Nightvine Read online

  Nightvine

  Felicia Davin

  Copyright © 2018 Felicia Davin

  All rights reserved.

  To my brother

  Contents

  1. Glorifying and Truthful

  2. Lyrebird shift, 2nd Triad of Simosha, 761

  3. A Rain of Blessings

  4. An Unmarked Letter

  5. Names

  6. Iriyat to Ilyr, Lyrebird shift, the 11th Triad of Alaksha, 764

  7. Wai

  8. Liquor Will Fix That

  9. Dances and Dunces

  10. Lyrebird shift, 14th Triad of Simosha, 761

  11. Bare Hands

  12. Lyrebird shift, 7th Triad of Rimersha, 761

  13. Ladies Don't Carry Swords

  14. Rosefinch shift, 10th Triad of Milsha, 761

  15. Decent Folk

  16. An Unmarked Letter

  17. Drivel

  18. Iriyat to Ilyr, Lyrebird shift, the 17th Triad of Yahad, 764

  19. Nightward

  20. Lyrebird shift, 4th Triad of Barsha, 761

  21. Far from Home

  22. Rules Are Rules

  23. Lacemakers

  24. An Unmarked Letter

  25. Trouble

  26. Unnatural Behavior

  27. Barsha or Kirisha

  28. Not Friends

  29. An Unmarked Letter

  30. Casual Intimacies

  31. Mistakes

  32. Blink

  33. Depths

  Read on for an excerpt…

  Shadebloom

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  Glorifying and Truthful

  EV AND ALIZHAN HAD BEEN in Nalitzva half a shift before things went wrong.

  They’d set out to find Prince Ilyr with volume eleven of A Natural History of the World in hand. They’d left Ifeleh and her crew in the harbor with a promise to report back before the ship’s scheduled departure. Things might have gone smoothly if they’d taken Djal or Mala or even Gad, anyone from Vines who knew the city, but the crew had work to do. Perhaps if Alizhan could speak a word of Nalitzvan, or if Ev’s schoolroom grasp of the language had been more sophisticated, they could have explained things better. But instead, after the uncomfortable experience of having their papers scrutinized at the docks, Ev and Alizhan had struck out on their own, heading directly for the palace gates.

  The harbor reminded Ev of home—the salt air, the colorful square sails and painted ships, the people in all shapes and sizes chattering in every language—but the rest of Nalitzva was alien. Wide straight streets cut through the imposing white stone buildings in a grid, and at every square intersection, larger-than-life human statues loomed over the citizens. They raised swords and scepters and their staring white eyes followed her. Everyone in the streets felt their presence, otherwise why would they all be so quick and quiet in their walking? The grand square leading to the palace gates was nearly silent, populated by statues instead of people.

  And guards. Statues and armed guards.

  Ev wasn’t sure if it was a sin against God’s Balance to carve images of people out of stone, as Laalvuri priests of the Balance said. She wasn’t inclined to trust priests after the discoveries of the past month, but the statues still made her uneasy. Ev preferred to let God’s Balance alone in the hopes that it would do the same for her—a plan that wasn’t working out at this moment, as Ev got five sentences into her request and two guards seized Alizhan by the arms. She cried out in pain.

  “Let her go!” Ev shouted, but two more guards grabbed her by the arms. She struggled. She could elbow them in the stomach and break free. But Alizhan was still captive, and Ev didn’t want to be separated from her. They couldn’t win this fight—even if they managed to take down four armed men, there were more guards in the square and the palace, and they’d get caught eventually.

  One of the guards grabbed A Natural History of the World from Alizhan and rifled through it, pausing when he saw a stamp on the flyleaf that identified the book as part of Iriyat ha-Varensi’s library. He conferred with the other guard, who still held Alizhan.

  “What did I say?” Ev whispered to Alizhan. She’d only tried to express that they’d heard of the prince’s talents with language, that they’d brought him a book no one could read, and that they’d be very grateful for his help if he could decipher it for them. She’d been as polite as possible, given how little of their language she spoke. Maybe she’d pronounced something wrong.

