by Callie Bates
I blink at her. An independent agreement with the empress? That means the Idaean Rose isn’t simply helping Elanna out of the goodness of her heart. This isn’t quite the game I expected Firmina Triciphes to play. And yet, I suppose, if anyone is to claim the crown, it might as well be her. I think of what she said to me in the gardens about her desire to change things—about her true reason for marrying the emperor.
“That’s good,” I say.
El nods. “It gives me hope. And then Bardas told me you destroyed the fleet…” She smiles brilliantly. “Eren’s safe, for the moment.”
“Have you been in touch with Sophy?”
A haunted look comes into her eyes. “Not yet.”
“Lady Elanna has been quite unwell,” Bardas reminds us. “She only began walking about yesterday.”
Hope warms me. If this Sylvia person can help El, she can help all the sorcerers in the city. It gives us a chance. “Do you know what Sylvia did, to make your mind cope? Perhaps she could help—”
“Oh, Sylvia’s quite keen to undermine the witch hunters.” Bardas smiles. “I’m certain she’d be glad to proffer her advice, but—ah—perhaps tomorrow. She and the boy will be long asleep by now.”
“Of course,” I say. But for no reason I can identify, the hair prickles on the back of my neck. I tell myself all sorcerers are keen to undermine the witch hunters. It’s not an ambition unique to Madiya and my father.
I turn to El. “You could come back with me. To our camp. That is—if you want to join me.”
She smiles at me. It makes her nose wrinkle and her face soften, and warmth floods through me. “Or you could stay here tonight,” she says, lifting an eyebrow. “With me.”
“That is a tempting offer, madam…”
Bardas clears his throat. Elanna’s eyes narrow, and I suppress a snicker. “Of course, Jahan, we’d be more than happy to accommodate you.”
“Come along.” Elanna pulls me along with her, pushing at a bookcase. It’s a false door and, within, a narrow staircase twists upward. She pauses there, and slips her smallest finger around mine. She leans against me. Heat burns through me at the softness of her body. Heat—and relief. I thought I had lost her forever. But she’s here, and she’s whole, and I’m so damned glad I think my heart might burst out of my chest.
“El,” I begin.
“Shh.” She taps her finger to my lips.
We climb the stairs. Two doors face each other at the top. She points to one and mouths, “Sylvia’s.” The other, she opens. The bedchamber is small and the floor creaks, and I can’t help glancing at the bed, swathed in green brocade curtains. A pile of books sits on the table. Windows overlook the dark Channel. It’s a far more comfortable hiding place than mine has been.
We look at each other. Alone, at last.
I reach for her. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how I could have imagined you were dead.”
“I wondered the same about you.” She looks up at me. “But I found you now, Jahan.”
I raise an eyebrow. “I believe I found you…”
She laughs.
I touch the collar at her neck again, lightly. It’s snug; it must be leaving welts. I reach for the fastening with my mind, trying to snap it, but the magic slides away, as if off a smooth surface. The witch stones must be blocking my power—as usual, it seems. I feel myself frowning.
“There’s no use trying to break it off,” she says. “We’ve been trying for days. If Sylvia’s apprentice can’t do it, no one can.”
“Your magic,” I begin, but she shakes her head.
“Let’s not talk about that now. I just want to be here with you.” She’s smiling in a way I know well.
I lean into her. “Do you suppose Bardas is still below us? Can he hear anything?”
“I honestly don’t care.” She tugs herself up, wrapping her hands around the back of my neck. I feel for her hips under the folds of her gown and pull her close. Her mouth is hot on mine. Moist.
But her taste is wrong. So wrong I almost gag. It’s bitter, yet sweet.
“Jahan? What’s the matter?”
I’ve pulled back from her, a hand clamped over my mouth. Opium. She tastes like opium. “Someone drugged you.”
“No,” she says, bewildered. “Well, Sylvia has been giving me something. A tonic, to help with my head. I feel so much better after.”
