These Divided Shores, page 16
Rosalia whistled, ignoring her. “Shame and hell, with permanent magic, we’d get our people back and never have to worry about an enemy again.”
“Permanent magic is not Elazar’s ultimate plan,” Kari tried. “That is how he will enact his ultimate plan. What will he use it for? Does he mean to purge all the raiders, as he has said? We need answers to these questions before we form our next steps.”
“A purifying light,” Ben said. “Elazar kept talking about a light bathing Grace Loray, starting in the outer ports and culminating in New Deza. Blessings to those who obey and punishment to anyone who fights. We thought the light might have been Elazar giving permanent magic to his most loyal defensors, but the fact that he is still moving forward with his plans without having permanent magic—he has something else in the works. Some of his priests announced it on our way in, and dozens of his defensors were at Fort Chastity. I think my father knows we retreated to Port Mesi-Teab, and whatever he has planned will happen here first.”
“Whatever Elazar’s gonna do doesn’t matter now, does it?” Pierce surveyed Lu. Vex snarled, looking liable to murder him. “Not if we have a weapon like permanent magic. Can you really make it?”
Kari surged forward. “No. She can’t.”
Pierce gave Kari a sardonic look. “I’d like to hear for myself, Madam Councilmember.”
“It doesn’t matter if permanent magic can be made,” Fatemah said. “You will not commit such cruelty in my sanctuary. That is what it will be—cruelty, experimenting on people, manipulating our island’s magic. And”—she hesitated, disgust curling her lip as she glanced at Ben—“we have heard the proclamations too, from Elazar’s people, of a light coming. Rumors say his blessings will start in a few days. If it has nothing to do with permanent magic, Elazar could be planning more arrests, more burnings, interrogations, the sorts of things that nearly destroyed Grace Loray years ago. We must act before Elazar gets the chance.”
“How?” Pierce planted one hand on his hip. “Say Elazar is planning to attack Port Mesi-Teab. We could march on him first and—what? Politely ask him to leave? With our couple dozen Emerdian raiders, however many Rosalia’s got left, and the Tuncians, who don’t have their Head? All that, against the whole of Argrid’s military and the Council’s soldiers?”
“We had small numbers during the revolution,” Kari countered. “We utilized our island’s terrain and defeated Elazar’s forces with guerrilla attacks. We can defeat him now the same way. I move that our next steps be to scout for Elazar’s location and assassinate him. Killing the figurehead of this war in a single, decisive act will make it far easier to reclaim the island and demand return of your missing people.”
Ben’s heart tripped. Assassinate him. He knew, in the fog of his mind, that this war would end only with Elazar dead. But the idea felt uncomfortable.
Pierce’s lips twitched. “And I move that we fortify this sanctuary. We batten down and let Elazar throw his worst at us. We already know his ultimate weapon is here.” He jabbed his thumb at Lu. “We go on the defensive until we get permanent magic—then we march on him, and we take out not just him, but every goddamn defensor stinking up this island. It’ll be far easier”—Pierce’s voice turned mocking—“to get our missing people when all of their captors are dead.”
“How long will that take?” Kari’s voice pinched. “What if you never get permanent magic? You are basing our next steps on a weapon that doesn’t exist.”
Pierce ignored her, staring at Lu, who eyed everyone in the room.
Ben started to pull attention back onto himself—he could make permanent magic, too; let the raider Heads torment him—but Lu turned to Kari.
“I can make permanent magic,” Lu said. “And with it, we will destroy Elazar.”
Rosalia applauded. The noise sounded dull in Lu’s ears.
“Permanent magic doesn’t help us with an immediate plan of action,” Kari said, her face frail. “It could be months before you perfect any potion.”
“I’m close,” Lu said. “I know I am. Days, at most.”
“We need to focus on steps to take against Elazar now.” Kari was trying so hard to convince Lu without derailing their war plots—leader, mother; general, parent. “We will fortify our position in this sanctuary, as Pierce mentioned. We will build our defenses. But we cannot sit behind those defenses hoping for permanent magic.”
Fatemah stepped up. “I second your earlier motion to scout for Elazar’s location and assassinate him. We will not turn this into a magic war. We go after Elazar as we are, or you all will leave my home.”
