by Jenny Martin
Miyu shakes loose, and catches her breath. Wide-eyed, we stare at each other. I have no idea who might be watching unseen, so I whisper in her paint-smudged ear. “That was—”
She cuts me off with a nod. Dakesh. Benroyal’s puppet ruler and Cash’s older brother. For her, the shock’s already wearing off. But the calculating calm in her eyes does little to ease my mind. I struggle to dial down the panic, but it’s a losing battle.
“If he’s here, and we’re spotted, we’re dead,” I whisper. “Worse than dead. Ambushed, interrogated, gift-wrapped, and delivered to Benroyal. We’ve got to get out of here.”
“You’re not thinking rationally. If you would simply take a moment to—”
“I don’t do rational.”
“Then it’s a good thing I’m here.”
Yeah, it really is. I take a breath and will my brain to actually, maybe just for once, spit out a coherent thought.
Miyu’s already one step ahead. “None of our intel indicated there would be a royal visit. But this may actually be in our favor.” Even in her ridiculous disguise, I can see the gears turn behind her eyes. “We could easily slip through a crowd in such disorder. You up for a little chaos?”
“That I can handle.”
She looks me up and down, as if making her own assessment. She adjusts the hood of my robe, pulling it forward.
“There,” she says. “Much better. I can’t see the terror in your eyes now.”
I start to take the bait and mouth off, but then it hits me. I’m not afraid anymore.
It takes most of the afternoon to wind our way through the heart of Manjor. We slip through the crowded market district, avoiding IP stations all along the way. Beyond the storefronts and alleyways, the roads narrow, and we walk in shadow, between the run-down high-rises and crumbling villas of the slums.
By noon, we are hot and tired. Children rush onto the street, ready to scavenge a midday meal or pick up a job. Some of them are wiry and quick enough to put me on alert. I keep my hands in my pockets as they pass. Others jostle and shove each other, trading trash talk and laughter. So many of them wear a smile like Cash’s, a grin that crackles with clever defiance.
A handful of them beg or offer small wares, a handmade bracelet or some other trinket. I don’t speak the language, but it’s easy to figure out just about everything’s negotiable, and all for a “bargain” price. Rapidly, Miyu deals with them. Most, she chases off with a stream of Biseran words. A lucky few get a handful of credits.
They shout back at us, hand over heart, before running off.
“We need to keep moving,” Miyu warns.
So we walk.
Finally, after another half-hour march, we reach the oldest abbey in the city. Here, we’re to meet Miyu’s contact, who’s supposed to take us to my uncle’s vault. Sweat-soaked and bone-tired, we walk up the wide steps through the high stone archway. Through clouds of spice into a vast, dimly lit church.
“Watch your step,” Miyu warns.
I look down just in time. I nearly stumbled over a curb. No, not a curb exactly, but a low ring of brick, bordering a small fountain. A ripple of light draws my eye to the water inside. The pool’s a black mirror, reflecting candlelight, and the whole chapel’s filled with them. I count at least a dozen little wells, each a few feet in diameter, spread out with pathways between.
The air is thick with the scent of poppied incense and the hum of whispered prayer. There are many other mourners here. Murmuring, they kneel and light candles. They wash away their mourning masks and leave offerings at the wells. My eyes slide away from their earnest faces. Ours is a false pilgrimage; I’ve got no right to stare.
Miyu stops in the middle of the room, near the most central pool. I drop beside her. Wary, I touch her wrist, but she shakes her head. “We’re safe here,” she whispers. “It’s dark enough, and we need to blend in.”
I scan the room. I see mourners focused on their own prayers. Here, in the shelter of the dim, everyone’s washing away the masks.
“The water,” I whisper. “What is it for?”
“The current of souls.”
“What?”
“Most Biseran believe that the soul—sibat—is immortal, a current that can never be destroyed. They say that all life is connected in that current, and that all wells . . .” She skims her hand over the surface, sending ripples through it. “All worlds, past and present, are also connected, because the current of sibat runs through each.”
