It wasn’t the sight of the house that made the air turn sour with Ev’s feelings, but the young man who walked out of it to greet them. Ev thought his name with such dread that Alizhan had no trouble learning it. Ajee didn’t look worthy of such an intense reaction to Alizhan, but people never looked like much of anything to her.
He was a little shorter than Ev, so he was still a head taller than Alizhan. His black hair was pulled into a short braid, and he was wearing a tunic and trousers in red with black embroidery at the cuffs and collar. The clothes meant nothing to Alizhan, but both Ev and Ajee thought about them for a moment as he came into view. Wedding clothes. His feelings were as unpleasant and prickly as Ev’s, and then there was sharp note of surprise.
“Who’s this? What happened to you? You’re hurt!”
It was his voice—rich and warm—that called the memory to the surface.
Of course I like you, Ev, but not like that.
Alizhan had dreamed this, after Ev had touched her. Ajee’s face sparked no recognition, because faces never did, but his voice echoed in her head. Such a lovely voice, but not at all the words that she—no, Ev—had wanted to hear.
Ev and Ajee had been sitting together on a smooth patch of sun-warmed rock at the top of a hillside, looking down at the farm where they’d grown up together. In a moment of silence, Ev had brought up the future. “Maybe we should just get married.”
They could join their neighboring farms into one property. It had never been Ev’s dream to stay here—at least not without seeing the world first—but she was twenty-two years old now and it was time to put away her foolish childhood dreams. It made sense to get married, didn’t it?
Ev had known, distantly, that this proposal was dull and practical and not at all romantic. It was nothing like how Vesper had proposed to Aurora after carrying her from a burning building. It was nothing like any of the books Ev had read. But grand passions were reserved for people with grander lives. Wasn’t Ajee always telling her to stop paying so much attention to stories? It was sensible and simple to marry someone she knew and liked. She could be happy here on the farm. She and Ajee were friends. They’d grown up together, sharing their lives up to this point. They could keep going.
She hadn’t expected Ajee to say no.
She hadn’t expected him to say that she was being ridiculous and ruining our friendship. He’d grown agitated, gesticulating and starting and stopping sentences without ever getting to the end. And then he’d choked out a short, dry laugh and said Think how absurd you’d look in a wedding gown! and Would you stomp up to the altar with your staff in hand?
He’d treated her idea like a joke.
The joke wasn’t just that he might marry her, but that anyone would. His cruelty had caught her by surprise. Ev had always known she wasn’t beautiful—too tall, too broad, too different—but it had never seemed to matter before. They’d spent years working and playing together, sparring and racing and wandering all over the farm. As kids, they’d often slept in the same room, talking to each other long after their parents had shut the door and told them to go to sleep. She’d taught him to fight with a staff last year, and in return, he’d stolen a bottle of wine from his parents. They’d drunk the whole thing up in the barn loft, dissolving into dizzy laughter over nothing. He’d kissed her up there, and more. She remembered it with warmth.
Maybe he didn’t.
Ajee had strode away from her without saying goodbye, and it wasn’t until two or three triads later that he’d found Ev in the barn and said, “I’ve been meaning to tell you this, but it only just happened. You see, there’s this girl—”
“Seliman,” Ev said immediately. Orzatvur was a small village, and there were only a few neighboring farms. There weren’t that many girls. One in particular had always drawn Ajee’s eye. Ev didn’t care about Seliman so much as the fact that Ajee hadn’t bothered to apologize for anything he’d said.
“Yes,” he said dreamily. “She said yes. We’re getting married.”
“Oh.”
“Isn’t it wonderful?”
And here was the strangest part of the memory. Alizhan had been Ev, and had felt the hollow in Ev’s stomach and had known exactly how much Ev had wanted to yell no, or burst into tears, or maybe hit Ajee in the face. Her fist had tightened. But instead, she’d blinked once, forced her fingers apart, smoothed her tunic, and said, “I’m very happy for you.”
And smiled. Ev had smiled.
