Chapter Twelve
CHAPTER TWELVE
Sleep came and went. Brightly lit ballrooms and men who’d drugged her abounded in her dreams to the tune of stormfall pounding against the window. Nursing a headache, Sarai came downstairs to find an equally tired-looking Cato.
“This storm was an ugly one.” He stifled a yawn. “Kadra will be at the Aoran Tower Gate. He wanted you to know that he’s found Petitor Livia’s mother.”
Her appetite vanished, dread and anticipation taking its place. “I see.”
If there was any evidence incriminating Kadra in Livia’s death, then this dance of theirs would end. She’d go to Aelius, and her vengeance would be complete. It was everything she’d hoped for only a month ago before entering this tower. So why couldn’t she summon any joy?
Feeling unanchored, she barely noticed the reek of smoke and mud in the air on her walk to the Aoran Tower Gate, where Kadra conversed with his vigiles. Faint lines of weariness bracketed his mouth, and she took a deep breath, emptiness sweeping her at the thought of this solid, malevolent man rotting away in the mines.
She hid her perturbation throughout their journey, but couldn’t mask it upon reaching the outskirts of Edessa. Left to fend for themselves, the poor clustered in makeshift structures—brick walls and roofs of corrugated metal—or rickety apartments, ill-maintained by the landowners .
“This is Arsamea all over again,” she said, dismayed. An hour and a half’s ride back into the Quarter and she’d be among the lavish domii of last night’s partygoers.
“Edessa has many faces.” Kadra dismounted, leading his horse onto a narrow road between insulae. “You won’t find a town without poverty.”
Spotting a glint of gold some yards away, she squinted. His vigiles hefted steaming pots toward an insula, ladling soup to a group of exhausted people.
The emptiness she’d felt earlier intensified. “You do what you can.”
His mouth curved cynically. “I do what my coffers allow.”
They approached the border of Kadra’s Quarter with Cassandane’s, an outward line of crimson-painted cobblestone with an inner line of black stone. Scores of people darted across, making a beeline for Kadra’s vigiles, faces hopeful for soup. She wondered if Cassandane knew. The Corpus provided that the Tetrarchy couldn’t interfere with each other’s governance of their Quarters, a law evidently set in place to impede the creation of a dictatorship, unimpeachable on its face. Yet, in effect, it had discouraged cooperation as much as it had tyranny.
Kadra tilted his head toward a rocky trail tucked behind a hut. It ended in a brick shelter, tiny even by the outskirts’ standards. A white-haired woman shifted open the planks that served as a door and moved them back when she saw him.
“Get lost,” she snarled. “I don’t need another lying Tetrarch.”
Another? Sarai edged past him. “We’re here to talk about Livia.”
“You’re here now , are you? Didn’t bother a year ago when I needed help. I begged you lot to avenge my girl, and you gave me excuses.” She spat in the dirt.
Sarai glanced at Kadra, who shook his head. She believed him. Kadra was many things, but she’d never seen him turn away a petitioner.
“We think Petitor Jovian may have been murdered,” she said tentatively. “Are you saying your daughter was as well? ”
The old woman went quiet. She shuffled the boards and emerged, stooped over. “You won’t do anything, just like the others. But I’ll give you the damn story if you want it so bad.”
“What happened to her?” Kadra kept the doorway in his line of sight. Sarai tracked his focus to an oblong shape within the cramped dwelling, wrapped in cloth.
“Death.” Her mother shrugged. “One day, she’d stopped by for a meal. The next, she’d fallen into a vat in one of the Metals Guild’s forges.”
The Metals Guild again . Her heart sank. “How?”
“That’s what I asked.” The woman crossed her arms. “Apparently, the Guildsmen came in to work and found her arm sticking out of the molten metal. Of course, she’d been murdered! But Guildmaster Helvus denied everything, offered his condolences, then slapped me with a bill for the metal she ruined by dying in it.” She laughed bitterly. “Cassandane paid but said there was no way of telling if a Guildsman was involved or which one. Only Jovian knew that something was wrong. Came to Livia’s wake and kept muttering that he saw something he shouldn’t have. Died a week later too.”
Sarai’s blood turned to ice. The Sidran Tower Girl must have seen … Jovian’s burnt letter had said. “Did Livia seem afraid before her death?”
“I barely saw her.” Livia’s mother snarled. “She was worked to the bone. Only came home twice in those last weeks. For a final meal and to get rid of all our scuta. I don’t know why,” she added when Sarai made to ask just that. “But if Livia wanted it gone, then I’d toss the house itself. I just figured it was because she didn’t like the Metals Guild.”
Odd. “Forgive me,” Sarai began hesitantly, “but did you happen to see Livia’s body?”
“See it?” The woman’s laugh went eerily off-kilter. “She’s always with me.”
