“I’m sure he wishes the same of you,” Ev said. The way they’d ended things with Thiyo weighed on her like a stone crushing her heart. It was hard to shake the feeling that they’d made a mistake. “He was right, you know. This is a bad idea and there’s a strong chance we’ll get hurt or killed.”
Alizhan traded the snow from one hand to another, packing it into a sphere. “You’re always so cheerful and optimistic. That’s what I love about you, that you always expect the best of every situation.”
Even in that joking tone, the word love fell on Ev like another weight. She was carrying too much guilt. “There’s something I have to tell you,” she said. Alizhan still couldn’t read her. Ev wanted to confess of her own volition before the effects of the nightvine faded and Alizhan found out the truth.
“I’m really sorry,” Ev said. “For everything. For Iriyat and how she treated you. For—”
“You know what’s extra awful about the thing with Iriyat?” Alizhan interrupted. “I keep having this fantasy, a dream of this other life, one where she told me. Nothing else is different. She’s still killing people, still making people forget, and I don’t care. I’m her daughter and she loves me and none of this,” Alizhan hurled her snowball out of the alcove and it powdered the drifts outside, “ever happened.”
“We wouldn’t be friends, in that life,” Ev said, the words falling as quietly as Alizhan’s thrown snow.
Alizhan kept staring into the dim blue light of Din Yaritz. After a long time, she said, “It’s a bad thing to want. But I want it anyway.”
Was that an opening? An invitation to apologize? An indication that Alizhan might forgive Ev? “You’ve always known a lot about what people want.”
“The funny thing is, I want that, but at the same time, I want none of it to be true. I wish Thiyo had kept translating and discovered that it was all some terrible mistake.” Alizhan huffed. “I’m still hoping that when we read the rest of his translation, that will be the case. I don’t make a lot of sense.”
“You’d know better than anyone that people want conflicting things all the time. We don’t necessarily make sense.”
“No,” Alizhan said, drawing out the word. “We don’t.”
“I didn’t finish my apology earlier,” Ev said. “I’m sorry for how I treated you in Estva. I did something really stupid, Alizhan, and I regret it, and I understand if you don’t want to forgive me.”
Alizhan folded her knees up and rested her chin on them. She dragged her index finger through the pile of snow. “It was Pirkko, wasn’t it?”
Hadn’t she seen? Oh. Of course. She’d witnessed what had happened in the hot springs, but without her abilities, she couldn’t recognize anyone—except Ev. There’d been other dark-skinned people in Estva, but none of them had been women of her height.
“You don’t have to answer. I already guessed. I’m useless now, but even I could figure that out.” Alizhan sounded resigned.
“I shouldn’t have—”
“Why her, though? You could have kissed dozens of other people.”
Ev shook her head at Alizhan’s inflated opinion of the number of people who wanted to kiss her, but it was hard to see in the alcove, and Alizhan never paid attention to that kind of gesture, anyway. “I’m really sorry, Alizhan. I don’t have a good answer.”
“You do. You just don’t want to say it.”
Ev sighed. “She’s beautiful and she wanted me and she was right there. Is that enough?”
“And it was simple,” Alizhan said. “Simpler than it would have been with me.”
The truth was piercing. It was so silent that Ev could hear her own heartbeat, and for an instant, it surprised her. The sound should have been the crystalline shattering of glass, the crunch of shards. Ev closed her eyes, pushing tears through her lashes and onto her cheeks.
“Are you crying?” Alizhan said with curiosity and sympathy. “I’m sorry. I can’t feel it at all. The whole world feels dead since Estva. It makes me feel dead, too. I didn’t mean to make you cry. I just wanted us to tell the truth. And as long as you’re kissing me, I don’t really care if you’re kissing anyone else.”
Ev had never had Alizhan’s senses, but sometimes she didn’t need them. “Bullshit.”
“Well, fine,” Alizhan said. “I did care. I was angry. But I’m trying not to be angry anymore. Because I understand about wanting things to be simple. And I wouldn’t have been angry at all if you’d picked someone better to kiss.”
“Someone better?”
