by Sara Raasch
One of the Seniors, a man with a blotchy face, huffed. “We have stolen nothing from criminals.”
“The Mainland trade. You take syndicate money with every boat of magic you sell.”
“A Council-run trade assures that any funds from botanical magic benefit the people of Grace Loray, not just the individual syndicates,” countered the other Senior—a woman, who looked calmer than the blotchy man. “The magic trade should have been legal and government controlled from the beginning of Grace Loray’s founding. We have done nothing but restructure this island into a functioning—”
“Functioning. Sure. You call lettin’ the syndicates fester into poverty functioning? Whaddya expect us to do now that the Council controls the trade with the Mainland? Least you can give me is rightful say over Devereux Bell. He’s a raider, and he’s mine to deal with, Andreu.”
Wait. Andreu, as in Kari Andreu? The infamous Kari the Wave, who’d come up with the guerrilla-style attacks that had chipped away at Argrid’s more formal-style military during the revolution? Kari the Wave, who had personally planned more than a dozen of the rebels’ moves against Argrid—taking storehouses, sinking ships, freeing people in missions—and hadn’t lost any of the attacks she’d led? That Andreu?
This could be fun.
“Go screw a smokestack, Silkcyst,” Vex cut in.
Unlike Lazlo, Pilkvist didn’t blubber—he backhanded Vex across the face. Ow.
“Head Pilkvist!” said Andreu. “You will not bring violence into our—”
“This urchin,” Pilkvist cut her off, and when Vex righted himself, a fist met him in the gut, “is an insult to every syndicate. He is a pest who must be eradicated”—Vex recovered from the second blow and Pilkvist readied for a third—“and he is mine to eradicate!”
Andreu appeared beside Pilkvist and grabbed his arm, her face red, her cream-colored skirt slapping Vex’s boots. Behind her, soldiers moved in, weapons drawn. Pilkvist’s raiders lurched forward a beat, and the crocodile around the one’s neck clacked its jaw.
Vex tasted blood. He had to focus on the pain to keep from smiling—it’d been way too easy to turn the room upside down.
“This is how you allow trials to operate?” came a voice from the front row of pews.
Vex sought it out—a councilmember with slick black hair and a glossy overcoat. One of the Argridian diplomats.
A completely unwelcome gush of terror made Vex croak.
Andreu released Pilkvist. “I move we reconvene in one week,” she said to the other Seniors, “to allow time for deliberation.”
Relief spiraled through Vex. A week was better than nothing.
He looked over the crowd, found the girl again, and winked at her.
One of Pilkvist’s raiders pulled out a pistol and clocked him on the base of his skull.
Devereux dropped to the tiles, his manacled hands keeping his body dangling from the post.
Head Pilkvist gave a tight bow. “A pleasure doing business with you, Kari the Wave.”
Kari’s nostrils flared as though she wanted to say more, but she held back. The raiders left, trailed by the soft hissing of the small crocodile.
Milo stood. “You allowed raiders to treat you with disrespect—and ones from the Mecht syndicate at that? They are barbarians! Have you any control over your country?”
The courtroom drew a breath, and Lu thought that, if they could, everyone present would burrow into the tiled floor.
Kari whirled on him. “You will not pretend to understand the operation of this island.”
It was a rebuff, that Argrid had misunderstood their colony when they had controlled it.
Milo waved his hands. “We have accepted that Grace Loray holds to different standards of purity than we do, but surely your government has a registry of immigrants? Use that to begin restraining those who may have joined a syndicate and ensure that they cannot do harm to this government—or ours by extension, once we finalize this peace treaty. If you—”
Milo stopped, turning his head as he surveyed the slack-jawed Council.
“Oh,” he breathed. “You don’t have a registry?”
“It would be better to invite the raider Heads to a discussion and foster peace with them,” Kari said, but Milo didn’t acknowledge her.
“An addendum to our treaty.” He waved Lazlo to write and Lazlo, dumbstruck, grabbed his pen. “Argrid demands Grace Loray eradicate stream raiders and the threat they pose to both our countries, first by condemning this Devereux Bell outlaw to death.”
