Floodpath

by Emily B. Martin

  “Dead?” Lark prompts.

  “I don’t know—I don’t think so, but they dragged me away. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  I clap my hand to my mouth, reeling back from her.

  Soe.

  Fala.

  Soe, my dearest friend . . . I sent her right into the heart of danger, I told her to say exactly the things that would put her in harm’s way . . .

  Fala.

  My body flushes with shock. While Irena’s sobs begin afresh, I lock gazes with Lark. Her eyes are creased in anger.

  “Your head of staff is a Hire,” she says. “And now she’s trying to cover her tracks.”

  The guards would have killed Irena without question, thinking her guilty of the crime, and the secret of Soe’s attack would have died with her. It would all have been pinned on the chaos of hunting down the Sunshield Bandit.

  Shards of memory start to fit together, tiny things that didn’t have a pattern before—someone was able to get into Iano’s rooms to leave the blackmail letters, someone even the servants didn’t see, because they didn’t see anyone they wouldn’t expect. Someone had to have access to the queen’s seal to replicate it, and then use it to verify orders. Someone had to have access to records that would detail my si-oque, and the ability to anonymously deliver a forgery to an influential minister. Someone had to have spies, informants, muscle—not in the oblivious court, wrapped up in its own importance, but below, in the fabric of the staff. Someone had to be willing to risk everything to preserve the labor system—a system that created its own hierarchy under the stagnant, self-absorbed power of the palace. While politicians squabbled and bartered with human lives, another society quietly organized itself to take hold of the power bestowed by a too-mighty court.

  Fala coordinated the attack on my coach.

  Fala ordered the cut in my tongue, the weeks in a cell.

  Fala blackmailed Iano to appoint Kimela.

  It was Fala.

  I lunge forward and tug Irena’s hands away from her tear-and blood-streaked face.

  “Where?” I ask urgently. “Fa’—where?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispers. “She left the records room, but I didn’t see where she went.”

  “She’s destroying evidence,” Lark says grimly. “Where would she go? The Hall of the Ashoki?”

  “I don’t . . . perhaps there, or her office,” Irena says. “Palace records are up with the clerks, but staff records are all in her office.”

  Beskin. Poia. Simea. How many other staff mysteriously disappeared around that same time?

  I point at the different hallways.

  Which way? I ask. Lark translates.

  “This way to the main workroom, and her office,” Irena says. “There’s a corridor leading to the Hall of the Ashoki from there.”

  Up the hall, a door slams.

  I nod. “Go.”

  We run.

  Veran

  “It’s a Moquoian tea, you won’t have tried it before,” Fala says, pushing me down into the chair and handing me the mug. “It’s invigorating for the cold, but it’s best drunk quickly for full effect. It helps with the unusual taste, too.”

  She closes my hands around the mug and then returns to her desk. I stare as she sweeps her gaze over the drawers. I look down at the mug, my mind racing frantically. My thoughts crash back to the rock above the coach road just a few days ago, where I needed to think clearly and instead I panicked, where I needed to be brave and instead I fled.

  You and your hero complex, Lark has said so many times now.

  A few days ago I thought I knew exactly what a hero was.

  A few days ago I figured out I wasn’t one.

  After a moment of silence, Fala looks back up at me, and without trying to make sense of my thoughts any longer I hurriedly lift the mug, not wanting her to grow suspicious at my hesitation. The tea inside smells familiar, like the high evergreen slopes of the Silverwood after a rain.

  What do you have? Mama asks in my head.

  Fala sinks into her desk chair, still watching me. She’s here, and I’m here. She’s wary of me now. And I have a full mug but no real answers yet.

  Start with that, Mama says.

  “Oh, I’ve had urch before,” I say, tilting the mug toward my mouth.

  “Good,” Fala says.

  I lower the mug and wipe my lips with the back of my hand.

  There’s another length of silence, and then abruptly she leans forward and taps Tamsin’s essay, still lying on her desk. As she does, I see her si-oque peek out from the black hem of her sleeve, the first commoner’s si bracelet I ever saw. I asked her why there were so many colors on it. She explained that she had no family to pass the beads on to.

