He leans back, wings flapping, and rubs his throat. He doesn’t look at me. He’s gone paler than usual and looks . . . smaller. “The moment you say no is the moment you are lost forever. Eternity. You deny any of it, and there is no going back. I will not be able to save you. Please.” He meets my gaze, and his countenance is so broken and so despairing that tears prickle my own eyes.
“I will shatter,” he whispers, and something inside of me does.
“I—” My voice is all breath rushing from my lungs. “I-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“I know,” he interrupts, softer, feebler. “I know, but please try. Your words have power, Maire, just as your thoughts do.”
I think of Shah, of his raised fists, of my shouting, Stop! A shiver courses across my shoulders and down my arms, but I’m not sure if it’s from the memory of Shah beating me, or from the power of the word itself.
Fyel runs one hand down his face and shudders. Looks at me. “I wish . . . I wish you could remember . . .”
He reaches one hand up to touch my cheek. I wonder if the bruise there has faded.
Fyel’s fingertips pass through me, but for a moment I think I feel something, something both warm and cold, something that kisses my skin with the faintest, shiver-like tingle, and it strengthens me.
“Will you stay?” I whisper. “I don’t know when he’s coming back, but will you stay?”
His features soften ever so slightly. He doesn’t say yes, he doesn’t nod, but he stays until his ghost thins and evaporates, until he’s an outline of white and shadow, until he loses his grip on this world and is gone.
I can go anywhere. It makes me sick inside. A different sick than the other sick, but I can go anywhere. I can find her.
She is mine.
CHAPTER 15
I have a dream.
In my dream Fyel and I are lying in a dip of golden sand beneath the shade of bizarre trees, tall trunked and rough, with broad sweeping branches and broader, spoon-shaped leaves. In one of these trees sits a bird I know I shouldn’t recognize, and yet I do. It’s a long bird colored salmon everywhere but its head, which is black. A long, curved black beak juts from its small face. It doesn’t chirp; it doesn’t move. It doesn’t even breathe. It’s just perched there, waiting. No wind stirs its feathers or the broad leaves around it. They, too, are waiting.
I look up to two suns in the sky, floating close together. One is blue and one is red. Below them, on the horizon, is a swath of white . . . something sharp and angled, like it was cut out of the violet sky by a child’s hand. It is unfinished. I know this, too, somehow.
I curl against Fyel’s side. He’s resting, his back to the sand, his arms stretched above his shoulders, his hands tucked under his head. He’s warm, and he’s solid—completely opaque. He’s astonishingly white, save for his clothes. They’re different clothes, strange but familiar, and they’re gray. Almost light enough to be another shade of white. His eyes are closed, and his bright, white hair dusts the sand in soft, curved wisps.
His chest rises and falls with each breath. My red hand moves beneath his shirt, tracing circles over his stomach. Somewhere, apart from the dream, I realize he has no navel.
My cheek presses against his shoulder. I like the smell of him, earthy and sweet. More finger-length locks of white hair sweep over his white eyebrows and pale forehead. They’re a warm sort of white, like duck’s down and roses.
Propping myself on my elbow, I look down at him, thinking he looks both old and young at the same time. I move my hand from his stomach to his lips, tracing their curve with my thumb. He opens his eyes.
Oh, gamre, I think. I know that color.
When Shah returns to the cave, he stands in the mouth and looks at his traps. He takes a long time doing this, making an effort to investigate each individual jaw.
His gaze rises to meet mine and he says, “What did you do?”
“I threw rocks,” I answer.
To my surprise, Shah laughs. He laughs hard, bending his knees and squeezing his ribs. His giggle is high pitched, yet also hearty and loud. He’s like this for a couple minutes, though despite all his laughter, I don’t see a single tear in his eyes, and I have no desire to join in the fun.
He trudges through the traps and unlatches me from my chain, though he doesn’t remove the metal cuff from my ankle. “Don’t be bad,” he says, hugging me to him as he fishes for something in his pocket. I cringe, wondering if it’s the knife he once used to cut my binds, and I have the thought to snatch it from his hand and throw it out the cave mouth. I don’t get the chance; that strange sickness of Shah’s magic assaults me, and I grit my teeth and shut my eyes to fight it.
