Thief's Cunning

by Sarah Ahiers

  “He carried me into the lake,” I mumbled in explanation.

  Nev and Bedna both turned to stare at me.

  “She understands Mornian?” Bedna asked quietly.

  “No.” Nev shook his head. “Very little.”

  They spoke in riddles and mysteries, twisting and turning me around until I couldn’t find myself anywhere.

  “How soon after she sang Culda’s song did she fall ill?” Bedna asked.

  Metta stepped beside him. She pressed a dry shirt into his hands and he pulled it over his head. “She complained of being tired right after the song.”

  I coughed, deep in my chest.

  “She woke feeling worse,” Nev said. “I let her sleep until afternoon, when I made her eat something.”

  “Soup,” I supplied.

  They stared at me even closer then. Nev’s eyes were wide with concern.

  “She’s understanding more than just a little Mornian,” Metta said quietly.

  I pushed myself up on my elbows at that. “Are you speaking Mornian?” I asked.

  They glanced between each other, but their non-answer was an answer of its own.

  I coughed some more, the sharp pain in my lungs contrasting with the fear snaking through my chest. “What’s wrong with me?” I asked. “What’s happening?”

  “Lie down.” Bedna pushed me onto the bed. She pulled another blanket over me and I couldn’t deny that the extra warmth was something I craved.

  “Also.” Nev spoke slowly. “This is not the first time she’s been ill . . .”

  “When?” Bedna asked him.

  He looked at me, apologies in his eyes. “In the dead plains. She tried to go home. But the farther she traveled from Mornia, the sicker she got. When we turned back, she recovered. We thought—well, we didn’t know what it meant but we suspected it had something to do with the gods. She had displeased Culda, maybe, so she couldn’t travel.”

  Bedna made a thoughtful noise in her throat and disappeared into the kitchen.

  “You were leaving with her?” Metta exclaimed.

  Nev faced her. “Yes. I was.”

  “This is not the time for squabbles,” Bedna snapped.

  I turned on my side, watching them. But they fell silent. Finally, Bedna disappeared around a corner.

  Metta stepped closer to Nev and they began to whisper to each other so Bedna couldn’t hear them.

  “How could you do that? To me? To our status?”

  “All you care about is your status!” Nev whispered harshly. “You don’t care about me. You have Isha. You will have the child. You will have your status back and what of me? You’ll continue to send me away, to travel forever with the tiger, gaining wealth to help our status even more?”

  “You like to travel!” she shot back.

  “I was alone, Metta! I was alone until Allegra. She is the best thing that ever happened to me, and we are the worst that ever happened to her. Look at her! She is like this because of us. But no, all you care about is your status.”

  Nev was out of breath. I’d never heard him speak that way to Metta before. To anyone, really.

  “I care about more than just our status,” Metta finally said. “It is because I care about you, and Isha, and the child that I try so hard to raise our status. To make a better life for all of us. I don’t want Allegra to die.”

  “Only because if she does, you’re worried you won’t be able to hold the singura.”

  “No,” she snapped. “That is not why I don’t want her to die, Nev. I see she makes you happy. I see she is strong, that she is not afraid.”

  They glanced at me then, and Metta sighed, then walked away.

  Nev pulled a chair beside my bed and sat beside me.

  “Tell me what’s going on.” I kept my voice quiet, mostly to prevent more coughing.

  Nev shook his head. “I do not know.” I would have accused him of lying to me, but I could read the fear in his eyes.

  I couldn’t speak Mornian, past the few words and phrases I’d learned from Les. But if Nev and the others had really been speaking Mornian right now, then something had changed, because I had understood each word. Hadn’t even realized they were speaking Mornian.

  Bedna returned, a steaming cup in her hands. “Drink this, Allegra.”

  I struggled up onto my elbow and took the cup. The warm steam poured over my face. “What is it?”