  Alizhan grimaced as the guards bound her hands behind her back. Their hands were gloved, but Alizhan was wary of any contact. “It doesn’t matter, Ev,” she said. “They’re on high alert, suspicious of everything. The mention of a book set them off. They won’t let us anywhere near the prince now.”

  Alizhan hadn’t understood a word of the conversation. But she knew what the guards were feeling.

  “They can’t arrest us,” Ev said. “We haven’t done anything.”

  The guards ignored this as they’d ignored everything else Ev had said. They were marched out of the wide, clean streets into a shaded alley and through a wooden door that clanked shut behind them. The building they’d entered had low ceilings and poor lighting, and Ev saw almost nothing before the guards began to strip her.

  “Smoke and—” Ev swore, and she rounded on her captors. She got a punch in before she heard Alizhan yelp, and when she turned to make sure Alizhan wasn’t dead, her guards pinned her arms behind her back and forced her to her knees.

  “It’s okay, Ev,” Alizhan was saying, her breathing labored. “Not now. Later.”

  They were hurting her. Alizhan had learned to cope with crowds since Mala had given her some rudimentary training aboard Vines, but enduring the grim manhandling of a strip search by two strangers was too much for her. The guards confiscated the book. Alizhan held herself together long enough to pull on the new clothes she was given. Then she passed out.

  Ev barely managed to catch Alizhan, slumped into unconsciousness, before both of them were pushed into the cell. The heavy door slammed shut behind them. Ev sat down, carefully adjusting Alizhan’s slight weight until Alizhan’s head was cradled in her lap and none of their skin was touching.

  Ev shivered. When she’d first stepped into the cell, her bare feet had curled involuntarily at the touch of the cold stone beneath them. It was so much colder here than in Laalvur. The loose, rough-spun fabric of her prison clothes offered no warmth. There was a single, barred window high in one cell wall, open to the outside air. The rest of the cell was unremarkable—there was straw scattered on the floor, and a bucket in one corner. It was only on her second look that Ev noticed there was a pile of straw in the darkest part of the room, and that pile of straw contained a human being.

  Ev opted not to speak to the other person. Prison wasn’t a good place to make friends.

  She wanted to touch Alizhan. To feel her pulse. To check for bruises. It was an instinct, nothing more. Ev wanted to reassure herself. But Alizhan still couldn’t bring herself to touch Ev’s skin even when she was awake and in control of herself, so touching her while she was unconscious and vulnerable was out of the question. Alizhan wouldn’t like being in Ev’s lap when she woke up, but Ev couldn’t bring herself to dump Alizhan’s prone body on the floor.

  Instead of touching Alizhan, Ev whispered her name. “Wake up, Alizhan.”

  The other prisoner didn’t stir. Ev was speaking Laalvuri, so he probably couldn’t understand her. She kept her hands at her sides, not touching Alizhan, and continued speaking softly.

  “They took the book, but it’s okay,” Ev said. “We’ll get it back from Ilyr. After we break out of prison. I guess we’ll have to steal some normal clothes before we get near the prince. We’ll figure
it out. Or you will, once you wake up. I know you will. You’ll be okay.”

  It was easier to say it than to believe it. Ev had never felt so far from home. “You’ll wake up just fine. We’ll get out of here, and we’ll get your book back, and we’ll go home and we’ll fix things. And then we can go back to the farm, where it’s warm and the light is just right, and we’ll see my parents and Kasrik and Eliyan and Zilal and Tez and the cats and you can stay—”

  Alizhan’s eyelids fluttered.

  A moment later, she vaulted out of Ev’s lap and landed clumsily a short distance away. Trembling and wild-eyed, she rubbed her hands up and down her arms furiously.

  “I know,” Ev said, but it did nothing to calm Alizhan. She was still hugging herself, either trying to warm herself or trying to rid herself of the feeling of other hands on her skin. “Breathe.”

  Alizhan took a ragged deep breath. And then another. Another. Even through her sack-like prison tunic, Ev could see her chest rise and fall.

  “Too many people,” Alizhan said. She was still working to get her breathing under control.

