“What a funny little group we are,” Merat observed, all false courtly lightness.
Alizhan didn’t want to make small talk to lift the tension. Touch me and die, she didn’t say. Could she actually kill someone with her touch? And if so, could she kill someone like Merat, someone powerful and experienced with their own gifts? If Merat reached for her, Alizhan would find out.
“I can tell the two of you are close,” Sardas said to Alizhan, nodding at Thiyo asleep in her lap. “He was upset when you left. He told me he’d made a big mistake, letting you leave without him.”
Fucking nightvine. Alizhan knew he was lying but couldn’t sense what the truth was. He sounded so friendly. “A change of heart,” she said dryly. “Followed by a sudden illness.”
“Sometimes those happen when the people we love disappear from our lives,” Sardas said. “And as for his sickness, I’m sure it will pass. I had no idea islanders were so ill-affected by liquor.”
Thiyo had avoided wai at Ilyr’s wedding, but he’d sucked down glass after glass of wine. Alizhan couldn’t say how many he’d had because she’d had far too many herself. Unlike her, he hadn’t been affected. “I’ve never seen a hangover like this.”
Merat made a little noise of protest at the vulgar word hangover, as if she weren’t the type of woman who had her enemies dragged from their beds and thrown in secret prisons.
“Have you met many islanders?” Sardas asked.
“Somehow I don’t think that’s the problem,” Alizhan shot back.
“Now, now,” Merat said. “We’re stuck in this carriage for half a shift, and then we’ll be aboard Honesty together for a long time, so let’s be civil.”
“An excellent point,” Sardas said. “Perhaps we could pass the time in conversation. Would you like to tell me about yourself?”
“No,” Alizhan said and resumed staring balefully and silently at Merat.
Merat laughed, as though apologizing for this outlandish behavior, and said, “Sardas, I’m sorry, but stubbornness is a family trait.”
So Sardas knew they were family? How much else did he know?
If Thiyo were awake, he could navigate this conversation for her. He’d be better at saying elegant, mean things to Merat. He could walk the line between socially acceptable and vicious. It had only been a little while, and Alizhan already wanted to resort to baring her teeth and growling.
Alizhan peeled off Thiyo’s hat and stroked his flattened hair. The wild, dark waves of it fell over his eyes. It was shiny and soft, but Alizhan knew Thiyo missed having long hair. She ran one of the short locks through her fingers. To Merat and Sardas, the gesture might look sweet and absentminded. A useful illusion. There were no casual intimacies in Alizhan’s life. Every touch was deliberate and considered.
Wake up, Thiyo. Wake up and remember.
Nothing happened. Alizhan continued to touch him, just in case.
“That’s often the way,” Sardas was saying. “So many things run in families.”
“My little girl used to refuse to wear anything but purple,” Merat said. “You could offer her dozens of tunics and dresses and skirts, in all the finest fabrics, with the most delicate embroidery—you’ve never seen such beautiful clothes—and she would throw them on the ground and stomp on them unless they were purple. In the end, it was easier to bend to her will. It was our house color, after all.”
My little girl meant Iriyat. It was jarring to think of her as a child. Iriyat never spoke about her family. Alizhan had always assumed it was because the loss of her parents was too painful.
Merat sighed. “I wish she hadn’t gone mad.”
Alizhan didn’t want to talk to either of them, didn’t want to ask any questions, didn’t want to be drawn into Merat’s ploy, but she wanted very badly to know more. Merat thought Iriyat was mad?
“I’m sure you’ll do your best to set things right,” Sardas said.
Alizhan blinked. Set things right wasn’t how she’d describe committing a murder. Sardas must not know. If Merat was lying during this conversation, the lies weren’t meant for Alizhan.
Merat put a hand on his knee. Shockingly familiar, for a Nalitzvan aristocrat. “You’ve been a good friend to me, all these years. When I felt most abandoned by the world, there you were. I am both sorry you have to witness this low moment in my life and relieved that you are here, all at once. You do like to give shelter to the lost.”
This last sentence was spoken with a look at Thiyo that even Alizhan perceived. Merat was doing that thing—Thiyo’s thing—where you said something in which none of the individual words was mean, but somehow the impact of the whole was insulting.
