“A Firestarter,” Iriyat began, “is a member of a particular political faction in this city. You know, I presume, that references to fire are considered shocking and obscene in Adpri culture. The name is deliberately provocative. Like the faction known as The Pure, Firestarters adhere to the utopian vision of their martyred leader, Usmam Umarsad, but unlike The Pure, they believed his revolutionary vision cannot be achieved in the city as it currently stands.”
Usmam Umarsad was Ev’s grandfather. The man her father had killed to save himself, his stepmother, and his sister from abuse. What kind of person could adhere to the vision of a man like that?
Iriyat continued calmly, “They want to burn the whole place down.”
19
Water
The relief of being able to communicate with Djal was short-lived. Thiyo could speak, but not be spoken to. He was still locked out of conversations. The nuances of what Ev and the crew of Vines had planned were lost on him, but Ev seemed less anxious in their company and was going along with them, so Thiyo assumed they must be going to Adappyr as well. That was still the goal—or the first of several increasingly difficult goals.
Vines had a crew of thirty-five, but only Ifeleh, Djal, Mala, and three others were traveling. There were two men and a teenage boy who talked all the time. The rest of the sailors would stay with the ship while it was docked in Ndija.
At least, that’s what Thiyo guessed. Only those six crew members were outfitted for traveling, and if he were captain of a ship, he wouldn’t leave it unattended in Ndija.
Djal offered him boots, new clothes, and a pack. The clothes were distressingly unfashionable, and Thiyo made sure Djal knew it. Djal found him amusing, and conveyed Thiyo’s thoughts to Ev, who only rolled her eyes. She looked dashing in her new tunic and trousers in blue. Mala had offered her a skirt like the ones women wore in Ndija, with a high hem in the front and a train in the back, and Ev had looked horrified by even joking about it. An unsurprising reaction—she was a practical woman—and yet still endearing. Thiyo had many opinions on what colors and cuts made Ev look the most radiant, but even if she wanted to hear them, which she undoubtedly didn’t, he was forced to keep them to himself.
The clothes that were offered to him were long-sleeved and knit. He hadn’t expected that for a trip across the Day continent, but an instant of reflection made things clear. They couldn’t possibly travel over land, not with the blistering, constant sun.
They were going underground.
Thiyo knew little of Adappyr. The language was gone from his memory, and he’d never bothered much with the stories in Halelitha’s recited epics. He vaguely recalled that Adpri culture had changed a great deal since the fall of the Day Empire, and the language in their ancient epics had little to do with the modern vernacular. That wasn’t useful. There were multiple underground levels, he thought, and famous mines, and a river that ran through the city. The rest would be entirely new to him. Everything was a novelty when you lived in such ignorance.
The entrance to the caves was as well maintained as anything in Ndija, which was to say not very, but someone had cleared the way and built a set of wooden steps down into the cave at some point. The railing wobbled disconcertingly. Having descended the stairs, the rest of their path was on the cave floor. It was slippery-smooth, but Thiyo trusted it more than he’d trusted those stairs. The caves were damp. Perhaps they planned to follow a branch of Adappyr’s underground river into the city.
Thiyo tugged his new wool coat tighter and followed Ev down the sloping ground and into the darkness. She was carrying a glass lamp, its fluid sloshing, but the cave only seemed eerier in its green glow. He’d been excited to travel to Nalitzva with Ilyr, and to Estva with Alizhan and Ev, but his enthusiasm for this journey had dimmed. What good was traveling if he couldn’t talk to anyone about it?
Djal dropped back until he was walking next to Thiyo, then nudged him in the side with his elbow.
I can talk to you but you can’t talk to me, Thiyo thought, grouchy. That’s hardly better.
Djal shrugged and kept pace with him.
Had he been asked before, Thiyo would have said that his part of the conversation was always the best and most important part, but being unable to understand anyone else had humbled him on this point. There was little use in being witty and clever in a void. He sighed.
