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  Despite his hesitations, Thiyo did it. Before he fully understood her intentions, Ev put both her hands on his sides. He grunted in surprise at the pressure, and then his feet were dangling several uncomfortable inches above the railing, and two long stories above the ground. She’d picked him up like a child.

  “Depths drown you, put me down!”

  “Stop squirming. Reach for the roof,” Ev huffed.

  “And do what? I only have one good hand.”

  “The other option is,” Ev said, and considering that she was still hefting all of Thiyo’s weight and he wasn’t doing anything to make it easier for her, she hardly sounded out of breath at all, “I throw you.”

  “What!”

  “Sounding better and better all the time,” she muttered.

  However she got him onto the roof—if she even had the strength—it would still be enormously difficult and dangerous. Astonished, all he could say was, “You don’t even like me.”

  “I’m not leaving you here.”

  “Can you do this?”

  “I carried you before. You’re not as big as you think you are.”

  Before? Oh—he’d woken up in Erinsk’s apartment above the shop. He couldn’t remember how he’d gotten there, but now he knew. A sudden memory of Ilyr picking him up and carrying him to bed, both of them drunk and laughing, surged forward and Thiyo shoved it aside.

  He braced his left hand against the edge of the roof. Then he toed off his slippers and kicked them onto Ilyr’s balcony. They were unusually large for women’s shoes. Much too big to fit Aniyat. Let Ilyr’s servants wonder.

  “I’m going to change my grip,” Ev warned, and then suddenly her hands were supporting his thighs and she was pushing him higher. Thiyo got both hands on the roof, and then his knees, and he managed to crawl forward on all fours before he had to stop as a spasm of pain shot through his right hand.

  As he knelt on the roof catching his breath, supporting himself with his left hand and cradling his right to his chest, he thought, my dress is ruined. For some reason it made him laugh.

  Ev was not in the mood. “Hurry up,” she said. “I’m coming up after you.”

  “I normally require a lot more romance before I let someone grab my ass like that,” he told her.

  “I doubt that,” she said flatly, and Thiyo laughed again. Then he began to crawl. He made a lurching, unsteady progress up the slope. His breathing became short and fast and labored. The pain in his hand was agony. His skirts were voluminous enough to slow him down, but not nearly thick enough to protect his knees from the hard edges of the tiles. Alizhan had made this look so easy.

  Thinking of her, Thiyo glanced up. Alizhan had already picked her way down the center line of the roof. She’d halted, turned toward the light side of the palace, evaluating the trees in the courtyard. Damn. Ev had been right. They were going to have to climb down a tree to get off this depths-drowned roof.

  Under his foot, one loose tile scraped against another, a dry screeching sound. Thiyo squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his left hand against the roof. He prepared to fall to his death.

  The moment passed. He didn’t slide to his death. He breathed. He put his hand forward, then his feet. He continued upward.

  Ev, who was less encumbered, reached the peak of the roof before he did. She waited for him, and when he finally dragged himself up beside her, she stood up and offered him her hand. The world wobbled as he got to his feet. He leaned on her for balance. She was so steady, Ev.

  He let her go first, and then he followed her at a distance.

  Until now, Thiyo had always liked wearing dresses. The sound and feeling of skirts swishing around his legs pleased him. Dresses came in a beautiful variety of shapes and colors. Nalitzvans were always surprised to learn this, since they’d all heard that islanders went naked. This wasn’t exactly true, but no one ever listened to Thiyo’s explanations about that. It was too exciting for them to imagine a foreign playground, a land of naked lust where nothing was taboo. When they asked him about clothes, they always did so in hushed tones, thrilled by their own boldness. There was always a note of suppressed longing in their questions. Thiyo suspected they were all hoping he’d volunteer to strip naked in the great hall.

  Perhaps, if he ever came back here, he would.

  Still, he’d answered their nosy questions truly: he really did like all kinds of clothes, especially dresses. Except now that he was tiptoeing across the palace roof, trying not to fall to his death, he wished he wasn’t wearing one. It would be nice to be able to see his feet without holding up yards of fabric in one hand.