  She explained that her work had always come first.

  “You know why this pamphlet is so dangerous?” she asks.

  I shake my head. That scent of evergreen curls off the lukewarm mug. It’s naggingly familiar—less like my mountain home than I thought. And certainly not urch. I know what larch and birch smell like. This is stronger and sharper. Why do I know it?

  “No,” Fala confirms. “You’re a foreigner. You would not be expected to know. Let me explain. This pamphlet is akin to pulling a thread holding a tapestry together. It’s the start of an unraveling.”

  Important, and urgent, Mama says.

  With the barest turn of my head, I slide my gaze to the glass door she locked with a key, then to the other end of the room, where the rain hits the windows. There’s a door handle there, too—there must be a landing outside. I can’t tell if it’s locked or not. I squint at it.

  One crisis at a time, Mama says.

  Fala sees my look. She checks the far door as well. The mug tilts in my hand, and when she looks back, I raise it hurriedly again to my lips.

  “How is the tea?” she asks.

  “Unusual,” I reply. I show her the half-empty mug, shuffling my damp boots on the floor.

  It seems to put her at ease. She leans back in her chair.

  “You did a very bold thing, Veran, writing that first letter to Prince Iano last year. You pulled the first thread.”

  “Tamsin had already started pulling,” I say.

  “Tamsin—” she begins sharply, and then inhales. “Tamsin Moropai didn’t pull threads. She set the tapestry on fire. There were many in this palace who hoped her messages would be too extreme for the young prince to take seriously—until pressure started coming from across the Ferinno, as well.”

  “Pressure was already building here in the country,” I protest. “Just because it never penetrated the palace doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. Folk’s lives are at stake.”

  “Oh yes, folk’s lives are at stake,” she says, repeating my careless Eastern word back to me. “But I don’t think you realize just how much. I don’t think you realize in what ways. You’ve tampered with an entire political system, Veran.”

  “Not the one up top, I’m guessing?”

  She narrows her eyes at me, and I wonder how I ever thought her motherly. The whole room smells of the sharp, pungent liquid in my mug. I’m flushed all over now with my own stupidity.

  “I should have gotten you out of the way from the first moment you started bumbling around this court, complicating all my work,” she says quietly. “Things would have been completely straightforward without you.”

  I struggle to order my thoughts. “Like you tried to do with Eloise? Putting that bowl of water on her windowsill and removing a pane to draw infected mosquitoes into her room?”

  “I assumed she would be my main problem, not you,” Fala says with a sour twist to her lips. “But you would have been even easier to remove—as easy as this. Who’s to say it wasn’t just one of your fits?”

  Listen to your body, Mama whispers.

  I finally place the scent of the remnants in my cup. Redcedar. It’s mentioned in the scout handbooks, but only in the forestry sections, because it’s considered a timber wood, not a medicina
l.

  In fact . . . it’s the opposite.

  Vague memories of footnote warnings slip through my head. Convulsant. Purgative. But I know the real reason it smells so familiar.

  Glass cleaner.

  The mug falls from my hand and hits the hardwood floor with a crack. I catch a final glimpse of Fala’s stoic face as I slide off the chair and crumple to the floor.

  Lark

  Tamsin is ahead of me, racing across a long, shadowed room filled with worktables, the high ceiling lost to darkness. I grip my ribs in one hand, my sword bare in the other—drawing each breath is agony, but it’s drowned out by urgency. This woman, Fala, just attacked a stranger who knew too much—who else might she deem a threat? She had no problem going after the high-ranking ashoki, no problem threatening the prince.

  And Veran could be in the palace—and she would know if he was. If that ring belonged to him, she must have held it in her hands and known he was here, asking to speak to the queen.

  Behind me, Irena gasps, “There!” She points to a short staircase at the end of the long workroom, where a glass-fronted office glows with firelight. Tamsin barrels up the stairs and lunges for the door handle. She rattles it and then pounds on the glass.

