“Thank you.” Ev would never know how grateful Alizhan was, but the words were a start. “You wanted me to know you were coming. And what you were going to do. But you’re quiet now.”
“I thought you were probably having enough feelings by yourself,” Ev said.
“No, no, I just meant—you’re good at that now. Controlling whether I can sense you.”
“Yeah,” Ev said, and no matter how much control she had, Alizhan knew she was shy in the face of the compliment. “It took me long enough. But I wanted to learn how. For you.”
Alizhan was too exhausted to examine why that made her eyes well up with tears again. She could only manage to say, “You’ve done a lot for me.”
“I’m not keeping track,” Ev said, amused. She nudged Alizhan in the ribs. “You’ve done one or two things for me.”
“Not nearly enough.”
“Well, if we live through this, you’ll have time to do more,” Ev said lightly.
“Has the wave come?” Alizhan pushed herself up and went to one of the windows.
“We’d know if it had. Although on my way over, I wasn’t looking at anything but what was right in front of me,” Ev said, coming to stand at her side. “I’ve never seen so many people crammed into the streets. I don’t think I could have seen the ocean if I’d tried. But that’s good. It means they’re getting out of the lower city.”
“Shit,” Alizhan said, looking out the window. “No wonder you couldn’t see the ocean.”
The view overlooked the inlet of Denandar—or where the inlet ought to have been. Instead there was a rippling expanse of red sand and rock extending farther out than Ev had ever seen. Sunlight caught on embankments of shells, twinkling white and pink against the sand. Ev could all too easily imagine tiny figures wandering out into that new landscape, not knowing what it meant.
The same thought occurred to both of them. Alizhan whispered bimok a thetsarsho mavi a gimir zaleij. Shell collectors make bone offerings.
A wave was coming.
38
The Gardener's Hand
Thiyo rang the bell till his arms ached. When he finally let go, another pair of hands grabbed the rope. In the deafening chamber, he hadn’t heard anyone else enter. Now he was surrounded by six young people, four men and two women. The young man taking the rope from his hands was one of the men he’d shouted at in the street earlier. The five others were gathered around one of the windows, murmuring in amazement.
Whatever was out there was of more interest to them than the corpse and the tied-up man on the floor. Sardas was awake, but he wouldn’t have been able to say much while the bell was ringing.
The crowd at the window parted for Thiyo. “Look,” said one of the young women. “The sea receded.”
“That means a wave is coming in a few minutes,” Thiyo said. “Aren’t you worried about the body on the floor?”
“The older priest must have killed him,” she said. “You tied up the older priest, which means you didn’t kill him, and you were ringing the bell, so we figured you were trying to do some good. I’ve never met anyone who looks like you. Are you an islander? Have you seen a wave before?”
Thiyo was relieved that they weren’t here to kill him or cart him off to prison. “Yes and yes, I suppose. It’s been a long time—the same wave that hit Laalvur nineteen years ago also hit the islands. I was five.”
The bell ringer had ceased his work to listen to Thiyo, but Thiyo was lost in thought.
Unusually for the time, both his parents had been home. Sunslope was out of range of all but the most legendary waves, so there was no need to evacuate, but once they’d seen ships put up their warning sails, they’d hiked up to Summit with half the village just to get the view. Waves inspired fear and brought devastation even to the most well-prepared communities, but it was considered sacred and necessary to watch them. To remember. He had dashed ahead of the group in his excitement and getting chastised for his enthusiasm on such a somber occasion. From their lodgings in Summit, they could see the wave hit Hoi’s western shore, where the land faded gently into the sea and the water rushed in as if it had simply decided to put the border somewhere else. And they could see the wave hit the Dayward edge, where one of the smaller peaks of the island dropped precipitously into the ocean and the wave rose up like a wall of water and roared. They’d meant to witness it in silence, but the wave overrode their intentions, churning up curses and gasps. Thiyo remembered interspersed words and gestures, little bits of things like “Look, there!” and “Is that—?” and “A tree!” All their sentences had been as fragmented as what surfaced in the water.