“It isn’t just your home.”
Nayeli’s face was grim. “As long as Cansu’s missing,” she continued, “we’ll do everything we can to get her back. Including permanent magic. I’m with Lu.”
“We cannot win this war divided,” Kari said, her voice cold. “We must find a compromise. Many of you believe in permanent magic; many of us believe in acting as soon as possible and keeping magic out of this war. But we must find a way to—”
“Tell you what, Councilmember.” Pierce sniffed. “If you figure out where Elazar’s hiding and scrape together an assassination attempt before Lu here makes her potion, we’ll join in. But if we get permanent magic first, then we stage our attack with that weapon and wipe out as many of his defensors as we can. How’s that for compromise?”
Kari’s face paled. Her hesitation made Lu’s chest buck with terror. That was all she could feel: fear, hatred, need. The need to obliterate Argrid the same way it had obliterated her.
That need blinded Lu as Vex shuffled next to her.
“No,” he whispered.
Lu deflated. “What?”
“No. Not with . . . not with magic. My father didn’t want—”
“Since when do you do things because of your father?” Nayeli snapped. “Cansu is gone, Vex! Argrid captured her because you left her in the castle. You owe her.”
Vex shivered, a tremor that made him dip his chin to his chest.
Pain lit like an ember in Lu’s heart. She stoked it higher, willing herself to feel it beyond the numbness, beyond the need.
He disagreed with her. Vex, who had been tortured with magic in the Church’s prisons. Vex, who knew her history with magic as well, and for a moment she saw the situation from his view: Lu wanted to create more of what had hurt both of them.
But it was different. They would be the ones in control. They would be the victors.
Nayeli, her eyes red, grabbed Lu’s hand. “C’mon. I’ll get you someplace to work. Let them scout for Elazar. We’ll get permanent magic and end this whole mess.”
Nayeli dragged her out of the room. Pierce and Nate trailed them; Rosalia lingered for half a breath longer, enough to throw a parting wink at Vex.
Pierce sidled up next to Lu in the hall. “What do you need? We can get you anything.”
Rosalia, not about to be outdone by anyone, offered the same.
“Plants. Laboratory supplies,” Lu said. The more she listed, the lighter she felt. This was right. This was active. “Tuncian spices, the steps to make Emerdian stones, Visjorn bear blood—”
Pierce gave a scowl. “Why do you need Emerdian stones?” he asked at the same time Rosalia grumbled, “Nothing Grozdan?”
Nayeli ignored them. “Visjorn bear blood? How’re we gonna get Mechtlands shit on Grace Loray?”
“Leave it to me.” Rosalia’s smile was eager.
“And—” Lu paused. Darkness welled over her, thick and brutal. “I need to find my father.”
Pierce frowned. “Huh? Why?”
“Does it matter?” Lu snapped. “Kari and Fatemah will send scouts searching for Elazar—you can send scouts searching for my father. Tomás Andreu.”
Pierce drew back, calculation marring his fine features. “All right, girlie. He won’t be able to take a whiz in a river without us knowing about it.”
“Adeluna!” Kari’s voice echoed behind them. “Please—”
Lu went rigid. The group stopped around her, and she pulled out of Nayeli’s hand. “Give me a moment.”
Nayeli nodded. “We’ll wait for you outside,” she said, and corralled Rosalia, Pierce, and Nate down the hall.
Lu turned toward her mother. Her skin prickled with worry that Kari would hug her again and Lu would be powerless not to disintegrate in her arms.
Kari pressed her lips together. A pause, and she motioned behind Lu, at the hall now empty of raiders. “Your father? That’s what this is about to you?”
Lu jolted back a step, fury and fight coursing through her in a reflexive wave.
“You don’t think I want revenge, too?” Kari pleaded. “After everything he did—to you—but there is a bigger war right now, sweetheart. And making this magic won’t—”
“I’m done fighting this war,” Lu cut in. Each word tore through her like a scream, but all that came out was a whisper, soft and agonized. “All my life, I’ve only ever fought this war. I will make permanent magic because it will undo the horrors I helped commit and it will save this island. But I’m done being a soldier.”