There’s a pile of fresh linen beside the well. After pulling one of the towels into her lap, Miyu leans in and begins to wash away her own mask, splashing her face until it’s hers again. The paint bleeds in rivulets, spilling through her cupped hands. In the water, the tendrils of color curl out and dissolve, unfurling like dying blooms.
“So when you die, your soul is carried from one well to another,” I say when she’s done.
She nods.
Cautious, I test the rushing water, letting it slip through my own fingers. It’s fragrant and cool. So I wash up too. Less gracefully, of course. I scrub and scrub and scrub away the sticky mourning mask. My face comes clean, but I end up drowning the sleeves of my robe. Miyu hands me a towel. I mop myself up as best as I can.
She presses her face into another, then puts it aside. I see her now, raw and unguarded. She’s looking exhausted, and I can’t really blame her. And yet the prim satisfaction remains. When it breaks, turning up the corners of her mouth, I read the truth. Miyu likes saving the day. She’s good at it. And with all the stupid people in the world, she knows she’ll always have to.
We both glance around the church again.
“Why do they pray?” I ask. “Why do they come here at all, if there’s no true death?”
“They mourn a soul’s passage,” she says thoughtfully. “They pray for its return, or for reunion in another life, in another world. And they ask for balance, that if they have lost a loved one, that this world receive his or her equal. An sibat sibat. Soul for soul.”
“An sibat sibat,” I repeat.
“Emam arras amam. In this life or the next.”
“In this life.” I close my eyes and think of Cash. Silent, I bargain with the current. Please. Let it be this life.
A swish of movement catches me off guard. I open my eyes and spy the dark robe, its mud-spattered hem skimming the floor. Someone looms over us, hood pulled low. The head-to-toe black of the outfit is startling. Instinctively, I shiver, as if death itself has dropped in.
Miyu stands, speaking to him in Biseran.
When he shifts to listen, I catch a better glimpse of his face. There are two x’s scarred into his cheeks. One under each eye, surely made by knifepoint. When I stare at him, he says something in Biseran, then walks away. After I stumble to my feet, Miyu and I follow him to the back of the church.
There, he pulls back a curtain and we step into a dark alcove. No more candles, and I can just make out the first few steps, twisting below. The man in black starts to descend, then stops. At Miyu’s shoulder, I look down the turn, where the stairwell’s pitch-toothed mouth eats the last shadows.
“Come on,” she says.
I hesitate. Up until recently, I’ve always trusted my instincts. I get a knot in my gut before a hard right? I go left. Trouble is, I look at this man and I see a blind turn. He may be our guide, but he’s not working for us.
“We don’t know this guy. We don’t know where he’s leading us,” I say quietly. “We can’t even see.”
“It’s an acceptable risk,” Miyu counters, irritated that we’ve stopped. “I’m told we can trust him.”
“Trust him? How do we know our real guide isn’t dead or whatnot because this guy—who’s dressed like death incarnate, by the way—choked him out and is just taking us down here so he can push us down the steps or drop us into IP hands? Shouldn’t we be u
sing some kind of signal or code word or something?”
It’s too dark to see, but I can practically feel the roll of her eyes. “For sun’s sake, I’ve already used the signal. And the robes are perfectly suitable for our point of contact.”
The guy’s just standing there, waiting on us while we bicker like some old married couple. When she and I sigh at the same time, it might as well be a signal of our own.
The man clears his throat. Looks at us like he’s got better things to do.
So we stop arguing and do the sensible thing: We start inching our way toward possible death.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FOLLOWING OUR GUIDE, WE EASE DOWN THE SPIRAL. TWENTY steps, and we lose all light. Forty, and the dank air puts a rasp in my breath. Pressed against the wall, my fingertips sense the rush of water behind rock. It whistles through my bones. Soon, I stop counting steps. The darkness has teeth, clamping down on us in a cold, blood-shiver bite. The farther we sink, the more tense and uneasy I get. Despite Miyu’s reassurances, bugging out seems like a reasonable option.
