“I told you everything,” Paxben continued. “I imagined you reading the letters. I imagined you understanding, and I’ve had this exact conversation with you so many times, Ben. I imagined everything you could say to me.”
“Even this?” Ben waved at himself, at the fearful, incapable man he was.
Paxben grinned. “I always told myself I’d be so damn relieved you were on my side that I wouldn’t care. We could conquer anything together.”
Ben’s grip on the bars went lax. The cell melted away, the ship and Grace Loray beyond, nothing intruding on a moment Ben had never thought he’d get again.
“Irmán,” Ben said, his throat swelling.
I’ve missed you.
Paxben’s smile faded. “Para sempre,” he returned. Forever.
I’ve missed you, too.
The room where the defensors deposited Lu was on a high-enough deck that it had porthole windows letting in the moonlight. In that dimness, Lu could make out tables of supplies, cupboards glinting with vials. The familiarity of a laboratory would have been comforting if she had been capable of feeling anything beyond the shackles grating her wrists and the memories of everything her father had told her.
The defensors bound her to a chair and left, shutting the door so the only noise was the quiet shushing of waves beyond the walls.
Behind her, chains rattled.
Lu shot up straighter, unable to look too far behind. Had the prince gotten to the room before her? Would her interrogation begin already, in the dark, when she couldn’t see any of it approaching? Her pulse hammered. Though she wanted to use her normal methods of inducing calm, she bit back the desire—Tom had taught her those methods.
The chain clanking was followed by a voice, hoarse and rich, accented with the Mechtland lilt. “You caused the chaos on deck.”
Lu clenched her hands on the chair’s arms. Not the prince. He’d said something about an assistant, hadn’t he?
If he had a Mecht as an assistant, the prince could be close, too close, to making magic permanent. But if the man was his ally, why would the prince have chained him?
The Argridians could be playing on her sympathies to get her to share secrets.
She stayed silent.
The Mecht grunted at her refusal to speak. “Fine.”
A long while passed before the laboratory’s door opened. In that time, Lu heard the splash of water and bark of orders—Elazar leaving and taking Milo, she hoped.
The door squealed open and the prince entered, light filtering from his lantern. Defensors attempted to follow him, but he shut the door on them as if their mere presence annoyed him.
The chains behind Lu rattled, the Mecht prisoner rising up.
“Gunnar—has she spoken?” the prince asked, his eyes on Lu.
“No.”
The prince set the lantern on the table beside Lu along with something that he dropped with a dull thunk.
Her book. Botanical Wonders of the Grace Loray Colony.
“I haven’t seen one of these in years,” the prince whispered, speaking, unsurprisingly, in proper Argridian. He adjusted the flame higher, casting light on his face and the equipment on the table beside him. An impressive arrangement, one organized by a mind that understood botanical magic more than Lu would expect of an Argridian. Especially the prince.
The prince caught her appraisal but didn’t smile, shifting so he leaned against the table.
“I’m Ben,” he said.
Lu frowned. But it was better than prince, as though she owed him allegiance.
“You are Adeluna Andreu. Or Lu,” Ben continued, “I’ve been told.”
Confusion made her frown retreat.
He pressed on, tired, like he had single-handedly rowed here from Deza. “I have something I would like to propose to you.”
Her nostrils flared. “I will not help the—”
“Not for my father. For me. Or, well, for the rest of the world. I’m not that arrogant.”
Behind her, Gunnar huffed.
“You have no reason to trust me,” Ben said. “But do you trust Pax—Devereux?”
Lu kept her face blank. Her body, still.
Ben leaned forward, knocking Botanical Wonders back as he moved. “He said to tell you to—” He rolled the words through his mouth. “To jump backward off the waterfall?”
Lu’s stiffness released with a single shift of her head. “What did you say?”
Ben smiled. “To jump backward off the waterfall.”
Her breath quickened. “He didn’t jump.”
Another smile, stronger, gaining traction. “No. You pushed him.”
Only she and Vex had been on the cliff that night. Not even Nayeli had seen.