The same thing happened again, only this time the fragmented sentences were in Laalvuri, and there was no gentle slope to the beach. The ocean reared and rushed in, a cliff of water almost as high as the cliffs on land. Louder than the bell they’d rung, as loud as the quake and subsequent crashes in Adappyr, it slammed into the city, the wall of water collapsing and sloshing. It crushed docks and doors, flooding every room in the lowest two levels and drawing out chairs and tables and any people unlucky enough to think their walls would protect them. Bodies and debris swirled in the flood, the undercurrents already sweeping them back out to sea even as more water poured in.
“It’s receding,” said the young man with the bell rope in his hands. “We should go down there and rescue people.”
Thiyo wanted to snap “absolutely not,” but he managed to hold his tongue long enough to steady himself. Did no one talk about waves in Laalvur? Did they ignore waves the same way they ignored magic? Nineteen years wasn’t long enough to forget everything. He tried to keep his voice calm. “Don’t do that. We can’t be sure it’s finished. We say ‘a wave’ but sometimes it’s a chain of waves. There could be another in five minutes. Or an hour. We can’t do anything for those people if we’re dead. Wait here for a few hours. When we’re sure it’s safe to go down there, we’ll look for survivors.”
All six of his new friends accepted this without protest, and Thiyo wondered what he’d done to earn their trust. Perhaps they just wanted a reason to stay up here where it was safe. A few minutes later, as their questions poured in, he realized what they wanted was to hear everything he knew about waves. Thiyo knew so much about this particular wave that explaining its origin would take hours, but as it happened, no one in his audience had anywhere to go.
A second wave hit only minutes after the first. All Ev could do was clench Alizhan’s hand as they stood at the window, their eyes fixed on the incoming water. A third wave came, and then a fourth. Even high up in a tower on a hill, she could feel the rumbling in her feet. Or maybe that was her imagination, and it was the blast of sound that made her tremble. The sliver of Denandar visible to them was clogged with water, a filthy whirlpool. They counted down the minutes, waiting for another wave. None came. They let more time trickle by in silence, watching the flood drain back into the ocean.
“We have to go down there,” Ev said.
Alizhan inhaled and let the breath out slowly. “I knew you were going to say that.” A moment later, she added, “And I know you know that I knew. What I meant is, going down there must be the right thing to do, because you said we should and I really don’t want to do it.”
Ev laughed. “I don’t think that’s a sound method for judging whether something is moral.”
“But in this case, it’s correct.”
“Can I tell you a secret?” Ev said. It was a silly thing to ask, since she wasn’t hiding anything from Alizhan. “I don’t want to, either.”
“No. You’re scared, but you want to. That’s different. You want to go rescue people and dig things out of the mud, even if you’re worried about what we’ll find. But thank you for trying to make me feel less wretched.” Alizhan smiled weakly.
Rescuing people wasn’t the first thing on Ev’s mind, and she was surprised that Alizhan chose to gloss over her grim list of priorities, until Alizhan sighed and stared at her feet and added, “And
I suppose we have to dispose of that, or else we’ll both hang for murder.”
“I wouldn’t let them hang you,” Ev said, and for once, she was the inappropriately cheerful one. Alizhan hadn’t glanced at Iriyat’s body when she’d spoken, but Ev couldn’t help it. She had to reassure herself. The previous generation of the Varenx family had both wriggled out of their deaths, Merat by running away and Orosk by staying half-alive, and Ev couldn’t let Iriyat continue that legacy. A sword through the heart was a harder thing to escape, and Iriyat’s corpse was cold and still. Good.
“I doubt the Council would ask your opinion,” Alizhan said. “No matter how much they hate Iriyat, they won’t let common people go unpunished for killing one of their members. It sets a bad precedent for the eight who remain alive, you know?”
“Nine,” Ev corrected. “You’re alive.”
Alizhan’s face froze, her eyes comically wide.
“You’re her sole heir. My understanding is that you inherit everything, including her place on the Council. So as a Council member, you can ask me for testimony on the death of Iriyat ha-Varensi.”
“Oh God,” Alizhan said, as if none of this had occurred to her. She hadn’t been able to think beyond Iriyat’s death and the city’s survival. But Ev had spent her isolation in Varenx House reading a fantastical novel and Kasrik’s equally fantastical pamphlets, and she had a few ideas.
“If you make me testify, I’m going to tell them I want full, sole credit for that murder.” Ev picked up Iriyat’s body and carried it over her shoulder. “Or we can get rid of the evidence and pretend she died in the wave and everyone will agree it’s poetic justice.”
