Thiyo was managing, too—listening was as much of a marvel as speaking. Ilyr spoke and there was a kind of echo in Thiyo’s head, a delayed interpretation as his mind pulled the pieces together and filled in the gaps.
“It’s a mishmash of everything you used to know. And what I don’t understand, I can guess.” Ilyr huffed to himself, not a quite a laugh. “I know you well enough for that.”
Thiyo’s eyes filled with tears all over again and he threw his arms around Ilyr. He half-suspected that by that point, he would have thrown his arms around Merat Orzh herself if she’d had a conversation with him. It was like being rescued from the medusa—not that he really remembered that experience. He would have clung to anyone who pulled him out. It had been so depths-drowned lonely, not being able to talk. But he’d rather hug Ilyr than Merat, and whatever delicate, thorny thing lived between him and his former lover, the solid bulk of him was familiar and reassuring, as was the low grunt of surprise he made when Thiyo squeezed him.
“Fuck, Ilyr, I’ve been falling apart.”
“Couldn’t get that girl in there to put you back together?”
Thiyo withdrew from the hug. “She’s done more of the work than you have. You just happened to be the first person who said a sentence I understood.”
Whether or not Ilyr comprehended that—and Thiyo strongly suspected he did—he didn’t like the sound of it. “Hmph.”
“Perhaps you deserve a little more credit than that,” Thiyo said, softening. “I’m sorry for everything, Ilyr.” He moved closer and laid his head on Ilyr’s shoulder. He waved a hand in the air as if he could encompass all the wrongs he meant to apologize for in one gesture. That, more than anything, brought home how much akilithana he’d swallowed. “I wish it wasn’t like this.”
“You have no idea,” Ilyr said. He rested his cheek on Thiyo’s head and they stayed in that posture, quiet, for a long time. Thiyo could hear the rustling of insects and the trills of birdsong from the woods. Eventually, Ilyr spoke over them. “How can I ever get over you?”
“You’ll fall in love with somebody else. Somebody better.”
“Easy for you to say,” Ilyr retorted. “And I can’t believe you set up me up to say these words aloud, but who could be better, Thiyo? I just want you. But a version of you that would love me and nobody else. No Aniyats, no Evs, no shirtless stonemasons repairing the back garden wall.”
“I didn’t sleep with the stonemason,” Thiyo said, affronted. It was a digression, beside the point, but he was so pleased to be able to digress again. And maybe his tongue was looser than it needed to be. “And you would have looked if you’d been there. And I wasn’t in love with Aniyat, not really.”
“The fact that you have to make a list of all the people you didn’t sleep with or fall in love with is the problem,” Ilyr said. “And I notice an omission in your objections.”
“Ev?” Thiyo smiled to himself. “Mah Yee, she won’t even kiss me and I want to lie down and die at her feet.”
Beneath him, Ilyr went rigid with discomfort. Probably not a good idea to talk about Ev while cuddling with Ilyr—who might have said he was still in love. Thiyo didn’t intend to be cruel. With the slow, deliberate motions of someone highly intoxicated, he disentangled himself.
“Sorry,” he murmured.
Ilyr sighed. “A good illustration of the point we were discussing, I suppose.”
“So if you could have this imaginary version of me where I’m not myself and I only ever look at you, what then? You’d take me home and keep me a secret for the rest of our lives? It won’t work, Ilyr.”
“It was working. We could have kept it up.”
Thiyo shook his head. He had no idea if he could express himself on this subject, but he had to try. “Ilyr, when I was on the run, I met some people in Shadeside. People who live in fear of your father’s regime because of who they are and who they love. It’s not right that they should get imprisoned or executed for doing exactly what we were doing in the palace. You have the power to change it.”
“I don’t,” Ilyr said. “They’d kill me for trying.”
“Your father’s guards and executioners are already killing people. Why should you have the right to risk anything less? This is more important than me or you—or whether our fucking is so good that we can go a few weeks without fighting. You might be able to find someone else who’s willing to be your dirty little secret, Ilyr, but you’ll have to spend the whole time wondering how long until he gets tired of that or you both get found out. When you love someone, you’ll fight to have more than that.”