Vex trusted Ben.
As though easing to the edge of that cliff, Lu said, “All right, Ben. What is your proposition?”
“My father wants me to find a way to make magic permanent.”
Lu knew this already—Vex had told her.
“You want to do that?” she asked.
But Ben shook his head. Then stopped and squinted.
“I want to cure the world of my father. He gave people Shaking Sickness. I mean to show everyone that I can cure it, and that he can’t, and neither can the Church.”
Lu looked away, at the equipment spread over Ben’s table. “Have you?”
“What?”
“Have you figured out a way to make magic permanent?”
“That isn’t what I want to do,” Ben pressed. “I want to cure Shaking Sickness. You know what the cure is. If you help me, we can—”
Lu’s face went hard, emotionless, her body responding in kind. “Whatever good deed you think will change anything, you’re wrong. This is war.”
She hadn’t said that aloud yet. Not in the machinations, the search for Milo; not in the prejudice and threats toward raiders; not even when Elazar had been on this ship, on Grace Loray’s shore.
There had to be a peaceful solution. We sacrificed too much for peace.
But she knew now. There had been no sacrifice. The war had never ended.
She had been a fool, in so many ways.
Lu let go of her collected, demure politician demeanor. She let herself once again become the girl of blood and secrets who had spent her childhood listening to her parents plan battles and discuss death over breakfast.
“If you want to stop Elazar,” she started, “you’ll need to do more than discredit him by healing the people he’s hurt. He wants permanent magic so he can have an unstoppable army of defensors—but how will he convince his devout soldiers to accept—let alone ingest—magic?”
She suspected what Elazar would do, but she waited for Ben’s answer.
He stared at the floor in thought. “He’ll say it came from the Pious God. He’ll say it wasn’t botanical magic, but blessings for those of purity.”
Lu nodded. When she was younger, she had left these sorts of plans to her parents, relaxing in the knowledge that the burden went to someone else. But she had heard enough of their plots and listened in on so many of their meetings—she could do this.
Her father had made her very capable.
And Kari? Had she known the truth?
Lu couldn’t bring herself to wonder. There was no solace in knowing, no help in the answer. All she needed right now was to plan. To be a child of the revolution.
She smiled, though it made her feel hollow. “We’ll make potions. We’ll take Powersage, and make strength permanent; we’ll take Aerated Blossom, and make flight last longer than one breath. Elazar won’t be able to claim permanent magic is a gift from the Pious God, not if we make permanent magic first and tell everyone that it came from Grace Loray’s botanical plants.”
Ben’s face drained of color. He looked behind her, at Gunnar, and his hesitation made Lu lean forward.
“You can, can’t you?” she asked. “You can make all magic permanent.”
Ben shook his head. “No. But between the three of us,
we can figure it out.”
Gunnar stayed quiet, his silence weighted. Lu didn’t care. She was beyond reason. She was utterly broken.
“Then I’ll help you, Ben,” she said. “I’ll help you destroy your father.”
And mine, too.
Defensors escorted Lu out later, leaving Ben alone with Gunnar and the book that had turned up in Lu’s things. The book the Church had burned for the same reason they had burned Rodrigu—heresy.
Ben had agreed to escape this ship with Lu and Vex. To go somewhere safe—Lu had described a stream raider haven in a port north of here—with them, help Lu make permanent magic, and reveal it to the world before Elazar could claim it as a gift of the Pius God.
Relief surged through Ben’s veins with a momentum he hadn’t expected. It plowed into his worry, six years of holding himself in perfect check, and cracked apart the armor he had built of obedience and piety and carefully selected sins.
He had agreed to irrevocably turn on his father. No more hiding. No more lying. No more holding his breath waiting to be discovered.
Paxben was alive, and Ben was well on his way to being free.
The lantern didn’t light every corner of the room; darkness sheathed Gunnar near his cot. Ben stayed where he’d been throughout the conversation with Lu, on the edge of the table, ankles crossed.
He lifted his eyes to Gunnar. “You have nothing to say?”
