I cleared my throat, covering my shock. Finally, a bit of good fortune. “I’d like to see Raav Ovintak.”
The man’s laugh started as a chuckle and grew to a belly laugh. As I watched him, anger swelling, I had to force myself to calm down. He had no idea I was serious.
“Sorry, miss. It’s a good plan, convince a locked-up trader you can get him free . . . long as he pays you a modest sum. At any rate, you’ll have to beg him for coin another day. No one’s allowed to visit the trader cells.”
I stared him down to show I wasn’t amused.
“You were serious?” he asked after a moment.
“We’re friends,” I said, feeling I owed him no more explanation than that.
“Right, well, it’s still not allowed. Anyone else you care to see?”
I nearly told him no, but then remembered the night of the Ulstat attack, the thief whose spirit I’d made contact with. What was his wife’s name? . . .That’s right. Miva. From inside the outer wall, I might get a better idea of how to help Raav. Plus, I’d made myself a promise to tell the woman what had happened.
“You holding a woman named Miva?”
The man’s lips twitched in a half-smile. “Feisty one. Pretty, too.” He turned to call through the gate. “Hey! Markolt! Girl here to visit Miva. Must enjoy a good tirade.”
He turned back to me with a wink. I flashed him an insincere smile, narrowly avoiding a snide comment. Most city guardsmen joined the force because they wanted to make Istanik a better, safer place—unlike House guards who usually inherited the position and the hefty salary. By my guess, this man was one of the bad eggs, the sort who enjoyed the power his position gave him. Before I’d joined the Nocturnai, I would have told him off. Fortunately, the last few months had taught me some valuable lessons about getting what I wanted.
The gate swung open with a squeal of ungreased hinges, and I winced. Another guard strolled over. His face looked kinder than the gate sentry, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. I tugged my jacket down over my hips, hiding Tyrak’s dagger from view; if the guards noticed it, they’d confiscate it before letting me in. Given an opportunity to go deeper into the prison, I’d definitely want to be armed.
“Miva’s over there,” the new guard, Markolt, said while pointing.
When I started walking, he fell into step behind me. “Rules say I have to stick close. Sorry.”
I nodded. His presence didn’t bode well for me sneaking into Raav’s area, but at least he had the decency to apologize for it. “I understand.”
Miva looked up as I approached. Though her hair was ratted and her clothes filthy, I understood immediately why she’d made an impression on the guards. Where many of the prisoners sat inside their cages, dull-eyed, Miva was a burning fire. Her gaze reeled me in.
“Who in the rotted heap are you?” she asked.
“Hi, Miva,” I said. “My name is Lilik Boket.”
At this, Markolt jerked in surprise. Though neither gutter nor trader—guardsmen, both city and House were a class somewhere in between—he knew my name. Miva, on the other hand, gave no hint of recognition. I wondered if she’d already been locked up when I was chosen for the Nocturnai.
“I have bad news,” I said, approaching her cage. As I wrapped hands around the bars, the guard sucked in breath, probably to demand I step back. He seemed to reconsider, though, and said nothing.
Miva’s brows raised. “I’m already locked in this cage for the next ten years. What’s worse than that? They taking our blankets? Or am I next for the hanging basket?”
For all her bravado, I saw the fear in her eyes.
You’re here. The sudden voice in my head made me jerk in surprise. It wasn’t Tyrak, not this time. The thief? Closing my eyes, I tried to open myself further.
We met before, right? I cast my thought wide, unsure how to project it when speaking to someone I couldn’t precisely target.
You saw me murdered, yes.
“Well, what is it, girl?” Miva said, an impatient edge to her voice.
“A moment, Miva. I’m sorry. It’s . . .”
Touch her for me, the man said. Please. I’ve been here for . . . I don’t know. Time is strange. But all I’ve wanted to do is hold her.
“Miva, this will be difficult to hear,” I said. “Your lover is dead.”
Husband! We were married two years before she . . . before they took her.
“Lover? What?” she said, lip curling.
