Evreyet looked at her hands. They were broad and long-fingered and she didn’t usually wear gloves. She must have been a child in the memory, to have such small hands.
She wandered through the gardens, wondering if the site of that memory would spark anything, but she couldn’t find the particular bush she’d been hiding in. She looped back around the house, drawn by the vaguest of memories to the Nightward side. There were few trees or bushes here, as it was hard to grow things in constant shade, so the plantings were smaller and scruffier. The house had screens on this side to let in cool air. Evreyet halted outside one. Inside the house, on the ground floor, this must be Iriyat’s study.
She had a memory of lingering here, in the brush outside the screen. Fearful and desperate and hiding. Evreyet crouched down. In the memory, as uncomfortable as it was, she had no problem tucking herself against the building and not being seen. Strange. She knew her own body well enough to say that even as a child, she’d been long-limbed. This knowledge didn’t come from her mind, but from muscles still in the habit of a too-tall adolescent girl, always trying to take up less room. No habit was enough to make her current position comfortable. There was hardly any space between the edge of the house and the drop down into the weeds. She stood up and pressed her back against the house.
Maybe it wasn’t her memory.
That was crazy. How could she have someone else’s memory? She didn’t even have her own.
Sound from inside the room disturbed her. Squinting through the screen, she could see two guards enter, dragging a bloodied man between them. Iriyat was seated behind her desk, waiting. The man’s face and hair were matted with blood. He’d put up a fight. The guards dumped him on the floor.
Iriyat crossed the room and took each guard by the hand. “Thank you. Leave us.”
The moment was suspended in silence, neither man acknowledging what she’d said. They both turned and left without a glance at their victim. Evreyet shivered and couldn’t say why.
Iriyat’s desk obscured him from Evreyet’s view. When Iriyat knelt on the floor next to the man, Evreyet could only see the top of Iriyat’s blond head. At least that meant Iriyat was less likely to notice her.
Why was she spying on Iriyat, anyway? Iriyat had saved her life in Adappyr. Iriyat was kindly taking care of her while she was useless. If Iriyat had some business in the city that required her guards to drop a half-dead man at her feet, Evreyet ought to turn away and ask no questions.
Whoever Evreyet was, she wasn’t that person. She stayed to watch.
“Vatik,” Iriyat said. She jostled him until he moaned. “I want to talk to you.”
His speech was slurred and there was a sound that might have been spitting blood. “What’s there to say? Just kill me.”
Evreyet stiffened against the stone wall, trying not to breathe. This man thought Iriyat was going to kill him? Now she really couldn’t leave.
And there was something about this—being outside this room, listening to a secret between Iriyat and Vatik, dread curling in her stomach—that was more familiar than anything else Evreyet had experienced since coming back to Laalvur. And yet it had that strangeness to it, the sense that it wasn’t her own memory she was reliving. Last time they were standing up and I could see them, she thought, and had no idea where it had come from. She put her hand on his face.
Was that what would happen this time? And why did it chill her so much? Iriyat had touched those two guards earlier. Had she done something to them?
Iriyat laughed. “Oh, I will. But if you betrayed me, you must know by now that I’ll have what I want from you. The only question is whether you’ll give it to me freely. It will be painful if you don’t.”
“Do it, then. You’ve done it before.”
Do what? What was this man—Vatik—talking about? Was Iriyat going to torture him? Evreyet wished that desk weren’t in the way so she could see what Iriyat was doing. Was it wrong to stay here after hearing that? Should she run into the house and try to save this man? Evreyet was in bad shape, bruised all over, but she could hold her own against a tiny woman like Iriyat if she had to.
“Years and years of loyalty, Vatik,” Iriyat was saying. “What changed?”
“You don’t think I could have pieced it together myself? All those holes in my memory formed a pattern eventually.”
Vatik had holes in his memory just like Evreyet did. And now he was covered in blood and lying on the floor of Iriyat’s study. That didn’t bode well for Evreyet.