“Eradicate the stream raiders?” Kari echoed, nausea visible on her face. “They are citizens of Grace Loray. They are numerous and well armed, and as Pilkvist mentioned, they already resent the Council for restructuring Mainland trade. What you are suggesting will lead to civil war.”
“And what you have tolerated is mutiny. Without definitive action to prove that Grace Loray values order over crime, Argrid cannot, in good conscience, link itself to this island via a treaty.”
That speared Lu in the chest.
Lazlo called for a discussion on Bell’s sentence and Milo’s proposition. Councilmembers shouted objections; others cried agreement. Milo didn’t move from where he stood in front of the Seniors, as though each opinion needed to go through his ears first.
Dread crept over Lu, darkening her vision, but she sucked in a breath and shook her head to clear it. Argrid had sought to cleanse the island and now demanded that Grace Loray continue their work.
It didn’t matter what Milo wanted, or how they had gotten here. Lu might not have agreed with the syndicates, but they surely did not deserve to be eradicated. The Council would negotiate a better resolution, and the Argridians would leave. There would be no need for rash action or—forbid it—civil war with the raiders.
Lu was a lady now, a politician like her parents, fighting with her words and diplomacy. She would never again have to fight for Grace Loray in any other way.
5
THE VIEW FROM Elazar’s office had been breathtaking once. The cathedrals had stood tall, beacons for the lost, and the Inquisitors’ university headquarters had gleamed. Shops had boasted lavish imports from neighboring countries: pungent spices from western Tuncay; polished gems and intricate weaponry from Grozda; extravagant leather wardrobes brought across the northern valleys from Emerdon; furs and wooden baubles from the distant, war-torn Mechtlands. Citizens had looked up at the palace, hands lifted in thanks to the Pious God for blessing Argrid with a holy king who had brought them prosperity.
Their fields and forests offered exports of cash crops and lumber. Their coast gave them abundant hauls of sea life and easy access to trade. Ben had been a child, but he had soaked up these lessons from proud monxes, excited to be part of such a prosperous, anointed country.
But Argrid’s military had never required many of their funds before—so when it became clear that the threat of burnings was not enough to keep the Grace Lorayan colonists in line, Elazar had been forced to reallocate the funds from Argrid’s exports. Buildings crumbled into disrepair; shops were boarded up; hunger and poverty struck the outlying villages and flooded Deza’s poorer districts. Twists of smoke rose where infected belongings had been burned to prevent the spread of disease.
As Ben stood at the window the afternoon following his Inquisitor patrol, he watched passing citizens lift cupped hands in reverence to the holy Eminence King who guided them through this struggle.
His breath streaked across the glass. Sometimes he envied Grace Loray’s democracy. Better to have a country of people who participated in their ruling rather than people who took everything from their king as truth.
Such unwavering belief, however, was the reason Argrid had never needed a strong military before the revolution. The threat of hell was enough to thwart any dissent.
The door to Elazar’s office opened and shut. Ben’s awareness piqued, but he didn’t turn.
A chair slid out. “You disappoint me, Benat.”
Ben
faced his father. Elazar sat at a desk with bookshelves behind him displaying Church tomes and statues of the Graces. Grace Aracely, for the Pious God’s pillar of penance; Grace Loray, for the pillar of purity and the evangelist who centuries ago began the mission to purify what became his namesake island; and more.
The oddments gave Elazar consequence, even when he wore a silk shirt, cravat, and breeches instead of his ceremonial robes. Though Ben couldn’t remember his father ever being anything less than imposing. His black hair had just given way to gray, and his smooth brown skin merely looked more lived-in than Ben’s finer features. Years of bearing the title name of Elazar, of balancing the politics of kingship with the religious guidance of Eminence, fending off evil and uprisings—none of that had worn on Ben’s father. Everything he’d done, he’d done at the bidding of the Pious God. There was no better reason.