  How sad, that he was standing at the tip-top of the palace, with a view down the hill over the grey slate roofs, white walls, angular stone streets and green hedges of Nalitzva, this city he’d called home for the last year, decorated with square bell towers and narrow temple spires and bordered by the glittering sea, and all Thiyo wanted to look at was his own feet. He could have stood tall and looked across the sea toward the light of Day, or turned his head Nightward to see the horizon darkened with dusky blue. Instead he stared down and put one foot in front of the other.

  The walk to where Alizhan was perched was arduous, and sliding down the roof toward the tree she’d chosen was even worse. Thiyo tried not to use his right hand for anything—at this rate, it would never heal—but when faced with a precipitous drop, the instinct to cling with both hands was impossible to overcome.

  They waited for a moment when the few scattered people in the courtyard, party guests who slipped outside for some air, were all occupied. There was a cluster of three drunk young men in one corner, stumbling and laughing uproariously over nothing, and a couple on the opposite side of the space, huddled under a tree. It wasn’t difficult to guess what they were doing.

  Alizhan jumped down from the tree first. She landed in a crouch, without making a sound, her skirts floating to the ground after her. Then she motioned for them to follow. Ev was less practiced but still nimble. Thiyo breathed a sigh of relief when he dropped to the ground without cracking his face against the cobblestones.

  The courtyard made him regret leaving his slippers on the balcony. But staggering made him look drunk, and being drunk was a good explanation for being barefoot and filthy, so he made no effort to disguise his gasp every time his foot landed wrong.

  It was just a short walk across this courtyard, and then they’d be at the palace gates, and then in the streets, and then back at Erinsk’s shop, and then he could get on with the rest of his life.

  Whatever that might be.

  Easier to think about the cobblestones.

  The guards at the palace gate had been too bored, or too distracted by partygoers canoodling in the courtyard, to look up at the roof and notice three people walking along the peak of it. Thiyo assumed they’d be equally uninterested in three disheveled guests making their exit, and they were. The guards waved them on.

  The palace gates let out into a grand open square, which Nalitzvans had very sensibly called Royal Square. It was perhaps the only sensibly named thing in this quarter of the city. Thiyo led them out of the square by taking a left down Valor Street, instead of heading right down Justice Street, which had too many aristocratic townhouses with guards outside their doors. The residents of Valor Street, while still quite comfortable, couldn’t afford the same security. Only two of the houses had guards.

  Thiyo kept a watchful eye on these men, but neither of them took much note of their group. Perhaps they’d make it back to the shop after all. Ev and Alizhan could get their things and change into their old clothes and still have time to get to the harbor to board Vines. And Thiyo would go… somewhere.

  “Halt!”

  The shout came from behind them, with such authority that it could only be a palace guard. Thiyo jerked his head around, saw uniformed guards with swords belted at their sides, and hissed, “Run!”

  Ev and Alizhan needed no further instruction. They dashed down the street. Thiyo ran
after them, but lacking practice in running in skirts, with no shoes, it was only a matter of time before he tripped. His face collided with the cobblestones and pain whited out his vision for an instant. Agony radiated from a point on the side of his face.

  Alizhan and Ev didn’t know the city, but they could figure out that going downhill would get them closer to the harbor. They’d make it without him. The guards were catching up to him, but maybe he could talk his way out—make up something about being tricked by foreigners, bat his eyelashes a little. Shit. Was that the sound of a sword being unsheathed?

  A glint of metal caught his eye. His heart caught in his throat.

  Is this the end? Thiyo thought. He choked back a hysterical laugh and cursed himself for believing Ilyr. Five minutes. The bastard had probably called the guards right away. Getting through the front gate had been a lucky break. If there was a group of guards here in Justice Street, there must be others searching the palace and all its grounds. Ilyr had never intended to let any of them get away.

  Thiyo made the mistake of sitting up.

