Ev had nothing to say to that.
“Besides, you only know what happened when you touched her,” Djal corrected. “Think you might be a singular case.”
Alizhan now looked like she was asleep. She didn’t wake when Mala lifted her body from the ground, and she didn’t even stir when handed to Djal.
Ev could have carried her. Watching someone else do it made her ache. To stop herself from reaching for Alizhan, she clenched her fists at her sides.
“Now,” Mala said. “Where are we going?”
15
Lyrebird shift, 6th Triad of Alaksha, 761
HERE IS THE PART OF the story I am most loathe to tell.
I do not regret anything but this: I awoke, groggy and naked and bruised, on the cool stone floor of some underground room in Varenx House, and as my dazed mind reassembled my fragmented memories, I concluded that my parents intended to kill me. Fine, I thought, let them.
I knew then as I know now that Orosk and Merat Varenx, the despicable monsters who raised me, killed Arav Matrishal. It will never be written in any court document or street pamphlet or official history, so let it be written here. They murdered him. They might not have called that wave from the deep themselves—the waves persist in keeping their secrets from me, but I will own them in time—but they killed him all the same.
They had killed Arav. Let them kill me, too.
I let my head loll back against the stone. I had been drugged, I think, or perhaps it was malnutrition. My head throbbed. Sick and starved and aching, I waited for some poor unlucky servant to enter the room and carry out the duty of ending my life. It seemed to me at the time that it would be a great relief to be rid of it. My parents would be doing me a service. What reason did I have to keep living, if Arav was dead?
And then I felt you move.
Just a flutter. But it was enough. You, the last remnant. The seed. Letting myself die would mean killing you, and I could not do that. I hated you for keeping me from joining Arav in death, but I loved you for keeping some part of him alive.
It was not a servant who came, but my parents themselves. They could not trust anyone else with the task. They were, of course, barehanded. I did not understand what they intended at first. My father was holding a length of stiff, thin metal wire with a curved end. His arm was hanging down at his side, nonchalant, as though he always went about his domestic business with such an object in hand. My mother cupped a steaming mug in both hands, as though she was bringing me a comforting cup of tea. My eyes watered at the sharp, cool scent of the steam. The fragrance was so overpowering that it took me a moment to recognize it, although the leaves had come from my own garden. A plant called kalaprish, so named because its round leaves look like kalap coins.
I had heard stories of desperate young women taking kalaprish. It is a toxic herb, and most of those stories ended with dead young women. But women still brewed tea from the leaves or took a few drops of its oil on their tongues. Other methods of ending a pregnancy were far riskier. Suddenly the length of wire in my father’s hand made sense: a safeguard, in case they could not force me to drink the tea.
My parents did not want to kill me. They wanted to kill you.
They must have visited my cell while I was unconscious. They were clearly expecting me to be unresponsive. Perhaps they planned to tip my head back and pour the tea down my throat. It was not part of their plan for me to leap to my feet and launch myself at them, shrieking.
I don’t remember a moment of decision. No one had said a word. Did my mother take a step forward? Did my father’s slack grip on that wire tighten? Or was it my own realization that caused me to react? I do not know. I have never felt so much like an animal, naked and enraged. I flipped the mug into my mother’s face, splashing her with hot tea. She screamed. The mug shattered against the wall behind her, shards clattering to the floor.
I lunged for the wire with one hand and I slapped the other against my father’s temple. He tried to sidle away from my grip, but I pressed my thumb into his eye socket. My fingers scraped through his hair. He struggled, and then ceased struggling. I was only thinking of that poison, that wire, and how they meant to murder you before you even lived. How they had murdered Arav. I had no room left to think of practicing the delicate art of Lacemaking. I do not even know what I would have aimed to take from him. There was no direction. No precision. My touch was not a scythe but a fire. I swept through and left smoke and ashes, scorched and blackened ruination behind me.
I took everything from him, as he had taken everything from me.