No safer excuse.
“How so?” Ben put the desk between them, hands behind his back.
Poor Prince Benat, people would say once they heard that his father had, yet again, summoned him to berate him. And after an Inquisitor patrol, no less.
Elazar lifted a dark eyebrow. “You showed up at your patrol hungover. You allowed the condemned to speak, which is the reason they felt free to attack you. Things could have ended in disaster had your defensors not been able to restrain the raider.”
“With all due respect, that wasn’t—”
“And shortly after you stumbled back last night in a fog, the ambassadors from the Mechtlands left.” Elazar rose, knuckles on the tabletop. Ben’s father hadn’t beaten him in years, yet Ben fought an instinctive recoil. “I needed you here, helping me convince the ambassadors to give Argrid the loan that will repair our military from the Grace Loray disaster. The world is changing. It is not enough to sway people’s souls with truth; missionaries are only as successful as the armies behind them. You abandoned your country for your own desires.”
“I was there for the emissaries of the Emerdian queen,” Ben returned. “And the representatives from Grozda, and the empress’s viceroys from Tuncay. I was there when they scoffed behind our backs that Argrid was broken and unable to hold on to our assets. How would it have been different with the Mechts? Clan wars deplete their own country’s assets—I couldn’t watch them sneer at us all the same.”
Elazar lifted a hand, silencing him, and Ben flinched. Elazar didn’t react.
“I’ve allowed your . . . lapses because I hoped you would find the Pious God’s path and become a beacon of healing to our people on your own,” Elazar said. “But I was wrong to assume you would not need the same guidance as others to reach a state of purity. I am sorry. I have failed you as your Eminence.”
“Fantastic. I suppose I should— Wait. What?”
Ben had had this meeting with Elazar at least a half dozen times. Elazar reprimanded him, Ben argued, and Elazar would sentence him to Inquisitor patrols or a month in a monastery. Their people rejoiced as Ben served out his sentences. Their prince making reparations encouraged them to atone for their own sins.
Elazar’s apology stopped Ben cold.
“Much of your rebellion stems from a lack of responsibility,” Elazar said. “It is time I pass on to you some of the duty you will one day hold in my place. Despite their barbaric tendencies, the Mechts have agreed to assist us. With that aid, I give you the task of developing a cure for the diseases plaguing Argrid.”
Ben’s anxiety turned to outright dread. “The diseases? All of them?”
“Yes. Influenza. Boils. But particularly Shaking Sickness.”
Shaking Sickness. A disease with no known cause or cure, one that pulled people apart from the inside.
See? the devout said. Evil will rip you apart.
“The contingent in Grace Loray is close to finalizing the peace treaty.” Elazar’s voice was guarded. “The Grace Lorayan uprising came because they wanted independence. They have independence now—but still, we fear for them. They cling to the Devil’s ways. We have the chance to approach them with cleansing again, in a new way:
“I want you to develop a healing potion with Grace Loray’s botanical magic.”
Ben gawked. Memories raced through his mind, of his uncle teaching him about Grace Loray’s wonders, of him and Paxben reciting the names of plants that were evil.
The rebels on Grace Loray had revolted due to evil magic tainting their minds and souls. So Elazar said, and so Ben had believed, until all magic became evil and Elazar had overseen the burning of his brother and nephew without hesitation.
Then Ben felt the smallest seed of understanding for the Grace Loray rebels. For their freedom. For their staunch connection to magic when his own world became so restrained.
Had Elazar truly just said he wanted Ben to use magic? Was this a dream?
“How,” Ben started, his mouth tasting of ash, “will using their evil cleanse them of that evil? And why me? Why would I be able to do anything?”
Elazar’s eyes narrowed. “You question the task that the Pious God has outlined for you?”
Ben’s breath caught, his body tensing as it had during so many lessons after Rodrigu had burned and the Inquisitors had been stripped of any real power. “Everyone must understand the importance of the Pious God’s pillars, especially the pillar of purity,” Elazar had told the monxes who tutored Ben in his father’s stead. “Treat him as any other pupil. Show no restraint. He must learn what is right.”
