Chapter 24 Caspia
Twenty-Four
Caspia
The boy and his bread were swallowed whole by the crowd in the Skanshon marketplace. His tent could be anywhere in this city, and I had no clue where to look.
“Excuse me,” I said, pushing past people, searching past legs and bodies for the child.
“Wait.” Andreas’s hand had slipped from mine, but I didn’t stop.
This boy, this vision, could change everything.
“Have you seen a boy?” I asked a woman selling beaded jewelry in a tarped stall.
She met my gaze and shied away.
“A boy with black hair and a loaf of bread. He’s this tall.” I held out my hand to the top of my hip. “Have you seen him?”
She signed the Eight and ducked under the tarp’s flap.
I slammed my fist on her table, then moved to the next.
The man held up a clay vase. “You won’t find a finer potter in this city than me. I’ll make you a deal.”
“Have you seen a boy?”
His smile dropped, and he shook his head.
I was about to move to the next stall when two strong hands took hold of my shoulders, spinning me around.
“Caspia.” Andreas’s eyes were panicked. “Stop.”
“We have to find him, Andreas. Please.”
“You said your visions were about the past.”
“Not this one. It came while I was standing right beside you. Right next to the baker. And I saw the boy with the loaf of bread.” I sucked in a calming breath. “I need to know what this means. Why the vision was different.”
He sighed, dragging a hand through his hair.
I held my breath, waiting for him to tell me no. For him to finally admit he didn’t believe I had visions. That there was no such place as Nelfinex and I was simply some delusional woman he wished he hadn’t rescued from the Coraness River.
There were times when I struggled to believe my own reality.
I wouldn’t blame Andreas if he turned away right now and left me in this market.
“Okay.” He took my hand. “I’m guessing this is a regular place for the boy to pick pockets. We’ll ask around. The baker didn’t seem surprised when I caught the boy. It’s likely he’s seen the child before. Maybe he’ll know where we can find him.”
Never a doubt. Never a hesitation.
I didn’t deserve this man.
But I was keeping him all the same.
“Thank you.” I lifted onto my toes, kissing the underside of his jaw. Then I followed him back to the baker’s cart.
It took the remainder of the sun to find the boy.
At first, I’d thought people’s reluctance in the market to speak to us was because we were clearly not from Skanshon. That maybe they protected their orphans from outsiders.
Except then I realized it was me they shied away from. When Andreas approached the market stalls alone, he was met with a much warmer welcome. It was me who made people shy away.
Like the boy, they’d take one look at my golden eyes, searching for starbursts to tie me to a kingdom, only to find they weren’t there.
After a while, I kept my eyes on my feet, studying my boots as Andreas did the talking.
When the sun began to set and the sky took on a palette of pastel hues, I was certain we’d failed. That we’d lost the boy and any chance I had of changing his future.
But at the very last stall in the market, a woman selling embroidered slippers pointed across a bridge toward a cluster of buildings on the river’s opposite shore.
They were incomplete, their windows without panes and their walls without plaster.
“The man putting them up ran out of coin,” the woman said. “They’ve been abandoned since the summer solstice. I see the children from time to time, though they’re good at avoiding adults. I’d wager the boy you’re looking for carved out a spot for himself amidst the junk over there.”
Andreas bought a pair of slippers in my size, paying her twice the asking price. Then we raced across the bridge, quietly navigating the wreckage.
A swish of black hair caught my eye as we made a lap around the second building. The boy walked with his back to us, his loaf of bread tucked under his arm. He was limping, careful not to put too much weight on his right foot.
Was that why he hadn’t eaten the bread already? Had he gotten into a fight? Had he been caught trying to steal from someone else?
Andreas and I spotted him at the same time, sharing a look as we followed him, keeping enough distance not to be noticed but staying close enough not to lose sight of him.
When we found the tent around the corner of a half-constructed building, the boy had already ducked inside.
The tent was exactly as I’d seen in my vision. Filthy. So small only a child could fit inside. It was tucked close enough to a wall that most would walk past thinking it was a covering, not a shelter.
Andreas held up one finger, gesturing for me to wait as he walked to the tent on silent steps and whipped up the flap.
The boy scrambled backward on his pallet, his cheeks bulged with bread. “You.”
“Me.” Andreas dropped to a crouch. “What is your name?”
