These Divided Shores, page 21
“Lu,” Vex whispered. “He’s—damn it, we tried—we went back. We fought. But they got him. They took—”
“You mean to say”—Fatemah’s voice was ice and death—“that not only did you leave Cansu there, but she now does Elazar’s bidding?”
Ben turned to Fatemah. “We failed. Your people—Mani, Zey—they died trying. And—” He paused and Lu went forward another step, hearing both Ben, distantly, and Vex, even farther:
“Elazar is holding a child as ransom,” Ben told Fatemah, the crowd, “for our surrender. He has two raider Heads now, bowing to him. His coming light is a dangerous sort of mind control, separate from permanent magic, and I don’t care what in the Pious God’s hell you all disagree on regarding Grace Loray’s future—there won’t be a future, for either of our countries, if you don’t stop and—”
“Teo.” Vex’s voice was soft. “Defensors got Teo. They were planning to follow us back to where he was and take him, but he was there. They took him.”
Lu’s vision blackened. The pressure in her heart ruptured, spilling horror into her soul.
“There is another piece at play,” Tom had said. “You won’t want me to use it.”
Lu put a hand to her mouth. Without Milo’s ministrations, how best to control her? By ripping away someone she loved. By taking the remaining source of innocence in her war-torn world.
Her father had taken Teo to force her to submission.
“Lu?” Vex stepped closer. They were in the center of the clearing, Kari and Fatemah arguing a few paces away, Nayeli at the edge, Ben standing over Jakes’s body, and dozens of eyes, raiders’ and refugees’, watching, judging, fearing.
Lu looked at Vex. She hadn’t realized she was so close to crying, but a tear fell, hot and heavy, on her cheek. “Why was he there? How?”
Vex shook his head and reached for her, but she recoiled. “Lu—god, I’m sorry. He hid in the boat. I should’ve taken him right back, but we had to go in. We had to find out what Elazar was doing, and I—I’m such an idiot, such a—damn it, Lu, I—”
“You took him”—Lu’s voice ached—“into Elazar’s gathering?”
Vex tore his hands through his hair, sobbed, and the world broke.
Edda pushed out of the crowd, hobbling on her injured leg, pain contorting her face. “It ain’t his fault,” she tried, but Lu spun on her, shock drowning under a gush of rage.
“You,” she spat. “You let him do this? You both—after everything, I thought the one thing I didn’t have to worry about anymore was your responsibility with Teo. How could you—how could you do this—”
Vex reached for her again. She slapped him away, and shame sent him reeling back, hands up, surrender and apology and a hundred things she had no strength to acknowledge.
Teo was gone. He was a prisoner of Elazar—of Milo. As she had once been, not much older than him, tied to a chair in a safe house.
Her mission to Fort Chastity had sent slivered cracks through her drive to end this war, letting in the faintest rays of reconsidering other paths. Now, those cracks smoothed over, an unbreakable varnish of fury and dread.
Tom and Elazar had wanted her to return to them, to make permanent magic for them. They were so certain of her weaknesses and thought they could play her by kidnapping Teo.
No more hesitation. No more weighing morality.
She would obliterate them.
Ben was tired. He was sore, beaten and bruised and aching. Behind him, waves of Gunnar’s heat raged, the same that had drenched their boat in sweat and stifling breath.
He was furious that Ben had brought Jakes.
Ben was furious that all this had happened, every moment, and that he had to stand here, listening to Kari try to soothe Fatemah, only to have Fatemah whip on him with an unrepentant barrage of hatred.
Jakes made a moan of coming to. Fatemah’s eyes dropped to him.
“You brought a defensor here,” she stated. Her hatred sharpened, found its mark.
The crowd of refugees gasped. The raiders bellowed in shock and objection.
“As a prisoner,” Ben stated. “He knows my father’s plans. He has—”
“The Argridian prince left with two of my raiders”—Fatemah licked her lips, her teary eyes leaping back up to his—“and returned without them—and with a defensor instead.”
Fingers gripped Ben’s wrist at the same moment he felt the intensity of what he had done. He glanced to the side, saw Gunnar, backing him up, even with their disagreement.
He had no time to think further. Fatemah waved a hand, and one of her raiders slid a sword out of a holster on his back. Ben had seen similar weapons during his few visits to Tuncay—a brutal, jagged blade that weighed as much as some full-grown men.