Alizhan was angry now, just thinking about these memories. Ajee was standing in front of them, waiting for an explanation, and Alizhan wanted to reach over and grab Ev’s staff so she could whack him.
“I’m fine,” Ev said in answer to Ajee’s questions, which wasn’t true, and then said, “Get everyone—no, on second thought, just get my parents. I’ll explain inside.”
He turned and went inside, and Alizhan said, “I don’t like him.”
Ev’s voice went high with surprise. “Why not?”
Ev had asked Alizhan not to talk about what she could see in Ev’s head. The rule was a nuisance and it was going to make life difficult for both of them. But Ev had also smuggled her out of the city and saved her life. Ev knew the truth about her and had still said you’re not a monster. So instead of explaining, which would have required breaking Ev’s only rule, Alizhan huffed, spat on the ground, and strode into the house after Ajee.
Ev’s normally calm and cheerful mother gasped at the sight of blood on Ev’s tunic. Neiran covered her mouth with her hands and set all of her jewelry jangling. One deep breath later, she’d lifted her long black braid over her shoulder to get it out of the way, taken firm hold of Ev’s wrist, led Ev into the bathroom as though Ev were still a small child in need of direction, instead of a twenty-two-year-old woman who towered over her mother.
Neiran began to rinse out Ev’s cut and wrap her abdomen in clean linen. Ev didn’t protest. She was grateful to be taken care of, and to be given a mug of bitter pain-relieving tea, and she was just about to start explaining everything to her mother when she heard people talking in the kitchen.
Alizhan was in the kitchen with Papa and Ajee, and who knew what someone might say or do to her? From the other room, Ev heard her father introduce himself as Obin Umarsad, and Ajee gave his own name as Ajeekar Chatragat, to which Alizhan replied, “Alizhan… Alizhan.”
She didn’t say Alizhan Varenx. But she wouldn’t have. She was a servant, not a family member. Still, she might have had some other family name. How lonely, to be not only an orphan, but an unknown.
Neiran finished tying off the linen wrap with the professional ease of a tailor and the long practice of a mother whose child had scraped herself raw too many times to count. “Who is that girl, Evreyet, and how did you get hurt?”
“She needed help, Mama.”
Ev waved her mother’s fussing away with one hand and went into the kitchen. Her father wasn’t scowling at Alizhan, but he also wasn’t doing anything to make Alizhan feel at ease in a strange place among strangers. And he was a wall of a man, imposing even when he smiled, which he only did for Neiran and Ev. Obin couldn’t help but loom over Alizhan, making the kitchen feel cramped. He believed firmly in equality and justice for all, but it was hard to tell from his demeanor.
Ajee’s arms were crossed over his chest. All three of them were standing around the round wooden table, rather than sitting. The room was silent.
“She said you could explain,” Obin said.
Ev told them about the Solor guards in the market and the masked men on the road, but could not bring herself to mention the stolen book, the dream-memory, or Alizhan’s particular skills.
Obin’s eyes narrowed as his gaze settled on Alizhan. Ev wondered if Alizhan ever noticed things like that, people squinting at her, or if she perceived their scrutiny in her own way. “I remember you,” he said. “You’re barely any bigger than you were. You were in the market—it must have been a decade ago—and Ha-Varensi came looking for you. You jum
ped off a bridge into the water. Ev was upset.”
Alizhan nodded once, slowly. “I was… a difficult child.”
Alizhan might not be a child any more, but Ev privately thought the present tense might be more appropriate for difficult. Then she remembered there was no such thing as thinking anything privately, and grimaced.
“You still work for Varenx House?”
“I did until very recently,” Alizhan said. Perhaps it was because she saw faces so indistinctly and could never study anyone else’s expressions in order to train her own, or perhaps it was simply her large and lively features, but Alizhan’s expressions always seemed too big for her face. They didn’t fit. Her eyes were wide with uncertainty. After a moment, she said, “Ev left out some parts of the story. There’s a book. It belongs to Iriyat, but it was stolen by Solor House almost two triads ago. I broke in and stole it back, but unfortunately, I was seen.”