When we finally come to a stop, I’m sure we must be near the source of the wells. I can feel the spray in the air.
At the bottom of the stairwell, our guide fumbles around in the dark. A door swings out, squealing on rusty hinges and slicing through the pitch.
At first, the brightness blinds me, and I focus on the electrical hum. Then my eyes adjust to the eye-level glow of emergency lights, racing down a narrow walkway. At my left, a rippling canal. On my right, stone and shadow and hard-packed earth. The path before us stretches out farther than I can see.
I hear voices. Not echoes from the church above, but conversations bubbling over the splash of the canal. Instinctively, I press my back against the wall, ready to scrap it out with whatever springs from the dark.
A boat drifts by, then another. The first holds a few passengers. It’s their voices I hear. And the second vessel isn’t a boat after all. It’s a small hydrift platform, gliding over the water. Loaded with cargo, it trails behind; a lone woman steers it. When both vessels pass us by, the fight-or-flight hammer of my pulse simmers down a notch.
“Smugglers?” I ask.
Our guide nods. “The aquifer runs the length of the city, all the way to the shore.”
His Castran is near flawless, and I try not to think about how much he’s already heard. I’m terrible at stealth.
“And the tunnel?” Miyu presses.
“Tunnels,” he corrects. “Miles of tunnels.”
“And every one of them a bootlegger’s best friend. That about right?” I ask.
“Something like that.” His scarred face splits in a surprisingly honest smile. A third boat drifts by. Another platform, but this one’s less laden with cargo. Our guide hails its pilot, who answers by bringing the vessel to a stop beside us. Both men speak in rapid-fire Biseran, a blur of unfamiliar words. I look to Miyu. At least she knows what they’re talking about.
She reads my mind, whispering, “The pilot called you a little gan-gan.”
“What’s a gan-gan?”
“It’s an insect.” She pauses. “Kind of like a sand flea.”
“Great. Now I’m a blood-sucking little—”
“Not exactly,” Miyu interrupts. “Ganganarem, as they are more properly known, live on the backs of brush monkeys. But they don’t draw blood. They digest the feces of their host and—”
“Stop. Just stop, okay? Why would you think I’d ever want to know that?”
“Well,” she replies. “You did ask.”
She’s stone-cold serious. At least I think she is, by the look on her face. I’m not even sure whether to cuss her out or bust up laughing. But I don’t get the chance to decide. Our guide interrupts.
He motions for us to climb aboard the platform. When I don’t get a move on, the pilot, a leathery old man, mumbles in Biseran.
“What’d the pilot say?” I ask Miyu.
“He said ‘let’s go,’” our guide answers.
Miyu’s eyes narrow. “Actually, it sounded like he said—”
He silences her with a look. “He said he hasn’t got all day. He said let’s go.”
We climb aboard, even though I’m certain the pilot’s words put Miyu on alert. But now we’re drifting in fog and mist and shadow, so it’s too late to ask what or why. All we can do is keep near the edge—our eyes on the men, our backs to the current.
As we drift along, I start to notice things along the route. The guide wasn’t kidding about miles of tunnels, but we keep a straight course. Dockside, along the walkway, recessed thresholds line the canal. And the farther we go, the more people I see.
Sure, I spy a few nasty-looking toughs like our guide, but there’s an odd assortment of seemingly ordinary folk too. Dock workers haul dry goods off boats, couriers scurry from one spot to another, would-be merchants watch as buyers appraise their everyday wares.
This isn’t just some scummy black-market hive, like you’d find in a Castran city. In Capitoline, the facades are as pristine as a Sixer gown. But turn up the hem, and you get the crooked seam, woven by dealers and thieves. But here in Manjor, only the surface is chaos. Underneath, there’s order and common trade. Splash a little sunlight on this place, and you’d have your own little riverside borough. It’s as if I’ve fallen into some weirdly stitched alternate universe.
Our guide mistakes my gaping for fear. “You’re safe enough for now, if you do as I tell you,” he says. “Down here, we steer clear of IP business.”
