“Alizhan and I found one upstairs, in the room with Kasrik,” Ev said. “And we saw four people go in and out…” She paused, uncertain which of those four people were out of the house and might be returning. They’d find out soon enough. She directed her gaze at Mala. “Kasrik is hurt. Alizhan wants to know if he can be moved safely. If so, I’ll take him to Solor House and explain to Mar what we’ve found.”
Mala nodded. “Let’s go.”
Kasrik was awake but dazed when they re-entered the room. Mala made a quick, efficient check of his vitals. Unlike Alizhan, who’d calmed under Mala’s touch, Kasrik seemed to liven up. His eyes focused more clearly on her.
“I don’t think I can heal him here, at least not in the time we have,” Mala said. “His wounds aren’t the kind we can see.” Kasrik did have visible wounds—raw flesh where his wrists had been bound, and a black eye, to start—but there must be something beyond what Ev could see. Mala was enumerating things. “No broken bones, no gashes… I don’t know if he can walk under his own power, dazed as he is, but I think if you go with him, he can get there.”
Ev hated the idea of leaving the house and all its vulnerable children unprotected, but Mala and Djal would be here. And if Ev was being honest with herself—a difficult thing—what she really hated was leaving Alizhan.
“I’ll take care of myself,” Alizhan said quietly, and for once, Ev just nodded.
“We need Mar,” she said, more to convince herself than anything else. They needed him to accuse Iriyat before the rest of the Council. They needed the resources his wealth could provide. Then she lifted Kasrik out of the chair and held him until he was carrying some of his own weight. Half-slouched against her, barely awake, he wouldn’t be an easy companion to transport across the city.
Ev was spending far too much of her time carrying semi-conscious people across Laalvur. Kasrik was heavier than Alizhan had been. His eyes were open, but she couldn’t tell how aware he was.
The trip was excruciating, but at least it ended easily enough. Ev didn’t have to say a word to the servant who opened the door at Solor House. The man recognized Kasrik and ushered her inside immediately. Once, entering one of the Great Houses had been a dream, and she might have marveled at the high ceilings of the entrance hall or the elaborate carved stone screens on the Nightward side. There were white and blue tiles arranged in complicated mosaic patterns and rugs in every shade of blue. Ev couldn’t put Kasrik down to remove her shoes. She’d never dirtied something so expensive, and that stray thought might have made her laugh if she hadn’t been so frantic. The servant led her to a room with a bed where she could deposit Kasrik—the trip had taken its toll—so she did.
Just as she was wondering what to do next, she turned around and Mar ha-Solora was standing in the room. The thick carpet had muffled his tread. His clothes were wrinkled, his hair was mussed, and his eyes drooped with fatigue. Still, he made the space feel much smaller.
“Will he live?”
“I think so,” Ev said. “Mala—a healer we know—thought it was safe for me to bring him across the city. She said his worst wounds are the kind we can’t see.”
Mar pushed past her and knelt beside the bed, gently examining one of Kasrik’s bare arms and the black scarring that traced up and down his skin like a new set of veins. “What happened? Who did this? What did this?”
“We found the orphanage he told us about,” Ev said. “In Gold Street. There were several people working there—we suspect they’re priests of the Balance. At least some of them. Two of them might just be guards. They’re keeping nineteen children in the house. I think—I think—” Ev took a breath, realizing that she had been talking extraordinarily fast, “—I think they might be doing experiments. With venom.”
“Medusa venom?”
She nodded.
Mar frowned. “Now that I think of it, I suppose I’d heard somewhere that it left this distinctive kind of scarring. But what possible purpose could this serve? You can’t be telling me that Iriyat is keeping a secret house full of orphaned children just to do cruel experiments on them? I know I underestimated her, but…”
Ev had no answers.
“There must be some reason,” Mar insisted.
“Can you come up with a good enough reason to hurt kids?”
Mar glanced at Kasrik. His shoulders slumped. “I hate this.” He sighed. “I suppose you came here so I could gather the other seven Council members to bring Iriyat to trial.”
