A fake smile wouldn’t fool Alizhan, who never looked at Ev’s face. But Alizhan wasn’t here and Ev might never see her again.
“Good,” Djal said. “You’re thinking of Alizhan. Now shut me out by thinking of something else.”
Thiyo had straightened at the mention of Alizhan’s name. Ev wondered if he had any idea what Djal was trying to get her to do. She certainly didn’t.
“You don’t have to stop thinking about her—or Thiyo,” Djal said. “You just have to hold two thoughts in your head at once. It’s sleight of hand. Direct my attention where you want it to go. Distract me from your real thoughts.”
Thiyo had definitely heard his own name. Ev tried not to think of that. She didn’t want Djal to comment on it. Instead, she studied the coarse weave of the sheets beneath her. They might once have been white but they were now a dirty grey. The Emperor’s Head wasn’t a luxury establishment.
“Good,” Djal said.
“But I distracted myself as well,” Ev said.
“It’s a start. Anything’s better than what you’ve been doing.”
Heat crept up her neck and into her cheeks. God only knew what Djal had accidentally overheard—or witnessed?—in her thoughts. Did he know about the drowning dreams? Had he told Mala? If he’d seen those, what else had he seen?
“The goal is to shut out anyone who might be listening,” Djal said. “Ideally, you’d do it instinctively and I’d perceive you as blank. But if you don’t have the instinct, it’s tedious to learn that level of defense—Thiyo is chiming in here to agree with me about just how tedious, and I have to assume he was born with the instinct. You get the idea. So for you, being able to put up a screen of bland, harmless thoughts will be good enough. With practice, you’ll learn to hold two things in your mind. We’ll keep doing this as we travel. Adappyr might not have quite as large a population of mind-readers as Ndija, but there are enough to make me worry.”
So Thiyo did know what they were doing, even though all he’d seen was the two of them sitting in the room. What had tipped him off?
“I think you know the answer,” Djal said. “And you know, I was right before—when I said being louder on the outside would help you be quieter inside. You can’t hide from me because you’re too busy hiding from yourself. All that denial takes work, little sister.”
Ev had told Alizhan how she felt. She wasn’t lying to herself anymore. She had no idea what Djal was talking about.
And before she could ask, he’d walked out of the room and left her alone with Thiyo.
Ev locked the door and drew the curtains to block most of the light. They readied for bed in silence. They’d spent enough time together without speaking that Ev ought to be able to discern the nature of their silences, but this one was mysterious to her. It wasn’t comfortable, she knew that.
That thought, and far too many others, kept her awake. She lay on her back and then on her stomach. She threw the sheets off and pulled them back up. Sleep didn’t come. Her thoughts raced. They multiplied, so wild and numerous that Djal could probably hear them from rooms away. She worried about where they were and where they were going and where they’d been. Would they ever get home? Was Alizhan even still alive? Hours passed like years.
If it were possible for anyone to see the future, Ev thought bitterly, she would have developed the skill through sheer force of worrying.
Ev rolled onto her side and brought her knees up to her chest. From the other side of the dark room, she heard a sigh. She hadn’t realized Thiyo was awake. He got out of his bed, crossed the room, and stood over hers. It was strange that he had his own bed to get out of—this was the first time they’d slept in separate beds in almost two weeks. Was he distressed? Had he grown accustomed to her so quickly?
If he needed her, she wouldn’t abandon him. Ev reached behind herself and lifted the sheet in silent invitation. Thiyo slipped in and folded himself up against her.
Somehow, his presence soothed her worries. It wasn’t magic. She didn’t fall asleep in an instant. But it was nice to have a reminder, especially one so solid and warm, that she wasn’t alone. She had Ifeleh, Djal, Mala, and the crew of Vines. And she had Thiyo. Whatever awaited them, they would face it together.
