These Divided Shores, page 20
Mani surged forward a step. Zey ripped a plant out of a pouch on his waist: Rhodofume, used for smoke screens.
Gunnar gaped at Ben. “They can do nothing. Not here. Benat—”
Ben spun on Mani, pressing close. He spotted the nearest defensors at the edge of the room, hidden in shadows along the wall, but armed and watchful.
“Stand down,” Ben begged Mani, Zey. He turned to Vex. “Tell them. They can’t do anything here.”
Vex, at least, didn’t make a move to draw a weapon. But his face was a mess of pain.
“It’s Cansu,” he pleaded, and though Ben didn’t know her, didn’t feel the connection, he felt the weight. Responsibility and family.
“Teo,” Ben whispered, his eyes dipping to the boy.
“Vex, get him back to the boat,” Edda ordered. “We’ll meet you there. Mani, Zey—”
But they were already off, cutting two separate, careful paths through the crowd. Edda growled a curse and slipped away, taking a step, pausing, then another, then shifting left. No one else in the crowd was moving; if they walked too quickly, defensors would swoop in.
Defensors would swoop in either way, once they got to the stage. How would they free Cansu? What would they do to get her out of Elazar’s grasp?
Elazar finished his prayer. “This woman has been a menace to your city for years.” He motioned to Cansu, who spat at him. He didn’t flinch. “She has demanded your tithes, your loyalty, your resources—for what? Feigned protection, weak support? No, good people—this raider has let the Devil claim her soul, and by extension, she has locked your city into a state of destitution. But tonight, the Pious God will cleanse the evil from her soul—instantly.”
The defensors forced Cansu to her knees. She dropped, chains rattling, and for the first time, her eyes left Elazar to hit the crowd.
Mani and Zey were halfway across the room. Edda was even farther back.
“They won’t reach her in time,” Vex wheezed.
Ben snatched Gunnar’s arm, clinging to his biceps, but what could they do? A distraction, maybe. Whatever attention they drew to themselves, they would draw to Teo.
Elazar began to sing. Not a prayer this time; a deep, guttural hymn. Ben knew it—“The Feast of Grace Biel.” A song about the celebration that the Pious God held once Grace Biel died and entered heaven, to reward him for living the most chaste life of all his children.
Cansu, her eyes still on the crowd, stopped fighting. Her shoulders drooped, her face softened, a storm of rage giving way to a vacant stare.
“What is he doing?” The question left Ben’s mouth in a quiet rush.
Gunnar moved closer, his arm around Ben’s waist, holding him up as Elazar’s voice filled the hall and rose beyond the open ceiling, swelling into the starry night sky.
Cansu seemed to go with it. Every bit of tension in her body unwound, her arms in her lap, her face serene.
The hymn ended. His face red from exertion, Elazar turned to Cansu. “The Pious God bids you banish the evil from your soul. Unlock her chains, defensors, so she may rise, made anew by the Pious God.”
Mani reached the front of the crowd and dove onto the stage. Zey, down from him, hurled a Rhodofume pod that coated the platform in a thin veil of smoke.
The crowd erupted. Screams crashed through the air, people shuffling as they turned for the door.
Vex yanked Teo into him, face buried in Vex’s stomach. The defensors onstage drew weapons. A single pistol fired, the flash and burn of a bullet that careened into the sky.
But Elazar didn’t call for attack. “Friends,” he said, “raiders have found our gathering, but you have no need to fear. The Pious God will protect us—using the very ones who stand against him.”
The defensors on the edge of the room moved into the light. They directed the crowd’s attention to the stage with careful guidance, though many had guns drawn in their hands.
The screaming ceased. The crowd stilled.
On the stage, Cansu was standing now. Her eyes stayed on the crowd, no reaction to seeing Mani a pace away from her, or Zey next to him.
Elazar turned to her. “Kill them,” he said.
Ben’s chest incinerated. Vex buckled, pressing Teo closer.
Edda appeared next to Vex. Clearly, she had read the situation, her face white with panic. “We need to leave,” she said. “Now.”
On the stage, Cansu looked at Mani. Her face showed no recognition at all.