  “It is a tea,” she said. “It will help lower your fever.” She placed her fingers on the bottom of the cup and tipped it to my lips, until I had to drink or risk the tea spilling over me and the bed.

  It tasted terrible, like she had soaked sticks in hot water and added some bitter leaves for fun. I tried to stop, but Bedna shook her head and kept tipping the cup.

  “Drink all of it. Then take another nap. We will be here when you wake.”

  I finished the tea and she took the cup from me. “I don’t want to sleep,” I said. “I’ve been asleep too long. And there are monsters in the mist.”

  But even as I spoke, I realized how wrong I was. My eyes were heavy, and my head bobbed. I did want to sleep.

  I slipped down onto the bed and closed my eyes. Nev brushed my still damp hair away from my face, and then I was asleep once more.

  thirty-five

  MY DREAM RETURNED. I’D BEEN SURROUNDED BY SHADOWS for days now, but they had been false, hallucinations brought on by my fever, my illness.

  Now, standing before the gray mist again, seeing the shadows dart behind it, merge and separate before me, I wondered how I could have ever mistaken Nev and Metta and Isha for the shadows that towered over me, here in my dream.

  “Allegra . . .” they called, their familiar voices returning the dread to my bones.

  The mists twisted and spun, the maelstrom returning.

  My hair whipped around my face. I pushed it from my eyes.

  “What do you want?” I yelled into the maelstrom as it rose above me.

  “What belongs to Us,” the voices said.

  I stepped back. It was the first time they had spoken to me, other than to call my name.

  “What belongs to you?” I yelled into the wind. But I was too late. The maelstrom crashed down and I woke with a gasp.

  Nev sat across from me in the chair and he leaned forward, worry on his face.

  “Nightmare,” I croaked, struggling to a sitting position. I felt . . . not cured. Not well, but better than I had before I’d drunk the tea. Lucid and clearheaded.

  I turned, sliding my feet off the edge of the bed.

  Nev pushed his hands forward, trying to hold me in place. “Allegra.”

  “I need to use the bathroom,” I said, and he lowered his hands.

  Isha appeared from somewhere and stood beside Nev. “I will bring you.”

  She grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet. I wobbled, unsteady.

  She walked me out of the house and around back, to Bedna’s bathroom. The hot sun warmed my skin and I closed my eyes, savoring it.

  Isha paused at the door. “Do you need help?”

  I shook my head and freed my arm. It was slow going but I managed to make it to the toilet without falling down.

  “I’m surprised you volunteered to help me,” I said to her past the curtain door. I emptied my bladder, then used the wall to pull myself back to my feet and hobble to the door. I pushed the curtain aside. “Aren’t you worried I’ll kill you?”

  Isha pursed her lips and didn’t respond, only taking my arm and helping to lead me back to the front door.

  “I’m joking,” I said to her.

  “You are too weak to kill anyone right now,” she finally said. And I caught the twitch of her lips as she tried to hold back a smile.

  I snorted. “I wouldn’t bet on it.”

  Back in the house I sat on the bed with a groan. Bedna stepped from around the corner with another cup of tea.

  “No,” I said. “No more tea. No more sleeping.”

  “This is ahlo kheel.”
r />   She passed the cup to me, and I looked down to see the thick, green liquid staring back up at me.

  “It will help your strength to return.” She pulled another chair over and sat beside Nev, next to my bed.

  I sipped the oil. It had a fragrant herb flavor that left a fresh taste in my mouth.

  “Are you speaking Mornian right now?” I asked her.

  She glanced at Nev. “No.”

  “But you were earlier. And I could understand you?”

  “Yes.” She sighed.

  “What’s going on? I need answers.”

  “You have been sick,” Bedna started. I passed the cup the Nev and scooted closer to her.

  “I know. But you think it was something different. Not just a normal illness. Why?”

  “Because you are still ill. Because you are improving, here, but you are not free of it. And because . . .” She paused.

