“He’s going to be so angry,” Alizhan murmured. Her eyes were closed in concentration. Fresh sweat beaded on her skin, and not from the warmth in the room.
“Don’t overtax yourself,” Thiyo warned.
She worked in silence for a long time. Thiyo sniffed at the stolen vial of nightvine essence and shuffled through the correspondence she’d given him. It was in Laalvuri script, and most likely ciphered. Once decoding it would have been as easy as breathing, but now it posed a challenge. His efforts weren’t rewarded and his attention drifted to other things. The slight roughness of the paper beneath his fingertips. The ink faded to brown with age. The tiny star-shaped dried flower pressed to the bottom of the letter in his hand.
Mah Yee drag me to the depths.
Thiyo had seen living versions of these flowers barely a shift ago at the garden in Gold Street. And he’d seen them before that. One had fallen out of Sardas’s correspondence in Estva, and Alizhan had panicked at the sight of it because it reminded her of Iriyat. Those letters had meant enough to Sardas that he’d kept them with him on his voyage home. And what kind of letter was signed with a flower? It might be encrypted, but Iriyat was secretive. He wouldn’t put it past her to encrypt a love letter.
Thiyo didn’t think she felt anything for Sardas, but she wouldn’t balk at exploiting his feelings to gain his help. She’d written about trying to flirt Ilyr into submission in her private journal. The journal had been full of incriminating information like that, its crucial content wrapped in a history tome Iriyat thought no one would touch. What if these letters were just the opposite, and it was the form that mattered, not the content? Alizhan’s splitting grin from the garden stuck in Thiyo’s mind. She’d seen those same flowers and had an idea, and now here they were again. What was Thiyo missing?
He didn’t have a chance to ask her because Mar blinked awake and groaned. “All hells.”
“I imagine your head hurts,” Thiyo said. “Mine did when she fixed me.”
“Where’s Kasrik?”
Thiyo hadn’t expected that to be his first question. “Safe, as far as I know. He declined to accompany us. Said you’d be angry with him.”
Mar sat up and then slumped forward, putting his face in his hands. “I was. Or at least I thought I was. Some valuables went missing from the house and Iriyat convinced me he’d stolen them.”
“Ah.”
“I would have given him the money,” Mar said, and it had the tired air of something repeated. “Shit. Of course that’s not the point. I believed her over him. She probably stole them herself. Oh, God’s Balance, what have I done?”
“More likely she hired someone, since I wasn’t around. Iriyat’s deceitful, but she’s no thief,” Alizhan said with professional disdain. She ignored his last question. She’d been kneeling on the floor next to the sofa and when she unbent her legs, Thiyo was surprised they didn’t creak. She stretched her arms and rolled her head forward and around.
“I’ll have to call off the wedding somehow,” Mar said. He should have sounded appalled, but instead his tone was soft and detached. Perhaps he hadn’t fully accepted what had happened yet. Thiyo couldn’t imagine that Iriyat had kept her hands off him in the time they’d spent betrothed to each other, and he felt a painful sympathy. Then again, maybe Mar didn’t want to appear weak in front of two strangers and was saving his feelings for later. Thiyo couldn’t blame him for that.
“Not just yet,” Alizhan said. “I need you to host a party.”
“What?”
“You have to get every member of the Council of Nine and the High Priest of the Balance into your house at the same time,” Alizhan said. “They all have to be present when I accuse her.”
“We tried this,” Mar protested. “I accused Iriyat and it nearly ruined me.”
“We tried something similar, but not this,” Alizhan said. She picked up the nightvine from where it rested on the floor. “We’re prepared this time.”
“So you invade my home and make demands of me,” Mar said. “I suppose I should expect it.”
“She also rescued you,” Thiyo pointed out, because he was sure Alizhan would say so herself far less delicately if he didn’t. “You might say thank you.”
“Gratitude is not something I feel a great deal of at the moment,” Mar said. Then he turned to Alizhan and said, very stiffly, “But thank you.”