“He’s fascinating,” Sardas said. “You should give him a chance.”
And Sardas was doing something else—the words all sounded nice, and yet somehow they didn’t add up to treating Thiyo like a person. Sardas had been warm and friendly to Alizhan when they’d first met. He’d been harboring secret plans the whole time—what secrets exactly, she still didn’t know. But he’d lured Thiyo into a trap. The carriage felt too small and enclosed, and they had so many hours to go.
The least these two awful people could do for Alizhan was to give her some useful information about her family. But to get that, she’d have to speak. Alizhan took a breath. “When did she go mad?”
“She was always troubled, but she could be managed until your father died,” Merat said. “I didn’t approve of him, I’m sorry to say.”
She didn’t sound sorry. Besides, Alizhan was glad to hear it. Her father was the only person in her newly discovered family, besides Eliyan, that she liked. She would never meet him—except through Thiyo’s translation. If Alizhan had let Thiyo continue reading his translation of the journal instead of storming out, she’d know Iriyat’s version of the story.
“He was a sailor and he died in the last wave. Iriyat always blamed me for that. Grief makes people irrational. It’s not as if anyone controls the ocean.”
Sardas laughed. “Truly a mad aspiration.” He paused to consider it. “But a rather wonderful one, don’t you think? Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we could control the waves?”
“You’ve always had a taste for whimsy, Sardas. Anyway, mad with grief, Iriyat attacked us—her father and myself—shortly after discovering that the sailor had died. I’m afraid she killed Orosk—her father and your grandfather. But she told the world we were both dead and wrested Varenx House from my hands, playing the part of the victim the whole time.”
“And now you’re going to… set things right,” Alizhan said.
“With your help,” Merat said. The satisfaction in her voice turned Alizhan’s stomach.
31
Mistakes
THIYO’S BRAIN WAS WRUNG OUT like a wet rag. He’d woken up a few times over the mess of the last few hours—shifts? triads?—to relieve himself. And to throw up. Mah Yee, there’d been far too much of that. He’d barely eaten anything, but his body was purging itself of something. He’d accepted water from Alizhan and Ev and stared dully while they’d asked things like “How did you get here? What happened that made you leave Estva?”
Thiyo didn’t know. Alizhan and Ev had treated the subject so gingerly. At first, they’d asked him over and over again if he was sure he wanted to come with them. Whatever the plan was, he must have objected at some point, but his objections, whatever they’d been, had vanished. And now, since they’d stopped asking, and since the rolling motion and wooden creaking of his surroundings must mean he was on a ship, Thiyo assumed they’d decided for him.
Awake, he probed the gap in his memory the way he’d use his tongue to poke at a space between his teeth: absentmindedly, incessantly, to the point of madness. It was dim in this cabin, and dimmer still in his narrow berth, and he didn’t bother to examine anything else around him. He was too busy sifting through his own mind. It was sickening to be so aware of the gap—and he was already sick to begin with. His head throbbed. It felt like he’d be
en poisoned. But who would have done that?
It was too warm. He was still dressed in the coat he’d been wearing in Estva, which meant the clothes underneath were likely rank, but there was nothing to be done about it. He unbuttoned his coat, pausing when his hand brushed a strange lump in one of his inside pockets. He pulled out a brown cloth bag. How had that gotten there? It was light for its size and it rustled when he shook it. Thiyo picked apart the seam at the top.
Dried nightvine. He should know how this had come into his possession, but his aching head supplied no answers. He poked a finger into the loose contents of the bag and discovered a tiny, folded piece of paper. He shook it free of the leaves and unfolded it.
Don’t trust S.
The message was in Nalitzvan, in handwriting so neat it might as well have been printed. There was a black smudge at the end of the sentence, made of a substance that didn’t look like ink. Thiyo touched it—eyeliner. A woman with black eyeliner and no hair. Ayat. A priest of Doubt at the press in Estva. She’d given him this bag of nightvine and she must have written the note, too.