  One of the guards swung his sword toward Thiyo and let the point hover below Thiyo’s chin. “Where did they go?” he demanded.

  There were only two guards. His first panicked glimpse backwards had made him think there were more. Two wasn’t so bad. Perhaps he could get them to fight each other.

  “As far as I can recall, last time I saw them, they were running down the street. That way.” Thiyo gestured behind himself, very helpfully.

  The point of the sword pressed against his neck.

  “Such scintillating conversation you make,” Thiyo said, leaning back as far away as he could stretch. “Women probably fall at your feet all the time.”

  “Pretty face,” the guard mused. It wouldn’t be pretty a few hours from now, all swollen and discolored with fresh bruises and old makeup. At least it would match the rest of his body. “Shame to ruin it with that smart mouth.”

  “Hey, I know her,” the second guard said, having a moment of epiphany. “She’s that savage the prince brought back from the islands and put in dresses.”

  Put in dresses! If you only knew… Thiyo disliked the direction this conversation had taken. But he also disliked having a swordpoint so close to his jugular, and continuing the conversation was his best chance to change that.

  He had a small, sheathed knife in the left-side pocket under his gown. Most ladies wore pockets, so he hadn’t even needed to ask Erinsk to cut discreet slits in all his petticoats. Thiyo had acquired several knives after his encounter with Barold Hyersk and the venom, just in case he ever dropped his guard and woke up in Hyersk’s bed. Ilyr had scoffed at this precaution and Thiyo had nearly stabbed him for laughing, thinking Ilyr didn’t understand how terrifying the experience had been.

  “That’s not it,” Ilyr had said. “What good is that knife? You can’t even get that dress off by yourself. I’ll teach you to use a sword instead.”

  “Ladies don’t carry swords.”

  “You’re not a lady.”

  Thiyo had accepted a few lessons, but had never gotten around to acquiring a sword of his own. He regretted that now. He’d always thought the knife would do, in a pinch. It would—if only he could worm his hand into his pocket before these two realized what he was up to. “It’s true.” It was very hard to sound sensual and alluring in his present circumstances, but he did his best. If they wanted to know about savages in dresses, he’d tell them. “I never wore any clothes until I came here.”

  When Thiyo had first arrived in Nalitzva, he’d had to clamp down on a devilish impulse to add and everyone agrees my cock is gorgeous, care for a peek? to sentences like the one he’d just spoken. Although he’d never made that particular joke, a year at court had done nothing to curb his urge to shock these prudish mainlanders.

  The sword vanquished that urge entirely.

  “Yeah?” the second guard said, with obvious interest. He was standing closer to Thiyo, close enough that Thiyo could see that the straw-colored hair sticking out from under his helmet was damp with sweat. He was still the second guard in Thiyo’s estimation, since he wasn’t the one with the sword.

  The first guard grunted. “Don’t get excited,” he said. “Let’s just take her back to the palace. She probably didn’t know no better, running around with thieves.”

  Back to the palace! Thiyo’s only aspiration in life was to get away from the palace. Mah Yee drown these assholes in a wave and let their corpses sink to the bottom!

  That was when he saw Ev standing behind the two guards. How had she gotten there? Thiyo wrenched his gaze away from her and smiled at the guards. “We don’t have to go back to the palace,” he said, in as sultry a tone as possible.

  The first guard scowled, but the second guard gave it an instant of consideration. It was just enough time for Ev to yank his sword from its scabbard. The second guard rounded on her, but he was empty-handed. The first guard swung his sword away from Thiyo and toward Ev, and the second guard wisely got out of the way.

  The blade would have slashed right across Ev’s abdomen if she hadn’t turned aside. As it was, it left a long gash across her left flank. Ev gasped in pain, then gritted her teeth and swept her stolen sword in an arc that cut through the air and right into the guard’s side. She didn’t wound him as badly as he’d wounded her, but it was enough to startle him. Her next swing chopped through his leather jerkin and into his side.