“Husband,” I corrected. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said, but I saw the doubt in her eyes.
“I saw it happen. A guard struck him. The blow was intended for his shoulder, but he turned at the last second and took it on the temple.” I left out the part about the jeweled box and the man’s intent to sell it to pay her debts.
Miva’s eyelids fluttered as she struggled to reject what I’d said.
“I have no reason to lie,” I offered.
Acceptance fell over her like a yoke. Her face, moments ago a mask of cool indifference, twisted in pain. Miva collapsed to the cobbles that floored her cell, a wail escaping her lips. I followed her movement, dropping down beside her, and threaded my arm through the bars. She sat just out of reach; my fingers trailed over the stones as I withdrew them.
I don’t know what to do, I said, unsure whether I was speaking to the husband or Tyrak.
Tyrak answered: Do what you were born for, Lilik. You’re a channeler, the bridge where the living and the dead meet. You offer comfort. Connection.
Who in the rotted heap was that? the husband asked.
The similarities in the couple’s speech habits lifted my spirits. I licked my lips, staring into Miva’s eyes.
From behind, I heard mutterings in the other cells. More than one of them mentioned the word “nightcaller.” I ignored the other prisoners and focused on the task at hand.
I narrowed my thoughts and concentrated only on Tyrak. I didn’t realize he could hear you, too.
Your channeling talent is a bonfire, Lilik, he responded.
There it is again! the husband cried.
His name is Tyrak, I thought. He lost someone, too. What’s your name?
Dreven. Dreven Han.
I looked at the woman, her face torn by despair and confusion. Dreven, tell me something that only you and Miva knew. I need to convince her you’re here.
I . . . well . . . tell her the babies hatched. Two weeks after the guards took her. Three little chicks peeping and squawking in the eaves. They’ve fledged now. Flown away.
“Miva, will you take my hand?”
She looked at me like a cat who’d just been squirted with water. “Why?”
Go gently, Tyrak said. In my time, the bereaved knew what to expect from a channeler.
“I have a message for you,” I said quietly.
At this, the woman’s eyes shot to the guard. He’d backed off a respectful distance to give us privacy. Still, I understood Miva’s nervousness. She was locked away here with no hope of release. Things could still get worse, though. Trader justice was never kind.
“It’s nothing dangerous. It’s from Dreven.”
Her dead husband’s name brought a whine of grief from her lips, but I pressed on. “He wants you to know the chicks hatched not long after your arrest. They’ve flown away now.”
Miva’s lips pulled back from her teeth, a feral snarl. “So you tried to cozy up to him once I was locked up, that it?” She eyed me up and down. “What are you? Thirteen? My Dreven would have nothing to do with that.”
Tell her there was never anyone but her, Dreven said. From the first moment outside the doomsayer’s stall.
“He says you’re the only one he’s wanted, ever since that day outside the doomsayer’s. Miva, I know this is difficult to accept. I take it you weren’t free when the Nocturnai sailed for Ioene.”
She snorted. “Trader business for a trader war.”
A few of the other prisoners cheere
d at her words.
“Same thing now, what with the Ulstats attacking,” a nearby man said. He stood in his cell, dirty hands wrapping the bars. “We ought to have stood up for ourselves decades ago.”
“Never should have signed that stupid defense bargain in the first place,” Miva spat. She stared at me, eyes piercing. “So if you weren’t out for his affection, what? You keep talking like he’s alive even though you just told me the opposite.”
Thinking about the number of ears listening in, I reconsidered what I’d been revealing. None of the prisoners would be talking to a trader any time soon, but one of the guards might decide to tell the Council that I claimed I could speak to the dead. Specifically, a recently deceased Istaniker. Now that I’d explained channeling to the traders, someone would put it together. And they absolutely could not know about the presence of nightstrands on Stanik Island.
Reaching into her cage, I gestured for Miva to come closer. Though she regarded me with narrowed eyes, she edged within reach. Straining, I pressed a finger against her wrist.
