Merat was dangerous, both petty and ruthless, and she’d already hurt Thiyo. She and Iriyat really were like mother and daughter, though neither of them would want to hear it. Two beautiful, polished women with something vile and vicious slithering underneath. Merat couldn’t be trusted. But the offer made Alizhan hesitate. They had to get out of Estva and back to Laalvur somehow. Their next-best option was working until they had the money to book passage on a ship, which might take another week—they’d still have to travel to the coast, and the ship would undoubtedly be slower than what Merat could provide.
“How do you know we’re family?” Alizhan asked instead of accepting the offer.
“It’s all over your face.”
“You said yourself I don’t look like her.”
“I met him once,” Merat said. “Your father. A great brute of a man. Iriyat likes them big and dumb. I’m sure she’s found hundreds of replacements to fuck since the moment your shell-collecting fool of a father sailed right into that wave.”
“But you didn’t know when we met in Ilyr’s quarters.”
“As I said, it took me some time to place the resemblance and work it all out. I only met him once, after all. But you’re involved in her life somehow, and you’re the right age, and you look just like him—no, that’s not it, it’s not your face itself, but something about your expressions. Even now, your mouth is working like you want to say something but can’t remember how. Your eyes are blinking and your eyebrows want to leap off your forehead. He could never keep still, either. It’s enough for me.” Merat tsked. “She kept you a secret from the world, as though she was ashamed of you. No wonder you crossed the ocean to expose her secret correspondence.”
Alizhan didn’t care about being kept secret from the world. She cared about being kept secret from herself. Merat’s insults were missing the mark, at least. Looks meant nothing to Alizhan—and given the choice, she’d rather look like “a great brute” than Iriyat, no matter how beautiful. And if Thiyo’s translation was really Iriyat’s journal, then her father hadn’t been a brute at all.
Bile rose in her throat. Was that acceptance? Did she believe Iriyat was her mother? Was she just going to stand here and let this woman talk as if it were true? How could it be true?
How could it not be true?
“How old am I?” Alizhan said. She wished her voice still sounded flat and mechanical, instead of small and choked and uncertain. Why was she even asking? She didn’t want any of it to be true, and she certainly didn’t want to learn any more details from Merat.
Merat hummed a note of mild surprise. A hesitation. But she’d mentioned Alizhan’s age, so she must have done some calculation. “I’d guess you were born in Barsha or Kirisha of 745.”
“Nineteen,” Alizhan said. The precision was new. Iriyat had always given her age as an estimate: “you’re eight or nine.” But she’d known.
“She never told you,” Merat marveled. “She does love her secrets. That’s what’s in the book, I assume. Some secret that will ruin her. I look forward to it.”
It was a stupid piece of trivia, her age. The month she was born. But she’d wondered her whole life. The one person who could have told her had kept it from her on purpose. And for what? One last final stitch in the tapestry of lies that made up Alizhan’s life?
Merat might be cruel, but at least so far she was honest. She’d stated her intentions plainly.
“I am the secret that will ruin her,” Alizhan said. “When does your ship leave?”
“Excellent,” Merat said. “We can leave Estva by the end of the shift. I don’t want to stay in this hovel any longer than I have to. By the way—what’s your name?”
28
Not Friends
EV AND THIYO WALKED OUT of the barn. Two small figures stood in the snow in front of them. Even in the darkness, that woman in white could only be Merat, and the diminutive bundle of furry coats facing her had to be Alizhan. Ev dashed for them, not waiting to see what Thiyo would do. Merat couldn’t be that close to Alizhan. One touch of her hand could ruin everything.
She could hurt Ev, too, but what did that matter? Ev shoved herself in between them. “Get the fuck away from her,” she said to Merat, pushing her back with both hands flat on her chest.
“Ev, don’t!” Alizhan’s hand shot out and snapped around Ev’s bare wrist.
The world froze. It was nothing like the other times Alizhan had touched her. There was no pain. No magic exchange of feelings or memories. It was just a small, hot grip around Ev’s arm. Skin to skin.
Ev wasn’t holding Merat in any way, and the older woman took advantage of her shock and stepped out of reach. “We’ll continue this conversation,” she said to Alizhan, and slipped away into the darkness. And when she was gone, there was nothing but the two of them, standing side by side in the snow. Touching.
