Nightvine Page 3

  And Arav’s death was not her only crime: my mother would have killed you, had I not attacked her. I could never forgive her for that.

  And now, when she came back to Laalvur, my mother would kill me, too.

  Alive but across the ocean, she haunted me. I would sleep better if she were dead. Fear stopped me, but not fear of my mother. The thought of killing her brought me nothing but relief. But I could not bring myself to set foot aboard a ship.

  I had seen the ocean crush the life out of too many people.

  I could have sent someone to kill her in my stead. I considered it. But given that my mother was a powerful Lacemaker, and anyone who got close enough to kill her would be in danger of having their memory altered, how could I ever trust anyone else to do the job? Even if they sent me some gruesome evidence back across the ocean, how could I believe it? How could I rest until I knew for certain?

  It had to be me. Eventually, she would come back for what I had taken from her. To Laalvur. To Varenx House. And when that happened, I would strike.

  Until then, I would watch.

  3

  A Rain of Blessings

  “WE DON’T HAVE A PLAN,” Ev hissed. Then she regretted the words. She’d already assumed someone didn’t speak Laalvuri and been proven wrong. The guards were right outside the door. What if they’d heard?

  “We don’t need a plan,” Alizhan replied. Why was she so calm? Didn’t she ever panic? “We have me.”

  The prisoner made quite the face at those words, but whatever he intended to say was cut off by the sound of Alizhan screaming.

  Ev and the prisoner flinched, then cautiously exchanged glances. Alizhan was still sitting cross-legged on the floor facing the prisoner. The only difference was that she had thrown her head back to emit an unholy wail.

  She’s fine. She’s not in pain. Ev took a breath.

  The key clanged against the lock and the door swung inward by a few inches. Ev had to scramble out of the way. Alizhan, on the other hand, leapt up and threw herself at the guard who had peeked in the opening. She only got a hand around his wrist, but it was enough. He grunted in pain and fell forward, throwing the partially open door wide. Alizhan danced out of the way.

  There was another guard standing behind him, but Ev was ready by then. She knocked the door into his face as he tried to enter the cell after his partner. He fell backward into the corridor beyond the cell.

  Ev pulled the door back open, looking over her shoulder to see Alizhan leaning against a wall for support. The prisoner was standing now.

  He didn’t look nearly astonished enough. Most people, if they saw a tiny woman take out a man twice her size with a touch on the wrist, would at least let their eyes go wide. A gasp or two would be perfectly expected. The prisoner shrugged, sauntered out the open door, and didn’t pause to wait for Ev and Alizhan.

  “Need help?” Ev asked.

  Alizhan shook her head, pushed herself upright, and walked out of the cell under her own power. The tremor in her limbs was counterbalanced by the determined set of her jaw.

  Once Ev was in the hallway, she noticed that the guard at her feet had a ring of keys. “There are probably lots of people in this prison who don’t deserve—”

  “Don’t you dare,” their new friend—Ev couldn’t very well call him the prisoner now—snapped. “This is not part of the plan. You still need my help and I did not sign up to right wrongs or fight for justice or save kittens or whatever the depths-drowned fuck you think you’re doing. Swoop in and play hero on your own damn time.”

  “You’re awful,” Ev told him. She picked up the first guard’s ring of keys and tossed it to Alizhan. Then she stepped back into the cell to retrieve the other guard’s keys.

  Alizhan caught the keys and offered the ex-prisoner a delightfully sunny smile. “What plan was that, again?”

  “There are other guards,” he insisted.

  “I’m sure they need a distraction from torturing people,” Ev said, unlocking the cell next to theirs. There was a group of women inside, huddled together so it was hard to tell how many, and as soon as they saw Ev, they all started speaking. The cascade of foreign words was too much for her to understand, so she just smiled and gestured to the open door. She moved to the next cell.

  Alizhan made her way down the corridor in the opposite direction, unlocking doors and pushing them open, not waiting to see if anyone came out.

