The defensors looked at a loss. One stammered, “I—what happened, my prince?”
“The prisoner has chosen to recant.” Ben kicked the door open wider, revealing the Mecht, who had his arms folded, face pinched in a scowl.
Goddamn it, was Ben the only one who could play off a lie?
“Haven’t you chosen to recant?” Ben pressed him.
“This is madness!” Jakes croaked. “He tried to kill you, my prince.”
The title made Jakes remember himself. His face disintegrated into the expressions Ben hadn’t seen when he’d left Jakes on the forecastle deck: Hurt. Anger. Longing.
Ben ached anew—his father hadn’t made Jakes feel that pain.
“Defensor Rayen, take note.” The lack of emotion in Ben’s voice shocked even him. “My father will wish to know that I am ensuring the Pious God’s work is completed. My new assistant is eager to help fill the world with the purity that saved his soul.” He looked at the Mecht. “Tell the defensors—”
He didn’t know the Mecht’s name.
“Gunnar,” the Mecht filled in for him. “I, Gunnar Landvik, serve—” The muscles in his jaw swelled. “I serve the Pious God.”
27
THE VILLAGE WHERE Lu and Vex decided to dock the Meander could barely be called civilization, the waters of Backswamp liquefying the whole area. Every building teetered on stilts, people shuffling between them on sagging, moss-covered bridges. Unsteady docks bobbed under the weight of people in knitted cloaks or crocodile-skin vests, tethering their boats and unloading cargo over the mildew-infested waters.
The remoteness of the village made it easy to forget that in the bigger cities, Council soldiers were still arresting raiders, driven by the Argridian delegates demanding justice for Milo’s abduction. Grace Loray was already near civil war—so said the scouts Cansu sent out.
None of the Council knew that Argrid had caused this conflict and was coming to break Grace Loray when it was at its weakest.
Lu stared out the porthole of the Rapid Meander, Botanical Wonders open against her chest, teeth catching her cheek. In the vials she’d snatched from Pilkvist, she had ended up with two of Drooping Fern, one of Alova Pipe, and one of Cleanse Root. Drooping Fern would be useful if Vex had ingested Awacia. She couldn’t imagine the Church hadn’t given him that plant, to keep him awake. Alova Pipe was not, as far as she knew, a counter to any plant, and it had no use beyond being a skin protectant. Cleanse Root had many uses—if Vex had an actual disease.
Lu closed Botanical Wonders, her finger trailing over the bullet hole in the cover.
Two raps came from the door to the bunkroom. Lu opened it to find Vex, his hands cupped to hide something in his palms, one side of his mouth skewed up.
He broke apart his hands, revealing a vial.
“Bright Mint!” said Lu. “You found it!”
“Edda did.” He extended the vial and Lu took it, analyzing the segment of bushy green plant within. “The crew she’s on did a job to get some.”
Lu winced. “She’s all right? The Mechts haven’t recognized her?”
Vex let loose a rakish smile. “Give us more credit than that.”
Raiders lived for this, he’d said. Danger. Excitement. Generally causing mayhem.
One of Cansu’s raiders had left the night they’d made their plans, bound for New Deza and Kari with a letter Lu penned. A day later, five of Cansu’s raiders—who had a blend of Tuncian and Mecht in their ancestries, with fairer hair and lighter skin to pass as Mecht—and Edda had managed to get into various Mecht crews.
Once Kari read of the Mecht syndicate’s involvement with Argrid, Elazar’s planned magic abuse, and the Argridian armada’s approach, she would take action, and Lu would arrive in a few days to further press for help—hopefully with Milo Ibarra in tow.
With the pieces in motion, Cansu had returned to Port Mesi-Teab to listen for news of Argrid’s approach through the Budwig Beans that Fatemah had planted around the island. Vex had suggested staying in Backswamp, where their spies on the Mecht crews could run reports to them—one managed to sink three of Pilkvist’s boats and make it look like an accident; another had destroyed a half dozen crates of his plants—and Vex, using a Budwig Bean left by Cansu, relayed it all to Port Mesi-Teab.