Lu turned from the argument that would come.
“You’re right.”
She froze, muscles turning to stone.
“You’re right,” Kari said again, louder. “It was wrong of us to put this war on you when you were a child, and it was wrong of me to ask the same of you now. I’m sorry, Adeluna.”
Shock twisted Lu, and she met her mother’s tear-filled eyes.
“You don’t have to fight,” Kari said, a hopeful smile lifting her lips. “You don’t have to do anything at all in this war. You can be done, sweetheart.”
Kari opened her arms to Lu, an offering of rest and unity.
But in this instant, Kari took everything from Lu’s childhood and turned it upside down. She confirmed that every pain Lu had borne, every moment of silent suffering, every task and secret, had been based on incorrect intentions.
Everything Lu had ever done had been wrong—as a traitor to Grace Loray when she obeyed Tom; and as a misguided rebel child when she had obeyed Kari.
She had wanted her parents to fix what they had made her, but now that Kari’s apology hung in the air, Lu felt like she was drowning. She was a spiral of doubt and horror, a life built on a foundation of slipping mud.
Lu took a step back. Kari’s smile fell, her open arms drooping.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” Lu whispered, tears tracking down her cheeks. “I’m sorry.”
She didn’t intend to run, but her body forced her into a sprint when Kari shouted her name, the sounds soaked in tears.
15
THE ROOM EMPTIED, leaving Ben alone with Fatemah, Edda, Vex, and Gunnar.
Ben weighed the path he had chosen. He could have sided with Lu and worked to give dangerous magic to criminals. Instead, he had stayed in this room with those who would still plot the assassination of his father, but without waiting for a war-changing weapon.
When this war was won, when the mantle of Argrid’s rule passed to him, he would spend the rest of his life working to make up for the atrocities he was about to assist.
Paxben—Vex—took one hobbling step forward. His focus was on the door, the path Lu had taken. Kari could be heard shouting Lu’s name.
Ben put his hand on Vex’s forearm.
Vex gave a weak smile. “I’ll come back.” He saw Fatemah and his shoulders drooped. “Or—I don’t have to go—”
“Yes, you do.” Ben pushed him a little. “Go find Lu. I handled Argridian court politics; I can handle raiders.”
Fatemah dropped into her now-vacant desk chair. For a moment, her attention was elsewhere as she shuffled through one of the bottom drawers.
Vex’s smile turned real, bright and invigorating like the Paxben from Ben’s memories. “Court politics. I haven’t thought of that drama in years. Do the nobles still try to outdo each other at that festival? Damn, which one was it—the one with all that awful-smelling garland?”
Ben grinned. Vex meant the Día de Dar, the holiday of Grace Neus, the Grace who had been sainted for embodying the Pious God’s pillar of altruism. Every year, the Church held a festival where nobles set up booths throughout the city, giving away food and drink and clothes, anything the poor might need. Pungent garlands of oleander, orange, and lavender decorated each booth, a sad attempt by the nobles to combat the body odor of so many people.
The nobles had turned the holiday into a contest. They all wanted to give away the most, the best, the grandest.
“Yes,” Ben said. “A duque gave away his mansion last year.”
Vex snorted.
“My father put him up in an apartment to keep the man from being impoverished himself.”
Vex’s snorts sharpened. Ben laughed too, swept away by an image from the recesses of his mind: laughing like this with Paxben, the memory blurry and weakened by time.
Edda cleared her throat. Gunnar looked past them.
Fatemah was watching them.
“Are our attempts to save lives from your king humorous to you?” she snapped.
The blood drained from Ben’s face. He’d been talking with Vex in Argridian. It had been so natural, to speak to his cousin in their language again.
Vex winced. “Sorry, Fatemah.”
But Ben pushed him toward the door. Vex needed to find Lu. He needed to mend whatever he could while there was still hope to fix them.
Ben’s eyes went to Fatemah as Vex and Edda left.
“Fatemah,” he beseeched her. “I don’t mean to—”
“I speak Argridian.” Fatemah looked back down at the paper she had removed from her desk. “Do not think you can plot secretly.”
