Nightvine Page 14

  “I don’t care,” Alizhan said. Her roving gaze had settled on one of the white walls of the room. “I don’t know why you didn’t just tell us.”

  “Habit born of spending a year in a place that slaughters its gifted citizens,” Thiyo said. He would have shrugged, but he was too exhausted to move even that much. “Look on the bright side. You came here because you wanted Ilyr to decode that book, right?”

  Alizhan nodded.

  “You’re in luck. Ilyr never could have done that for you, but I can.”

  “Yes, we’re all marvelously lucky, aren’t we?” Alizhan said, throwing his words from earlier back at him. Then she sighed. “So you’ll come with us, then?”

  He was silent for a moment. Nightward was absolutely the wrong direction, if he wanted to go back to Hoi. But what was left there for him? His father was dead and his mother had always known he was a disappointment, and then he’d confirmed all her worst suspicions by abandoning his duties to run off with a foreigner. If he ran back now in disgrace, he’d receive a cold welcome. No one needed or wanted him in Hoi.

  “It’s just a few weeks of hiding out,” Alizhan said. “We’ll work and lie low and then we’ll book passage on a ship that’s leaving the Nightward coast from some other port. Ev and I will go back to Laalvur and stop Iriyat, and you can get yourself home safely.”

  “Fine,” he said. He didn’t have any better solutions. He’d slit a man’s throat and his hand hurt and Ev had almost died and he just wanted to go back to sleep.

  “Don’t you dare,” Alizhan said. “That chair is mine.”

  Thiyo glared at her through half-lidded eyes.

  “Clean yourself up and take the other half of the bed,” she said, pointing to the space next to Ev. “See, I’m not jealous.”

  He sighed, pushed himself out of the chair, and walked to the door in search of a bath and clean clothes.

  “Also, if you come back in and wake Ev or jostle her or put her in any pain at all, you will regret it.”

  “I regret lots of things,” Thiyo told her. As replies went, it was weak, but he wasn’t capable of anything sharper, and it had the merit of being true. He shut the door behind him.

  Snapping at Alizhan didn’t make him feel better. Throwing away his ruined dress and washing the blood off his skin did. He had to ask a stranger for help to unlace his stays, but this request didn’t faze the young woman he found in the hall. When he came back, he was ready to apologize, but both Ev and Alizhan were sound asleep. Thiyo blew out all the candles in the room, then crawled into bed next to Ev and joined them.

  16

  An Unmarked Letter

  MY CHERISHED FRIEND,

  PLEASE EXCUSE the tone of this letter, as the urgency of the present situation prevents me from taking the time to craft it with the delicate refinements of style that you deserve, and like a brute, I have simply shoved a few crude sentences into our private cipher.

  At the moment I am writing, in your calendar, it is the second triad of Yahad.

  First, regarding the revelatory contents of your most recent letter: how mischievous of you to send me after Lady Lan in the way that you did, when you knew exactly what “she” was. Only for you, my dear, will I suffer such humiliations.

  That monstrous and unholy combination of man and woman—alias Lady Lan—recently resurfaced at the wedding of His Royal Highness Prince Ilyr, and knowing that the pair of them were (or are?) lovers certainly pushes a few things out of the shadows.

  Thanks to this new information that you have so graciously provided to me, it now seems obvious that Lan himself is the author of the obscene Loves. I still suspect M in both the publication of this volume—a move calculated to provoke, distract, and undermine Ilyr, whom she views as more your pawn than hers—and in Lan’s disappearance from court, but I have not yet determined where Lan was during his absence.

  I cannot say how Lan encountered your pet thief and her stray, but I must assume he was responsible for getting them out of prison and into the royal wedding. (I did consider that Lan could have been in prison, but I searched all the prisons in the city after Lan’s disappearance, and none of the guards had any memory of a person of Lan’s description. You should have told me earlier that Lan was a man, my darling. Your little joke has hurt my work.)

  Your thief tried to violate my mind, as you said she would. I was prepared.

