“It’s for her benefit as well,” Lu countered. “If Milo isn’t found, Argrid will force the Council to blame the raiders—”
“Yeah, she won’t care. It’ll piss her off that you assume she needs the Council to protect her syndicate.” Vex jerked on a lever, slowing the Meander to a halt so they could think. “I need to get past her blockade. What if we—”
“The Schilly,” Lu said. “Go north. Take the Schilly River. It connects with the Leto farther inland—you can avoid Cansu’s raiders that way.”
“You’re neglecting to mention how the Schilly connects to the Leto,” Vex countered.
Lu’s brows lifted. “Are you afraid of a little waterfall?”
“A little waterfall?” Vex chirped, then heard the cracking of his voice and cleared his throat. “I’m more worried about the Council-run system of platforms and pulleys that lower boats down the falls. You have to pay the Council soldiers, who have free rein to search your boat if, oh, say, a diplomat is missing and an escaped convict is on the loose.”
Lu gave the smile she’d given from before they’d escaped the castle. The one Nayeli now wore too, eager and demented.
Oh god, Vex thought. Did I bring another Nayeli onto my boat?
“What if I could get you past the falls and the Council soldiers?” Lu asked.
“No Cansu? No soldiers either?” Nayeli hurled herself through the door and looped one arm around Lu. “I like this one a lot. Can we keep her?”
But Vex’s eye was pinned on Lu. “How, Princesa?”
“You mentioned to the Council that the last time you dealt with Ingvar Pilkvist, it involved a shipment of Aerated Blossoms,” Lu said. “Do you still have it?”
Vex considered. “Edda, mind the engine—make sure we have enough fuel to get up to the Schilly. Nay, go get our Blossoms.”
“Only three,” Lu corrected. “Edda and Teo can pose as a family and take the lift—soldiers won’t look twice at something so innocent. You, Nayeli, and I will take another route.”
Edda dropped obediently through the hatch as Nayeli pulled back from Lu, aghast. “Are you saying I don’t come across as innocent?”
Lu laughed, and it stopped any smart-ass comment Vex had been about to make.
“Not even a little,” Lu said, smiling.
Nayeli beamed. “Good. I’d hate for that rumor to start.”
“We’re splitting up?” Vex drummed his fingers on the helm as he plowed the boat northeast, away from the Leto. “I figured you’d use the Blossoms on the boat somehow.”
“You thought I could make the whole boat fly?”
“You melted an iron lock. A flying boat isn’t that far-fetched.”
Lu gave him an incredulous look. “We’ll each take a Blossom and jump off the cliff away from the falls, out of the soldiers’ sight. The moment we get close to the ground, we’ll—”
She stopped, her eyes going to where Vex tapped a loud, incessant rhythm on the helm.
“You’re afraid,” she guessed.
Vex’s hand stilled. “Of falling to my death? Ridiculous, I know.”
“You won’t die. The timing must be exact, but—”
“You know how long the effects of Aerated Blossoms last, don’t you? Only as long as you inhale. A few seconds. Which means our margin for death is that long.”
Lu smiled. Vex squirmed. He’d been right to be terrified—so far, her plans had a certain perilous twist to them, as though she wasn’t aware of how mortal some people were.
“It’s been a few years, but I’ve done this before,” Lu said. “We’ll be fine.”
“A few years? Back when you were a killer child? Or whatever the hell the revolutionaries made you into.”
The lightness on Lu’s face vanished. Vex stepped closer, as if he could chase it down and coax it back out.
Her expression went furious. “If the plan doesn’t suit you, find your own way, raider.”
Before Vex could say anything else, Lu threw herself down the hatch.
Lu landed in the hall as Nayeli emerged from a bunkroom with three Aerated Blossoms. The spiky balls were no bigger than her palms—an untrained eye would dismiss the plants as sea urchins.
“Now what?” Nayeli asked, but Lu pushed past her.
“Ask your captain. It is what I’m paying him for, after all.”
Lu heaved herself into the opposite bunkroom. Teo sat on the cot they’d shared.