She closed the space between them and took the weapons from his outstretched hands. He let her, stricken by shock and confusion and the hovering trust that this was his leader—
Cansu turned the pistol on him and fired.
Mani crumpled to the stage. Zey cried out, but Cansu drove the knife into his gut.
Startled yelps dotted the room. Someone was weeping.
As Zey’s body crumpled to the stage, Cansu came into view again. She dropped the gun and knife and stepped back, showing neither reaction nor remorse.
“Sin is strong,” Elazar announced. “But the Pious God is stronger. This is the second of the four once-great stream raider Heads who the Pious God has purified. The first, Ingvar Pilkvist of the Mecht syndicate, surrendered himself to cleansing. Most raiders will be like Cansu Darzi: resistant to the Pious God, drowning in magic. But the light has come, and it will subdue even the greatest evil to obedience. You need not fear anymore. I will save your country.”
Ben had forgotten Ibarra was there, but he moved at Elazar’s beckoning.
“General,” Elazar said, “here is a tool the Pious God wishes you add to your great command as we bring the light to Grace Loray.”
Ibarra smirked. “Thank you, Eminence.”
Ben’s fingers dug into Gunnar’s arm until they went numb.
His father had used Menesia in the past to wipe memories of experiments. Ingvar might have surrendered to Elazar willingly, but Ben had seen him in the villages—the man was under Menesia’s influence to make him pliant.
But whatever Elazar had done to Cansu was deeper than simply forgetting. He had made her murder her own people.
“Benat.” Gunnar’s breath brushed Ben’s jaw. Sometime in the madness, he had come to hold Ben, one arm gripping his shoulder, the other across his waist.
Ben followed Gunnar’s look to the defensor closest to them—who was staring back, head tilted in a curious frown.
“Run!” Edda shouted as the defensor’s eyes widened in recognition.
“The prince!”
The room came alive again. The defensors along the edges, on the mezzanine, all swung toward the cry. That movement sent the crowd into a frenzy, screams and tangled prayers shooting up into the night sky.
Gunnar whirled Ben around and shoved him toward the door. Edda did the same to Vex, who grabbed Teo by the arm and ran.
The defensors stationed outside the room had weapons ready, but Gunnar washed them back with a wall of angry flame. They screamed, and a path cleared. The wide main doors of the fort still sat open.
Ben flew across the entryway behind Gunnar. He glanced back to see Edda, Vex, and Teo close behind. The entirety of the crowd was behind them, families and elderly and desperate citizens squeezing through the single door of the fort’s central room.
The plaza before the fort was empty. No army waited to intercept Ben; no defensors had looped around with ready pistols and vicious orders. The oddity of that socked Ben in the chest as he leaped down the steps, scrambling after Gunnar, who kept flames alive in each fist.
The dark night obscured the expanse of stone. But as they angled for their dock, a form materialized, a single person who stumbled across the ground.
Gunnar slammed to a stop, one arm arching back to pin against Ben’s chest. Around them, the crowd ran for their own boats, crying out that raiders had attacked, Pious God, they will kill us—
The teetering form twisted, eyes locking on Ben.
“Jakes?” Ben frowned, breathless.
Pain twisted Jakes’s face. A jagged cut lanced across his cheek; sweat and dirt made a paste over his neck, his once-pristine uniform wrinkled and torn.
He looked how Ben had after weeks in the Port Camden prison.
“Ben—” Jakes’s voice caught. “Message—from—”
He faltered, dipping forward and slamming to his knees at Ben’s feet.
Gunnar grabbed Ben’s arm and yanked him on, making once again for the dock. Ben pushed his heels into the ground.
“We can’t leave him—” The plea left Ben’s throat before he could consider it.
Jakes had betrayed Ben, yes, but he was still Argridian as much as the defensors Ben had worried for in the prison’s burning hall. He was still one of the people Ben was responsible to protect.
Shaking, Jakes reached out a blood-covered hand and seized Ben’s leg. His face paled, his other hand gripping his side. Blood glinted in Gunnar’s firelight, fresh scarlet streams of it leaking through a wound in Jakes’s stomach.
Ben’s own blood turned to ice.