“It’s opium,” I burst out. I’m breathing hard. If I kiss her again, will it bring back the cravings, the ones I struggled to subdue after I came to Aunt Cyra?
Elanna’s hand flies to her lips. “Are you sure?”
I nod my head. “I know that taste.”
El, seeming to sense that the moment between us can’t be regained, goes to the table and pours a glass of crimson wine. She hands it to me, frowning.
I drink. The wine burns the back of my throat. Guilt eats at me. El will think there’s something wrong with her, some reason why I don’t want to touch her, when the truth is that there’s something wrong with me. But I can’t find words to put around this fear that’s building in my chest. I set down the wine and tear my fingers through my hair.
Fingers touch my elbow. El pulls my hands down and guides me to the bed. We sit together, our shoulders touching. She doesn’t say anything. Gently, she pulls me down so that I’m laying my head in her lap.
I close my eyes. This is enough, I tell myself. It is. Elanna strokes my arm, and I hug her knees. At some point the dark comfort of sleep overtakes me.
* * *
—
A KNOCK AT the door brings me alert. I don’t know how long I slept—minutes, perhaps, no more. El’s hand has stilled on my arm. I sit so she can get up and go to the door. It must be Bardas. Couldn’t he leave us alone for just a little longer?
The door scrapes. I squint through tired eyes. A boy’s voice says, from outside, “We heard you up. She thought you might want a tonic.”
I can’t breathe. The cold in my legs seems to spike into my heart. I know that voice.
It can’t be. There’s no way my youngest brother followed me to Ida, but took refuge with Bardas Triciphes. It’s a boy’s voice, that’s all. It’s similar.
But I find myself pushing past Elanna and wrenching the door open. And there he is, Lathiel, slight and startled, holding up a guttering candle. We stare at each other. I can’t seem to find words. I thought Father had poisoned his mind against me so much that he stayed home. But he’s here—in the Deos Deorum?
“What are you doing here?” I say. “Why didn’t you come to Aexione?”
Lathiel just looks up at me, wide-eyed. As if he’s been caught.
There’s a sound beyond him, from the door on the other side of the landing. Another light gleams. And before I even see the halo of her golden hair, or hear her call out, “What is it?” I know who it is. And I can’t move. I can’t breathe. I’m suffocating here, my heart ricocheting between my ribs.
This is where she is. This is where she’s been, all this time.
This is why Lathiel came here—she must have called him, too. He must have stowed away on the Celeritas, and gone to find her.
What’s she doing here? Does she think Bardas Triciphes will help her realize her ambitions? Why?
Then she comes into view, softer than I remembered, smaller, wrapped up in a dressing gown. She’s been asleep like an ordinary person, not machinating plots or experimenting on hapless children.
Still, I can’t seem to move, even to look at Elanna, who’s touching my elbow. I can’t look away from the woman approaching us. El’s saying something, but I can’t hear it over the pounding of my heart.
Then she’s close enough to see my face. She lifts her candle. Her eyes are the same blue I remember, as cold as the winter sky.
“Jahan?” It’s the voice that has pursued me all the way fr
om Eren. The voice I burned out of my head.
I can’t make my mouth form words. I can’t make myself ask how she came to be here, or what Bardas thinks he’s doing—or how he imagines she will help their cause. I can only whisper one thing.
“Madiya?”
She smiles. The woman who destroyed my mother, who ruined my childhood, who treated me and my brothers as nothing more than experiments, smiles at me. As if she’s happy to see me. As if she’s relieved.
“I knew you didn’t mean to cut me from your mind,” she says. “Though it was cruel of you. Painful. You should have listened to me sooner. After I helped Elanna—”
She helped Elanna? I finally tear my gaze to El, who’s frowning. She tries to explain, “Jahan, this is Sylvia. She’s the one who…” She stares at Madiya. “Who saved me.”
Madiya interrupts. “Where’s Rayka? He refuses to answer my summons!”