  The ex-prisoner blew out an annoyed breath. When Ev turned around next, he was gone.

  Smoke. They really did need his help. She shouldn’t have pissed him off. Still, she hadn’t been looking forward to spending more time in his presence, and she wasn’t entirely sorry to lose him.

  She finished unlocking the last few cells and hurried to collect Alizhan. The halls were filling with people now, so there was no need to be stealthy on their way out. They had to be fast, though. Their former cellmate was right about other guards.

  The halls of the prison formed a grid with intersections at right angles. Their cell had been dug into the ground, so Ev kept an eye out for stairs leading up. She kept an eye out for anything staff-shaped, too, but she was disappointed on that count. The stairs, at least, were easy to find.

  And waiting at the top was their former cellmate, wearing a pair of slippers with pointed toes and gold embroidery under his rough-spun prison trousers. In his uninjured arm, he was clutching two other pairs of shoes, one small and one large, and a pile of clothes in familiar colors.

  “What?” he said, when Ev looked at him in surprise. She’d thought he was long gone. She certainly hadn’t expected him to do anything useful. “You can’t escape barefoot. It will slow us down more than you already have.”

  Alizhan accepted the clothes and the pair of slippers from his hands readily.

  Ev hesitated. “You didn’t happen to find…”

  “A ring?” He opened his left hand and offered it to her. “You arrived recently enough that none of your things had time to go home with the guards. Sadly, the same cannot be said for what I was wearing when I arrived.”

  Ev slipped the ring over her thumb and took the rest of the clothes from him.

  “I wanted to know if you saw a book,” Ev corrected, although she’d wanted the ring back more. The ring was a gift. The book was a burden.

  He shook his head. “I didn’t see any books.”

  “Smoke.”

  “You swear like an Adpri. Charming,” he said, and his smile was just slight enough to be confusing. Was that an insult or a compliment? “We’ll have to go straight to my tailor,” the prisoner continued.

  Now that had to be a joke. Ev laughed.

  The prisoner looked at her in silence until she stopped. “Change,” he said.

  Alizhan wasted no time, stripping out of her prison uniform in the stairwell. It happened so fast that Ev nearly got whiplash trying to look away. Alizhan deserved some privacy, after all.

  The prisoner rolled his eyes at Ev. “If you don’t put these clothes on, then I will. The fewer of us who are obviously escapees from a prison, the better.”

  Alizhan was already dressed, wearing a red and yellow printed tunic and trousers that Ev had bought for her. Alizhan was the only woman Ev had ever met with even less interest in clothes than herself. Still, she seemed to like the things Ev bought her, and she’d developed an attachment to this particular outfit. In traditional Laalvuri style, its intricate, geometric pattern suggested flowering vines and fruits without representing them. The colors suited Alizhan.

  The sound of slamming cell doors and shouting brought Ev back to herself. “Turn around,” she snapped at the prisoner. He followed her instructions as disdainfully as possible, but he did follow them.

  While Ev was changing, he said, “You didn’t ask Alizhan to turn around.”

  “She’s a woman.” And Ev didn’t mind if Alizhan looked. Alizhan knew that, but she didn’t seem to have taken Ev up on the invitation. She was staring off into space.

 
“Are you worried that I might be shocked senseless by the sight of a pair of breasts?” he said. “I’m touched by your concern, but I assure you, I have seen them before. Yours can’t be that extraordinary.”

  As long as they had to work together, Ev planned to ignore as much of what he said as possible. It was the only way for both of them to get out unharmed. She pulled her shoes on and said nothing.

  “Can you lead us out of here before we get trapped again?” Alizhan asked.

  “Gladly, if your friend is done being a prude.”

  Ev responded with a stony stare, and the prisoner turned down the hall at the top of the stairs.

  Alizhan’s expression betrayed confusion. She looked like she wanted to say something, but with one more glance between Ev and the prisoner, she shook her head.

  “Can we trust him?” Ev said quietly.