It is possible for Lacemakers to kill with a touch. The body is so vulnerable. The lungs forget to breathe, the heart forgets to beat… I did not do that to my father, but it was a near thing. I do not know what stopped me. Some last remnant of sentiment. Or perhaps it was that he ought to have killed me, rather than leaving me alive to feel the rage and fury of grief. Perhaps what I did to him was crueler than the simple finality of death. I left him breathing, and little else.
He crumpled to the floor when I removed my hand from his face. Only a moment had passed. I was standing there, naked but for a thin sheen of sweat, with the metal wire in my hand. My mother was not even an arm’s length away, blotting her red face with the hem of her tunic. She was crying—gasping raggedly, at least. It was hard to tell if she was producing any tears, given the state of her face. I doubt she felt any genuine sadness.
“You killed him.”
At that moment, I was not entirely sure whether I had. Either way, I had no regrets. Out of breath, with my heart drumming in my chest, I remained on my feet and focused on her through the force of my anger. Words felt trivial and distant. Instead of saying anything, I reached for her. She put up no physical resistance. She put up no resistance of any kind, other than a very small, soft, “No.” I ignored it, as she had ignored my wishes all my life.
She folded under my touch even faster than my father had.
I should have known, then, that she was using my own favored tactic against me: appearing weak and defeated in order to survive to win another fight. But it looked for all the world like I had just destroyed both of them and left their bodies prone on the cell floor, and it was all I could do to stumble into the hallway and call for help. Then I retched and collapsed.
I awoke in my own bed, with the green glow of lamplight all around and the welcome scent of all my potted plants coloring the air. Parneet was at my bedside, waiting. I did not know what shift it was and had no sense of how much time had passed.
“The other servants called me in when they found you,” she said. She was sitting as she often did, with her elbows resting on her knees, which were spread at an unladylike width. She looked at a wall, feigning disinterest. Her greying hair was in a messy bun at the nape of her neck—I have no doubt she would have shaved her head if she thought my parents would have accepted it. The thought made me smile. What did it matter what they thought now?
There were streaks of dirt ground into the knees of her loose beige trousers. Even surrounded by death and destruction, Parneet was still herself: always in the garden, never dressing up for anyone, no matter how rich or powerful. It was so reassuring that I almost cried. But she would not have liked that, and I needed to save my tears for more politically expedient moments.
Parneet sniffed. “They seem to think I care for you.”
“You would never be so foolish,” I said, even as I was touched that she had waited for me to wake. Parneet might not have raised me, but I enjoyed her company more than I had ever enjoyed my mother’s, and we had come to an understanding. It was an unspoken understanding, as Parneet preferred that most matters of importance, especially those adjacent to the marshy depths of sentiment, remain unspoken. That suited me. I changed the subject. “Are they dead?”
“They?” she said. “Your father has a pulse. He breathes. But he does not appear to see or hear anything around him. We sat him upright in one of the upper bedrooms.”
�
��And my mother?”
“Was she in the cell, too?”
All Unbalanced hells. She was gone. I had no way of knowing what she remembered—everything, nothing, something? Had her collapse been a ruse? Why would she have run? Who could be sheltering her? She would resurface if I did not stop her. I had to think fast. The chaos of the city served me well in that.
“Listen, Parneet. Both of my parents died tragically in the wave.”
Parneet gave me a hard stare, and for a moment I thought she would protest that my father was alive—or at least breathing—only a few rooms away. My mother was alive, too, for all we knew. But instead she merely said, without a trace of feeling, “How sad.”
“I am heartbroken, but will assume my duties as the head of Varenx House despite my grief,” I continued. “There will, of course, be a period of mourning of several months, and I will not be able to go out in society. The other Houses will understand that I mean no disrespect by declining invitations and refusing visitors. My betrothal to Rossin Tyrenx will be broken immediately, as I cannot bear the thought of boarding a ship when the watery hell so recently claimed both of my beloved parents.”
“Naturally.”