“Lu? Is it morning?” He rubbed his eyes.
Lu dropped onto the bed and put her arms around him.
He stilled. “Lu?”
Once, when she was small, her parents had taken her to a Church service outside Port Fausta. The other parishioners had dismissed them as a devout family, freeing them to get the layout in order to rescue allies Argrid had imprisoned beneath the main mission building. As Lu’s parents had counted the windows and doors, she’d listened to priests beg the Pious God to forgive the congregation for the impure acts they had committed.
“Hypocrites,” her mother had called the priests afterward. “They call free thought impure so they can burn a man for speaking against the Argridian king, but the burning doesn’t displease their god?”
Lu had nodded gravely, folding away words like impure until the day she first stumbled back to a safe house with blood on her hands. She learned why the priests didn’t beg forgiveness for killing people. Not even the Pious God could cleanse a soul of that stain.
Teo shifted in Lu’s arms, reaching up to pat her on the head. “It’s all right, Lu.”
Tears warmed her eyes. She was so grateful to have Teo with her, an anchor to the life she was meant to lead. Even though he was still a few years shy of how old she’d been when her father had first sent her out to spy on Argridians, she was glad she had brought him on this quest.
How weak she was, to be so selfishly relieved for his presence here.
Lu held Teo and breathed.
Night fell, the darkness so disorienting that Vex almost forgot their plan as he followed Nayeli and Lu up the tree-lined shore. Dense jungle pressed against the Schilly, the trees hung with moss and vines that wafted in the breeze. The churning, bellowing anger of the Schilly-Leto waterfall drowned out any chirps of wildlife.
Vex met Lu where she hid behind a wide tree trunk. The water from the falls made the humidity worse, and Vex’s hands were damp, his eye patch chafing. He peeked around the trunk to get a view of the area where captains anchored to pay the fee before their boats were lowered down the falls—or searched.
Lanterns glowed from the flat wooden buildings on either bank of the river. Steamboats waited along each side in two long lines for the lift to lower them down. The soldiers on guard checked the boats that sailed up to the docking stations.
Vex had braved this route when there was a soldier on duty he could pay off. Back then, only one in four boats was ever pulled over in random searches. Now triple the guards fanned down the walkways, swarming every boat.
The higher security didn’t sit well with him, in the same way that New Deza’s wharf market had seemed off. Something had changed. Was it because of the missing Argridian?
The Rapid Meander was third in line. Vex clamped his hand on the tree trunk, knuckles tense.
He felt attention on him and looked at Lu. “Can I help you, Princesa?”
She pulled back, rolling her eyes.
“She doesn’t like when you call her that,” Nayeli whispered, lounging against the tree.
Vex frowned. “Really?”
“You thought I enjoyed it, raider?” Lu scoffed. “That I flinched out of pleasure?”
“But there you go, calling me raider! It was a give-and-take.”
Lu bowed her head to the trunk. “Fine. I won’t call you raider. You won’t—”
“Shhh!”
“Excuse me? I’m trying to—”
“No! Look.”
Vex pointed. The Rapid Meander had sailed up to a walkway that stretched beyond the payment stat
ion, and guards came up. Edda went to the starboard railing, her hand lifted in greeting. Teo’s vague outline could be seen sitting on the table in the pilothouse.
Vex exhaled. Held it. Struggled to breathe.
As soldiers reached Edda, others on a boat behind the Meander shouted, “Raiders! Tuncian syndicate!”
A scuffle broke out as soldiers grabbed the crew of the raider boat and wrestled them to the deck. The guards approaching Edda dove for the other boat, helping their comrades pin down the crew and rip into their lower-deck hatch.
Nausea made Vex waver, his knees slipping on the moist undergrowth. Memories overlapped this moment—watching soldiers attack people for merely looking suspicious. Tearing apart their property. Screaming, Heretics! Sinners! The Pious God condemns you—
Vex’s body went rigid.
