So much for that, Thiyo thought. Iriyat had reversed her position and was now running around Laalvur slaughtering bell-ringers to cause as much destruction as possible. Alizhan had given her a taste of defeat at the trial, and she’d responded by deciding to take them all down with her.
He hurried to the tower on the Arish promontory, which was set closer to the sea than the one on Hahim. It was easy to find, being a tower, and would have been a short walk if the streets of Breakneck Hill hadn’t been packed with people fleeing inland. Kasrik and the others had successfully delivered their warning. Thiyo sidled through the crowd with as much care as possible, but still got shouldered and thwacked by bundles of possessions. These people, already alerted to the danger, had no need of the incessant bell-ringing. But who might be in the farther parts of the city, unable to hear this signal? With the silence from the towers, Thiyo had no idea what shift it was. How much of the city was asleep right now?
As he walked down from the top of Breakneck Hill, the crowd thinned, and by the time he was on the street at the top of Arish, the bell was only a distant irritation. Thiyo saw two neighbors emerge into the street to ask each other why the bell was ringing like that. Did they not know what was coming? It had been nineteen years since the last wave, so perhaps some of them didn’t.
“A wave is coming!” he yelled, and they blinked at him in confusion and then suspicion. Thiyo had neither the time to explain himself nor the time to knock on every door in the neighborhood. His best chance to warn them was ringing the next bell.
The area in front of the tower was clear. The path leading to the door was lined on either side with gardens in the Laalvuri style, which was to say wilderness to anyone else’s eye. There were flowers in red and blue, shaped like bells and trumpets. Thiyo couldn’t say what they were, but they must have been on the Temple’s approved list of what was natural and right.
It was not natural or right for the wooden door to be hanging open, and Thiyo experienced a moment of fear so pure it was a physical clenching of his whole body. A refusal to walk forward into that space where Iriyat—or someone—might have murdered another priest. What if she was still there?
Ev would go in. Alizhan would already have scrambled up the wall. He had a sword—not that he knew what to do with it, Ilyr’s long-ago lessons having been an excuse to touch more than anything else. Thiyo sighed and mounted the stairs. His ascent was unremarkable except for his rising sense of dread until he spiraled toward the top.
The smell assaulted him. Blood and shit and viscera choked the air. He put a hand to his mouth and forced himself forward, where the first thing he saw was a still-bleeding body on the floor. He couldn’t be sure if the priest was dead, but the rapidly spreading blood was a bad sign.
The second thing he saw was Sardas, wiping a short knife on the dead priest’s robes. He hadn’t yet noticed Thiyo. He sheathed his knife and picked his cane up off the floor, using it to get back to his feet. He turned toward the stairs, and Thiyo unsheathed his sword.
“I thought you were dead,” Sardas said, his gaze caught on the blade. His hand went back to his dagger, drawing it out.
“I thought you were my friend,” Thiyo said. For all his bravado with Alizhan, now that he found himself alone with Sardas, Thiyo didn’t want to murder him. He could have. His inexperience with a sword would pose no problem. Sardas was older and slower and armed with a much smaller weapon. Even Thiyo could win that fight.
But Thiyo hadn’t come here to kill Sardas. He’d come to ring the bell. Sardas was an obstacle, not the ultimate goal. Thiyo took a step forward and some satisfaction in the way Sardas recoiled. Just because he wasn’t going to slit Sardas’s throat didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy the moment. Sardas had betrayed him and recently murdered two people. He deserved to quail in fear.
He steadied himself and replied, “I was your friend. But she’s always come first for me.”
Thiyo laughed. “And you think murdering two priests will make her love you? What’s your plan, to drown in her arms?”
Sardas stiffened. Iriyat had likely promised him something absurd—an impossible happily-ever-after—to secure his aid in getting out of prison and executing her deadly vision. He had the dagger out now, his arm extended to keep Thiyo from getting closer. Thiyo circled him. He swiped at Sardas’s knife with his sword.