“No,” I say. It seems like the only word that makes sense. I turn to El. “No. She’s not your savior. She won’t help us. She’ll poison you—she’ll destroy you. I won’t—I can’t—”
I grab Elanna’s arm. I have to take her. How do I know Madiya hasn’t already stolen her memories? How do I know she hasn’t already begun to destroy this woman I love? I tug El, but she doesn’t move.
“Jahan, we need to talk about this—we need to find Bardas and ask him…”
I hear the words come out of El’s mouth, but they only rattle around in my head. It’s happened already—Madiya has manipulated her. Worked holes in her mind. Maybe El no longer remembers the stories I told her about my childhood. Maybe she thinks that Madiya is trustworthy because she saved her, but Madiya would never do anything out of simple human generosity. No, she’ll be using Elanna to further her plan. To destroy the witch hunters. It’s all she’s ever wanted.
“Come with me.” The words seem to come from very far away, though they’re mine. “She’s going to destroy your mind.”
“Jahan,” El says, “we need to talk—”
“No.” I stare from her to Madiya. To Lathiel, watching me with a steady gaze. Of course, Madiya doesn’t have the power to create a simulacrum. She needed him to do it for her.
“Jahan.” Madiya reaches out, and so does Elanna.
I bolt. She’s going to come after. She’ll push me down, dribble opium into my mouth. I’ll wake up and I won’t remember any of this. I’ll forget who I am, why I’m here—
There’s a staircase in front of me. I run down it, leaving everyone behind. I surge through the deserted halls. Through an empty courtyard. Out, my ears echoing, into the night.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
It’s not until I stop at the Middle Bridge, panting, my chest heaving, that I realize what I’ve done. I abandoned Elanna. I left her there to be manipulated by Madiya. To have holes worked into her memory. To become a person I don’t recognize.
Not only her, but Lathiel. I abandoned him once, for six long years; now I’m abandoning him again.
I could go back. I should. I pace across the empty street, making a complete circle, once, twice. Fear clutches me by the neck. I am such a coward. I can’t face Madiya again. Not depleted, as I am. I need my strength back. I need a plan. If I go back to Solivetos Hill, perhaps I can take power from the Tirisero font. Perhaps that will be enough to save them both.
And if Elanna believes Madiya is her savior, then perhaps I’ve already lost her. Lost her even more completely than I did when I believed she’d been executed by Emperor Alakaseus.
“Hey! You there!”
I’ve wandered onto the bridge. A guard is shouting at me from up the street, his voice echoing over the water. Now the guards on the other side of the bridge are looking around.
I gather myself and run, hurtling across the bridge, toward the startled guards. At the last moment, I compress space. I pass through their bayonets and muskets, the scent of pipe smoke and the sturdy texture of their clothes. Then I’m pounding up the street, and they’re shouting after me. I compress space again.
But my exhaustion catches up with me, or perhaps my fear. I stumble. If I keep on like this, I’m going to get caught. Already I feel hollow—more hollow than I have in years. And while it almost seems like it doesn’t matter anymore, I can’t abandon the sorcerers at Solivetos Hill. Madiya knows about them; Bardas will have told her everything. With his influence, it won’t take much effort for her to find and suborn them.
I have to keep them safe. I draw the shadows around myself and trot down the street, ignoring the stitch in my side and the raggedness of my breathing.
I dodge two witch hunter patrols before, at last, the pillared temple rises before me. I pass through our defenses—an empty, abandoned dome—and stagger to a halt inside.
A figure moves out from an alcove, holding up a lantern. Tullea. Her face is drawn with lack of sleep. “Jahan? Did you see Pantoleon?”
“Pantoleon?” I say stupidly.
“He went back to his apartment. He said he had to get a book—he said he’d realized something. He wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
“Realized what?”
“I don’t know!” She throws up her hands, nearly flinging the lantern at my head. “He just went out!”
