He got into the bath and called, “What are you doing? Aren’t you going to sleep?”
“I have to go see Kasrik again,” she said, distracted.
She hadn’t told him that, either. “Why? And do you want company?”
She didn’t answer, and he could hear the rustling of clothes. He scrubbed himself down and tried not to feel insulted that she didn’t want to tell him anything or watch, which she would have been not merely permitted, but invited to do, a distinction he would have been keen to demonstrate if she’d shown any interest. That thought slipped out before he could stop it.
“Thiyo,” she said from the other room. “You’re exhausting. And I’m already tired. You wanted a bath and I found you one. Please just enjoy it. I can’t care about your mess of romantic and sexual feelings right now. We might never see Ev again. Or maybe all three of us and everyone else in this city will die in a wave.”
Privately, Thiyo thought it wasn’t his feelings that were a mess. He was clear about what he wanted: a brief, relaxing interlude of physical pleasure followed by an intense conversation about how they might solve their problems. She might be more upset about the latter than the former, whether she’d admit it or not.
“Some time you’ll have to tell me what you’re planning,” he said as dried off. “All of what you’re planning.”
She came back into the room, dressed in a black tunic and trousers that were too large for her. Thiyo was sure he could have found better in the wardrobe if she’d only asked him. Alizhan stared at some fixed point behind him for a moment, then said, “I can’t.”
Was she choked up? He tied the towel around his waist and went toward her. “Are you crying? This interlude isn’t going how I wanted at all.”
“Stop it, Thiyo. We can’t have sex now. I have to do something terrible.”
“It was a joke. I assume you’re familiar with the concept.” Alizhan looked so miserable that he spontaneously added, “I’m sorry. I’ll be serious. What’s wrong?”
“I told you.”
“Yes, ‘something terrible.’ That’s vague. You mean… a murder? I wouldn’t disapprove of that, if you picked the right person.”
“You’re joking again.”
“Not even a little.” He wanted to urge her to sit on the bed, but he was afraid she’d bolt at the first opportunity, so they’d have to stand in the bathroom until they resolved things. Important conversations so often froze people into place.
“Look. I have a plan. But it’s better if I don’t tell you.”
Was she afraid he’d critique her plan? Absurd. He just wanted to know it so he could make sure it was the best plan. Was that so wrong?
“Don’t,” Alizhan snapped into the silence. Thiyo had to shield his thoughts with more vigilance. “Ev isn’t here to stop us from bickering and we don’t have time for that. There is no best plan, Thiyo. There’s what I—what we have to do to win, and whatever we can scrape together between now and the wave.”
“I know,” he said with as much gentleness as he could, since she’d invoked Ev’s name. “Alizhan. You know how I feel. You know I’m a coward. I won’t judge you for feeling fear that I myself also feel. Don’t hold yourself to some impossible standard. Tell me what you’re thinking and we’ll be afraid together.”
She sighed, and he thought he had her, but then she pressed her lips together.
Thiyo said, “I might suspect you brought me here to placate me, since you’re about to go confer in secret with Kasrik. You knew I wouldn’t like that. Why can you talk to him about this terrible plan, but not me?”
She reached out as if to touch him, then stopped herself. Was she afraid her control would slip? “Thiyo. I’ll tell you what I can when I get back. Until then, get some rest.”
“Fine,” he said, and laid down for the most resentful nap of his life.
Two beautifully peaceful and cruelly brief hours later, Alizhan shook his shoulder to wake him. He pressed his face into the pillow and mumbled, “No. Not yet.”
She poked him in the side until he was awake, rude creature that she was. “We have people to deceive and objects to steal.”
“You’re horrible and I don’t want to participate in any more schemes with you.”
“If that’s an example of the kind of liar you are, I need a new partner. Get dressed.” She’d already pulled on Eliyan’s robe. His preparation wouldn’t be so fast.
Thiyo began to dress and said, as casually as possible, “So, this plan.”
