Even in the gloom the tracker’s violet irises flashed from across the chamber. His arms had moved with a careless sway, yet upon noticing Anna and stumbling past a painted girl, he grew still.
Nacek gulped down his wine. “Bring her here.”
The pipes and broken singing and cracks of trampled foliage gave way to Konrad’s boots on tile. “Come along, panna.”
Konrad approached the orza and Dogwood men followed in turn, spurring Anna on with a guiding hand upon her shoulder.
Shem watched the gesture with bold eyes and hardened fists.
Anna squeezed his hand. Don’t do it, Shem. Not now.
“Took you some time,” Teodor said to Konrad. “Now we know you’re clear of hound’s blood. Can’t track a single girl.”
“Where was she?” Nacek asked.
“With the foundlings,” Konrad replied, stepping before the orza and bowing to both women. “How goes the evening?”
The orza met Anna’s eyes, but spoke to the others. “Tiring, I’m afraid.”
Teodor gave a deep, grating laugh, then set his goblet on the stonework surrounding the orza’s throne. “We’ve had enough mirth here to last us ten fucking lifetimes, and yet our prized guest was nowhere to be found. It bruises the heart.” Teodor stumbled to the orza’s side, bent over, pressed his lips to the orza’s hand, and kissed so forcefully that her fingers clenched the armrest. “Did you know where she was?”
“No,” the orza said. “She was in safe hands, surely.”
“You can ask Jalwar,” Anna said, pulling up short of Konrad’s side. She stared at Teodor, then at the tracker, who had neither spoken nor wandered closer. “It was just a visit.”
“Just a visit?” Teodor asked. “Disappeared on your guards.”
“We told them,” Anna shot back. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Then how will you have fun, dear?” Josip said, giggling beside a column and seizing a dancing girl by the wrist. His hungry eyes were upon Anna, and failed to recognize the terror beside him.
The orza cast her gaze to the floor. “Do you hear it, then? All is well. Perhaps we should call on Them to prepare your quarters.”
Almost in unison Josip let out a cry of protest and Teodor grunted, pointing to the dim shafts of light spilling through gaps in the ceiling. “Where’s the night, then?” the latter growled. “We’re hardly out of our beds, and I still have the sleep in my eyes. We’re staying here till we’re done.”
Anna watched Teodor take another swig and felt the same repulsion as in her old home, where riders spat their chewed pulp on her father’s floor. Their lapses in common decency were maddening. Especially from the tracker, who refused to even acknowledge Anna beyond timid glances from the shadows. While she hadn’t expected him to cast his words behind her, she was enraged by his shyness, by his shuffling between the trees like a spooked deer. His burlap mask made him pitiful and strange, as though playing the part of the orza’s commissioned fool. “There are other places for you to gather,” Anna said, still glaring at the tracker.
“Oh, aye,” Teodor growled. “Other places for you to gather, too. Instead you slipped away. Weird way of it.”
Anna edged past Konrad and onto the orza’s stone circle, unwilling to bury her scowl. She leveled a finger, peeling and bloodied and pink, at Teodor. “We told them where we were going. I wasn’t hiding from anybody.”
“It was miscommunication, perhaps,” Konrad said softly.
“Curious,” Nacek said at Teodor’s back. “You oversee the missives between your units, Konrad?”
Konrad cleared his throat. “Yes, but I can’t ensure that every man reports properly.”
Anna shot the captain a pointed look, certain that his attendant in the market’s post had used a pocket mirror to flash movement reports up the central column.
“Aye, aye,” Teodor said, kicking over his goblet and shattering Anna’s recollection. “Fuck your reports, Konrad. Our goddess doesn’t want to be found.”
Josip wandered closer to the spectacle, still dragging the young dancing girl with a white-knuckled grip. “There must have been something delightful in the foundling halls.”
“I was just helping Jalwar,” Anna said, stunned that she’d even have to defend her kindness to men without a conscience. Patvor’s four-cycle crusade had swallowed entire districts and brought ruin to countless men, regardless of whether or not it was justified, yet they feared an afternoon in the service of broken children. They condemned the joy she’d brought to foundlings, who had likely lost their kin in similarly justified circumstances. “They don’t have enough aid, you know.”
