To the left of Stoneface was another man. A sailor, although that was hardly a distinguishing feature in this tavern. Thin and worn out, but not as hairy and unkempt as Stoneface. He thought very clearly about his abysmal hand—a random assortment of low numbers, not enough matching values or suits—and then waved his hand and pushed his cards forward, still face down. He was folding.
Then it was Alizhan’s turn. She didn’t know the exact value of her own hand, but she knew she couldn’t win against Night-and-Day. She folded. Ten kalap wasn’t much of a loss.
To the left of Fold was a lanky man, probably also a sailor. Older than Alizhan, but young compared to the other players. His skin was the same deep, rich brown as Ev’s, and his black hair was cropped short. Both his hands were branded between thumb and forefinger with the cross that marked him as an exile from Adappyr. Night-and-Day thought he was handsome, if irritatingly talkative. Until the moment that Alizhan focused on him, she’d thought of him as quiet, but then she realized her mistake. The man was vivacious, whistling and humming and chatting with the people at the table and other tavern patrons about nothing at all. She hadn’t been listening to his voice.
But his mind was quiet.
It wasn’t the seamless, eerie blankness of Iriyat or Kasrik. He radiated a happy warmth. But it felt very distant, and there was no buzz of thoughts beyond it. No stray secondary feelings.
Was blankness something people were born with, like height or hair color? Or was it a habit? A choice?
Was this man like Iriyat and Kasrik? Was he like Alizhan? Was she a blank person, too?
Alizhan wished she could read his face, since his mind was closed off. She couldn’t tell if he was faking his cheer, or if his hand was genuinely good. He called the bet, and then said, “You know what? I’m feeling good this shift,” and dropped in ten more copper coins.
Now it was the grey-haired dealer’s turn. He shook his head and folded, leaving only Night-and-Day, Stoneface, and the blank man in play. The blank man started to whistle a vaguely familiar tune. Alizhan never knew the words to anything. Like most songs, it was probably about lost love. The melody was nice. Night-and-Day, on the other hand, thought he’s not handsome enough to justify that nonsense. Stoneface surprised Alizhan—he had a soft spot for the song, and the words came to his mind: in golden Laalvur by the sea so low, my love lives high on a red stone hill, and there still the curling vines do grow.
Night-and-Day called the bet. Stoneface folded. There were 150 kalap in the pot. That kind of money could buy Ev a new staff and keep them fed and sheltered for a couple of triads. Too bad Alizhan hadn’t had the cards to win it. But she’d lost interest in the game. Her attention was on the whistler.
Night-and-Day flipped her cards. Three Stars, two Suns. The Adpri man fanned his out with a flourish. They were all red and all Suns: a Scorch. He had won.
Scorch took a little bow and then immediately took up whistling again, hooking his arm around the pile of money on the table to draw it closer. The rest of the players slid their cards toward the center and the grey-haired dealer collected them and began shuffling the deck. Night-and-Day was unhappy. Stoneface was downright suspicious. Apparently he’d seen Scorch win several very large pots.
Scorch said, “Buy you a drink if you want.”
It took Alizhan a moment to realize he was speaking to her. What did he want? Impossible to tell. He felt the same as he had during the card game. Cheerful, but distant. Muted.
“You gotta remember to look at people’s faces,” Scorch said, very quietly, and that startled Alizhan even more.
“You know,” she said. Her heart quickened. She’d never had a chance to talk to someone like herself. Iriyat had never shared anything with her, and Kasrik had called her a traitor and then run. But here was this man, standing here, who might be just like her. He might answer her questions. He might understand. Alizhan had never wanted anything more.
“One or two things, yeah.” He shrugged. Then he said, “I think I want some air.”
Alizhan searched the bar with her gaze. Ev was still at their old table. She’d watched the first round of poker with worry. Now she was regarding Scorch with suspicion and interest. He was probably Adpri, or Laalvuri and Adpri, like Ev.