“That explains why Solor guards were looking for you, but what of the others?” Obin asked.
“They were from Varenx House.”
“Your own employer?” Alizhan simply looked at Obin until he said “Ah.” It was a rare sight, someone taking on her father like that. Ev loved him fiercely, but when he looked his sternest, even she found him imposing.
“So you pissed off two of the Great Houses and then you came here,” Ajee said.
“I wanted to warn you,” Ev said.
“What were you thinking?”
Obin put a hand on Ajee’s shoulder and stopped him from saying anything else. “Alizhan, you must have had a reason for doing what you did.”
“Yes, but it’s… hard to explain.”
Now Obin stared at Alizhan. “You brought danger to our door, so you’d better come up with an explanation.”
“We don’t know everything,” Ev cut in. “Someone came to Ha-Solora with accusations against Ha-Varensi. That prompted him to have the book stolen. And we—she, I mean, Alizhan—intended to get the book back to Iriyat, but it’s not clear if we can trust her, either. Alizhan overheard a conversation where it sounded like Iriyat was plotting to have someone killed.”
Obin huffed. He seemed to take it as a given that neither leader could be trusted. Ev’s mother put her hand on his to quiet him. Neiran had always worried about his politics.
“And what is this book?” Obin said.
“Volume eleven of A Natural History of the World. We don’t know why it was important to Mar,” Ev said. “Or Iriyat. Mar suspected it might contain some secret, but he didn’t understand it.”
“This is one smoking hell of a mess.”
“Obin,” Ev’s mother chastised, just as Ev said, “I know, Papa, but—”
Her father looked pensive, and Ev stopped talking. “How do you know Mar ha-Solora didn’t understand it?”
Ev knew because Alizhan knew, and Alizhan knew because—well, that wasn’t Ev’s secret to share.
“Can I see it?” Obin said.
Alizhan hesitated, then shrugged and handed over the book, which now looked a little worn around the corners. Obin accepted it, then sat down at the table. He opened the book to the first page to study the text, as though the secret might reveal itself if only he stared hard enough.
“I can’t prove it to you,” Alizhan said. “I can’t prove anything. I need to investigate. I need to get back into the city—”
“You need safety from all the people who are trying to kill you,” Neiran interrupted. Mama hadn’t introduced herself to Alizhan, and she didn’t bother now. “You need food and rest and—forgive me—a bath and some clean clothes.”
“They can’t stay here!” Ajee interrupted. “Solor guards are searching the city for them, and it’s only a matter of time until someone searches the outlying villages.”
“Are you suggesting that I throw out my own daughter?” Neiran said coolly. Ev’s mother was a small woman whose round face was marked with faint lines from laughing and smiling so often. Ajee looked suitably taken aback by her tone.
“He’s right, Mama,” Ev said.
“Oh, they’re not trying to kill me,” Alizhan said, with the tiniest emphasis on the word kill, in the way someone else might say oh, I don’t think that shade of blue suits me. A minor correction. Ev stared. What did Alizhan think they wanted with her, in that case? If Iriyat was willing to have Kasrik killed over this book, why would she balk at killing Alizhan? But these thoughts were pushed aside when Alizhan continued, “They would’ve killed Ev, though. But she kicked their asses!”
Ajee and Neiran both frowned at this addendum. Obin’s expression remained neutral, but Ev thought he might be trying not to smile. He was a good teacher.
“You can sleep a shift here,” Neiran said, responding to Ev instead of Alizhan. “We can handle ourselves.” She spoke these words without even glancing at Obin, who was still intent on the book, but Ev took her meaning. It was not Neiran who would be answering the door with a staff in hand, as fierce as she might be with needles and pins.
“There’s a space under the floorboards in the pantry where Alizhan can hide if anyone in uniform demands to search the house.” Obin looked Alizhan up and down. “You’ll fit.”
“There’s a what where?” Ev had lived in this house her entire life and never encountered any such thing.
“Your father likes to take precautions,” Neiran said. “He doesn’t trust anyone.”