“No,” Ben stammered. “I do not question you. I—I just—”
A smile carved through Elazar’s disdain. “As Eminence, you will face many things that teeter between sin and salvation. Questioning your tasks is wise, but know your limits, Benat.”
Ben’s heart skittered.
“Before the war with Grace Loray escalated,” Elazar continued, “the Church allowed healing magic. You studied it once, and as my ordained heir you are protected from its temptations. Use the University to develop a cure for the diseases plaguing our country.”
Elazar came out from behind his desk. Ben stood his ground, thinking over everything he’d done or said—but nothing was worthy of a beating.
“If you can cure the Pious God’s curse with the thing Argrid fears,” Elazar said, “you will show Grace Loray that the Pious God accepts their magic. The world will see that we are capable of adapting. I will ease the transition in the Church and government, but you will win our people by alleviating their ills. I admitted that I failed you, and I admit now that—”
“Father.” Ben cut him off. He couldn’t hear more. Elazar had said too many impossible things already.
Every year, on the holiday honoring the Pious God’s pillar of chastity, people made pilgrimages to cemeteries. The day celebrated abstaining from impurities, living without—but it had also become a day to remember those the Pious God had removed from the earth.
Elazar and Ben would trek to the royal cemetery, where Ben’s mother was entombed alongside dozens of Gallegos in sealed stone coffins. In the stillness of the crypt, Elazar would choke back tears as he told of how Ben’s mother had died in childbirth with Ben’s younger sister. How Elazar’s parents had died before that, from a plague; and how Elazar’s two older brothers had died as teenagers, passing the burdens of the title-name Elazar to Ben’s father and Rodrigu to Paxben’s father.
“Ours is a family of tragedy,” Elazar would say. “The Pious God ordained us in blood.”
Ben had always believed his family were servants to a higher calling—until he’d watched Rodrigu and Paxben burn. For all his power, Elazar hadn’t saved his brother and nephew. Hadn’t, not couldn’t, a distinction that Ben had begun to see more and more: The Church hadn’t given any of the people they burned on Grace Loray a chance. They hadn’t explained why magic was suddenly considered the Devil’s work. They hadn’t tried to save the Inquisitors when the public demanded their power be stripped.
Ben had been faking prayers since he’d watched his uncle and cousin burn. He sinned obv
iously so those who looked for weakness didn’t have to look too hard. He knew exactly where the line was between irredeemable and forgiven, and he’d spent so long living within these boundaries that he’d forgotten how confined he was by the Church’s dogma.
But here his father stood, telling Ben his country needed him to work with magic again.
A childlike part of Ben cried out before he could reason through it.
“All right,” Ben said. “I’ll do it, Father.”
By the time Ben got to the University, it was late afternoon. A half dozen defensors accompanied him, including Jakes, who carried the chest from the raider ship—once contraband, now supplies.
They left the carriage and horses in the stables outside the University complex. Ben was barely aware of their progress, unable to take his eyes off the chest.
The initial high of being commanded to work with magic again had worn off as soon as Ben had left his father’s study. Ben had to be drunk, or passed out in a tavern, dreaming of things that could not happen. Had Elazar truly changed his stance on magic? Argrid desperately needed assistance—looking at the city confirmed that no amount of praying helped.
Maybe Elazar had changed. Maybe the treaty with Grace Loray would bring acceptance.
Thinking it felt impossible.
Ben trailed two of the defensors through the gates that opened into the University complex, the pale bricks of the perimeter wall worn from centuries of standing. His eyes tore from the chest to latch onto the sign arching over the entrance. Protesters had scratched through it years ago, but Ben could see the words as though they were etched in his skin.
Universidade Rodrigu.
Rodrigu, a family name given to the second son of the king, as the name Elazar was given to the first son. The first son was destined to be the king and head of the Church; the second, when there was one, became the keeper of knowledge and the High Inquisitor.