Ev was supposed to leave a message in return. How could she express “we made it out alive” in playing cards? That was the most essential information, and it must be what Djal and Mala had intended in their own message. Just the fact that they’d left any message at all meant they were alive. The method itself suggested secrecy was more important than nuanced communication. Ev shouldn’t leave a written note. She shouldn’t ask around or go looking for them. They were hiding.
Ev selected a ten from each suit: Sun, Stars, Smoke, Snow. That conveyed “message received, we’re alive too,” didn’t it? Ev scanned the cards one last time, then nodded at the bartender, who collected the cards and put them back under the counter.
After they’d left and begun their long hike up into the city, Kasrik said, “You have no idea what you’re doing.”
God, was it that obvious? Ev resisted the urge to cringe. “I thought you couldn’t read minds anymore.”
“I can’t. I watched you,” Kasrik said. “I watched the bartender, too. I don’t think she knew that you were confused. You put on a good show.”
“That was smart of you,” Ev said. “You learned to read people in the usual way.”
“It’s so much work.”
“Yes,” Ev said. She didn’t laugh, even though his amazement was charming. Kasrik had lost something. “And half the time, I’m wrong. Tell me, what did you think of the priest we saw at the door?”
“She didn’t like Iriyat.”
Ev nodded. She’d had the same impression. From Alizhan’s memories, she knew that was rare. Most people fawned over anyone beautiful, wealthy, and famous. Iriyat was doubly dangerous, with the tragic story of her parents’ early deaths and her reputation for selfless generosity. A priest at the orphanage where Iriyat had given so much money and time ought to have been overjoyed to see her. “Do you think she suspects something?”
“Maybe,” Kasrik said.
“Did you notice anything else about that priest, Kasrik?” Ev was fishing for confirmation. Now that she knew Kasrik could observe people in a way that Alizhan couldn’t, she wanted his opinion.
“Yeah,” he said. “She looked like Alizhan.”
22
A Trick of the Light
A SCORCH,” ALIZHAN SAID WHEN she walked in the door to Solor House. Ev and Kasrik were sitting on one of the huge sofas in the first room after the entrance, with cards spread on the table in front of them. Kasrik was trying to teach Ev the rules to every game he could think of, in case she needed to leave more messages, but she’d been distracted, waiting for Alizhan.
Alizhan kicked off her shoes and came to join them. She sat cross-legged on the floor next to the low table and starting rearranging the cards so that all the Suns were together. With her features unmoving in concentration, her resemblance to the serious priest grew stronger. Ev pushed that thought aside as Alizhan fanned out five cards. “That’s how Djal won when we played cards the first time. I called him Scorch because I didn’t know his name.”
“So it means what I thought,” Ev said. “They’re alive and recovering. And they’d prefer not to be found.”
“That’s my best guess, too,” Alizhan said. She sorted the cards into the message that Ev had left: a ten of each suit. She nodded her approval. When that was done, she said, “I think we should talk to Eliyan Matrishal.”
“Who?”
“The priest,” Kasrik guessed. “The one who didn’t like Iriyat.”
“We just found a secret prison run by priests of the Balance, and now you want to talk to one?” Ev said.
“When Iriyat came out of the orphanage, so did Eliyan, and after Iriyat left, Eliyan went over to Arishdenan to buy some tea,” Alizhan said. “I followed her for a long time. She’s good, Ev, I promise. Some of them are rotten, but not all.”
“They all think they’re serving God,” Ev marveled. This wasn’t the old religion, with more than one god. These priests all served the same God. “The guy who hurt Kasrik thought he was carrying out God’s will, and so does this woman who feeds and shelters orphans.”
“Says more about them than it does about God.”
Ev raised her eyebrows. She’d never asked if Alizhan believed in God.
“I don’t want to. What kind of god makes a world like this one?” Then, like a priest of Doubt, Alizhan murmured, “But what do I know?”
“What should we talk to her about?” Kasrik asked.
“The truth.”
“That’s a far cry from breaking into the orphanage and sneaking out with nineteen kids,” Ev said.