“And neither should you,” Obin said. He closed the book and slid it across the table toward Alizhan, who took it back.
Ajee looked like he was about to protest, and Ev understood his doubts. If Obin was preaching general mistrust, then why shelter Alizhan? It was a risk. But Papa and Mama trusted Ev’s opinion of Alizhan.
Her opinion wasn’t enough for Ajee. No part of her was.
It was stupid to get upset about a few cutting remarks when mere hours ago, someone had tried to cut her open. And yet Ev looked at the floor and swallowed around the lump in her throat.
“Even if the guards don’t find her, what then?” Ajee said. “You’re mixed up in something you know nothing about.”
“We’ll solve that after we eat,” Neiran said lightly. She went into the pantry. Alizhan followed her, book in hand, and her bare feet made no sound against the floor.
There was a bathroom adjacent to the kitchen with a white-tiled floor and a copper soaking tub. Unlike the kitchen, it had no windows open to the light. It was walled all around for privacy, so the only light came from the green glow of the lamps, glass globes filled with the luminescent fluid drawn from medusas, and their reflection in the smooth tiles.
Ev filled the tub for Alizhan and handed her an old set of clothes. It was a tunic and trousers in goldenrod yellow with matching embroidery, all Mama’s handiwork, the cotton soft and worn. The trousers had been too short for Ev for years now, but the outfit would fit Alizhan like a tent. Still a vast improvement over the filthy rags she’d been hiding and sweating and bleeding in for God knew how long.
Alizhan stared at the clothes for a long time without saying anything.
“You don’t like them?” Ev ventured.
“Oh, no, it’s not that. I don’t care about clothes. But it’s easier to get around in Laalvur if people ignore me. People don’t really like to look at me anyway, of course, because they can tell there’s something wrong with me, but dressing like a beggar gives them an easy explanation for why they don’t want to look at me. It’s better for me that way.” Alizhan’s gaze darted from one side of the room to the other. She chewed her lip. “So it’s on purpose, now, the rags and the dirt and all that. Because it makes life easier. But it didn’t use to be. When I was a kid, I mean. It wasn’t on purpose, back then.”
“Because no one took care of you?”
“No, no, they tried. At least, after I got to Varenx House, they tried. So many servants tried to dress me or bathe me or brush my hair. But you know how it is when people touch me.” Alizhan held the clothes in one arm and started gesturing wi
th her free hand. “There was always a lot of screaming. Kicking. Fainting. That sort of thing. And so after a while, they stopped trying, and by the time I could do all those things for myself, I didn’t like any of them.”
“But now it’s on purpose,” Ev said. She didn’t really need clarification. But her heart ached for a little girl who couldn’t be clothed or fed or cuddled, and what she really wanted to say was why didn’t Iriyat do those things for you? and that felt intrusive.
“Oh, Iriyat,” Alizhan said, waving a hand in the air and completely forgetting their new rule about mind-reading. “Yes, she could have. But she’s always busy. But anyway, yes, now it’s on purpose, so stop being sad.”
Ev wasn’t sure whether that command was meant for her or Alizhan herself, but either way, Alizhan obviously wanted to move on from this conversation topic. “So you… want the rags back?”
“No, no, that’s okay, I… don’t need them.” Alizhan clutched Ev’s old clothes tight to her chest. “There’s always more rags, you know? They’re not hard to come by. This is fine.”
“Okay,” Ev said. Navigating a conversation with someone who could see into her head and hear everything she didn’t say out loud was taxing. Ev hadn’t missed Alizhan’s reaction, and the way her thin fingers had clamped folds into the fabric, but they obviously weren’t going to talk about it. Stop being sad, Alizhan had said, as if Ev’s feelings were like the water gushing into the tub, and one turn of the faucet could stop them.
When Ev shut the bathroom door behind her, Ajee was waiting for her, and he drew her into the far corner of the parlor, as far away from Neiran’s work in the kitchen as they could get. The open design of the house left few possibilities for private conversations. Ajee didn’t sit, so neither did Ev.
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