She shrugged. “Thank me by helping to put her in prison. You have as much reason to as anyone, if not more.”
Mar frowned. Privately, Thiyo wondered if he was questioning the possibility of any prison holding a person of Iriyat’s abilities. Thiyo certainly had. But all Mar said was, “When will this party be? My staff will want some time to arrange things if we’re inviting that many people, especially guests of that rank. Perhaps in two weeks?”
“No. Next triad,” Alizhan said. “We can’t afford to wait. Tell them you’re moving the wedding up so they’ll all be forced to come.”
“Iriyat will never agree to that, she’s been planning the wedding for weeks, we’ve chosen an auspicious triad in the middle of the month, we’ve promised people feasting and dancing in the streets—”
“If they live through the coming wave, you can give it to them,” Alizhan said, cutting him off. “Right now you have to listen to me.”
Thiyo had an interruption of his own. “How does any of this help Ev?”
“Iriyat will bring her to us,” Alizhan said. “It will please her to show Ev off like a trophy, and it will please her more to be the only one who knows the truth.”
“How can you be so sure—”
Mar silenced Thiyo with a gesture. His gaze bored into Alizhan and he spoke in a clipped tone. “What wave?”
Thiyo passed over Kasrik’s latest pamphlet and helped Alizhan recount all of what they knew, and Mar’s horrified expression deepened with each new detail. Finally, he agreed to help them. “But I can’t say we’re moving the wedding. It won’t work.”
“What else will get every Council member and the High Priest here?” Alizhan said. She jabbed the question at Mar as though he were responsible for all their problems and he drew back, indignant.
Luckily, Thiyo could solve this one. It was hardly a challenge, since he’d used the same line only hours ago. It had opened plenty of doors since he’d left Hoi, and as tiresome as it was growing, he could turn it to his advantage one last time. He sighed. “Tell them you have an important visitor from the islands.”
32
Stranger
Ev spent every moment in Varenx House looking for opportunities. She needed to learn as much as possible about herself and about Iriyat, and then she needed to get out. If nothing else, she could run to that man in the market who might be her father. She didn’t want to put him in harm’s way but she might not have a choice.
Ev didn’t plot her escape quickly enough, because Iriyat asked her to resume her duties as a guard. “A light assignment,” she promised. “Just standing around at a party.”
She provided Ev with a uniform in Varenx House grey and lavender, including a leather jerkin, but no weapon.
“You won’t actually have to guard me,” Iriyat had assured her. That wasn’t why Ev had wanted one.
Iriyat was keen to meet this visitor from the islands who’d showed up unannounced at Solor House, and irritated that she hadn’t been the guest of honor’s first stop. “Look impressive,” she instructed Ev, whatever that meant.
“You know what would help me look impressive? A sword,” Ev said, but Iriyat ignored her as they were ushered into the house.
Solor House was as richly furnished as Varenx House, but with fewer plants. The carpets and sofas all tended toward shades of blue, but the people inside were wearing every color. Ev watched Iriyat greet a few of them, and once she was satisfied that Iriyat didn’t expect her to remain close, she withdrew from the crush of people and stood near a wall. Ev had no interest in Iriyat’s welfare—the opposite, really, although Iriyat’s
ignorance of that was keeping Ev alive—but there might be other people at this party who could help her. It was worth her time to eavesdrop.
Unfortunately, successful eavesdropping required stealth, and Ev had none. She couldn’t disappear from view. Many of the party guests sent her surreptitious glances, and one in particular was bold.
Was it customary among islanders to stare at a stranger like… Ev searched for a comparison and failed. No one had ever looked at her like that. Memory or no memory, she was sure of it. Why did it make her ache so? The islander was tall enough to look her in the eye. She was dressed in Laalvuri clothes. A dark green tunic skimmed over her figure, and a veil of the same color covered her hair, but her face was naked. Her eyes were warm brown with a thick fringe of black lashes, and a spray of freckles crossed the bridge of her nose. How could she be so covetous and cocksure with only the arch of a brow? And yet there was a sadness there, in the slight downturn at the corner of her mouth, as though she’d expected Ev to react differently.