The sensation punches me in the stomach, and when it’s over, I slide out of Shah’s arms and onto my knees, kneeling on rust-tinted earth. I perk up, forgetting the nausea, and run my fingers through the soil. We’re in the Platts—we must be. How close to Carmine have we come?
“Where are we?” I try.
Shah must be in a good mood, for he answers, “Umber.”
Umber. The city-state is east of Carmine by about a hundred or so miles. Franc was born in Umber.
Shah grasps the back of my neck and guides me forward toward the city, which rests in the valley between several small hills. Our feet leave tracks in the dirt until the road becomes bricked.
“How do you do it?” I ask, staring ahead. “Appear and disappear as you do? How did we get here?”
“No questions,” Shah says. “It’s mine. Mine.”
I lick my dry lips and focus on the city ahead of me. So many secrets. I wonder if Shah transports in a similar way to Fyel, but then again, Shah doesn’t have wings.
As we crest a hill, my breath hitches.
Umber is enormous.
I’m sure there are bigger city-states than this, but if Umber were a person, Carmine would fit into her palm. All the roads are bricked and uniform, connecting in an almost perfect grid, save where they curve to compensate for the hills, many of which boast windmills. Some of the buildings are four, even five stories tall. There are windmills on some of their roofs as well. And the people—there are so many people of all varieties in the street, along with wagons and carriages. I don’t see any farmland, save for a few plots on the farthest hills, detached from the bulk of the city.
Umber grows in size as we travel into it, its buildings rising up like well-watered sunflowers, the faces of its people becoming sharp and distinguishable. I glance at Shah, but he seems unimpressed. With his ability to transport wherever he wants, I imagine he’s witnessed much grander things. As we descend, the noise of the city tickles my skin and swarms in my ears, not unlike the forest insects at the hottest time of day, but these noises are harder and less peaceful, punctuated by horseshoes against the brick and curses and shouts. There’s no music in this place.
We merge into the street, and people stare at me. At first I think it’s as in Daneen’s city, and the stares are from those sympathetic to slaves, but I soon realize they stare because of my red skin, not because of the cuff on my ankle or the possessive grip Shah maintains on my neck. No—as we wind deeper and deeper into Umber, I soon learn that slavery is commonplace. Very commonplace.
A third of the people I pass are slaves. There are burly men who bear brands across their chests. Some have multiple burns for multiple owners, the previous marks burned again with a straight bar of negation. There are women wearing cuffs over their wrists or chains between their legs, shuffling back and forth from store to store, loading carts or—in one case—pulling them. We even pass a corral of children, dirty and downtrodden, who look to have been slaves since birth. None of them lift their gaze to meet mine as I pass, and I shiver, wondering if this is my destiny. Wondering why the gods don’t answer their prayers, either.
Shah’s grip tightens as he turns me down an alleyway and onto another street. No, I will not be passed from one owner to the next, I decide. Shah plans to keep me for a very, very long time
. My right ankle aches its agreement.
And what will happen when I remember, Fyel? I wonder, focusing on the jab of the crystal tucked into my boot. Or when I find this crystal’s match? You still won’t be able to save me. I’m not sure I can save myself anymore.
I can hear Arrice’s voice chiding me—Don’t think that way. Don’t you ever—and straighten my posture as we walk, mulling over the incident on Shah’s back porch. Could I shout at Shah now, order him to release me, and lose myself among the bustle of people in this city? Yet nothing else I’ve ever said to him has swayed him like that simple stop. I’m not sure what I did, if I really did anything at all. Could I repeat such a spell?
I eye Shah, whose lips are set into a firm line. Would my words work amid so much noise, and around so many people? I would likely just make Shah angry, and judging by the slaves around us, no stranger would look twice if he decided to punish me here.