Other raiders reacted. Emerdians armed themselves; the group of Grozdans, behind Rosalia, did the same. The refugees screamed.
Ben held up his hands. “I don’t want to fight—”
Fatemah ignored him. “We gave you liberties—but we owe you nothing. Even those of Argridian descent here owe you nothing. You are deposed, exiled, worthless in—”
“Fatemah, stop!”
Vex staggered forward. Behind him, Edda rocked in the torchlight; Lu, her arms folded, glowered from the shadows. Ben’s heart squeezed with sorrow on her behalf, for Teo—but Vex’s fury raged bright and high.
Ben couldn’t remember ever seeing Paxben upset. Not like this, shoulders hunched and eye bent and lips pulled back in dire focus through the blotchy redness on his face.
He looked like Rodrigu.
“I won’t let you talk to him like that,” Vex told Fatemah.
Fatemah laughed in furious amusement. “You won’t let me?”
Vex went rigid. He looked at Ben, the rage on his face flickering away to worry.
Ben wavered. Gunnar’s hand went to the small of his back, holding him still.
“What is going on, Devereux?” Fatemah asked, her tone a threat. “Why do you, an unaligned Grace Lorayan raider, defend the Crown Prince of Argrid?”
Vex closed his eye as if unable to watch the coming storm. “He’s my cousin,” he whispered, three small words that sucked in all the surrounding noise until there was only that admission.
Fatemah was the first to recover. “You are the nephew of Elazar?”
“Fatemah.” Vex shivered but faced her. “Fatemah, you know me. You’ve known me for years. You haven’t always liked me, I admit, but you know me—”
“You are Argridian. I always knew that. You’ve been spying on us, haven’t you? All this time. I allow you into my home, and you’ve been one of them.”
“No—”
“The prince; this defensor; Cansu, unsaved. Mani and Zey, dead. Now—this betrayal. Raiders!”
Fatemah’s supporters surged out. The refugees, cowering, let out startled chirps of fear.
Ben tried to throw himself in front of Vex, but Gunnar whipped around and planted a hand across Ben’s hip. Edda was already in front of Vex anyway, glowering, while Nayeli heaved closer to her aunt.
“Fatemah, stop!” Nayeli said. “You know this isn’t—”
“Emerdians!” Nate cried. “If you don’t lock him up, Fatemah, I will. Goddamn spy.”
“I’m not a spy!” Vex’s voice broke. “Let me explain—”
“Lock them up!” Fatemah waved her raiders to action. “All of them! I won’t tolerate this anymore—this is my home, and I will have order here! Lock up all Argridians!”
A dozen things happened in the span of a breath.
Gunnar shoved Ben back, over Jakes’s stirring body, as if they could run.
The Tuncians made for Vex, who gaped but didn’t try to fight back.
The refugees, whom Fatemah had dragged here to reclaim the items stolen from them, screamed, shoving to leave the area. Ben caught confused cries: “The raiders will kill us—”
A single man at the front of the refugee group didn’t move. His wide eyes and heaving breaths spoke to fear, but he stayed rooted, his hands in his pockets.
“This isn’t the way!” Kari tried. “We are losing this war. We cannot turn on each other!”
Nayeli ripped bundles of Hemlight out of her holster and blocked a Tuncian raider with her forearm. “Don’t make me hurt you. Any of you. You know I can.”
“Surrender,” Edda said, to Vex, to the raiders. “Stand down! Nayeli—stand down!”
“STOP!”
The plea came from the refugee man still in the middle of the road, exhaustion and terror wiping his face into a snarling mask that horrified Ben to his soul.
“Gunnar.” Ben dug his fingers into Gunnar’s shoulder. “Gunnar—”
“Raiders, Argrid, Council—you’re all the same! Claiming you fight for us. Claiming you want peace. Lies!” The man pointed at everyone, one hand still in his pocket. “You all keep fighting, drawing the war out for yourselves while we die for you! If you love Grace Loray, you’ll surrender. Elazar’s right. You’re evil, and so is he, and all of you need to stop!”
The man yanked out his hand. A bundle of plants sat in his fist, a tangle of greenery the size of his fist. Ben squinted, trying to place what it was in the darkness.
