The Speaker starts on the fourth boy, her hand shaking as she pushes the opal against his forehead, her words tripping over themselves as she rattles out one Blessing and then the next, the cup in her hand, pouring water without concern now, because if he inhales the water that is less danger than if he does not drink at all. Finally, horribly, the boy’s body relaxes and he coughs and coughs and coughs, but his eyes are his, and the Speaker turns to the fifth boy, Bren moving with her.
I glance between him and the eldest, the sixth. There is saliva dribbling from his mouth now, his eyes disappeared beneath slits. Please, no. Artemian huddles over him, and the boy’s body seizes up again.
I grip my skirts, wishing there was something, anything, I could do. The tips of Niya’s story sash brush my fingers. I look down. Her sash, with magical wards that she created, new and unusual and unknown. Enough so that Stonemane noted them. Maybe they can’t do anything, but maybe they can. I look up to the boy, jerking on the floor, and past him to Bren, holding the fifth, his lips white and his eyes dark. They are thieves, their whole lives dependent on secrecy. And lies. They will never reveal the secret of my sash.
I tug it open as I scramble forward, using one hand to slide it under the boy’s neck as he jerks, and twist the ends together around him.
Artemian looks up in surprise. “What are you—”
The boy takes a gasping breath, and then relaxes. Together we stare down at him. He gives a little shudder, but it isn’t a seizure. His eyes look back up at us, afraid and very much still him, still knowing and focused and there. I let out my breath with a half laugh, tinged with hysteria, and tamp it down at once. “You’re going to be all right,” I say as the Speaker turns to us, her eyes wide.
I had forgotten to consider her.
No matter. I’ll take Niya’s sash and walk away from here, and she’ll never see me again.
But she heard Bren, knows I’m connected to the princess. She’ll figure it out—
“Give the Blessing,” Artemian says sharply. The boy sits up, Artemian’s arm around him, his other hand sliding over mine to hold the sash together. I release it and move back. Bren watches me from the other side of Artemian, his gaze sharp and thoughtful.
The Speaker goes through the Blessing quickly, and when Artemian hesitantly unwraps the sash a few breaths later, the boy remains sitting, his memories gone but his mind still his. Bren reaches out and takes the sash from Artemian.
Oh no. He is not taking that from me. I cross my arms and meet his gaze.
He dips his head, but when he speaks, it is not to me at all. “We thank you for coming here,” he says.
“What is that sash?” the Speaker asks. “I have never heard of anything that could stop the Darkness. There is only the Blessing.”
“Fae magic,” I blurt, because I need some explanation that protects Niya. At least there isn’t a mage here to gainsay me. “I wasn’t sure it would work, but their magic is different from ours. It must have reached into the boy in a way that our wards can’t.”
She nods at once. “Can other such sashes be gotten? They could save so many children.”
They could. They could, except I don’t believe my own lie. Niya said specifically that the protections she had sewn into the sash were against magical attacks. Which means that the Darkness isn’t something that blooms from within a child’s blood. It’s sent against them. The Darkness is an attack.
In a land where magic is so rigidly controlled, there is only one group that could cast such a spell so regularly as to make the Darkness a threat. The answer is terrifying.
“Kelari?”
I blink at the Speaker. Shake my head. “I—I don’t know.” I don’t know anything.
Bren rises and steps between the Speaker and me. “If more sashes can be got, I’ll make sure you are the first to learn of it. I thank you, truly, for coming.”
The Speaker nods and packs up quickly, sparing me a single glance as she moves to the door. But then she looks at Bren and doesn’t say a word. I was right, at least, that thieves and secrets go hand in hand.
Chapter
26
Outside, Bren offers me my sash without a word. For a half moment, I’m so startled by his actions, I can only stare. I thought for certain I would have to fight for it. His lips twitch, and I snatch it from his hand before he changes his mind.
“It’s not Fae magic, is it?” he asks as I wrap the sash about my waist.