“More than they deserve,” Teodor said. “One of the first things our saltmasters struck off the ledgers. How much could those slugs possibly feed back to the kales?”
Nacek groaned. “Twelve fields of salt per cycle.”
“I don’t mean salt,” Anna shot back. “Hands and medicine. You can’t buy everything.”
“So what can you give them, girl?” Nacek said, his eyes sharp and dark, his teeth wine-stained. “They haven’t even seen stirrings of Rzolka in their dreams. Leave them in their swaddling.”
“She gave the helping,” Shem said, skirting past the Dogwood men to stand at Anna’s side. “What is wrong?”
“This was one of them, no?” Nacek asked, his face was composed as he looked over Shem. “Strange little beasts.”
“Nothing about the cause says we can’t help people,” Anna said.
“Common sense,” Teodor cut in. “Us or them. Doesn’t look one hair good when you run off after their spawn, try to go where we can’t see.” His hat’s brim threw long, distorted shadows across his face. “Tell us how it looks, girl. Tell us that you care.”
“I do care,” insisted Anna. “I’ve done my part.”
“And then some,” the orza said, paying no mind to the wicker-hatted man looming nearby. “Perhaps this should be discussed tomorrow.”
“Speak your mind on it, Dalma,” Teodor said. “Do you think she ought to be marking their babes? Jalwar’s runts?”
“I didn’t mark any of them,” Anna hissed. She glanced toward the tracker for support, however ridiculous the plea seemed, but found only violet wisps in his eyes. “I wouldn’t.”
“It’s so difficult to be sure these days,” Josip said in a singsong tone. “I am most curious as to why our portrait of beauty has left us without informing us of her path, or her intentions. Most curious.”
“We see it,” Shem said, cocking his head to the side. “We see foundling hall, and we visit. Good thing.”
“That’s what we want to fucking hear,” Teodor said. “You make flash-crack choices, girl. We’re trying to win a war, and you’re lured by whatever shiny-and-brights you see. Do you want to see Rzolka come back?”
Anna unclenched her jaw, tasting stirrings of blood. “Of course.”
“Settled, then.” Teodor’s face dissolved into its drunken mask once more, the rage and earnestness and mistrust evaporated. “We just need more order.”
“You can trust me,” Anna said, sensing the end of worthwhile hours and redemption in the drunkard’s words. She considered that their cause was the proper path, no matter what sacrifices it demanded, and that she’d feel purified when her fingertips brushed Rzolka’s field-stalks once more. But there was no way to soften the chaos. There was no purity in drowning healing for hatred. “I won’t mark them, you know, any of them.”
“Words are so fickle,” Nacek whispered.
“I could look after her,” Konrad said, filling the gap left by Nacek’s words as they trailed into a hiss. He glanced at Anna, and for a moment his warmth and soft words reminded her that she wasn’t alone. His newfound innocence held the glowering of wicked men at bay. “I could personally ensure her safety, and report back whenever you need it. Doesn’t that sou
nd reasonable?”
Teodor, for all his boldness, seemed unsure of what to say. He glanced drunkenly to Nacek, then to Josip, and finally to the tracker, though his gaze was too fogged to convey any meaning. “Huh. A keeper.”
The orza straightened in her throne and stiffened her lips. “He’s a good man, and a good soldier.”
“Needs more rules,” Teodor said, chewing at his. “For her safety, of course. No more trips to that hall. Too many foul spirits in the air, and we’ll carve up that place if she steals their illness. No more trips to the markets, or the barracks. Might cut yourself down there. And no more trips to the chambers with the Hazani sukra.” Teodor examined Anna’s twitching eyes. “That’s right, girl. We know about your meetings. We always knew. Needs to stop now though, as there are blades in every corner of every avenue in this fucking city. Can’t risk what they might do with free access to you.”