“But the bells—they must have driven him mad—”
“You know what he’s like, once he gets an idea in his head! He insisted he would be fine. I tried to follow him, but…” She swallows hard. “It felt as if the bells were bashing my head in. I couldn’t do it, Jahan. Not even for him.”
I can feel the weight of her shame—and her fear. She must hate how the bells render her powerless. I glance over my shoulder. Going back out into the street is the last thing I want to do. But I’m not losing Pantoleon now, not after I fought so hard to keep him as my friend. “I’ll find him.”
“Thank you,” Tullea manages, and I can see how much it costs her pride to say the words.
I just nod and go back into the street.
* * *
—
IT’S SO LATE now that even the patrols seem to have ceased. The soft scuff of my footsteps is the only sound on the streets. Even the bells have slowed their incessant ringing, coming only on every quarter of an hour—more warning, now, than threat.
I can only guess at what route Pantoleon took back to his apartment. What could possibly have seemed so urgent that he left the safety of Solivetos Hill and braved the streets on this of all nights?
The doorways sit bare even of beggars. Alleys stand empty. I try to swallow down the fear rising in my throat. Why would Pantoleon take such a risk? I want to shake him, the careless bastard.
But it feels good to have something to do. Something beyond running in fear, terrified by the knowledge of Madiya’s presence.
I’ve reached Wisteria Street, and there in the middle of the block is Pantoleon’s house. Maybe he made it home and stayed there. It would be safer than risking a return through the streets.
I pass through the front door. I’m so weary it’s a struggle to hold the wood particles apart. I creep up the stairs—only a mouse—and into my friend’s rooms.
Even in near-darkness, I can tell the rooms are a disaster. They appear to have been ransacked. Books and pillows are strewn across the floor. My body thumps hot and cold; I fumble for a candle dropped on the carpet and pull the memory of flame out of its wick. My heart pounds. I’m terrified the light will show me Pantoleon collapsed on the floor, the life run out of him.
But the rooms are empty.
I don’t have to guess what happened—the witch hunters found him. But is this a recent ransacking, or is it from days ago, when they first searched his apartment?
Brandy has soaked into the cloth binding several books. I mop it up with an already ruined throw pillow. The liquid’s fresh. And Pantoleon, no matter how worried and distracted, would
never leave a book to be ruined.
Which means…
There’s a squeak on the stairs. Then the door flies open. Pantoleon’s landlady stands there, brandishing a lantern and a club.
Instinctively, I fling my hands up.
“I’ll scream,” the landlady says. “I’ll wake up the whole block. The watch will come.”
“I’m a friend of Pantoleon’s,” I say, in my most soothing manner. “I’m looking for him.”
“At four o’clock in the morning?” She tightens her grip on her club.
“Tell me where he is, and I’ll leave you in peace,” I say.
Her gaze shifts around the room, studying the fallen books and teacups, coming back to me.
“I’m unarmed,” I add. “Although I have been known to slay people with my charm.”
The woman’s eyes narrow. “You’re not a sorcerer. The bells would unhinge you.”
Cold washes through my hands.
“Did you know he was a sorcerer?” she demands.
“No!” I force shock, disgust, horror into my tone.
The woman nods. “Yes. He came here all a disaster—I thought him sick with influenza or some such. But he couldn’t think to answer the simplest questions. So I called the witch hunter patrol. They came once before, you know, to search his rooms. But he’s a wily one—he outfoxed us all. I suspected him of something, though. Heard noises up here at all hours.” Lowering her voice, she says in a dramatic whisper, “He’s friends with the Korakos.”
“Ah,” I say. Thank the gods for my beard, or she would surely have known me on sight. “Well, that’s enough to damn anyone.”
“Exactly! This time, he couldn’t hide the truth.” She waves the club. “They took him, praise the gods. I can’t believe I sheltered one such as him.” And she spits as if to avert evil.
Pantoleon’s own landlady betrayed him. I can’t find the words to maintain my charade.
“I’m sorry to trouble you,” I manage. “What terrible news.”