“Alizhan is still at the house with all the children,” Ev said. “They can be witnesses. The house is full of evidence.”
“What are we going to do with nineteen children?” Mar said. He rubbed a hand over his face. “Nineteen children who terrified their families into abandoning them.”
“Don’t say that,” Ev snapped. “It’s not the kids’ fault. And their parents were probably terrified by all those sermons that priests of the Balance are always giving about the horrors of the ‘Unbalanced’ among us. But we’ll figure it out. We’ll find homes for them, or… people who know how to teach them, or something.”
“In a city where no one believes in magic.” Mar rubbed the bridge of his nose. “What a mess.”
“Yes.” Ev meant her reply to sound steadfast. She wanted to convey that they’d solve this.
Mar interpreted it differently. “It’s not like Iriyat to be sloppy. I know the house was hidden in plain sight, and you might not have found it if not for… Alizhan. But employing so many people gets dangerous. People talk. And keeping so many children a secret. The more I learn about this, the more questions I have. This place must be a secret from most of Iriyat’s servants, and also from most of the priests. How do we find out who’s involved?”
“People might be involved without knowing it,” Ev said. “But I suppose we should start with the ones who are in the house.”
“Two guards, you said, and four others you think might be priests. What about that guard of hers who nearly killed Zenav in the Temple of Doubt? The gruff one with the beard? Do you think he knows?”
Ev had Alizhan’s memory of hiding in the foliage outside Varenx House and eavesdropping. “He knows something, but not everything. I think he kills people for Iriyat sometimes, but he doesn’t like doing it. He might not remember it.”
Mar stared. “How can you possibly know—never mind, I know it’s Alizhan. Fine. We’ll assume he’s involved, willingly or not. So that’s seven accomplices at least. I have no idea how our courts will deal with someone who might have had their memories altered, but we’ll get to that. I think you said six of these people are in the house, yes?”
“No,” Ev said. Cold horror seeped into her gut. Anavik had left the house while they’d been watching, and they hadn’t seen him come back. He could return at any moment. Worse, he might be reporting to Iriyat right now. “One left before we went in.”
“That’s not good,” Mar said. “We need evidence. And that means we need to keep this secret from Iriyat for as long as possible. If she gets word—”
Ev already knew. “Call your Council. I’m going back.”
She should never have left Alizhan alone at the house. Not alone, of course, but what could Djal and Mala do against Iriyat’s hands? What could Ev do, for that matter? She didn’t know, but she knew she had to get there anyway. If Anavik came back, he’d know instantly that the house had been compromised. Even if they could contain him, he might have mentioned to Iriyat or Vatik that strangers were lurking in the street—he’d given Ev and Djal a thorough examination when he’d left. Anyone working in the house would have a healthy sense of paranoia.
Why hadn’t she planned for this? She should’ve known better.
Just as Ev had come in without looking at any of the elaborate decorations of Solor House, she strode right back out without another glance.
19
The Soul of Virtue
DJAL AND MALA HELPED ALIZHAN carry the tied-up priest down the stairs into the room where al
l the children were staying. They’d also left the two incapacitated guards there—the one Zilal had put to sleep, and another whose hair was matted with blood—in addition to two men and a woman Alizhan had never seen before, all of whom were alive, but unconscious and bound. Zilal followed them down the stairs, quite cheerful for a child whose life had recently been threatened.
“Will we still live in this house?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Alizhan said. “Do you want to stay here?”
The boy chewed his lip. The question stumped him, so Alizhan let it go.
“Can you tell me the names of the people who work here?”
He nodded. “Hakur,” he said, pointing to the stocky young man who’d threatened his life and Alizhan’s. Then he looked at the other captives. “Josik,” he said, indicating the man he’d put to sleep in order to allow Alizhan into the house. “Okardas,” he said, pointing to the man with blood in his hair. The two men and the woman, he named, “Lortseya, Ashtur, Osan.”
“Is there anybody else who isn’t here?”
“Anavik,” he said. “And a nice lady.”
“With yellow hair?”