“And convenient,” Alizhan said. “The city had no love for her after the trial, and she made trouble for the Council. No one will investigate.”
“Right,” Ev said.
“I’m not sure it is right,” Alizhan countered. “But I don’t care.”
“I’ll be sure for you,” Ev said and walked down the stairs. Their trip down into the lower city was a difficult slog, but no one stopped to ask about the dead body they were carrying. They hiked all the way to the tip of Dar, until the city was at their backs and Varenx House was far above them. Ev dumped Iriyat’s body in the roiling, debris-filled ocean without an instant of regret. They watched the corpse sink into the murk, tendrils of blond hair undulating like tentacles, until it was swept out of view. It was the burial she deserved.
Thiyo had left Solor House in Mar’s silk dressing gown and a pair of sandals, utterly the wrong outfit for wading through muck and searching for survivors. He kept having to pull the robe back together. It would almost have been easier to take it off, sodden as it was, but splintered wood and shards of glass were still swirling through the water, and Thiyo wasn’t inclined to expose himself to that. Especially not since he’d run into Ev’s father and the two of them had pulled an elderly woman safely out of her home. Obin wasn’t talkative, beyond asking after his daughter, but he seemed to approve of Thiyo being here.
The wave Thiyo had witnessed in Hoi had caused destruction, but nothing like this. The islands had developed a warning system long ago to ensure their own survival. It relied on the abilities of trackers like his father and the one he and Ev had met. Laalvur should have its own warning system—perhaps Orilan would be able to develop one. Adappyr should have one, too. So should the rest of the world.
Iriyat had been right about that. It was wrong that his people had kept their knowledge to themselves, even if mainlanders might have rejected it as superstitious bunk. They ought to have shared it anyway. Thiyo ought to have shared it long before this. Here, lifting smashed doors so he could break into the half-flooded homes and shops of Arishdenan to see if there were people inside, it weighed on him that he hadn’t.
At least he knew what he had to do next.
Iriyat might be gone—Thiyo desperately hoped that Ev and Alizhan had killed her and lived to tell the tale—but there would be other waves. Her dream of controlling the movements of the world would die with her, as would her desire to keep all her discoveries for herself. She’d wanted to know how the islanders protected themselves from waves so she alone could possess that knowledge. She’d dreamed of presenting herself as sole savior. But as the scene in this ruined Arishdenan street demonstrated, one person would never be enough. There were no singular heroes after a quake or a wave. There were dozens of people helping each other, and every outstretched hand and ladleful of drinking water was as necessary as the next.
His friends from the tower had proved useful, both at rescuing people and at retelling his story, so by now several strangers had asked for help or thanked him by name, and he’d heard people cursing Iriyat in passing. He hadn’t had time or energy to think on that. He’d simply directed anyone who’d asked to the easiest path into the upper city, where people whose homes were intact had opened them to neighbors who’d lost everything. People who might never have spoken to each other were now embracing and sharing stories. Just as after the quake in Adappyr, when Nari had taken him in, a community sprang up in the wake of a disaster.
Perhaps that community could be nurtured. Perhaps it could grow into a way to save people before the next wave.
It was Alizhan who dragged Ev away from the city when she was on the verge of collapsing. “We have to go back to Solor House. You need rest.”
They said goodbye to everyone they’d been working with and passed many more people on their way up who offered them directions to places where they could find food, water, or shelter, or possibly reconnect with missing friends or loved ones. It was impressive how fast people had come together. Alizhan politely declined every offer except for the last one.
“We are looking for a few people,” she said. “A tall islander with wavy black hair that comes down over the ears—”
“Thiyo,” said the woman. “Last seen in Arishdenan.”
Alizhan’s descriptions of Obin, Kasrik, Eliyan, Henny, and Ket weren’t met with such instant success. “We left him alone for half a shift and somehow Thiyo got famous,” she told Ev after they’d walked away.
“I’d expect nothing less.”
They found him in Arishdenan as promised, working side by side with Obin, who was overjoyed to see Ev. Alizhan made all four of them come back to Solor House for food and rest by snapping, “Don’t even try, I know how hungry you are.”
There was a crashing loud argument happening inside Solor House when they got close, but it took her companions ages to hear it with their ears. Alizhan could only perceive Mar’s feelings, which meant the source of conflict was probably Kasrik.