  Their cell was quiet, but Ev could hear the din of prisoners shouting, sobbing, and striking the walls of the other cells. That wasn’t the reason Ev wanted out—being in prison was enough of a reason for her—but she had no intention of quibbling with Alizhan. “If I lift you up, maybe we could get to that window. Do you think we could work those bars free?”

  The window was too high for Ev to reach all by herself. It was also so small that it was hard to imagine even Alizhan squeezing through it, and the metal bars were solidly embedded in the wall, but Ev didn’t have a better idea.

  “It’s rude to plan an escape and not invite me,” the other prisoner said, startling Ev.

  He spoke Laalvuri. Smoke.

  “It’s rude to eavesdrop,” Ev snapped.

  She’d thought he was asleep or unconscious, and even if he’d been awake, he hadn’t seemed interested in either of them. But he must have been listening. He lifted his head from his prone position, then sat up. With one hand, he brushed off some of the straw and dirt clinging to his clothes. He somehow managed to make the action look graceful, even regal.

  “What’s rude is you being so unbearably dull,” he informed Ev.

  Ev started to stand, but Alizhan said, “Wait.”

  “Ooh, the little one’s in charge,” said the prisoner. “I was picturing it all wrong.”

  What had he been picturing? How could he make Ev so angry and uncomfortable with just his tone of voice? Ev wouldn’t have hit him. She might have loomed over him in a silent, threatening way, though. She missed her stick fiercely.

  “Don’t worry, Ev,” Alizhan said. She wasn’t even looking at Ev. Her eyes were still locked on the prisoner. It was fiery unsettling sometimes, having a conversation with Alizhan. She pulled things out of the silence with eerie accuracy. “He smells good.”

  Alizhan crawled across the cell and sat down cross-legged in front of the prisoner.

  He laughed, a single flat sound with no humor in it, and directed his gaze at Ev. “There is something tragically wrong with your friend’s nose.”

  Ev might have laughed and explained it to him if he’d been a little nicer. As it was, she was mystified by what Alizhan saw—or smelled—in him.

  “He’s sad. And hurt,” Alizhan continued, addressing Ev as if the man in front of her couldn’t hear her. “He’s trying to hide it.”

  So he was hissing at Ev to distract her, like a wounded tomcat hiding in a dark corner of the barn? She would’ve had patience for the cat. Unfortunately for her cellmate, Ev’s sympathies didn’t extend to sharp-tongued strangers.

  “He is not,” the prisoner said. “He is in perfect health and would make a useful accomplice for any escapes you might be planning. In fact, out of an astonishing generosity of spirit, he will mastermind said escape plans for you, since your previous attempts have been so lackluster.”

  It was dim in the prison, but he didn’t look or sound Nalitzvan. Despite speaking flawless Laalvuri, he didn’t look like anyone Ev had ever met in Laalvur. His skin was a golden shade of tan, lighter in color than Ev’s or Alizhan’s, but not the milky shade of most Nalitzvans, either. He was wearing the same loose beige tunic and trousers as all the other prisoners, so his clothes gave no clue as to where he was from. He sat with his legs crossed. And since Alizhan had mentioned it, Ev noticed he was cradling his right hand in his lap. His black curls were matted with dust. A sparse scattering of stubble dotted his cheeks.

  “You’re an islander,” Alizhan said. Ev wouldn’t have blurted it out so casually, even if she had put it together. “How did you end up here?”

  “An excellent question. Also rather rude.”

  Alizhan wasn’t deterred. Good manners were not among her skills. She stopped trembling and focused all her attention on the prisoner. “If you’re an islander in prison in Nalitzva, then how and why do you speak Laalvuri?”

  “There isn’t a good Laalvuri word for it,” he said, which wasn’t the answer Ev expected, although it was hard to say what she’d expected. Was he some kind of international criminal? Or was he like them, unjustly imprisoned?

  “You know, we’re not all the same. I don’t go around calling you mainlanders. I know you’re Laalvuri.”

  “Well, which island are you from, then?” Alizhan said, as if she were being very patient. “Tell me and I’ll call you that instead.”