Small progress, but enough? Doubtful—seeing as it was one week before Argrid would arrive, if Pilkvist’s two-week deadline was correct.
Lu pushed down her worry. She had to believe that her parents would come through. Her mother, Kari the Wave, one of the most feared leaders of the revolution, would find a way to use Lu’s information, and Tom was just as resourceful and wise.
But Lu had spent the past five years watching the Council argue over simple things. She wasn’t sure they would take her information as proof. Yet Cansu’s raider-spies on Pilkvist’s crews hadn’t found any news of Milo, no correspondence between Pilkvist and Argrid. There was nothing concrete to send to New Deza to supplement her letter.
Lu’s dread carved a permanent hole in her chest.
She moved around Vex now, heading for the engine room and the laboratory they had improvised with supplies gathered from the village. The heat of the room had become familiar, as calming to her as the book in her arms.
She busied herself with the beakers on the table beside the furnace as Vex dropped onto Edda’s cot.
He leaned against the wall with his arms folded behind his head. “I should’ve added a kid to my crew years ago. Haven’t had this many days of peace . . . ever.”
Lu cut him a threatening look. “Teo would be overjoyed to hear you say that.”
“It isn’t me you have to worry about. That kid’s got Nayeli completely under his spell. He already bewitched Edda, too. I think we might be stuck with him.”
Vex gestured to the deck, where Nayeli and Teo posed as a traveling brother and sister. Lu had to admit that this way, though it put Teo on display, had proven safest so far. No one in the secluded village had given them trouble.
Lu broke down the Bright Mint. She had already prepared the Drooping Fern—a bell jar filled with the knockout smoke waited in the middle of the table, the glass supported to keep it from falling over. Lu held her breath and, as fast as she could, slid a plate of Bright Mint paste into the Drooping Fern smoke.
The combination should result in slumber and enhanced mental function in a dream state, thanks to the Bright Mint, which might enable Vex’s mind to remember what the Church had poisoned him with.
After a few minutes, Lu slid the plate of Bright Mint paste back out, cradling it in her palms. Vex had crouched forward, elbows on his knees.
His focus leaped from the floor to her with a forced smile. “Ready?”
Lu didn’t approach him. Giving magic tonics to Annalisa had been easier, as she had had no fear of botanical magic. But Lu briefly imagined the situation in reverse, with herself seated on the cot and Vex readying to give her a concoction.
“We don’t have to do this,” Lu whispered.
The smallness of the engine room let Vex take her wrist without having to leave the cot, and he tugged her toward him, planting her between his knees.
“Yes, we do,” he said.
He didn’t let go of her wrist. His knees pressed on either side of her legs, and the closeness of him made Lu incapable of moving anyway.
She stared at him, his eye on the Drooping Fern–infused Bright Mint.
“Try to focus on what you want to know,” she said, her voice weak.
She realized what she was asking: that he relive what the Church had done. Her heart galloped, a cold sweat warring with the engine room’s heat.
This was madness. There had to be another less intrusive way.
But when she looked at Vex, he grinned.
“You’re cute when you’re worried,” he said.
The muscles in her shoulders relaxed. “You aren’t?”
“Cute? Always.”
“Worried.”
A shudder worked down the corded mu
scles in his neck, a flinch that he fought to cover by shaking his head. But he didn’t say anything. Maybe couldn’t.
Lu forced a smile despite her nerves. “Let’s recount. The fearsome Devereux Bell is afraid of heights, as well as—”
His eye brightened. “You were never supposed to talk about that.”
“I’m not the best at following orders.”
“You hide it so well.”
She used a spoon to gather the Bright Mint concoction and, as she spoke, pressed it to his lips. “I hide many things, Devereux.”
He ate the paste and lifted his eyebrow. “That sounds like a challenge.”
Only the slightest tremor told her he was afraid—or it might have been from Shaking Sickness.
She was noticing it in him more. A spasm here, a shiver there. Had he always exhibited signs of the illness, or was she more aware of his body now?
“Oh, not a challenge—a proposition.” Lu set the empty plate and spoon on the table behind her. “I make you a onetime offer to have me here and now.”
