“Fatemah,” Lu guessed.
Fatemah lifted an eyebrow. “And you are?”
How best to introduce herself? Lu straightened. “A . . . representative of the Council.”
Fatemah glowered. She said something in Thuti. Vex responded. Fatemah frowned, said something back to him, and Vex batted his hand at Lu and replied again.
“I’m right here,” Lu said. “I already know you speak the Grace Loray dialect.”
Fatemah frowned at Lu. “There are five languages spoken in Tuncay,” she snapped. “How many can you name? I speak the Grace Loray dialect for the same reason all Tuncians do here—because we have no other choice.”
Lu slid back a step. “I’m sorry” was all she managed. “I’m sorry I—”
“We do not want the Council’s sympathy. Why did you come?” She scowled at Vex. “Why did you bring her here?”
“We need your help,” he told Fatemah. “An Argridian diplomat’s gone missing. We thought you might be able to hear what happened to him, or his location, or—”
Fatemah pivoted, cutting Lu out of the conversation. But based on the furious pitch in Fatemah’s voice and the harsh flush of red to her golden-brown skin, Lu found she was all right with not being the woman’s focus. Cansu was nowhere to be seen—if she had heard Vex, likely they’d have two angry people to fend off. But finding Milo would help them by stopping the tensions with Council soldiers. Things would get better.
As Lu stayed next to Vex and Fatemah, with the crowd’s disdainful eyes on her, she felt more and more like an intruder. Would uncovering Milo’s plot and having Vex bring him back to the Council fix the wrongs that made this raider sanctuary necessary?
“Can you assist us or not?” Lu interrupted, panicked about the slow, methodical unwinding of the plan that she had put her faith in.
Fatemah rounded on her. Despite the woman’s short stature, she seemed to tower over Lu. “You have no idea what you have risked coming here.”
“I do,” Lu tried. “If you do not help me find General Ibarra, the Argridians will push the Council to blame raiders for his disappearance.”
“The Council has already blamed raiders for his disappearance.” Fatemah pointed out people as she mentioned them. “Soldiers who were raiding tenement buildings forced those people from their homes. The people there? Soldiers confiscated their boats while looking for the missing Argridian. More are here because this syndicate no longer has the resources to employ them, thanks to the Council’s seizing of the Tuncian Mainland trade. The Council is the reason for this place as much as Argrid once was—whatever you think to change by finding that Argridian general, it will not help. You do not understand the problems here. None of the Council does.”
Lu faltered, struck breathless as she looked at wide-eyed children and their somber parents. She remembered the soldiers at the falls, and the Grace Lorayans in the streets of Port Mesi-Teab.
“We do not fear the Council,” Fatemah said. “We lived through Argrid’s oppression. We lived through five years of the Council telling us to either conform or become destitute. The Council would not have won the war without us. Tuncay worships the God of Chaos and the God of Death, as well as those of Rebirth and of Life. We do not fear—”
Nayeli shoved out of the crowd. “How long are you going to pretend this is working?”
Fatemah responded, but in Thuti, the brush of her hand signifying that she was trying to ignore Nayeli’s question.
“What should we do?” Cansu appeared now. The look on her face was a mirror of Fatemah’s, but closer to grief than fury. “Become Grace Lorayan? It’s not as easy for everyone to abandon their culture as it is for you.”
“I didn’t abandon anything,” Nayeli spat. “This isn’t Tuncay. We aren’t Tuncian. We don’t owe allegiance to the empress, and we’ve never even seen Tuncay’s deserts or its mountains. I can’t keep living in between.” She spun on Lu. “Tuncians started this sanctuary to protect the people Argrid tried to imprison up at Fort Chastity. They’d even smuggle some people out”—she motioned at the looming wall—“to safe houses away from the port.”
Cansu hissed for silence, but Nayeli kept talking.
“They should’ve shut it down when the war ended, but they still let Tuncians live here—new immigrants, and families who’ve been here forever too. Gods, it’s crazy, right? They’re so damn proud that they’d rather be here in squalor, but still call themselves Tuncians, than have a better life and be Grace Lorayan.”