“You’ve changed, Thiyo.”
Thiyo looked down at the black scars lining his arms. Everything was hazy around the edges. Of course he’d changed. He’d killed a medusa and it had stolen everything from him. Had he and Ilyr really just talked to each other? But how? He lifted his head and tried to make Ilyr’s features come into focus. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re coming with us. It’s nice to have someone to talk to, but more than that, we’re trying to do the right thing. I hope you and Ev don’t hate each other too much.”
“Don’t ask too much of me,” Ilyr said. “One miracle per shift.”
“It does feel like a miracle.”
“It’s not. You’re a mess. But you were my mess for two years. I know how to sort you out.” Thiyo didn’t miss how satisfied Ilyr sounded—or the implication that no one else, especially not Ev, knew how to sort him out. Then Ilyr added, “Tayihe would probably understand you even better.”
Thiyo shook his head. “I saw her when we first arrived and we couldn’t make it work.”
“You must have made some progress since then,” Ilyr said.
It had come in such frustrating dribs and drabs, word by word. It seemed an impossible leap between what he’d been doing with Ev in the rain earlier, repeating a nursery rhyme without really comprehending it, and what he was doing now. Perhaps he wasn’t learning, but remembering. “Thank you for this.”
Ilyr shrugged one shoulder, a graceful and minimal answer that spoke volumes. Still in love.
Ev was already in bed and Thiyo crawled in next to her, still giddy. “Ev, Ev, there’s so much I want to say to you. Mah Yee, I’m so sorry for how ungrateful I’ve been, you’ve saved my life more times than I could count, and not just in fights, but every time you drew me out of my sulking…”
She blinked, her eyes heavy with sleep. “Thiyo?”
“Maybe you only understand a third of what I’m saying, but a third is so much more than zero,” Thiyo said. “Ilyr and I ate akilithana and I learned how to talk again and I’ve never been so happy in my life. I could kiss you.” Thiyo paused. “Oh. That’s right. You don’t want to kiss me.” It was the perfect puncture for his mood. “But sometimes I think you do want to kiss me. You just won’t let yourself. I don’t know why, though. I wish Alizhan was here. Not just so she could tell me the truth, of course. I miss her. And I know you miss her, too. And I promise I’ll help you find her after we warn Adappyr. Even if you never, ever want to kiss me, I’ll do that.”
“You’re high,” Ev said, after a long silence. “You and Ilyr got high.”
“Well, yes, but that’s hardly the point.”
“I can’t tell what you’re talking about, Thiyo. Something about Ilyr and happiness and kissing? And me and Alizhan? Did you make up with Ilyr? Is that what happened?”
He sighed. Ilyr’s miracle had worn off. “Yes and no,” he said.
“That’s nice, Thiyo,” Ev said. She patted him sleepily on the head and closed her eyes.
Ilyr had been regrettably sober for their walk back down to Sunslope. Performing a miracle for Thiyo hadn’t been enough to fix things, not when that woman was still around, and to make things worse, they stayed in Tayihe’s house. She wasn’t pleased to see him again, and their supposed plan to deliver a warning to Adappyr meant nothing to her. Ilyr passed the hours until everyone went to bed in sullen silence, and then he searched Ta
yihe’s kitchen for wai.
There was none. Gods damn her, she’d seen him coming and cleared it all out. She did have akilithana, though, and he took some more, just in case. It had helped him stagger through that maze of a conversation with Thiyo last triad.
He waited for it to take effect, but it did nothing to make him feel better. He pulled himself up and found his way to the bedroom, where habit and intoxication tripped him up. He opened the door to find Thiyo in bed with someone else.
Of course.
He should have known. He should have remembered he wasn’t sleeping in this room any longer. Ilyr hung in the doorway, flooding the room with light, unable to do anything but stare. The high had helped him through that conversation, but it was doing nothing for him now but spearing him to the spot. The moment felt inevitable and eternal—he’d always been here, or he’d always been waiting to be here, and now he was stuck with no way forward. Thiyo had said always in Nalitzvan when they’d talked, part of a convoluted sentence that Ilyr had understood as I’m always going to make you unhappy. Wasn’t that the truth.
