Ifeleh waved a hand in the air. “Hurry up. You’re encroaching on my sleep shift.”
“Um,” Ev said, not sure what exactly Ifeleh wanted her to say. “My father talks a lot about how everyone in Adappyr can read, and how everyone has enough to eat, and no one has to work if they’re too old or too sick. And there’s no religion. The people govern themselves.”
“Ah. Is that what he thinks?”
“I never understood how or why a place like that would send its citizens into permanent exile so often.”
“Adappyr used to be like that,” Ifeleh said. “Although even when there was enough for everyone, the laws were still strict about violence, and the punishment was always exile. But the Adpri worked to make paradise, and as long as you didn’t commit a violent crime, you could partake.”
“What happened?”
“Many of us believed in these ideas, in this movement, and we were working together to make it possible. But we had a leader. A beloved, charismatic man named Usmam. He brought us together. If there were arguments about how to proceed, he settled them. He was just and considerate, and he worked his whole life to achieve peace and prosperity for his people.”
The knots in Ev’s stomach could rival any on the ship in their twisted tension. One good man who’d been the key to continued peace in Adappyr—a peace that no longer existed. It wasn’t hard to guess what Ifeleh was about to tell her.
But there was a detail she hadn’t foreseen.
“He was my father,” Ifeleh said. “Our father.”
Ev blinked. “But you said my father was your half-brother—‘the bad half.’”
“So I did. I’m sure you’ve guessed by now what I’m about to tell you. Obin killed Usmam. Usmam was a respected, adored leader outside his own home, but inside it, he was sick with rage. He screamed at us and beat us. He killed his first wife, your grandmother, and he would have killed his second, and me as well, if Obin hadn’t killed him.”
Ev’s heart stuttered in her chest. So her father was a murderer after all. All those schoolyard fights over his honor, all those tears, all those times he’d never been able to look her in the eye and say “of course I’ve never killed anyone.”
All those years, and he hadn’t just told her the truth. That stung more than anything.
“But Usmam was a pacifist who made violent crime illegal! Why wasn’t he convicted and exiled?”
“No one believed us, niece,” Ifeleh said.
Just like no one would believe Ev and Alizhan if they told the truth about Iriyat. “So my father killed him to save you, and then he suffered for it.”
Ifeleh nodded and said, “So did many other people.”
“You blame him? But he saved your life!”
“Is my life worth a city?” Ifeleh asked. She raised her hands, palms out, in a philosophical gesture. “I don’t know. I won’t ever know. Who can make that choice?”
“Is this why we’ve never met before? Why you don’t come around?”
“It’s complicated. You know, some people survive ugliness and it brings them together. Obin and I, we still love each other, but… we remind each other of the bad times. We wanted new lives, so now he has his and I have mine. But he sent you to me because he knew I’d help you, and I will.”
“Thank you for telling me,” Ev said as she left, but she didn’t feel any gratitude. Alizhan had been right—sometimes it was better not to know. Ifeleh’s story twisted her up inside, and two contradictory wishes warred in her mind: she wished he’d told her the truth a long time ago, and she wished he’d lied.
Most of all, she wished she’d heard from him—a lie, the truth, anything—instead of someone else. Why hadn’t he told her? Didn’t he trust her? Didn’t he think she loved him enough to forgive him?
Did she love him enough to forgive him?
The answer was immediate and unshakeable: yes. Of course she did. But you could love someone with all your heart and still be very, very angry with them, and Ev went to sleep with her jaw and her fists clenched.
The next time she saw Alizhan, Ev had been thinking a lot about fathers. And aunts. But family was a delicate subject, and Alizhan had brusquely pushed it aside last time Ev had broached the topic. Maybe it was better not to bring it up. They were crossing the ocean together, going somewhere neither of them had ever been. They needed each other. They had to stay friends.
“You know,” Alizhan said, leaning against the railing and peering down into the water. “The harder you try not to mention something, the more you think about it, and the more obvious it becomes to me.”