“You knew I didn’t like her! She was awful and she threw Henny out in the cold and I still think she might have been a spy for Iriyat and even if she wasn’t, we shouldn’t have trusted her. If you really had to kiss someone, I’m sure Henny or Ket would’ve said yes if you’d asked nicely, and you wouldn’t even have needed to ask Thiyo.”
They had swerved from seriousness into absurdity.
“Henny and Ket are in love with each other, and Thiyo’s accustomed to royalty—he thinks I’m a dull, plain country bumpkin. And more importantly, I don’t want to kiss any of them! Not even Pirkko,” Ev said, then she amended it. “Or at least, I don’t want to kiss anyone nearly as much as I want to kiss you.”
“That’s good to hear,” Alizhan said. She laid her head on Ev’s shoulder. “But I’m trying to tell you something and you’re not listening.”
“Tell me, then.”
“I’m aware that I’m… difficult,” Alizhan said. “Even more than usual in Estva. And I’m sorry for it. I want to be a person that you can love all the time.”
“You are,” Ev said. “Even when you’re difficult. Sometimes because you’re difficult.”
“Good,” Alizhan said. “I’m not finished. Things are good between us now, and I love kissing you, but we both know it might not last. And I don’t know where we’ll get more nightvine. Or wai. So we should enjoy touching each other, but we have to keep in mind that it’s temporary. And there will be times when I can’t give you what you need. And I want you to be happy, Ev, even if it’s not with me.” Alizhan paused to take a deep breath. “If you want to kiss someone—even if that person is Pirkko—you should. Life is short and ours might be shorter than normal.”
“I can’t believe you teased me about being a pessimist not half an hour ago,” Ev said.
“I’m being practical.”
“In that case, I think you should kiss me while you’re still alive to do it.”
Alizhan’s lips were warm against Ev’s and Ev could feel her smiling. “You know,” she murmured, breaking the kiss. “If we’re not going to talk, I don’t care if anyone overhears us. We could go back to Night’s End.”
“We could,” Ev agreed, grinning, and an instant later she was tugging Alizhan back toward their room. Pragmatism or pessimism, Alizhan’s argument had rendered every touch that much more urgent. They raced up the stairs and slammed the door, dropping gloves and scarves and coats on the floor of their room. After so many weeks of thick layers, it was a surprise how much smaller Alizhan was without her coat on, and how bright her printed tunic was compared to all that mottled brown fur and leather and wool. She looked as beautiful and as wildly out of place as if a warmth-loving Day flower—yellow lady’s lace or red sawleaf or climbing arish—had burst through the frozen ground and bloomed in spite of the dim, cool sky and the blankets of snow.
Alizhan propelled her toward the bed. Ev fell back willingly when her calves ran into the mattress, and Alizhan toppled with her. The bed was hardly big enough for Ev alone, but the two of them tangled their limbs together and managed to pull their remaining clothes off, laughing between breathless kisses. Ev threaded her fingers into Alizhan’s hair, and then Alizhan pulled the tail of her braid over her shoulder and began to undo it.
“You know, I thought when this finally happened that I’d know exactly what you wanted,” Alizhan said.
Was she nervous? Ev ought to have expected that, even with Alizhan’s ferocious kisses. Min
d-reader or not, Alizhan had never done this before. The nightvine made it impossible for her touch to hurt Ev, but it also took away the one advantage she’d been counting on. Ev took her half-undone braid from her hands and finished the work herself, loosing Alizhan’s hair until it curtained their faces, its ends tickling Ev’s collarbone and breasts. “And how did you expect me to know what you wanted, mm?”
“I don’t,” Alizhan paused, her breath catching as Ev palmed one of her breasts and stroked a thumb over the nipple. She closed her eyes. “I didn’t think about that.”
“I did,” Ev said, smiling. She let her hand glide down the smooth skin of Alizhan’s belly and the tangle of dark hair between her hips, then lower until her fingers skimmed slickness. Alizhan shivered above her, clenching her thighs around Ev’s. “And I’m sure we can figure it out.”