Satisfied that Ev had seen her, Alizhan followed Scorch out the door. He walked just like he felt: an easy kind of saunter, not rushed, as if he was enjoying every step. They went around the tavern into a shaded alley, and he sat right down on the ground with his legs crossed. Alizhan sat next to him.
“This the first time you’ve been down here to cheat at cards?” Scorch asked. He sounded friendly enough. He took out a little pouch of dried dreamleaf, pinched some into a piece of paper, and rolled himself a cigarette. Alizhan liked the sweet, fragrant smoke, but when he offered it to her, she shook her head. She needed her concentration now, and she had enough trouble sleeping without smoking something that would give her strange dreams. Scorch lit the end with a match and began smoking the cigarette.
Alizhan didn’t bother denying her intention to cheat. She didn’t know if he could read her or not, but the lie didn’t seem worth the effort. “Yeah.”
She felt a swell of warmth and amusement from Scorch. “Lucky I was there to take those winnings, save you from getting your ass beat.”
Ev would have saved her. She didn’t need any strangers offering to do the same. But Alizhan had more important questions. “How are you doing that?” she interrupted.
“Playing cards? I think you know.”
“No, the other thing. The thing where sometimes you’re quiet and I can’t read you at all, but sometimes a little bit slips through. Am I like that? Am I quiet?”
“As a little temple mouse,” he said. “Our kind, we got natural shields. Thing about a shield is, you can lower it if you want to. Then again, sometimes you trip and your shield goes flying, does you no good at all.” Scorch took another drag of his cigarette, holding it between two long, nimble fingers. Alizhan’s stomach turned over.
“You’re not wearing gloves.”
“And you are,” he said.
Was he purposefully slow at answering her? “Scorch,” she prompted.
He laughed out loud. “Did you just call me ‘Scorch’?”
“Well, I don’t know your name and I can’t read you.”
“Nah, I like it,” he said, still laughing. “My name’s Djal, though, if you ever want to use it. Anyway, earlier I said you were quiet like a temple mouse, but that ain’t it. Not exactly. See, you’ve been thinking we’re the same. And we got something in common. I got just enough of this,” Scorch paused to tap his temple with his ring finger, the cigarette still pinched between his middle finger and his index, “to be real unnatural good at cards.
“But I ain’t got that hand magic. Nobody hurts if I touch ‘em. I’m a little fluffy yip-yap lap dog. You, little sister,” Scorch—Djal—turned to give her a big white smile that she had no idea how to interpret, “you’re a wolf.”
Alizhan frowned. She wasn’t sure how to be a normal human being, one with a family and friends and a home and a life, and here Scorch was telling her that she was something else entirely. “What if I don’t want to be a wolf? What if I’d rather be a temple mouse?”
“That ain’t the kind of thing we get to choose,” Djal said. “I don’t know much about wolves, but I imagine they’re smart enough that they only bite people they want to bite.”
“That doesn’t help. I keep hurting people. And myself. I need someone to teach me.”
“I don’t know that I’m the one for that, little sister, and I’m sorry for it. But I might know somebody who could, if you could come with me.” He sighed. “I’m too Adpri to believe much in sin. But it’s fiery close to sin, the way Laalvur and Nalitzva treat us. In Adappyr, we teach our children. All our children, not just the easy ones. This city does make me considerably richer, though. Nobody’d play cards against me in Adappyr.”
Alizhan didn’t
know what to say to that. Djal seemed content to sit in the alley and fill the silence with smoke, but she had no way of knowing what he really wanted. It was awful, not knowing how people felt.
Maybe not as awful as the alternative.
“You’re chewing your lip,” Djal said. “Got something to say?”
“Wouldn’t I say it if I did?”
Djal laughed. “I guess you would, then.” He put out his cigarette. “We should go back in. Bet your girl’s worried.”
“She’s always worried.” He wasn’t supposed to know Ev was a girl. Alizhan hadn’t accounted for other mind-readers in her planning. That was beside the point. She still had questions. “Were you serious about knowing someone who could teach me?”
“I was.”
“Can I see you again? Can you introduce me?”