  Lan and the stray made a scene at the wedding while your pet slipped out to investigate Ilyr’s private quarters. Then Ilyr took the other two into his private quarters; conversation inaudible. All three escaped. Ilyr exited quarters later in the company of M. Unsure of M’s involvement; will keep you apprised.

  Guards were sent out in search of “thieves,” stolen goods not specified. Two guards found dead in Valor Street; one slain with sword, one with dagger. There was other blood in the street, but the tracks led nowhere. Two horses were stolen from a house on the street, but they wandered back to their owner only a few hours later.

  City guards began searching for murderers matching their descriptions—your girls, that is, not the other one. Ilyr announced the death of Lady Lan that same shift.

  The guards have made no progress in the search for these two fugitives, but the guards lack my skills. For me, a few triads of gossip produced a lead: Lan’s preferred tailor, an elderly man named Erinsk, scorned for his suspected unnatural tendencies and thus forced to do business in a dingy little shop far from reputable Needle Street. He caters to a few members of the court who share his proclivities, and a few others with adventurous tastes in fashion if not in bed, as well as the high-end whores of his neighborhood. Erinsk’s clientele struck me as a good starting point for investigating Lan’s connections outside the court, and the fastest way to track down our three troublemakers.

  Erinsk has a girl working in his shop, taking orders and doing the books. About fifteen years old, pale skin, black hair, freckles, an unattractive surfeit of intelligence and a total lack of manners. Name of Liyet. She herself wasn’t inclined to chat, but when I praised her to Erinsk—the lies required of me in this profession do tax my spirit, that rude creature deserved no praise—he opened up. She’d been sent by his dear friend Madam Zhenev, proprietor of a nearby establishment, who knew all sorts and could always help people in need.

  I kept this name in mind as I wandered the neighborhood. I saw no signs marking the establishment. But as I chatted with a book peddler near Erinsk’s, it came up again. Of course, the peddler had a copy of a certain volume of filthy unnatural poetry, and he mentioned in passing how popular the volume had been at a whorehouse in a nameless alley two streets away.

  Went to investigate the brothel, which was indeed run by a Madam Zhenev. Decided to keep an eye on it. So did city guards. They went away without incident—twice. One of the urchins I employed to lurk in the alley saw a blond boy-whore shaking their hands. Nothing for several triads, and then that same blond boy drove a wagon out of the city. My people followed him and reported that he passed five checkpoints and none of the guards could remember anything about him afterward.

  They are headed Nightward, most likely to Estva. I assume you have people there.

  * * *

  Please accept, my friend, my most sacred and sincere vows,

  MP

  17

  Drivel

  “YOU’RE DEAD!” HENNY BURST INTO their room with a small blond in trousers following behind her, breathless. “It’s all over the city. They rang bells and everything! They say Prince Ilyr was weeping when he announced it!”

  Thiyo pushed himself up from the bed, still groggy. His face ached. He accidentally nudged Ev, and she groaned.

  Before everything went to shit, Thiyo used to sleep for as long as he wanted in a gigantic bed in the palace. There were heavy curtains covering all the windows that blanketed his room in blessed, velvety darkness. He missed sleeping in almost as much as he missed having an unbroken hand and an unbroken heart.

  “Wouldn’t be
the worst thing to happen to me lately,” he grumbled, and sat back against the headboard. He brushed his hair out of his face, a gesture that was more habit than necessity ever since his stint in the prison and the unwanted haircut that had come with it. He rubbed the sleep out of his good eye. The other one was too swollen to touch.

  Henny and her friend were staring at him.

  “You’re… Lady Lan, right?” Henny ventured, and her friend elbowed her in the side.

  Oh. Right. He was naked. Nalitzvans always cared so much about whether people had clothes on.

  “We’re very sorry, your ladyship,” Henny’s friend said solemnly, cheeks bright red.

  “This is Ket,” Henny said.

  Ket was an attractive young man, slender and compact, with his short hair falling in a thick wave over his blue eyes. Even when sleepy and in considerable pain, Thiyo could be counted on to notice these things. Ket shifted his weight from one foot to another and said, “Are you… like me, then?”

