by Becky Allen
“I will,” Andra promised, then reached for the wineskin. “But not tonight.”
“No,” Erra agreed, smiling despite herself as Andra refilled their mugs. Neither of them picked the mugs up, though, as their eyes locked. “I’ve got something else in mind for tonight.”
Jae was overwhelmed before they even reached the cities. It was three more days of travel just to get them close, and “close” meant surrounded by a sprawling town outside the city walls. The town held more buildings and more people than Jae had ever imagined existing before.
The buildings, mostly made of tan bricks, reached so far out into the horizon Jae couldn’t even see the fields beyond them. They must have been there to keep this many people fed, but Jae couldn’t imagine how much land that would require—or water. Aredann had been a tiny oasis in the midst of the vast, endless desert, but she’d barely seen sand in two days. Instead, the world had been greener and greener, more and more of it farmable, fed by channels from the reservoirs.
Even the sky was different. She’d almost gotten used to the clouds and storms that had plagued the world since she, Tal, and Elan had restored the Well’s magic. Smoke from cookfires blotted the sun, and the closer to the cities they got, the larger and higher the buildings were.
“Jae, you can’t gawk like that. You’ll be noticed,” Elan said, his kind voice softening the rebuke. He put a hand on her elbow to nudge her back in line. They were moving slowly now, as they approached the gate into one of the cities—Kavann, apparently. Palma was mounted on a horse and had a camel laden with supplies. Lenni, Elan, and Jae were walking—slowing their progress down, yes, but they’d explained to Jae that for all Palma was Avowed, she was relatively poor, so no one would expect her to have her servants outfitted with mounts of their own.
Palma wore a beautifully embroidered dress under her travel robe, and earrings and bracelets that glinted in the sunlight. Jae didn’t know much, but she knew that Palma’s clothes were nicer than anything Lady Shirrad had had at Aredann. But then again, Aredann had been considered laughably remote. Maybe Shirrad had been poor, too. For an Avowed.
“You’re the one who should worry about being noticed,” Jae replied to Elan, but she tried to make herself look as bored as everyone else did.
Elan stroked his beard self-consciously. He’d been clean-shaven when he’d come to Aredann, but now he had a beard and had grown his hair out, almost down to his shoulders. He’d tucked it up in a knot at the nape of his neck, hidden by the hood he always, always kept pushed up now. He was leaner than he had been, too, starved and honed by their trip into the desert and the trek they’d taken since then.
In a lot of ways, he looked nothing like the arrogant young man who’d arrived at Aredann. That was what they hoped, anyway—there wasn’t much else they could do to disguise him. No one would look for a Danardae in the plain robes of a servant.
But Elan still stood like one of the Highest, carried himself as if he owned the world. Jae suspected that would be far more easily noticed than her gaping.
“They all think I’m dead,” he said, repeating the rumor one of the Order’s spies had told them. “No one will be looking for me.”
“The Twill think you’re dead,” Lenni said. “But the Highest have spies looking for you. Elthis Danardae is not foolish enough to simply hope you’ll never come back, not knowing all you do.”
The line to pass through the gate to the city of Kavann seemed endless already, but people kept coming up behind them, lengthening it. They silenced their talk in the crowd, for fear of being overheard. Forward progress was so slow that Jae barely noticed anything changing, and then she looked up, and there it was.
The wall around Kavann was enormous, easily five stories high on its own. Unlike the dull buildings out here, it was obviously mage built: the base was red tile, and bright green vine designs slithered across it, never quite repeating in an obvious pattern. They twisted and met and broke apart again, dotted with red and yellow splotches that had to be flowers, though it was hard to see from this far away. Jae was willing to bet the detail, up close, was astounding.
“Magecraft really was an art form,” Lenni explained in a whisper as they shuffled forward. “Meaning they used it to make great art. Just wait until you see the estate houses, Jae. You won’t believe it—every inch is like that, stunning.”