We trail down to a more rural part of the city—I can only assume Shah didn’t transport us there directly out of fear that someone would see his magic and steal whatever bestows his miracle ability—and come to a large home surrounded by a complex iron fence. There’s even a guard watching the gate, but he recognizes Shah and lets him in, eyeing me the whole time. I avoid his gaze, not wanting to detect whatever hostility may lie within it.
Shah leads me down a long, narrow walkway, whereupon a second guard meets us and directs us around the house. There is a large yard here, green but patchy, and a set of stables that house a handful of plow horses. I scan the slaves grooming them, and it’s then I see him—the male slave who stopped outside of my shop the evening before the marauders hit. The one who ate the petit four.
He glimpses me, but there’s no recognition in his eyes. We met only briefly, and I look very different now, what with my ill-fitting men’s clothing and my vivid skin color. I’m glad he left the city before the bandits came, but I wonder what his fate could have been had he stayed. Could he have gotten free, or, perhaps, been delivered to a kinder master?
I remember the master, vaguely, as we enter the house, Shah still guiding me by my neck. I don’t like the half memory I have of him walking up from the blacksmith’s. I don’t like him for keeping slaves. I don’t like him for coming to Carmine right before the attack. I don’t like him for the finery of his house, for the silver candelabra and the redwood sideboards and the tightly woven rugs of indigo and saffron, for the displayed harp enchanted to play itself, or for the golden, egg-shaped orbs that form wreaths over nearly every door. I see the maids, none of whom are smiling, and assume they, too, must be slaves. The house is immaculate and vast, and I hate the man who owns it.
When I meet him, I scowl, but he doesn’t see me, only Shah.
“This is her. She. Her. Her.” Shah gestures to me, but the short man still doesn’t see me, only looks me up and down, a quick calculation. To him, I am merchandise he’s not convinced will work.
“And she bakes? She knows witchcraft?” he asks. Shah, not me.
“Of course. She is special. I told you.” His orange brows draw together, reminding me of a reprimanded child.
“We shall see. I will only pay when I’m satisfied.” He gestures with a limp hand for us to follow him, and he takes us into the kitchen, which is as enormous as the house would suggest, measuring at least twenty times the size of the one in my bakeshop. Two-thirds of the wall on the left is lined with a broad stretch of counter space, breaking to fit two ovens in the middle. Beneath it are wooden shelves filled with baskets and plates and other knickknacks, and above it hover a few cupboards and hooks boasting various utensils and pans. The right wall, on the far end, repeats this pattern, though the third oven embedded into it is unlike any I’ve ever seen. I can’t begin to guess where one would put in the wood. Two tables take up space in the middle, one covered with a few abandoned dishes. Two women are chopping something on the far table, but as soon as they see us, they scoop it up and exit through the closest door, scuttling away like frightened mice.
“The things she’ll need are in here somewhere,” the slave owner comments. “What I want is a drug—or a biscuit or whatever it is she makes—that will keep my workers alert. To stave off fatigue and general wear so I can get more hours out of them. I’ve things that need doing and orders to fill. Need to cut expenses, like I said.”
“I can make food infused with strength,” I say. The man eyes me in disbelief, clearly offended at my voice, but I continue, “Or endurance, to help them.”
“No.” He slices the air between us with his hand. “No. None of that or I won’t pay a cent. Nothing that will empower them. Nothing that might give them the upper hand.” He speaks directly to Shah, who is nodding. “Is that understood?”
I stare at this man’s face, trying to look past his eyes, but I see no light in him. I’m going to be sick.
“She understands,” Shah answers, and my soul darkens.
“I will pay you in gold if you succeed”—again, he speaks to Shah—“and nothing if you fail. Don’t cross me.” He prods Shah’s chest with a finger and exits the kitchen.
Shrugging, Shah says, “You heard him,” and proceeds to take a seat on a stool in the corner, where he cleans his nails with his teeth.
I don’t want to be here.