I suppose I should tell you something useful, as long as we’re doing this, Thiyo thought. It was a funny thing, thinking at someone. He had to organize his thoughts clearly in order to convey them. I translated a secret journal written by Iriyat ha-Varensi in which she detailed her plan to control the movements of our world. She was particularly interested in controlling—that is to say, causing—events like waves, quakes, and eruptions. The collapses in Adappyr are part of her first large-scale experiment.
Even without language, Thiyo knew the word Djal said was obscene.
I don’t know how she’s causing them. She’s discreetly paying people to demolish parts of the city, I assume. She wasn’t foolish enough to name her associates. But she tracked every collapse meticulously. As I tried to tell Ev, if enough of those collapses cause a quake in Adappyr, there’s a chance Adap will erupt. Whether or not that happens, there will likely be a wave in Laalvur soon after the quake.
Djal was wide-eyed. Thiyo assumed he was asking the same question that Thiyo had asked after reading Iriyat’s journal. Did she know she might cause a wave to hit her home? Was it a desired consequence of her work or an accidental side effect?
I don’t know if Iriyat knows about the wave hitting Laalvur, Thiyo said. I spent a lot of time translating her journal and I still don’t know. She always claims that she studies them in order to prevent one, but she dreams of waves all the time and then writes about them… almost lovingly. She can’t be trusted. We have to warn Adappyr and Laalvur.
Djal was shaking his head and swearing again. He walked a few paces ahead to catch up with the rest of the group and convey to them what Thiyo had just said. Thiyo could only watch their reactions. He was gratified that Ev didn’t look surprised, only worried. She’d understood him after all.
Ev had learned a lot from the Vines crew in the triad they’d spent walking through the caves of the Exile Road. She’d had a quick education on Adpri politics and customs and a long overdue discussion of her own family’s history. Only the Adpri crew members had accompanied their captain on this trek, and she learned all of the things they were most excited to revisit in their long-lost home: friends, relatives, particular food stalls in the market, dancehalls, theaters, gambling dens, certain views of the underground Ija river, and lovers.
Some things, she wished she could unlearn.
That was true of the song the crew had taken up, which Ev assumed was called “The Girls in Ndija” from its repeating refrain. It had seemingly endless verses listing the virtues of the women in every city state, country, and empire, and how none of these virtues compared to the vices of the girls in Ndija, which were also listed in obscene detail.
They’d been singing for what felt like hours, and worst of all, the song was simple and repetitive enough that Thiyo had picked it up and joined in.
“I can’t believe you’re willing to study this but you were a miserable soot stain about my reasonable, useful lessons and Halelitha’s epics,” Ev told him. It was a lie, though, because she could believe it. Thiyo only grinned at her. She had a feeling he knew what the song was about.
Actually, Ev had a feeling he could understand and say far more than he let on. He just didn’t like making mistakes, so he refused to risk speaking with her.
He’d risked it with Ilyr at that last meal at Halelitha’s. Ev remembered that well enough. Of course, he’d had akilithana then, which had made him violently ill the next triad. She hoped whatever Ilyr had said had been worth it. She’d been the one to clean up that mess, since even when Ilyr had been with them, he’d been too busy brooding to help.
Thiyo seemed happie
r now, so she let him keep singing. She wished she could do what Djal was doing for him. Somehow, even in this group of people in the enclosed space of the caves, she felt alone.
The caves had changed as they’d walked, growing cooler and damper. Ev frequently had to hunch her shoulders to avoid hitting her head, and the rest of their group was as tall or taller than her. In the breaks between song verses, dripping echoed throughout the caverns. Water pooled in low places. Ev had stepped in enough cold puddles by now that she was watching carefully for her lamp’s glinting reflections. Some sections of the cave were low enough all across that their group simply had to wade through water up to their knees.
These sections became more and more frequent until they reached a place where Ev couldn’t see the other side of the water. The pool’s facing edge and the arching ceiling of the cave were illuminated by her lamp but the far side of the water receded into darkness until she could no longer tell where it ended and the stone began.