  “Badly in need of coffee?” Thiyo joked. He knew that wasn’t the answer to Ket’s question, but it was the only thing he cared about at the moment. Coffee and medicine.

  Thiyo squinted at the rest of the room. Ev was lying in bed next to him, possibly awake but too stubborn to admit it, certainly not moving. Alizhan was curled in the armchair in the corner, definitely awake and looking very cranky. Thiyo remembered he hadn’t had a chance to apologize to her last shift. It must be hard on her, being in a house with so many people, and what’s more, being forced to touch Ev while Henny stitched her up. And then, of course, there was the problem of her feelings for Ev. No wonder Alizhan had been emotional and unreasonable.

  “Not exactly,” Ket said, his gaze pointed at the floor. “But we will get you some coffee if that’s what you’d like, your ladyship.”

  “Please stop calling me that. ‘Thiyo’ will do.”

  “You’re not Lady Lan, then?” Ket looked dismayed by this development.

  “I am when the occasion calls for it,” Thiyo said. “But right now the occasion calls for coffee.” He intended to stand up to follow them to the kitchen, but his body protested. The sheets rumpled over his bare legs presented another problem. “And maybe some clothes,” he amended.

  “Ket’s a man,” Alizhan said, when Henny and Ket had left the room.

  “Yes,” Thiyo said, not sure why this information merited restating.

  “Ket asked if you were like him,” Alizhan said. She spoke slowly, a sure sign she thought he was being dim. “But Henny and Ket thought you were a woman.”

  “I’m not dead either, but everyone seems to think so,” Thiyo said. “I’ll be anything they want if they bring me coffee and food.”

  His new best friends Henny and Ket came back to the room with clean clothes, coffee, and a tray full of bread, cheese, and cured meat. Henny handed him the mug of coffee while he was still in bed, and set her tray down on his lap. The coffee was hot and bitterly strong. Thiyo beamed at her. Smiling hurt.

  His bliss meant nothing to Alizhan, who said, “You’re prostitutes.”

  Henny smiled and shrugged. “Have to earn a living somehow.”

  “Not me,” Ket said, scrunching up his face. “Not anymore. Madam Zhenev keeps me around for other things.”

  “You make people forget,” Alizhan said.

  Henny had shushed Ev for trying to talk about her ability, and her eyes went wide with horror at Alizhan’s bluntness. Thiyo sympathized, after a year of keeping deadly secrets in Nalitzva.

  “Place like this, it comes in handy,” Ket said, more placid at being found out. Ket was an impressively even-tempered young man. Thiyo had snapped at people for less. Then again, the power to erase someone’s memory would be a source of confidence and calm, and the idea was almost enough to make Thiyo envious. He had no such protection from discovery, and neither did Henny. “I don’t mind helping. I’d probably be dead if not for Madam Zhenev. Nalitzva’s not kind to people like me.”

  “People who make other people forget?” Alizhan said. “People with magic?”

  “Yes,” Ket said. “And people who don’t fit into someone else’s idea of what it means to be a man.”

  Thiyo had been cranky and selfish with Ket earlier, and now he felt guilty. Ket had wanted to forge some kind of connection. Maybe Thiyo should say something nice or reassuring. “Not everywhere is as strict as Nalitzva,” Thiyo said. “Not everywhere is obsessed with categories. Where I come from, we have all kinds of men and women and people who are both or neither and we just let them live their lives.”

  “Where you come from, they kill any outsiders who try to enter,” Alizhan said dryly.

  So much for Thiyo’s attempt at being nice. What Alizhan said was true enough. The prohibition against foreigners protected the islanders from disease, corruption, and the deadly greed of mainlanders, who would hunt medusas to extinction, given the chance. The elders had only made one exception to the rule, and that had been Ilyr. He hadn’t brought disease or corruption. He’d come and he’d left and he’d taken Thiyo away with him—an indifferent outcome for the nation of Hoi, and a devastating one for Thiyo.

  Because Nalitzva was just an endless succession of prisons within prisons, each one lonelier and more hopeless than the last, starting with the glittering palace where you could do anything you wanted except tell the truth.

  “Still,” Ket said. “I’m glad to know a place like that exists. It makes me think we could make one of our own.”

