These Divided Shores, page 19
“Devereux,” Edda said in warning.
“Can you promise me you won’t run off?” Vex pointed at Teo. “You gotta promise me, kid, that you won’t leave my side, you won’t try to find Elazar, you won’t do anything but get information. I swear that this is the best thing you can do to stop the war. Can you do that?”
Teo considered. His eyes went past Vex, to Edda, Ben, Gunnar, the Tuncian raiders.
He inhaled, deep and long. “Yes,” he said.
Vex pushed back up to his feet, biting back a shudder, and held out his hand. Teo took it.
Edda rolled her eyes and jumped off the boat before reaching back for Teo. When she lifted him under his arms, she held his face right above hers and glared up into his eyes.
“You’re a smart kid,” she told him. “And I know you know that hiding on this boat was a damn fool thing to do.”
She plopped him onto the dock. He wavered, looking up at her with glassy eyes.
Goddamn it, Edda, go and break the kid’s heart—
“But,” Edda continued, thumping Teo on the head, “you’re also a helluva lot braver than most of the raiders back in the sanctuary. So c’mon, Raider Teo.”
She snatched his hand and dragged him onward. Teo glanced back at Vex with a smile.
“His insolence reminds me of someone,” Ben whispered.
Vex chuckled. “I was never as selfless as him.”
Ben went silent. Vex snuck a look at him.
“Yes, you were,” Ben said in Argridian.
A weight pushed Vex’s heart down into his stomach, low, throbbing heaves in his gut.
“Let’s go,” Mani demanded. He and Zey shot off, catching up with Edda and Teo.
Ben touched Vex’s arm as he disembarked. Vex clambered down and marched up the dock next to his cousin and Gunnar, letting that brief levity of an idea overpower the ricocheting pain in his legs.
Had he been selfless? Something about Ben thinking so made it seem like Vex’d been . . . Rodrigu. Like he’d embodied more of his father than he thought.
17
BEN AND GUNNAR shuffled in the middle of the group as they made for the fort’s open doors. Mani and Zey took up the rear; at the front, Vex hid his eye patch under his cloak’s hood, Teo pinned between him and Edda. All of them watched the people who pressed inside Fort Chastity.
The circular entryway showed five doors that Ben knew led deeper into the fort, thanks to the map tucked into his shirt. One stood open, the crowd funneling through. Here were the first signs of Elazar’s presence: a defensor stood on either side of the open door, hands behind their backs, eyes pierced ahead. To the right, on an overturned crate, a priest held his hands out over the crowd.
“The light has come to Port Mesi-Teab!” the priest bellowed.
“Elazar’s light,” Vex hissed back at Ben. “It’s happening now?”
Mani cursed. “Zey—use the Budwig. Send a message to Fatemah. Shit, we aren’t ready for an attack yet.”
“I don’t think it’s an attack,” Edda whispered. “You see any armies?”
Zey put a hand over his ear and mouth, whispering quick and low into the Budwig Bean that reached back to the sanctuary. But Mani frowned, and Ben shared a look with Gunnar.
There had been no armies in the villages Elazar had paraded Ben to, either. Just Elazar, a handful of defensors, and righteous certainty.
“She says we go in,” Zey huffed. “Stick to the plan. Keep an eye out for Cansu or any of the missing raiders. Leave if things get dangerous.”
Ben pulled his chin to his chest, hoping his cloak’s hood kept the soldiers from recognizing him. But the defensors didn’t flinch; the priest didn’t pause in his shouting.
Ben’s group moved from the entryway into the fort’s central room, a large open space with a mezzanine framing the upper reaches and the ceiling open to the pink-blue evening sky. A place for public executions or announcements, with a platform at the far end.
Here, the crowd stopped. People packed the room so thickly that Ben and his group could take only a few steps inside, the door close to their backs. Which was preferable, despite their unease at seeing so many of Port Mesi-Teab’s innocents gathered here.
Everyone was quiet, exchanging whispered words as they eyed the empty stage. Torches lit the area as the sun slipped away.
“Defensors above,” Ben whispered back at Mani and Zey. He jutted his chin upward, to hidden forms in the mezzanine’s shadows. “If my father keeps his normal security for public functions, there will be one standing every seven paces, armed with two pistols and a sword. The ground floor will have the same.”