“But I shouldn’t gawk,” Jae mumbled, and Elan swallowed a laugh.
“It’s just, everyone who comes this close to the cities is used to it,” he said. “But I suppose servants like us might not have seen it before.”
As if he passed for a servant. Jae didn’t say that aloud, though.
“Which reminds me,” Lenni said. “Jae, do you know—” She cleared her throat and started again. “I thought you’d be interested to know how the word ‘Closest’ came about.”
“Yes, I would be,” Jae said. The Closest were the descendants of the Wellspring Bloodlines, the mages who had worked with Janna Eshara to craft the Well. But that title had been lost to time, and now they were simply called the Closest. She’d heard that the name had come about because they were the closest to the earth; they worked barefoot as they tended the land. But so much of what she’d always known had been a lie, so she wondered if even that simple explanation was untrue.
“ ‘Closest’ used to be an honorific,” Lenni said. “It was a title for all mages, not just the Wellspring Bloodlines, because they were the closest to the elements.”
“Hush now!” Palma’s voice came down from above and in front of them. They’d taken another few steps forward, and now they were close enough that Avowed guards were walking the length of the line, looking at everyone in turn. Jae’s skin crawled when she felt their gaze fall on her, and even more so when she recognized the uniform. It was the same guard uniform that Rannith and a few others had worn back at Aredann—newer and better fitting, but the same gray robe over loose pants and shirts, and they were all armed with swords and knives. And they all looked deadly serious.
For just a moment, Jae was back at Aredann, with Rannith’s gaze roaming over her body. A single word from him had become a command, because she’d been cursed, and unable to refuse even though she’d hated him, even though she’d been terrified—
Elan’s hand on her elbow guided her forward, and the guards passed by. They’d loop back eventually, but for now she was safe.
And she wasn’t cursed anymore. True, she could only use magic as a last resort, to save her life if it was threatened—they couldn’t afford for her to panic and attract attention. But if it came down to it, she could save herself. Rannith was dead, she was here, and she would never be defenseless again.
They approached the gate at last. A guard, a woman who was nearly as tall as Elan, took Palma’s name, noted the number of people in her party, and asked her a few questions. She’d be staying with her parents, who still had a house in one of the cities; she was staying at least through the ceremony, maybe longer. The guard seemed bored by it all, since so many people had the same story, but her voice grew intense as she said, “Just be careful if you find yourself near the channels—the guards there are being very careful to keep people out of trouble.”
“Has there been trouble?” Palma asked, voice high and nervous. Jae couldn’t tell if that was an act or not.
“That’s not for me to say,” the woman said. “Just—be careful of it, Lady. There’s been flooding, though, so some of the bridges are inaccessible. You’d do well to avoid passing between cities if you can.”
“I’ll try to stay away from the channels,” Palma said, and dipped into a curtsey. “Thank you, Lady Guard.”
The guard nodded and motioned them onward. Lenni gestured to Elan to take the horse as Lenni herself continued to handle the camel—they’d have to walk through the city, and a lady with servants would hardly lead her own mount.
Jae looked around at the city within the gate for the first time and stumbled as Elan nudged her forward. Sh
e caught herself but couldn’t stop staring.
The town outside had been enormous, but within the gate, it seemed that buildings were packed together so close that if one came down, its neighbors would fold and topple into the space it left. The only way to tell where one ended and the next began was by following the patterns across the tiles—they would stop abruptly, or change colors. Except in some places, where there were dull, small tan buildings between the mage-built houses. They must have been built up in the generations since the War, with no magic to beautify them.
The buildings were huge—six, eight, even ten stories high—but for every house, there had to be at least a hundred people. The streets were a cacophony—a sandstorm of noise so loud that Jae might as well have been deaf. There was no way she’d be able to hear Elan or Lenni if they tried to speak to her. Merchants shouted about their wares; people screamed to one another. She could hear singing and chanting. People staggered through the streets, some toward the shops and others dashing across the road. What had been a line outside the gate was a disorganized crowd inside, everyone headed in a different direction, and no one too careful about where they walked.