“I know,” Ev said, and sighed. She stood next to Alizhan and rested her hands on the railing. As they’d sailed farther from Laalvur, the sun had dropped toward the horizon and the sky had dimmed from its usual red-gold. The water still glittered in the low light. “I’m trying to be polite. I thought you might not want to talk about it.”
“I don’t. But if you’re going to think about it all the time, then I have to think about it all the time, too. So why don’t you just say it?”
“I know you’re sure Eliyan’s not your mother. But you also mentioned her brother. And she’d known people like you before…”
“You think he’s my father and Eliyan’s my aunt,” Alizhan said. “But I don’t want him to be my father.”
“Why not?” Didn’t she want to meet him? Hadn’t Alizhan longed to find her family? Wouldn’t this lay the mystery to rest? And wouldn’t it be nice to gain Eliyan as a family member? On the other hand, Ev had recently discovered a new family member and found the answer to a lifelong question about her father, and it hadn’t brought her much peace.
“Because he’s dead, Ev.”
“Oh.” Nobody had mentioned that. Guilt settled in Ev’s stomach. No wonder Alizhan hadn’t wanted to talk about it. She should have guessed.
Alizhan dabbed at her eyelashes, then pulled her hand away and stared at her fingertips as if the wetness there were some dangerous alien substance. She dropped her hand down, leaning her elbows on the railing again and letting her tears drip into the sea.
Ev tried to bring up the silver lining. “We don’t know it’s him for sure, but that would mean he didn’t—”
“I’ve been looking for him my whole life and he’s dead.” Alizhan bit out the words with force, but the beat of silence after her sentence was broken by a ragged breath. Ev stepped closer. Could she hug Alizhan without hurting either of them? She settled for laying a hand on her back. “He’s not supposed to be dead.”
“You’d rather have it be someone living? Someone who chose to leave you at the orphanage?”
“Living people can change their minds. They can fix their mistakes. The dead are just dead.”
Ev had never seen Alizhan cry, and she wasn’t sure if she was witnessing it now. Alizhan kept her face down, turned away from Ev. Ev stroked her hand down Alizhan’s back, moving in big, slow circles. “Do you know how Eliyan’s brother died?”
“The last wave.” Eliyan hadn’t mentioned it, which meant Alizhan had cared enough to search her mind for the answer. Alizhan scrubbed the back of her hand across her face. Was that a sniffle?
“I was three. You would have been a baby, or maybe not even born yet. That means that if he was your father, he didn’t abandon you. That’s important, right? You talked about people fixing their mistakes, but maybe he never made a mistake to fix. It’s not his fault he died in the wave. He wanted you. He would have loved you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” Ev said. An instant later, Alizhan was clinging to her, arms clamped around her waist and face pressed into her chest. Ev waited an instant, but neither of them recoiled in pain or passed out. She put her arms around Alizhan. Smoke, she was so small. Ev lifted one hand to stroke Alizhan’s hair. She let it run the glossy length of her braid. “You’re allowed to cry, you know. You can be upset about this.”
“I know,” Alizhan mumbled. “I don’t like it.”<
br />
“Crying? Having feelings?”
“There are things inside me that I don’t control or understand,” Alizhan said. “I don’t know what will happen if I let them out. What if I hurt someone?”
“You hurt me once and I’m still here.”
That did make Alizhan cry. It was a long time before either of them said anything else. Ev sat down on the deck and Alizhan curled up next to her, knees bent and kept tight to her chest. Ev rubbed her back and let her cry.
Eventually, Alizhan’s sobs slowed and she blotted her eyes with the hem of her tunic. “You’re too good for me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You are. You deserve somebody who’s better at this. Somebody who can touch you. Really touch you, I mean. Somebody who can see your face and appreciate it. Somebody who knows when to say sorry without being told. Somebody who wouldn’t put you and everyone you care about in danger and then drag you across the ocean.”
“I’d like to see you try to drag me anywhere,” Ev said, poking one of Alizhan’s wiry arms. “And you don’t get to tell me what I want.”
“But I know what you want,” Alizhan said. “I see your dreams. I can’t be that for you, Ev. I’ll hurt you.”
