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.
I saw them, those poor fools, before the sea came back.
“Came back” is no way to describe it at all. I thought, having read A Natural History of the World and its explanation of waves, that it would be a curling crest of water, a peak that folded back into itself and collapsed as it flowed toward the shore. Naively, I thought it might be beautiful.
Crushed together and sticky with sweat in the street, straining to move uphill through a solid mass of bodies, the crowd watched the ocean. I remember keeping my hands clenched in the fabric of my sleeping gown, my arms tight to my body, trying not to hurt anyone. As if it would have mattered. We would all have been lucky to forget that moment.
There is no verb that can describe the water’s return, brutal and sudden. It was as if the rest of the world had moved. The sea was simply there again, where there had been land and air and no sea at all.
Unsatisfied with its former shoreline, the sea devoured the harbor and doused the lower levels of the city. Buildings flooded. The harbor splintered. Those poor shell collectors, invisible under the water, were dashed against the rocks. They made their bone offerings to whatever lived in that watery hell.
Broken planks bobbed to the surface.
I thought of Arav’s family’s little wooden house on stilts in the Marsh. All the little stilted wooden houses in the Marsh, so much driftwood now. Had they run uphill? Had they gotten away from the water in time?
And Arav. Arav.
The crowd, like a beast with a single mind, began to move uphill again. I wanted to go downhill, toward the water, toward the Marsh, toward Arav.
I didn’t realize I was screaming until strangers put their hands on me and asked me to calm down. A couple of men helped me kneel and catch my breath, right there in the street, and the crowd flowed around us—gentler than water.
I must have looked hysterical. Unbalanced. Tangled hair. Scratched arms. Bloody feet. Streaks of dirt on my ripped gown.
Eventually, they moved me inside someone’s empty home. It was out of the way of the crowd. I babbled about finding Arav’s family.
I know, from reports, that the wave struck on the 28th Triad of Alaksha. I stayed in that house—abandoned by its owners, but occupied by a dozen new residents—for several triads after that. No one was ringing the shift-change bells. Camps formed in the upper city. The water receded from the lower city, but too many people had been displaced. Kind strangers brought me water and food. Everyone was searching for word of someone.
I was, in a way, lucky. Survivors from the Marsh drifted through the upper city, and one of them happened to be Eliyan, Arav’s older sister. She heard that I was searching for Arav Matrishal, and she came to sit with me.
I started to cry before she said a word. Her bleak expression told me enough.
“Shade had just departed Laalvur when the wave hit,” she said. “They were only a few hours out. Not far enough.”
Eliyan had always been serious, but her tone was dead flat. A report in someone else’s words, since she had not yet come up with her own. She did not say the rest: there were no survivors. Arav is dead. It was not necessary. No ship could have withstood that wave. I wanted to reach for her hand. I did not. I will never forget how she looked, standing there limned in loneliness and empty air, her own arms wrapped around her body. There was no one to touch her or comfort her. I tucked my bare hands into my lap with guilt, too horrorstruck to look at my own body.
Arav had promised me that he would stay in Laalvur, knowing there was a possibility that I might be pregnant. He had promised to stop working aboard Shade for a while. He had said he would search for work in the harbor, closer to home. Closer to me.
He should not have been on that ship.
He would never have been on that ship if my parents hadn’t touched him. But they did, and now Arav was dead. It was my parents’ fault. It was my fault. Arav was dead.
I never had the chance to tell him. I never will, I thought, and went from weeping to sobbing to heaving up what little I had eaten since the wave.
“I’m sorry,” Eliyan said. “Whoever my brother was to you, it was obviously important. I wish he had introduced us.”
I had nothing to say to that. Perhaps it was for the best that she did not remember me. I curled up on the ground in misery. Eliyan left at some point. Some time passed—an hour, a shift, a triad, a week, who can say—and I did not die. Then guards in Varenx livery found me in the city. They lifted my body off the floor and brought me back to my prison.