Elan dropped his grip from her elbow to her hand, still guiding the horse with his other. She shot him a grateful glance. The horse at least kept people off them on one side, and as long as they were linked together she wouldn’t be lost. If she got pulled away in the midst of this, she might never find him again.
The smells were as much an assault as the noise: sweat and dung, spices and meat as they pushed through one market, sticky sweet smoke in the next. Urine and mold and damp, everywhere.
Thankfully some of the din died down as they moved to an area with fewer merchants and smaller buildings. Here, there was actual space between the houses, and they were decorated with potted plants in front of the tiled walls, even bushes and small trees. The buildings were smaller, but cleaner, and there were fewer people.
“This is an Avowed neighborhood,” Elan explained, though Jae’s ears were still ringing. “The markets are always busy, but not usually that mad—but I suppose with everyone coming in for the ceremony things are louder than usual. And Twill neighborhoods tend to be…noisy. Or so I’ve been told.” He shrugged a little.
It was evening by the time Palma announced, “Here we are. I…I haven’t sent word to my parents. I know they’ll be happy to see me despite everything, but…” She cast a look at Elan.
“I’ll keep my hood up and stay out of sight.”
“That’s the best we can do, I guess,” Palma said.
They dropped most of their things in a room in the servants’ quarters but left right away to avoid Elan being spotted by anyone in Palma’s estate who might recognize him. Elan kept one bag with him, slung over his shoulder—it contained the papers and translation key Lenni had given him. It was, without a doubt, more valuable than everything else they carried combined.
Thankfully Lenni didn’t lead them back to that market but instead from this Avowed neighborhood to one where more Twill lived. The houses were lower, crowded against one another, but a little less frantic than the marketplace. Soon, Lenni had turned in to one of the buildings. The door was larger than most of the others—it wasn’t a residence, at least not on this floor. It was a drinkhouse, crowded with noisy patrons and that same sweet smoke. Jae’s nose tickled and she had to sneeze. It was sweet, yes, but overwhelming.
Lenni wound her way around tables to one of the back corners, and as Jae and Elan settled, she walked up to the bar. When she returned it was with mugs of something Jae had never tasted before, a thick milky drink that made her tongue tingle. “You’ll want to go slow with that,” Elan warned her. “You’re not much of a drinker.”
It was the better part of an hour later when someone joined them at the table, with another round of drinks. The man had deep brown skin, short-cropped black hair, a goatee, and a mustache that looked more like a stain across his upper lip. He and Lenni nodded at each other, and then he turned to glance at Jae and examine Elan.
“Well, I see at least one of the rumors is true,” he said, inclining his head to Elan. “I wouldn’t have noticed if I wasn’t looking for you, but—”
“But,” Lenni interrupted, “the girl is much more important. No offense, Elan.”
Elan looked amused and said, “Of course she is. We can all agree on that.”
“Jae, this is Osann—a very respected mason, among other things,” Lenni continued. “Osann, this is Jae, of Aredann. The one the Highest have come to fear.”
“More than you know,” Osann said, and turned his attention to Jae.
She didn’t enjoy the scrutiny but refused to stoop under it. New people always made her nervous, but she didn’t want the Order to think she was skittish.
Eventually Osann nodded. “Lady Mage.”
Jae glanced around the room, but no one was paying much attention to them. The crowd hadn’t gotten larger, but it had gotten louder as people had more to drink. It was hard to hear over the din, and dark enough that she had to squint to make out people’s lips moving. But they were mostly talking about lovers and quarrels and what they’d eaten that day, not about the group in the corner. So she turned her attention back to Osann.
“The guard at the gate warned us about trouble,” Lenni said.
“There’s been plenty of that,” Osann agreed. “The reservoirs are flooded, and so are the channels. Half the stone city was washed away.”