The Drooping Fern was taking effect. Vex swayed, caught himself with a hand on the cot.
“Unfair,” he groaned. “To make that offer to a man when he can’t act on it.”
“Ahh. There are plants that can fix problems of that sort.”
Vex lay on the cot, one arm thrown over his head, but he paused and cut her a narrow-eyed smirk. “No,” he murmured, his eye fluttering shut. “That would never be a problem. Not . . . not when you laugh . . . como unha canción.”
Like a song.
Lu’s lips opened, and in the stillness of the engine room, she heard herself make a soft, involuntary sigh. Had he intended to say something so sweet to her? Or was it the botanical magic whisking him away from reason and reality?
She repeated the words, a moment of indulgence—and realized he’d said that in proper Argridian.
He was there already, in his mind. In the Church’s holding cells.
The stark reality cut through the velvet around Lu’s heart. War was coming. Argrid was close. Who knew what the Council was doing? But of all the problems in Lu’s world, this one she could solve.
She slid her hand over Vex’s arm and started to hum, the song Teo always sang when he was afraid, the one Kari had sung after Annalisa died.
“Dirt and sand, all across the land; the currents are ours, you see. No god, no soldier, no emperor, no king, can take my current from me. Flow on, my friends, flow on with me; together we flow as one. No god, no soldier, no emperor, no king, can erode what we have done.”
Slowly, the memory tonic worked. Vex remembered Aerated Blossom after breakfast one morning, Croxy at sunset one night. He knew there were others, but Lu scratched up a list of the plants that would counter the ones he’d recalled, to get started on those. Vex whisked the list to Edda, who would continue to hunt for plants while she spied on Pilkvist’s crew.
There was no news of Milo Ibarra.
Vex knew he and Lu were starting to go mad. They couldn’t see the sun in Backswamp, but that didn’t stop them from counting the days. How close were they to Argrid’s arrival?
More than a week after they’d made their plans with Cansu, Lu, Vex, and Nayeli readied to go to New Deza. It was way longer than Vex had wanted to wait around in Backswamp before they went to Lu’s mom, but Edda kept pressing them to give her time—“Who knows what chaos will find you in New Deza? Remember, you’re a wanted criminal and Lu broke you out of prison.”
They couldn’t wait any longer. But Vex feared they had waited too long, and so the morning they decided to leave, it was too damn perfect that Nayeli flung herself down the Meander’s hatch.
“Edda just dropped this off.” Nayeli tossed Lu a vial of Powersage—it would combat the Aerated Blossom. “And she said to let you know that the crew she’s on has a trip scheduled for tonight.”
Vex splayed his hand on the tabletop next to Lu as she put the Powersage into boiling water. He whipped his head to Nayeli. “What? Tonight? Where?”
“They’re meeting a ship off the coast.”
“Tell me it’s one of their own.”
“If it was, would they need to meet up with it in the dark, with little warning?”
Vex wavered, relieved he could blame it on Shaking Sickness, not his desire to plunge the Meander into a forgotten corner of the island and leave all this behind.
They’d waited too long. All their hope hung on that letter Lu had sent to her mother, but had it been enough to convince the Council to do anything? If Vex hadn’t listened to Edda and had just gone to New Deza without her for protection, would Lu have been able to change anything?
Vex shared a look with Lu and almost said all his worries out loud—until he saw her face, gray with horror.
“Tonight?” She spun on Nayeli. “We’re supposed to have more time until—”
But she stopped. Pilkvist’s two-week timeline had been a stretch.
“All right.” Lu gathered herself, pulling up her unbreakable shield. Vex balked—how could she do that? He was ready to drop to his knees and scream his terror to the planks of his boat, and he knew she was just as afraid. “We must tell Cansu. Maybe Cansu’s raider reached my mother with the message, and she’s already sent support? Just because we haven’t heard anything or weren’t able to go doesn’t mean the Council won’t help.”
The Budwig Bean Vex had been using to communicate with Cansu sat on the table, and Nayeli snatched it. “I’ll tell her.” She slipped into the hall.
Lu leaned closer to Vex. Out of instinct or intent, he wasn’t sure, but he didn’t so much as breathe too harshly in case it would make her move away.