Zilal nodded. Iriyat. Alizhan’s stomach clenched at the thought of Anavik walking free. He might be reporting to Iriyat right now. All Unbalanced Hells, she hadn’t intended to take everyone in this house hostage. She’d only wanted to free Kasrik. But what could she do now?
“We’re going to look around the kitchen and see if there’s food for all these kids,” Djal told her. “Do you need anything?”
For Ev to come back. For this to be over. “No, I’m fine.”
“Sure you are,” Djal said. “We’ve got this. We just need your friend Mar to show up with the rest of the Council and then it’ll all be over.”
Alizhan glanced down at Zilal, who wanted so badly to know if he and the other children would still live in this house. It would be a long time before this was over. “I don’t understand why she did any of this.”
“Trials get people talking,” Mala said. “Come on, I’ll make you some tea.”
It was less work than Alizhan expected to get all nineteen children to go to bed, and it horrified her to think about just why they were all so obedient. Djal took up a post by the front door, and Mala stayed in the room with the children, so Alizhan went to sit by the back door. The thought of that room upstairs, with its chair and its dozens of implements, chilled her. All those bottles. Would Kasrik recover? Could you recover from being tortured, or was it something you learned to live with, instead?
Would Iriyat have done that to Alizhan, if Alizhan had been less eager to please?
All those years of pleasing Iriyat. Alizhan had never worried about whether she was doing the right thing. Now it seemed clear that she must have done the wrong thing—many times over. She’d never even stopped to consider that. Ev would’ve thought about it. Ev would never do something just to get someone to like her. Ev had principles. Alizhan had come by her own principles far too late.
Her mind slipped easily from these bleak distractions into the darkness of sleep, and she woke up to the choking, unnatural darkness of smoke. Tears stung her eyes.
Then someone grabbed her around the waist, and the shock of contact seared up and down her body. She blinked away the blackness from her vision, but the hall was full of smoke. Fire. The house was on fire. Where was everyone? Her captor lifted her up and threw her over a shoulder.
Breathe. Breathe. Ground yourself. But her feet weren’t on the ground and there was no air, only smoke. Still, if she couldn’t ground herself, maybe she could read her captor.
Little ghost more trouble than she’s worth, he was thinking. Oh, Hells. It was Vatik. Should’ve killed her like the others. Others? Did he mean the children? Had he set the house and fire and left all the children in it to die? Were Mala and Djal still alive? Where was Ev?
“Stop,” Alizhan said, and it was more coughing than words. Vatik ignored her. “Put me down.”
She kicked at his chest. It had no effect.
Horrible, Unbalanced place. The city’ll be better off without these monsters. At that, Alizhan gasped and had another coughing fit. Vatik didn’t think the children were monsters. He thought the priests were monsters.
He’d killed them. And the guards. Alizhan searched frantically for thoughts of Djal and Mala. Vatik hadn’t found Mala, but he’d fought an Adpri man when he entered the house. A man lying on the floor with a gash in his stomach. As good as dead. Alizhan sucked in a stinging breath of smoke. Was that Djal? Had Vatik killed Djal? A scream died in her throat, suffocated by fire and ash. Not now. She couldn’t think of that now. She had to find out more.
“Iriyat ordered you to kill the priests,” Alizhan guessed. She was killing the witnesses. Burning the evidence. “Did you kill the children, too?”
“Why, is that what you were planning?” Vatik said, his voice a low snarl. “What are you even doing in this place, little ghost?”
“Taking down Iriyat. Saving those kids.”
“You’re even madder than she said,” Vatik said. His voice had a note of pity in it. “Iriyat told me you’d gotten all Unbalanced and run off after some delusion. I always knew you would. But she loves you, for some reason, so here I am cleaning up your mess and taking you home. At least I get to shut this awful place down as a benefit.”
“What?” Alizhan choked.
“I don’t know how you ended up here, or what those bastards did to you, but you’re lucky Iriyat was paying attention,” he said. “As soon as she got word you were here, she sent me to rescue you and burn this place to the ground. It’s her sleep-shift, but she’s out there in the street rescuing children, because that woman is a saint beyond the Balance.”
