“There are some things I don’t want to remember,” he said, his voice rough. “Now go. We can’t be seen talking to each other.”
He walked back to the small collection of tents and surveyed his men’s work. Alizhan frowned, puzzled by his refusal but forced to respect it. She couldn’t touch someone who didn’t want it, not after storming out on Iriyat for doing the same to her. But now she had nothing to do, and nowhere to channel all of her anger.
Iriyat hardly slept. She was always awake, chatting with her guards or writing some correspondence or observing her surroundings or trying to talk to Alizhan. When she did rest, it was fitful. She was easily woken. Perhaps she feared that someone would betray her and attack her while she was vulnerable.
The thought had crossed Alizhan’s mind. Instead of attacking Iriyat, she settled for rifling through her possessions. Iriyat kept a file of correspondence close to her. Alizhan wanted to know what was in it.
Luckily, Iriyat had spent years encouraging her to practice stealth. So when her mother fell asleep at last, Alizhan had no trouble creeping into her tent and sliding the file from her bag. Inside were a number of half-finished letters. Most of them were in a script Alizhan recognized as Adpri, but couldn’t read. The ones in Laalvuri were encoded. Alizhan sighed. Of course a woman who’d invented her own writing system and written a journal in invisible ink wasn’t going to be careless with her correspondence.
Thiyo would have been able to read them. And Ev could have told her if she was doing the right thing. But if either of them were alive, Alizhan wouldn’t be in this predicament in the first place. She pushed those thoughts away before they unleashed a flood of tears.
There were a few pages Alizhan could read. The others were in Iriyat’s pristine handwriting, but these were printed. A collection of pamphlets from Laalvur. When Alizhan exited the tent and moved back into the sunlight, she knew who the author was within one sentence. At first, seeing that there were many fewer words in insistent large print, she thought Kasrik had developed a more mature, less explosive style. Maybe it was her aunt Eliyan’s moderating influence. Upon reading, Alizhan changed her mind. Kasrik hadn’t restrained himself at all.
14
Letters from Another World, No. 1
Before we imagine a new world, we must examine our own.
Readers, you have trusted me so far, even when I have told you that things you have always held true are false. You were told there was no such thing as magic. When I told you magic was real, you listened. Hundreds of you left me letters at the tavern called The Red and The Black in Arishdenan, or at The Three Reeds in The Marsh, telling me of times you had witnessed your friends, your family, or yourselves experiencing something you had been told was impossible. What you have seen is real. You know it and I know it. You are not mad, my cherished readers.
And I am not mad, either. I hope you will still believe me after I reveal these truths.
I come to you as Vesper, the name of a hero from another world. I chose this name to protect myself and my loved ones from those who would harm us, but another reason has come to me. When we read about Vesper and Aurora of The Sunrise Chronicles, we imagine another world, one utterly unlike ours. We make it with our minds. There are stodgy old priests who would tell you that this is a frivolous use of your time before the Balance swings, but I tell you it is the opposite. Our imaginations are the foundation upon which we shall build the future, and the practice of reading strengthens them.
Readers, I would like to imagine another such world with you, a new world that we can make with our minds and our hands and our bodies, right here in the present where we stand. Right here in the city of Laalvur. If we can imagine a world where the love of two people conquers evil and Day spins into Night, why can we not imagine other wonders for our own? Laalvur could be a city whose people take care of each other. A city whose people do not suffer and starve. A city whose people have a say in how they live.
But before I present this new world to you, we must examine ours as it is. The need for change will be evident to all.
I was born in the Marsh, like many of you. This low-lying part of our city is fertile ground for magic, and it grew in me the way it has grown in many of you. I have seen your letters, you Marshers—you know that sometimes, such children disappear from our homes and our streets. The powerful in our city turn their faces away and refuse to see these crimes. But we see them.
I have done more than see, dear readers. I was once one of those children.
It is easy to disappear children with no parents or other family to protect them. My parents passed when I was young, my father at sea and my mother of illness. My siblings were taken in by our great-aunt, but she refused me entry into her home. I was Touched, she said. Unbalanced.
