25 Easy
Sarai stared at the sky, lost in thought as they rode to the Grains Guild’s horreum.
Having never been there, Méherre had only been able to open a Bridge as far as Aelius’s vigile station, where they had stolen two horses and ridden like the wind. She stared at the familiar wooden gates crawling close on the horizon. By all the gods, to what purpose was a god tormenting their city?
“You’re quiet.” Méherre nudged her mount to trot beside hers.
“I’m lost,” Sarai admitted. “I wish I had more in the way of power to halt Noceo and this god. But I can barely get people to take me seriously let alone the divine.”
Méherre shot her a look that she wasn’t used to receiving.
Kind but also implying that she wasn’t very bright.
“Noceo and the Order came for you,” she said slowly.
They could have ignored you when you positioned yourself as a target, but they drove you straight to a Hearing instead.
” Méherre spread her hands wide at Sarai’s bewildered shrug.
“You really don’t see it? They only sought to take away your social capital because you had some.
Ever thought that you might be focusing too much on the few who dislike you and not the multitude who couldn’t care less either way? ”
Sarai nearly lost her grip on the reins.
Méherre raised her brows meaningfully. “That’s why Noceo keeps offering you power, so he can take advantage of your name beside his. Yesterday’s display earned him more fear than it did respect. Your allegiance would place a thumb on the scale in his favor.”
Something stuck in the back of Sarai’s mind. She opened her mouth when Méherre spoke again.
“Freedom without power is a curse for people like us.” She examined the sleet-covered farmhouses on either side of the road. Icicles hung from the eaves, dripping. “I saw you recognize it too in Komis after the strike.”
“People like us?”
“People who want to set the world right,” Méherre clarified. “You care a great deal. A dangerous thing for a woman with power. You ran yourself ragged around Edessa.”
Sarai’s brow furrowed. “Méherre, how do know so much about—”
“Anything you’d like me to examine with Cassandane? She’s the only one of us wandering in a daze about what to do, so I thought I’d help her after leaving you here.”
Sarai lost her train of thought. “Perhaps a search of the Hall of Records too? Anek may as well be on their own there with Harion.”
Méherre snorted. “Nothing between his ears, and he does get so touchy about it.”
Sarai studied the deep downturn to her lips, the weariness lining her face. “Thank you, truly. You must have imagined there would be more to the capital than a couple of tired Tetrarchs, Petitors, and several hundred vigiles trying to hold the country together.”
“Not precisely. But you needn’t worry.” Méherre’s smile was that of a woman who had known too much compromise and now took no quarter. “I’ve only ever wanted to see this through.”
Sarai registered the ring of truth in the words as they drew up before the gates into the horreum and bid Méherre farewell.
The cold howled around her, striking invisible knives through her thick birrus to penetrate skin as she circled the horreum. Her footsteps plunged deep into fresh flurries, sinking to the ankle as her mind turned to the unique question of Dalvia.
To Kadra’s knowledge, Dalvia had been an only child, and after the death of her parents, she’d been left to depend on the mercy of Kadra’s Clan. But try as she did, Sarai couldn’t fathom why the woman hadn’t left Noceo if she abhorred what he was doing.
Her feet sank into a footprint. A frisson of warning ran down her spine upon sighting a second trail in the snow. Shit. Who else was here?
Holding her breath, she eased backward, stepping in her own footprints until she had come back the way she’d entered. Turning, she froze at Noceo standing before her.
Hands behind his back, he stared at her in equal shock, then surveyed her scarred skin with the arrogance of a man who believed his judgment crucial to the existence of most. “You could pass for the Xārōmand Desert. Cracked earth.”
A few words and he reduced her to so little. Worthless. She ground her teeth at the memory. “About to imbibe more stimulants and fight a god?”
Noceo scowled. “Where’s Drenevan?”
“Not here.” She was suddenly heartily thankful that he had stopped by Aoran Tower first. “Where’s Dalvia?”
“Who knows? Still upset at your defeat?”
Sarai watched him as one would a blackstripe bear. Her breath fogged out in the cold. “I don’t know where you get the idea that you’re doing any good, but nothing will change with you around. At least there’s hope with the Tetrarchy, flawed as it is.”
“Hope. Illusion.” Noceo kicked at a tuft of snow. “You haven’t seen enough to know the difference.”