  “It’s not just Ket. We’d all probably be dead if not for Zhenev,” Henny said. “The difference is just which bits of our bodies have been declared a crime against the laws of man and the gods.” She held up a hand and wiggled her fingers.

  “I feel what other people feel,” Alizhan volunteered. “And I know their thoughts. And if I touch them, sometimes they know mine. Or sometimes they pass out.”

  Henny gaped. “And they don’t kill you for that, down in Laalvur?”

  “I hide it well,” Alizhan said, which Thiyo thought was up for debate. He sipped his coffee. “Shut up, Thiyo. That’s not the point. You touch people.” This last part was clearly addressed to Henny and Ket, even though Alizhan was staring into space.

  Ket nodded. “It took a long time to learn how.”

  “Ket’s good,” Henny said. “He’s been teaching me better control.”

  Ket blushed again, and Thiyo didn’t miss the way he looked at Henny. Perhaps those lessons in control weren’t pure altruism. They were a lovely pair, well-suited in their contradictions. Ket was wiry, his face sharp-featured and angular under the blond wave of his bangs, but his manner was gentle and shy. Although, again, a person with Ket’s power could afford to seem gentle. Henny was taller than Ket, but softer in appearance, with big brown eyes and a figure that was evident even under her loose dressing gown. But her softness was only a façade. In conversation, she’d been far pricklier than Ket. Was that an irony, given her healing ability, or a necessity, given where she’d found herself in life?

  Would Alizhan be an unwelcome intruder in their private lessons? Thiyo didn’t care. He was emphatically for any plan that involved teaching Alizhan better control. If she hadn’t been so frayed after helping Henny with Ev’s stitches, she might not have been so angry with him afterward. Night madness was enough of a danger in the dark, icy confines of Estva without an uheko who couldn’t handle close quarters.

  “Henny, could you touch Thiyo?” Alizhan said. “He’s in pain and it’s making him grouchy. He’s very emotional and unreasonable. It’s distracting.”

  “Wh—” Little eavesdropping wretch. Thiyo was tired and beaten down and not shielding his thoughts, and Alizhan was abusing her power. And he wasn’t being grouchy. He was being a realist. Besides, Thiyo still had questions to ask. They’d hardly had a chance to discuss anything important. Ilyr had announced his death to the city, for Mah Yee’s sake. What did that mean? Was there a funeral? How grand would it be? And then there was the book to
be deciphered. He couldn’t work on that if he was high as a kite. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

  “He’s not and he won’t,” Alizhan said. Thiyo resented being treated like a child, and he wanted to spite her by proving how good he felt. But as soon as he thought about standing up, he realized how right Alizhan was, depths drown her.

  Alizhan leapt up from her chair, retrieved the tray from Thiyo’s lap and then walked back across the room with her prize. She offered a biscuit to Ket on her way, which he graciously accepted. Thiyo did his best to ignore this little victory march.

  “He is in worse shape than I thought,” Henny said, coming to his bedside and giving him an appraisal. Thiyo normally welcomed attention to his naked body from anyone beautiful, but Henny was less than appreciative. “Couldn’t see all those bruises until he was naked. And those fingers need splinting.”

  Henny brushed her fingers against the back of his hand. As reluctant as Thiyo was to give her his coffee, he found his grip on the mug loosening.

  He’d forgotten how good the absence of pain felt.

  Thiyo was distantly aware of Alizhan appearing at Henny’s side and taking the mug of coffee from her. She drank. She spit her mouthful of coffee back into the mug with a splash. “You drink that?”

  “I don’t, but Zhenev can’t live without it, and Henny likes it, too. It’s all the rage,” Ket said, when it became clear that Thiyo had no intention of answering. “An import from the islands. Expensive, too.” This last sentence sounded like a mild rebuke to Thiyo’s ears, but Alizhan would neither notice nor care.

  Alizhan shoved the mug of coffee—or spit and coffee— toward Ket, and he took it before it spilled. “I thought it would be like tea but instead it tastes like bitter dirt.”

  Thiyo felt too serene to take offense.