“It’s not important how I know,” I said. At the same time, I projected my thought: Dreven. Try to speak to her.
It was only a theory; I had no training in channeling. But it had been so much easier to hear the strands when I’d laid my hands on Ioene’s stone. Plus, Tyrak’s voice was much stronger when I touched the dagger. It might work.
Miva. My love. Dreven’s voice broke before he could say more.
But Miva heard. I knew it by her gasp. Staring at me, she shook her head side to side, astonished.
“I just know,” I said quietly.
“Hey,” the guard warned, booted feet stomping closer. “No touching the prisoners.”
I wondered why he’d decided to object now, but quickly understood when I glanced over my shoulder. The iron gate had swung open, and a knot of traders had stepped into the yard. Among them, I spotted Trader Yiltak and Trader Korpit. So much for my hopes of getting inside the building. Smoothly, so as not to cause more trouble for the guard who’d been lenient, I slid away from Miva’s cage.
“Will you come again?” she whispered.
“Every half-moon that I’m in the city.”
As she smiled at me, her lip trembled. A tear slipped down her cheek.
Well done, Tyrak said. I’m proud of you.
What can I do to thank you? Dreven asked.
I started to tell him no thanks were necessary. I was a channeler; this was my duty. But as I watched the traders gather, whispering and casting glances my way, I realized there was one thing he could do for me.
Can you feel the other prisoners? I asked. On Ioene, the strands had difficulty sensing distance and location in the same way as the living, but for them, people burned bright.
Silence filled my mind while Dreven considered.
I think so, he said at last. It’s been difficult, but I’m feeling more . . . anchored now that you’re here.
It was much the same in our time, Tyrak added.
There’s a young man. A trader, locked inside. Raav Ovintak. He’s here with his mother.
I feel him.
My throat caught. Is he okay? Is he hurt? Afraid?
He’s okay. Hungry. But he’s okay.
My breath left my lungs. “Thank you,” I whispered, forgetting to speak through my thoughts.
“Huh?” the guard asked.
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
I approached the traders, head held high. Most of them ignored me, though they clearly knew who I was. Trader Yiltak, on the other hand, fixed me with a hard stare. I met her eyes and shrugged. She didn’t control my movements. Though she might suspect my reasons for coming here, she had no proof.
Nodding at her, I stalked out the open gate. Only once I’d cleared the grounds did I pause to wonder: why were the traders here? Were they moving on Raav already? I whirled, ready to beg for his life. Too late: the gate swung shut in my face, its squeal reminding me of Miva’s wail upon hearing news of her beloved’s death.
Chapter Sixteen
I STILL HAD hours to wait before my meeting with the Korpit sisters. I wanted to keep my mind off Raav, so I decided to investigate the Istaniker nightstrands a little more before seeing Katrikki. I thought about the voices I’d heard growing up, so many stories I’d decided were created by my overactive imagination. They’d seemed like little scenes from the past. Histories. Unlike the strands on Ioene, the spirits in Istanik’s aether seemed confused. Locked to the stories of their deaths, maybe. What better place to try to contact them than the graveyard?
Near the stilt-houses on the upper fringes of the slums, the terrain plunged into a narrow valley. On one of the hillsides, before the final drop into the gorge where runoff from heavy winter rains carved a trench, a natural bench had formed. Centuries ago, the trees had been cleared away and a stone fence constructed. Much of the fence had fallen now, tumbling into the ravine below, but the enclosed area hadn’t changed. Istanik’s graveyard was a peaceful place, a meeting of ancient and new. Toward the back, the oldest graves were marked by headstones so worn by age and moss that no one knew who lay beneath them. Nearer to the city, the recent dead were buried.
As I neared the grounds, I swallowed hard at the sight of the newest graves. Two of them with the earth so freshly turned they could only be the people who’d been killed in the Ulstat attack. Dreven and another.
All at once, I was so angry I wanted to sink the Ulstat fleet myself. But it wasn’t only the Ulstat’s who’d hurt us. The Trader Council was just as much to blame. And had any of them shown a drop of remorse that one of their own members had turned on Istanik? Were they even considering risking themselves to take down the Ulstats?