“Lace,” Iriyat said, and Evreyet had no idea what she was talking about. “But no, of course you didn’t put it together yourself. Alizhan told you. I just wonder when she had the opportunity. How long have I had a traitor in my ranks? What did she have you doing?”
“You know I hate that little witch,” Vatik said.
The sound of skin slapping skin and then a long groan.
“Evreyet convinced you to abandon your post in Adappyr?”
Both Iriyat and Evreyet were equally surprised to learn this. But Iriyat’s heart couldn’t have gone wild with fear the way Evreyet’s did. Iriyat had lied to her. Iriyat wasn’t her friend. And people who weren’t friends with Iriyat ended up in pools of their own blood on her study floor.
“Oh, but it was Alizhan who told you first, as I suspected. The shift of the fire in Gold Street,” Iriyat said. “That long? And you’ve been meeting with that libelous little seditionist child ever since. I’ll kill him after I kill you.” In the pause that followed, there was the soft, heavy sound of a body hitting the floor. Evreyet cringed. Was Vatik dead? Had she stood by while a man was murdered? She couldn’t continue to stand here and listen to this—but if she went inside, Iriyat might kill her too.
“He’ll get you first,” Vatik said, his voice a rasp. “Even if you kill him, the pamphlets won’t stop. You’ll make him a martyr and then you’ll really be in trouble.”
Evreyet didn’t know who they were talking about—a young man who wrote pamphlets and “the little witch,” someone named Alizhan—but she tried to hold every word in her memory. She might not be able to save this man, but maybe she could save these people.
“You think I’ve underestimated him,” Iriyat said, incredulous. “It’s the reverse, you know. That little wretch writes about me as if I were a despot who rules over this city with a hypnotic power—ha!—and yet he has underestimated me.”
“You have your hands, sure,” Vatik said. “But you’re only one woman. The only people who work with you are people you’ve tricked. You’re alone.”
“I need no one else,” Iriyat said.
Vatik hissed out one last, rattling breath.
Evreyet should have run. She’d watched Iriyat murder Vatik somehow. With her bare hands? There’d been no sound of strangulation or breaking bones. She could hardly imagine a woman as small as Iriyat killing a man of Vatik’s size with no weapons. Yet everything she’d witnessed told her that was what had happened. If that fiery desk hadn’t blocked her view, she’d know for sure.
She walked back to her room, trying not to shake. It felt impossible to know anything for sure. Iriyat had said her name in that conversation: Evreyet convinced you to abandon your post? That meant Evreyet had known Vatik before. She felt as though the ground had fallen out from beneath her. Was she responsible for his death, if she’d persuaded him to desert? Smoke.
Remaining at Varenx House was a dangerous choice, but leaving was equally fraught. She didn’t know where to go or who to ask for help, and Iriyat would come looking for her. Evreyet couldn’t hide from her, and if she tried, Iriyat would know she knew something was wrong. Right now her only advantage was that Iriyat didn’t know what she’d seen. If Iriyat found out, Evreyet guessed she’d get another convenient blank in her memory—if she didn’t end up in a pool of her own blood on the study floor.
She had to stay, though. If she’d played some part in the events that had led to Vatik’s death, she wanted to know why.
Evre
yet found out little of use over the next triad. She discovered new things about herself all the time, and unfortunately, one of those things was that she was a terrible liar. Her life—and what little memory she had—depended on Iriyat not knowing what she’d witnessed, and she could barely put a sentence together. She kept seeing Iriyat standing in her study, regarding her bloody palm with distaste. That scene cast doubt over every minute that Evreyet had spent in her company since waking up on the floor of the Sun Hall in Adappyr.
Luckily, Iriyat attributed Evreyet’s halting answers and fumbling with her tea cup to her injuries. “Perhaps a walk would do you good,” she suggested. “I’ll have two guards accompany you, just in case you suffer a fainting spell. But take a stroll through the city. It might restore you.”
Leaving Varenx House sounded ideal, and Evreyet agreed eagerly.