This was the constant refrain of their relationship—such as it was. Alizhan told Ev that what she wanted was impossible, that Alizhan couldn’t ever, that Ev should stop wanting her. Ev’s desires were always out in the open. When Alizhan refused them, she never said I don’t want to. Only I can’t. And she’d been upset to learn that Djal had kissed Ev. But every time Ev tried to learn how Alizhan felt, Alizhan shut down the conversation. When Ev had asked if Alizhan was like Eliyan—uninterested in sex—instead of saying yes or no, she’d said it doesn’t matter. That was avoidance. Fear.
“Listen,” Ev said. “If you don’t want this, then say you don’t want it. I’ll still be here if that’s how it is. But if you’ve been telling me it’s impossible because you’re afraid, well… You didn’t hurt me just now. I know we weren’t skin-to-skin, but it’s still progress. And you’ve been on this ship with all these people this whole time, and you haven’t been sick. You’ve been practicing with Mala. You’re getting better. And I’m very patient.” Ev squeezed Alizhan’s shoulders. “Did you know I once waited ten years for a girl to tell me her name?”
Alizhan laughed—a teary, startled sound.
“It’s possible,” Ev insisted. “So stop thinking about what I want. Think about what you want.”
Alizhan hugged her knees tight and buried her face in them. “That sounds like it involves feelings.”
At that, Ev laughed. “Yes. Yes, it does.”
Ev tried to give Alizhan some space to think after their raw, revealing conversation. She didn’t want to pressure her. So Ev passed a lot of time aboard Vines in a troubled, solitary haze. Ev kept away from the crew—did they think of her as the captain’s niece, or as the traitor’s daughter?—and let Alizhan spend her time with Mala. Gad tried to cheer her up with stories or distract her with questions, but even he eventually ran out of things to say.
There was a commotion on the deck one triad, which Ev ignored, because if there was a problem, she’d only be in the way of people with more wisdom and experience than herself, and they’d ask her to leave. But then Gad dragged her out of her berth, and he insisted on going to get Alizhan, too. Mala allowed it, and the three of them went up to the deck and stood by the railing.
“Look,” Gad said, pointing down into the water.
A huge, translucent orb floated just underneath the surface, green as a lamp, with hundreds of finger-thin tentacles trailing after it like the train of a gown. A giant medusa. Ev felt her eyes go as wide and round as its bell.
How strange. It was so massive, so sinister, so threatening, and yet utterly silent. If none of the sailors had seen it, the creature might have passed beneath their ship unnoticed. Ev wondered how many other medusas had done exactly that.
“I wanted to go after it, but the captain said no,” Gad said. “She said you need special training and equipment to do it without dying, and no prize is worth dying for, anyway.”
The medusa was still drifting by, in no hurry to go anywhere. Did it know they were above it, in this ship? Was it waiting? She shivered.
Alizhan was standing curiously close to her. Her gaze wasn’t pointed toward the creature in the water, but on the distant horizon. And yet she seemed to be concentrating on something. Was she afraid? How could anyone come so close to the thing in the water beneath them and not feel afraid?
Gad was still talking. “The captain said if you sail long enough, if you stop in enough harbors, you meet sailors who tried. The ones who lived, anyway. If they still have all their limbs, they have black scars on their bodies, places where their skin just died. That’s how powerful the venom is. Sometimes it has funny effects on people’s minds, too. But it sells for so much money in Laalvur, and it’s all the rage in Nalitzva now. We could be rich…”
Ev had stopped listening. Alizhan’s gloved hand had slid into hers. Ev wanted to grip fiercely and never let go, but instead she stayed perfectly still and regulated her breathing. Alizhan’s fingers curled around hers, slowly, but with increasing sureness. By the end, Alizhan was holding her hand.
That answered Ev’s question about what Alizhan wanted.
Ev’s eyes were wet, but she wasn’t afraid. She looked back at the monster in the water. “I’m happy to let it go. I don’t ever want to get close to one of those.”