“Message—listen, Ben,” Jakes begged, his voice cracking on the narrowness of fading consciousness.
Edda met them in her rush to leave. She saw the wounded, battered defensor as Ben bent down.
Around them, the crowd ran. Somewhere, a priest had started praying again, trying to infuse calm in the people screaming, sprinting, scrambling to get away.
Jakes transferred his hand to Ben’s shoulder. His grip was weak, fingers slipping on Ben’s borrowed raider clothes. “Your father,” Jakes hissed, one hand still pressed to his side. A fresh spurt of blood trickled down the stained cloth of his breeches. “He knew you would come. Knew someone would—come.” Another wince. “If they couldn’t get you—told me to tell them—tell Adeluna—to surrender. All of you, all raiders, surrender, for the boy.” Jakes fisted his hand in Ben’s shirt on a renewed burst of desperation. “They’re going to follow you to where he is. They’re going to take him. A—Teo? They said—”
Jakes’s eyes rolled back in his head. His body went slack, crumpling to the side.
Ben gaped at him. Elazar had tortured Jakes? Why?
The agony that came dragged a dozen other sensations with it. A stab of betrayal at everything Jakes had done; fury that Jakes could still foster such strain in Ben’s heart; and a vulnerable wretchedness when he looked up into Gunnar’s rage.
“What did he say?” Edda demanded. “What the hell was he talking about?”
All of you, all raiders, surrender, for the boy.
Ben grabbed Jakes’s arm. He didn’t stir, but his chest rose and fell in sharp breaths.
Ben turned to Edda. He couldn’t ask Gunnar for this. “Help me—he’s alive. We can get more information out of him. We can—”
Vex broke out of the running horde. Tears streaked down his face, his eye wide in panic.
“He’s gone,” he gasped at Edda. “Teo. Defensors took him. He’s gone.”
18
THE NEXT MINUTES were a dream.
Lu swayed as Nate plowed their steamboat through the night-drenched waterways. Screams chased them, tangled cries from people fleeing the gathering at Fort Chastity.
In the very heart of a clandestine Argridian assembly, Lu had done nothing. She had no information, nothing to hold as proof that this mission had been worthwhile. At least they had destroyed Tom’s stores of plants—thanks to Nayeli. Did he have more, though? Why had Elazar called so many innocents to Fort Chastity? What had stoked them to such panic?
And what had Tom meant by all his talk of Menesia?
Too many questions. Too much pain. Not enough action.
Lu rocked with the steamboat, bleary and blank. She couldn’t put a name to her state: a cloud had fallen over her, and though she drew in shuddering breaths, she felt as though underwater. The living embodiment of a breath held.
The farther they sailed from Fort Chastity, the more Lu expected the screams to dissipate. But old cries flowed into new, coming from ahead—the sanctuary.
Nate docked the boat, and Nayeli was the first to race off. Rosalia and Nate closed in behind, while Lu moved sluggishly, stumbling across the dock and past the barricade.
Voices rose. As Lu wove through one of the tenements guarding the main bulk of the sanctuary, screams became accusations.
“How dare you!”
Torches and lanterns flickered on a dozen refugees in the center of the main outer road. A mix of raiders surrounded them, some confused, others jostling one another and mocking the obvious turmoil. But a single group stood apart—a knot of Grozdan raiders.
Rosalia was already with them. A canvas bag sat on the ground at their feet, and she was talking with her people, shaking her head, chuckling at something in her hand.
The refugees were not amused. One shot forward.
“We never agreed to this!” he bellowed. “It’s thievery—but what else should we expect from the likes of you?”
Lu hung back, scanning the crowd. There—Kari pushed through behind a fuming Fatemah; Nayeli, next to them, looked drawn and exhausted.
“Where have you been?” Fatemah demanded of Rosalia. “Is this how you run your syndicate—vanishing without a word, leaving your raiders to ransack innocent homes?”
“Ransack?” Rosalia scoffed. “They didn’t rob anyone. It’s a tithe, woman.”
Fatemah’s face went purple with fury, but her voice came low and controlled, the growl before attack. “You will return what your raiders stole from those under our protection. The people of Port Mesi-Teab who desire Tuncian protection pay a fee—but it is their choice. This is war. You cannot demand tribute from those who have no say about our—”
Nate and Pierce shoved out of the shadows, into the little clearing that had formed in the road. Raiders and refugees alike watched on.