Anna searched for friendly faces that didn’t exist, shelving any notion of telling them about the qaufen arrow strike cycles earlier. There was only Shem, whose stare was devoid of comprehension and hidden designs alike. “I can still speak to her. With Bora.”
“Keep her at an arm’s reach,” the tracker said, wandering through the foliage without preamble. His boots mashed the grasses and crushed the roots and reminded Anna of the land he’d trampled underfoot so long ago, hunting. “There’s a bad way about her.”
Anna met his violet eyes. “She’s my friend.”
Teodor gave a sputtering laugh. “Her breed of sukra doesn’t make friends. Break away from her, girl. She can die in the foundling pits if she wants to lecture something.”
“She provided the safety that your circle could not.” The orza met the southerners’ eyes evenly, undaunted. “She has never given me reason to doubt her loyalties.”
“With all due respect,” Teodor growled, slurring respect so horridly that it sparked Dogwood laughter, “I’d sooner piss on a northerner’s loyalty than trust it.”
Josip and Nacek shared toothy smiles.
Anna thought of her lessons, of the mornings she’d shared with Bora when the sun crept in bright brands over the setstone, begging her to close her eyes and retreat to the quiet place she’d constructed amid anarchy. Where time was unimportant, and where loss and memory were foreign concepts she delayed indefinitely. Those moments vanished in the cracks of Teodor’s rotted teeth. “How do you expect me to spend my days? As your servant?”
Teodor’s laughter slowed and fell away. “You think you’re a servant?”
“The days don’t change,” answered Anna. “Either I’m being escorted down the same passages, or I’m waiting to be called in the same quarters. There’s nothing else for me, and you know it. You all know it.”
“Nothing?” Teodor bent over, picked up another goblet, and drained its contents. He surveyed the grasses before tossing the goblet out of sight. His mouth hung ajar in a ragged line. “Your bathwater is cleaner than anything the spoiled sows in Malchym have ever seen. You have more ink than a tomesroom. More lessons than the budding pricks in Nahora. More music than a bogat’s troupe, and more fabrics than a trade galley on the Byryd, and more salt than you know what to fucking do with. And you say you have nothing, then? To anybody in Rzolka, you’d have the life of a goddess.”
Anna took a step forward. “That isn’t what I—”
“But you still think you have nothing. Maybe it’s been too good, girl. Maybe you’ve had it too good here.”
“Teodor,” the tracker growled. “That’s the solid end of it. We’ve staked out our lines.”
Teodor whirled, wicker hat flopping. “The stubborn sow will always uproot its posts, brat. Remember that.”
“She is stubborn,” the tracker said, pausing to walk toward the throne and stand beside the orza’s scribe, “but stubborn is better than drained. We need that fire, if we want to torch the wretched cities. Nothing else to be said.”
Josip peeled his fingers from the dancing girl’s wrist. “Oh, truly.” He winked at Anna. “Everybody adores a good challenge.”
It wasn’t the first time she sensed the threat in their circle. In Nacek’s crooked, bitter words, in Teodor’s brazen taunting, in Josip’s lust, in the tracker’s apathy. But now the danger had grown, manifesting in the unreadable glimmer of Konrad’s eyes. She’d promised herself to never be used again, but the promise faltered at every opportunity. Even the orza, who’d once seemed so strong and steadfast against such men, fought to resist shrinking away like a beaten hound in her scribe’s shadow.
“It’s done,” Anna said at last, glaring at the entire gathering. “I’m sorry that you couldn’t find me, and I’ll find new pastimes in my quarters and lessons.”
Teodor’s eyes widened. “That so?”
“You have free steps wherever the Dogwood roam,” the orza added, not without a pointed note of distaste. Words regarding the Dogwood, as they had in preceding weeks, set her jaw to churning.
“For now,” Teodor said, sniffling. He nodded at Konrad and took another drink. “And you’ll watch her.”
“Within reason,” the tracker cut in. “You’ll stay out of her quarters.”
Konrad pressed a hand to his armor, although the gesture seemed insincere, given his smirk. “Absolutely.”