Mani nodded. Zey held a distrustful gaze on Ben before sweeping his eyes over the mezzanine and shifting his grip under his cloak, flashing the pistols strapped to his own waist.
“You’re the prince,” came Teo’s soft voice.
Vex shushed down at him. Mani and Zey went rigid.
But no one outside their group had heard him.
Ben’s heart lodged in his throat, but he managed a smile at Teo. “Yes.”
Teo didn’t smile back. His eyes hardened. “He’s your father.”
It was an accusation. Vex gave Ben an apologetic look, but Ben stayed focused on Teo.
“I know,” Ben whispered. “Who is your father?”
Teo’s eyes narrowed. “Mama said he died.”
Ben shrugged. “Sometimes we are like our fathers. Sometimes not. I promise you, I am nothing like mine.”
Teo looked unconvinced. But a deliberate stomping cut off further conversation, whipping every head toward the platform.
A man stood in the center of the elevated wooden planks. Ben squinted.
His breath twisted in his lungs, a squeeze of memories and hatred.
Vex growled. Gunnar angled closer to Ben.
“Citizens of Port Mesi-Teab.” General Ibarra raised his hands for attention. “Thank you for heeding the Pious God’s call to gather here tonight. I know you came at the risk of great harm by those who fight to drown this island in sin and magic, but I assure you, we took every precaution to keep this gathering hidden from impure, evil souls.”
Behind Ben, Mani snorted. Edda rolled her eyes.
Ben swallowed any reaction, his body washing with a calming sense of separation. He didn’t have the right to be repulsed by Ibarra’s twisted words. It wasn’t his luxury.
“Now,” Ibarra continued, “let us welcome the Pious God’s representative on this earth—the Eminence King of Argrid.”
Ibarra stepped aside as soft applause rippled across the room. Edda was the first in their group to clap, and she glared at the rest of them until they complied.
“Blend in,” she growled.
Ben managed one clap. Two. His hands hardened, his heart unresponsive and icy, as at the far end of the room, his father took the stage.
“People of Port Mesi-Teab,” Elazar started. Others came up the side steps behind him, defensors dragging a manacled prisoner with a bag over their head. The prisoner bucked wildly.
Ben’s stomach sank. He met Vex’s eye, dropped a look to Teo. Would his father kill someone here, before this crowd of families and children?
Edda was already twisting to hide Teo’s face against her when Elazar continued.
“You have heard, by now, of the light that the Pious God will bring to Grace Loray,” he said. “A light that will bestow blessings on those who are obedient, and will eradicate the evil from your island. I bring to you, good people of Port Mesi-Teab, the first look at what this light will do to those who insist on sullying your country.”
Elazar waved at the defensors. One yanked the bag off the prisoner’s head.
The prisoner wavered, blinking in the torchlight. Even from the back of the room, Ben could see she had been ill-treated: bruises purpled her skin, dried blood matted her short hair to the side of her head.
She pierced Elazar with a look of passionate hatred. “You manic son of a bitch!” she shouted, loud enough to carry across the room.
Gasps rippled out. Mani and Zey were loudest.
Vex whipped back to look at them, desperation paling his face.
“Cansu,” he said. To Edda, again, aching, “Cansu.”
The press of the crowd heading for the single open door in the fort’s entryway had been the perfect cover to let Lu, Nayeli, Rosalia, and Nate slip through one of the closed side doors.
“Vex and Edda are in that crowd,” Nayeli said as Lu shot down a dark stone hallway after Rosalia.
Lu didn’t pause as she said, “They have their mission. We have ours.”
Nayeli didn’t respond. Lu knew half of her was here with Lu; half was with Vex and Edda.
Lu felt it, too. She felt a lot of things, all of them suffocating, but she kept walking, pistols rattling against the sword at her waist.
A map of the fort said that the storage area was on the lowest level. If they didn’t find Tom’s supplies there, they would search this fort, ceiling to cellar, until they located his plants, his equipment, whatever potions he had made—and destroyed them. Nate hoped they’d be able to steal a good amount of magic. Rosalia hoped for bloodshed.