“I need the names of everyone who knows about what happened.” It would be necessary to determine who was loyal to my parents, and who could be persuaded to help me instead. Anyone who had seen me locked in the cell might be inclined to pity; I could work with that. Most urgently, I needed to find out who trusted me enough to help me hunt down my mother.
“You’ll have them,” she promised.
I paused. “Since it is now up to me to manage this household, I will need help. Perhaps you—”
“No,” she said, and stood up. “I understand what you need to do, and I support you, but you need someone else for that. There is only one way that I like to get my hands dirty.” She brushed her hands on her trousers, as if I hadn’t already understood that she was talking about literal dirt.
“Of course,” I said. And, skirting dangerously close to an admission of feeling, I added, “You know I am grateful for you.”
“Wouldn’t help you if you weren’t,” she said shortly, and left the room. This behavior would have been utterly unacceptable in other servants, but Parneet could do what she wanted and she knew it.
I dressed and got out of bed and went down to address the household that now belonged to me.
16
Bad Habits
ALIZHAN WOKE IN WARM, STIFLING darkness, with the faint familiar scent of their room at The Anchor in her nostrils. She was in bed. Ev wasn’t in the room. She shut her eyes. She wanted to dissolve back into the darkness, to shuck off awareness of her body—the ache in all her limbs, the piercing pain of being conscious—the way a snake shed its papery skin.
Even with her eyes closed, Alizhan knew that the woman who’d touched her was sitting on the floor, her gaze level with Alizhan’s body, staring. Djal’s friend felt a little like Djal—warm, but distant. Unreadable. But not blank like Iriyat.
“Ah, so that’s what you want,” she said. She spoke Laalvuri with an Adpri accent, slow and musical, lingering over her vowels.
And suddenly Alizhan was invited in. Inside, the woman wasn’t like anyone else. She wasn’t a crashing wave of thoughts and feelings, a thousand little awarenesses all at once, sloshing over some deeper pool of memories and intentions and beliefs. Her mind was calm and orderly.
My name is Mala.
Alizhan let out a little breath of laughter in surprise. It was so different to be welcomed, instead of breaking and entering. Although most people hardly guarded themselves at all. It wasn’t breaking in if the door was swinging wide open. It wasn’t trespassing if the residents dropped all their possessions out the window into the street outside.
Shh, Mala thought.
Alizhan had never encountered anyone who could hear her. Except maybe for that one time she’d touched Ev by accident, and then Ev had dreamed her memory. But that had been so painful. This was easy. Alizhan knew exactly what Mala wanted her to know: she’d had some sort of fit, and Mala had touched her to help her get through it, because Mala was uheko just like her, and now she was going to teach Alizhan to control her powers.
Out of habit, Alizhan went snooping. Where was Mala from? Was she an Adpri exile, like Ev’s father? What did she do to get exiled? What secrets was she keeping? What did she want in life? Then she found herself gently shooed out of Mala’s mind.
“What’s uheko?” Alizhan said, opening her eyes. Even the tiny amount of light in the room made her squint. Getting invited to read Mala’s mind had almost made her forget how much pain she was in.
“I’ll show you if you give me your hand.”
Alizhan regarded Mala’s outstretched hand as if the older woman was holding a knife. With great caution, she reached for it. She let her own hand hover for a moment, trembling, and then Mala closed her fingers over it.
The pounding in Alizhan’s head receded. Her bruises and aches calmed. Relaxed, she breathed deeply. The world went quiet. Alizhan couldn’t remember feeling so safe or happy in her life.
“You said we were both uheko,” Alizhan said, after a stretch of silence. Her voice was slow and sleepy. “This isn’t what happens when I touch people. I can’t do this.”
“I can’t read minds,” Mala said. “Uheko is an islander word for touch-magic. We both have it.”
“But your mind is so nice,” Alizhan protested. Nice wasn’t the word she meant to say, but she couldn’t think of any other words, and she felt too good to care much.
