Chapter 10
Ivy
The smell of frying dumplings drifts up to my rooftop perch from a stall at the edge of the city square. My mouth starts to water with a pinch of my stomach, but I hold my position.
My job here is to observe the ordinary citizens milling around below me, not to join them.
At least I’m not alone in my current mission. Rheave has hunkered down on the roof tiles next to me. He’s wearing one of Tinom’s concealing charms too, but when we’re touching, I can see and hear him without the illusion interfering.
Right now, he has his fingers looped casually around my wrist as he peers over the busy square. “The city has so many people. How will we be able to talk to them all?”
“We don’t need to speak to all of them. As long as we catch the attention of a bunch, they’ll chatter about it to everyone they know, and word will spread that way.”
The daimon-man’s eyebrows leap up. “It’s like a kind of magic. Humans are so eager to share things with each other.”
Despite the tension coiled in my belly, my lips twitch with a smile. “I guess the sharing helps us understand the world—by finding out what everyone around us makes of it too.”
For a long time, I didn’t have anyone I could really talk to that way. All I could do was listen in from the shadows.
It is easier to feel like I have a place here when I’ve got people who want me beside them.
Rheave adjusts his quiver against his back. He’s brought his bow and plenty of arrows so he can shoot down any captured daimon we spot in the crowd we expect to form.
That’ll both ensure they don’t interfere and give proof to the story Petra’s going to tell.
I glance at the clock tower visible over the tops of the nearby buildings. “Just another few minutes to go.”
Rheave shifts on his feet. His hand slips from my wrist briefly and then snatches it again when he ripples out of view as I must have to him. His gaze twitches to me and away.
It still feels like something’s a little strange about how he’s acted with me since I escaped Lothar. The uneasiness I’m tamping down creeps up through my chest.
“Is everything all right?” I ask him. “Nothing’s come up in the past several days that’s bothering you?”
The daimon-man lets out a dismissive huff. “Of course not. You’re back with us, and that’s what matters the most. We’ll deal with the rest of the scourge sorcerers like we brought down their march.”
His fingers tighten against my skin, but he still keeps his gaze averted. Maybe it’s only general daimon oddness… or maybe there’s something he doesn’t want to tell me.
I was under the control of the same scourge sorcerer—or at least one with the same gift—as the one who’s manipulated him. Does he associate me with that awful magic now?
“You know,” I try again, “even people who care a lot about each other sometimes have problems come up that they need to talk through. That’s part of having a close relationship with someone—at least for humans. So if you ever are concerned about anything to do with me or my other partners or anyone else we’re spending time with, I’d want you to say so.”
Rheave scoots a little nearer so he can give the side of my head a brief nuzzle. “I know that, Little Vine. So much talking. But the only thing I’m wondering about right now is what the people down there will be saying when Petra talks.”
His voice has lightened enough that I’m not sure if I was just imagining my impression of his discomfort. It could be the lingering madness provoking a more subtle paranoia.
So I smile at him and set my hand over his to give it an affectionate squeeze.
Before I can say anything else, a light flashes overtop a stack of crates at the other end of the square.
The brief flare is an illusion conjured by Tinom, designed to draw people’s attention to the main show. It fades into a projected image of Petra as I know she’s standing in a building elsewhere in the middle wards.
We picked out the three squares in this section of the city where we thought there’d be the most activity—the most people around to hear our true queen’s message. The nobles of the inner wards, Petra and Tinom can reach out to directly. It’s the more ordinary people who make up the majority of Florian’s citizens who she needs to get on her side against the scourge sorcerers.
Rheave and I are here to take note of reactions in this spot. Alek and Casimir are watching the second square. The third is within viewing distance of the place where Petra is actually standing, where Stavros has been coaching her on the best ways to stir people’s loyalties and remind them that our country is worth fighting for.
Petra didn’t have her royal crown, but she found herself a violet dress of sweeping silk worthy of a queen. For once, she’s swept up her dark hair into the formal, swirling style favored by the court. And her stance is nothing short of regal.
Her clear voice rings through the square, amplified as part of the illusion like Lothar projected his the other night. “People of Florian! I have important news to share with you. You’ve been lied to about the death of our king.”
As planned, those words get everyone’s attention quickly enough. Most heads in the square swivel toward the illusion of Petra. Startled murmurs pass between the onlookers.
Petra hurtles onward, unable to hear the response she’s getting. She holds up the blood-sworn letter with the sigil showing. “I was there when King Konram was murdered, because he is my father. You may not recognize me, but you should see the resemblance to my mother, Queen Ishild. When I was twelve years old, at my dedication ceremony, I stopped being Prince Dunstam and became Princess Petra. My parents decided to keep my new identity secret from you for my own security, as this blood-sworn document confirms. But it is your security I’m most worried about now.”
The warble of voices has risen while she speaks, some people below us sputtering in disbelief, others letting out shocked laughs. I notice more figures are arriving from the streets that lead into the square, others emerging from the shops and eateries along its edges.
“Prince Dunstam died!” someone hollers. “This bint could be anyone!”
“She does have Queen Ishild’s look to her,” a woman murmurs to her companion just beneath my rooftop perch.
Petra lifts her chin, the anger in her expression clear even across this distance. “My father was murdered. One of his magic advisors, Lothar Riosemek, stabbed him with a knife and let him bleed out on the floor of his palace in Regica. He would have killed me and my younger sister and brother as well if we hadn’t managed to escape. Now this same man is trying to tell you this death was the will of the gods. It was not. It was Lothar’s will, so he can impose his ideas on this city and the rest of the country.”