  “He’s hard to read, and very confusing, but… I think so. I know you don’t like him, and he is talking a lot of shit, but he feels like a good person to me. He hasn’t had any really loud, awful thoughts, at least. Besides, who else is going to help us?”

  “When you say he’s hard to read,” Ev said.

  “I think he might be like me,” Alizhan said. “Or like Mala, or…”

  “Iriyat,” Ev finished. Because that would be great. She hoped he didn’t have mysterious abilities of any kind, and she especially hoped he wasn’t like Iriyat. Ev wanted to keep her memory intact. It was disconcerting enough that Alizhan, who could see right through everyone, found their new friend difficult to read. “Well, don’t let him touch you, just in case.”

  Alizhan blinked. It was a wasted warning: she never let anyone touch her.

  “Right,” Ev said. Alizhan wasn’t going around hugging or shaking hands. “Was his story true?”

  Alizhan frowned. “Yes,” she said. “But not all of it.”

  “Which part was a lie?”

  “Something was wrong the whole time he was talking. I’m just not sure what.” Alizhan shrugged, and turned to follow the prisoner, who was halfway down the hall already. Ev had only just started after her when they saw the prisoner get stopped by a guard. The guard grabbed him by his left arm. A rapid exchange of incomprehensible Nalitzvan ensued. The guard was loud and angry. The prisoner spoke Nalitzvan with unruffled calm and absolute authority, as if he was accustomed to being obeyed.

  For a fraction of an instant, it occurred to Ev that she and Alizhan could sneak back down the stairs and abandon the prisoner. In the chaos they’d created, they could probably find a way out of the prison on their own.

  He might do it to them, if the positions were reversed.

  “We don’t have to get involved,” Alizhan said, watching the scene in front of them, and likely listening to Ev’s thoughts as well.

  Ev sighed. “We do, though.”

  Alizhan grinned. “This is why I like you.”

  They approached the prisoner and the guard together, and just as the guard finally noticed them, the prisoner began speaking Laalvuri again, slowly, grandly. “Yes, please do come closer, my esteemed Laalvuri colleagues, and tell this guard how profoundly disappointed you are in Nalitzvan hospitality.”

  Ev and Alizhan stopped just out of the guard’s reach. The prisoner looked at them, and said in Laalvuri, “Well?”

  “I do not speak much Nalitzvan,” Ev said in that language, halting over the difficult sounds and addressing the guard. This was a terrible plan.

  The prisoner smiled as if he were having a fantastic time, rather than being gripped around the bicep by a guard who could easily throw him back into a cell to be tortured. “Yes, of course, it is so polite of you to try to speak Nalitzvan,” he said in Nalitzvan, slowly and clearly enough that Ev could follow. “But that is not necessary since I am here as your interpreter so you should let me talk.”

  Still smiling, the prisoner stressed “me” and “talk” with so much emphasis that he probably pulled a muscle. Ev nodded.

  “As I was saying,” the prisoner said in Nalitzvan, addressing the guard, and then he became so formal that Ev could no longer follow what he was saying. But when he turned back to them, Alizhan took a decisive step forward.

  “Of course,” Alizhan said in Laalvuri. She couldn’t possibly have understood any of what he’d said in Nalitzvan. She was even more useless than Ev when it came to languages. But she spoke Laalvuri perfectly, and as she addressed the guard, her words came out in a slow, even cadence that she never used in real conversation. “It doesn’t matter what we say because you’re going to translate it however you want. Also, Ev, if this doesn’t work, his last-ditch desperate plan is for one of us to knock the guard out and run. I vote you.”

  The prisoner didn’t give any indication that Alizhan had said anything funny. Instead, he launched into a lengthy, lecturing interpretation of what Alizhan had just said. The guard’s eyes widened. Ev could only catch a word here and there: Laalvur, important, Ilyr, mistake.

  Her teacher had said that last word all the time in class.