“You open this house to the homeless or I will never speak to you again!”
Yes. Definitely Kasrik.
“I can’t—I don’t feel—”
Mar had been about to say safe, and she could feel him vibrating with anxiety even rooms away, so Alizhan announced her entrance by calling “Iriyat is dead.”
It was getting easier to think about. Less like a spiny burr underneath the rest of her thoughts. Smoother, cooler, something neutral and true. She’d seen it happen. She’d seen the body go into the water. She was sad and happy and sick and relieved all at once.
She shucked her muddy shoes, although her feet and legs were no cleaner, and went into the central parlor. Thankfully, Kasrik and Mar had stopped yelling at each other, though Mar was still grappling with his feelings. Alizhan was pleased to discover that Eliyan, Henny, and Ket were also alive and in the room.
“Mar is currently hosting nine of us,” Alizhan said. “I’m sure he’d be happy to donate money and whatever’s in the pantry to people who need it. Meanwhile, Varenx House is empty, so why don’t we let people stay there?”
There was a moment of silent consideration, then assent, then a barrage of questions. Was Alizhan laying claim to Varenx House? Would the Council accept that? Would she assume her place on the Council and manage the fortune she’d inherited from Iriyat? And how would she get people
out of the house, once she’d let them in?
“The whole Council knows me now, after Iriyat tried to discredit me and I had to put on that show,” Alizhan said. “None of them will contest my claim. And I don’t want to live there, so someone else might as well.”
“It’s a sensible solution for now,” Mar said. “Although I should point out that you are not invited to stay here indefinitely.”
“Sure. Fine. I’m going to my room,” Alizhan said. Ev and Thiyo followed her.
“That was a neat trick, what you did in there,” Thiyo said, impressed. “There will be more arguments to solve in the weeks to come, I think.”
“It was nicely done,” Ev agreed. “Did you know Mar would agree to make donations before you said that?”
Alizhan didn’t want to think about future arguments or what she’d bullied Mar into. She peeled off her clothes, partly because she wanted them off and partly because she knew it would halt the conversation. It worked. Thiyo and Ev both went silent with surprise and interest. And then a split-second of horror from Thiyo. “You’re not getting into our bed with all that filth on you, are you?”
“Our bed?”
“Am I uninvited?” Thiyo asked, confident he knew the answer.
And he was right, damn him. Alizhan threw her muddy clothes at him for being smug. He stepped aside, untouched and unfazed. She turned on her heel and walked into the adjacent bathroom without another word.
“Uh,” Ev ventured, still in the bedroom. “This is probably something we should talk about. Since not all of us can read minds.”
“Thiyo knows damn well he’s still invited. He just wanted to hear me say it. And I’m very tired and hungry and cranky right now, so I don’t think you should ask me to talk about anything.” Kasrik’s pamphlets had all sorts of things to say on the evils of wealth, but Solor House had a cistern of water somewhere in its depths and some complicated system of pipes that produced hot baths, and Alizhan had never felt anything more luxurious than stepping into that tub. She sank down into the water, leaned her head back, and closed her eyes. The bath had gone a long way toward improving her mood already. Ev still felt miserably uncertain, and Alizhan could help with that. “But I suppose I’d rather talk about this than whatever else the future holds, so here it is. We don’t do anything else the way other people do—I don’t even think the way they do—so I don’t see why we should start now. You’re in love with each other. And me. And I’m in love with both of you, in different ways. I don’t see why we should have to arrange ourselves otherwise to make other people comfortable. As for the particular mechanics of fucking and sharing a bed, I don’t want to do those things with anyone else and neither does Ev, although I should have let her say so herself, but I’m sure Thiyo does, or will on occasion, and that’s fine with me. Also you’re both absurdly tall and if you kick me or steal the covers or can’t keep your thoughts quiet while you’re asleep, I will move to a different bed that isn’t full of your stupid long legs and incessant thoughts. Which I love. Because I love you. It’s a foolish, incomprehensible, liquefying kind of feeling, and sometimes I look at you—either of you, both of you—and think I might die from it, but I also can’t live without you and I don’t ever want to feel any different. But I was serious about the bed. I can’t be expected to put up with everything.”
Shadebloom Page 38