Gunnar didn’t move. Not a shift of his shoulders, not a flex of his jaw.
“You have me here to keep you from getting too close,” Gunnar said.
“Yes.”
“Stop, Benat. Don’t do this with her.”
Ben-jay, Ben parroted in his head.
Ben peeled his eyes away from Gunnar. They had spent almost two weeks on this ship, with Gunnar watching his every move and making unexplained suggestions to keep Ben from figuring out how to make magic permanent. Two weeks, and Ben had given himself that time, expecting some great revelation to occur to him, one that would make everything right.
But this—making magic permanent with Lu, and revealing it before Elazar could take credit for it—was the only thing that might effect change. His plan of curing Shaking Sickness had felt weak, even to him. Something like that wouldn’t be enough to change an entire country’s beliefs and stop a war.
“This is different,” Ben told Gunnar. “This will stop my father. Your people use magic like this all the time—”
“Yes,” Gunnar cut in. “That magic is still burning the Mechtlands.”
Ben winced. “I’m sorry. We can use it to help your people, too. If they had—”
Gunnar sighed. “No, Benat.” He moved into the light. His expression of severity sent a chill over Ben’s body. “You have a good heart, I see now. But you are making a weapon. Only death will follow.”
Once Ben left, Vex fully expected defensors to kill him, despite Elazar agreeing to let him live.
That agreement had been a lie for Ben’s sake. Elazar wanted his nephew dead—Vex’d known that since the courtroom in New Deza, when he’d seen the Argridian diplomats. He’d felt it, deep in his soul. Argridian pawns of Elazar’s, leading a charge for Vex’s death at the hands of the Council? Way too convenient to not be intentional—and not surprising, either.
But Vex hadn’t been afraid until now. Until he was here. Trapped under his uncle again.
He wouldn’t escape Elazar twice, and knowing that brought him close to passing out.
But defensors only came to move Vex to what was more or less a closet on the middle deck. They put Lu back in the original cell, he guessed—they’d keep them split up to use as leverage against each other and drive them crazy with uncertainty.
Damned if it wouldn’t work.
Vex forced himself to sit on the floor of the cramped closet. Only a sliver of light peeked under the doorframe. He could hear defensors breathing outside, but otherwise, silence.
Ben didn’t believe in Elazar.
Six years of Vex telling himself he was an idiot for writing letters to someone who existed only in his memory. Six years of moving on with his life, because he couldn’t expect Ben to turn on Elazar. If Ben had risen against his father, Elazar would’ve killed him.
Vex leaned his head against the wall and smiled up at the blackness.
For the first time in years, he let himself remember what it’d been like to hope that Argrid would get better. He remembered his father spinning stories of tolerance, encouragement, and growth, and how Vex had pictured it happening: he and Ben, standing side by side. He’d killed that dream the day his father had burned.
But now. Elazar still had endless power—and Ben had power, too.
Maybe Vex would survive this. Maybe every piece of who he had once been wasn’t dead.
33
DEFENSORS DIDN’T COME for Lu the first day, nor the second. They brought her food and water and left her to stew alone in the cell, where she imagined what scenarios might be playing out beyond the ship.
Nayeli had figured out something had gone amiss. Where was she now? What had she told Teo? They had not made a plan for this scenario, should Vex and Lu not return. Perhaps Vex had his own arrangement with his crew for such an event. But Cansu was on her way, and bent for war, no doubt. Had the Argridians captured Edda on the Mecht crew as well? Her crewmates had no reason to suspect her. Surely a rescue was coming.
Did the Council know of Argrid’s presence off Grace Loray? Or had the Argridian diplomats and their allies concealed that information? What of the councilmembers who opposed Argrid—were they still under house arrest? Or, worse—who was against Argrid, and who else, like Tom, was an Argridian agent?
Lu wanted to rip the planks of the cell apart for some way to expel the pressure in her chest. She pictured her mother’s face, relived everything Kari had said, or done, or hinted at, looking for holes, comparing it to Tom’s deceit. She pictured Branden, the loyal captain of the castle guard. She pictured Annalisa’s mother, Bianca, who claimed she had fled Argrid but died of the disease that Elazar was giving to people—some of whom he let remember.