Iriyat. Street. Children. “Oh, Hells, she’s touching them.”
“I never liked you, little ghost. Never understood why she did. You’re too strange by half. Don’t make me drop you before we get back to Gold Street.”
Iriyat would touch her, too, and Vatik, and everyone, and no one would ever know this place had existed. Nothing would stop Iriyat from making another place just like it, and finding more nameless children for her cruel experiments. Alizhan had to do something. But Vatik thought Iriyat was the hero, not the villain.
Hakur had known exactly what he was doing. He’d known he was torturing children with abilities. He just happened to think he was working in the service of some greater good, at Iriyat’s behest, at least according to what he’d said out loud. Alizhan would bet all the other priests knew what they were doing, too, and probably the guards as well. That was why Iriyat had asked Vatik to kill them. But in order to get him to carry out that brutal order, she’d had to convince him that they were people worth killing—criminals, torturers, murderers.
In this case, they were. But Iriyat had still lied to Vatik. She’d had to twist the story. And Alizhan knew it wasn’t the first time Iriyat had needed her power to keep Vatik in line.
He wasn’t like the priests. He didn’t believe in whatever awful project was happening in the house. He had a code. He believed in right and wrong, like Ev.
If Alizhan could save Vatik, she could save herself, too.
“Your memory troubles are Iriyat’s fault,” Alizhan said. “She’s destroying you.”
He stopped walking.
“Yes,” Alizhan said. “I’m the little ghost, too strange by half, an unnatural horror and a monster and a disturbance to the Balance and probably a witch, too, sure. But I know things. I know your memory doesn’t work as well as it should. That’s because of Iriyat. When she asks you to do something that you consider dishonorable, and you resist, she makes you forget your concerns.”
“My lady Ha-Varensi is the soul of virtue and she would never—”
“If she’s the soul of virtue, why does she keep secrets? What could she possibly have to hide?” Alizhan said. “How did Iriyat know about this house? You don’t need a perfect memory to see that something is w
rong here.”
“That something is you. You’re a witch and a liar—”
“But I’m not wrong,” she interrupted. “Your memory has holes in it. We both know it. Think. Iriyat told you not to touch me. You’re wearing gloves now. Have you ever touched Iriyat? Has she ever touched you?”
“Absurd. She’s a modest woman, a woman of strong faith—”
“You must be losing time,” Alizhan pressed. “Are there shifts you can’t account for? Do you find yourself in places without understanding how you got there?” She could feel the uncertainty uncurling in his gut. His fear and horror salted the air. And then his thoughts gave her exactly what she needed: an image. “Or maybe you find blood on the blade of your sword without knowing whose it is?”
A silence. She had him.
“Soldiers live hard,” he said. It was a last effort, an excuse, and he didn’t believe his own words. “If we don’t die young, sometimes we grow old before our time.”
“Yes,” Alizhan said. “But it’s one thing to forget names or places. It’s something else to forget whose throat you cut.”
“You watch your mouth, little ghost,” he said. “I might be listening, but I still don’t like you.”
“Listening is all I need you to do,” she said. The plan would come. She just had to keep talking. Vatik didn’t like her, but he wouldn’t kill her, and she could work with that.
20
Smoke and Fire
SMOKE AND FUCKING FIRE,” EV said, and it wasn’t just a curse. Smoke was billowing through Gold Street, and a crowd of people pressed close to the house. The Vigilkeepers had parked their wooden cart with its cistern of water in the street outside, and they were spraying the house with water. A chain of people were also handing off buckets of water to put out the blaze. Others were shouting and crushing closer, but they didn’t seem to be helping.
Ev pushed forward until she could see why.
A tiny woman, her blond hair uncovered and mussed, stood near the garden gate, ushering wailing, soot-smudged children out into the street. Unconcerned by the devouring fire so close behind her, she calmly knelt and embraced each child, touching their cheeks and directing them away from the fire. The children were running toward the Vigilkeepers, who were helping them into an empty wagon. Ev counted thirteen of them already huddled together.
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