I peer toward the door through which the two maids disappeared, praying that maybe they’ll return, maybe they’ll help me, but the door remains shut. Worrying my lip, I move down the long line of cupboards, pulling their carved handles—ivory?—one at a time until I collect the necessary ingredients. I’ll make sugar cookies because they’re simple, and because they’ll be easy to pass out among the dozens, if not hundreds, of slaves this man keeps.
I don’t want to be here.
The silvery cuff around my ankle feels heavier than my boot as I set to work. My movements are slow and heavy, my bones wrought in iron. I imagine Fyel swooping into the kitchen, his wings ten times their size, his body as whole as it had been in my dream, taking my hands in his and whisking me away to another world, a world with sand and suns and violet sky.
I crack eggs. Stir.
I want Franc to puff out his chest and crack his knuckles, even though I used to groan whenever he did so, and face down this slave owner—shouting over him, arguing with him, twisting a finger into every moral and logical fallacy in his ridiculous request.
I want Cleric Tuck to hold my hand and tell me to pray, to tell me this man will get his reward, that Strellis will take from him and give to the slaves, that there is hope even in a dark place like this.
I wish Arrice were here. To guide me, to take some of the burden from my hands. To whisper in my ear: You don’t have to do this. He’s an awful man. I’ll distract the weird one, and you run out the back door. I’ll take care of you, Maire.
What am I making, again? Cookies. Cookies of alertness. Something to banish sleep.
I think of Shah. I either sleep very little or too much in his care, depending on where he strands me.
Sugar, stir. Zest, stir. Flour. Knead. Knead.
I am this dough. Two hands work me in opposite directions. One hand I fear, and one I can’t touch.
I wipe my eye with my shoulder. I’m not sure if a tear was there or not—I smeared it too quickly to tell.
I use a glass cup to cut circles into the dough once I roll it out. Mindless circles. Shapeless. I imagine them being distributed to these servants to make them work harder, but not to nourish them. Not to strengthen them. I should have put every ounce of strength and rebellion I had into them. I could save them, couldn’t I?
You can’t even save yourself, my thoughts whisper back.
Shah sits in the corner, idle. Unlacing his shoes, lacing them. Playing with whatever he finds in his coat pockets.
Cookies on the tray, in the oven. I don’t want to be here.
My leg hurts.
I bake tray after tray after tray of cookies. The sugar atop them glints like Fyel’s wings. I scrape th
em off the pan with a spatula and spread them across the countertop to cool. Stacks of cookies. Nine dozen of them. Shah claps his hands and comes over, inhaling their hot, sickly aroma. Then he leaves, skipping offbeat with himself. When he returns minutes later, the slave owner, whose name I have not learned and do not care to learn, comes with him.
I wipe my forearm over my hairline to keep the sweat from beading.
The man frowns at me and raises a thin eyebrow at the cookies. He takes one off the top of a stack and studies it. I imagine it’s still warm. His thumb leaves a print in it.
He sniffs it, licks it, bites it. Chews, swallows.
He glares at Shah. “I don’t see anything special about it.”
I meet Shah’s eyes. The effects are usually immediate with my confections.
What had I been thinking while I made them? As I ponder on it, my blood goes as sour as old cream.
The man takes another bite. “They’re good cookies,” he says, but his voice is growing rough, and the skin shaded by his ears flushes. “But I’m tired, and I don’t feel any different.”
Shah grabs fistfuls of his coarse, curly hair. “No no no! It works, it works!” He looks at me with wide eyes. “Try another!”
“No!” The man yells and throws the cookie to the floor, stomping on it with his foot. The flush spreads over the rest of his face and trickles down his neck. He turns to me, seeing me, and marches toward me. “You cur! You have wasted my time and my resources for flimsy parlor tricks!”
I know the look in his face. I step back, but my cuff hits my boot and I stumble, giving the man enough time to strike me.
He hits me hard, harder than Shah ever did. Hard enough to shoot my trajectory sideways. I slam into the counter, my shoulder hitting the shelves below it, my head hitting its edge, and stumble onto the ground. That’s when the pain registers. Searing and white and red—
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