S must be Sardas, then. What did Ayat mean? Thiyo’s memory was full of holes. Some things remained: he remembered living and working in Estva for weeks. He’d translated the journal in secret and discovered that eating nightvine protected people from magic. Henny had broken the rules to heal a man with a broken leg and been kicked out. Ket had left to save her. And there was a gap, except for the foggy memories of Alizhan and Ev looming over him, their eyes huge with concern.
Someone had altered his memory. Sloppy work, if he could notice it.
He’d been eating nightvine for weeks. Was that why someone had poisoned him? To make it easier to alter his memory? That would make sense. It didn’t do anything to calm the swell of nausea in his stomach.
Outside his cabin, there was the murmur of conversation. He identified Alizhan and Ev and someone else—a soft, feminine voice. Thiyo knew that accent—Nalitzvan so hard and delicate it might as well have been carved with a chisel, scraping away any hint of soft Laalvuri consonants. But why would he recognize that voice? Who was speaking?
The conversation ended and Ev and Alizhan came in.
“Oh, good, you’re awake,” Ev said.
“I found this,” Thiyo said, sitting up and handing her the bag of nightvine and the note. “And this. And someone altered my memory.”
Alizhan promptly sat down on the edge of his berth and Thiyo regarded her with apprehension. “We thought so. And I just,” she started, reaching a hand toward his head. “Nothing’s come of it yet, but I have a stupid, inexplicable urge to touch you like this, so will you let me?”
“Your urge to touch me is neither stupid nor inexplicable,” Thiyo said. Then he sniffed. “Although I admit I’ve smelled better in my life.”
Alizhan put her hand in his hair, and a memory rose out of the fog of the last two triads. She’d done this before. He remembered her fingertips on his scalp. Without a word, he repositioned himself so he was lying with his head in her lap. She put her other hand in his hair and began to massage little circles into his skin. It felt lovely—so gentle—a balm to the ache of loneliness he’d grown accustomed to, a kind of sweetness he’d almost forgotten existed in the world.
“Who wrote this?” Ev said, peering at the note. “What’s this Nalitzvan word here?”
“Ayat wrote it. It says ‘don’t trust S.’ You should take that nightvine and keep eating it so you and Alizhan can touch each other.”
“So she’s talking about Sardas,” Ev said, ignoring his advice. She didn’t hand the bag back.
“Yes, although I don’t know—ow! You can’t do that if you’re going to pluck out my hair, you little fiend.”
“I didn’t,” Alizhan said. “I wouldn’t do that.”
“I was watching and she didn’t do anything differently,” Ev said. She pushed Thiyo’s bent legs aside and sat at the end of the berth. As though finally accepting that they were going to be here a long time, she set the bag of nightvine aside.
Alizhan continued massaging his scalp, a pleasant, firm pressure that contrasted with the ache behind his eyes. He wasn’t at his best. Maybe he’d imagined the pain. “Well, I won’t make you stop, in that case.”
“Anyway, Sardas seems to be friends with Merat,” Ev said.
“Who?” Thiyo had no idea what Ev was talking about. And then the ship lurched. Alizhan’s hand splayed over his temple to hold him in place. Thiyo yelped at the spike of pain. Merat. That was the woman with the distinctive accent. Merat Orzh Varenx. A Lacemaker. Alizhan’s grandmother and a figure in the journal he’d translated. The woman responsible for his stint in a Nalitzvan prison. She must have touched him and made him forget. But if so, then how had he remembered?
The ship groaned beneath them and Alizhan stroked her hand through his hair. That spike of pain he’d felt—that had been Alizhan, restoring a memory. She wasn’t just touching him for show, or for comfort. She was working.
A chill of disappointment settled over him—she hadn’t simply wanted to touch him. But that was absurd. She was doing something important and he was being pathetic. And he’d just learned something crucial. “That’s why you two have been so ridiculously apologetic.” Thiyo swatted at Alizhan’s hands and sat up. “We’re on this ship with Merat. I told you this was a bad idea and I didn’t want to come. So why the depths-drowned fuck am I here?”
“You remember her!” Alizhan was delighted, grinning despite the dark circles under her eyes. “It worked! What else do you remember?”
“I remember asking a question one second ago and not getting an answer.”
