Someone had obscured a great deal of information from him, but they’d left his feelings for her intact. Iriyat wouldn’t have done that—she wanted to know what Thiyo knew, and she wouldn’t give a puff of smoke for his feelings. Someone else had altered Thiyo’s memory. And they’d left him with a drawing of Ev.
There was no escape route. They were already at their destination. They were meant to stay with Iriyat.
“Smoke.”
“I’m thinking of possible reasons someone might have emptied out my head, and most of them are deeply unpleasant,” Thiyo said.
Mar and Iriyat’s conversation inside the parlor got louder. They were walking toward the balcony door.
Ev felt a surge of anger that this was the plan Alizhan hadn’t told her about. Iriyat was going to manipulate her—again—and there was nothing they could do about it. No wonder Alizhan hadn’t bothered to restore more of her memory. She’d known it would be for nothing. Ev could overpower Iriyat, but if she did that, Alizhan’s preparations for the trial would be a waste. But why had Alizhan arranged things this way? Ev wanted to trust her, but couldn’t understand.
In the tight set of Thiyo’s mouth, she saw her own misery reflected back at her. She leaned in so close their cheeks brushed and then whispered in his ear, “We killed a medusa, remember? This is nothing.”
It wasn’t usually a pleasure to remember that, but right now she was grateful to remember anything at all. If it helped steady either of them to know they’d faced down worse monsters than Iriyat ha-Varensi, so much the better.
“I don’t remember, and I don’t feel at all like a person who would do that, and you are not making me feel better.”
Ev thought of pushing up their sleeves and showing him their matching scars, but instead, in the instant before the door swung open, she turned her head and kissed him. He responded instantly. He pressed the length of his body against hers like they could melt into each other, seep through the wall and vanish, and he did it with such urgency that Ev almost believed it. Rough and rushed, it was a kiss of last breaths. Her shoulders scraped against the wall and her teeth bit his lower lip. Their bodies would mark what had happened.
Iriyat stormed onto the balcony. Ev wanted to push Thiyo out of harm’s way, to tower over her, to advance on her until she was forced against the railing. But she didn’t. It wasn’t Thiyo holding her there, but some thread of trust in Alizhan.
Iriyat stood almost as close as Thiyo, and she was fuming. Mar had followed her out onto the balcony and he hovered behind her shoulder, his face frozen in worry.
“What are the two of you doing out here?” Her voice was honeyed.
“Kissing,” Thiyo answered honestly.
Iriyat rolled her eyes. “And where is my daughter?”
“I don’t know,” Ev said, just as honestly, and for a moment she was relieved. The fear came back quickly enough.
“But you saw her in private and she meddled with you,” Iriyat guessed. She sighed. “A waste of effort, since you’re still here. I’ll free you of her influence. But this whole thing is a waste. I already know exactly how it will play out, no matter what precautions she’s taken. Mar claims he never spoke to her about any of this, that he didn’t know she planned to humiliate me in front of the Council, but—” Iriyat whipped a glove off and struck Mar with her bare hand, catching his face and holding it “—I know how she twists people to her will.”
“Stop!” Ev yelled. She couldn’t stand to the side while Iriyat hurt someone. Ev pushed Thiyo out of the way. Iriyat paid her no attention and Thiyo grabbed her arm before she got any closer. It was horrible to watch. Mar crumpled under her touch, going to his knees. Bile rose in Ev’s throat. She couldn’t let that happen to Thiyo, not after he’d suffered such a loss when they’d fought the medusa. And she couldn’t go through it again herself. And what if Iriyat didn’t intend to let them live? She’d murdered Vatik with her bare hands. She could do the same to them.
Iriyat let go of Mar and he groaned and toppled to the ground. Ev put herself in front of Thiyo as Iriyat glided toward them. “You can’t lie to me, you know. Not when I’m in your head. In a way, this is the sweetest gift she’s ever given me. She knows I’ve always wanted to know what islanders know.” Iriyat studied Thiyo. “This clever little flirt sidestepped a whole conversation’s worth of questions, but I always get what I want in the end.”
