I follow the path away from the palace, past what I now recognize as practice fields for the soldiers—they had only looked like a dark expanse when I passed them that night—and around a curve to a series of buildings. Benches are set out across from them, right where the sun warms them. I sink down onto the nearest, stretch my legs out before me to rest my foot, and try to think about what I’ve learned today.
In the end, it isn’t as much as I’d like: I want to know how the boys came to be where they are, what they know of the people who snatched them, how many other children are held helpless within the city and across our kingdom. I want to know who has knowingly kept them where they are, and who has been unintentionally complicit. I want to break them out of their prison, consequences be damned. If only I had the ability. Or my sisters with me.
Between Niya’s quiet, steady focus and magical talent, and Bean’s drive to right all wrongs, I would have the support I needed to do something. God knows we’ve helped others before. At least I might have had a chance of helping these boys with my sisters’ aid. But it’s just me here now, on my own in a strange city, and I don’t know what I can accomplish alone.
“Kelari? Oh, it is you!”
I look up with a blink in time to realize it’s Kirrana, a tiered metal container in her hands, before she plops down on the bench beside me and opens up her container. She separates the tiers to reveal a generous meal of spicy fried potatoes, a separate dish of chickpeas, and a cloth-wrapped set of flatbreads.
“Would you like some lunch?”
I look at Kirrana, and it occurs to me that she isn’t looking at me at all. She’s very carefully not looking up. Ah, the bruise on my cheek.
“It’s all right,” I say. “I don’t mind if you stare.”
She flicks me a glance, her gaze skimming over my cheek, and then she hands me a flatbread. “Eat.”
“No questions?” I ask as I tear off a piece and scoop up a bite of chickpeas.
She shrugs. “I find that food usually helps when I’m feeling low. You can talk, though, if you want to. I’m pretty good at listening.”
“Let me guess: You’re an older sister?”
She grins. “No, I’m the youngest. You’re the oldest, though, aren’t you?”
“Well, yes.”
“See, that’s older sisters for you, not believing the young ones can listen.”
“That’s not true at all,” I protest.
She grins and prepares an especially large bite for herself. “I’m listening right now,” she says, and pops the bite into her mouth.
I can’t help laughing, my bruised cheek aching, as she watches me patiently and chews. And chews. She raises her brows, her left brow arching over her eye patch.
“You’ve figured out who I am,” I say.
She swallows. “It’s not like you made it a secret. You did tell me your name. I’m sorry, you know. We all heard what happened.”
I nod. “It’s—that’s not why I’m here.”
“So why are you here?”
“I don’t know.” I look across at the buildings and find that I do want to talk. “Do you think the snatchers are a real threat?” I ask abruptly. “Or just a fiction?”
“They’re real,” she says, her voice low.
“How do you know?”
A pause. She sets her flatbread down, her expression still. “My brother was snatched when he was eight. I was three. We know he didn’t run away.” She swallows. “My mother still mourns him. We all do.”
“I—I’m sorry.” I hadn’t meant to dredge up such pain for her.
“Not your fault,” she says, and picks up her bread again, but she doesn’t eat it, just sits with it in her hands. “Why do you ask?”
“A girl disappeared from our town just before I came here. And today, when I was out in the city, I saw some boys who . . .”
She looks at me sharply. “Who what?”
“Who might have been snatched. They were working, and the man who kept them said they owed him a debt, but the way he kept them—” I swallow hard. “They couldn’t leave. And they weren’t from the city, had no one here to protect them.”
“They couldn’t leave?”
I nod.
“Have you told anyone? Someone ought to be able to help them.”
“I will. And that might help these particular children, but . . .”
“You think there are more in the city?” Kirrana demands.
“Perhaps. And there are certainly more who are smuggled away.”
Kirrana looks down at her half-eaten flatbread, thinking. “You want to find the rest, help everyone.”
I nod, even though it sounds absurd spoken aloud like that.
“The princess might listen to you.”
“Yes, but to help anyone else, she’ll need more information than I have. She can’t launch an investigation without evidence, without proof that the snatchers even exist.”
Kirrana looks across the way at the buildings, one of which must be the tax office. “I wish I knew how to help you.”
So do I. I brush the crumbs off my skirts. “It’s all right. I’ll keep trying, and perhaps I’ll find out something more.”
She puts out a hand, just barely touching my arm as I rise. “I’m here. If I can help, I will.”
I thank her, though I’m not sure what a tax clerk could do against slavers.
I update the princess on my visit to the brickyard in a quiet moment before the evening’s banquet. She listens silently, her expression grim.
“If everyone around this brickyard is complicit in keeping them there . . .” She shakes her head. “That’s going to make it that much harder to find such people, because no one will report them.”
I nod, steel myself for this next bit of news, for it still makes me sick. “My contact also said that there are brothels where snatched girls are kept by force. He said when guards go to investigate, they take—they visit the girls for their own pleasure, and leave the brothel owner alone.”
“No.” Alyrra’s expression is livid. “No. I’ll have every brothel in this city shut down!”
“Who will you send?”