Her black eye was no longer swollen shut, but she wasn’t much to look at, so she wore a veil to cover as much of her face as possible. Iriyat laughed at her and said she wasn’t exhibiting the modesty that spurred virtuous women to wear veils. Evreyet thought Iriyat didn’t exhibit the modesty that spurred virtuous women to wear veils, since she was keenly aware of her own beauty and used her veil to ornament herself, to tease her admirers, and to impress the public with her devotion. But she’d have to be dumber than a pile of ash to say any of that out loud, especially after what she’d witnessed, so she smiled and nodded.
Iriyat didn’t like it when she swore, especially not with words like smoke and pile of ash. Where had Evreyet picked those up, if Laalvur was her home? She didn’t ask. It was best to keep Iriyat happy. Evreyet tended to her fear in secret, a cold little fire that would give her away if anyone caught sight of it.
The two Varenx House guards who trailed behind her weren’t the ones she’d seen last triad, thank smoke. They were giving her plenty of space. Evreyet was free to do as she pleased. For an instant, she could imagine her fears were absurd. Perhaps her mind, like her body, was bruised in the aftermath of the quake.
It was hot, but not so blistering as the desert had been, and she enjoyed the low angle of the sun and how it colored the sky so brilliantly. Her feet took her down from Varenx House and across a bridge over Denandar, then across the promontory and down the zigzagging path into Arishdenan. She wasn’t sure why she’d chosen this path, but it was a pleasant walk down into the salt air of the market, thick with the odors of fruits and cheeses and animals. She didn’t care for the smell of fish, but at least it was only one scent among many.
So many of the vendors in the market were calling out singsong chants about their wares that it took Evreyet a long moment to realize that one of them, a tall Adpri man, was calling out to her specifically.
“Ev!” he said.
Iriyat never called her that, and yet it sounded familiar. It felt more right than her full name. She approached him. The guards lingered at a polite distance.
“That is you under that ridiculous veil, isn’t it?” he said. “What the fiery fuck happened to you?”
His coarse language would have shocked Iriyat, and Evreyet took some pleasure in the thought. On impulse, she unpinned her veil to show her face.
He recoiled. “Smoke. You lost a fight.”
“There were six of them,” she said, a detail that she’d only just recalled. She had no reason to feel defensive in front of this stranger.
“Congratulations on surviving, in that case,” he said. He offered her a thornfruit and she took it. Then he switched into Adpri and said, in a low voice, “I assume you have good reasons for not coming to see us.”
He’d noticed the guards. Evreyet must know this man—and others, since he’d said us—but she couldn’t remember how. She was afraid to ask. It was a precarious thing, not knowing her own life, and it left her shifting her weight from one foot to the other, worried and embarrassed. She’d taken an instant liking to this stranger, with his swearing and his deep voice, and she didn’t want to offend him by revealing the gap in her memory. She chose her words carefully, hoping to conceal her ignorance. In Laalvuri, because none of this was secret, she said, “I returned to the city last triad. I’ve been recovering in Iriyat’s care. This is the first time I’ve left Varenx House.”
His eyes went wide with alarm, but all he said was, “I see.”
He bent down, reaching for something blocked from sight by his wooden cart full of crates of fruit. When he stood again, he was holding a book. “This is a new edition. I bought it for you a few months ago. Been keeping it with me, just in case.”
He spoke these words like a confession, like they exposed some vulnerable part of himself, and Evreyet accepted the leather-bound book with trepidation. Who was this man? What was he giving her?
He hadn’t inscribed the book, much to her dismay. She wanted to know his name. She turned to the title page, looking for other clues. It was the first volume of a series of novels called The Sunrise Chronicles, and it sparked the same vague feeling of familiarity that chased her around the city. She’d have to read it to find out why. She flipped through the first few pages, not wanting to ruin any potential plot developments, and felt something shift. She opened the book wider and discovered it was stuffed with leaflets. At a glance, their titles spoke of radical politics. Letters from Another World, No. 23: On the Cruelty and Injustice of the Council of Nine. Letters from Another World, No. 1: On the Scandal of Gold Street.
Were these the pamphlets that Iriyat and Vatik had discussed? Iriyat had mentioned Gold Street.