Jae glanced at Elan, who translated, “He means the stone buildings by the channels—a slum, basically.”
“Well, now it’s mostly gone,” Osann said. “Lots of people lost their homes, the ones who weren’t killed in the collapses, anyway, and they’re underfoot everywhere now. The guards haven’t had much luck getting them out of the cities, and they say they have nowhere else to go. Most of them probably don’t.”
“That’s awful,” Jae said, thinking of Palma’s anguish at losing her home.
“It is,” Osann agreed. “But more to the point”—he paused, smirking crookedly at Lenni, and affected a high, innocent voice—“that same flooding made it cursed hard to build a bridge to the pavilion for the vow ceremony. As you requested.”
Lenni nodded, looking satisfied.
“Is that what the Order does?” Elan asked. “Sabotage?”
“It’s what we’ve been able to do,” Lenni said. “More than anything, it gives our people an outlet—a way to strike against the Highest, even if it’s barely more than a nuisance for them. Though with what we know now, we won’t have to hassle the bridge builders anymore.”
“So we won’t,” Osann agreed. “It seems you have other plans for that.”
“I hope not that many people know about the plans,” Jae said. Too many people finding out seemed dangerous, but if Lenni trusted them all…
“We needed to tell some,” Lenni said. “There will be guards at the ceremony, so we’ll need our people to keep them busy. But we’re being careful about who we trust. I swear.”
“And we will be ready,” Osann said, leaning back, looking pleased with himself. “I don’t know exactly what your plan is, Lady Mage, but trust me—the Order has been waiting for you for years. No matter what the Highest do, we’re ready.”
Jae nodded, unsure what she should say. Now it wasn’t just her and Elan against the Highest anymore. It would be the Highest’s army against Jae’s magic and her new allies. She just had to hope that her magic, and the help from these people who were now counting on her, would be enough.
Elan breathed a sigh of relief as they stepped into the misty air the next night. It had been a tense, unpleasant day. They’d spent it holed up in the servants’ quarters of Palma’s parents’ house. He didn’t dare show his face—Palma’s family might recognize him.
Seeing Palma herself was…interesting. It was clear that Palma would be happy to pick up with him where they’d left off, trading kisses and secrets, but he didn’t find himself particularly tempted
. Erra had warned him, and then been so angry at him, when he’d gotten close to Palma—she hadn’t believed Palma was at all genuine with her affection.
Elan could see that now. Something about her rang false. He didn’t doubt she was attracted to him, but looking back with clearer vision, he could see she’d used him, too. Mostly just to increase her social standing, but she certainly hadn’t discouraged him from speaking out against his father.
He wasn’t the same man she’d known anymore. He wondered if Palma realized that, what she saw when she looked at him now.
“I hope you aren’t afraid of the mud,” Lenni said as they walked. They were heading in toward the reservoirs, which lay at the heart of the cities—and the world. The four cities spilled into one another, separated only by channels that brought water from the reservoirs out to the fields, joined together by plenty of bridges. The four reservoirs were just as linked—they were all roughly circular, or would be, if they didn’t overlap at the middle. That was where the pavilion stood, though Elan had only actually been there a few times in his life.
“As if we haven’t spent days slogging through it?” Elan asked. “At least it’s kept most people inside.”
“They think it’ll rain again tonight,” Jae said. “I bet it will. But not until late—near dawn.”
“How…” Lenni regrouped. “Is that…Do you…” She made a frustrated noise. “I don’t understand how you can tell all that.”
“I can feel the water in the air,” Jae said. “I mean, with my…other sense. It gathers, and now that I’ve seen so much rain I can just sort of tell when it’s finally too much.”
“Useful,” Lenni said. “Do you think you could make it—that is, it would be useful if you could make it rain.”
“Hm.” Jae’s noise was noncommittal, and her head cocked slightly as she walked, as if she was listening. Finally she shrugged. “Maybe. I’ve never tried.”