Cansu wilted. “You’re as bad as the Council for thinking it’s that simple.”
Fatemah stated something in Thuti. Nayeli, for the first time, responded in Thuti, but she dropped her eyes to the ground.
Fatemah reached into her collar and freed a necklace made of stones. They clinked as she worked one loose and tossed it at Nayeli’s feet.
“We will help,” Fatemah said. “Then you will leave. Don’t return. Not anymore.”
She left, Cansu and the crowd trailing after her. Nayeli’s eyes stayed rooted on the stone.
“Thanks, Nay,” Vex said.
She looked up. “Please. Fatemah’s predictable. And Cansu? Wave a busty woman in front of her, and she’s a goner. It doesn’t take much to get them to comply.”
Her words were light, but her face was hard. She bent to snatch the stone, and Lu saw a symbol she didn’t recognize carved into the surface.
“What does that mean?” Lu asked.
“She’s my aunt.” Nayeli sniffed. “Rocks have special meaning in Tuncay—you take one from near the home of someone you love and carve this word on it. It says family.”
Nayeli let it fall out of her hand before she lifted her eyes from Lu to Vex.
“What are you idiots still doing here? Don’t let them change their minds.”
Before they could say more, Nayeli riffled her hands through her hair and strode down one of the dirt paths.
Lu gawked after her, but Vex cleared his throat.
“This happens every time we visit. Though there’s usually more bloodshed.”
He started in the opposite direction. Lu followed—after swiping up the stone.
Would Kari have had stones like this if the war hadn’t interrupted their lives? Would Lu, if she hadn’t been so determined to be Grace Lorayan?
The stone should have felt brittle, a rock beaten by river currents.
Lu slid it into her pocket and hurried after Vex.
16
BEN SAT AT the desk in his front room, crouched over parchment and quill. He wrote until his vision swam and his candle burned low and every muscle in his back cried out for reprieve.
Of the more than fifty varieties of botanical magic native to Grace Loray, Inquisitors found that four were pure enough to use to heal people.
A tray of garlic fish and tomatoes slid onto the desk. “Eat,” Jakes prodded.
Ben didn’t look up, wringing his brain dry to extract every drop of magic knowledge.
Several texts from Grace Loray claim there are more, but some, like Drooping Fern, have proven too dangerous to use, as their effects inflict harm or encourage the sins of overindulging and intoxication.
The holy ones are: Cleanse Root, Healica, Powersage, and Alova Pipe.
Jakes planted his hands on the tabletop, jolting the candle flame.
“Tell me what you need,” he whispered. “Let me help you. Let me in.”
Ben closed his eyes. He needed supplies. He needed a new laboratory. Could he still use the Mecht’s aid money? He needed plants, too, but he doubted his father would provide more.
But he needed this now. Before Elazar swept in and withdrew his orders. Before Ben lost his feeble grip on change and defensors led him to a pyre the same way he had been living all these years: alone and afraid.
Though—that wasn’t true. He hadn’t been alone.
Jakes’s breathing was calm and rhythmic.
Ben kept writing, forcing himself to remember everything Rodrigu had once
taught him.
Healica and Alova Pipe used together cured boils. The result was instant when applied to the skin in a paste and imbibed in a liquefied tonic.
Powersage and Healica cured influenza—again applied in both a paste and a tonic, but healing came after two days of repetition.
Jakes grabbed Ben’s hand and lifted the quill. Ben rose with it.
“This is what I am.” Ben spoke so Jakes couldn’t. “A servant of the Pious God, doing the bidding of our Eminence.” Until he decides what I am doing is sin. Until he reveals his true motive, and it was to get me on a pyre all along.
“I know,” Jakes said. “You walk around as though the fate of your people’s souls hangs on your actions. It is one of the things that made me fall in love with you—you care, in a way few people in Argrid still do. In the way my family did.” Jakes’s smile was lopsided. “When I see your devotion, I hear my sister’s voice, speaking of honor and loyalty to Argrid. You will, one day, be the king Argrid needs. Grace Benat.”
Jakes smiled, expecting Ben to be honored. But Ben’s heart squeezed.