“A flooded section,” Ifeleh said. “The first of three. We’ll have to swim. Everything perishable in our packs is wrapped, and everything else will dry eventually. You only have to hold your breath for a moment, then the ceiling rises and you can put your head above water again. The lamps should work underwater, but if they don’t, this section is relatively straight. Keep swimming in the same direction.”
Ifeleh always went first. Ev watched her wade into the water up to her shoulders and then it consumed her, her lamp, and her pack, leaving only a few ripples on the surface to mark where she’d been. Her disappearance sent a spear of panic through Ev.
All that water.
She hadn’t ever been swimming before being thrown overboard from Honesty and she’d barely been in water since. Thiyo had tried to take her to that hot spring, but they’d run into Ilyr, and Ev had been spared the experience. But now there was no choice. Adappyr was on the other side of that water—on the other side of several more enclosed stretches of water. Her lungs went tight and airless just thinking about it. She couldn’t possibly get into that pool. What proof did they have that Ifeleh was getting out on the other side? Maybe she’d already drowned. What other fate could possibly await them in that darkness? It was impossible to see down into the water. Who knew what might be lurking there? Ev had been in the ocean—where at least there was air and light—and she’d survived only by a miraculous stroke of luck. In this gloomy, dripping tunnel, the chances of another such miracle were vanishingly small. Ev would have to turn around and hike back through the caves to Ndija by herself, or she’d have to find an exit and cross the sun-baked surface, but she’d die if she went into that water.
Ev didn’t realize her body had somehow folded to the ground without permission until Thiyo sat down next to her and put a hand on her shoulder. She was breathing too fast. Ifeleh had gone into the water, then one by one her crew had followed her, and Djal had gone and Mala had gone and now only Thiyo and Ev were left and they were going to die right here in this cave, where there was no air.
Thiyo had turned her so they were facing each other and he had a hand on each of her shoulders. He was breathing very slowly and deliberately. His face was illuminated by their lamps on the cave floor. Ev didn’t know how much time passed before she matched her breathing to his, only that it happened eventually.
Thiyo gripped one of her hands. He looked from her to the water and back again.
Ev shook her head. “I can’t.” She said it quietly but it echoed.
“You can.”
Surprise overtook fear for an instant. “A sentence,” Ev marveled. “You said—”
“Yes,” Thiyo interrupted, irritated and embarrassed by her reaction. He pulled on her hand, encouraging her to stand up. He tilted his head at the water. “We go.”
She managed to stand up, but one long look at that impenetrable black pool and her stomach dropped again. “Thiyo, no, I can’t, who knows what’s in there, I—” keep imagining something swimming up underneath me and tangling in my feet. Ev stopped. It wasn’t her imagination so much as a memory: the searing pain of a medusa stinger corroding her shoe and burning the sole of her foot. It felt real. Mala had said Ev was wounded, and this was what she’d meant.
Thiyo pulled on her hand again. He was standing in the shallowest part of the pool now, water up to his ankles. He gestured down at his feet, showing her that he was fine.
Ev didn’t move.
He tugged on her arm again and fixed her with a look. “You, me, water, now.”
Ev wrenched her hand out of his and shook her head. She was going to be sick. She couldn’t do this. “You go. I’ll go back.” She pointed back the way they had come.
“Ev.”
“I can’t, Thiyo.”
Thiyo gave her an exaggerated shrug and walked into the water by himself. Ev stood frozen, only her heart pounding, as he disappeared into the water. Was he really leaving her alone here? She’d always known they’d say goodbye at some point, but she hadn’t expected it to be like this. The air in the cave felt thinner already, but that didn’t make any sense. It was just her body, panicking again. What would she do now? She’d have to go back to Ndija by herself and find a way to get to Laalvur somehow—find Alizhan—warn her—
Thiyo’s head popped up above the surface. He grinned at her and spread his arms wide. “See?”