Lu couldn’t get her mind to function. Each step she took peeled more of herself away, until she was less a living girl, more an embodiment of years-held fury. This was who Tom had wanted her to be, wasn’t it? A weapon. A murderer.
The hall took a turn. Rosalia, at the head, swung down it—and quickly flew back as defensors beyond cried in alarm.
She grinned. “Two defensors at the top of a stairwell.”
Nate checked his pistols, his manic smile peeking out from beneath the brim of his curved leather hat. “Guarding something?”
“Should be the— Shit!”
Rosalia’s words cut off in a startled shriek as Lu brushed past her and chucked a small satchel down the hall. The explosion was small enough not to rattle the stones, sending a feeble, echoing pop back at them.
The defensors went silent.
Nayeli sank her fingers into Lu’s arm. “Rhodospine?” She had recognized the noise. Each Rhodospine pod released a barrage of piercing spikes—a deadly, violent thorn grenade, far more dangerous than its cousin plant, the Rhodofume smoke screen.
Lu nodded, unfazed. Rosalia cackled and shot back around the corner. Her cackling faded to a long, impressed whistle.
“Well, they’re dead,” she announced.
Nate chuckled, brushing past Lu and Nayeli. Lu made to follow, but Nayeli seized her arm, two bright red spots touching her cheeks.
The emotion—or absence of emotion—in Lu’s eyes must have been clear, because Nayeli didn’t say anything. She released Lu and held her hands up in surrender.
The defensors were, indeed, dead. Slumped against either wall, their bodies contorted in macabre dances, skin and uniforms riddled with the Rhodospine spikes.
Lu’s eyes trailed over the blood leaking from their wounds, the glazed surprise to their vacant expressions. Her eyes moved to the stairwell. At the bottom was the lowest level of the fort; the storage room. Tom?
Rosalia was busy searching one of the bodies for anything of value. Nate had the other, and as Lu walked past them, she stopped to make sure Nayeli, at least, had her.
A step behind, Nayeli’s face was pale, her eyes on Lu’s boots.
Lu ignored any feeling of sympathy. She took the stairs, dropping down, down, down.
Two more defensors waited at the bottom. This time, a satchel of Variegated Holly with Hemlight—one to cause an explosion when lit; one to do the lighting.
The aftermath left two dead soldiers at the base of the stairs—right in front of a wide storage room. Boxes and crates filled the space in something like organization, netting holding barrels to the ceiling and the air thick with the smell of decay, dust, and earthy plants.
Rosalia and Nate stumbled down the stairwell as Nayeli pulled various plants out of her own pouches. More explosives, again Hemlight and Variegated Holly.
“What do we destroy?” Nayeli asked, moving for the closest crate.
“Let’s see what it is first,” Nate countered. “We’ll take as much as we can carry.”
“I would prefer you didn’t,” came a voice.
Rosalia, Nate, and Nayeli spun. But Lu smiled. She wasn’t sure where it blossomed from, this odd, uneven tilting of her lips.
Across the room, taking slow steps toward them through the maze of waist-high crates, came Tom.
Lu had her pistol out. Her thumb hit the hammer, cocking it, and she looked at her father down the barrel.
Her heart didn’t beat. Her mind didn’t spin. She was blood and rage and she hadn’t come here to destroy Tom’s plants or stop his progress on permanent magic. She had come here to stop him, to feel something, to steal herself back from him.
Tom stopped. His face rippled with understanding, followed by agony. “You’ve remembered, then,” he whispered.
Lu’s pistol bobbed. Remembered? Remembered what?
“Lu?” Rosalia said. “This him?”
“I begged the king, for all my years of loyal service, not to put you in that cell, Lulu-bean,” Tom said. “It was why you woke up in that room with me. And if you had listened, you would still be unaware of your memories.”
“Memories?” Lu re-aimed, refocused. “You’re stalling.”
She swept the room, seeing no other defensors, hearing no raised alarms. But the explosions she had set off must have alerted someone.
Tom took another step closer. His agony cracked into uncertainty, eyes narrowing. “It was why I didn’t visit you in the prison. I thought you would need time to reconcile your new memories. The Bright Mint in the prison. The defensors gave you small doses of Narcotium Creeper to counter it, but I feared—” He stopped when the confusion didn’t leave Lu’s face.