Ev slid a finger in and had to stop to catch her own breath, overwhelmed. She couldn’t feel what Alizhan was feeling, not really, but the sensation of being inside someone else—the silky, wet warmth of it, but more than that, the intimacy of being invited to this most secret place—was almost as powerful. Alizhan leaned down and kissed her, then rocked her hips, encouraging Ev to move. It was easy enough to find a rhythm that made Alizhan sigh and gasp, and when she came, shuddering, it was almost too soon.
Alizhan let her head drop to the pillow. Next to Ev’s ear, she murmured, low and throaty, “God, that was good.”
Ev expected her to relax into languor for at least a moment, but instead she sat up, beaming. “I want to do that to you. And then you can do it to me again. Actually, let’s just stay right here and keep doing that forever.”
Then they were kissing again, and Ev absolutely would have signed on to Alizhan’s plan to stay in bed if someone hadn’t banged on their door. They both froze.
“Let them knock. They’ll go away if we ignore them,” Alizhan whispered.
The banging happened a second time.
“Open up,” Merat said. “A friend of yours just arrived.”
“We don’t have any friends,” Alizhan said. “Henny and Ket are far away by now, and Thiyo’s too angry to come after us.”
As Alizhan had just proved, they did have friends, and Ev couldn’t risk leaving any of them alone with Merat. She extricated herself from Alizhan, dressed, and padded to the door, cracking it open to hide the haphazard piles of clothing on the floor.
Outside, Merat stood next to one of her hulking guards, who had one arm braced around a limp, unconscious Thiyo. His feet were on the ground, but not supporting his weight. His head tipped forward. A dusting of snow melted in his hair, which had grown longer since they’d been in Estva and now hung down into his closed eyes. Ev let the door swing wide and held out her arms, hoping desperately that Alizhan had dressed by now. Merat could draw her own conclusions about the messy state of their room. Ev didn’t care. The guard dumped Thiyo on her. She caught him, which was awkward since he was almost as tall as her, a long and ungainly burden.
“What happened? How did he get here? Why is he unconscious?”
“He was overcome with regret after you left, and drank himself into a stupor talking about how much he wished he’d come with you,” Merat said. “I’d rather not have a drunk degenerate on my ship but if you take responsibility for him, I’ll allow it. Sardas speaks well of him, but that priest is a soft-hearted fool.”
“Sardas?” Alizhan had come to the door—fully clothed, thank God—and was peering around Ev and Thiyo.
Ev vaguely remembered the name. Hadn’t that been the priest who’d worked in the press with Thiyo and Alizhan?
“Yes,” Merat said. “A priest of the Balance and a long-time correspondent of mine—I believe he mentioned that he knew you. I’d offered him a berth on the ship, in case he wanted to return home again. He declined, but he must have changed his mind out of pity for your friend here. I suppose they’ll be joining us. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I was resting.”
Merat spun on her heel and went down the hallway to her room. The guard followed her.
Ev maneuvered Thiyo toward the bed and Alizhan shut the door.
“What the fuck,” Alizhan said, latching the door, and Ev couldn’t think of anything else to add.
Thiyo was breathing but still solidly unconscious as Ev laid him down. “How did Sardas even get him here? We rode for hours before arriving. Was he drunk the whole time?” She sniffed. Thiyo did smell like liquor, but he didn’t reek in the way she’d expect if he’d been guzzling the stuff while on horseback all shift. “Thiyo’s not even that good at riding when he’s sober.”
“Is he okay?”
“I think so,” Ev said. She couldn’t stop staring. Considering how troubling the context was, Thiyo looked eerily serene in sleep. “I just can’t fathom what made him change his mind, or why he’d arrive in this state.”
“We won’t know until he wakes up,” Alizhan said. She moved to cover the single green lamp in the room with a cloth and then she sat down on the opposite edge of the bed. Thiyo lay between them. “I guess it would be inappropriate to keep having sex now that there’s an unconscious man in our bed.”
“Yeah,” Ev said. It wasn’t so much Thiyo’s arrival as the sight of Merat’s face that had ruined her mood.