The doorway around him wasn’t an exit but a trap. He couldn’t move from his place any more than he could escape this moment, an arrow that had been headed for his heart the moment he’d met Thiyo.
Wai was the only thing that could free him from this feeling, and he hadn’t drunk any since last triad. The old woman and her giant family didn’t keep any around, and Tayihe had emptied her cupboards. But this was Hoi. There would be wai somewhere. That thought set his feet in motion, but as he turned to leave, he found himself observed. Tayihe loomed tall and silent behind him, her hands on her hips. How long had she been there? Time meant nothing to him, but he knew the answer: too long.
“Where are you going?”
Ilyr had trained his whole life to lead an army and rule a kingdom. He’d sailed and ridden and hiked to places all over the world, places his countrymen had feared to go. He’d hunted wolves and boar. Fear had no hold on him—except when it came to Thiyo’s mother.
Tayihe was the first person he’d ever encountered who wanted nothing from him except his absence. Meeting her had been a revelation, and not a pleasant one. It wasn’t that Tayihe was so brusque—although she was—but that her manner had shed light on everyone else in his life, and how desperate they all were to ingratiate themselves with the future king. Perhaps they also resented him, or had judged him inadequate, but they took care not to show it.
“I asked you a question,” she said. She spoke in Nalitzvan, though she knew he could speak Hoi. She wanted to remind him that she was better at his language than he was at hers. Ilyr wished he was beyond noticing or caring, but he wasn’t. Learning Hoi was the greatest intellectual accomplishment of his life, and his mastery, no matter how accented, put him in a rarified class of mainlander scholars whose number could be counted on one hand. Tayihe wasn’t impressed. “But it was only courtesy. I know where you are going. Shut that door and let them sleep, Ilyr.”
“Where do you think I am going?” he asked, proud that his voice didn’t quaver. The idea that Tayihe had ever treated him with courtesy was laughable, but he didn’t laugh. He shut the door quietly.
“To find wai,” she said. “You are an addict. Don’t go, Ilyr.”
She knew it was customary to address him as Your Highness. He knew she knew. Everything she said was deliberate. Calling him an addict was further insult. He was a man in desperate need of a drink, that was all.
“You’ve wanted me to leave since I arrived, and now you tell me not to go?” He’d never spoken so boldly to her before. Was it his broken heart or his loosened tongue at fault? “I can’t imagine you care so much about my well-being, or about Thiyo and Ev’s supposed mission. It’s all mainland trouble, isn’t it?”
“I don’t care about you,” she said, and though she was only confirming what he’d said, to hear it stated outright was a slap. “You have to come my home twice now, once to take my child away from me and once to lie to me that Thiyo was dead.”
“I thought he was dead too!”
The hard line of her mouth softened, but when she spoke, she said, “I don’t forgive you. I can’t. Were I speaking only for myself, I would let you walk out of this house and ruin yourself however you wish. But Thiyo cares about you, and will take it hard if you drink yourself to death, and so, for Thiyo, I am asking you not to.”
“Speaking for Thiyo,” Ilyr said. His mouth twisted into some mockery of a smile. He’d been the topic of Tayihe and Thiyo’s greatest disagreement, and Thiyo had chosen Ilyr over his own mother. Now Thiyo had spurned them both. “So you scraped up some last remnant of maternal feeling?”
The blow didn’t land. Tayihe’s expression remained fixed on him. “I know Thiyo’s heart. Does your mother know yours?”
Tayihe’s aim was better than his, and rather than admit how little he knew of maternal feeling, Ilyr said, “If you think Thiyo cares for me, you don’t know his heart.” He hadn’t meant to break eye contact or cross his arms over his chest, but he’d done both.
“He loves you,” Tayihe said. “Just not in the way that you want. Don’t go, Ilyr. Don’t hurt him any more than you already have. He’s suffering.”
If that didn’t merit a godsdamned drink, what did? He couldn’t take any more of this. “I was always going to make him unhappy,” Ilyr said, and then he turned and walked out the door.