Would you love me if you knew what I believe?
The question sent him buckling back into the chair. When it came down to Elazar’s will or Ben’s, which side would Jakes choose? The side of the Pious God—or the side of a heretic?
Ben crouched over, bile crawling up the back of his throat. If he lost everything to create this tonic and show Argrid that magic could be good, he would make the best goddamn healing tonic the world had seen. It would cure everything, even Shaking Sickness, like Elazar wanted.
Where to start, though? Ben hadn’t gotten further than breaking down a few plants before the fire three days ago. How to combine them into a healing tonic? How to test it?
The ink on the parchment blurred and the words melted and all he saw were flames spreading out from the candle, taking over his world.
Ben jolted as though he’d been burned. He was an idiot. The Mecht warrior. The one his Inquisitor patrol had caught along with the raider crew. He had spared the man’s life because he knew things about botanical magic that no one in Argrid did, yet Ben had made no move to interact with him.
Ben shoved himself to his feet and took determined steps around his desk.
Jakes intercepted him. “Where are you going?”
Ben stopped, feigning nonchalance. “Grace Neus.”
“Now? Are you—”
“I don’t need your help,” Ben told him. Begged him.
Stay here. Don’t see what I must do. Don’t see this side of me. Please, please—
“No, it’s fine. I’ll ready a carriage,” Jakes said, and disappeared.
Ben sank to the edge of the desk. Jakes would follow him into the holding cells. Anything he said to the Mecht, Jakes would hear.
But Elazar had not yet told him to stop working on the potion. He had to do so with caution—before he lost more than he could bear.
Grace Neus Cathedral never closed—the Pious God always welcomed children who needed guidance. When Ben entered, he wasn’t surprised to see wayward souls huddled in the pews, monxes and a priest lighting candles for the Graces.
Ben hurried up the side, making his way to the door at the front of the cathedral, one he’d gone through with his Inquisitor patrol dozens of times. The door led to a staircase, guiding Ben and Jakes down to an intersection of halls lined with barred cells.
Here, the color of the cathedral met its opposite. The walls, floor, and ceiling were dark gray stone, with sconces providing intermittent light. During services, this floor echoed with the crooning of the monxa choir and the Eminence’s sermons, an intentional design to let any present here listen, meditate, and repent.
“You shouldn’t be—” a monxe started to say, coming out of a supply room on their left. His eyes widened when he recognized Ben. “My prince. What can I do for you?”
“I pardoned a Mecht raider,” he said. “I need to speak to him.”
Behind Ben, Jakes straightened, but he stayed silent.
The monxe’s shoulders hardened. “Yes. Follow me.”
He started off. Most cells they passed were occupied, and Ben recognized the aristocrats from the gathering yesterday. They either slept on cots or knelt before the carving that decorated the back of each cell—the Church’s cupped hands.
The monxe made another turn and stopped before a cell near the end of the hall.
The hangover Ben had had and the chaos of that Inquisitor patrol blurred his memories of the raider. All he remembered was the sun high in the sky, and in the man’s blond hair.
When Ben looked inside the cell, he let out an audible groan.
The Mecht wore the same clothing Ben had caught him in, stained now. He stooped on his knees, his arms tied at the base of his spine to chains that snaked up the walls, his head drooped, hair matted. He grunted as though it took physical effort to hold himself upright.
“The prince wishes to have a word with you,” the monxe informed the raider as he unlocked the cell. “The Pious God watches your every move.”
The Mecht snorted, but the noise was hard to catch. He lifted his head, and Ben saw why: monxes had fastened an iron mask over his mouth and nose.
Ben had seen raiders confined, the more reactive ones restrained. But this one wasn’t even allowed to breathe freely.
It was Ben’s fault the man was chained like this. His fault that the Mecht had been transformed from a sun to a flickering candle flame.
“He’s safe,” the monxe told Ben. “This is to remind him of the restraint he must show as a child of the Pious God.”
“Leave us,” Ben rasped. The monxe bowed and left. Without him, it was quiet, and Jakes stayed so silent that Ben looked at him to make sure he was still there.