“We’ll do that if Eliyan doesn’t agree to help,” Alizhan said. “But she already knows some of the kids who just arrived are strange. And she’s uncomfortable with Iriyat, even though she doesn’t know why. She’ll believe us. We just have to show we don’t mean them any harm.”
Kasrik was nodding. “Take me with you. If she lets us inside, I’ll talk to them.” He yawned. “Next triad, though.”
He got up and wandered out of the room. Ev was glad to see him planning to get some rest. She’d been worried that she’d have to order him to sleep. He’d been so determined not to show any weakness on their walk—except for the moment of Iriyat’s appearance, and Ev couldn’t blame him for that. She’d felt the same jolt of fear.
As soon as Kasrik was gone, Alizhan said, “She’s not my mother. I know you talked about it and you both think I look like her, but she’s not my mother.”
“I know,” Ev said. “It doesn’t make sense.” The resemblance was there—those thick, arched brows and that prominent nose. Eliyan’s face was a little longer and squarer through the jaw than Alizhan’s, and in the few minutes Ev had watched her, she’d held herself still and unsmiling. But the thought of Eliyan—a woman who’d dedicated her life to raising motherless children—giving up her own child was absurd. The resemblance was some kind of accident. A trick of the light. “She loves kids.”
“It’s not that. She loves kids, sure, but she could have been forced into giving hers up somehow, if she had one,” Alizhan said. “But I don’t think she ever did.”
Alizhan had glossed over a dark possibility—that Iriyat had stolen her and forced her mother to forget—with such speed that Ev was left lagging behind. “You think she never had a child? Why not?”
“She never thinks about sex,” Alizhan said. “Most people do. Not consciously, but underneath the rest of their thoughts, there’s a current. Someone attractive walks by, they notice. Not Eliyan. It never occurs to her.”
“Maybe she hasn’t seen anyone attractive in the hours you’ve been around her.”
Alizhan shook her head. “I’m not explaining it right. You have to trust me, though. I can feel when people are… not necessarily that they’re aroused or anything, but just… the possibility is there. She’s not like that.”
“Are you?” Ev hadn’t meant to let the words out—her hand was halfway to her mouth, too late to slap it shut—but there they were. If Ev had kept silent, Alizhan would have ignored her thoughts on the subject, since it was exactly what she’d told Ev not to hope for.
Hope wasn’t allowed, but Ev could be curious, couldn’t she? Alizhan knew everything about her.
“Am I what? Like Eliyan?”
Alizhan didn’t need that clarification. She was stalling. But Ev nodded.
“It doesn’t matter,” Alizhan said. “My point is that it’s unlikely Eliyan ever had a kid of her own, even though she loves them. She just isn’t interested in sex. I’m not saying it rules out your theory, but we should talk about more important things now.”
“We almost got caught this shift,” Ev said, accepting Alizhan’s desire to change the subject. The hoods had been a good idea, but face veils would be better. “We’ll have to be more careful next time.”
“I don’t mind wearing a veil,” Alizhan said. “The world feels fairer that way—I can’t see anyone’s face, so why should they get to see mine?”
Fairer. Right. “You
can read minds.”
Alizhan gave a lopsided smile, lifted her shoulders, and spread her hands wide. Despite her lingering frustration, Ev laughed.
“You’re right that we’ll have to watch ourselves. There’s only the door in Temple Street and a back door on the other side of Denan. Eliyan won’t be inclined to trust us if we go in that way, so we’ll have to use the main door.”
“You know we’d be endangering her by telling her the truth. If Iriyat finds out about her involvement, she’ll mess with Eliyan’s memory. Or worse.”
“That’s always true. It could happen to Mar or Vatik. It could happen to me or you.”
Ev had spent far too much time contemplating it already. Would it be painless, just a touch of the hand wiping away her memories? It would be like killing a small part of herself. As awful as it was to imagine her own loss, it was worse to imagine leading someone else into that danger. But they needed help.