Sarai’s head whipped toward the shape within the hut. Still laughing, the woman plodded inside and returned with it. She drew the cloth away with a flourish .
Sarai’s stomach curdled. An arm lay within a wooden box, runes etched all over the wood to prevent its decay. Livia’s mother must have paid a Lugen well for such preservation. Fear coiled around her at the familiar shattered fingers, the elbow joint facing the wrong way. Two bodies disfigured in death. And at the center of it all, the Metals Guild.
Her hands shook. “Another fall,” she whispered for Kadra’s ears alone.
“It was the only piece of her that wasn’t coated in metal.” Livia’s mother hugged it to her. “I don’t have anything else for you.”
Barely able to breathe, Sarai struggled for words.
“We appreciate your assistance,” Kadra said smoothly, after a quick glance at her. “I’ll see that her killers pay.”
“Ha! You won’t do anything either,” Livia’s mother said scornfully. “I went to Tullus, too, you know. He told me that anger was unbecoming, that the gods decreed Livia’s fate and that I should pray for her rest in the Bright Realms instead of conjuring culprits.”
Damn him . She took in Livia’s mother’s ragged clothes, the box she so fiercely clung to, the spark of hope in her eyes that she extinguished every time it flared up. A mother who loved beyond death, whom the world had ignored, just as it had Jovian and Livia. Eyes burning, she hugged her, feeling the bony hills of her shoulders when she patted her back.
“I’m sorry.” It was all she could say to this woman who’d been failed in every way. “I’m so sorry.”
She was quiet on the way back. Kadra rode ahead, acknowledging her silence but not prying into it. She wished he would. None of this made sense.
The Metals Guild was involved, but how did Kadra fit into this? Jovian and Livia had no ties to him beyond their corpses being found in his Quarter, and all she had was a memory of his voice, which she was starting to wonder if her cracked skull had made up that night.
By the time they reached the vigiles who’d been distributing soup earlier, she had a splitting headache. One set down his pot when he saw them and ran over .
“There’s been a strike, Tetrarch Kadra. Eighteen streets north.”
Kadra turned to her. “How fast can you ride?”
Her adrenaline surged. “As fast as you need.”
“Stay close.”
With a white-knuckled grip on the reins, she spurred Caelum on. Their mounts picked their way across the widening streets, breathing hard. Smoke hung in the air, worsening with every mile, scratching her throat. Thinking of the storm she’d been caught in with Kadra, she sent a fervent plea to the gods, her dread burgeoning when the dwellings grew larger. They rounded a cluster of trees, and Kadra drew to a halt. She froze.
Fortune, have mercy.
An insula rose ahead, obliterated. Embers still bloomed on the upper floors, Kadra’s vigiles perched on ladders to throw buckets of water at them. People clustered outside, sobbing and screaming in pain, burns lacing their skin. Her breath hitched when two of Kadra’s vigiles emerged from the rubble, carrying a blackened corpse between them. At the sight of their Tetrarch, they set the body down and came over.
“How many?” Kadra’s features were grim.
“Twelve dead, Tetrarch Kadra.” One of the vigiles wiped his sweaty forehead, smearing it with ash. “The rest are either getting there or burned enough to wish they were.”
“Get them to the healers and find a few brick Guildsmen who’ll help rebuild.” Kadra indicated the people clustering around the corpse, wailing. “Ask them where they want the bodies buried and join them in finding shelter. The air’s thick. This storm isn’t over.”
Both vigiles nodded and vanished back inside the charred building. Dismounting, she coughed at the smoke, gaze fixed on the scutum lying on its side at the front of the home. Crouching, she gingerly touched the rod, finding it cool to the touch.
“I don’t understand.” She turned to Kadra. “Why didn’t it work?”
Kadra grimly surveyed the dead. “What do you know of the scuta? ”
“They’re steel rods, engraved with protective runes that Tetrarch Aelius found in an ancient annal.” Her chest tightened when the vigiles brought out another body. “Don’t they shield against lightning?”
Kadra’s laugh was ugly, humorless. “Do you know what the runes say?”
She shook her head, frustrated. “I can only read a few.”
His shadow fell over her shoulder. “May I?” He offered his hand.
The heat from the fire receded as a different rush of warmth hummed over her skin. I shouldn’t . He might feel her scars. They were at the scene of a disaster.
Yet, she still nodded. His large hand covered hers, another coming to rest on her shoulder in a steadying hold. That had always troubled her. That a man so entrenched in violence was capable of gentleness. She nearly choked when he interlocked their fingers and pressed them to the scutum, tracing each rune to show her their meaning.
“‘The strength of the shield cast by this fulgur scutum,’” he read, “‘depends on how fervently those who dwell under its protection believe in the Elsar. A prayer will save you. But doubt, that stealthy poison, will doom you.’”