“We’re well aware of this being a war, Fatemah,” Pierce said. “But we’ll be damned if we return to Port Camden empty-handed after this. We can’t be running a charity. Protection takes resources, time, funds, and we got a list of some rare shit we need for our ultimate move against Elazar.”
Realization stabbed Lu.
Rosalia took a half step closer to Lu, enough to get her attention, and chucked a bauble into the air. Lu caught it, a chain coiling in her palm around a small trinket.
It was a glass sphere the size of Lu’s thumb. A murky maroon substance swirled behind an etching of a bear’s face, curved teeth bared in a vicious snarl.
Rosalia was too far away for conversation, but when Lu met her eyes again, she gave a wicked smile and mouthed, Visjorn bear blood.
Lu’s eyes widened. They’d found Visjorn bear blood.
Lu had tasked Pierce, Nate, and Rosalia with gathering items for permanent magic. This was how they had gotten her supplies so far? By robbing these people?
The refugees were terrified. A man stood at the front, his shoulders heaving; a woman and her child huddled against each other.
This necklace had to be sacred to whomever Rosalia’s people had stolen it from, a Tuncian or Emerdian with Mecht ancestry. But Lu tucked it into her pocket, hoping the refugees would forget this trinket, her heart a tangle of eagerness and regret.
“What you are doing is not normal syndicate function,” Kari tried now, stepping between Fatemah and the others. Ever the peacekeeper. “It is extortion. And we cannot—”
“Oh shut up, Councilmember!” Pierce’s cry rang off the surrounding buildings. The Emerdian raiders shot fists into the air. “You’re the reason that this is normal syndicate function. Your lot stole the magic trade with the Mainland from our syndicates. Extortion is the only way we keep our syndicates running, and like hell will I sit here while these people”—Pierce pointed at the refugees, who flinched—“owe us. They owe us, like it or not. When we get Grace Loray back from Elazar, how did you think we’ll run things?”
“With agreement,” Kari said. “With proper involvement and all voices heard. With—”
“With the Council? You think we’ll bow back down and let you idiots plow Grace Loray into the depths of the ocean? No, sweetheart—this is the future now, like it or not. Your way didn’t work. Our way—”
“It doesn’t matter!”
Lu whirled. The voice yanked the crowd with her, all whipping to the entrance of a tenement and the mangled, bloodied people who stumbled out into the road.
Edda hobbled—holding on to Vex, oddly, a gash through her cheek and across her leg. Tear trails left bright streaks on Vex’s face, and as he helped Edda sit on a crate, his eye leaped up to Lu’s.
The sense of fogged wrongness contracted.
Behind Edda and Vex, Gunnar came with a body sprawled over his shoulder. He dumped the person into the road, an unconscious moan breaking the man’s lips.
Lu staggered. Jakes.
“It doesn’t matter,” the voice said again, carrying out of the tenement’s door. Ben followed it, emanating a level of fury Lu had not yet seen on him. Hands in fists, eyes aflame, he marched forward and stopped over Jakes. “You’re arguing about a future that won’t exist—we saw Elazar’s light tonight. He showed hundreds of Port Mesi-Teab’s citizens what he can do when he used Menesia to make Cansu Darzi submit to him.”
“What?” Fatemah went still. “No. Menesia only erases memories—it does not allow someone to control another person. You are lying!”
Lu stepped forward a pace, her heart dragging her into the middle of the clearing. “I don’t think he is,” she spoke up. Fatemah’s lips flattened into a line. “One of Elazar’s servants said he discovered something that Argridians can do to Menesia. They have figured out a way to manipulate it—not permanent magic, like the Mechts do, but it must be this. They have a way to make Menesia let them control another’s actions.”
Fatemah went still. Nayeli wavered back, back again, stopping when she hit Kari, who grabbed her arms and said something low and quiet to her.
Vex was next to Lu, looking at the ground. At the dirt beneath his boots.
Her heart swelled. Pressure building. Wrong, something is wrong.