Jakes’s attention was on a cell across the way, where a man lay on a tattered pallet. His body shook, tremors that made his limbs twitch, but otherwise, he appeared unconscious.
Shaking Sickness.
“Are you sure you wish to be down here?” Jakes asked, his voice brittle. “How will this help you make the tonic?”
In response, Ben entered the Mecht’s cell. The man’s eyes narrowed in either a glare or a squint—it was hard to tell.
“Can you speak?” Ben asked. “Have you recanted?”
The look he gave Ben was now definitely a glare. The fury in his bloodshot eyes was so strong, the blue depths darkened.
“I’ll take that as a no,” Ben said. He lowered himself to the floor, level with the Mecht. Pious God above, Ben had forgotten how big the man was, his size intimidating even while restrained.
The Mecht jolted at Ben’s movement, his shirt shifting across his chest. Light from tapers in the hall caught briefly on his sternum, showing red welts that made Ben lean closer.
“What happened?” Ben dared to grab the edge of the Mecht’s shirt. Their close proximity made him flush with the heat that radiated out of the man’s skin. “Did the monxes do this? If they’re—”
“Your people cannot hurt me,” the Mecht said. “In the Mechtlands, we are taught to worship Visjorn: bear spirit, rampaging and brutal, eternally hungry. I do not fear your petty god of words and obedience.”
Ben froze, his fingers pinching the Mecht’s shirt. The Mecht’s words and the scar on his chest were what stopped him: four swirling lines branched out of a circle. It looked like a brand, but the lines were jagged and unsteady, as if someone had painted the wound on by hand.
“It’s an emblem,” Ben said. His eyes lifted to the Mecht’s. “A clan mark, I’d guess.”
The Mecht didn’t respond, but his words and attitude gave Ben hope.
“There are things I want to know.” Ben released his shirt. “The Eye of the Sun is—”
A deep chuckle resonated against the Mecht’s mask. When he spoke, it was in a language Ben didn’t understand, one of the dozens of tongues of the Mechtlands.
“Excuse me?” Ben pressed.
“I say Argridian
prince is . . .” The Mecht paused, the corners of his eyes wrinkling. “Argridian prince is . . . like dumb, only worse. Only you do not know you are.”
“I’m not asking you to tell me your secrets,” Ben assured him. “I want . . .”
What did he want?
The Mecht shrugged his torn shirt up his shoulder, covering his mark as best he could. The temperature of the cell ramped higher and sweat trickled down Ben’s spine.
“Your magic is permanent,” Ben whispered.
The Mecht tipped his head in confusion.
Ben risked a glance back. Jakes’s focus was on the sick man across the hall. For a moment, they had privacy.
“I don’t care about Eye of the Sun itself,” Ben whispered. “What I care about is that it’s permanent. There aren’t any other plants with effects that last that long. How did you do it?”
“They do not give Eye of the Sun to those who will talk,” the Mecht countered, and Ben got the impression that his lips were sealed as unbreakably as his iron muzzle.
“How many of your people have died in Argrid?” Ben asked. The Mecht looked away. “All because this country fears magic so much they’d rather kill those who use it than understand it. I can make them understand. But I need you to help me.”
The Mecht didn’t look at him. Ben tried another tactic.
“It can’t be any of the traditional methods. Not a paste, a tonic. Not inhaled.”
The Mecht didn’t react. Ben’s eyes fell to the parts of the mark he could see. It almost looked like a burn Ben had received at a feast as a child. Melted sugar had sat in a pot for people to dip fruit into, and when he’d gotten some, a strand of the molten liquid had squirmed across his arm. For days after, he’d had a nasty red mark on his skin, like the Mecht’s scar.
“A syrup?” Ben said aloud. Thicker than a tonic, more condensed.
The Mecht looked up, his eyes unreadable.
Rodrigu had dissolved Healica pods in boiling water, and other plants were dissolved to make tonics, but Ben had never heard of a plant reduced beyond that stage. And he had seen an Eye of the Sun flower once, in a shipment long ago—it had no buds for nectar, no part of it that contained a naturally occurring syrup.