That brings her up short, but not for long. “We’ll need a force of soldiers dedicated to stopping the snatchers—men and women who volunteer to do so. I’ll talk to Kestrin.” She pauses. “It will have to wait until after the wedding. I can’t make such a change yet. In fact, it will be better if Kestrin and I do it together, rather than me alone.”
“Then he knows you’re looking into the snatchers?”
She nods absently.
“Does anyone else?” At her look, I say, “I need to know whom I can trust with this. Who in the palace knows what you’re trying to do?”
“Kestrin,” Alyrra says at once. “I assume Filadon would be trustworthy, given how close he is to Kestrin, and that he recommended you specifically.”
Did he? “You mean, because he knew I would care about stopping the snatchers?”
“Yes.”
I thought so.
She laughs. “Such a bright, sharp look, Rae! I see he didn’t tell you.”
“He’s very good at keeping secrets.”
“That he is,” she agrees. “As we navigate the palace side of things, I expect we will include Garrin. He has . . . indicated a wish to support us, which I don’t mind taking advantage of. Kestrin says his cousin is unquestionably loyal.”
I nod. Garrin is too far above me to be much of an ally, but it’s good to know that Alyrra will be able to rely on more than just her husband.
“You’ve done well, Rae,” Alyrra says. “This is a definite start.”
“It’s where some of the children end up,” I point out. “We don’t know how they get there, or who actually does the snatching. Nor do we know where the rest are sent.”
“I know. But even this much is more than we had last week.”
More, but not enough. And I don’t have any further leads. If only I could have spoken
to the boys in the brickyard. . . . “If we can rescue the boys I saw, they may be able to tell us how they were transported, who sold them to the brickmaker.”
Alyrra nods. “If we have a mode of transport, you think we’ll be able to start looking for that as well.”
“At least more effectively than we have up until now.”
“I’ll speak to Kestrin. I know the royal guards have different roles from those of the river wardens, or the soldiers who patrol the city. If we could just send one of his quads to collect the boys, it would be an easy thing, but I suspect it will have to go through the proper channels or we’ll risk alienating those we need on our side.”
“I understand,” I say, even though I cannot help thinking of the boys suffering days or weeks longer because of bureaucratic logistics.
In the next room, the connecting door opens and footsteps sound softly on the carpet. Alyrra says, brightly, “Our self-defense lessons will begin in the morning, before breakfast. I’ve asked all my attendants to take part.”
“Yes, zayyida,” I say as Jasmine steps in, glancing toward me. Alyrra nods to her, and sends me off to get ready for the evening banquet.
The meal is a long one, but the nobles I am seated beside are pleasant, and kindly include me in their small talk about the weather, the festivities, and everyone’s clothes. I smile and nod and do my best not to say anything to test their patience. The sheer opulence of this dinner seems a world away from the grim reality I glimpsed earlier today.
My sleep that night is plagued with haunting visions of the brickmaker’s boys, their eyes filled with darkness and their hands scarred and weeping blood. I dream of a labyrinth constructed of yellow bricks that walls them in, rising up between us as I race toward them. Finally, I find a break in the wall, but when I reach it, the foreign prince turns toward me, a smile on his lips and his pale eyes glistening with violence.
I wake with a jerk to the stillness of my room, the faint sound of Mina’s breathing. But there is no sleeping after such a dream. Dawn cannot be more than an hour or two off. At home, I would go out for a ride on Muddle, or just walk out into the plains and sit down to rest in the quiet. Neither is an option here. I lie in bed as long as I can, and then grab a shawl and slip out to the common room. And laugh at myself. Because here too I have nothing to do—no horses to check on, no mending, no cooking, not even a treasured book to read.
I make myself tea, hot water from the kettle kept upon a mage-made warming stone, a scoop of leaves dropped into the pot, and think about the boys I saw, about Seri and if she will ever be found, and the way Ani wept as I held her, as if her sorrow might break her open. I think about how little I actually know and whether I will be able to do anything to stop the snatchers.
I don’t have any answers. I lean my head against the sofa, and remember Bren’s face when I guessed his past, the fact that as a thief he has shut down or driven out every slavery operation he could find in his own territory. I think of the old grief in Kirrana’s eyes as she spoke of her stolen brother, her offer to help however she could.
The snatchers may be ruthless, but I have a wealth of secret allies, people with their own losses who will help me. I pull my feet up onto the sofa, resettle my shawl about my shoulders. They may be street thieves and tax clerks and shopkeepers rather than lords or guards, but that doesn’t make them any less important. All I need to remember is that they are there; that I need only find them to be able to move forward.
The snatchers have been stealing people for about thirty years now—Mama once said that when she was a child, they never feared such a thing. I’m not going to be able to dismantle their operations in a week, or a month. But I know what I want.
I’ll simply have to be patient in order to get there.
Chapter
24
“Your timing leaves something to be desired,” Mina tells me as we ready ourselves for our first self-defense lesson. “It’s the day of the baths! Could you not have kept such a helpful suggestion until after the wedding was completely finished? I mean . . .” She glances at my cheek with its purpling bruise and says with a hint of guilt, “It is important, but it is also a rather busy week.”
“I know,” I say apologetically, wishing I’d at least managed to sleep a little later.