18
Firestarters
Alizhan spent the remainder of their journey in troubled silence. She’d read all the pamphlets that Iriyat had collected as quickly as possible and returned them to where she’d found them without being caught. What worried her was that Kasrik had been caught. Iriyat hadn’t yet imprisoned or killed him, but she’d undoubtedly identified him as Vesper—in the pamphlet, he’d identified himself—and based on the dates, Alizhan would guess that Iriyat had attacked Mar and announced her upcoming marriage specifically to threaten Kasrik.
Of course, marrying Mar had other advantages for Iriyat. It kept him close so he couldn’t plot against her, and it consolidated the wealth and power of Solor House and Varenx House. Alizhan had spent enough years working for Iriyat to appraise all the angles of such a move, and to know that once Iriyat had Solor House under her power, it wouldn’t be long before she turned her sights to the other great houses of Laalvur. She’d rule the city by herself soon enough if no one stopped her.
And not just one city. Iriyat’s business in Adappyr was designed to bring her more power. Alizhan couldn’t quite figure out how, but she knew Iriyat well enough to guess that.
They arrived at the surface of Adappyr tired and sweaty and wilting from the heat. It had taken many triads to travel here, although the distance wasn’t that great. It was the sun that made the journey difficult, limiting their traveling to a few hours at a time.
There were no buildings. Alizhan wouldn’t have known they were at the city, except that in the middle of the flat expanse of rock before them was a huge dome rising up from the ground. It was made of glass and metal, but it was impossible to see down into the city. Fabric shades were strung up inside the dome to block the worst of the sunlight.
They paused for a moment and then Vatik led them to an entrance concealed in one of the rocky outcroppings to their left. The door was cleverly disguised as part of the rock, and engineered to slide back into it. The apparatus was massive. Their whole party, horses and carriage included, went into the rectangular room inside the rock, and the attendants inside used a crank to shut the door behind them.
There were no exits from the room. Alizhan’s heart pounded. Looking at all the humans and animals inside, the space no longer seemed large. How would they get out? Was this a trap? Were they being killed?
The floor lurched beneath her feet and the room began to move.
Alizhan nearly jumped out of her skin. There was a groaning of metal, and then the room settled to a stop. When the attendants cranked open the door, the view outside was completely different, and the air that rushed in was a few degrees cooler.
They were underground.
“Your horses and carriage will be kept in the stables,” one of the attendants said to Iriyat. He didn’t bow or address her as my lady ha-Varensi, which registered to Alizhan as both very foreign and exactly what she’d expected of Adappyr, but she noted it distantly, since her pulse was still thumping from the experience of the moving room.
It was a relief to step outside, although Alizhan wasn’t sure if they were outside. Their surroundings looked like farmland, fields of crops being harvested by hundreds of workers, but there was a roof over their heads. The surface of the world. A system of skylights and mirrors meant that it was almost as bright underground as it was above.
Alizhan, Iriyat, and their half-dozen guards were escorted down a path by the other attendant. When they came to another door that looked like it might slide into the surrounding rock, Alizhan couldn’t help but ask, “Is this another moving room?”
Iriyat sighed, a reaction that was calculated to attract Alizhan’s attention, since a facial expression would have no effect. The sigh was meant to let her know that this question was
ignorant and unbecoming and Iriyat wished she’d kept it to herself.
The attendant laughed. “We call them elevators. And yes. You are meeting with First Structural Engineer Buriyewon Ichinek at the city offices on the Right Bank, in Stoneforest, which is the fourth level.”
A trip four times as long as the one she’d just endured. The Adpri attendant was quiet, and Iriyat was blank as always, but Vatik and the five men under his command were not. It was one thing to ride through the open desert with them, but the thought of another trip in that box, contending with the minds of six people, made Alizhan ill.
The fields around them, populated by dozens of people, were as tranquil as Iriyat had predicted. It wasn’t the featureless blank of Iriyat herself, but a calm and distant murmur. People in Adappyr knew how to manage their thoughts. That was a relief. A whole underground city pulsing and writhing with the feelings of thousands of people might have killed Alizhan—if not, she would have wished herself dead.