Bright Mint was in the Port Camden prison’s walls. A green, bushy plant used to enhance mental clarity—countered by Narcotium Creeper, a plant that caused delirium. It was not unsurprising that the plant used to enhance thought could cause insanity in high doses—and that the plant known for causing hallucinations would balance it out. It was poetic, almost.
Lu’s mind raced. Bright Mint could be countered by Narcotium Creeper, as Tom had said. But Bright Mint also had connections to another mind-altering plant: Menesia.
Argridians had given Menesia—the memory-erasing plant—to the Mecht raiders in the Port Camden prison’s laboratory. But anyone who forgot things using Menesia could undo the magic with Bright Mint.
Lu’s world went to shadows, back to light. “You thought I remembered something,” she rasped. “You’ve given me Menesia.”
Tom wheezed in relief. “The Narcotium Creeper was enough to keep the prison’s Bright Mint from undoing the Menesia? Thank the Pious God. Lulu-bean, he watches out for you—”
“What did you think I had remembered? Did you do it to Kari, too? Did you—”
“Lu.” Nayeli’s hand closed over her shoulder. “You don’t have to do this. We can destroy these crates and leave.”
“No!” Tom was just as insistent. “You don’t understand what the Pious God has helped me do—because of you, sweetheart! The Bright Mint, in the bricks. Thinking of you in that cell, with that magic—it made me ill. But I also realized—Bright Mint, in Emerdian bricks, enhancing the effects. The Mechts, using Eye of the Sun. And Tuncians—their spices. The people on this island have been combining their individual heritages with Grace Loray’s magic and getting spectacular results.”
Tom had realized the connection as Lu had. She had given him the idea about Tuncian spices. This was her fault.
Her gun was at her side. When had she lowered it?
“And Menesia.” Tom smiled. “Pious God—it was in front of us all along. Menesia. But only the naturally permanent plants last, love, and I know you are close to making every plant permanent. The two of us can do it together! Stay here. Work with me—”
“Menesia?” What had he discovered about Menesia? Lu lifted her pistol again, but her hand shook. Deeper and deeper the secrets ran; deeper and deeper the lies. “Stop, stop—”
Tom raised his hands, palms out in surrender. “Lulu-bean, please stay with me. Don’t—” His voice caught on sorrow. “There is another piece at play that I can still stop if you stay here. You won’t want me to use it, and I can stop it, but you have to decide now!”
Another piece? What was he talking about?
“To hell with this!” Rosalia bellowed, and shot Tom.
Lu’s body jolted with the gunshot. Tom spun backward in a spray of blood, then righted, his hand to his shoulder and his face contorted in shock and pain.
“Use the Variegated Holly!” Rosalia screamed. “Now—let’s go!”
Nayeli moved, lighting matches and throwing the explosive plant at the crates. Lu heard it, then—shouting. Distant, thundering footsteps, cries of alarm and fear.
The crowd above. Whatever Elazar had organized—it had turned.
Vex, Edda, Ben, Gunnar—they were all in it.
Lu clawed to the top of herself. A glimpse of light, a single breath, and she focused—
Tom had vanished.
“Let’s go!” Rosalia echoed herself. Nayeli’s explosions were catching, a crate here, a crate there. Rupturing waves of splinters and magic, supplies, weapons.
Nate swore. “Goddamn it, we lost everything!”
Lu had expected to leave this mission with resolve. But the gathering in her soul was deeper anger that Tom had managed to pile on more betrayal.
Menesia. What had he figured out about Menesia? What had he made her forget?
And what other piece did he have in play?
Nayeli grabbed Lu’s hand, yanking her up the stairwell, back toward the ramifications of where Lu’s revenge had driven her.
Ben faltered. “The Tuncian syndicate Head?”
Zey whispered into the Budwig Bean again, his throat pinched. Mani, red-faced, had a knife in one hand, a pistol cocked in the other.
On the platform, Elazar lifted his arms, reciting a prayer from a hymn on cleansing. The defensors held Cansu behind him, her hands manacled. Her dark, livid eyes never left Elazar, as though she could incinerate him with the heat of her fury.