An exhausted laugh escaped her, tinged with a bitterness that took a moment to ebb off. “I have. Enough to know the difference between the illusion of power and hope of it.” She performed a pointed once-over of his quaking hand. “Drugs wearing off?”
He ignored her. “The south needed a lesson after the all the north has suffered.”
“Please, you wanted to stick it to Kadra.” The replica of Aoran Tower, the assumption of Kadra’s position.
This had always been revenge. “Anyone who gave a hav?d about the country would have held every piece of the Aequitas together as people escaped. What can your voice do beyond force others to do what you can’t? ”
He stilled.
“It isn’t that you didn’t want war.” She watched the pallor of his face worsen, letting her tongue run untrammeled.
“You can’t control it. That’s why you vanished after triggering the lightning strike on the Aequitas.
Why should I tie my lot in with a man who can’t so much as shield himself from a single bolt without ordering someone else to protect him—” He slapped her hard enough to whip her head to one side.
Pain burst white-hot through her skull. Winded, she wordlessly touched her bleeding lips, exhaling through the ringing in her ears. When she turned to meet his eyes, he had never looked paler.
He might have drawn her blood, but the blow was hers.
He stared at his hands for a moment as though still comprehending that he had struck her. “His life should have been mine,” he whispered. “I’m taking it back. You’re the one clinging to a monster.”
Furious denial sprung to her lips. He laughed it off before it left.
“He didn’t single you out?” That unearthly voice wove around her like a vise.
“Didn’t make you feel bared to your soul and entirely known?
Didn’t praise you as beyond compare or give you what he vowed he gave no other?
And then, you felt called to him despite what you saw of his evil until common sense vanished and all that was left was a desperation to please,” he hissed with bitter vehemence.
“Not for the reasons you think!”
“Really? As children, Drenevan and I were ordered to lure people into working for the Clan.” He stared at the horreum’s gates, weak of moonlight spilling over his delicate features.
“Our targets were fellow children, though the difference in mental acuity was so wide as to be unfair. We’d encourage them to join our blazeleaf production warehouse for coin, and then lock them in with the rest of the workers.
Once their families came crying and begging, Clevsin would force them all into servitude.
We had a thriving workforce. But how did we get children to turn their skin to leather while curing and drying blazeleaf?
” He turned back to her. “The same tricks. Lure them in. Make them feel seen. Promise them that you and only you can help with their struggles. Prove it with little things, and when they’re well and hooked, reel them in.
No one was immune to Drenevan. Not you. Not Tetrarch Othus. ”
She winced at the memory, staring at the sweat lining the grooves of his palm, and the pale, almost-ill waxy sheen of his skin.
“Two things can be true. Taking away Othus’s free will was wrong, and you were desperate and didn’t have anyone to turn to.
” Her heartbeat was a staccato of pity and anger.
“You act like your motives are efficient, and Kadra’s were evil, but so many are dead. Because of envy.”
Noceo dropped his hand. “He got everything, while I remained stuck in Komis with nothing, always slaving away, always afr—” He cut himself off with a shake of his head and a laugh.
Afraid? “You’re mad if you expect me to believe that Kadra heartlessly abandoned you. That man carries more guilt than the Chaboras River has water!”
“You barely know him. He left eleven years ago without a backward glance,” he snarled.
“Gods, there isn’t a chance in any of the ten hells that it’s true, but it was up to you to build a life of your own!” she said incredulously. Dalvia was one thing, but this silver-eyed snake could have made his home in the Xārōmand Desert if he so chose.
“You don’t see it.” Noceo pricked his thumb and pressed it to the runes for Coercion on his armilla.
Power roared to life, the seething press of magic a tangible weight over them.
His skin turned a shade paler. “I could have forced you to join me at any point. But it has to be real. You have to see it as I have or I become the villain of the piece.”
She was inches from slapping him. “All I see is a pathetic piece of former nobility who’s spent eleven years wallowing over his life being hell when you had it easier than I ever did.”
“That’s what you believe?” His silver eyes glittered, something almost mad in their depths.
“Then, look!” He seized her wrists, twisting them ruthlessly when she tried to escape.
“Tell me that I didn’t suffer.” He wiped some of the blood from her bleeding mouth wound onto her armilla and pressed it into herar, the rune for “Probing.” “Let’s see how long that high horse of yours stands. ”
He touched her fingertips to his head. The world dissolved in a familiar rush.