Ev turned away, unable to bear it. The islander, as guest of honor, surely had more important things to do than look at her.
Across the room, Iriyat was chatting and laughing with other guests. She’d said all four Great Houses were represented, and all five Lesser Houses as well. Everyone here was wealthy and famous and accustomed to ignoring guards and servants. She observed them in silence. Ev wondered if she’d have recognized any of them before losing her memory. Probably not. She didn’t feel like a fancy party kind of a girl. Nothing about this house, with its patterned tiles and thick pile carpets and wide arched doorways, felt familiar. The guests pinched delicate glass flutes of yellow wine between their manicured fingers and plucked pastries off silver trays with their free hands.
They weren’t interesting, these rich strangers. Even if she’d known their names, she couldn’t imagine wanting to listen to them, let alone speak to them. But she should try to do both. One of them might know who she was. She scanned the crowd again. The islander was still watching her—no, walking toward her.
“Come to the terrace with me,” she said, her words shadowed with an accent. “I need protection.”
“From what?” Ev asked. It wasn’t her job to protect anyone but Iriyat, but she had no intention of doing her job.
Her eyes sparkled and Ev had the impression she wanted to laugh. “The ocean, of course.”
“But—”
“Islanders have more reason to fear the ocean, not less,” the woman said, sailing past.
Why did she think Ev would have anything to say on that subject? Let alone that it would be the first thing out of her mouth? Ev’s objection was practical. She followed the woman out the door to tell her so. “I can’t possibly protect you or anyone else from the ocean.”
That smile. The woman had provoked her on purpose. And now they were both on the terrace. Alone. Despite her professed fear of the ocean, the woman walked right up to the stone railing and stared down the Dayward side of the cliff into Hahimarish inlet. She walked along the railing until she came around to the Nightward side to gaze out at Hahim Harbor and the low-lying neighborhood strung along the coast beyond it. Ev felt compelled to follow her. Her posture didn’t suggest that she was about to jump, but the idea of that long fall into the water tugged at something in Ev’s memory.
“Mainlanders are so strange,” the woman said. “Why build anything so permanent on the coast? I understand building this house here, at the top of this cliff, but everything down by the water would be destroyed by a wave.”
“That’s the Marsh,” Ev said. “It does get destroyed when there are waves. But there hasn’t been one since I was three years old.” Ev heard the words come out of her own mouth and blinked. Iriyat had left her a scrap of memory, it seemed.
“Another will come,” the woman said.
“But no one knows when. And this is where our city is, and people need places to live,” Ev said. It wasn’t a good system. It was cruel to force the poor into the most vulnerable parts of the city. But at least they’d been safe in the nineteen years since the last wave.
The woman had an expressive face, and somehow she managed to make Ev question herself without a word.
Ev had vowed to find out more about herself, or at least about Iriyat, and this woman was unlikely to provide answers on either subject. But they were here, and Ev was reluctant to go back inside. It had nothing to do with the woman’s gaze, and how it wandered down Ev’s body like a touch. Or the lock of black hair escaping from the green scarf covering her head. Or the shape of her mouth. She stood close to Ev. Closer than a stranger should. Ev didn’t move away. “What brings you here?”
“To the terrace? The party is boring.”
Ev hadn’t meant her question so narrowly, but the woman was being tricky. It didn’t seem polite to agree about the party, even though Ev had thought so herself. “And I’m more interesting?”
“By far.”
Something—that significant tone, the other woman’s closeness, the intensity of her attention, the natural air of secrecy and illicitness lent by leaving a gathering together—something sent a hot thrill down Ev’s spine. If this woman wanted to talk to Ev, then Ev had to take advantage of the situation. She had absolutely no idea how to go about that, but what was there to lose?
“So now I know why you’re out here with me,” Ev said, and she tried to channel all the warmth she was feeling into her words. “But I don’t know why you’re at this party, or what brought you to Laalvur. If I’m correct in assuming that you came from somewhere else?”