“If we tell her truth, she’ll want to help,” Alizhan said. “You accepted the risks and so will she.”
The massive, metal ring for knocking on the orphanage door was huge and heavy in Alizhan’s hand. The moments between knocking and the door opening hung suspended, stretching longer with every breath.
A man in grey robes opened the door. At the sight of two young women in face veils, one very tall and one very short, and a young man with his hood pulled low, recognition seized him.
Shit. Alizhan couldn’t move. She couldn’t give away that she knew what the priest knew. Iriyat and Vatik had warned him to watch for them. He’d send word as soon as he stepped away from them. By the time they left the orphanage, the streets would be full of Varenx House guards.
Alizhan’s fingers twitched. She might hurt herself if she touched him. It might be worth it. Or maybe Ev could knock him out. He was only a little taller than Alizhan and the robes made it hard to tell, but she’d guess he was soft. How much of a fight could he put up?
Kasrik nudged her in the back. She didn’t want to turn toward him—too obvious. But she scanned the foyer beyond the priest and saw a child.
Not remarkable, to see a child in an orphanage. But this one was unreadable. And he was about Zilal’s size. She ripped her gaze away from the child to meet the priest’s eyes. She smiled at him, but from the wave of confusion that washed through him, she didn’t do it right.
“Hello,” Alizhan said as calmly as she could. “How are you?”
It was enough. The priest started to form a word, then his mouth went slack and his eyes rolled up and he sunk to the floor. Zilal stood behind him, still holding the priest’s limp hand in his own small one. Alizhan hadn’t seen or heard his approach—an impressive skill for such a young child, but one she wished he’d never had to learn. He stared up at Kasrik.
“Good work,” Kasrik said. He crouched down. “You remember me?”
“No. Yes.” Zilal made a face. “I don’t like to remember.”
“Can’t blame you for that,” Kasrik said.
“You don’t have to remember,” Alizhan said. Zilal didn’t recognize her. “Are you hungry?”
Zilal scrutinized the three of them for a moment, and then nodded. Alizhan took a few steps toward him, and then knelt down and offered him something from the pocket of her tunic. A single thornfruit sat in the middle of her palm. Her hand was bare, but with one steadying breath, she reminded herself that he couldn’t hurt her and she wouldn’t hurt him. Her control was stronger now. Mala’s tedious lessons in breathing had been worth it, since now Alizhan could offer this small kindness to someone else.
Zilal grabbed it and pinched the rind until it popped off, then ate it in one bite. Alizhan smiled and offered him several more, and he ate all of them. When he was finished swallowing, she picked up the rinds and said, “My name is Alizhan.”
“Zilal.”
“Oh my.” The voice was low and female, and it came from the woman who was now standing on the other side of the foyer from them. Eliyan. “This isn’t how we usually answer the door.”
“Your new arrivals aren’t usual,” Alizhan said, getting right to the point. The other priest wouldn’t sleep for long. He’d be sure to tell Iriyat he’d seen them when he woke, even if they got away. “Can we talk somewhere private?”
“Zilal, please go back to your room for a while. The rest of you, this way,” Eliyan said. She led them through the cavernous main hall and into a small, sparsely furnished room divided by a curtain. On their side of the curtain, there was a chair and a desk covered in stacks of books and a lamp. The lamp, a tall column of glass filled with green fluid, was perched on the books. From Eliyan’s thoughts, Alizhan knew the other side was where she slept.
Eliyan locked the door.
“I’m sorry I don’t have more chairs.”
“We don’t have time to sit,” Alizhan said. “You took in nineteen children after the fire in Gold Street—Zilal among them—didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“The others are like Zilal,” Alizhan said. “Not exactly like him, but they have unusual abilities.”
Eliyan was nodding. “You don’t have to dance around the rest. I’ve known children like this before.”
“You have?” Ev was surprised. “Don’t you believe all that stuff about how magic isn’t real and people should abandon their Unbalanced children into the care of the Temple?”