I look up, my hands tightening the knot. “What else would it be?”
He considers me silently. I meet his gaze, and the moment draws out a little too long.
“There was something that stopped you back there, when you were answering the Speaker,” he says.
I glance either way down the street, but there’s no one here but the lookouts at the corner, too far to hear. “That’s because, Fae or not, it’s only a ward,” I say. “It shouldn’t have worked, not against something in the boy’s blood.”
Bren’s eyes narrow. “Then how did it stop the Darkness?”
“It’s simple,” I say. “The Darkness isn’t what we thought. If my wards only work against magical attacks, then the Darkness was never within those boys. It was sent.”
“Sent,” Bren repeats, the word sharp and sibilant. There’s an instinctual readiness about him, a looseness to his stance, that speaks to just how deadly he thinks my words are. “Do you know what you’re saying?”
“That there’s only one group who could coordinate a kingdom-wide magical attack upon our children? Yes. It doesn’t seem possible that the Circle of Mages, tasked with protecting all of Menaiya, could be allied with slavers, and yet there is no other explanation.”
Bren rubs a hand across his mouth, glances toward the end of the alley. “If the snatchers are aligned with the mages, then we have a whole different level of trouble on our hands.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” he asks. “No, I don’t think you do. Do you know what men are capable of doing to hide their actions? To keep themselves in power?”
I have an idea. “They’re already selling our children into slavery. I suspect they could easily turn on . . .” On the princess, as well as me. And on my family.
“Very easily. They will destroy anyone who even attempts to uncover their actions. Your royals aren’t going to be able to take out the mages. They’re much more likely to lose the throne in a political coup and have a puppet put on it in their place.”
“The Circle is that powerful?” I ask, my voice dry.
Bren tilts his head. “They were pushing for a spare heir to be named when the prince went missing for a handful of days just a month ago. They got quite close to succeeding, if the rumors are to be believed.”
“Then . . . what do we do?”
We look at each other a moment, and then Bren takes my hand and threads it through his arm, as if we were at court, or sweethearts, and starts forward. “Let’s walk.”
I take a quick half step to catch up with him, and he adjusts his pace with a slight jerk, as if he’d forgotten himself for a moment. I glance at him, but he’s looking ahead. “First, you’ll have to prove this theory of yours. You’ll need to let someone inspect that Fae magic of yours, and correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re not going to allow that, are you?”
I stiffen and then curse myself, because of course he can feel my reaction through my arm. I tug my hand free at once. I should never have let him touch me so casually anyhow, and of course he did it so he could read my reactions better.
He breathes a soft laugh. “It’s nice to know even country girls have secrets. Did a lover give it to you?”
“Oh, shut up,” I say, and my irritation makes the lies I need to protect Niya come more easily. “That’s absurd. I bought it at Spring Fair a year ago. I was told it was Fae magic, though I didn’t quite believe it then. What kind of Fae would enchant a story sash? So no, I don’t know where it came from. But I do know that if the mages are involved, there’
s no way I want them to see the one ward that does work against their spells. It has to be built differently. Once they know how, they’ll change what they’re doing to get past this as well.”
“True,” Bren says. “So what will you do?”
I don’t know.
“I don’t recommend destroying our royal family. I’m not a great fan of the king or his son, but the princess will do the kingdom some good, and . . . neither anarchy nor a puppet king appeal.”
“So what? We quiver in fear and do nothing?” I don’t want to endanger the royal family, but I’m not giving up either.
Bren grins. “I can’t really imagine you quivering, to tell the truth.”
“Oh, hush! It’s a real question. I have to keep trying. I’ve seen what it does to a family to lose a child like that. And those boys—there are more like them out there. And girls.” The idea of girls like my sisters—of Bean—being stolen and sold into a brothel—of Seri—I can’t.
I look up at Bren. “I’m not going to stop when there’s still so much that needs to be done.”
“No, you’re not,” he agrees, a quiet statement of fact.