“I see the elevator disagrees with you,” the attendant said. “Perhaps you’d prefer to take the stairs?”
Alizhan nodded vigorously.
“Perhaps someone could make she sure arrives,” Iriyat said, indicating that she had no plans to take the stairs herself. It had been a tiring journey, but Alizhan would have walked down a hundred flights of stairs to avoid the elevator. This was only four. And now that she knew Iriyat wouldn’t be accompanying her, it sounded all the more pleasant. Alizhan didn’t miss that Iriyat wanted her surveilled, but she’d be watched either way.
“Of course,” he said. He called to one of the women working in the fields and they had a brief exchange in Adpri. From what little Alizhan could feel, it was cheerful.
“Hello,” the woman said in hesitant Laalvuri. She waved for Alizhan to follow her.
There was a set of stairs right next to the elevator but Alizhan’s guide opted for a different one, leading her through fields and orchards. Alizhan marveled at the farmland around her. How many years—and how many thousands of people—had it taken to build all this? There were rumors that Adappyr had suffered famines in recent years, but with such a harvest surrounding her, Alizhan had a hard time imagining it.
That is, until her guide took her around a pile of rubble that had obviously once been a wall. It was cordoned off, but a whole section of the grain field had been crushed. Repairs had been made to the ceiling and a new wall had been built, but the debris from the collapse was still visible. Alizhan could see a few stems poking up through the rubble. Her guide had no reaction to the sight, suggesting that it was unremarkable to her. Or that she was hiding her thoughts. But her warmth was easy enough to read—she was happy to have a task other than working in the field, even if it was only leading a foreigner down the stairs—so Alizhan suspected the former.
Alizhan wished she could ask her guide questions. How could she convey to this stranger that even though she didn’t speak Adpri, she could probably understand anything the woman wanted to say to her? And that if the woman would permit Alizhan to touch her, they might be able to have more of a conversation? Alizhan had only achieved that once, with Mala, but maybe everyone in Adappyr was adept with magic.
It was worth a try. Alizhan pointed at the debris. “What’s that?”
Her gesture was translation enough. The woman waved her hand, dismissing the pile. But she didn’t say anything. Alizhan probably wouldn’t have been able to understand anyway, not with the woman protecting her thoughts.
The stairwell the woman led her into was busy with traffic in both directions. Alizhan had expected people to be carrying baskets of produce or grain, but she supposed they must use the elevators for transporting those things. People filed by, a brilliant parade of colors and prints. It was strange not to know exactly what they were thinking, but to have vague impressions of contentment or concentration or concern.
Knowing about the increasing frequency of the collapses in the city—and that Iriyat was causing them—Alizhan had expected more fear. But if these people were worried about the structural integrity of their home, or about the various violent political factions Alizhan had heard about, they were keeping it quiet.
The traffic changed as they descended. The top two levels were mostly farmland, and the people moving through them were obviously there to harvest and distribute food. She saw a few people with aprons over their clothes, butchers or bakers or cooks. The number of these people diminished as they went into the third level, and Alizhan noted that people’s clothes became brighter and more elaborate. As they passed the third level, she heard music and raucous laughter. The fourth level had a more serious tone, and that was where her guide led her out of the staircase.
Adappyr didn’t feel like it was underground. Alizhan couldn’t see the sky, and every street had an echoing ceiling of rock, but there were large open spaces and plenty of light, whether from the same system of skylights and mirrors as she’d seen in the uppermost level, or from a profusion of lamps.
Her guide led her through a few twists and turns until they arrived at an official-looking doorway with signage that Alizhan couldn’t read. Then the young woman waved one hand, turned on her heel, and left. Alizhan knocked on the door and was ushered inside.
All six of Iriyat’s guards were seated in the foyer, drinking something from ceramic cups, but Alizhan was led past them and into a private meeting room with Iriyat and a middle-aged bald man. They were seated around a table with a huge map of the city spread out on it. This must be Buriyewon Ichinek, First Structural Engineer of Adappyr.