There was nothing to feel but Alizhan’s hand. But Ev was still awake and aware enough to feel it, and that was new.
She dropped her arm down, hoping that Alizhan wouldn’t let go—she didn’t—and turned to face her. She positioned herself closer than she’d ever dared. Lifting her arm, she brought Alizhan’s grip closer to her face. She examined it, just as she had with Thiyo’s, but there was nothing out of the ordinary about her hand. Ev had never had the chance to look with leisure. To stand so close without fear.
Ev ought to ask what the hell Merat had been talking about, and if Alizhan was okay, and she ought to apologize for so many things, but all her attention was on their hands. Every point of contact between them was alive. Time was suspended and dreamlike. She would have had to measure in breaths or heartbeats, but each one felt a thousand years apart. Was this real?
And then Alizhan pulled Ev’s right hand toward her face. She kissed the tips of her fingers. Her palm. The inside of her wrist. Everything around them was so still, interrupted only by the boom of Ev’s pulse. The press of Alizhan’s lips against her skin was slight, but it carried the weight of some ancient ritual. An invocation. A prayer.
Ev wanted to answer it. She cupped Alizhan’s cheek and Alizhan let go of her wrist and let herself be pulled toward Ev. Even with Alizhan standing on tiptoes, Ev still had to dip her head down to kiss her.
Everything between them was so fraught and fragile. Ev kissed Alizhan with slow caution. The tip of Alizhan’s nose was cold against her face. But as soon as Ev parted her lips, Alizhan kissed her fiercely and practically climbed her body. It made Ev laugh, how much themselves they were, a little breathless hitch in their kissing. Alizhan clamped her thighs around Ev’s waist and Ev obliged, putting her hands underneath her ass to hold her up. Once Alizhan was at the same height as her, she deepened the kiss, sweeping her tongue into Ev’s mouth. Alizhan’s bare hands touched her cheeks, her jaw, her neck, eager and reverent. Her fingertips traced the shape of Ev’s earlobes and the edge of her hairline. Ev shivered at the intimacy, at the hot shock of desire that ran through her, and she pushed back against Alizhan’s tongue with her own.
Unlike with Pirkko—something she had let happen, an instant of directionless desire that had overwhelmed her—with Alizhan, Ev knew exactly what she wanted. She wanted this to go on forever. The present blossomed into ten thousand vivid futures—combing her fingers through the loose silk of Alizhan’s hair, sucking a bite into the tender skin of her neck, smoothing her hands over her naked skin, laying her down and opening her up with kisses—and Ev wanted every single one of them.
There was the sound of a throat being cleared.
“For the record, I did not watch that, because I am given to understand it would offend your delicate mainlander sensibilities if I had,” Thiyo said. “Although I will point out that it was in public and I could hardly be blamed for being in the vicinity, since I was trying to make sure Merat Orzh didn’t liquefy your brains. But since I—for some terrible, unknown reason—seem to care what you two strange creatures think of me, I promise I looked pointedly away as soon as it became clear that you
were not in danger. I am, of course, very sorry to interrupt, and I offer you both congratulations on being slightly less hopeless than I assumed, but for now, I think we ought to discuss what the watery hell Merat Orzh is doing in Estva, and if there’s any way we can arrange for her to end up in prison. Or dead. That would also be fine with me.”
“What were you planning to do if we were in danger?” Ev asked. She’d set Alizhan back on her feet during Thiyo’s speech, but they hadn’t moved far apart. “If the two of us couldn’t defend ourselves against her, what hope did you have?”
“I resent that question,” Thiyo said. “What did you want me to do, abandon you to your fate?”
Not so long ago, Thiyo would have been raring to do exactly that. But Ev didn’t say so, and Alizhan couldn’t hear her thinking it, so there was a moment of silence.
Then Alizhan said, “Merat offered us a ship to Laalvur.”
“And you told her to fuck right off to the drowned depths she crawled out of, I assume.”