  “And because I could understand you when you spoke Mornian.”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “And because it happened before. I believe it is a spiritual sickness. When you tried to leave, you pulled away from the Three and closer to your god in the west. So you fell ill.”

  “Spiritual sickness,” I stated. She wasn’t even speaking Mornian and I was having trouble understanding her. “The gods are making me sick,” I said. “Why?”

  “I do not speak for the Three.”

  “You’re a samar,” I said. “If not you, then who?”

  Bedna exhaled through her nose, and then nodded. “It was a mistake for you to take up the singura.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “Yes, but it was a mistake for you to take it up. You are already a samar for your own god,” she said. “To take up the singura, to sing the ghosts away, it is a pledge, to be a samar for the Three. But you are not. You have not given up your own god.”

  “No.” I shook my head vehemently. “I am a disciple of Safraella. I am Her mortal hands in this world. I do Her dark work.”

  “Yes.” Bedna nodded. “And that is why you are sick. Because the gods, your god, the Three, are jealous gods. They do not share.”

  “They do not want to share,” I said, “but they won’t let me give the singura to someone else. I am trapped. I either serve the Three or I die. How can I escape from that?”

  Bedna didn’t respond. She had no answer.

  There was no way out for me.

  “And what if nothing changes?” I said. “I cannot give the singura away, but what if I keep it, and still serve Safraella?”

  “The illness will consume you,” she said.

  “I’ll die?”

  She shrugged. “It is only a suspicion.”

  “But I wore the singura for days before coming here. I was never ill in Lovero.” Never had the nightmares.

  “I believe it is because your god shielded you. She is the patron of Lovero. You are Her samar. She protected you.”

  “Until I left. Until I arrived here.”

  “Yes.”

  I closed my eyes. Gods. My life had become a battle between gods.

  How had I even gotten here? I wasn’t anyone special. I wasn’t Lea, the chosen of Safraella. I was just a girl who had received a necklace from her uncle for her birthday. And now my life had become this: choose to serve different gods, or die.

  But Safraella was a god of death and murder. Even if I chose to set Her aside, which everything in my being rebelled against, there was no saying She would not find a way to kill me, the way She had when the Da Vias had turned to another god. At the very least, if I stood before Her at the end of my life, would I be confident She would provide me a new, better life?

  Nev called my name, softly, and I opened my eyes again. “You should have never brought me here,” I said to him.

  He inhaled sharply.

  “Do not blame the boy,” Bedna said. “Bringing you here is not what set these trials into motion. The pieces were in place long before either of you were born. Bringing you here was a kindness he did for you. At least now you know what you face.”

  “My death.”

  Bedna scowled. “Would it be so bad, to turn to the Three to save your life?”

  “Would you?” I asked her. “You, who are Their disciple. Would you give Them up, turn to another god just to save your life?”

  She clasped the singura at her neck. She didn’t answer, but I read the truth in her eyes before she turned away from me.

  “It would be a hollow faith,” I said.

  I leaned my back against the wall of her house, pulling my legs up on the bed. I would not be controlled in this. I was done. I was done letting people, or gods, make decisions in my life. They would not force me to change gods outside of my will. If I died, then I died. But at least I died because of a choice I made. I would not be caged.

  “Allegra,” Nev said.

  I shook my head. “No,” I said. “No.”

  I lay down on the bed, facing the wall, my back to all of them.

  And because I was still ill, it didn’t take me long to fall asleep.

  I woke in the night, the house quiet and empty except for Nev. He crawled into bed with me, and I pressed myself against him, his arms wrapped around me.

  “We fit together,” I said, remembering what he’d said in the night, before I fell too ill.

  I felt him smile against my neck. “Yes. I think so, too.”

  It was unfair to blame him for bringing me here. It wasn’t his fault any more than it was Les’s fault for giving me the necklace, unaware what it meant, what would happen. We were all just trying to do the best we could with the knowledge we’d had at the time.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “For what I said before. I don’t blame you.”