  The prisoner was still talking. The guard’s grip on his arm had gone slack. The prisoner’s broken hand, Ev noted, was concealed behind his back. Best not to draw attention to the fact that he’d been tortured, if he was spinning a story about how they were important visitors from Laalvur and this whole thing was a terrible mistake.

  That was Ev’s best guess at what he was saying, anyway. She tried to look serious and important. Meanwhile, she subtly shifted her stance, since she was definitely going to have to punch out this poor guard when the prisoner’s stupid plan failed.

  And then the guard let go of the prisoner.

  Ev had to stop her mouth from dropping open.

  The guard was bowing, and showing them the way to the door, and suddenly they were standing in the cool shade of a narrow alley. The prisoner—now Ev really had to start thinking of him as the ex-prisoner—smirked at both of them.

  “Like I said, a rain of blessings.”

  The light, quick patter of Alizhan’s laughter followed them all the way down the street.

  4

  An Unmarked Letter

  MY CHERISHED FRIEND,

  THE ROYAL Temple bells are ringing the hour of Holy Honor on this, the second quartet of the Archer’s month, of the year 1144 of the Crown—in your charming foreign calendar of birds and forgotten gods, I believe that translates to the shift of the Lyrebird, the 28th triad of Alaksha, and the year 764—and I have just learned some very interesting news.

  Those two you warned me about—your pet thief and her stray—did indeed arrive in our city. They tried to present a foreign book to the Prince, and were immediately thrown in jail. The book was confiscated by the guards and delivered to Ilyr.

  I will, of course, do my best to retrieve it.

  Our two young friends were undoubtedly unaware that the city is currently consumed by suspicion of all books, foreign and domestic, and that we keep ourselves warm in the cool Nightward air by piling these paper outrages to good decency in our grandest public squares and setting them alight.

  If this letter arrives smelling faintly of smoke, you will know why.

  The rash of book burnings was sparked by a single volume, an incendiary little collection of poems called Loves. Rumor has it these Loves are dedicated to—inspired by—our Prince, and the ink certainly did not flow from our future Princess’s quill.

  I mean you no offense, my dear, and you know I treasure your correspondence, but I am obliged to point out that my fellow countrymen consider it vulgar for ladies to hold writing instruments in their delicate hands. Any shape longer than it is wide can be suggestive, especially one with a tip that drips.

  And we are all quite certain that no lady wrote this volume of poetry.

  Indeed, the question of instruments comes up rather frequently in the poems, as you will see; a copy is enclosed.

  Book peddlers caught with this stack of kindling are imprisoned and interrogated. Only the incompetent ones get caught
with copies. The competent peddlers can hardly keep it in stock. It is the talk of every party.

  I am still watching M, as instructed. I suspect her involvement in recent events at court—not only the sudden publication of the obscene Loves, but also the disappearance of Lady Lan, as detailed in my previous letter. I have yet to uncover the full workings of the matter. Lady Lan muddied the waters by making a great many enemies at court. Her mysterious absence is a relief to all but our poor, defamed Prince.

  * * *

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

  MP

  5

  Names

  A FRECKLED, BLACK-HAIRED GIRL answered the door at Erinsk’s shop. She didn’t look taken aback by the three bedraggled strangers in front of her, but she didn’t look ready to let them in, either. Then Erinsk himself, still as portly and dapper as ever, bustled up behind her, his bushy, grey eyebrows raised high at the sight of them. He tapped the black-haired girl on the shoulder and she stepped aside to let them pass.

  “Darling. Your clothes. Your hair. You look terrible.”

  Sweet, reliable Dyevyer Erinsk always had his priorities in order. Or perhaps he simply hadn’t noticed the broken hand yet. Thiyo himself had been able to push the thought of his hand aside during the rush of slipping out of prison. The pain had never gone away, but it underscored everything he said and did with sharp urgency, painting the world aching bright. Escaping had kept him focused. Then their trip through the city had been quick and uneventful, and his focus had started to fade. But every time Thiyo thought the pain might fade along with it, he accidentally jostled his hand and brought everything roaring back.