Ev only frowned at him, so he walked back out of the pool, sloshing water everywhere. Everything he was wearing, including his pack, was soaked. His hand was cold when he grabbed hers. “You and me,” he said, his voice low and serious. He indicated the pool with his head again, as if Ev didn’t know what he wanted by now.
“I’m not getting in there for less than a full sentence,” Ev said, and it was a joke because obviously she wasn’t getting into the water at all, but also not a joke because she had to say something to make him stay.
Thiyo sighed. He came around behind her and pushed firmly on her pack, propelling her forward a step.
Ev stopped in her tracks and twisted around to glare at him. “You think you can push me somewhere I don’t want to go? I’d like to see you try.”
“Ev,” he pleaded. He drew out a long gesture in front of them, signifying the length of the caves, pointing beyond the water. “Ifeleh, Djal, Mala… Adappyr.”
“They were going anyway. They don’t need us.”
“Quake,” Thiyo argued.
“Yeah, and what exactly are we supposed to do about that?” It only occurred to Ev then that she’d never taught Thiyo the word quake. Where had he learned it?
He pushed her toward the water again. “Swim.”
“You swim,” she said. “I don’t know how.”
“Yes,” he said, but Ev knew he wasn’t agreeing with her rock-solid, incontrovertible point. “We swim.”
This time, when he caught her by the hand and headed for the water, she let him. He’d said at least two sentences, after all. We survived the ocean together, she chastised her frantic heart. What’s a little puddle? Her heart didn’t slow as the water rose around her legs and over her hips and up to her shoulders. They continued down the gentle slope of the cave floor until the moment when it grew too deep for either of them to keep their head above the water. Her arms were underwater now, invisible even in the faint glow of the glass lamp she’d hung around her neck, but she clenched Thiyo’s hand and he looked back at her and nodded. We swim.
He’d taught her to swim in the single most harrowing instant of her life. She could do this. This time, she hadn’t been thrown overboard. She’d chosen to walk into the water. All she had to do now was kick her feet and keep her head above the surface.
Until they came to the part of the cave where the ceiling dipped low, forming a flooded tunnel. Thiyo took a demonstrative deep breath and ducked under. He didn’t let go of her hand. Ev followed. Wading through deep water with their packs had been difficult and swimming was worse. Even with lamps, it was murky in the tunnel, sediment from the cave floor stirred into the
water by their friends’ passage. Ev could hardly see, but she could feel Thiyo pulling her forward, so she kicked and kicked and tried not to think about air until at last she felt him pull her up. Her first breath was a welcome shock and every breath after that was a gift.
She hadn’t had to think about her breathing or her pounding heart in all those long minutes of crossing through, and Ev was surprised to discover that focusing on survival had imposed order on her body. Her panic had dissipated.
The cave ceiling was only a handspan above the surface of the water where they’d come up, but as they swam forward, it arched high above them. Eventually they came to a place where their feet could touch the ground again, and after that it was nothing to walk out of the water.
They splashed up to the edge of the pool, soaked and chilled, where the others were waiting. Ev hugged Thiyo, and if a tear or two escaped her, no one could tell. Her face was already wet.
20
Don't Leave Me
Thiyo had guided Ev through two more flooded sections of the cave and then, thank Mah Yee, they’d come to a long, dry stretch. It wasn’t dry by any normal standard, but it didn’t require swimming, which was good enough for Thiyo. He’d had enough of emerging from cold pools into cold air and shivering in his wet clothes. By now he objected to swimming almost as much as Ev.
She’d made it, though. He’d always thought Ev was brave, but that was because he’d watched her run into fights and face down monsters. He’d never really seen her afraid. It was different to watch someone conquer their own fear. It almost made him want to… well, she’d elicited a few words out of him in a desperate moment. Maybe that was enough for now.
As they walked, Thiyo marked which caves were carved by nature and which by human efforts. Most of the caverns were natural, with rounded walls and ceilings, sometimes forested with thin spires of stone. But previous travelers had connected one cave to another by clearing passages with explosives, so sometimes there were piles of rubble, or places where they had to cross through a narrow space braced by wooden beams.
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