“You’re not going to like it.”
“I gathered that much.”
He elicited the beginnings of a plan from her. All of it concerned the immediate future, and none of it contained the words and that’s how I’m going to fix Ev in a tone of ringing certainty and cheer. The bath and the bed had been the easy requests.
Alizhan helped him dress and powder his face to the best of her ability, which wasn’t much, and Thiyo complained loudly about it, which made her laugh. “If we live, you can teach me to put on rouge and kohl,” she said. She laid her head on his shoulder. “And clothes. I was never interested before, but… now I think I might be.”
Thiyo knew I was never interested before covered a painful history, but all he said was, “I’d like that.”
Considering the plan she’d described, things were as good as they could be between the two of them.
Not much later, Thiyo found himself walking alone down Temple Street. Alizhan was hiding somewhere as usual and had left him to handle the guard on his own. What was under his clothes wouldn’t stand up to a groping, so he had to hope the man would behave decently. Even with the copious cosmetic supplies in the house, getting ready had been a challenge. The only aspect of life in Nalitzva that Thiyo missed was Dyevyer Erinsk and his clever engineering. Maybe Thiyo could persuade Erinsk to send his designs to Neiran Umarsad.
Funny, that Thiyo was imagining his future in Laalvur, when for all he knew, nobody in Laalvur had a future.
Orilan’s senses would be all the warning they had. It was a distressing thought, which put him in the right frame of mind to approach the guard at the door of the priests’ quarters.
“Sir, sir, so sorry to bother you, but I’m hopelessly lost.”
It was hard to make himself shorter, and sometimes his height put men ill at ease, but he bent his knees as far as he could and leaned forward and clutched at the guard’s sleeve. A frown and a squint from the guard, and a terrible moment where Thiyo wondered if maybe his breathy pleading and foreign accent hadn’t been enough, and then the guard clasped Thiyo by the hand and said, “You must not be from around here.”
Mah Yee, Thiyo had missed this thrill.
It shouldn’t have made him so happy to simper and misunderstand directions for the next five minutes, but life was short and most of it was depths-drowned joyless, so Thiyo was taking what he could get. The guard waved two grey-robed figures through the massive door during those five minutes. “I’m done when the shift change bell rings and the next guard shows up,” he said. “Maybe I could walk with you?”
This part always broke Thiyo’s heart a little. All the fun was in wrapping himself up in the attention, but then once he got it, he had to let it go. Life in the Nalitzvan court had been a string of flirtations all culminating in some excuse about the hour or the wine or His Highness. That last one was most effective. These mainlander men, they didn’t like it if you mentioned company. “Oh, thank you, that’s so generous,” Thiyo said, slipping his hand from the guard’s. “But I couldn’t possibly. This friend I’m meeting, he’s…”
“I see,” the guard said, and that was all it took. Thiyo didn’t have to finish his sentence.
Thiyo patted the guard on the arm, thanked him again, and walked back the way he had come.
Alizhan shuffled past Thiyo and the guard. Eliyan’s robe was too long for her and she had to walk carefully, her hands buried in its folds to keep the hem from catching on the threshold or dragging on the worn
wooden planks of the foyer. At the end of the narrow passage, there was a common room with enough people in it that counting the distinct presences took effort. A cluster of four people chatting in a corner to her left, and another two in the back corner on the opposite side of the room, all of them seated at long tables. This room, carved into the rock, was interior and windowless, but she only noticed because she liked to look for exits. It didn’t lack for light, not with every wall studded with lamps. The white plaster walls glowed faintly green, but otherwise the room was austere. The Temple of the Balance was enormously wealthy, and if Alizhan stole from the kitchen, there’d be cream and fresh fruit and fine wine, but it wouldn’t do to furnish the priests’ quarters with art. They kept their money quiet here.