“Are you?” I ask uncertainly.
“No. But I don’t know how much I can actually help you beyond this.”
“I can’t share the sash,” I admit. “Not yet. But if what I think is true, then the Blessing doesn’t do what it claims either.”
“You think the Speakers are involved?” Bren asks dubiously.
“I don’t know. But the cups they use are enchanted as well, aren’t they? Not just blessed?”
He nods slowly. “They are. I always thought it was convenient how a child couldn’t keep their memory of being snatched, no matter what.”
A shiver runs through me.
Bren smiles tiredly. “I grew up knowing what was necessary for a thief to survive. It doesn’t take very much: you must never be caught, and never leave behind either clues or a witness. The slavers have it down to an art.” He raises a hand toward me, lets it fall. “If you wish, I should be able to get you the items from the Blessing. Do you have someone you trust who can look at them?”
I’d send them to Niya, but there’s no way to discuss this with her without fear of being found out. Which leaves . . . Stonemane. I’d rather not owe him a favor—there are stories warning against owing the Fae anything at all—but I can’t see a way around that.
“Yes,” I say. “But don’t steal them. If the Speaker you take them from doesn’t know they’re missing until they’re needed . . .”
“I’ll buy them off a Speaker for more than it will take them to get a new set,” Bren says. “Probably the same Speaker you saw today. She’s quiet, and trustworthy, and needs the money for her elderly father.”
I nod, and glance about the streets. They’re starting to look familiar again—there is the road we took to the brickmaker’s yard. Which brings me back to the first thought that struck me when Artemian and I arrived tonight. “I thought you said you weren’t going to help the boys.”
Bren shrugs. “Turns out Kel Téran likes his drink. It was easy enough to have a man join him at the local tavern and hand him a bottle with a little something extra to make him sleep. He won’t know what happened till sometime tomorrow, at which point the boys will be long gone.”
“But you planned that, however easy you say it was. Why?”
Bren snorts. “You asked me to steal them, now you’re asking why?”
“I didn’t—”
“Didn’t you?”
I wrap my arms across my chest. He’s right, and I don’t regret it one bit. “Maybe I did, but they were stolen from their families. And you said you wouldn’t.”
“Changed my mind,” Bren says quietly.
Even though they were on the Scholar’s territory. And I’m grateful for it. “Will you send them home?”
“Certainly. I think it a very good use of the money I lifted off of you when we first met.”
“Are you—” I cut myself off as he outright laughs at me. I take another deep breath, not sure why I’m so infuriated, and say, “I would have given it freely had I known.”
“Mmm. More’s the pity, that.”
“My ring you took—that was my grandmother’s.”
He raises his brows.
“I’ll buy it back from you.”
“Oh, Rae, no!” he cries with exaggerated horror. “That would be closer to blackmail, and I’m not such a criminal as all that. But I’ll take good care of it, now I know how special it was to you.”
Oh, the nerve of the man! “It wouldn’t be a crime, you know, if you didn’t steal once in a while.”
“I don’t know about that,” he says, his voice light and cutting as a blade. “I’d say it was a crime for the brickmaker to buy each and every one of those boys, to keep them captive and engage his neighbors so that they wouldn’t have even a hope of escape. What’s more wrong, Rae? That he would do that, or that I stole those boys out from under his nose and left him to deal with the consequences?”
I shake my head. “I won’t argue about the brickmaker, but—”
“Then you have no argument. What’s the law but one man’s decision of right versus wrong? I make my decisions how I see fit.”
“Bren,” I say, fighting frustration. Hurrying through darkened streets doesn’t seem like the right time to discuss the value of rule of law, but I ought to give it a little effort at least. “If everyone makes their own decisions on that, we’ll descend into anarchy. And then what we’re trying to fight right now? The ‘right’ of men to steal others and sell them into slavery? That’s what will gain power. Oppression gains power. Just because we disagree with the law doesn’t mean we destroy it. You yourself told me that you don’t want anarchy. That Alyrra should change the laws.”