“Well, there’s no help for it, I suppose. You should have heard Jasmine when she learned we would be training with a quad.” Mina smiles despite herself as she puts on an emerald-and-gold earring.
“Are you sure you want to wear jewelry?”
She grimaces. “Our instructions are to wear our usual clothes and jewelry so that we will know what we can or cannot manage in them.”
“Ah.” Well, I suppose I could put on a couple rings and a necklace. I rub my pinky, missing my grandmother’s ring.
A half hour later, we convene in Alyrra’s rooms. A royal quad escorts us down through the palace to a small courtyard I’ve never seen before. The distant sounds of clattering and the occasional baa tell me we’re near the kitchens.
Zayyid Kestrin waits with Captain Matsin at the center of the courtyard. After the usual courtesies, Matsin has us line up before him. “The first thing to know about defending yourself from an attack is that you are not trying to hurt your opponent,” he explains as we face him. “Your one and only goal is to escape. If your opponent loses their balance and falls, you run. If they are hurt enough to pause for even a moment, you run. If at any point you can run, you do so. Is that understood?”
We all nod, but I’ve already lost. All the women here can run, and with a little practice in their skirts, they’ll have a chance. But me? Not likely.
“Excellent,” Matsin says. “This morning, we will focus on how to punch effectively, and then how to block a blow.”
He pairs each of the attendants with a soldier, Kestrin coming to stand opposite Alyrra. Matsin himself walks over to be my partner. He inspects my fists, critiques my form as I practice how to piston out my fists in what he calls a jab-cross—first one fist, then the other—and then in a softer voice asks, “How well can you run, kelari?”
I glance at him and find myself both amused and strangely pleased that he did think of me. “About as fast as you can jog, I would assume,” I say lightly.
He nods. “Then we focus on your fighting. It is imperative that you learn as quickly as possible.”
“Is that why I have the best teacher?”
“Arguably, the prince is better than I,” Matsin says, and taps my fist. “Straighten your wrist to remain in line with your arm; that will deliver the power of the strike. The impact should be on the first two knuckles of your hand.”
We drill a jab-cross for half the session, then learn two different blocks that merge seamlessly into a punch or shove counterattack. We pair up to try them on each other as our teachers watch. Thankfully, I am matched with Mina, while Jasmine and Zaria break off together and the princess faces Kestrin. Mina seems to have a natural affinity for self-defense, earning a hard-won word of praise from Matsin as he watches us.
“Again tomorrow morning?” Matsin asks Alyrra, and she inclines her head, her face pink with exertion.
My body feels good for the first time in a while—I’ve missed that slightly achy feeling of having engaged in hard work. And, from the look on Alyrra’s face, so has she.
Two hours later, we arrive at the baths. They are a place both familiar and utterly foreign. Set apart from the palace by an open courtyard of sorts, the bathhouse is a large, opulent building, all curved arches and carved pillars and brightly tiled designs. Within, the changing room is filled with bath attendants, a team waiting in preparation for Alyrra, while a smaller group behind them casts their eyes toward us. There is already a wide array of noblewomen here, many of whom I now recognize, and there is much hugging and cheek kissing and laughter among the crowd.
Only the foreign queen stands fully clothed, shifting uncomfortably beside the noblewoman who traveled with her. “Alyrra,” the quee
n says as we approach her.
“Mother,” Alyrra says brightly. “I’m so glad you’ve joined us.”
“Am I supposed to undress in front of everyone?” Her voice, while low, cuts through the conversations around us.
“This is a tradition I’d like to honor,” Alyrra says with a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “It is certainly different from our own traditions, but I am hopeful it will be quite enjoyable.” She turns to us, effectively cutting short the conversation. “Forgive me, Mina, but I cannot remember what we do from here.”
Mina dips her head. “We change, zayyida, and then proceed into the bathing rooms.” She glances once through the gathered women, and then adds, “Perhaps Veria Havila might serve as a better guide for your first experience in the baths? If she would so honor us?”
Havila steps forward from where she stands beside a bench, her cane tapping on the tiles. She’s already undressed and wrapped in towels, the wrinkled skin of her arms sagging. The foreign queen stares with faintly restrained horror at the picture presented by this most formidable matriarch of the court.
Havila offers Alyrra a slight curtsy, made deeper by the dip of her head. “It would be my honor, zayyida, to accompany you and your mother through the day.”
Relief courses through me. Havila may not equal the foreign queen in rank, but she no doubt will know how to handle her. And, judging from the looks Mina is receiving, a good number of the women present approve of her inviting in an elder to create a buffer for the princess.
The bath attendants finally descend upon Alyrra and her mother as Havila explains to them what to expect. I retreat with Mina by my side, Jasmine and Zaria moving to a different bench. Our own bath attendants appear to accept our clothes and hand us towels in return. Mina steps out of her shoes and slides off her skirt, and Jasmine and Zaria do the same. I grip my skirt, as if I could take that off and leave my feet covered. I really don’t want to take off my slippers. While I’ve gone to public baths a thousand times before, it was always with my family, among women who had known me my whole life. Exposing my foot here is different.
The Theft of Sunlight Page 17