Thiyo had already ruled out slitting the old man’s throat. The thought made his stomach lurch. If Sardas attacked him, he would defend himself, but he couldn’t murder a man who wasn’t harming him, no matter how despicable. Thiyo had to ring that bell before the wave came. Time was short and getting shorter. Could he cut off Sardas’s hand if he had to? Talking was a far more palatable option—if anything in this hellish crime scene could be described as palatable.
“I would die for her,” Sardas continued.
“And she would let you,” Thiyo said. “She might not even notice.”
Sardas’s face tightened. “You know nothing of our relationship. Of her vision.”
“She sent you to waste away at the edge of the world,” Thiyo said. Why argue with Sardas? The man had already made his choices. But Thiyo knew what had been in Iriyat’s journal, and he wanted to tell the truth. That the truth would hurt Sardas was its own pleasure. That the truth might goad Sardas to violence… Thiyo might be hoping for that, too. He continued his circuit around the room, trying to close the distance between himself and the priest, taking another jab at his knife hand. “She erased her own child from your memory. She doesn’t care about you. She never has. She never will.”
Sardas dodged Thiyo’s sword, keeping his knife firmly in hand. “And why does it matter to you, little lost islander? Do you want me to feel as alone in the world as you are?”
Though he held a knife, Sardas didn’t seem inclined to attack Thiyo with anything other than words. He didn’t have to. He knew Thiyo wanted to ring the bell, and all he had to do to ensure Thiyo’s failure was delay until any warning would be too late. He didn’t care what else happened. It was easy for him to insult Thiyo. Sardas had spent their alleged friendship making conversation, saving up details that might hurt Thiyo later. It had been a betrayal from the beginning. But that wasn’t enough reason to kill a man in cold blood. Depths drown Thiyo’s stupid fucking inconvenient conscience. Where had it come from?
If Thiyo couldn’t kill Sardas, he might as well attempt to persuade him.
“If you ring that bell and help warn Laalvur about the wave, I won’t harm you. I’ll testify that you had a change of heart at the last minute. You might live.” It was all he could offer. Sardas was guilty. Thiyo couldn’t let him escape. Was Laalvur as keen to execute its convicted criminals as Nalitzva? Even if not, once his role in this disaster was revealed, the city would thirst for his blood. “Do the right thing, Sardas.”
He laughed and turned his wrist to show off the murder weapon in his hand. The blood of two priests was on that knife. “I told you I’d die for her. Why do you think you can change my mind now? Or are you too much of a coward to kill me? Perhaps you’re hoping I’ll do it myself, if you tell me all about how Iriyat doesn’t love me.”
Well, Thiyo had tried.
He glanced around the room, noting the smaller bells in the windows and a coil of extra rope lying on the floor under one of them. Would one of the small bells be enough? No—he had to deal with Sardas at some point. He might as well do it now.
“You asked me where I’d go after this, but I could ask the same of you, Thiyo. This isn’t your home. You’ll never belong here.”
“I know why I was trying to goad you into violence, but it makes no sense that you’d do the same to me,” Thiyo said, irritated. “I have a sword.” He gestured helpfully, making another pass at Sardas’s hand.
“You don’t even have the balls to cut my hand off,” Sardas said. “You’re useless. They don’t need you, those two women you think are your friends. They left you in Estva. They’ll abandon you here. Even if you stay in
Laalvur with them, you’ll always be on the outside. They won’t exclude you out of malice. It’s just that they’re so close to each other. How could they ever share that with you?”
Thiyo had been afraid of all those things once. That he’d have nowhere to go after leaving Hoi and splitting up with Ilyr. That he’d be useless. That no one would want him. That Ev and Alizhan would always love each other more than they loved him. Sardas had kept careful accounts, but they were out of date. Thiyo wasn’t free of his fears. Right now, for instance, he was terrified he’d never live to find out what the future held, all because depths-drowned Iriyat ha-Varensi had selfishly decided to take this whole city with her on her way out.
“When I tried to do this to you, I was telling the truth about Iriyat,” Thiyo said. He lunged forward, swinging his sword toward Sardas’s wrist in earnest now, not caring what he amputated. Sardas shrank back to save his hand at the last instant, and the knife fell to the floor. Thiyo kicked it away and threw his sword down after it. Then he drew his arm back and punched Sardas in the face with a follow-through that would have made Ev beam.