Ben’s body went cold. She had understood what he had said to Vex. But they had spoken only of Argridian traditions. They hadn’t called each other cousin, nothing that would incriminate Vex as someone to hate as much as the raiders hated Ben.
“I wasn’t—” Ben caught himself. No excuses. He didn’t want to appear insolent. “I—”
Kari slid back into the room. Her posture was defeated now, exhaustion darkening her face and a few strands of thick black hair breaking free of her bun. She scratched her forehead, eyes closing, gathering herself.
“That is the compromise, then,” she started, eyes still shut. “If we locate Elazar first, the Emerdian and Grozdan syndicates will join us in assassinating him. But if they create permanent magic first, we must join with them in attacking Elazar’s army enhanced with magic.”
“Then let us find Elazar.” Fatemah stood, a wide parchment in one hand. “I’ll have my people use our Budwig Beans to listen for his location, his goals, how many defensors are moving on Port Mesi-Teab. And when we all rescue my missing Tuncians, as well as the Emerdians and Grozdans, Nate and Rosalia will beg the Tuncian syndicate’s forgiveness.”
Kari shrugged. “In the meantime, we will extend the sanctuary’s perimeter and solidify Port Mesi-Teab. Head Blaise and Rustici appeared to agree with that venture now, at least.”
“They will,” Fatemah stated. Her focus turned to Ben. “Or they will leave.”
He stiffened. “I want to earn your trust.”
Fatemah’s face was a slate of stone. She stepped around her desk and thrust the parchment at Ben. “Then earn it. This is a map of Fort Chastity.”
Ben took the paper and stared down at a rough sketch of five levels. Some places were labeled: a wide inner hall, guard stations, weapons storage; exits here, there—
He looked up at Fatemah, careful to keep his face impassive.
Her voice took on a note of maliciousness. “Rumors have spread through the city of a gathering at Fort Chastity happening in a few nights. We need to know what it is—and as Kari said, we need information. If your father”—the words came on a low growl—“plans to usher in his coming light, perhaps this is it. Get into the fort. Find out what the defensors are doing.”
Ben gaped. “You trust me with this?”
“No. My people will accompany you. But you will know your defensors’ inner rotations, how to avoid them, how to work around Argridian setups—and you will gather information only. No attack yet. Get my raiders in, get the information we want, and bring them all back alive, and maybe then, Prince, maybe then we will trust you.”
Kari tipped her head at Fatemah. “You do not have Budwigs in the fort? Could you—”
Fatemah’s lips crinkled. “The ones we hid there have been . . . removed.”
She said nothing else. The implication sank into Ben.
Cansu was still missing, along with other Tuncian raiders—who would have known the Budwigs’ hiding spots in the fort. If the magic was gone now . . .
Elazar had gotten at least one of the raiders to tell him about the hidden Budwig Beans.
Ben pressed the map to his chest. “I am honored to do this with your people, Fatemah.”
“Good. Take some time to prepare.”
She marched from the room. With a pause and a heavy exhale, Kari left as well.
Tension alone had kept Ben upright this far—now that it was gone, he collapsed on the edge of the desk.
Gunnar’s hand dropped onto his shoulder.
Ben couldn’t remember the last time anyone had touched him with such gentleness. Even with Jakes, they had been surrounded by courtiers who disapproved of a noble consorting with a guard, so they’d had to keep any caresses private. And Elazar—cruelty laced his every touch.
It was yet another shock to Ben that, with everything he’d been through, he wasn’t repulsed by Gunnar’s hand on him. As though every touch from Gunnar wiped away a bad memory and replaced it with something new.
“We should listen to her,” Gunnar said. “Prepare. Rest. We will need it.”
Ben cocked a look up at Gunnar. “You’re coming with me? You—” Realization sent his eyebrows lifting. “You agree with Lu, though. About making permanent magic. Why did you stay here? I chose not to side with her, but that doesn’t mean—”
“Did you want me to go with her?”
“Are you asking my permission?” Ben shot up from the desk. “You aren’t my prisoner anymore. This war has already cost you too much. I don’t want it to hurt you more than it has—you don’t have to choose either side. You can go home. Maybe the Tuncians can get you an escort to the coast, or a boat.”