The child curled his lip and glared.
Andreas threw his head back and laughed, then stood, grabbing the boy by the back of his collar and yanking him to his feet, too. “You need a bath, urchin. And more to eat than bread.”
The boy struggled against Andreas’s hold but couldn’t work himself free. His bread was still gripped tight in his fist. “Don’t call me that.”
“Then tell us your name.” I crossed my arms over my chest, arching an eyebrow.
He stopped fighting, noticing me for the first time. He shied closer to Andreas, giving me a wary glance.
“Your name?” Andreas repeated.
The boy looked to the ground. “Kos.”
I walked over, bending low until I was eye level with the boy. “My name is Caspia. This is Andreas. You’re going to come with us, and you’re going to behave.”
It wasn’t an order. It wasn’t a threat. It was his future.
Because as I stared at Kos, I realized he was a dirtier, scrappier version of a boy I saw in a vision lunes ago. A vision that had come to me aboard the Cirrina.
The vision of a boy with floating books.
It wasn’t a vision that kept me from sleep. It was the boy sleeping on the sofa in the sitting room.
Kos looked like a different person after a bath and hot meal. He seemed younger. He was too thin.
Like he’d done for us, Andreas had ordered the boy new clothes from a nearby shop. Kos was dressed in a sleep shirt and pants, both of which draped on his scrawny frame.
But even with the hollows under his cheekbones, he was actually quite adorable without the angry scowl on his face.
I hoped eventually, we’d actually coax him to smile.
Moonlight spilled through the open balcony doors, and a cool breeze ruffled the sheer curtains.
I’d woken earlier from a dreamless sleep and slipped out of Andreas’s arms to check on Kos.
The moment I saw the balcony doors open, I was certain I’d find the sitting room sofa empty.
That Kos had climbed down the balcony and escaped.
But he was right where we left him, tucked beneath a tufted quilt.
Maybe he struggled with the feeling of being closed in, too.
Kos’s dirt-smudged bread was hugged to his chest.
Neither Andreas nor I had risked trying to take it away.
I pulled the blanket up over Kos’s shoulder, then walked to the balcony, staring up at the navy sky.
The wind pushed puffs of clouds overhead, blotting out pockets of stars. But the two full moons glowed so brilliantly even the clouds could not block out their light.
Somewhere across the Marixmore, were my aunt and my sister flying beneath the stars? If I closed my eyes, I could still hear the sound of their beating wings.
What would Oleana say about Kos? Would she still dismiss my visions as dreams?
This ritus might have been a failure, but the Divine was leading me down a path. Now I knew that I had the power to change the future.
I could save Andreas.
Maybe I could still save Xandra, too.
All I had to do was give up revenge for my sister. Her killer would walk free. I’d sacrifice justice for the man who’d won my heart.
The floorboards creaked inside, and when Andreas wrapped me in his arms, I leaned against his bare chest.
“I was sure we’d wake up and he’d be gone.”
I smiled. “Me too.”
“I’m going to send him to my family in Quentis. They’ll care for him until we return from Turah.”
Except if Andreas came with me to Turah, he wouldn’t return. That wasn’t our path, not anymore.
I tilted my face to the stars. And changed our fate.
Forgive me, Emery.
“I don’t want to go to Turah.”
“What?” Andreas let me go, spinning me to face him. “What about finding your cousin and the silver-eyed man?”
I put my hand to his cheek, his stubble gently scraping my palm. “I’m giving up my quest for vengeance. I want to go with you to Quentis. I want to take Kos ourselves.”
His eyebrows knitted together. “You saw something. You had another vision.”
“Yes,” I admitted. Now that he knew about my visions, there was no point in denying them.
“Tell me.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I pressed a kiss to his chest and breathed in his clean, woodsy scent. “I couldn’t save my sister. But I can save that boy.”
And I could save Andreas.
“Take me to Quentis,” I murmured with another kiss. “Please.”
His jaw clenched, his frame locked tight. But by the third kiss, his arms wrapped around me once more, his hands molding to the curves of my hips. When he slid his palms over my ass, I knew he wouldn’t argue.
The next sun, I stayed with Kos at the inn while Andreas made arrangements for us to leave.
And by dawn the following morning, we were on a ship bound for Quentis.