Had the bill that the Argridian diplomat lobbied for, the one to eradicate stream raiders, passed? Even if it had, surely the Council wouldn’t have implemented anything so soon? Lu would have said something to him, right?
Edda slipped back into the pilothouse and the Meander sailed on. From this angle, all Vex could see was the stern bobbing as the current shoved his boat against the barrier that kept it from plummeting over the falls.
Vex couldn’t feel a damn thing until the Rapid Meander drifted forward, swallowed up into the lift contraption. The soldiers had let it pass. They’d accepted the galles and the story about Edda and Teo being a family.
Vex gasped, forehead going to the tree trunk. God above, he needed a drink.
“There weren’t as many soldiers when I was here last,” Lu whispered. Her words made the silence between the three of them more potent, and Vex realized they’d all been on edge.
“Yeah.” Vex lifted his head, eyeing Lu. “We’re in Cansu’s territory, for god’s sake. Why would they care about a boat of hers that much? It wouldn’t be unusual.”
At the mention of Cansu, Nayeli stalked off into the trees.
“They’re looking for Milo,” Lu breathed. “The Argridians would have been insulted if the Council hadn’t increased security at checkpoints.” She glanced at Vex, then back to the docking stations. “At least the Council can control this.”
Vex gestured at the soldiers. “Why’d they go after the Tuncian boat, not ours? The Council doesn’t think raiders took him, right? They should be looking into everyone. Equally.”
He was trying to get her to say it. Oh, raider, I forgot to tell you—the Council is actively trying to kill people like you now. Not that that affects our arrangement.
Lu shook her head, but her brows pinched. “We should go.”
She stood and Vex stepped in front of her, rage shooting through him.
“Your Council isn’t as holy as you think they are,” he snapped. “If raiders did abduct the Argridian, you’d better believe they had damn good reasons for it. They’re shunned from society because your precious Council refuses to help them. You remember Pilkvist shouting about the Council stealing money? Well, they are. They may not think they did, but the Council ripped away the main source of income from the syndicates when they started Mainland trade. And instead of helping the syndicates fill in that gap, the Council blames them for suffering. I hope raiders did abduct that dumbass Argridian to shed light on the Council’s many, many flaws.”
“By starting the war again?” Lu retorted, a biting whisper. “If this is truly raiders seeking attention for injustices, it proves that they have no love for Grace Loray. They endanger our whole country, and they deny that the Council’s changes have helped other people on this island. Other law-abiding people. There are jobs now! Jobs in magic, in trade, in sailing. How can the syndicates be so upset as to go to war?”
“None of those jobs went to raiders,” Vex said. “None of the Council’s support helps anyone too poor to even know where to start. Not that I’m a huge proponent of the syndicates—they definitely have their flaws, too—but they aren’t wholly bad. And the Council isn’t wholly good.”
Lu opened her mouth but stopped. Her pause showed confusion on her face. Like maybe he was right.
“If none of this had happened,” Vex continued, “if that Argridian was still in New Deza sipping tea and eating fruit tarts, would you have given a thought to raiders?”
Lu’s face slackened.
“Honestly,” she breathed, “no.”
She left before he could respond.
Vines lashed at Lu’s face as she shot into the jungle.
She had expected the Council to increase security in response to Milo’s abduction, as she had told Vex. And it wasn’t unusual that the soldiers would target raiders—they were the criminals on Grace Loray, and going after them would appease the Argridians.
The reason Lu didn’t think that raiders had abducted Milo was that she distrusted Argrid more. But if she hadn’t, she felt the seed of what her assumption would have been—the same seed that had let her dismiss the boat at the falls.
Could Lu afford to weigh ethical arguments with war looming? She hadn’t considered morality during the revolution. She had taken definitive action at her parents’ behest.
Lu looked back at the docking station, where soldiers still searched the Tuncian boat, its possessions spread across the walkway along the riverbank, the crew bound and silent.
What was she fighting for? Lu was trying to find Milo to discredit Argrid, but she was trying to show raiders that the Council could protect them, too. That was what she wanted, what she had to believe the Council wanted—for the raiders to stop carrying on with their own syndicate governings. For them to submit to Council rule.