  “I know,” he said. And that was it.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked

  “Metta and Isha are resting. The baby will be born soon. Another ten days or so. Bedna is out. She will meet with the samars. Ask them to search for a solution.”

  A solution. There was nothing they could do. They had no real influence over the gods, no more than I did over Safraella, anyway. The only one who had ever claimed anything like that was Lea, and she wasn’t here.

  “What about your tiger?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you be taking care of him?”

  “I am taking care of you.” He kissed my head.

  “I’m serious,” I said. “He’s stuck in that pit. You’re responsible for him.”

  Nev chuckled, and irritation wormed its way through my chest. “He is fine.”

  I couldn’t stop thinking about the tiger, though. Maybe he dreamed of something different. Of the jungle, hunting his own meat, finding his own home. Or maybe he’d been caged so long that he couldn’t even dream of his freedom, of the home and life he’d lost. Maybe his chest ached, empty for something he’d never even had.

  “Please go take care of him,” I said, my voice cracking. “Please.”

  Nev looked at me in confusion, but finally nodded. He climbed off the bed. “I will be back soon.”

  He slipped through the door and was gone, and I tried to ignore the disquieting churn of my stomach. Dread surrounded me. Like the maelstrom in my dream made reality.

  Bedna pushed her way into the house and saw me, staring into space on the bed.

  “You are deep in thought,” she said. She poured me a glass of oil, then sat across from me.

  “I have much to think about,” I said. “Nev shouldn’t have told you that he tried to help me escape.”

  “He was trying to help you now, as he was trying to help you then.”

  I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly. “Dumb,” I said. “He’s so dumb.”

  “He is young. And in love. Men are never smart when it comes to matters of the heart.”

  In love.

  I had hurt Nev. I had turned his life upside down. And yes, it wasn’t my choice to come here, but still. “I have done nothing to engender such devotion from him. He has no reason to love me the w
ay he does.”

  Bedna smiled a small, knowing smile. “That is not always the way of things.”

  We fell into a thoughtful silence. I wondered if there had been a man in Bedna’s life, at one time, who did stupid things because he loved her too much for his own good. And I wondered if I would do the same for Nev, if our situations had been reversed. Did I love him enough to risk my own life for his?

  I didn’t know. My feelings for him were complicated. They were so wrapped up in all the things that had happened to me. I suspected it would take me a long time to unravel them all. And I would take the time to do so, but a long time was not something I had left anymore.

  A thought came over me, and I focused on Bedna. “Did you know my uncle?”

  She looked at me, eyebrow raised.

  “He was born here. Lived here as a child. Alessio.”

  Bedna nodded. “Yes. I remember him. I did not know him, but I did know his mother.”

  “The mother who brought him to Yvain to be rid of him, you mean.”

  Bedna pursed her lips. “Helna was a . . . troubled woman. She was a samar, but she did not feel close to Meska or her mercy. She never wanted a child, never wanted to be a mother. And then she fell pregnant on a travel. She was ashamed. Not from her family, or anyone else, but she shamed herself. And then when the child was born a boy, she was more shamed. She resented him. Her mother and father tried to reason with her, but she would not listen. She wanted to find the child’s father and give him to the father to raise. So she and her own father traveled to Yvain. But she did not return. Her father left the boy there because it was her wish, and she was a samar and a mother and his daughter, who he loved. He did not realize the boy had taken the singura until it was too late.”

  “He left my uncle on the streets of Yvain, for the ghosts to take.”

  Bedna exhaled slowly. “I did not know this. It was a wrong thing, what was done to your uncle. Plenty of people would have taken the child. But she was too shamed. She did not want to see him anymore.” She paused here. “I am not glad he took the singura and kept it from us so long, but I am happy to know he found a good life.”

  It was an apology of sorts. Not that I was the one who needed it. But it was still nice to have, anyway.