Thiyo’s fingers dug into Ev’s wrist. Was he restraining her or simply clinging?
“Why even bother with this farce of a trial? We all know it won’t work. But since she insists on inconveniencing me, I’ll show up and clear my name. Once she sees that I can’t be brought low through such methods, but she can, perhaps she’ll give up on this foolish notion. And I’ve already won. If both of you are at Varenx House, she’ll come home. That’s all I want, you know. For her to come back to me.”
Thiyo made a strangled, scoffing noise. Ev stepped back until they were touching again. As long as Iriyat didn’t kill them, there was hope. Ev’s voice was steadier than expected when she spoke. “She won’t.”
“For you, she will,” Iriyat said and touched them both.
“I feel like I just broke into the palace, walked right up to the most beautiful painting in there, tore it off the wall and set fire to it,” Ket said, sliding his hands under his armpits and hugging himself. “I can’t believe you asked me to do this. I can’t believe Thiyo let me.”
“You didn’t set fire to anything,” Alizhan said. “You just… took it off the wall and put it in hiding so no one else could see it. I’ll hang it back up.”
Henny muttered something in Nalitzvan that Alizhan could tell was about how risky the plan was, then slung an arm around Ket’s shoulders and squeezed. They were seated around a table in the courtyard of The Uzet. The brothel had chosen its name for the red blooms that were a celebratory symbol at the mid-year festival, meant for forgetting wrongs done in the past. Supposedly you could soothe your lover’s anger with a bouquet. The Uzet was a place for forgetting your troubles. Henny and Ket hadn’t picked up on the name’s double meaning and Alizhan didn’t want to tell them. They’d been staying here since their arrival in the city on the fifteenth triad of Simosha, weeks ago. Kasrik had tried to tell Alizhan they were here when he’d first come to her at Varenx House, but she’d been deep in her grief and had ignored him. They’d been out when she and Thiyo had visited him at the brothel for the first time. Alizhan had gone to Kasrik a second time on the suspicion that he might know a Lacemaker in the city, and she’d stumbled upon Henny and Ket drinking tea and cuddling in the courtyard.
It had been two hours since the party. Since she’d accused Iriyat. Since she’d abandoned Ev and Thiyo. Alizhan was still shivering. Thiyo consented, she reminded herself. He’d known the plan and had agreed to let Ket take that—and so much more—out of his head. And Ev had said yes without even knowing what Alizhan intended.
Iriyat has to think she’s won. She has to walk into that trial confident that she has everything under control. That’s when we can surprise her. Alizhan thought back on her own words to Thiyo and wished she could feel her past self’s certainty.
Henny stretched out a hand but didn’t touch her. “You’re shaking.”
“It’s fine,” Alizhan said. She deserved it. Ket was worried about having destroyed Thiyo, but if things didn’t go to plan, it would be Alizhan’s fault. She’d lose Thiyo and Ev. The Council might put her in prison for falsely accusing one of their own. Iriyat would never be punished. A wave would hit the city and no one would ever know she’d caused it. And now Alizhan had to live with those possibilities for two triads until the trial began.
“We have a room upstairs. Why don’t you get some rest?” Henny asked.
“I couldn’t possibly sleep.”
Ket laughed, and Alizhan wasn’t sure what was funny. His voice sounded distant as he said, “Henny loves a challenge.”
Thiyo knew nothing of himself except that he was a
coward. He had evidence. When Iriyat had locked him into this room in Varenx House, his body had revolted. Legs shaking. Heart and lungs all out of rhythm. He couldn’t even say why. The room was clean and empty except for a bed and some potted plants. Iriyat hadn’t threatened his life. No one was beating him. As far as he knew, Ev was safe somewhere else in Varenx House, probably in a room like this one. But the sound of the bolt sliding into place had hit him like a shot and left him feeling like he might die.