“Maybe,” he said. “I’m a sailor. I’m in town for eight more triads. We leave on the twelfth of Alaksha, at the call of the Rosefinch. You ask for Djal in any tavern in Arishdenan, they’ll know me. They might spit on the ground, but they’ll know me.”
“That’s not much time.”
“Not enough for you to learn everything, but there’s never enough time for that. It’s better than nothing. Go find your girl.”
“She’s not my girl.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Djal walked her back to The Red and Black’s door. When Alizhan found Ev, she was in the company of two angry men. An instant later, Alizhan recognized Zenav and Mar ha-Solora.
13
Lyrebird shift, 15th Triad of Pyer, 761
LET ME NOW RETURN TO describing the events that occurred sixteen years ago. It was the year 745, near the end of Alaksha, only a few weeks from the mid-year festival of Yahad.
None of that mattered to me at the time.
My parents, meticulous planners, had been through my room before locking me in it, and they had removed anything of use. The window was too high above the ground to provide an escape route. The servants who delivered my meals opened the door, slid in a tray, and shut the door. They never left enough food, but they never stayed long enough to hear me asking for more. No one spoke to me for triad after triad.
I slept. I lay awake worrying about Arav. I waited.
Eventually, something would change. Someone would slip up and enter my room. I would have a chance to talk my way out. I would alter memories if necessary.
Instead, my parents came.
The heavy door swung open, and suddenly the two of them were standing in my room. I was in my sleeping gown, barefoot and disheveled. My hair was uncombed and unbraided. Locked in, I’d had no reason to make myself presentable. I had not yet learned to greet my enemies wearing armor. Perhaps I did not yet fully understand that my parents were my enemies.
There was also the matter of my wardrobe. My clothes had begun to fit very snugly around the waist. My sleeping gown, as vulnerable as it left me feeling, was loose enough to conceal the curve of my belly—slight, for the moment, but noticeable.
For their part, my parents were wearing finery and expressions of grim satisfaction.
A cold bolt of certainty lanced through me. They had found Arav. They were here to gloat.
“You made him forget me,” I said.
It was the logical thing for them to do. People ask questions about dead bodies. My parents, following a long tradition of Lacemakers, preferred not to leave traces. Still, as long as Arav was alive, I could live with myself. I might never be happy, but at least he had a chance.
And deep down in the soil of my heart, locked away from the light, there was a tiny seed of an idea: I could help him remember. I just had to get out of my parents’ house and find him. If I could talk to him, if I could get him alone… We might have to run. We could do that. What did I have in Laalvur? Parents who imprisoned me in my own room? I would sail anywhere with him. Nalitzva, the islands, the wild lands beyond. And even if he never remembered, we could make new memories. We had fallen in love once. We could do it a second time.
As long as Arav was alive, anything was possible.
My parents were silent, and I kept that seed in the dark, far from my expression and my thoughts.
Then I realized my mistake.
“You remember him,” my father said, surprise in his voice. He paused for a moment, and his struggle was evident on his face. I was stronger than he had expected, and he was pleased and relieved to know that I was not as useless as he had previously thought. But I was using my strength to defy him, and thus as disappointing as I had always been.
“Of course she does,” my mother said. A smile slithered across her beautiful face. Her anger had always been cold. I had tricked her, and she would not forgive that easily. “She sent us on a chase after the wrong boy. An impressive maneuver, but not impressive enough.”
“If you had ever listened, all of this could have been avoided. If you had ever practiced Lacemaking for any purpose other than being a lying slut, you would have seen early on that this marriage is a gift, not a punishment.” My father sighed. “Rossin Tyrenx is not one of us. He could never make you do anything you did not want to.”
“And if you had ever paid attention to what we taught you, you would have known how to cover your tracks,” my mother said. “People all over the Marsh and Breakneck Hill had seen you with that boy.”
“You think I should have erased the memories of everyone in the neighborhood?” It was so wrong—and so daunting in scale—that it had never even occurred to me. That much Lacemaking would be an enormous undertaking, invasive and fraught with risk. It would be exhausting and painful for everyone involved.