  “Veran!” she shouts, her voice echoing through the cavernous space.

  My stomach drops. He’s in there?

  With her?

  I take the steps three at a time and arrive beside Tamsin. Through the glass I see the woman who came into my cell to look at me. She’s standing behind a desk, staring at Tamsin with a look of shock. My gaze drops to the floor, where Veran is sprawled on his side, unmoving, his shoulders and head angled around the far side of the desk. A broken mug and puddles of liquid are scattered on the hardwood floor. My stomach dissolves away completely.

  No.

  Tamsin heaves on the door handle again, and then slams her palm against the glass, screaming her frustration at the woman inside. Fala, in turn, stoops to retrieve something in the desk, scattering quills in her haste.

  “Move!” I push Tamsin out of the way and pull the patch cowhide hat off my head. I fold the thick leather around the blade of my sword, wind it back, and then arc the hilt toward the glass with the strength of a thousand swings at the firewood block. The hilt punches through the massive panel, spiderwebbing the glass and spraying shards inward. Inside, Fala shouts, but I wind back and swing again. Fragments fly across the room. Fala leaps back from her desk, cowering behind the chair. My third strike is the one that does it—with a sound like a stagecoach smashing on rocks, the entire panel shatters, crashing to the floor. Silica dust blooms into the air. Tamsin flings her arms over her head. Irena crouches by the stairs, shielding her face.

  A reek of glass cleaner—the kind they had us wipe down panels with before shipping—billows out with the silica. I don’t wait for the dust to clear—I jump over the doorframe, skidding on the piles of glass shards. Fala doesn’t wait, either. With a panicked look, she lunges again for her desk drawer and thrusts her hand inside. She emerges with a bundle of papers and jumps backward toward the fire grate.

  “Stop!” she shouts, flinging her hand out, her eyes wide, but I’m not going for her. She’s cornered and unarmed—I’ll deal with her in a moment. First I lunge down toward Veran. My boot slides on the glass, and I fall to one knee by his feet. I shake his leg.

  “Veran!”

  He doesn’t moan, doesn’t stir.

  “Fire and smoke, Veran, no—”

  “Fa!” Tamsin roars, struggling into the room behind me. And then, the L of my name deadened on her tongue, she cries, “Lark!”

  I look up in time to see Fala fling the bundle of papers into the fire. Just as they land in the smoldering grate, Veran’s boots thrash. Like a quarrel from a crossbow, he shoots off the floor and leaps for her, catching her around the knees. A penknife spins wildly through the air—I can’t tell who it belongs to, but it doesn’t matter. It falls uselessly to the floor and skids under the desk. Gasping, Fala topples sideways. Her head hits the wall, and she crumples to the floor. Veran rolls off her, tangled between her body and the far windows.

  “The letters!” Veran cries, flinging an arm at the fire. “Lark, get the letters!”

  I leap toward the smoking grate and hook the hilt of my sword over the burning pile, drawing them out, along with a trail of glowing coals. The bottom few are reduced to ash, but the top two are only scorched around the edges. I’m starting to stamp out the creeping flames when a trio of yells fills the little space, spinning in the chaos of desk chairs and fresh glass and smoke and bodies. Fala is up, and, though weaving from the hit to her head, steps on Veran’s open palm as she rushes to the far windows.

  Too late I see the latch. Too late I watch the door open and Fala flee out into the driving rain.

  Tamsin, though, doesn’t miss a beat. With another roar, she barrels past the desk and both of us, out into the dark night. Irena, still standing outside the shattered office door, gasps and turns. Without a word of explanation, she rushes back down the staircase and out of sight.

  I set my boots to jump to my feet, but Veran yelps again, “Lark—the letters!”

  The embers are still determined to claim the paper for themselves, and I hurry to crush out the final trails of flame. By the time I’ve beat the rest of the coals away with my hat, there are two mostly intact letters remaining, with all the writing visible, right down to Tamsin’s familiar signature, with the bat she hid in the M of her last name to lead us to her prison at Utzibor.