Alizhan didn’t sense a single feeling on her way across the city. She passed plenty of people. Even ran into one or two. Nothing mattered except finding Iriyat. She had to be working with someone—probably Sardas. Alizhan should have killed him when Thiyo asked. But if Sardas had been in the tower on Breakneck Hill, he was unlikely to be in the one on Dar. They were the farthest apart.
The door to the tower on Breakneck Hill had been left open. Sardas couldn’t have locked it from the outside. But the door to the tower on Dar was shut, and when Alizhan tried to open it, she found it blocked by something heavy. That meant someone was inside. It had to be Iriyat.
A decorative garden ringed the bottom of the tower, and an old vine clung to the stones. It was an easy climb.
When Alizhan squeezed herself between the window ledge and the small bell hanging above, breathless, she already knew she’d find Iriyat. She wasn’t prepared to be grabbed and dragged through. Her feet clanged against the bell. Iriyat thrust her down. Her back hit the floor and she managed to turn her head before her skull met the same fate. Iriyat’s fingers clutched at her shoulders, wrinkling the fabric beneath them. She was wild-eyed, her blond hair a grimy cloud around her face.
Alizhan expected vituperation, but instead Iriyat was near tears, whispering, “I knew you’d come.”
She’d never seen Iriyat in clothes like this, which must have been issued to her in the prison: rough, baggy, the color of dried mud. Alizhan might not have recognized her if not for the horrible blank touch of her hands. Well, and the bell tower and everything else about their circumstances, but still. Seeing Iriyat so disheveled subtracted something from her power, even as her hands crept up Alizhan’s neck.
Alizhan grabbed her wrists to wrench them away. She hadn’t worn gloves. Ev had tried to give her a sword from one of the Solor House guards, “just in case.” But Alizhan had refused. She’d killed Merat with only her hands, and she wouldn’t know what to do with a sword. Those were the reasons she’d given Ev.
She regretted her choice. It would be awful to kill Iriyat with her bare hands, to feel the agony of her last moments. Slicing her open with a sword would be far preferable. And Alizhan knew now that these were the only options left to her. Iriyat had to die. Lacemaker justice, her grandfather had said, before Iriyat had silenced him forever. He’d been wrong about so many things, but he’d known prison wouldn’t be enough to stop her.
Alizhan locked eyes with Iriyat. It was almost as painful as a touch—although neither of them had yet begun to work. Her hands were still clamped around Iriyat’s wrists, holding her away, and she felt nothing intruding in her mind.
“Let me,” Iriyat was saying. “It will work this time, it will work, I know it will work, let me fix you…”
Alizhan grunted. She twisted her hips and tried to flip them over. If Iriyat was determined to alter her mind—or kill her in the process—she had to end things quickly. They rolled across the floor, struggling. Iriyat’s soft voice was at odds with how hard she fought.
“We will leave this place together,” Iriyat said, and Alizhan had no idea if she meant alive or dead. “I love you. I don’t want to leave without you. And you love me. That’s why you came.”
She was pitiful and hideous, with her wet red eyes and her dirty clothes, pitting all of her strength against Alizhan as they wrestled on the floor. She’d never spoken like this. It was a relief to find her so broken. A confirmation of what Alizhan already knew. But it was bittersweet and short-lived. Alizhan’s heart ached at the sight of Iriyat in such a state, knowing what she had to do. Maybe it would be a mercy to kill her—but whether that mercy was for Iriyat or herself, Alizhan couldn’t say.
More importantly, could Alizhan focus with Iriyat fighting her? Ev had been right about the damn sword.
Her instinct was to touch Iriyat’s face to kill her, even though it didn’t matter. The bare skin of her wrists was good enough, and Alizhan couldn’t afford to let go. She sucked in a breath and closed her eyes for an instant, seeking the clarity she needed. When Merat had attacked her, she’d channeled all of her rage back into Merat’s body. But that rage had been for Thiyo and Ev, who didn’t deserve what Merat had done to them.