Ev stared at Alizhan. She hadn’t heard any of what had been said before she’d arrived, but apparently Alizhan and Merat had talked at length. Guilt seeped in. Ev had been in the barn with Thiyo doing—whatever they’d been doing. That had been foolish. If Merat had wanted to hurt Alizhan, Ev wouldn’t have been there to stop it.
“I didn’t,” Alizhan said, and Thiyo’s jaw dropped.
“You didn’t?” Ev asked.
“I’m not stupid. I don’t trust her. But she hates Iriyat, and she wants us to destroy her, so until that happens, we’re on the same side. And she can get us to Laalvur fast. And quietly. It solves all the problems we’ve been worrying about. Every other method we’ve come up with to get home takes way longer. And we’ll be together. We can handle her.”
“She threw me in prison,” Thiyo said, biting off every word.
“I know,” Alizhan said. “And once we’re in Laalvur, you can kill her for all I care.”
“Alizhan,” Ev said.
“What?” Alizhan shrugged. “I know both of you had to have long internal debates about whether you’re bad people now that you’ve taken lives, but I’m not like that. Sometimes killing a person is the answer. We can try to get her thrown in prison if you’d rather, though.”
“Who is this ‘we’ that’s going to Laalvur?” Thiyo said.
“The three of us, of course,” Alizhan said.
“Thiyo never agreed to that,” Ev said. “We should help him get home if that’s what he wants.”
“It’s not,” Alizhan said. “My senses might be dead now, but I still know a thing or two. Thiyo doesn’t want to go back to Hoi. But he can’t go back to Nalitzva, either. And he’s always wanted to see Laalvur. I think he’ll go with us.”
“Not if you’re traveling with Merat Orzh,” Thiyo said. “I’ll go anywhere in the world except wherever she’s going.”
Ev glanced between them, torn. She understood the urgency that Alizhan felt to get home and solve things. But if they left Thiyo here, she knew in her heart that they’d never see him again. And even though she’d wanted that when they’d first met, somehow over the course of their travels, something had changed.
But Alizhan was set on this and nothing Ev said would dissuade her. And Ev couldn’t let her go alone. “We’ll miss you,” she said, and it came out sadder and softer than she’d expected. She stepped forward to hug him and he hardly moved.
“You shouldn’t do this,” Thiyo said. “Don’t get on that ship.”
“Let’s go inside,” Alizhan said. “You can tell me how foolish I’m being where it’s warm.”
No one laughed. As they walked back toward the dormitories, none of them said a word.
“You look like you could use a drink,” Sardas said when Thiyo showed up for his shift.
Alizhan and Ev had left. With the woman who’d had him beaten and starved. How could they have been so stupid? He’d pleaded and argued for hours, said a few things he’d regret if he ever saw them again—which he wouldn’t, because Merat Orzh would kill them both. Or worse, she’d use them up and toss them aside and they’d never be the wiser. And still they’d left.
Ev had tried to hug him. “I’m not giving you a last embrace before sending you to your death,” he’d hissed, and she’d dropped her arms fast. After that, Alizhan hadn’t tried.
“We won’t forget you,” Ev had said.
“You don’t know that,” Thiyo had said. Then he’d stalked off to the men’s dormitory to lie awake for hours, because there was something jagged and angry scraping against his insides and it wouldn’t let him rest, and now he was here. He gave Sardas a grim, red-eyed look in response to his comment. “The shift just started.”
“Your friends left,” Sardas said. “I don’t know what happened between you, but I’ve been in Estva for years. People leave. It never gets any easier. Let’s take the shift off. No one here will report us.” He craned his neck to look into the bindery. Fama and Rin had overheard him and they were nodding. They liked Sardas and had almost warmed to Thiyo. They wouldn’t say a thing.
Ayat made a brief instant of eye contact with Sardas and Thiyo. “Their authority only has meaning if we give it meaning,” she said in her usual monotone. Thiyo understood that as an offer not to report their absence, but he couldn’t be quite sure. Perhaps that was Ayat’s goal. She sowed doubt with everything she said.
“Meet me in the library,” Sardas said.
“There’s a library? Why is this the first I’m hearing of it?”
“I’ll explain,” Ayat said. Was she volunteering to talk to Thiyo? What a strange shift this was. “You go,” she said to Sardas. “He’ll join you in a moment.”