“All lies!” a man near the illusion calls out. “She’s not even real.” He scoops a discarded piece of food off the ground and hurls it through the image.
Another voice rises up from off to his left. “That’s right! A real ruler would show herself, let us see this proof. What’s she so afraid of, huh? That we’ll see right through her? We already can!”
I tense in my crouched position. The hostility in those voices makes my riven power writhe in my chest.
Rheave notches his bow next to me. “Neither of the ones talking are daimon, but I can see a couple moving through the crowd. Should I shoot them now?”
I shake my head. “Not until they start pushing people around or Petra mentions the scourge sorcery.”
Whatever’s happening in the square nearest her, she must be aware of the sorts of protests people are raising. She holds up her hands in appeal. “I wish I could be with all of you in the flesh, but I wanted to speak to as many of you as possible at once. And I know that as soon as Lothar learns where I am, he’ll continue his quest to murder me and all of my family.”
“Easy excuses,” someone in the crowd sneers, and flings what looks like a battered shoe at her projected form.
I can’t tell if the rest of the restless voices below us agree with the skeptical comments or are questioning what Lothar’s told them.
Petra keeps going, though the tensing of her lips suggests she’s not pleased with whatever she’s witnessing from her own vantage point. “Think about what’s happened in this city since Lothar and his Order of the Wild marched in. How many murders have been carried out before your eyes? How have they desecrated our most sacred buildings? I can’t believe that this is the kind of world you’d want to live in—one full of violence and cruelty.
“And it isn’t just simple cruelty. Lothar and his followers are practicing scourge sorcery—the same magic that nearly ended our civilization and drove away the All-Giver all those centuries ago. That’s how they wield so much power. They’re helped by those they convinced as children to sacrifice every part of their body they could spare while remaining alive, leaving them mere shells of human beings. And by daimon, whose spirits they’ve trapped in bodies made of clay, upsetting the proper balance of life itself.”
Rheave doesn’t wait for me to give him the go-ahead. The moment the last statement has left Petra’s lips, he releases my arm.
Since I still know he’s there, I glimpse a wavery image of him pulling back his bowstring. One arrow and then another launch into the air from our rooftop, sped onward by crackles of his daimon magic.
They hit their marks in quick succession. Spurts of black smoke shoot up as the bodies collapse.
I lose sight of the toppling forms amid the now milling crowd, but the yelps of shock tell me they’ve transformed back into clay.
I duck low behind the jut of a dormer window so my voice won’t allow any eyes to seek me out and raise my voice to carry as far as it can. “She’s telling the truth! There are fake people walking around with us.”
The murmurs swell across the square. Some sound panicked, others angry. They’re starting to drown out Petra’s voice despite the amplification.
“It’s a trick!” someone yells—probably one of the Order members. “This false princess is using her lies to try to undo the progress we’ve made! She doesn’t care about you. She can’t even be bothered to come to actually listen to you. Just like all the Melchioreks!”
Not far from my rooftop, several pedestrians jostle against each other. I can’t tell what they’re squabbling about, but they knock over a cart full of apples.
As the fruit roll past people’s feet, several onlookers snatch one up and whip it toward the illusion of Petra.
“Come and really talk to us!” a woman cries out.
A male voice joins her. “Let’s see that proof!”
More and more shouts fill the air.
“Who are you really?”
“Why didn’t the Great God come back for King Konram?”
“Everything’s gone wrong!”
So many of the bodies are jostling together now. The illusion of Petra wavers. “Please, listen,” I think she says, and then I lose track of her words completely amid the chaos.
I can’t even tell how many of the unsettled civilians want to believe her and how many are upset with her—but there are definitely too many of the latter. The crowd surges toward the crates below her illusion, more objects hurtling through the air toward her image.
I don’t know how to stop them or make them see reason. My magic is flailing around in my chest now, desperate to yank all the people below me into order, but I can only imagine how disastrous that effort would turn out.
As I wrap my unpredictable power tight within me, my gaze sweeps over the churning figures. It catches on a boy of maybe seven or eight stumbling where one of the more aggressive onlookers has shouldered past him.
The boy trips and falls onto his knees. I have a flash of an image of his small body swallowed up and trampled by his fellow civilians, and my heart lurches alongside my magic.
I detach my necklace with the concealment charm and shove it in my pocket. “I need to help someone,” I gasp out in Rheave’s direction, and leap down onto the jutting store sign below before he can answer.
I don’t need my riven power for this. With another hop, my feet hit the ground. I throw myself through the weaving bodies, searching for the pale beige of the boy’s tunic.
There. He’s just yanking his hand away from being stomped on.
I spring across the last short distance and grasp his elbow to haul him upright—and backward into shelter between two abandoned stalls.
The boy spares me a puzzled glance and then darts forward again with a hoarse holler. “The king is gone! We need someone real!”
Gods help me, has Lothar already managed to muddle even the city’s children?
I snatch at the boy’s arm again to hold him back. “Why are you talking like that? She’s real even if you haven’t met her properly yet.”
He glares back at me with eyes so hostile I restrain a flinch. “If she’s got anything to do with the old king, I don’t want her.”
“Why not?”
The boy snorts as if the answer should be obvious. “What did King Konram do for any of us who didn’t matter enough to wear fancy clothes and go to his parties? Where was he when my dad broke his leg last year and some shoddy medic left him with a limp? If the royals can’t help us, we’ve got to fight for ourselves!”
He jerks his arm free and dashes away into the crowd, leaving me staring after him with a sinking sensation in my gut.