“Even though it might be our only chance. Even though, out of all the people we know, he’s the least likely to be offended. We could just push him to the side a little and be really careful, and look how out he is, we probably wouldn’t even need to be quiet—”
“Still not gonna happen.” Ev wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh or cry. This wasn’t a conversation she’d ever expected to have.
“Although now that I think of it, I said Thiyo wouldn’t be offended, but realistically, if we did and if he ever found out, it’d be sort of like we had a party and didn’t invi—”
“Alizhan.” Ev grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze. “It’s not our only chance. We will have more time. We will make more time.”
Alizhan sighed. “I know, I know. Something is terribly wrong and we have to be watchful and you’d feel guilty forever if Thiyo died in our bed while we were having sex. You’re always so moral and responsible.”
“It’s a curse,” Ev agreed.
“No, it’s what I love about you,” Alizhan said, suddenly serious. “You’re so good at right and wrong. If I were better at right and wrong, I might have seen through Iriyat long ago and saved us a lot of trouble. I spent so many years working for her. I made it possible for her to do evil things. You wouldn’t have done that.”
“I’m not a saint, Alizhan. I make mistakes. Wasn’t I just apologizing to you for one?”
“Kissing Pirkko hardly compares to the torture and murder of innocent people.”
“You didn’t torture or murder anyone yourself. And the context is important. She lied to you and abused you. She isolated you from everyone else and made you believe she was the only person who could love you. Of course you worked for her. Anyone would have.”
“I’m not sure that’s true,” Alizhan said. “But my point still stands. You care about doing the right thing more than me.”
Did that mean you care about doing the right thing more than I care about doing the right thing or you care about doing the right thing more than you care about me? Ev didn’t agree with either option, but the thought of parsing them made her very sad and tired. “We have to ride out in a few hours. We should sleep.”
“You sleep,” Alizhan said, settling back against the headboard and drawing her knees up. “You were right about keeping watch and making sure Thiyo doesn’t die.”
As Ev recalled, it had been Alizhan who’d said those things. But closing her eyes was more enticing than arguing.
Every time Thiyo stirred, Ev and Alizhan tried to ask him what had happened. But he could barely stay conscious. Ev had to carry him out of their room. “He has to travel to Koritz in the carriage,” she said. “It’s the only way.”
“He won’t li
ke that,” Alizhan had said.
“He won’t like sliding off his horse and snapping his neck, either,” Ev said. “There’s no way he can ride in this state. This is no normal hangover.”
“We can’t leave him in that carriage alone with Merat. One of us has to stay with him.”
A silence.
“This was your idea,” Ev said, quiet and firm.
Alizhan sighed. When she was riding outside the carriage, she could pretend that they hadn’t made a bargain with a monster. But for the next four hours, she’d be staring Merat in the face.
Thiyo’s eyelids flicked open once or twice while Ev hauled him into the carriage. For an instant, Alizhan thought he’d see Merat and wake up from his daze kicking and screaming. But nothing happened, at least as far as she could tell. Thiyo and Ev were still unreadable to her.
Merat said nothing as Alizhan sat down with Thiyo.
“You want me to come with you, this is how it goes,” Alizhan said. “Don’t touch either of us.”
“I can’t imagine why I’d want to.”
Sardas climbed into the carriage and seated himself next to Merat, on the bench opposite Alizhan and Thiyo. He shut the door behind him and pulled a cloth off one of the lamps to illuminate the leather-upholstered interior. He glanced around and said, in a voice tinged with sympathy, “Oh, Thiyo.”
Alizhan couldn’t read any of them, but she didn’t fall for that tone of voice. What was Sardas doing here? Merat said he’d come with Thiyo. Had Thiyo been unconscious the whole time? Had Sardas drugged him?
If Thiyo were awake, he could talk to her. If he hadn’t been eating nightvine for weeks, she wouldn’t even need him to talk. She could answer her own questions.
Alizhan put her arm around Thiyo’s shoulders and drew him down until his head was lying in her lap, a movement she managed with surprising grace, considering how much bigger Thiyo was, and how heavy and unconscious and uncooperative. Once she’d settled him there, she laid a hand on his head and turned the full force of her stare on Merat. She felt like an animal staking a claim.
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