“I’m sure your mother has help coming,” he whispered. “If the Council is only a day or two away, we can scout the ships tonight and get information—find out how many ships, how many weapons. I doubt Argrid will attack the moment they land. Maybe the Council heard about the approaching ships through their own sources? They could already be moving on it themselves.”
“The Argridian diplomats will likely be filtering information. They could have kept the ships’ approach a secret,” Lu said. She dropped her gaze to the floor. Each day that passed without Cansu’s raider not returning from New Deza or Edda finding Ibarra intensified the worry line between her eyebrows.
Lu looked up. She blinked in surprise at how close Vex was—he could feel her shoulder against his chest, the rush of her exhale on his face.
She didn’t pull back. God, he wasn’t even touching her—one hand was flat on the table, the other in his pocket—but his blood thickened. Every time she let him this close, it was like she’d granted him permission to experience something guarded and secret and downright amazing.
He soaked it up in case this was as close as she ever let him get.
A thump in the hall made Lu jolt back. Vex turned to see Nayeli sagging against the doorframe.
She looked at Lu. The sorrow on her face made Vex step forward, like he could take the brunt of the news she had.
“They’re not coming,” Nayeli whispered.
Lu seized Vex’s arm. He wasn’t sure she knew she’d done it.
“What?” Lu asked.
“Cansu’s raider got back to the sanctuary. Barely escaped New Deza with his life.” Nayeli shook her head. “He never even got close to the Council. The Seniors sided with Argrid two weeks ago and ratified the treaty.”
Lu choked. “What? No—my mother said she would delay it. She said she would fight—”
“The councilmembers who resisted the treaty are under house arrest.” Nayeli’s eyes shifted to Vex, like she couldn’t stand to look at Lu as she talked. “The Council has declared stream raiders enemies of the state. The Council isn’t coming. They’ve declared war on us.”
“Lu?”
Vex’s voice pulled her back to the surface.
“Adeluna,” he said, and she felt her hand on his arm. He stayed steady, and Lu couldn’t release him, not now.
/> “Since it’s just us,” Nayeli continued, no emotion in her voice, “Cansu wants us to move before Argrid gets a foothold here. Or more of a foothold, at least.”
Vex frowned and asked, “What does she think we can do against Argridian warships? If that’s what’s coming.”
“Blow them up. Send a message to Argrid that not everyone on the island is willing to bow to them like—”
Lu heaved forward. “No—we need to scout the ships. What if they aren’t warships? What if they aren’t even from Argrid? It could be a misunderstanding. There has to be a peaceful solution. I have to believe we can convince the Council in time to ally with the raiders and stop Argrid again. I have to. I cannot live in a world where Argrid could destroy us so easily. Please.”
She said the last word to Vex. She wasn’t sure why—not for permission, not for guidance. But that word came, and she wanted him to assure her that she was right.
Vex nodded. “All right,” he said. He looked at Nayeli. “Tell Cansu we’re gonna scout the ships off the coast tonight. We’re not giving up. We’ll find out what they are, where they’re from, and if they’re Argridian, we’ll—” He paused, his face going pale. “We’ll find proof. Something to convince the Council that raiders aren’t to blame in all this.”
Even if they had gone to New Deza, as planned, it wouldn’t have been enough. They needed proof now, not testimony. They needed Milo, or documents, or a captured Argridian soldier who would confess all. This was their best chance at stopping the war.
“Argrid can’t win the war, even with magic, if Grace Loray unifies.” Lu gained traction, her eagerness growing. “They fear it, otherwise they would not have gone to such lengths to break us apart. We have to try.”
Nayeli bowed with the weary exhale of someone who knew the odds.
Only one syndicate would fight the Argridian invasion. Argrid might have a small military, but it had taken every syndicate and all those who called themselves Grace Lorayan to stop them during the revolution.
Grace Loray could lose the very freedom its citizens had worked so hard to earn.
Lu didn’t know what to do with her emotions, and as Nayeli used the Budwig Bean to pass on their plans to Cansu, Lu moved back to the table.