She kept walking as she observed. Two priests were entering the stairwell opposite where she’d entered the room and it was easy to absorb the layout of the building from their minds. There were four stories stacked on top of this one and a kitchen below. Each floor above had two rows of rooms split by a hallway. Alizhan would search them all if she had to, but instead she lingered in the common room a moment longer, bending down near the stairs as if she had to adjust her sandal.
If everyone here had taken nightvine, this place would be miserable for her, all these people dressed identically with no thoughts to read. But Sardas evidently hadn’t shared his spoils, because none of the priests had protected themselves. It wasn’t long before gossip among the group of four turned to the subject of their new arrival from Estva. Sardas was well-liked, presumably because he hadn’t drugged and abducted any of his colleagues. Since they all lived together, they thought about the quarters Sardas now occupied, where he often spent shifts alone in contemplation. Fourth floor, left side, end of the hall. Alizhan was up the stairs before any of them had spared a thought for the small priest who’d passed through without greeting any of them.
She kept a normal, unhurried pace in the stairway, walking with a purpose. She passed three people and was grateful that priests spent so much time deep in thought. The fourth floor hallway was empty, but she could feel the occupants in their quarters. Two people sleeping, one praying, one shaving and dressing and preparing to go to the Temple itself.
If Sardas were in his room, she would have no warning.
The door was locked. Either he was asleep inside or he’d gone out somewhere. What Sardas might be doing in Laalvur, she didn’t know. Scheming with Iriyat, most likely. Alizhan picked the lock and held her breath as she pushed the door open.
He wasn’t inside. The windowless, unlit room contained a narrow bed pushed against the right wall and a desk pushed against the left. At least it wouldn’t take long to search.
She opened all the desk drawers and found no evidence of the brown bag of nightvine that Thiyo had smuggled aboard Honesty. Stifling a frustrated sigh, she went through them a second time. The shallow top drawer contained a pile of correspondence. Old habit had her sorting through the letters. A glimpse of something ciphered made her tuck the whole packet into her sleeve. Who knew what might be of use later? Her second search of the bottom drawer of the desk turned up a bundle of white sackcloth wrapped around a glass bottle full of something greenish and oily. When she popped the cork, the smell was unmistakable. Sardas had taken the nightvine and done something to it. She didn’t have time to stay and find out what. She closed all the drawers and remade Sardas’s bed as it had been, then hid the bottle along with the letters in the excess length of her sleeve.
She’d latched the door behind her and walked two steps into the corridor when she passed someone. They gave her a cursory nod, and then stopped at Sardas’s door. Damn these robes! That person was blank, and stopping at the room she’d just ransacked, which led to one obvious conclusion. Sardas.
Alizhan’s foot hovered over the first step down. He hadn’t stopped her. He hadn’t recognized her or drawn her into an incriminating conversation. She was free to go.
But Sardas had hurt Thiyo.
She’d said they didn’t need to kill him, and Thiyo had disagreed. Half a joke. But half true. For an instant, she considered it: walk back down the hallway, grab him by the wrist and channel all her feelings into him until his mind burst. It would be miserable. Killing Merat still haunted her. She’d feel every choking, drooling, pissing instant of his death. And then she’d have killed another human being, of course. But for Thiyo, she could do it.
The nightvine, though. He was still blank, so he must still be taking it. What if she couldn’t overpower him? And then there’d be the body in the corridor, and she’d have to flee, and there’d be questions
“Do you need something?” he called from down the hall.
Alizhan shook her hooded head and ran down the stairs.
Alizhan caught up to Thiyo, breathless and somehow already sweating and with twigs in her loosening braid, on the high street that ran along the coast between the hills and the four fingers of rock extending into the sea. He was ambling along enjoying the sights. She had Eliyan’s robe bundled under her arm and was wearing the black tunic and trousers she’d stolen from the closet of Mar’s former mistress.
“Skulking and running,” Thiyo said with disapproval.
“I didn’t kill him.”
Thiyo hadn’t expected that to be the first item in her report, and he certainly hadn’t expected such an apologetic tone, but he restrained his surprise. It was strangely touching, this admission that she’d considered it. “A pity.”