“That’s why I’m gonna be rich and you’re not,” Gad said. He grinned.
“Did you say something about black scars?” Ev asked.
Gad took off again, recounting the horrors of being touched by medusa venom: excruciating pain, black scars that never healed, stiffness in the affected limbs, and for some, a dullness of the senses. Ev looked at Alizhan, thinking of Kasrik, but Alizhan was now gazing directly into the water—into the dark emptiness where the monster had once been. Ev squeezed her hand.
“Anyway, before this thing showed up, that was what I wanted to show you.”
Gad pointed. Rising above the horizon, blurred with mist and painted in the dim cool sunlight of the Nightward shore, was the white stone edifice of Nalitzva.
Read on for an excerpt…
Nightvine, book two of The Gardener’s Hand and the sequel to Thornfruit, will come out in Spring 2018.
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Nightvine
Their cell was quiet, but Ev could hear the din of prisoners shouting, sobbing, and striking the walls of the other cells. That wasn’t the reason Ev wanted out—being in prison was enough of a reason for her—but she had no intention of quibbling with Alizhan. “If I lift you up, maybe we could get to that window. Do you think we could work those bars free?”
The window was too high for Ev to reach all by herself. It was also so small that it was hard to imagine even Alizhan squeezing through it, and the metal bars were solidly embedded in the wall, but Ev didn’t have a better idea.
“It’s rude to plan an escape and not invite me,” the other prisoner said, startling Ev.
He spoke Laalvuri. Smoke.
“It’s rude to eavesdrop,” Ev snapped.
She’d thought he was asleep or unconscious, and even if he’d been awake, he hadn’t seemed interested in either of them. But he must have been listening. He lifted his head from his prone position, then sat up. With one hand, he brushed off some of the straw and dirt clinging to his clothes. He somehow managed to make the action look graceful, even regal.
“What’s rude is you being so unbearably dull,” he informed Ev.
Ev started to stand, but Alizhan said, “Wait.”
“Ooh, the little one’s in charge,” said the prisoner. “I was picturing it all wrong.”
What had he been picturing? How could he make Ev so angry and uncomfortable with just his tone of voice? Ev wouldn’t have hit him
. She might have loomed over him in a silent, threatening way, though. She missed her stick fiercely.
“Don’t worry, Ev,” Alizhan said. She wasn’t even looking at Ev. Her eyes were still locked on the prisoner. It was fiery unsettling sometimes, having a conversation with Alizhan. She pulled things out of the silence with eerie accuracy. “He smells good.”
Alizhan crawled across the cell and sat down cross-legged in front of the prisoner.
He laughed, a single flat sound with no humor in it, and directed his gaze at Ev. “There is something tragically wrong with your friend’s nose.”
Ev might have laughed and explained it to him if he’d been a little nicer. As it was, she was mystified by what Alizhan saw—or smelled—in him.
“He’s sad. And hurt,” Alizhan continued, addressing Ev as if the man in front of her couldn’t hear her. “He’s trying to hide it.”
So he was hissing at Ev to distract her, like a wounded tomcat hiding in a dark corner of the barn? She would’ve had patience for the cat. Unfortunately for her cellmate, Ev’s sympathies didn’t extend to sharp-tongued strangers.
“He is not,” the prisoner said. “He is in perfect health and would make a useful accomplice for any escapes you might be planning. In fact, out of an astonishing generosity of spirit, he will mastermind said escape plans for you, since your previous attempts have been so lackluster.”
It was dim in the prison, but he didn’t look or sound Nalitzvan. Despite speaking flawless Laalvuri, he didn’t look like anyone Ev had ever met in Laalvur. His skin was a golden shade of tan, lighter in color than Ev’s or Alizhan’s, but not the milky shade of most Nalitzvans, either. He was wearing the same loose beige tunic and trousers as all the other prisoners, so his clothes gave no clue as to where he was from. He sat with his legs crossed. And since Alizhan had mentioned it, Ev noticed he was cradling his right hand in his lap. His black curls were matted with dust. A sparse scattering of stubble dotted his cheeks.
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