“Oh, but that first one is terribly dull. I’m at the party because Mar invited me, and he’s far too handsome to turn down.”
This mention of Mar and his handsomeness made Ev frown and she couldn’t say why. She knew, in the way she knew she was right-handed, that she liked women as well as men. Iriyat hadn’t burned that out of her; it was in her body. But she wasn’t so foolish as to imagine that a fumbling flirtation with this mysterious, wealthy, important foreigner would lead anywhere, so there was no point in worrying over Mar. Besides, Ev knew which one he was, and the woman was right about his looks.
“So I assume the answer to my second question must be very exciting,” Ev said, angling herself toward the woman and laying a hand on her arm. Was this too much? It was all guesswork based on a hazy idea of what was appropriate. Ev had no memory, mental or physical, of how to flirt. Maybe she hadn’t ever been good at it.
The woman’s eyebrows disappeared beneath her headscarf when she raised them. “Hmm. You’re asking a lot of questions. Maybe it’s my turn.”
“It hardly seems fair to dangle an intriguing answer in front of me and then snatch it away,” Ev said, her heart beating fast at the thought of being questioned by this stranger. She had no answers to give. She moved in close enough to kiss, far too aware that everything she offered was illusory. “I’ll only answer your questions if you answer mine first.”
The woman moved under her touch. Was it a shiver? She leaned in and Ev thought they might kiss, but instead the women laid her head against Ev’s shoulder and Ev felt the flutter of muffled laughter as the woman pressed against her. After a beat, she gave up and let it out. Her voice sounded vastly different when she lifted her head to ask, “Evreyet Umarsad, are you trying to seduce information out of me?”
Ev pulled away in shock and irritation. She hadn’t told this woman her name.
The woman reached for her, left-handed, and laid a hand on her arm. They were face to face now. “I didn’t mean to ruin it! Please keep going, I’m enjoying it—this might be my favorite thing that has ever happened. And I promise you, it’s going to work.”
The seduction or the information? Ev was too off-kilter, startled and suspicious, to ask. It wasn’t a good feeling, thinking you were going to get kissed and getting laughed at instead. And that was on top of knowing nothing about herself while this woman seemed to know everything. “You know me.”
�
�I do.” The woman sounded far less playful. Her current voice was lower than the one she’d been speaking with, and it jarred something loose in Ev’s mind. All of this woman’s different voices, she’d heard them when she’d read The Sunrise Chronicles to herself. “And if I’d kissed you right then, you’d be mad at me later.”
“I’m mad at you now,” Ev said, the words came out of her mouth before the rest of her caught up. It would have been madness to kiss anyone on the terrace of Solor House, let alone a woman. A woman who knew too much about her.
The woman shrugged one shoulder, as if she’d expected as much, and defended herself with nothing but a smile and a tilt of her head. It shouldn’t have been endearing.
“Who are you? Are you Alizhan?”
“How do you know about Alizhan?” Surprise lifted her tone. “No, never mind that now. I’m not Alizhan. But she’s here. She can fix your memory with a touch.”
Ev couldn’t stop herself from glancing down at the woman’s hand on her sleeve.
“My touch can’t fix your memory,” the woman said, in a tone that suggested she was capable of something far better.
Ev didn’t want to play this game anymore. The woman had known who she was the whole time—had been toying with her. It stung. She’d wanted to believe it was, if not exactly innocent flirting, then at least honest.
The woman sighed. “Alizhan told me not to tell you much. It’s better if you remember on your own, or with her help. Sometimes it’s upsetting to hear it from other people.”
“As we’ve established, I’m already upset, so you might as well tell me.”
“I wouldn’t know where to start, and honestly, there’s a good chance you won’t believe me. But I am sorry for upsetting you, Ev. At least that seems to be a constant in our relationship.”
The woman seemed genuinely regretful, which made Ev soften, even as she wondered what this stranger meant by relationship. “Why come talk to me, if you can’t tell me anything?”
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