate to the bazaar and the docks.
“You would do this?” he asked quietly. His eyes, a deeper brown than his skin, bored into her.
“Yes, if you see us safely to our boat afterwards and help us leave. I will purify any well you show me.”
The change in emotion revealed the lines of suffering Hahri had masked with his withdrawn disdain. Wrinkles etched themselves at the corners of his eyes and pulled down his mouth.
“Yes, if you do this, I will get you to your ship safely. But we must hurry.” Hahri peered over his shoulder again. The alley had fallen into deep shadows. “They will come looking for you soon. Follow me.”