Gradually, he got his breathing under control by not thinking about his imprisonment. Instead, he thought about all the things he remembered, which didn’t take long. Iriyat had touched him on the terrace at Solor House, but she’d left him what little remained of his memory, once she’d ransacked his mind and found nothing of interest. Her invasion had been painful and she’d salted the wound, saying, “I’d been told you were brilliant, but I suppose my mother ruined you. This emptiness looks like her work. Barbaric. Especially cruel of her to leave you barely literate. I suppose it’s a good thing you’re pretty.” And then she’d patted him on the head.
After that, she’d hurt Ev while he watched. It hadn’t looked like much from the outside, Iriyat’s hand on Ev’s face, but Ev had been so dazed afterward that Iriyat must have taken something from her. Anger burned from his stomach all the way up the back of his throat just thinking about it. Thiyo adjusted his assessment of himself. He was a coward who would gladly stab Iriyat ha-Varensi in the face.
She’d been charming to him when they’d spoken at the party. He’d had to evade all her questions about life in the islands, since he couldn’t answer any of them in any detail. The lady of Varenx House harbored a morbid fascination with waves and medusas. When he’d first spoken with her, it had struck Thiyo as odd, but after she’d attacked Ev, it had made a terrible kind of sense. One destructive force seeking others.
As Thiyo was picking through the rest of his memory, his mind snagged on a detail. Ev had mentioned medusas, too. That brought two things he knew into contradiction. He was a coward, and yet Ev had told him they’d killed a medusa. How was that possible?
The first and most obvious option was that Ev had lied to him, but he rejected it out of hand. He had no basis for trusting Ev except his feelings, but since his feelings were all he had, he was loathe to give them up. Ev wouldn’t lie.
The second option was that he wasn’t a coward, or perhaps that his reaction to being locked in this room—don’t think about being locked up—was singular in its intensity. But even if he wasn’t a coward, he still felt like a person with enough sense not to fight a medusa, although he couldn’t say why.
He knew nothing of medusas. He knew nothing of anything else, either, but it needled him that Iriyat and Ev had specifically mentioned them and he couldn’t recall a single detail about them. Except that he dreaded them and would prefer not to think of them, which fit perfectly with his cowardice. Still, though, shouldn’t such deep-seated dread be accompanied by knowledge? Why was Thiyo so viscerally averse to something he had only a vague notion of?
He knew what plenty of other animals looked like and sounded like and smelled like. He could call up a whole menagerie in his head. Whoever it was that had altered his memory, they’d excised what he knew of medusas. They didn’t want Iriyat to have it.
Thiyo picked himself up off the floor and lay down on the bed. As he moved, his sleeve pulled up, exposing his wrist. Thin black scars in irregular patterns wound up and down his forearm—and his other arm, and his legs, and his chest, once he checked. He didn’t remember acquiring them, but he knew something—something—no. Whatever it was he wanted to remember about these scars and their origin, it slipped from his grasp.
That meant the scars and the medusas were connected. This triumph startled a vindicated laugh out of him, partly because he knew something he shouldn’t, but mostly because Iriyat thought he was stupid, and Iriyat was wrong.
Would a coward be scarred all over? Perhaps he was wrong about that as well.
Thiyo slept and woke and slept again. The first time he woke, a guard had opened the door. He escorted Thiyo to the bathroom and then back to the room, where a tray of food had been left on the floor. The second time Thiyo woke, it was because Iriyat had entered his room. She stared at him in silence and he stared right back. She left without speaking or touching him. It was hard to fall asleep again afterward, as chilled as he was.
The next time he woke, he was alone and still locked in, which made him feel suffocated. He got up out of bed and soothed himself with spite and pettiness, picking every leaf and bloom off the three potted plants until the floor was littered. He was contemplating pulling out all the stitches in his bedding when the door opened. On impulse, Thiyo scooped up a handful of flowers and stuffed them in his pocket, in case he needed something to shred later.
He was marched through the hall and deposited in the grand foyer, where Ev and Iriyat were waiting for him. The guard who’d been holding his hands behind his back released him and he had to catch himself. Iriyat’s expression was serene and unimpressed. Ev offered him a small smile.