Sardas nodded at each of them, then picked up his cane and strolled out of the room. Once he was gone, Ayat rolled her chair closer to Thiyo, forcing him to move into the corridor. Sardas was already out of sight.
“‘The library’ is what we call the storage room where we keep the books before they get shipped out,” Ayat said. Disappointment crept in. Thiyo had been hoping for a real library, not some closet. “No one else ever goes into it, so sometimes we use it for other things.”
“The occasional mid-shift drink?”
She tilted her shaved head to the side, causing her black feather earrings to flutter. “Among other things. Privacy is hard to come by in Estva.” Ayat paused. “We don’t tell people about the library very often.”
“I see,” Thiyo said, a little hurt that Sardas hadn’t seen fit to tell him until now. He could have used a private room to talk to Alizhan and Ev. Not that he would have shared that with Sardas. Or Ayat. He wanted to know what she meant by “other things,” but questions never worked on Ayat, so he didn’t bother asking.
“The door is marked ‘storage.’ Take the second right, go all the way to the end, and go right again. You have to push hard on the door to get in. Keep your voice down once you’re inside.” Ayat was unbuttoning her coat and digging through the voluminous folds of her black robe. “But that’s not what I came out here to tell you.”
It wasn’t? Thiyo was suddenly conscious of how alone they were in the hallway and how low she’d kept her voice. Ayat pulled out a small, unmarked burlap sack. She handed it up to him and it was far lighter than he’d expected—not that he’d expected any kind of gift from Ayat. He squeezed it lightly and the bag rustled. “What is this?”
“Dried nightvine,” she said. “I heard you asking Sardas about it. And I have a friend who does the kitchen accounts, so this won’t be missed.”
“I’m not sure what’s more surprising, the fact that you’re giving me a gift or the fact that you have a friend.”
“Funny,” Ayat said, her voice dead flat. “No wonder everyone loves you. And it’s not a gift. I want you to find out what it does. Keep asking questions.”
“That’s why you’re giving me this? Because I was curious?”
“They were good questions. You were asking them wrong.”
&nbs
p; “That makes no sense. You have to know that. You just like to be cryptic because it goes well with the robes and the makeup.” What could Ayat possibly mean? What was the right way to ask a question? And why was she helping him now? She offered him no response. “You hated me, then overheard me indulging an idle curiosity, and now you’re giving me a sack of pilfered land seaweed and we’re friends. I’ve had stranger friendships.”
Ayat glanced sidelong around the hallway, her black eyelids nearly closed and the whites of her eyes a sharp, mobile interruption in the black streak across her face. “I’ve seen the company you keep,” she murmured, and if she was passing judgment on Ev and Alizhan, or Henny and Ket, Thiyo would spit on her. But she had nothing more to say on the topic, and instead continued with, “For the Temple of Doubt, there’s no such thing as idle curiosity. But don’t get ahead of yourself. We’re not friends.” She lifted her chin, indicating the bag in his hands. “Hide that. This never happened.”
Thiyo tucked the bag into his coat. If he’d been at court, wearing a fashionable dress, he wouldn’t have been able to hide it. But it had been a long time since he’d selected clothes for any quality other than warmth, so it was easy to make the nightvine disappear into an inside pocket of his bulky, shapeless coat. He was even momentarily grateful for the practicality, which was a truly sad comment on the state of his life. But there was hardly any point to looking good in Estva, since he’d lost the pleasure he took in it, and there was no one to impress.
Ayat took her leave of him with a nod, rolling her chair back into the press, and Thiyo followed her directions to the storage room.
It was neither a library nor a cramped closet. Sardas sat in the center of a small room lined with bookshelves and filled with wooden crates of books. Half the wall opposite Thiyo was spotless glass windows—this room must originally have been for some nobler purpose—and the glittering blue-black sky sprawled before him. The window didn’t look out onto the city but out onto the plains, an awe-inspiring expanse of emptiness that underlined the grandeur of the sky. Sardas was so focused on the view that he didn’t turn when Thiyo pushed the door open. There was a wooden chair next to him. On the stack of crates in front of him stood a bottle of some amber liquid and two empty glasses. Thiyo sat down.
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