But she had never asked herself why the syndicates were so opposed to the Council. They were criminals; they were stubbornly set in their ways; they warred with change—the reasons had been varied and flippant. Nothing true, though. Nothing concrete.
Nothing like what Vex had said, that there were gaps in the Council’s rule that the syndicates made up for.
Lu hated herself, suddenly, brightly. She was better than this. She was better than assumptions and prejudice.
Such things felt too much like Argrid.
The cliff eventually sputtered into flatlands, but it would take hours to reach them. The quickest route lay where Lu came to a wobbling stop: at the edge of the cliff, looking down into a jungle so thick and dark that she couldn’t see the ground. It would be like jumping into . . . nothing.
Vex stopped beside her, Nayeli with them again.
“Don’t use the Aerated Blossom until you get as close to the ground as possible,” Lu said, glad to have this simple task to refocus her. She had attached each of their Blossoms to a string around their wrists. Inhale through the hole at the bottom, she told herself. The gases within will let you levitate for a span equal to the time of inhalation.
Nayeli grinned, her teeth a slice of white in the darkness. Behind her, the lanterns of the lift base glowed, distant enough that it was a blur of yellow. No one would see them.
No one would know if they crashed to the ground, their bodies breaking on impact.
Vex seemed to be thinking that exact thing. He readied the Blossom in his hand, rolling his shoulders back, stretching his neck. “All right. All right. We can do this. We can—”
“Of course we can,” Nayeli said, turning to Vex. Her foot hit the edge of the cliff. “Don’t you worry, we’ll be—”
She tripped, flailed, and fell into the darkness.
Vex teetered next to her. “Shit!”
But Nayeli’s manic giggles flew up to them before the shadows swallowed her.
“I hope she hits a tree,” Vex whined. But he watched the darkness, one ear tipped, waiting to hear either a shout of pain or the crack of bones. But there was nothing.
Vex exhaled, but the tension in his stance didn’t ease.
“I find it hard to believe that the infamous Devereux Bell is afraid of heights,” Lu said.
Vex snapped a look at her. “If you tell anyone, I’ll
—”
“You’ll do what to me, Vex?” Lu made her voice sultry and pressed closer, trying to distract him like she had in the dungeon and on the dock.
His eye narrowed when he realized what she was doing.
“I think I hate you.”
“Not without reason,” Lu replied, and shoved him.
Vex sank into the air with a curse. Lu gathered her strength and jumped after him.
The night wind slapped at her as she fell, coaxing tears from her eyes. Her stomach lurched into her neck, bounced into her toes, the air tugging her body into shapes she didn’t know it could make. Her heart thundered with adrenaline, and all else faded until there was just the roaring of the falls and the softness of the wind and her body, floating, hovering, unwinding.
She had always loved traveling this way as a child. She’d used avoiding the Argridian soldiers stationed at the lift as an excuse to dive right into the emptiness, and as she fell now, she imagined the broken parts of her lifting into the sky. She imagined coming back together, the best pieces, renewal and rebirth.
Branches scratched her cheeks. Vines snapped under her weight. As the ground came up in a rush, Lu put the Aerated Blossom against her lips and inhaled. The gases filled her lungs, tasting of grime and brackish river water. Her body jerked to a stop so close to the ground that she could reach out and place her palm flat to it.
The gases evaporated and Lu fell to her hands and knees—Blossoms were one of the few plants Lu used, for that reason. They didn’t linger.
Someone grabbed her shoulders and yanked her to her feet.
“Why the hell did you wait that long to use the Blossom?” Vex shouted. Here, the falls’ noise was deafening.
“You—you were worried for me?”
“Yeah, I—”
Lu’s brows rose. Vex appeared to notice his words at the same time she did.
His mouth slanted. “You still owe me any botanical elixir I want.”
Nayeli stood nearby, tapping her foot. “Come on—I don’t like it here.” She turned for the Schilly, where they planned to reunite with the Meander.