That a quasi-stranger would hand her a hidden trove of seditious revolutionary literature should have alarmed her, but it felt as right as when he’d called her “Ev.” This was the key to everything. Her name wasn’t Evreyet. She didn’t work for someone as ruthless as Iriyat. She was some kind of revolutionary, and she had to find the author of these pamphlets and warn him that his life was in danger.
Ev clutched the book to her chest, moved by this man and his gift. She’d have to find somewhere out of the way to examine it. “Thank you.”
“Just come back when you’re ready.”
Come back where? Ready how? “I will,” she said, no idea of what she was promising.
“Oh, and Ev, I’ve heard she thinks those books are frivolous,” he continued, and there was no doubt who she was. He switched to Adpri again, keeping his tone conversational. “It’s the kind of gift that might get you in trouble.”
“I can see that. But I’m already in trouble,” Ev said in the same language, finally sharing his worry that the guards might be listening. It was the truest thing she’d said yet. “Why stop now?”
“That’s my girl,” he said. “You always get yourself out in the end. But you let me know if you need help. You know your mother and I would do anything for you—including raising all your little siblings. Every one of them is ten times as much trouble as you, and you know what that means.”
Ev’s mouth dropped open. Your mother and I. Had she been speaking to her father this whole time? That would explain his familiarity. The way he’d called out to her with such certainty even when her face had been covered. She’d been avoiding mirrors since her injury, her face a mess of bruises, but she’d seen enough to know there was a resemblance. His height alone ought to have tipped her off. Unease slithered through her stomach. What else had she forgotten? She didn’t remember a mother, or any siblings, but this man who was probably her father implied she had both. Would these things ever come back to her?
“Can we… go somewhere?” Ev asked. A desperate, impossible request. The guards would follow wherever she went. “To talk?”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” he asked. He kept his eyes on her.
“I don’t know,” she said with honesty. And then, very quietly, “I don’t have anyone else I can talk to.”
“What about your friend? Alizhan?”
That name had come up in Iriyat and Vatik’s conversation. It must be a woman, with a name ending in an, but Ev knew no
thing else, except that Vatik had called her the little witch. She hadn’t encountered anyone with that name since Iriyat shook her awake in the Sun Hall.
Ev took too much time composing her response, because the man who might be her father said, “You don’t remember?”
Caught. She shook her head, the slightest of movements. Dread had settled over her whole body, weighing her down. Iriyat had done this to her. She didn’t know how or why, but she was sure of that. Iriyat had made a hole in her memory, just like she’d made a hole in Vatik’s memory before she’d killed him.
“Worse trouble than you thought,” her father said. “I did wonder about your memory, but I thought you were being cagey for some other reason. Look, I don’t know a smoking thing about fixing this sort of problem. I can tell you what I know, but that’s not much. It seems to me that your friend would be of use.”
The one he’d already mentioned. Alizhan. “I don’t know where she is. Or if she’s even alive. Can you tell me… what do you think happened to me?”
“I don’t think you should go back there,” he said, and from his tone, she knew there was Varenx House. Was he avoiding the question? Or was that his answer? Ev didn’t want to go back to Varenx House, but the guards were still milling around the market. Could Ev lose them? There were two of them, and she was moving slowly from all her injuries. Even if she could escape them, Iriyat had two dozen more. If she wanted to track Ev down, she had that power. Anyone who helped Ev escape might suffer consequences. For now, there was no choice but to go back to Varenx House.
“I won’t put you in danger,” Ev said.
“I can handle it.”
Ev shook her head more forcefully this time. “At least if I’m there, I can… observe. I’ll be careful. I’ll keep my nose in this book. And I’ll come back to see you.”
She hurried away before he could argue. Instead of heading back toward Varenx House, she made her way to the innermost point of Arishdenan inlet, where there were a few inns catering to sailors and merchants who frequented the harbor. One of them had a collection of shabby wooden chairs and tables set outside, and Ev sat down and ordered tea. Her guards had followed her, but they kept their distance. She got out the book and began to read.
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