“Instead of putting everything we have worked for at risk? Yes.”
“Still thinking small, I see,” my father said. He sighed, and then addressed my mother. “As long as she remembers him, she can’t be trusted outside of this room. Even once she forgets, we will have to watch her.”
I trembled. They were going to touch me. I was afraid—if they worked in concert, they could overpower me—and I wanted them to know. Let my fear be visible. If either of them still harbored any affection for me, they should feel sick. What monsters would make their own child tremble in fear at their touch?
My hand almost strayed to my stomach at the thought: I will not treat my child the way they treat me. But I kept still. They could not know. I was increasingly certain that they could never know.
But if they thought I was afraid, perhaps they would underestimate me yet again. What could it hurt to quiver a little?
Bells rang out from the city. The call was neither Lyrebird nor Honeycreeper nor Rosefinch. Of course not; it was not the hour of the shift change. It was a melody I had never heard, hardly a melody at all, but a frantic clanging. I thought that sound was my salvation—my parents froze. They exchanged panicked, blanched glances.
“All hells,” my father swore.
“There hasn’t been one in twenty years,” my mother whispered.
“They don’t ring the bells by mistake,” my father said. “The Hour just docked. We have a goddamned fortune sitting in that harbor and it’s going to get smashed to bits and then looted by those lower-city animals.”
The Hour and Instant Our Eyes Did Meet was one of my father’s ships. It had just arrived in Laalvur loaded down with Nalitzvan gold, having sold richly dyed and embroidered silks to the wealthy inhabitants of the Nightward coast. My parents thought the urgent bells were a warning about an incoming wave. I knew such a warning existed, but had not heard it in my lifetime. My mother was almost right: the last wave was nineteen years prior, in 726, the year before I was born.
“They’ll be evacuating,” my mother said. “You can’t go down there, Orosk.”
“Damn it.” My father turned on his heel and strode out of the room. My mother hurried after him, trying to talk him down. The door slammed behind them.
I waited for the sound of the bolt. And waited.
The door was open. There was no time for changin
g clothes. I slipped out of my room and ran down to the garden. The path I had so carefully worn through the bushes was overgrown, but I plowed through it. Thorns ripped at my hair and skin and dress, and I let them. I had to find Arav. I couldn’t go back.
My chosen path into the city involved scrabbling up and down walls and darting through private gardens to avoid contact with guards from any of the Houses. It required me to be agile and furtive, but I had never encountered another person, so it was worth all the difficulty. I had launched myself halfway into someone’s garden before I realized my bare feet were bleeding. It didn’t matter. Arav would bandage my feet.
Two gardens later, I ran into someone climbing in the opposite direction. His head popped up over the wall and his eyes went wide. “You’re going the wrong way,” he said, panting. “There’s a wave coming.”
I saved my breath and jumped down into the garden. If citizens were overrunning gardens, the city must be in chaos. There was no point in taking a secret path. I made my way to the street.
A crush of people swarmed me, shoving each other to get uphill faster. I wove through the crowd. I was the only one heading down toward the sea.
I have always been small of stature, and it was difficult for me to see through the crowd. But when I did catch a glimpse of the lower city, I stopped so abruptly that I was nearly trampled.
The sea was gone.
It is a common expression among our people to refer to an impulsive fool as a shell collector. People hardly ever say the phrase, which is shell collectors make bone offerings. As a child, I never understood: were shells not a kind of bone? We do not normally make physical offerings at the Temple of the Balance, but in the old religion, people used to. Why not offer shells? Or bones, for that matter?
I did not grasp the truth of this expression for years, and when I did learn it, it was not from a dictionary or a learned priest of Doubt. The ocean taught me. I hope to God’s Balance that it never teaches you.
Right before a wave comes, the sea draws back hundreds of feet from the shore. The newly uncovered red rocks and sparkling sand are a lure for Laalvuri who have not yet seen a wave. A forbidden mystery, exposed. There are always those who scramble down the slippery wet rocks to dig their toes into the sand or stroll farther out to gather perfect, unbroken seashells.
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