“We left Estva and rode for Din Yaritz without you,” Ev said. “And then a shift later, while we were at an inn, Sardas showed up with you in tow. You were unconscious. We think he abducted you. We tried to get the story out of you every time you blinked, but we couldn’t. And we couldn’t leave you behind in that state. So you’re on this ship now. We’re really sorry.”
“Sardas?” Thiyo said in disbelief. The kindly old priest had abducted him? Had Sardas poisoned him?
“Ayat tried to warn you,” Ev said, holding up the note. “We didn’t get the message until it was too late.”
“I’m still not sure why Sardas did it, though,” Alizhan said, yawning. “Merat doesn’t like you.”
“I don’t care much for her, either.”
“You must have some value to her,” Ev said. “Or to Sardas.”
Thiyo looked at Alizhan. “Do it again. Touch me.”
She reached for him, putting a hand on either side of his face. They faced each other for a long time with nothing happening. Alizhan’s eyelids fluttered closed and she swayed with fatigue. Thiyo steadied her with his hands on her shoulders. Now that he’d had a moment to observe her, he could see there were long strands of black hair slipping out of her braid. Her tunic was wrinkled and grimy. Ev hardly looked any better. It had been a difficult few triads.
Alizhan didn’t move her hands from his face, but she said, “It’s not working.”
“What did we do right last time?” Thiyo said. “It felt like the ship moved, and then this lance of pain went right through my head, and suddenly I knew who Merat was. Before that, when Ev mentioned her, the name meant nothing to me.”
“You think the ship moved?” Ev asked. “I didn’t feel anything like that. It must have been something between you two.”
Alizhan nodded. Her eyes were open now, but shadowed with sleepiness. “You mentioned Merat, and I suddenly knew what it was Thiyo had forgotten. And he was thinking about it, too.”
“So you worked together,” Ev said. “That means Thiyo should think about Sardas.”
Thiyo visualized the priest’s face, with its long, angular nose and its laugh lines, and the grey robes he always wore. A bolt of pain shot from left to right behind his eyes, as though it had come from one of Alizhan’s hands and gone through his head. An image swam through his mind: Sardas lea
ning over him and offering him a small vial of something to drink.
Sardas had gotten him drunk and then given him something to drink, and fool that he was, he’d accepted it. That was how Sardas had poisoned and abducted him. But why?
Mah Yee, Thiyo regretted every swallow of liquor and every friendly word. What a mistake he’d made, trusting Sardas.
At the thought of mistakes, pain sparked. Thiyo didn’t want to think about anything else that would bring him pain—he’d had quite enough—but that twinge of discomfort was a road sign for some important memory that Merat had locked away. He had to find it. Mistakes, regrets… oh. They’d been drinking in the library, that little room with giant windows dominated by the Night sky. Sardas hadn’t been as drunk as Thiyo, but he hadn’t been sober, and the liquor had made him reminisce.
Thiyo’s head pounded. His breath came fast and shallow.
Sardas talked about a woman he loved. She didn’t love him back because she’d lost the love of her life in the last wave to hit Laalvur—just like Iriyat had written in the journal. Sardas hadn’t been able to stop himself from loving her, and they’d kept up a correspondence for years, even after he’d moved to Estva. Now he wanted to return to Laalvur.
Sardas had shown him a book in Hoi. A treatise on wai. Thiyo hadn’t been able to place it at the time, but now he knew he’d seen it before—in Alizhan’s memory. She’d stolen that book at Iriyat’s request. She said she’d like to meet you. She wants you to read it.
That came with such a head-splitting blast of pain that it took Thiyo a moment to understand that he wasn’t the only one howling. Alizhan had wailed and snatched her hands back. Thiyo made an instant of eye contact with her before her eyes rolled backward and she collapsed forward into his lap.
“Sardas didn’t bring me here for Merat,” he told Ev. “He’s working for Iriyat.”
Alizhan woke up in Thiyo’s berth feeling like someone had drilled into her skull. Thiyo and Ev weren’t there, but the bag of nightvine and Thiyo’s translation were both in the bed with her. She pushed herself upright. How long had she been out? Half an hour? Four hours? Impossible to say.
Nightvine Page 29