In the man’s other hand, he struck a match to life on his boot.
Nayeli gasped. “Variegated Holly. Oh gods—stop him—”
Variegated Holly. The most explosive of Grace Loray’s incendiary plants. One leaf could blow apart a stone wall.
This much of it would decimate the whole street.
“Surrender!” the man bellowed. “SURRENDER!”
Gunnar moved. Ben screamed, stumbling after him, while the remaining refugees barreled out of the area; raiders shrieked and clawed away into the darkness.
The man touched the lit match to the bundle as Gunnar tackled him. The two hit the ground, the now-lit wad of Variegated Holly rolling across the dirt street. The leaves sparked in the unsteady torchlight, caught; they had a second or two before the plant combusted—
The bundle stopped at Vex’s feet. Ben’s whole world narrowed as Vex bent, grabbed it, singeing his fingers, and on a cry, he chucked it up, high into the air.
But he faltered, limbs quivering.
When it exploded, it didn’t harmlessly puncture the sky. It struck a nearby tenement, blowing a hole through the top two floors of apartments with a percussive BOOM!
Screams ruptured from the sanctuary, from the building. Ben stared at the destruction, his heart gone still and brittle, hands over his mouth as, somewhere distant, Fatemah wailed.
“Murderers! You bring destruction here—you did this! Arrest them, lock them away—”
Rough hands grabbed Ben. He didn’t fight, even when Tuncian raiders yanked Gunnar off the refugee man, who scrambled away, tears streaking down his face. Raiders grabbed Vex, too, as Edda hauled Nayeli away.
“Stand down, we’re outnumbered—Nayeli, stand down—”
Nate and Pierce were gone. Rosalia huddled next to one of her raiders on the side of the road. Kari shouted orders, sending people into the building to help any survivors.
Survivors. Ben went limp in the hands of the Tuncian raiders.
The only person not moving in the bedlam was Lu. She stared up at the tenement, tears glistening in her eyes as she lowered her gaze to Vex, being dragged away.
“Fatemah!” Lu shouted. “You’re just as much to blame as anyone!”
The declaration filled Ben’s chest. Their war. What did it even mean? This? Fighting Elazar, the raider syndicates, the people of this island? Who were they fighting for, who was on their side, what was the point?
Lu’s face was murderous with the unbreakable determination of someone who didn’t care about the answers to those questions. Ben couldn’t process the horror of Teo being gone, but he had enough control of his mind to see beyond it. Lu was like Fatemah, Nate, Pierce, Rosalia—she would fight for blood. She would fight for revenge.
“This is our war!” Lu screamed. “Our war!”
19
THE TUNCIANS HAD converted the ground floor of a tenement into cells, replacing the hall-facing walls with floor-to-ceiling iron bars. They shoved Vex into one with Jakes; Ben and Gunnar got their own across the way. Fatemah had enough grip on her sanity to realize that Jakes could be useful—one raider chucked a satchel of healing plants at Vex’s feet before he left.
Vex stared at it. On the floor, Jakes moaned, unconscious and dying, and Vex had—almost—agreed with Gunnar’s desire to leave him for dead at the steps of Fort Chastity. But when they’d gone back to search for Teo, fighting off defensors and nearly getting killed themselves, Jakes had become their only option for answers.
Vex riffled through the satchel. A bundle of Healica—he’d have to grind it up for it to be useful at healing the gash in Jakes’s side. Beneath it rested a small vial of liquid. By the orange hue and the fact that the Tuncians wouldn’t have given prisoners anything dangerous, Vex assumed it was liquefied Healica, for drinking and healing internal wounds. Good enough.
“How do we fix this?” Ben asked in low, brittle Argridian.
The Healica sloshed into Jakes’s mouth, a bit trickling down his face and wetting the floor. But his throat swallowed and Vex dropped back onto the wood planks with a huff.
He had no response for Ben. He’d been asking himself that question since Teo’s hand had been ripped out of his.
A sob burned Vex’s throat. He beat it down, scrubbing his forehead. He didn’t deserve that release. He deserved the accusation in Lu’s eyes. The blame in her voice—“I thought the one thing I didn’t have to worry about anymore was your responsibility with Teo.”
Vex hadn’t processed what it’d mean to bring Teo into Fort Chastity. He hadn’t planned, or prepared, or done anything but be the same useless fuckup he always was.