She pictured Annalisa. Young. Innocent.
How deep did the deception run?
“Lu!”
A voice yanked her from sleep. Cold sweat washed over her, her body awakening somewhere unsafe before her mind could remember why.
Time was impossible to determine in the belly of the ship, but Lu blinked through her fog, noting the absence of any breakfast tray. Not yet morning.
Her eyes landed on the person outside her cell, expecting it to be a guard, or Ben—
But she dove forward with a startled sob. “Nayeli!”
Nayeli beamed. She wore black head to toe, her dark hair knotted against her scalp. Her hands wriggled in fingerless gloves, fast at work picking at the pouches strapped across her waist. But her attention was on Lu, her eyes round and happy.
“I gotta say, Lu, in the short time I’ve known you, you’ve ended up in a lot of cells.”
Nayeli withdrew whatever plant she’d been searching for. Lu eyed it, amusement warring with disbelief.
“No,” said Lu.
“Yes,” giggled Nayeli.
Footsteps pattered down the stairs. Lu gripped the bars, rigid—until one more person came into view. Edda.
“Where’s Vex?” Edda asked, eyeing the other empty cells.
“How are you here? Where’s Teo?”
“Teo’s far away, under guard with Cansu’s raiders. This ship had an early-morning shift change. Two defensors are unconscious. One more . . . can hopefully swim.” Edda paced up and down the hall like she was the one caged. “Hurry up, Nay—we don’t have long before this goes to shit.”
Nayeli made a sharp croak of achievement and lit the plants in her palms. “Back up, Lu!”
“Nayeli!” Lu tried again. “You can’t—”
Edda saw the plant. “Stop! I can get the keys—”
“Oops! Too late!” Nayeli sang and threw the
plant at the cell door.
It wasn’t Hemlight, which she had used to free Lu and Vex from the Mechts.
This was the far more dangerous, far more destructive, Variegated Holly.
All the things Ben had planned with Lu—fleeing to safety in a raider syndicate; making permanent magic before Elazar did—hinged on Ben’s singular task of getting himself, Lu, and Paxben off the ship.
Doing so had proven problematic.
No one from the Astuto ventured to the shore, despite how close they were. Supply runs, when needed, transferred goods from the shore to Elazar’s ship to Ben’s, but never did a boat go from the Astuto to the island. Intentional—the prisoners were aboard the Astuto. Having a predictable escape route would be stupid.
When he sent a letter via Jakes to Elazar, Ben found that even he was not allowed to go ashore.
“I request a solid workspace, free of the ship’s damp and constraints,” Ben had written.
“It is not yet time. Finish your work, at least one permanent potion, and we may proceed. Have you broken the girl yet?” Elazar had responded.
Ben crumpled the letter, feeling the distrust in his father’s words.
His cover was precarious. One wrong move, and Elazar could cry Heretic Prince and restrain him as a true prisoner.
Three mornings after Paxben’s arrival, Ben bolted upright, dreams of plants and fire scattering in the wake of a noise that didn’t make sense. His back screamed in agony from where he’d fallen asleep over his table, Botanical Wonders of the Grace Loray Colony serving as a horrible makeshift pillow. He rubbed out a kink in his neck, noting first the low light of dawn, then Gunnar, standing, the muscles across his bare chest strained with tension, the thin blanket from his cot pooled around his feet.
“What—” Ben stared at Gunnar’s clan mark. From this view, it looked like a sunburst, rays curling across his sternum and into the top ripples of his abdominal muscles.
“Unchain me,” Gunnar demanded. “Now.”
Ben shook his head to clear it. He’d heard a pop, only louder.
An explosion from the lowest deck.
Ben flew to his feet, yanking the keys out of his pocket.
“They’re keeping Paxben in a storage room down this hall,” Ben said as he bent to Gunnar’s chain. “We have to get him. If something’s wrong, he’ll be the first target to blame.”