14
Teeth Out
ALIZHAN PICKED THE WRONG MOMENT to walk out of the bar with a stranger. Zenav burst in right after she left, his left arm pushing the door open and his right arm cradled in a sling next to his body. So he was alive after all! Zenav was with a well-dressed, handsome man Ev could only assume was Mar ha-Solora.
Her suspicion was confirmed by the murmur that rippled through the tavern crowd. No one said anything outright, or even looked directly at him. This tavern was a place for drinking beer and playing cards, not gawking at the rich and powerful. Still, they noticed.
Ev had only ever seen Mar in Alizhan’s memory, so the details of his face were new to her: the high, skeptical arch of his brows; the few short locks of black hair falling across his forehead, while the rest of it was tied in a single braid down his back; the neatly kept goatee with just a hint of silver.
A scarf of finely woven, lightweight burgundy wool was draped artfully over Mar’s shoulders. The fabric was wrapped to show off its borders threaded with an intricate pattern in golden yellow. His tunic and trousers matched the scarf’s rich color. Laalvur was always the same warm temperature, so he wasn’t dressed to protect himself against the cold. A man of Mar’s looks could hardly be blamed for indulging in fashion—or vanity—but his clothes were more than that. They signaled his wealth and power, and they were enough to make everyone in the tavern keep both their distance and a careful watch.
Zenav, not blessed with Mar’s strong jaw or proud nose, slouched next to him looking scruffy and angry, staring down at his wounded arm. What had happened in the Temple of the Balance after she and Alizhan had run?
Both of them stared at Ev like they’d found her at last, and neither was happy about it.
Understandable. She wasn’t exactly delighted to see them, either. When would Alizhan come back inside? Ev didn’t want to do this alone.
“What do you want?” she asked before they could start.
Mar spread his hands wide. “I mean you no harm.”
Ev glared at Zenav and crossed her arms over her chest. “You sent one of your guards to break into my home while we were asleep.”
“Your… friend stole something from me.”
“She stole it back.”
“That implies that she returned it to its original owner,” Mar said, “and I don’t believe she did.” Ev opened her mouth to protest and Mar continued smoothly over whatever she might have said. “While intriguing, that fact is, of course, no concern of mine.”
“What do you want, Mar?” Ev said. If he was shocked to hear his first name, it didn’t show. But Ev still found satisfaction—and a little thrill—in disrespecting him.
If he took offense, Mar could order Zenav to unsheathe his sword and kill Ev on the spot. It wasn’t exactly legal, but only the other Council members could try one of their own, and they were unlikely to care. If the incident ever came to their attention, Mar could argue that he was defending himself against slights to his honor, and that defense would be accepted. But the case would never advance even that far—there would be no witnesses to report it, despite the two dozen people in
the tavern around them. They would all claim to be too drunk to remember the incident, and Ev would be too dead to argue.
Alizhan might kick him in the balls, though, if he killed her. Ev took some solace in this imaginary retribution for her hypothetical murder.
“If the answer is Alizhan, you can’t have her. She doesn’t belong to anyone but herself. We’re not giving you the book, either.”
“The little thief?” Mar asked. It hadn’t occurred to Ev that he wouldn’t know Alizhan’s name. Alizhan was at the heart of everything. But to Mar, she was just a servant—a criminal one, at that. “Fine,” he said tightly. “That’s not why I came here.”
Ev’s gaze strayed to the doorway, where Alizhan was standing, flanked by her new friend. He was a long, graceful calligraphy stroke of a man. By his features—the rich, dark brown of his skin, the beautiful symmetry of his face, the fullness of his lips—he was Adpri, like Papa. She’d met so few Adpri in her life.
He leaned against the doorway for an instant, observing Mar and Zenav facing Ev. There was something in his steady brown gaze that reminded Ev of Alizhan, though he could hardly have held himself more differently. Then, as Ev watched, he said something inaudible to Alizhan and laid a hand on her shoulder.