A noise in the hall made Vex look up. Edda and Nayeli appeared between the cells.
Vex held his breath. Lu wasn’t with them.
Edda kept her eyes on Vex. “The Variegated Holly hit mostly empty rooms.”
Vex didn’t move. “Mostly?”
“Two people have been found so far. They should recover.”
Ben moved to the back of his cell. Gunnar turned to him, whispering low and calm.
“You saw Cansu?” Nayeli asked.
Vex rocked forward, propping himself on his knees to brace against a painful, jarring shudder. He nodded, unable to look at Nayeli.
“And you didn’t—” Her voice caught. “Why was she there?”
“Elazar did something to her.” Vex’s voice was small. “Drugged her. Same thing he must’ve done to Ingvar, to get her to submit to him.”
“You saw that happen?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “And you didn’t stop it.”
The pain on her face filled Vex’s whole body with toxic guilt.
“Gods, Vex,” she hissed. “What the hell is wrong with you? What’d you expect to happen when you chose to go into Elazar’s gathering? Don’t you ever think?”
Vex shoved to his feet, needing to expel his self-hatred. “No, I don’t think. I do whatever I want and to hell with everyone else. I’m a good-for-nothing, unaligned heretic and—”
Nayeli squinted. “An unaligned heretic?”
“A raider.” Vex’s face heated. “A useless, unaligned raider. And I—”
“You two—enough.” Edda grabbed Nayeli’s shoulder. “Nay, we’re all scared out of our minds for Cansu. We did everything we could in a room packed with defensors. You know we wouldn’t have left her there if we’d had any choice.”
Nayeli looked at the floor.
“And you.” Edda swung on Vex. “A heretic,” she parroted.
Vex shoved back, but tripped on Jakes and slammed to his knees. The impact sent a sting of pain up his thighs, his torso, and Vex slumped there, his face contorted.
“Is that what you think of yourself?” came Nayeli’s voice.
Vex closed his eye.
“What voice do you have in your head all the time, huh, Nay?” Edda asked. “Fatemah’s? I’m willing to bet Vex has his dad, or Elazar even, shouting at him all hours of the day.”
“Dumbass,” Nayeli scoffed.
Vex smiled. It rose to a chuckle, and when he opened his eye, Ben was watching him from the back of his cell, Gunnar next to him. Jakes breathed steadier off to his right.
“I know you love us, Nay.” Edda nudged her. “But your heart ain’t in this crew. It’s always been right here with Fatemah and Cansu. We were a way to bide your time till your heart healed.”
“You weren’t a way to bide my time,” Nayeli whispered. She looked up. “You weren’t—this meant something—I may yell at you a lot, but you’re both—”
A weight thudded into Vex’s stomach. He felt wetness on his face. He was crying, surges of tears, all brought on by Edda, weeping, and Nay, weeping, and—goddamn them.
“We love you too,” Vex said.
“I was trying not to say it, Vex.” Nayeli scrubbed her eyes and looked at him. Her face softened. “I’ll talk to Fatemah. I’ll get her to let you out, or at least listen to your story and why you didn’t tell her who you are. I don’t know what I can do for your cousin, though.”
A too-familiar wash of dread made Vex shiver. “Just—” He hesitated. “Make sure the people in the tenement are all right. And see how we can . . . how we can get Teo back.”
Vex looked at Ben, who nodded.
“We’ll give Fatemah time to calm down,” Ben said. “If she is willing, I will speak with her. But I understand my presence here is—difficult.”
Nayeli shrugged without looking at him, her gaze still on Vex’s. “I’ll talk to Lu too.”
His body went rigid. Even if there weren’t bars closing him in, he wouldn’t be able to run to Lu. He wouldn’t be able to sweep her into his arms and make everything better. He was broken, and falling apart, and she hated him now.
God, that was what would kill him, the jagged teeth of his failure.
“Thanks,” he told Nayeli, but he knew it was pointless.
She nodded. Edda planted her hand on Nayeli’s shoulder.
Vex flicked his eye from Edda to Nay and back, and let this reunion nestle into the tangle of emotions inside him. He might be a useless unaligned raider—heretic—but as long as he had Edda and Nayeli, he wouldn’t choose any other fate.