Mala laughed. “Thank you, little sister.”
Alizhan remembered something else important: a priest. Gold Street. House full of Unbalanced little monsters. “Ev,” she said, too foggy to put the words in the right order. “Tell Ev. Kasrik. The priest. I have to go. I have to find—”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Mala said. “You’ve been killing yourself. Next time you collapse, you might not wake up.”
Kasrik might die, too. He might already be dead. But it was hard to make her tongue move to say those words, and everything seemed far away, like it was happening to someone else. Was any of this real? Mala had both her hands wrapped around Alizhan’s hand now. It didn’t matter if this was real. It was good. Everything was so quiet. Alizhan was floating.
She liked Mala. Her mind was so neat. Nobody else had ever invited her in. But Alizhan had tried to go somewhere she hadn’t been invited in Mala’s mind. Was Mala angry? She didn’t feel angry. But Alizhan couldn’t tell what she felt. What had Djal said? Shields. He’d talked about shields. This was a time when a normal person would look at her face, but it was dark, and Alizhan could never tell the difference between a real smile and a fake one, and her eyelids were so heavy.
“We’ll talk about this later,” Mala promised. “You should rest.”
Nothing had ever sounded like such a good idea.
The next time Alizhan woke up, she refused to let Mala touch her until she could see Ev. She sat straight up and crossed her arms over her chest, because that was what people did when they were feeling stubborn. Mala sighed and relented.
Ev arrived quickly. Djal came in, too, carrying a lamp. He stood next to Mala. Ev sat on the other side of Alizhan’s bed.
“Before I collapsed, I found a priest who knew about the second orphanage,” Alizhan said. “It’s in Gold Street.”
Ev must have told Djal and Mala some of the story, because they didn’t ask any questions. “So I’ll go to Gold Street,” Ev said.
“It’s a long street. You need my help to figure this out.”
“Why don’t you tell us what the priest looked like?” Djal said, and Alizhan gaped.
“You can recognize faces?”
Being a little fluffy yip-yap lap dog sounded better and better all the time. Djal could see people’s faces and tell them apart. He could read their expressions. He could touch people and be touched without hurting anyone. But he could sti
ll look inside people if he wanted to. How come he had all of the good parts of Alizhan’s life, and none of the bad?
“You can’t?” Djal asked.
Alizhan just looked at him. At his indistinguishable eyes, nose, and mouth that Ev liked so much.
He nodded. “That must be hard.”
“It never bothered me until I met people I couldn’t read,” Alizhan muttered. “Anyway, obviously I have to be the one to find this house. It’s the only lead we have, and I’m the only person who can follow it.”
“You’re also the only one who’s mortally endangered by leaving this room,” Ev said, forcing a calm into her voice Alizhan knew she didn’t really feel.
“I’m not going to die.” Alizhan clenched her arms tighter. It was easier to say it than to believe it. Mala had sounded serious on that point.
“Give me some time,” Mala said. “I’ll teach you a few things to help you. Then you can go.”
“We’ve already wasted too much time! Kasrik might be dead!”
“So might you, if you try that trick again,” Mala said. “Ev and Djal will look for your friend. I will stay here and teach you some sense.”
“Good luck with that,” Ev murmured, and she didn’t laugh, but Alizhan knew she wanted to. Did that make things better or worse?
Alizhan dropped her arms to her sides and let herself fall back into the pillows. It was the wrong move, because it made Ev feel sorry for her. Alizhan could feel the slow, cool drip of Ev’s pity, and she hated it. Ev didn’t usually think of her like that—a thing to be pitied—and it was too close to how everyone else saw her. An uncanny, uncivilized creature. A tragedy. A horror.
Even Djal and Mala, both of them just as Unbalanced as Alizhan, thought there was something wrong with her.
Djal spoke into the silence. “We’ll be back soon.”
“Why are you helping?” Ev asked as soon as she and Djal were outside The Anchor.
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