Alizhan didn’t flinch or cringe. She nodded, smiled to herself, and walked forward.
From across the room, the stranger’s eyes met Ev’s. There was a white flash of smile and a wink, and then he slid out of view.
Ev could hardly blame the man. Mar ha-Solora’s presence in this tavern could only mean trouble.
Alizhan, of course, walked right up to him.
Before Mar could say anything else in answer to Ev’s questions about why he was here, Alizhan broke in. “Mar wants our help because Kasrik is missing.”
Mar directed his attention at her. “So he was telling the truth—Iriyat did keep one for herself. Why you, I wonder?” A moment’s pause. “I’ve seen you before, and not just when you attacked me. I suppose you’ve been spying on me all these years.”
“Yes.”
Ev might have sidestepped the question, or at least couched her answer in some kind of justification or apology, but Alizhan did neither. Both the attack and her years of spying were facts.
Mar sighed and went to sit down at a table in the corner, as far from all the other occupied tables as possible. Zenav followed him, and she and Alizhan were supposed to do the same. Ev sat. Alizhan never really sat so much as she hovered. She twisted in her chair and bounced one knee up and down and then the other.
“You can’t know that Kasrik was captured. Maybe he got tired of you not believing him and left,” Alizhan said. She omitted that Kasrik might be dead.
“I see we hardly need to have a conversation at all,” Mar said sourly. As if infected by Alizhan’s restlessness, he drummed the fingers of his right hand on the worn wood of the tabletop. “You can just pluck it all from my thoughts. What delightful company you are.”
“What makes you think Kasrik was captured?” Ev asked. She didn’t want to play the role of placating the rich man with the armed guard, but Alizhan clearly wasn’t going to. And Ev didn’t want to be responsible for both of them getting killed. Somebody had to behave with a thimbleful of caution.
“Oh,” Alizhan said. Her rigid posture softened, and she slouched in her chair. Her gaze flitted from one edge of the stone ceiling to another. She’d angled herself away from both of them in her fidgeting, but she was obviously addressing Mar. “You care about him.”
Mar didn’t look happy to have these words spoken aloud, and he continued as if they had never been said. He spoke to Ev, not Alizhan. “Why would Kasrik leave? The boy has nowhere better to go. There’s a bed and plenty to eat in my house. I don’t ask for anything in return. He’s never been gone this long since he came to me.”
“And you regret bringing him to Iriyat’s notice,” Alizhan said. “You feel guilty. And you don’t like that I know that, but you shouldn’t care. I’d much rather help you find Kasrik now that I know you feel some kind of fatherly affection for him. If I thought this was all about your personal, political gain, we’d be gone already.”
Ev hoped to God’s Balance that Alizhan was right about Mar. If it was true that he cared about Kasrik, and not just crushing a political rival, that was a good sign.
“But what makes you think we can help?” Ev asked.
“You got away from Zenav when you needed to,” Mar said, and Zenav scowled at the tabletop. “And she successfully broke into Solor House. And if Iriyat is to blame for this, who would know better than her?”
Very quietly, Alizhan said, “Iriyat didn’t want him captured.”
At last, Mar gave her his full attention. “How do you know? Can you read her?”
Alizhan shook her head. “No one can read her. But stop thinking that she could still be innocent. Stop thinking this is all some terrible mistake. I know what I heard.”
Mar regarded her in silence, and Ev had a sudden, strong memory of how his mind had felt to Alizhan when she’d been lurking outside his office: geometric, methodical, almost mechanical. He was fitting pieces together. “When did she give that order?”
“I wasn’t supposed to be there. I stole the book and I just… I didn’t know what to do. So I waited and listened.”
“You robbed me on the twenty-eighth triad of Pyer. It’s the fourth triad of Alaksha now.” Mar paused to compose himself, and then said, “Kasrik is resourceful. He could easily hide for six triads. Anyone trying to kill him would have to find him. Did you give the book to her?”
“No. I haven’t spoken to her since before I stole the book from you.”