“I want her to see you both,” Iriyat said. “This absurd trial will be over in an hour, but at least we can use that hour to our advantage. Alizhan will be there, and she will see the two of you whole and happy, and she will come home.”
“You’re taking us to your trial?” Ev asked.
“Yes,” Iriyat said, irritated at having to restate herself. Then she forced her expression and her tone to smooth. “As I said, it will be quick. Then the three of you can return to whatever strange arrangement you have under my roof. I hope that will placate you enough that you stop your foolish plotting. I’m doing good things, you know. If you’d listen to me, I could explain it. Alizhan will understand once I help her.”
“So you’re not going to… restrain us?”
“Of course not, Evreyet,” Iriyat said. “Alizhan wouldn’t like that, and I know you won’t run. You want to see her.”
Iriyat walked out the door and Thiyo and Ev fell into step behind her, with three guards at their backs. Apparently Iriyat’s faith that her prisoners wouldn’t run still required guards. But Ev squeezed his hand, and he was grateful for it.
Ev was still dressed like the other guards. Thiyo was wearing the green tunic and trousers he’d worn to Mar’s party, since they were all he had. They were stale and wrinkled, but more importantly, they were feminine. Iriyat knew—from having thrown open every door in his mind, or possibly from some earlier source—what he had between his legs. But she didn’t seem to care how Thiyo presented himself, which surprised him. He knew hardly anything about her, but her desire for power over everyone who surrounded her was clear, and by letting him keep his clothes, she’d given up an opportunity to impose her will on him. A mark of how unthreatened she felt.
Guards and Iriyat aside, Thiyo enjoyed their walk down the switchbacked street and over a bridge across the inlet. There was sunshine and salt in the air. Ev was next to him. People in the streets dressed and spoke in a colorful variety of ways. He didn’t require a memory to feel happy. Had he known this place before? Had he liked it then?
Iriyat led them into the Temple of the Balance, beyond the bustling atrium and up a grand stairway in the back that was clearly reserved for official business. The priests they passed nodded to Iriyat as if she were one of their own, rather than an accused heretic. Upstairs, they entered a round, windowless chamber with an open space in the middle and two rows of wooden chairs in concentric circles around it. All the light emanated from green lamps held in wall sconces. This courtroom at the heart of the temple had a domed ceiling that would catch every whisper and echo it back, but despite the small crowd there was only the sound of shuffling shoes and trailing robes.
The inner circle was nine chairs, eight filled with lavishly dressed Council members and the ninth with an elderly priest in grey robes. They’d all been at Solor House two triads ago, and Thiyo recalled their faces but not al
l of their names. Eight of them were trying hard to keep their faces neutral, and Mar ha-Solora was staring down at the floor with an expression that would carve lines between his handsome brows if he wore it too long. The outer circle was larger and its scattered occupants harder to identify. Thiyo recognized Alizhan from the party, wearing the same blue silk clothes. Her hairstyle was the same as well, although she must have slept on it to make it so lopsided. He could see a pin slipping out the back. It would be so easy to walk up behind her and neaten it, if only he remembered how they knew each other.
Next to Alizhan was a priest in black robes with severe line of black face paint across his eyes and a white beard grown long enough to touch his chest, and on her other side was another priest in grey robes, this one a tall woman with her mouth in an unsmiling line. Were they here to observe? Next to that priest was a youth with an expression of pained concentration. Perhaps he was trying to grow facial hair anywhere other than his upper lip, Thiyo thought, and then regretted his amusement when he saw black scars on the boy’s arms. Whatever had caused that scarring, he was too young for it. Next to him were two young Nalitzvans, a red-haired woman and the blond man who’d been there when Thiyo had woken up at the party.
Thiyo narrowed his eyes at the blond man. The expression he received in return was all pitiful pale blue eyes. Had he done something wrong? Or had that man wronged him? Thiyo looked away.
There was one other person seated several chairs away, a woman whose black hair was mostly silver and whose face was mostly frown. Her tunic and trousers were both baggy and brown and there was a smear of dirt on one knee. Who were all these people? What role would they play here?
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