  A numb silence falls. The air curls with the scent of smoke and blood. Glass shifts under my knees, and I finally feel the bite of their sharp edges. Through the open door, the rain makes a constant hiss. I take what feels like my first breath in five minutes, my ribs searing in protest. I drag my gaze from the letters to Veran—he’s slouched against the wall, clutching his palm to his chest. He’s staring at me, too, his chest rising and falling with rapid breaths.

  “Lark,” he whispers.

  I let out my breath but can’t bring myself to say his name. I crawl over the glass-coated floor, shoving the heavy desk chair out of the way. He wriggles up to a sitting position, his back against the wall.

  “Are you all right?” I ask. My voice feels distant, detached.

  “I’m fine,” he says. “Are you?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re bleeding . . .”

  It’s an understatement. Little stings and pricks are starting to smart all over my body, from nicks on my arms and knees to two neat slices on each palm from the blade of my sword, despite the protection of my hat. A glance down at myself gives the impression that someone spattered me with red paint.

  I look back up. “I’m okay. You’re bleeding, too.” There’s a cut on his lip, and his cheek, and several along the backs of his hands. I grip the knees of my trousers, trying to still the shake in my fingers. “What happened? Did you seize?”

  “She gave me poison,” he says. He sounds just as stunned and surreal as I feel. “Glass cleaner. She said it was tea.”

  “Did you drink it?”

  “No,” he says. “I tipped half the mug onto my boots when she wasn’t looking.”

  “But you fell . . .”

  “I faked it,” he says. “I figured . . . it’s what she expected. If she thought she’d succeeded, it might give me an advantage. To do . . . something. I didn’t know what.” His gaze strays to the space under the desk, where the penknife slid. “I can’t decide which I’m more angry about—that she tried to poison me, or that she thought I can’t tell my evergreens apart.”

  He looks back to me, and we stare at each other for a moment. My heartbeat has never felt so loud.

  “I thought you’d died,” I say before I can stop myself.

  “I thought you’d died,” he replies in a rush. “Or at least, that you were going to die.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Me, neither.”

  We go back to jus
t staring again, our quick breaths matching the shush of the rain outside. His sage-green gaze flicks over me, all the bloody, torn places on my clothes and skin. I go on staring at his face, the now-familiar little scar, the damp curl of his hair, the sweep of his eyelashes, the cut on his lip.

  For one terrifying moment, I thought I’d lost it all.

  I thought I’d lost him.

  His lips part as if to speak, but nothing comes out. He wipes the blood off his cheek. Somewhere outside, past the rain, a faint bell begins to ring, a different pattern from before. We both seem to rouse from a trance.

  “Tamsin,” I say.

  He nods. “We should go.”

  “Can you get up?”

  “Yeah—can you?”

  With a mutual amount of clutching and lifting, we heave ourselves to our feet, trying to avoid any more cuts from the treacherous floor. We stand for a moment, our fingers closed over handfuls of each other’s clothes, absurdly trying to make sure the other is steady while brushing off our own hurts.

  Then, without warning, we’re just standing, our hands on each other and our faces just inches apart. Veran realizes it at the same time I do—I feel when his body goes still. He takes a breath, his face just a hair below mine, and looks up. A sudden memory materializes of that morning on the frosty slopes of the Moquoviks when I woke up to find him just as close.

  He swallows.

  “I left you,” he says, his voice soft and strained. “I screwed everything up, and then I left you behind.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay, Veran.” I don’t know how to touch a person to comfort them—I awkwardly squeeze his elbows, and then his shoulders. He draws in a long breath, and his fingers jump to brush my wrist, and then drop, and then touch my sleeve, and then smooth his bloody tunic front.

  And I want to catch his shaking hand and just press it, just hold it, keep it still between mine. I want something else, too, something more that I can’t identify.

  But that bell is still ringing, and the rain still drumming outside. And when I look out the open door, he twitches back a step, his expression almost apologetic. With another breath, he stoops and picks up the two scorched letters. He tucks them carefully in his tunic.