Lu shoved onto her hands and hurled her body at the railing with enough momentum that she started to go overboard, but the Mecht’s crocodile barred her escape—it snapped up against the boat, water spurting from the river, bloodied teeth flashing at her head.
Lu dropped backward, her mangled leg tearing on a crate next to the railing.
She was unconscious before she hit the deck.
Vex and his crew didn’t find Lu or Teo in the sanctuary, and none of the Tuncians had seen them. Which left the surrounding city. Or the jungle.
So, anywhere.
Vex wanted nothing more than to keep stomping around the sanctuary’s streets like a madman, but he made himself stop. He needed to think like Lu. Where would a politician-assassin-botanical-magic-expert go when she thought she’d been betrayed?
Well, thought wasn’t the right word.
He’d known from the beginning that she’d be pissed when she found out he had Argridian connections. But damn the Pious God above, he hadn’t kidnapped Milo Ibarra, and he’d been running away from Argrid when he’d ended up in jail, which he’d have told her if she’d stayed instead of racing off. Stubborn, infuriating—
Wait. Was it so terrible that she was gone? He didn’t need her. He could do what Nayeli’d suggested—find his Argridian contacts, see if Argrid had some plot afoot to retake Grace Loray and if he could stop it.
But Lu’s payment tempted him. Taunted him. Any magic concoction he wanted.
A shiver vibrated up Vex’s spine. Unable to come up with any brilliant revelations about where Lu had gone, he shouted at the ground. Which wasn’t helpful and didn’t make him feel better.
Movement came at him from two directions—his crew emerging from a path beside him, and a shadow in front of him that he whipped his head toward.
A door opened in one of the tenement buildings. Cansu shot out, dragging something—someone?—behind her. The look on her face was so wrong that Vex had to blink twice.
Regret?
“What the—” Vex’s attention shifted behind her. Teo.
Lu wasn’t with them. Didn’t come stumbling out after them.
Nayeli and Edda joined him. Vex was pretty damn sure his chest was about to combust.
“Found him sitting by the door,” Cansu explained, depositing Teo in front of them.
“Where’s Lu?” Teo asked, hands in fists. “I heard her—I think I heard her—”
He eyed Cansu, wary. Afraid.
“What did you do?” Nayeli rose to the offense. Edda went to Teo and picked him up, and Teo seemed to relax, though he didn’t look away from Cansu.
“I caught her running,” Cansu snapped. “She was gonna turn on us. I . . . might have attacked her.” Her words got less aggressive. “Some Mechts showed up. Looking for you, Vex.”
Vex curled his hands into fists, mimicking Teo.
“They caught her but didn’t see me.” Cansu rubbed a hand through her hair. She wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes. “They had a croc and let it get hold of her leg. Thought she’d tell ’em everything, where to find you, so I was ready to raise all kinds of hell.” Cansu finally looked up. “But she didn’t say a damn thing. They took her anyway.”
Vex felt a hundred different things, every one of them brand-new.
Lu might have left out of fear of his betrayal, but she wasn’t vindictive. He might be able to convince her that he wasn’t the heartless criminal she thought he was.
But for years, he had been heartless. Ignoring injustices. Living only for himself.
Vex cared suddenly that Lu knew he was a good person. That she didn’t hate him.
With that need, or maybe because of it, he was overcome with mind-numbing fury.
Vex pointed at Cansu. “You’re going to help us.”
She balked. “Excuse me?”
“Look, this is partly your fault too, all right? Lu wouldn’t have run if you hadn’t threatened war.” Well, she likely would’ve run when she found out about Vex’s Argridian involvement, but still. “You think you can make Grace Loray a lawless island of syndicates? Argrid’ll be burning people again so fast. That’s why they got a hold last time—because no one syndicate is enough to stop them. Lu was right. There’s another way.”
Cansu folded her arms, livid, but controlled. “What way is that?”
“Rescue Lu. Find Ibarra, like she wanted.” Vex was shaking—he’d never felt this before. Something like valiant. “Take ’em both back to the Council and sort out this whole mess. Peacefully. The Council will have to recognize you as separate from the Mecht syndicate if you return Ibarra, and they’ll be willing to listen. You don’t want war, Cansu. No one does.”