“Those men you sent to us, The Lampgreen Company, have been a great help in rescuing people from collapsed sections of the city,” he was saying to Iriyat. “Ah, this must be your daughter.”
It gave Alizhan a start to be addressed that way in public. Ichinek stood and shook her gloved hand, inviting her to sit.
“Your mother is a great friend to our city,” he said. “She has done so much for us.”
He’d marked the pages of the map to show the sites of the collapses. There were dozens. The one Alizhan had seen earlier must have indeed been unremarkable to her guide.
“Yes,” Alizhan said, looking at the map. Iriyat had indeed done so much. And how? Had she paid people to weaken the city’s walls and columns somehow? She must have. Adappyr had this whole fancy office dedicated to the upkeep of their infrastructure, including the man in front of her whose title was First Structural Engineer. That suggested there was a second, and possibly more. These people maintained their home. It wouldn’t simply crumble on its own.
The map was eight pages, one for the surface, six for the levels of the city, and one marking the locations of surrounding mines. Every page showed collapses. It made Alizhan think of how deep underground they were, and how much earth would bury them if the walls fell down around them.
“As I saying,” Ichinek said. “There are rabble rousers in the city who insist that these collapses cannot be accidents of the world’s natural movements. Ludicrous, I know. But their voices grow louder, and they trouble me. They say I am a fraud. I could use your help to silence them.”
“Who do you suspect?” Iriyat said, not at all distressed by a request to silence this man’s political enemies.
“They’re Believers, for the most part, but I am concerned that this myth—the lie that somehow, some sinister person is causing these collapses—has spread to other factions. Even the Pure begin to whisper among themselves.”
“Names, Ichinek.” Iriyat was implacable.
“Ulachiru,” he said. “It is the family name of the Second Structural Engineer. She herself is a quiet one, but one of her sons, Sanno, has been speaking out. He’s a writer on the Left Bank. He works in Underfoot.”
“His mother will have to be dealt with,” Iriyat said. “I’ll see to it.”
Apparently Iriyat felt so safe in what she was doing that she didn’t care if Alizhan witnessed this conversation. “What are you planning?” Alizhan demanded.
“These people insist that something can be done to fix the city—other than repairing the damage from the collapses as they happen,” Ichinek said. “It is a waste of time and resources. Your mother has offered to persuade them to abandon their cause.”
“Can something be done?” Alizhan asked.
Ichinek spluttered. “You think I would not help my city, if I could? This is the way of the world! The ground shifts. I cannot stop it! We can only react.”
“These people who think the collapses are caused by some… agent,” Alizhan said. “Who do they suspect?”
“It doesn’t matter!” Ichinek burst out. “It’s all nonsense! Conspiracies!”
For an instant, he was angry enough that his defenses slipped. All his unspoken answers to her question flowed into her mind. Witchcraft. Firestarters. Foreign agents. Buriyewon Ichinek. So Ichinek himself stood accused. No wonder he didn’t want to discuss it. His thoughts provided some other interesting leads. If Alizhan assumed that “foreign agents” meant “Iriyat,” then the correct answer was probably a mixture of all of those things.
“What’s a Firestarter?” Alizhan asked.
Ichinek said to Iriyat, his tone laced with accusation, “You did not tell me what your daughter could do.”
“You know what I can do,” Iriyat said, and Alizhan was shocked to hear her speak of it so openly. “You should have guessed.”
If Iriyat was talking to this man about her abilities, that meant one of two things. Either she planned to erase his memory or she planned to kill him. Alizhan tried to keep her composure. What had Iriyat promised this man, that he was so deeply loyal to her? She’d always inspired loyalty in Varenx House, but it was aided by the touch of her bare hands. She visited Adappyr on business sometimes. Had she spent enough time here to have manipulated Ichinek’s memory? Or had she promised him something in their correspondence? Was she bribing him? Was he simply a greedy fool?
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