I was eight years old.
My particular talent made me rather good at stealing, so I survived for a time on my own. I stole from carts in Arishdenan Market and picked pockets in Hahim Harbor with ease. But at the age of nine, ambition and curiosity led me to the Jewelbox, where my career as a thief was ended by Solor House guards.
I thought they would throw me in prison. If I were lucky, perhaps the Temple Street orphanage. I had heard terrible stories about both.
Instead they took me to a house in Gold Street. One you are probably familiar with, since it burned down on the eighth triad of Alaksha. At first, I thought myself lucky beyond all chance. There were half a dozen other children there, and we were housed and fed by the priests who worked there. They even made some attempts to educate us, the results of which you are currently reading. At the time, I was resentful of the education, but grateful that I no longer had to steal.
In the beginning, the priests asked only that we did not leave. It was an easy rule to follow. Why would I want to leave?
I did not know the other children there at first, but many of them had also come from the Marsh. And I recognized my brethren. We all had some particular talent, some aspect that would cause our relatives to bar their doors to us.
In the first few years of my life at this house, the priests occasionally asked us for strange things. Some of my hair. Some of my blood. They would lock me in a room with one of them and ask me questions for hours. I did not enjoy these tests, but I submitted to them. As I grew older, they began to ask me to go out into Laalvur and look for other children like myself. Orphans, they specified. Children no one will miss.
Readers, I am ashamed to say I did as they asked.
It was not so bad at the house in Gold Street, I told myself. A roof, beds, food when I wanted it—these things still meant more to me than any principle. So, you see, this is a story of my own complicity and guilt as much as it is an accusation. I have done wrong. But I am trying to make it right.
What was this house in Gold Street? It was a place where priests of the Balance studied magic in secret, performing experiments on children such as myself. They wanted to keep this knowledge for their own purposes. The experiments I have mentioned thus far were not so bad. But these priests had a supply of medusa venom—not the treated wai liquor that the rich of our city make a show of drinking at all their parties, but raw venom. They used it on us, sparingly at first, to see what effect it might have. They wanted to “cure” us, so I am told.
But after I escaped from that house once, when they brought me back, that cure became a punishment. I was strapped to a chair and tortured for hours. Priests laid medusa stingers on my bare skin. I still bear the black scars.
Yes. You may be able to identify me after this. I risk my own safety to bring you this truth. Those priests who worked at the Gold Street house are all gone now, dead in the fire that consumed the place. But the person who owned that house, who oversaw all those experiments, who twisted the work of the Temple to her own ends, she still walks free among us.
Not merely free, but beloved.
You already know the name I plan to write here, but you fear to speak it. You cannot quite believe that beautiful, virtuous IRIYAT HA-V
ARENSI is a liar and a monster.
Either she is, or I am.
* * *
Yours,
Vesper
15
And
Ev had to call Thiyo back. “We can’t leave him here,” she said, gesturing at Ilyr. He’d wake in a moment and for all she knew, he’d hike back to Summit and take those notes again. Thiyo sighed and helped her lift Ilyr to his feet. He woke for a moment, but was too drunk to object to being manhandled.
Just as they reached the trees, the world rumbled. Ev had never heard such a sound. It was like trees falling into each other, or a building collapsing, a booming clatter from nowhere. Had it come from the sky, suddenly overcome with darkness? She twisted, looking up, and a flash of light split the clouds. Ev couldn’t help it—she yelped.
“What the fuck,” she began, her voice rising, and stopped when she saw Thiyo grinning at her. He let go of Ilyr and spread his arms wide expectantly. Fat raindrops splatted into the mud of the riverbank and tumbled down through the broad leaves of the canopy.