“Peace is always better,” Edda added. Of all his crew, Vex was glad she’d spoken up—it was impossible to argue with her when she felt strongly about something. “War may sound like a noble cause, but watching your family get slaughtered ain’t noble. Better to wound your ego with compromise than feed your own pride with blood.”
Cansu’s nose twitched. She looked close to agreeing, so Vex didn’t let her think long. He looked at Nayeli, who nodded, and they made for the nearest shack to start planning how to get Lu back. Edda fell in beside him with Teo.
The Mechts were still looking for Vex. If they were Argridian lackeys now, they were probably hunting anyone trying to escape Argrid’s service. It wouldn’t have been hard for them to hear about Lu being on his crew and take her to draw him out.
Oh, it’d draw him out, all right. If he’d needed a push to commit to taking a stand against Argrid and the hell they unleashed, this was it.
No one fucked with his crew. No one.
20
THE DAY AFTER visiting the Mecht in Grace Neus Cathedral, Ben was in a stupor.
On the edge of his awareness, he felt Jakes move around his apartments. Sometimes he heard silence; sometimes Jakes’s distant, exhausted voice. Ben knew nothing but the plants on his desk, the notes in his ledgers, the mortars and pestles and possibility.
He had plants from the chest he’d salvaged from the University—not many, but enough. He was, surprisingly, able to access aid money from the Mechts, which let him have what he needed.
Still Elazar did not come to stop him.
Ben lit a candle under an iron bowl and saw the Mecht’s blue eyes, churning like the sea. He ground up Healica and Alova Pipe and saw the Mecht doubled over on the floor, fighting for consciousness.
Ben would one day rule a country that captured people and called their resistance evil. A country that had never needed a strong military because faith fostered obedience in each Argridian, in their soul and their being. And when people resisted, the Church killed them.
He put the pestle to the Cleanse Root and broke it down.
A lifetime later, he fell into the chair at his desk. Soot and sweat stained the rolled edges of his sleeves as he steepled his fingers against his lips and stared at the glass jar perched on the edge of his desk.
Healica. Alova Pipe. Cleanse Root. The three healing plants he’d had in that chest. He’d followed the methods Rodrigu had taught him but taken them further, grinding and dissolving and cooking so all that remained was the essence of the plants’ magic.
Ben felt as though he’d look up and see Paxben leaning over his desk, offering comments or turning to ask his father a question. And Rodrigu would slap Ben on the shoulder and say how such ingenuity was the sort of thinking that the Inquisitors valued.
He’d done it. Maybe. Whatever he had, there was enough to test on one person, two if he limited the doses to sips.
Ben leaned back in his chair, his hope venting on further complications. How would he test it? He had no true allies. Some of Rodrigu’s contacts might be alive, but how would Ben find them if they’d evaded the Church this long?
No—Ben had to do this on his own. If he went back to the holding cells under Grace Neus, he could test the potion on that man he’d seen with Shaking Sickness. It wouldn’t hurt him—at worst, it
just wouldn’t work. Best case, it’d cure him, and Ben could go around Argrid, giving ill people permanent health, explaining as he went that it was because of magic, not the Pious God.
He stood, stoppering the glass jar, and was halfway to the door when Jakes opened it.
Tension had been coiled around Ben and Jakes since the moment in the cathedral’s stairwell. The feeling was palpable now when Jakes saw the jar in Ben’s hand.
“You finished it? A healing potion?”
Ben’s body went numb. “I need to test it,” he said, a truth, finally. “Though I’m not sure—”
Something in Jakes’s expression changed. A crack formed.
“I know how you can make this work,” Jakes whispered. “I know who you need to heal.”
“What?”
“Trust me.” He smiled. Ben agreed without question, swept up by the joy on Jakes’s face, by the hope in the jar in his hand.
This was it. The beginning he’d waited for. The start of a new, stronger Argrid.
If Jakes saw what he could do, maybe they could change Argrid side by side.