Anna suddenly craved Bora’s analysis, her dissection of the sly smiles they passed between one another, just barely within Anna’s range of detection. “And I’ll bathe alone,” Anna said. She stared at Konrad, making his smile dim. “Understood?”
His voice was low, earnest. “Very much so, panna.”
Teodor’s eyes were too muddled to betray any of his thoughts. “Good.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then beckoned a dancing girl to his side. “Enjoy sleeping with your silks, girl.”
Anna looked to the orza, holding her tongue. “Good night, Dalma.” She turned away, glimpsing only the slightest crease in the woman’s brow, and made her way back down the stairwell with Shem at her side. The scattered footsteps of Konrad and his Dogwood attendants followed.
“Hold onto that fire, goddess,” Teodor yelled from behind. “But don’t let it burn you.”
Terror and rage and uncertainty flooded her, but Anna surrendered the sensations. She saw only the darkened gold of the hallways, felt only the human stairs bruising beneath her, and heard only Shem’s whispers of assurance as they walked.
She existed for the moment, unwilling to hold onto gathering fears.
Holding on meant death.
Chapter 21
The most troubling aspect of a restless mind was its intangible wandering. Thoughts of collecting firewood and rubbing sap from cold fingers rose in Anna’s mind, yet she indulged the vignettes, imagining the frozen edges of riverbanks and horsemen trotting down a dirt path. A thinking mind would’ve dwelled on Konrad and his muted regret as he wished her goodnight, his face disappearing in the ever-diminishing crevice of the door, or on the wicked men no longer bound by the orza’s leash, or on Shem, whom she’d ignored as he retired to his chambers with sullen eyes.
She didn’t notice that her mind had strayed. Not until the sound of a small bird’s flapping jarred her back.
Anna rolled over, eyes combing over the balcony, breaths trapped beneath rigid lips. Standing near the wind-tussled door hangings was not a bird at all, but a shadowed figure in a wash of moonlight. Anna clenched a fistful of silk and tried to draw the sheets in front of herself—her trembling subtle enough to be disguised in the darkness—and wormed her legs over the edge of the bed behind her.
If she could get to the ruj, which she’d wrapped in cotton and stored under the frame . . .
“You keep them unlocked.”
Bora’s crisp voice halted Anna. The latter exhaled into her silk covers. “What?”
Bora’s dark shape loomed, stepping through the double-doors and approaching the
bed like one of the specters from Anna’s nightmares. “The doors. You’ve left them unlocked.”
Anna pushed the covers aside and glanced at Shem’s door, wondering if the Huuri was alert enough to guard her from assassins. It was an awful burden to place on a boy. “Doors don’t seem to stop you.”
Bora moved to the table near Anna’s bed, lit a brass lamp, and sat stiffly beside her. “I saw what happened today.”
“It’s getting worse,” Anna whispered.
Bora gazed across the room, leaving a dark orange trail along the profile of her face. “We shall speak of that later. I meant your visit to the foundlings. You spent most of your hours in their hall.”
“And what?” Anna asked. She waited for a glare of censure, but there was only the quiet rustling of the wind. “It felt good to help them.”
“Such things are noble.”
It was surprising to hear from Bora, although Anna wondered why. In last month’s tomesroom scouring, she’d learned about Saloram. It was the philosophy Anna had learned on sun-laced rooftops and sweltering kators, the path that had molded Bora. It shunned runes and gods, and although it embraced the present, there was a driving force behind consciousness: the reminder to use one’s lifespan in a constructive manner. For all of Bora’s wisdom, she seemed hesitant to aid anybody but herself.
“You should be cautious, child,” Bora added. She studied Anna with hard eyes. “The animals in the orza’s company are always watching.”
Anna stared down into the flame-lit folds of her blankets. “They told me that we aren’t allowed to meditate together.”
“Nor to speak,” Bora said.
She could hardly believe it. “What do you mean? They never said that.”
“Not in your presence,” Bora said, “but they made it clear to both the orza and myself. It is a divisive thing, but in coming days, it’s essential for you to maintain your practice. Focus your mind often.”
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