“Rain does not make sounds like that in Laalvur,” Ev said, trying to recover some of her dignity. The rumble happened again and she shrieked and ducked her head. She wanted to cover her head with her hands, but she had to hold Ilyr up. It was pouring now, rippling into the river and drumming on every leaf and branch above them. Thiyo came back to support Ilyr’s other side and led them further into the trees. She didn’t think it was the way they’d come, and her suspicion proved right when he stopped in front of a rock face she didn’t recognize. He tugged at her hand until she came around the side of it with him, where there was an overhang. They ducked underneath. The rain continued to fall, but it was quiet and dry where they stood. Ev sat Ilyr down and he leaned back against the rock wall and fell asleep. Thiyo meticulously brushed off the flat spot on top of a rock at their feet and sat. He patted the space next to him in invitation, and they settled in to wait out the rain.
Despite the sudden stormclouds and the greenish quality of the light filtering through them, Ev could see perfectly when Thiyo smirked at her and said “What the fuck” in a passable imitation of her voice. He nudged her shoulder with his.
“Oh, now you can talk.” She could only look him in the eye—there was far too much bare skin below that. Ev pulled the panels of her skirt to cover her legs as best she could.
“What the fuck,” Thiyo said again, and this time his voice was deeper and harder. He was mimicking Ilyr, who remained deeply asleep behind them.
“I suppose you did hear that phrase twice in a short span of time,” Ev said. “And it’s useful enough, with our lives.”
Thiyo didn’t seem to understand any of that, but she hadn’t thought he was listening to her conversation with Ilyr. “What the fuck, what the fuck,” he repeated, experimenting. It was funny to hear the vulgar phrase repeated like a children’s rhyme, singsong.
“Alright, that’s enough,” Ev said. “We should look at that book.” She mimed opening a book with her hands and Thiyo pulled it from the bag and spread it over their laps. Ev had only gotten a cursory glance before, and she was dismayed to see that most of Ilyr’s notes were in Hoi. Why would he had have chosen a language that Iriyat couldn’t read? He said he’d been to an archive in Summit—had he been transcribing? Maybe he’d intended to translate this text.
She paged through map after map. The islands were featured, but the maps focused on the ocean. There were often drawings of medusas. Ev thought they were decorative at first, an illustration of the dangers of the water. Then she realized each image of the ocean differed from the last.
“These are drawings of specific waves,” Ev said. She flipped to a recent one, where the ocean towered over a particular promontory on the Dayward coast. “This is the wave that hit Laalvur when I was three.” She jabbed her finger at the drawing in excitement. Thiyo had wanted to talk to her about waves and Laalvur back on the beach in Kae, but he hadn’t been able to express much. He’d made progress since then, and this book felt like a missing piece. “Wave. Laalvur.”
“Yes,” he said.
“These are records. This book is about how the medusas can feel currents in the water. And there are people here—like your father, like Eili—who can track the medusas. That’s how you predict waves. That’s how the islanders have preserved themselves.” As Ev said some of the words he might recognize, her index finger drifted across the page to point to the images. Thiyo nodded. “And Ilyr was going to send it to Iriyat. Iriyat wants this information.” She checked to see if he was registering the name. “Iriyat?”
He nodded again. “Iriyat. Ilyr.”
“It seems like Ilyr was telling the truth about the contents. It’s about predicting waves.”
Iriyat and Ilyr had been right about something else: this was knowledge that could have saved lives in the rest of the world. But Ilyr had said Thiyo believed in sharing, and before he’d digressed into bitterness, he’d been talking about exactly this kind of wisdom.
“You wanted to tell mainlanders about this,” Ev guessed. “You still want to. You want us to go to Adappyr and warn them. But how can we deliver that warning? You saw what happened with Ilyr. He didn’t believe us. He wanted proof.”
“Adappyr,” Thiyo agreed, pointing at the city on the map.
“I don’t know how to gesture the concept of ‘proof’ to you,” Ev said. “But why would anyone in Adappyr listen to us?” She tried this again, “Adappyr,” pointing at Adappyr on the map, then at her ear, “listen,” then at the two of them seated side by side, “Ev and Thiyo.”
He shrugged. Ev didn’t know if that meant he didn’t understand or that he didn’t have a solution.