“And attacked me,” Mar said. He probably brought it up because he expected an apology, but none came. He ended the ensuing silence himself. “If you never gave the book to Iriyat, she knows you’re missing. She might think you suspect her.”
“Or she might think something bad happened to me at Solor House,” Alizhan said. “Although she wouldn’t suspect that you’d resort to violence. She thinks you’re soft.”
Mar’s eyes widened. “She thinks I’m what?”
Soft was not a word that anyone else in Laalvur was likely to apply to Mar ha-Solora. It wasn’t just the broad shoulders and the massive fortune. Even here in this dingy tavern, seated and unarmed, he was a powerful presence. He held himself with authority.
One by one, his ideas about Iriyat were going up in smoke. The sweet, innocent woman of his dreams had smiled at him to reveal a mouth full of fangs.
“She thinks you’re in power because you inherited it, and that you won’t be ruthless enough to hold it if anyone ever provides you with a real challenge.”
Mar laughed, or almost laughed. It was more of an incredulous huff. “Does she intend to provide that challenge?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what she wants,” Alizhan said, and then chewed her lip in thought. “Well, from what she said to me, she wanted the book back. But I think she also didn’t want anyone to know that she wanted it back. And Kasrik knew too much.”
“But now that the book is missing—and you along with it—capturing Kasrik could be a good source of information, and since he’s an orphan, it lets her work in the shade,” Mar said.
“So he might still be alive,” Ev said.
Alizhan nodded. Then, for a fraction of an instant, her eyes met Mar’s. “Kasrik said she hurts people like… us. He said she kills us.”
“He said that to me, too. I don’t know if it’s true.”
“But why—” Alizhan started, and the end of her question hung in the air. Ev had never seen her look so lost. “She told me I was the only one.”
“She’s always been very religious,” Mar said, half-apologetically, as if he could soothe away Iriyat’s behavior with explanations.
“Lots of people are religious,” Alizhan protested.
“You’re right. It doesn’t make sense. All the more reason to find Kasrik and get that b
ook decoded so we can get to the bottom of this.”
“We,” Ev repeated. Alizhan trusted Mar already, but Ev couldn’t know his heart. She trusted Alizhan, but it was hard to switch instantly from thinking of Mar as an adversary.
“You’re not seriously considering taking on Iriyat ha-Varensi by yourself,” Mar said. “Everyone loves her. She’s wealthy and powerful. Who will believe a crazy orphan and her foreign peasant friend who dresses like a boy?”
Mar wasn’t making it any easier for Ev to like or trust him. “I’m not foreign. I was born here and I’ve lived here my whole life.”
“I know. But that won’t matter if you accuse Iriyat of… what, exactly? Murder? Conspiracy?” Mar said. “She’ll use everything she can against you. She’ll blanket the city in pamphlets.”
Alizhan cut in. “I don’t think she will.”
“Weren’t you just trying to convince me she’s ruthless?”
“She is. But you’re thinking of what you would do, or what Ha-Garatsina and Ha-Katavi would do if someone publicly accused them. Iriyat is different. She won’t have to do those things. Not yet, anyway. Her first plan will be to find us and touch us.”
Mar had been keeping up a cool, steady front. He didn’t like that Alizhan had more information than he did, and he definitely didn’t like having his mind read. But his expression and tone had mostly remained neutral. For the second time in only a few minutes, his control slipped. “What?”
“Kasrik didn’t know,” Alizhan said. “I didn’t either until I saw it. Iriyat can touch people and make them forget things.”
Mar stared at her. Ev didn’t need to have Alizhan’s abilities to know what he was thinking. He’d known Iriyat for a long time. At some point in their years-long acquaintance, she must have touched him. “That’s not possible.”
“You believe Kasrik and I can read minds, but you won’t believe this?”
Mar shook his head, then touched his fingers to his temple. “No, I know, you have a point, but…”
Thornfruit (The Gardener's Hand Book 1) Page 18