  This wasn’t the artful dance of Ilyr’s lessons. It was fast and brutal and bloody.

  Thiyo got to his feet as silently as possible and took a few careful steps away from the fight before breaking into a run. He heard the unarmed guard’s boot soles slapping the cobblestones an instant later. Another few strides and Thiyo was tackled from behind, landing painfully hard. The guard came down on top of him and tried to wrestle his arms behind his back, ripping his dress in the process. Thiyo elbowed him in the gut and squirmed as hard as he could.

  He twisted his arm hard and managed to free the dagger from its sheathe in his pocket. He stabbed backward blindly. The knife point punctured leather and then something softer, and the guard yowled. Thiyo wrenched the knife out and bucked the guard off his back. He rolled to the side, then levered himself back up and slit the guard’s throat before he could think too hard about what he was doing.

  The skin parted, blood spurted, and Thiyo gagged.

  He looked back at Ev, who was staggering away from her own fight, clutching her side. The other guard was on the ground. Dead, Thiyo assumed.

  They were killers.

  He tore his gaze from the bodies in the street and turned to where Ev was looking. She was exhaling, barely making a noise but shaping the beginning of the word, “Where… ?”

  Alizhan was standing in the street, holding the reins of two horses, a medium-sized chestnut mare and a large black gelding with white patches. The animals were bridled but not saddled. Neither seemed terribly concerned about their circumstances. Alizhan said, “I saw you get hurt. Can you ride?”

  Ev nodded, but she couldn’t disguise her wooziness. Thiyo went to her and slipped her coat off her shoulders, then folded it up and pressed it against the wound in her side to staunch the flow of blood. He had to place her hand over the wad of fabric to get her to hold it there, and a moment later, they had to rearrange themselves so he could boost her onto the gelding. Horses. Of course depths-drowned horses were their only means of escape. What little he knew about riding would have to suffice. Thiyo put aside his fears and swung himself up behind her, wrapped his bad arm around her waist, and grabbed the reins.

  Alizhan got on the other horse and Thiyo took off down the street, praying to Mah Yee that they could hide themselves somewhere before the next guards came after them.

  14

  Rosefinch shift, 10th Triad of Milsha, 761

  MY CORRESPONDENCE WITH TSARDEYA BROUGHT me joy, even as I kept things from him. My letters never mentioned you. For years, I did not share my disc
overies about the effects of venom on people possessing magic after he expressed concern—as he did not believe in magic, he thought I was harming innocent people, rather than working toward a cure for the suffering they would cause to themselves and to society. And as always, he saw no connection between the two mysteries: the movements of our world and the workings of our bodies.

  But from our early correspondence sprang the idea of a network of observers all over the world. Tsardeya wanted everyone in the network to monitor their own surroundings: the tremors in the ground, the smoke and ash in the air around volcanoes, or the level and smoothness of the ocean. It was an excellent idea. I became the hub of all these correspondences. And slowly but surely, I persuaded all my correspondents to report on other things. My mother. The political climate in their city-states. Business opportunities. Local folklore about magic.

  I shared only enough to win their sympathies, and no more. My exchanges with Tsardeya had taught me to keep the truth to myself. I wrote to him once of the awe and beauty of the wave that haunted my dreams—that instant of red and empty shore consumed by a crushing wall of water—and he replied that he was terribly sorry for what had happened to me. I pray your nightmares will end, he wrote.

  In the long-forgotten folklore of Lacemakers, kept alive through a secret chain of parents promising their children that what we do is good and right, it is said we were born to ease people’s pain. To take away memories that tormented and oppressed. To end nightmares.

  Without knowing it, Tsardeya had wandered close to the myth of the Lacemakers in his wishes for me. But our legend is a lie and I did not want his prayers. I cherished my memories.

  My own visions in sleep were nightmares, and yet they were dreams as well. Witnessing the power of that wave brought me a feeling I have never experienced in any other circumstance. That grandeur, that nearness of death… I wanted to feel it again.