  “I’m from Hoi,” the prisoner said. There was a note of amusement in his voice, which was usually a good sign in people’s dealings with Alizhan, but Ev didn’t want to think well of him just yet. “And I’d very much like to get the watery hell out of Nalitzva and go back there, but first I want to know what you think I smell like.”

  “It’s not always a smell,” Alizhan said, unfazed by the Hoi’s priorities. She waved a hand in the air, drawing a series of vague circles, in a gesture Ev guessed was supposed to be helpful and explanatory. “Sometimes it’s a feeling. Or a color. A sound. An image. Words, maybe, if someone’s really loud. Anyway, I can’t tell much about you, which might be because you’re in so much pain, or—”

  Ev wanted to hear the end of that sentence, but the prisoner interrupted. “Well, prison is terribly hard on my complexion, you understand. I shudder to appear before you in this state, but I suppose it is a lesson in what life is like for those who haven’t been graced with dazzling good looks.”

  Ev didn’t have time for this. For him. She supposed under all the filth and bruises he might have been handsome, but she couldn’t imagine a less important subject. She crossed her arms over her chest and tried not to tap her fingers with impatience.

  “So I haven’t been able to attend to my toilette as usual. And the beds in this place! Let’s not even mention the food. Or lack thereof. A little ennui is to be expected. Anyway, clearly you’re a mind-reader. I’d say ‘why didn’t you just say so,’ but I suppose the answer is obvious, given where we find ourselves.”

  Alizhan nodded.

  In a different tone, rougher around the edges, the prisoner said, “You’re lucky these barbarians just threw you in prison instead of killing you on the spot.”

  “Lucky,” Ev repeated. He knew about magic, this man. He wasn’t suspicious or even surprised. He thought magic-hating Nalitzvans were barbarians. Maybe he could help them after all, even if he was glib and snide. Was he really in pain, like Alizhan said? Ev squinted at his hand.

  “Yes, lucky,” he said seriously. “In the same way I’m lucky that it was only one hand, and the wrong one, at that.” With his left hand, he gestured at the hand in his lap. Now that Ev was invited to examine it more closely, she could see it was swollen. Bruises darkened his skin. Some of his fingers were bent at unnatural angles. “We’re all marvelously lucky, aren’t we?”

  “They broke your hand,” Ev said, outraged. She felt guilty for all her uncharitable thoughts toward him. She didn’t like him, but he didn’t deserve to be ma
imed. And what could he possibly have done to incur such an inhumane punishment? What would the guards do to Alizhan and Ev if they couldn’t escape? A frisson of fear ran down her spine.

  “Beauty and brains,” the prisoner drawled.

  He was really testing the limits of her sympathy, this stranger.

  “Why?” Alizhan said. “What did you do?”

  “What did you do?” he shot back. Alizhan probably couldn’t tell that he was glaring at her when he said it, since she rarely looked at anyone’s face, but Ev could.

  “Nothing,” Alizhan said, unmoved by his tone.

  There was a long silence, and finally the prisoner relented.

  “Well, I wrote something,” he said. “The guards are possessed of strong literary opinions and they took it upon themselves to end my career.”

  “What did you write? Was it libel? Did you criticize the royal family?” Ev said.

  “Neither. It was both glorifying and truthful.” A joyless smile. “But really, why talk about how we ended up here—a dull, trivial subject—when instead, we could talk about how to get out?”

  “It’s not right,” Ev said. “We didn’t do anything wrong. We don’t deserve to be here, and whatever you wrote, you didn’t deserve that. It’s not like you killed someone.”

  “Yes, yes,” he said. “I’m so glad to know your sense of justice is offended. Now, about that escape plan. I hear you need to get to llyr. To get to him, you need someone who can speak Nalitzvan and someone who knows the palace. Coincidentally, this shift Mother Mah Yee and all your gods have rained blessings down upon you,” here he paused, and with his good hand, the prisoner made a graceful, sweeping gesture, indicating himself, “granting you the good fortune of meeting me. Get me out and I will get you in.”