Alizhan was angry with Iriyat on their behalf, too. But her own rage would be a far deeper well. To draw from that well, she had to let herself feel it. Iriyat had exploited Alizhan’s love to make her complicit in terrible things. Iriyat had poisoned what precious few happy memories she had of childhood. And she’d done it for—what? To destroy Adappyr and Laalvur? To find a cure that Alizhan didn’t need or want? To shape the world to her own ends, as if it belonged to her and her alone?
And all because she’d been… sad?
No. Alizhan knew better than that. Plenty of people lost loved ones and didn’t let grief twist them into something brutal and cold. Ev’s father and aunt had grown up in a violent family and they’d gone on to form families and friendships of their own. Eliyan had lost her brother and she’d grown up and found a way to help children like him. Kasrik had hardly known his family, and on top of that he’d been abducted and tortured, but his desire to change the world hadn’t manifested as secrecy and cruelty. And, of course, Thiyo had lost his father as a child. He and Ev had suffered, and all they wanted was to love each other in peace. That was all Alizhan wanted, too. She didn’t want—oh, how desperately she didn’t want to kill anyone. Iriyat had left her no other choice.
Iriyat and Alizhan could have been happy. They could have had a family. They’d never have had Arav, but Iriyat could have kept his memory alive in stories. Instead she’d kept even that from Alizhan.
With a grunt, Alizhan slammed Iriyat into the floor. “I didn’t deserve that,” Alizhan said, her teeth gritted. “And you didn’t deserve me.”
She blinked back tears, glad not to know what expression Iriyat was making, or any of what she was feeling. She already felt too much pity for Iriyat, and she couldn’t afford more. She didn’t look into Iriyat’s eyes, but she could feel Iriyat’s resistance ebb, her shoulders slumping.
“Will you do it, then?” Iriyat asked, her voice a whisper.
Alizhan didn’t answer, distracted by something in the stairwell. A sound, she thought, but there was no sound. Someone was charging up the stairs, though. Someone thundering with anger and fear and love.
Ev.
She wanted Alizhan to know she was coming. And she wanted Alizhan to know—as Alizhan always had—that this wasn’t complicated for her. Ev’s feelings about Iriyat were simple. They were the straightforward counterpart to what she felt for Alizhan. And yes, that was what it felt like when someone loved you. They didn’t talk about fixing you when you didn’t want or need fixing. They didn’t dole out tenderness in little bits and offer you more if only you’d become some different, easier version of yourself. They showed up when you needed them. Ev arrived, filling the doo
rway with her height, and unsheathed her sword.
Then everything happened too quickly and too slowly all at once. Knowing Ev needed a clear path, Alizhan let go of Iriyat and rolled off to the side.
Startled, Iriyat jerked her head around. “You.”
She started to push herself up from the floor, but Ev had already moved to stand over her. There was nowhere to go. Ev had her feet planted, free of doubts. Maybe it was cruel, but Alizhan hoped Iriyat was afraid.
Her voice didn’t shake the way it had when she’d been speaking to Alizhan. She’d pulled that sweetness back over her words like a new set of clothes, as though she were determined to end things with some shred of her public persona intact. “I almost had you, you know. You might have been mine. Tell me, has the wave come yet?”
“You won’t live to see it,” Ev said.
Iriyat shook her head, and there was a rueful note in her voice. “I should never have let you out of my sight, Evreyet.”
“It’s Ev.”
Then the sword came down, one blow right into her heart. Alizhan watched Iriyat spasm, then turned away and rang the bell furiously. She didn’t realize she was wracked with sobs until Ev gently took the rope from her clenched hands, saying “it’s done, it’s done, you can stop,” and Alizhan folded into her arms. The sobs kept coming, and Ev moved them so they could sit on the floor on the opposite side of the bell. When her eyes were clearer and her breath more regular, Alizhan leaned so she could see the other side of the room, stealing a glance at the body.
It didn’t look like Iriyat. But maybe it was just that Alizhan had never seen her in defeat. She looked small and crumpled and not at all like someone who could have overturned the natural order of the world. And dead. She looked dead.
“I could have done it,” Alizhan said, still sniffling. She wiped at her face.
“I know. But you didn’t have to,” Ev said.
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