17
Flattering Thoughts
After the red cliffs of Laalvur, the glistening white square towers of Nalitzva, and the lush forested mountains of Kae and Hoi, Ndija disappointed Ev. Smugglers and desperate exiles weren’t in a position to build grand edifices. The low, wooden buildings leaned at funny angles, their faded paint flaking off. As in all harbors, the salt air was a riot of scent and sound. Ev heard many languages she didn’t recognize, and some she did. Ndija had a large population of Adpri exiles—supplemented in recent times by a stream of refugees from the starving city—and there were Laalvuri sailors in the port as well. It was strange to be able to overhear a conversation by accident after so many months in places where that was impossible for her.
She’d tried very hard not to listen to Thiyo’s last conversation with Tayihe before they’d departed. Whatever success he’d had in conversation with Ilyr, it had encouraged him to open up. Tayihe, with her gift for languages, was in an even better position than Ilyr to understand her son. They’d talked for long hours while Ilyr had sulked and Ev had lain in bed pretending to be asleep.
As for Ilyr, he’d left Tayihe’s house while they were sleeping. Tayihe had reported that she’d tried to stop him, and Thiyo had been crushed to discover him gone. They’d searched for him without success, and then their ship was leaving, and they’d had no choice but to leave with it.
Useless pile-of-ash bastard. Ev could imagine herself repeating one of her father’s complaints about rich people. Ilyr had promised to help them and then he’d vanished. Now they were alone in Ndija, a half-Adpri girl and an islander who couldn’t speak, with a message of dire importance and very little idea what to do.
Tayihe had given them some money and Ev had already taken it to the exchange, so they weren’t empty-handed. But Ev wasn’t sure how much anything in Ndija cost, least of all the service she and Thiyo were currently seeking. Ev hesitated at the entrance to the street, taking in the crooked wooden buildings that lined it and the sign hanging over her with a sun-damaged painting of hands on it. Tayihe hadn’t told her about this place, the Street of the Healing Hands. Ev had asked around on their ship and at the exchange, as coyly as possible, until someone had given her directions.
What Tayihe had said was “They say you can find anything in Ndija.” She’d glanced at Thiyo and then refused to elaborate.
“Have you been?” Ev had asked her.
She’d scoffed. “A town full of mainlander criminals,” she’d said. “Why would I want to go? I have enough people lying to me here at home.”
Ev h
ad extrapolated from that. Tayihe wanted her to look for someone who could help Thiyo. She’d asked half a dozen people, “Where would I go if I wanted… help with an unusual problem?” Ultimately, they’d sent her here. In every doorway of the long, narrow street, someone hawked their services. Ev began to understand Tayihe’s wariness. “An end to nightmares,” called one woman. “Freedom from pain,” called the man across from her. “Know the future!” came from somewhere after the bend in the road. “Forget the one who broke your heart!” called someone, and another seller laughed and said, “Better yet, make the one who broke your heart forget!”
This market for magic made Ev uneasy. What was this place, where Lacemakers could ply their trade and no one blinked an eye? Still, she wandered forward, Thiyo’s hand clenched in hers, waiting to hear one of the sellers call out “remember” instead of “forget.”
Some of the sellers addressed Ev directly. “You want him to forget his other lovers, girl?”
Ev stiffened and stomped onward. The relief she felt that Thiyo couldn’t understand the question was instantly tainted with guilt. He should have understood. He should have replied with something clever. Instead, he tugged at her hand as she hurried to get them away, and when she glanced back at him, one corner of his smile tilted upward.
Never mind. He understood far too much already.
“You want to know if he’ll marry you? You want to know how many children he’ll give you?” called a tan, redheaded woman leaning in a doorway. She wore one of the asymmetrical skirts Ev had seen all over the city, with a hem that revealed one leg all the way up to the thigh, yet trailed behind her in the back. After so much time among islanders, Ev wasn’t as scandalized by the sight of the woman’s bare leg, but the skirts themselves offended her. Horrendously impractical. What if you needed to fight someone? Or run somewhere?
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