“I guess we have to try,” she said. The rain was still pouring down all around them. Ev stared into the forest looking for inspiration, but found only distraction. Behind her, Ilyr sighed in his sleep. “Do you think Ilyr is okay? I shouldn’t have hit him. And why was he drunk?”
“Ilyr,” Thiyo said. He shrugged again. Then he smiled, imitated Ilyr again, and said, “What the fuck.”
“So glad you learned that one,” Ev said. “And really, why did you learn that? Was it just hearing it twice? Because I’ve been repeating myself a lot and that hasn’t worked.” She thought about the way he’d repeated it. He'd imitated their voices. The pitch, the rhythm. And in Halelitha’s lessons, she was reciting epics. They were in verse. Was that the secret? Ev didn't know any epics. But she knew a few other things. She grabbed Thiyo's left hand and splayed his fingers.
“One went to Dar,” she said, touching his pinky finger. “To the temple to pray.” She’d learned this rhyme as a child and it had helped her keep a map of Laalvur in her head. She wiggled his ring finger. “Two went to Denan, where there’s cards to play.” It was a silly little thing, but it was easy to remember. “Three went to Arish to the market to stay. Four went to Hahim to sail away.”
She repeated it a second time, keeping it as singsong as possible, touching his fingers as she went. Thiyo looked unimpressed by her sudden passion for nursery rhymes. She pushed her hand at him, encouraging him to try. He accepted her hand, stroked his thumb over her knuckles more times than necessary, and then repeated the whole rhyme to her while stroking each of her fingers in a way that felt far, far too sensual.
Had he stumbled while talking? Ev couldn’t remember. “Thiyo.”
He met her eyes.
“I’m in love with Alizhan,” Ev said. It was true, but it did nothing to calm her pulse. Thiyo didn’t seem to have understood, either. “Ev and Alizhan,” she tried. He did better with individual words than with sentences. “Alizhan and Ev.”
“Alizhan and Ev,” he agreed. He was smiling. He hadn’t let go of her hand. His fingers tightened ever so slightly around hers. “And Thiyo.”
“Smoke, you are impossible,” she said, but she was smiling, too. He knew the word and. They were having a conversation—or close enough. This was progress. She’d just had to find a sub
ject Thiyo wanted to discuss. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a subject Ev wanted to discuss. And yet her body found his arguments persuasive. Why hadn’t she noticed how close they were sitting until now? Every part of her felt attuned to the narrow space between them. She should withdraw her hand from his. She should stand up and walk away. She didn’t manage either, but she did say, “Thiyo, we can’t. It’s not right—Alizhan wouldn’t—”
Ev couldn’t finish the sentence because she knew it was a lie. Alizhan didn’t care about this. She’d said as much. If you want to kiss someone—even if that person is Pirkko—you should. Ev had argued with that, too. With Thiyo’s eyes on her, she couldn’t say why she’d argued with Alizhan. Or why she’d resisted Biha, Tayihe, Halelitha, Ilyr, and every other person who’d mistaken Ev and Thiyo for something more than friends.
You wouldn’t even have needed to ask Thiyo, Alizhan had assured her. And she was right. They didn’t need to ask, didn’t need to talk about this, because Ev could feel how much they both wanted it. The force of it terrified her. No matter what Alizhan had said, wouldn’t this be a betrayal? The rest of the world would see it that way. What did it mean to want two people at once? Was she in love with Thiyo the way she was with Alizhan? She didn’t know how to answer that question.
It would be so easy to lean forward and let him kiss her. But she withdrew her hand from his instead. Around them, the rain had slowed to a drizzle. She’d barely noticed the storm receding.
“No?” Thiyo asked.
He probably wasn’t trying to look pitiful on purpose. Thiyo didn’t like to be pitied. Then again, maybe he wanted this to be as hard for her as possible. “No,” Ev said, and it came out soft and uncertain. She could feel something shift within her, a firm and unwavering never slipping into a not yet. Thiyo studied her for such a long moment that she wondered if he could feel it too. It left her uneasy and eager all at once.
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