“That’s because she is who she is. I, on the other hand, don’t have that kind of power. So I’ll make my own law around the edges of this one. And some of the wrongs will be righted.”
“Because all you do is look out for the poor and oppressed? You, and Artemian, and Red Hawk?”
He laughs. “Not likely. Does the king not reward himself and his closest allies for their work ruling his realm? So, we all share in the bounty of Red Hawk’s rule.”
“You’re not going to convince me,” I say. “Because as much as you enjoy touting Red Hawk like he’s some minor king, it’s the most vulnerable of society who need protecting, and rule of law is what will help them. Not five different laws, not a thief on a throne, and not—”
“Not a king who doesn’t care?”
Darkness take it! “You have no certainty he doesn’t care.”
“If he did, then you, country girl, would not be roaming the streets after dark in company with a thief, trying to uncover who is systematically conspiring to sell the common folk into slavery.”
“The law can change,” I cry, almost desperately. “That is what I’m trying to do.”
Bren glances at me. “And, oddly enough, I’m helping you.”
I let out my breath in a sigh, and find I have no arguments left. We’re not going to see eye to eye. I don’t want Bren to steal, not to help me, not to help himself. And certainly not to taunt me. “I’m grateful for what you’ve done tonight,” I admit.
A beat, and then he says, “Didn’t do it for your thanks.” His voice is light enough to make it sound like a casual remark for all that it isn’t. No, he didn’t steal their freedom for me, or Alyrra; he did it for himself, for the boy he used to be.
“I know,” I say.
We walk in silence for a few paces and then, as we turn a corner, he says tightly, “Rae.”
“Yes?” I glance at him, surprised at his change in tone.
He’s looking up the road toward a group of men gathered on the opposite side of the street, just outside an inn, the front of it lit by a great red lantern. “Keep your head down, would you? And if I tell you to run, you do it. No questions.”
“Ru
n?” I echo. I doubt I could outrun any of the men here.
“You know how to get back to West Road from here?”
I’ve been watching the streets, and at this point I recognize where we are. Only a block or two farther to the west side, and Red Hawk’s domain. “I think so.”
“Good.”
“Shouldn’t we maybe just turn around?”
“Too late,” he murmurs. “That will just invite the chase.”
As we draw even with the group, one of them steps forward, his head tilted to see Bren’s features past the shadow of his hood, the red lantern providing far too much light. “I’ve seen you before.”
“Evening,” Bren replies, his voice easy and carrying. If I hadn’t just heard him cautioning me to run, I would never have believed him worried in the slightest.
The man shifts, and I catch the gleam of lamplight on metal. It’s a knife of some sort. A long one. “You’re in the wrong neighborhood,” he says.
“Just passing through,” Bren says. “I want no trouble.”
He puts his hand at the small of my back, pushing gently, and I realize I’ve slowed. But Bren doesn’t want us to stop for this conversation, and neither do I. This isn’t the time for court manners.
The man starts after us. He is tall and wiry with a sparse goatee. “I’m talking to you. You unarmed?”
Bren half turns as he keeps walking. “Not particularly, but I’ve no interest in drawing blood.”
The rest of the group is now focused on us. There are three of them, and they are all walking after us. “Who is he?” one of them asks the first.
“Seen him doing Red Hawk’s work, I think.” He raises his voice. “Am I right?”
Bren glances back at them, spreads his hands, palms up. “I’m just walking a friend home.”
“You come here, walking through our territory like you own it, and we’ll give you trouble,” the man snarls. “I think he needs a lesson, boys.”
He starts forward at a jog, his knife gleaming wickedly in the moonlight.
“Rae,” Bren says, his voice no more than a puff of breath. “Run.”
He aligns himself toward the man, a pair of daggers in his hands now, materializing as if from thin air.
The Theft of Sunlight Page 19