“But I got it.”
“You have a dazzling smile when you’re pleased with yourself. I’d almost forgotten. Would you care to give our stroll some direction? I’m prone to getting lost in this city.” She’d found him easily because he was walking down the widest street he could find toward the destination she’d pointed to, a grand fortress of a house at the tip of the furthest peninsula. He still couldn’t understand its place in their plan. He didn’t want to waste time rescuing some rich man he’d never met, not when Ev was in trouble.
“So I hear,” Alizhan said. “No problems?”
“None. And you?”
“He’s done something to it. Made it an oil.”
“We’ll test it,” Thiyo said, more intrigued than concerned. “I picked up a pamphlet from the ground. I would have bought more from the sellers I passed, but I don’t seem to have any money.”
“I’ve never found that an obstacle to getting what I want, and I can’t see why you would, either. What’s in the pamphlet?”
“A warning about an incoming wave.” Thiyo said this with as much nonchalance as possible, though Alizhan could likely divine his true feelings. They’d been separated for an hour and it had taken him most of that just to get the gist. He had a splitting headache and was furiously embarrassed. A last remnant of his painful exile from the world of words. Thiyo wanted Alizhan to restore his literacy, but she needed to save her energy for more urgent matters.
“Good,” Alizhan said. “We’ll show it to Mar.”
Thiyo was prepared to say anything to charm his way into this stranger’s home, but instead the burly, crooked-nosed guard took one look at Alizhan and said, “Last time you got involved in my life, I broke my damn arm.”
Thiyo decided to stay quiet.
“Zenav. You remember me,” Alizhan said. “So you must know why I’m here.”
“I wish I didn’t,” he said, but he sighed and opened the door. “I like this job, or I used to. Don’t piss him off more than you have to, please? Or if you do, pretend you broke in and keep my name out of it. Ha-Solora pays better than Ha-Katavi or Ha-Garatsina, and we both know Ha-Varensi won’t have me. I don’t want to work for a lesser house. Do you want to be announced? Or are you, uh… what exactly are you planning to do? Can you fix him? Is that even possible?”
It must be disorienting to work for a man who’d had his memory so altered. Mar was effectively under Iriyat’s control. Thiyo felt sympathy for Zenav. It was even understandable that he’d dislike Alizhan.
Given what he’d said, he probably regarded her appearance as an omen of violence to come. He wasn’t wrong.
“Is she here?” Alizhan asked. There was no need to be more specific.
“No.”
“Then send for Mar.”
“And tell him what?”
“An islander is here with a business proposal,” Thiyo said. Zenav’s chin drew back into his neck in shock. He studied Thiyo for a moment and then gave one reluctant nod of his head. He called for a servant to carry the message, and a few minutes later, the boy returned to lead them into a small parlor. Mar stood up to greet them, and for an instant, Thiyo had to respect Iriyat’s taste in men.
“God, you never stop,” Alizhan muttered under her breath.
Mar was silver-haired at the temples but not stooped or shriveled in the least. He’d dressed in understated grey, but his wealth was on display in every fitted seam. His gaze was calculating, but his smile seemed genuine enough. After all, he believed Thiyo was here to make him richer. His hand engulfed Thiyo’s and his touch was warm and reassuring as he introduced himself.
You shouldn’t have shown me how well he treats his mistresses. Thiyo directed this thought at Alizhan and she rewarded his teasing with a stifled laugh that she managed to turn into a cough.
Mar waited politely for her to finish before he offered her his hand. No dainty hand-clasping for Alizhan. She grabbed him by the wrist and Mar went down so fast that Thiyo had to grab him before he cracked his head on the low table in front of the sofa.
He was broader than Thiyo and it took both of them to lay him down on the sofa. Zenav came into the room and observed Alizhan with a wary eye. He stepped out, ostensibly to guard the door, but more likely because he was disturbed.
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