Easy for him to say. He’s not the one with the bounty on his head.
“It’s just not what I expected,” I say aloud. “I expected—”
“A festering sap-hole?” the pilot cuts in.
So they both speak flawless Castran. Larken was right. Here, nothing is quite what it seems.
The old pilot stares at the roof of the canal. “The real heart of Manjor is all underground. We know how to keep to our own business. And how to keep the wrong sort out.”
“And who exactly is that?” Miyu asks, raising an eyebrow.
“Anyone who doesn’t pay a full fare,” he grumbles. When he says something else in Biseran, Miyu’s eyes sharpen. I scrawl a mental note to self: If we make it back to the Strand in one piece, I’m studying Cash’s language like my life depends on it.
Maybe it does.
Miyu lets it go, and after the old man stops grousing, our guide pulls off his monk’s robes. Underneath, he’s dressed neatly enough, in a crisp shirt and pants, polished belt and boots. And there’s something about his manner—the straight-backed way that he stands, the command in his voice—that betrays him. He’s not just another thug for hire. Surely there’s more to him than that.
Either way, I can’t blame him for ditching the robes. Even down here, in the chill, the weight of them’s oppressive. But when I start to shrug out of mine too, he stops me.
“You said we were safe down here,” I protest.
“I said you were safe, if you do as you’re told. I didn’t say you should draw attention to yourself. I have no need to hide down here, but you must. Keep the robes. At least until we make the drop. There, you can burn them, for all I care.”
“Are we close?”
“Very.”
“Will you be bringing us back?”
His smile turns up like a cutthroat slash. “No, but I’m certain our paths will cross again.”
“What’s your name? What do we call you?”
The old man’s eyes dart our way. He gives his friend a warning look, but our guide still answers. “Call me what you will,” he says. “But most would say ‘Fahrat.’”
The pilot laughs. “Fahrat, indeed.”
His cackle reeks of disrespect. Even Miyu flinches. But I ignore the old man. “Thank you, Fahrat. For safe passage.”
He n
ods.
The pilot brings us dockside. “All ashore.”
We climb out and follow Fahrat, who leads us into a section of canal so shadowed and quiet, I hesitate, even as Miyu follows. Without missing a step, our guide coaxes me on.
“If I wanted the bounty, I’d be spending it now. If I wanted you dead, you’d already be facedown, floating into the sea,” Fahrat says, all too matter-of-factly. His back is still turned, and he curses softly in the dark. His right hand searches the rock face of the cavern wall. “Come along or turn back. Choose, and stop wasting my time.”
A few more feet, and Fahrat grapples with one of the small outcroppings in the rock. I startle at the sudden, grinding scrape as it comes loose. After putting it aside, Fahrat reaches into the pocket of rock behind it, fussing and cursing some more. It’s as if he’s found some kind of invisible, secret switch, but . . . no. Nothing happens.
He snaps, jerking his chin at me. “You. Put your hand in.”
I open my mouth to argue, but he’s having none of it. “I have no business here. You must come and open the door.”
“What? What door?”
“This sensor . . . it is not programmed to open for me. It is not my appointment.”
Quickly, Miyu nods and I move beside Fahrat. I’m sure as sap not slipping my hand into a blind hole, so I lean in to get a better look. Squinting, I detect a tiny glimmer of . . . something metallic?
“Please,” Fahrat says after a moment, clipping each word. “Take your time, while we stand here exposed outside this secret entrance. I would like it very much if someone else drifted by, so we could compromise it.”
I mutter a curse, then put my hand inside the small, shadowy pocket of stone. This is metal, smooth and unmarked. A second later, I jump back at the quiet click and whir that begins the moment my palm makes contact. At my right, an entire section of wall begins to move. It opens, revealing a sleek Pallurium door, as polished as any elevator entrance in the Spire.
My pulse starts to gallop. A Sixer-built, blast-proof hatch? Down here, it doesn’t belong.