The two of them raced outside into the still-breaking dawn. Ben had spent a full day ensconced in his room. He had barely felt the time pass—and he was so caught up in rethinking his development of the tonic that he didn’t realize where they were going until their carriage stopped.
He stared up at the tall gray building. “Grace Neus?”
“Trust me,” Jakes said again, opened the door, and leaped out.
Ben followed. The cathedral was busier now, monxes and monxas fluttering around, cleaning. More visitors sat in the pews, conversations filling the air.
Jakes led him up the side aisle, toward the staircase they had gone down one night ago. This was where Ben had intended to go to test his potion. Why would Jakes bring him here, too? He could have remembered the Shaking Sickness prisoner as Ben had.
But why did Ben’s stomach twist?
On the lower floor, Jakes shot forward. They walked past cells with people on their knees, others thrashing and weeping on their cots. Monxes stood in one cell, praying over someone who screamed their innocence.
The injustices had been easier to ignore at night.
They reached the Mecht’s cell. True to Ben’s command, the monxes had unchained and unmuzzled him, and he was now sprawled on the floor with his back to the wall. He didn’t stir at their passing, his eyes closed.
Ben touched the jar at his hip and left a silent promise at his cell that it would be over soon. No more pain. No more ignorance. Only understanding.
The Shaking Sickness patient thrashed in the cell across from the Mecht’s. Outside, a man stood, watching the prisoner writhe.
Ben’s brain tripped when he saw the man, but Jakes walked forward, beaming as though he’d expected this visitor to be here.
Ben shook his head. He couldn’t comprehend what was happening.
Elazar, in Grace Neus Cathedral’s holding cells. Elazar, smiling.
And Jakes, saying, “He’s done. The prince is ready to join our holy crusade, Eminence.”
21
LU AWOKE TO the odor of vomit and mold. A moment after that, her other senses came to, muscles stretching and throbbing. Relief swept over her—she could still feel her body, which meant the Mecht raiders had not used Lazonade, as they had threatened.
Her gratitude evaporated when the wound on her leg screamed with pain.
She bolted upright with a hiss. At some point in her delirium, she’d been given a strip of stained fabric to stop the bleeding, but it surely had doubled her risk of infection. Though being in the cargo hold of a ship where cleanliness was an afterthought had guaranteed one.
Lu left a hand on her knee, as close as she dared get to the teeth marks for now, and surveyed the room. Ropes tied boxes and barrels to the walls, and a single iron door led, presumably, to the rest of the lower deck. The Mechts had taken her weapons, and from the shouts of activity abovedecks and the vibrations in the floor, she knew they were moving.
But Teo is safe. He could have run back to the sanctuary—or Cansu could have him.
Lu swallowed and steeled herself. Fear for Teo would do nothing but hinder her. He was smart—and Cansu couldn’t be heartless enough to harm a child. He would be fine, and Lu would break out of this ship and be back with him by nightfall.
But . . . should she escape? She was in the custody of the raider syndicate that had taken Milo—whether to protest the Council’s unfair treatment or because Argrid had convinced them to stage the abduction. If Lu stayed, she could find out if Argrid had masterminded this to weaken Grace Loray or if the Mechts were stoking only a civil war.
Appalling that Lu even thought the phrase only a civil war.
Vex was a factor now, though. Vex, whose motives were a mystery, and who had lied from the beginning. If Vex was a pawn of Argrid’s and he decided Lu’s actions didn’t work in his favor, Teo could become a hostage.
Lu couldn’t tell if her reasoning was rational or if it came from the terrified place in her chest that refused to be at anyone’s mercy. This situation had spiraled so far out of her control that if she thought too long about it, she found it impossible to breathe.
Return to the sanctuary. Get Teo. Then take the information I’ve gathered and let my parents form a plan.
Lu grabbed the nearest crate and shoved herself upward, standing on her uninjured leg. Dizziness rocked her, but she hobbled a step and opened the first crate.
“I’ve gotten out of worse situations than this. Like the fourth mission I went on—the one in Port Fausta,” she said, talking to combat the agony. Inside the crate, dozens of wrapped bundles sat like treats at the bakery where she’d bought pastries for Annalisa and Teo. “That one was bad. Every person in that tavern was an Argridian soldier.”