“I grew up in the Marsh. We took care of our own,” Eliyan said coolly. A few names and faces flitted through her mind, but one stayed longer than the rest. A brother. Eliyan had once had a brother with some ability. Don’t look, she was thinking. Kasrik’s black scars, only the raw ends visible at the hem of his sleeves, haunted her mind. Eliyan had seen scars like that before. “There were always whispers that someone was taking children. Especially certain children.”
“Didn’t it worry you that the Temple encouraged suspicion of anyone strange or different?” Ev asked. “And if there were rumors, why didn’t anyone do anything about them?”
It bruised Ev’s heart each time she learned of some new wrong. If only everyone could feel how badly they were failing Ev’s hopes at every turn, the world would be a better, kinder place. At least, she made Alizhan want to work harder.
“We tried. I’m still here, trying. As for why we didn’t report it to the authorities… Haven’t you heard?” Eliyan asked, her voice bitter. “Salt-crusted, water-brained Marshers will believe anything.”
“That’s terrible,” Ev said. “It still doesn’t explain your choice to join—”
“I told you,” Eliyan said. “I’m here, trying. I took this position specifically to protect these children. If anyone was trying to hurt them, I would know. And the Temple of the Balance is the spiritual home of hundreds of priests and thousands of worshippers. We’re not all the same.”
Alizhan didn’t have time for this. She had to direct them back to the subject. “Someone is trying to hurt them. I know you noticed Kasrik’s scars. You’ve seen scars like that before—on your brother’s arms. You know what caused them.”
Kasrik touched his wrists, but it was too late to hide.
Eliyan was only startled for an instant before understanding bloomed. She’s like him, she thought, and her gaze searched Alizhan’s face. Keeping her voice neutral, she said, “I don’t, actually. I’ve seen sailors come home with scars like that after tangling with giant medusas.” She turned to Kasrik, her voice softer, “But you look too young for that.”
“He is,” Alizhan said. “There’s some kind of trade in medusa tentacles here in the city. They’re still potent even after they’re detached. There was a room full of jars in the house that burned down—a torture chamber. You can see what happened to Kasrik there.”
No longer trying to hide, Kasrik pulled up one of his sleeves to expose the ragged black lines striping his forearm. “A priest of the Balance did this to me.”
Eliyan went white-hot with rage. “Who?”
“A man named Hakur. He’s already d
ead,” Alizhan said. “But there are others. And they’ll be looking for the children you just took in. That’s why we came to talk to you. When Iriyat was here, did she ask you about them?”
“Of course, but everyone’s talking about them. No one seems to know what happened, but the rumors are ugly.” Eliyan was viscerally upset by the scars and their story. Her stomach was roiling. She was trying to calm down, reminding herself that she’d watched these three young people talk to Zilal. They seemed like good people. It wasn’t their fault that they came bearing terrible news. At least they were speaking plainly.
“You don’t like her,” Alizhan said.
“We revere God’s Balance in nature and we distort it in our communities,” Eliyan said. “For Iriyat to be so rich, how many hundreds or thousands of other people must live in poverty? Her charity patches over something fundamentally broken.”
Ev was trying not to smile, thinking of her father saying rich people. She liked Eliyan.
“You’re right to dislike Iriyat. She’s the reason children have disappeared from your communities for so many years. She’s the reason the Temple preaches suspicion. We don’t know what her goal was, but that house belonged to her. She’d been holding those children there, hurting them. She might have been studying them. Now that they’re here, she’ll look for a way to get them out again.”
Eliyan went from stunned to skeptical and back. “How could she possibly keep all that a secret? And who are you, that you’d discover it?”
“I used to work for her,” Alizhan said. “You already know what I can do. Iriyat can erase memories with a touch. Watch out for her hands next time she’s here. And don’t let her touch your skin. That power, combined with her wealth, is how she operates in secret.”
“Say I believe this,” Eliyan said. “What do we do about it?”
“We need to hide those children,” Alizhan said. “It would be fine if they were adopted by people you trust, but if that happens, any evidence that they were here—or written records of where to find them—needs to go missing in a mysterious accident. And Zilal needs to get out now.”
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