Even before the Ulstat warships sailed into the harbor, the Council had been coming up with excuses for why they couldn’t help on Ioene. Most likely, they’d still be arguing with me if the Ulstat’s hadn’t shown up. And all the while, Mieshk grew stronger.
As I stood looking over the graves, I realized I was well and truly done hoping for their help. Gutterborn would retake Ioene. But before we set sail, we’d retake the city. It was the only way to be sure that no more commoners would die because of trader arrogance. We’d throw the Ulstats out of our harbor, and as soon as the Council lost power, I’d free Raav and the prisoners who’d been locked up for the crime of being poor.
Whenever I visited the cemetery, I made a point to pay tribute to Paono’s parents. Buried side by side, they were as close in death as they’d been in life. After slipping through the gate into the yard, I found their markers by ease of habit, and knelt in the moonlit grass.
“I’ll bring him home,” I promised, imagining they were watching.
And maybe they were. My tribute finished, I stood and faced the recesses of the cemetery. When I was young, this place used to spook me. I still remembered shivering, gooseflesh on my arms, during the funeral for Paono’s parents. But now, even at night, I felt only stillness in my heart. With what I’d learned on Ioene, the friendships I’d made with the spirits of the dead, I knew there was nothing to fear here.
Looking upon the moon-silvered graves, I opened my mind.
And gasped, recoiling.
Within the graveyard, the nightstrands howled. They ached. They lived in confusion and loss. Immediately, my jaw clenched with the rising urge to vomit.
Fires, Lilik. It’s awful.
I clasped my forehead between my fingers and thumbs. Had our dead been suffering like this ever since the survivors of the Vanished civilization washed up on our shores?
Can I fix it? I asked.
I—I don’t know. Not right away. I don’t think it’s like this for all of them. Not Dreven, clearly, but he had your early guidance. There must be others.
“I hope so,” I said, my voice loud in the darkness. My illusions that the graveyard was a place of repose had been shattered. I no longer wanted to pretend there was peace to be found here.
It’s nearly time
to meet Katrikki.
I nodded, swallowing. In truth, I was glad for the excuse to leave.
The tree’s rough bark felt like oyster shells, smooth yet sharp, with edges that could cut. Carefully, I climbed from a large limb onto the wall, then spotted the other tree, some narrow-leafed variety, a few paces away. The branches didn’t overhang the wall as far as I’d hoped—maybe they’d been trimmed since Mareti’s childhood. I wasn’t sure how I’d manage to get back out of the gardens but decided I could solve that problem later. Teetering atop the wall, I jumped and caught the closest limb. The branch bent and crackled, leaves rustling. My heart crawled up my windpipe, lodging there for a moment while I waited for the inevitable snap of breaking wood, but the tree held. Wrapping my legs over the branch, I shimmied for the trunk.
“Ever think of joining an acrobats’ troupe?” Katrikki asked when I’d climbed low enough to hear her whisper.
I dropped the last body length to the ground. “Nah. I have too much fun hawking eggs.”
Mareti smiled at this, earning a glare from her sister that quickly vanished. Katrikki might not like me any more than I did her, but she recognized the help we offered one another.
“So here we are,” Mareti said.
“Any luck with Raav?” I asked.
She shook her head, her frustration showing on her face. “Maybe if I were heir. But I doubt they’d listen even then. They have no idea what to do about the Ulstats.”
“Have they tried to get aboard the ships? The cannon are the only problem here.” I shook my head, equally frustrated.
“True, but who is going to do it? No trader will risk it, and last I heard the soldiers are refusing orders until they find out who wins. Most House guardsmen are useless for shipboard combat.”
“So they’d rather take the easy route and sacrifice Raav.”
She shrugged. “It’s typical trader negotiation. Figure out the position of least risk and bargain from there.”
“Least risk to whom?” I asked, wondering why I’d ever considered asking for help from the Trader Council.
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