Lu lifted a package and unraveled it. Rations, dried meat. She returned the lid and moved to the next crate. Clean bandages, or at least clean fabric. She took one and bent to rewrap her leg, her vision spiraling as she peeled the old bandage out of the deep, maroon-black wounds.
“One little girl was out of place in that tavern.” Lu steadied herself on a breath. “I escaped by sliding out of that garbage shoot. It was the first time I got shot.”
Lu teetered, landed on her injured leg, and nausea ripped through her, a gray veil flickering over her eyes.
“I think I’d rather be shot,” she hissed, and tore open the next crate.
Inside lay vials of plants. Lu grabbed one, her body going numb in a swell of hope. A healing plant? She shook the vial, eyeing the green leaves. Bright Mint?
That the Mechts had Bright Mint, known for its ability to increase mental alertness, was not unusual; they could have purchased it at any market. More unsettling was the fact that the entire crate contained vials of it, a plant found in northern Lake Regolith—not the Mecht syndicate’s territory. They could have traded for it, but what would the Mechts need with so much Bright Mint? It wasn’t particularly lucrative on any market.
Lu hobbled to the next crate, finding rows of bundled Narcotium Creeper. Ah, now this could be useful. She could find the boat’s wine or water supply, clean her leg as well as she could, and dump in the Narcotium Creeper. In high concentration, its juices caused hallucinations, and in smaller doses induced relaxation. Either way, it would be a matter of waiting for the crew to drink and letting the plant take effect so she could escape.
But the captain had been chewing on Narcotium Creeper, as the Mechts were well known for—no doubt most of the crew had the same addiction and tolerance. Lu would have to put a great many leaves into the water supply to make any difference. But what other option did she have?
Lu grabbed bundles of Narcotium Creeper and surveyed the room. Three barrels sat in the front corner, but as Lu moved, the ship lurched, grinding to a halt. She dropped, landing on her forearms while her mangled leg smashed into the floor. Sparks of pain shot up her body.
Abovedecks, feet s
tomped, the thundering of more raiders than had been on the boat earlier.
Lu clawed across the floor and up the barrels. She shoved her fingers under the lid of one, splinters breaking off in her nails as footsteps descended the ladder.
It was like the tavern in Port Fausta all over again. Only this time, the hatch that had released her into the night would not prove so helpful.
The door opened. Lu dropped, hanging limp off the closed barrel, the Narcotium Creeper falling unused to the floor.
In the doorway stood Ingvar Pilkvist. His chest was bare beneath a crocodile-skin vest, pistols strapped across his torso, a machete at his waist. Wooden toggles swung in his long white hair, and his blue eyes might have been kind if not for the way he watched her, hands on his hips, lips peeled in a smile.
If the Head of the Mecht syndicate had taken it upon himself to come see her, this was as deadly as Lu had feared. And she had no other plan.
For now.
The Mecht raider syndicate had claimed the southern third of Grace Loray as their territory, so it followed that one of their bases would be deep in an area that even the legal magic extractors preferred not to visit: Backswamp.
The swamp ran the full length of Grace Loray’s southern shore, a waterlogged tangle of cypresses, willows, mangroves, and other trees that clawed their roots into the slimy waters. The branches formed a continuous roof that thickened the humidity, and the bloated rivers had congealed into one unbroken body. Crocodiles and snakes thicker than a man’s thigh glided between dilapidated bungalows owned by the most resilient residents, and darkness ruled, a world where the sun couldn’t reach.
Hours later, Lu and her captors arrived at their destination. Stilts held a building—if it could be called that—over the water, each leg straining under the wear of river sludge and the weight of the home. The walls, roof, and floor were planks of wood that had endured far too long in Backswamp’s soggy climate. The docks that floated around the bungalow drooped in the water, jostling under raiders as they unloaded their cargo. More bungalows stood beyond; one released fiddle music into the air, the other held stumbling, drunk raiders on a long deck. A community of outlaws.