Staring at her shaking fingers gentled by large, callused ones, it took a moment for the words to penetrate. Her jaw dropped. “The shields work on faith ?”
He released her. “That’s what the runes say.”
“So if the scutum doesn’t work …” She broke off. “You can’t be serious.”
“If it doesn’t work, then the inhabitants must not have had faith,” he said sardonically.
“Something as nebulous as faith can’t govern this .” She gestured at the catastrophe around them. “Everyone would be better off erecting a monument to Lord Fortune on their roofs. How can belief power a hunk of metal?”
“How indeed.” The strange gleam she’d seen in Kadra’s eyes by Jovian’s corpse resurfaced. He turned his mount back to the path. “Come.”
“You’re going to just walk away? Won’t you offer a word of comfort? ”
Something bitter tautened his face. “There is no comfort for the living after this. No platitudes that will ease the burn of everyone saying that these people deserved it for lacking faith. The dead will die again by public opinion, and the living will never live it down.” He indicated the spectators keeping their distance from the carnage as though it were contagious. “You can’t change that.”
Without thinking, she gripped his reins. “Don’t.” Her voice wobbled, aware that his vigiles were watching them, and that she was being insubordinate again. “Don’t do what Cassandane and Tullus did to Livia’s mother and walk away, thinking that coin alone will help.”
“Words won’t aid them.” His features were hard.
“They will aid some . You may never have lost anything, Kadra, but I have, and if even one person had bothered to tell me that it wasn’t my fault, I would have appreciated it a great godsdamned deal.” She realized that she’d addressed him without his title.
Something shifted in his eyes. After a moment, he dismounted and stalked over to the survivors with her. A few tearstained faces turned at their approach.
Sarai bowed low. “I’m sorry for your losses tonight,” she said awkwardly. “And for what it’s worth, I don’t think that a lack of faith caused this.”
“Then why?” a woman cried, clutching her mangled arm. “Who did this then?”
A lump built in Sarai’s throat. “I know it’s no comfort, but sometimes, there’s no one to blame,” she whispered. “Perhaps the gods are cruel. Or perhaps they want to take us where it’s safe. At the very least, there is no stormfall in the Bright Realms.”
Some shrugged, deep in grief. Others lined up to where Kadra was offering his condolences so compellingly, it was like she’d hadn’t talked him into it.
Returning to their mounts, she snuck a glance at him. Why listen to me? Do you care about these people or are they just useful to you? Why were you at Sidran Tower that night ?
Eyes still holding that fierce light, Kadra turned to the road. “This way.”
She let the questions turn to ash in her mouth.
They made rounds of the other farms to see if they’d been struck. A city like Edessa didn’t have the capacity for much arable farmland, but livestock farmers were always necessary, and littered the outskirts. Leaving a dwelling, Sarai stiffened when Kadra cast a sharp look at the sky.
“Get down.” He indicated a nearby holm oak.
She didn’t think twice. Dismounting, she’d just finished tethering their mounts when blinding light ripped through the sky followed by a scream of thunder.
A drop of rain hit her shoulder. Then another. And the sky opened above without any garden folly to save them.
Rain spitefully bit into her skin, her robes doubling under the weight. The ground softened into sludge, and she cursed when her worn Arsamean boots began rapidly sinking in. Eyeing Kadra’s sturdier footwear, she tried to keep her balance, searching for something to grip. The wide tree trunk behind her had no purchase, and Caelum was too skittish for Sarai to grab her reins.
“You’ll have to excuse me,” Kadra said quietly.
A warm hand gripped her waist, pulling her against him. The scent of oranges enveloped her. Her boots squelched, ruined. Yet, she only had eyes for the face a foot above hers.
“I would have asked,” he said with amusement. “But you were about to fall.”
Blood throbbed in her ears. The side of her body touching his sighed at the heat, as if she’d never known she was cold until this very instant. He’s a mass murderer , she reminded herself fiercely. He was at Sidran Tower. Her pulse cooled.
“Thank you,” she said stiffly.
Kadra’s humor faded, his eyes returning to knifelike sharpness. He surveyed her boots. “I’ll have a pair made. ”
The words held no condescension, but she still bristled. “Thank you, but I can afford it.”
“Hmm.” Not a change in his expression, but she had the feeling that he’d seen too much in her response.
She hated this. The attraction, the fear, the contradictory directions her body and mind fled in around him. The way she watched for the wry curve of his mouth and how she’d replayed the night he’d removed her birrus a thousand times. A bolt of lightning hissed above, and she wished it would strike her, so she would stop thinking. An angry roar of thunder followed, and she couldn’t halt a shudder.
Kadra looked down, raising an eyebrow, and she flushed.
“We’re under a tree ,” she said through gritted teeth. It may as well be a lightning rod.
Looking like he was fighting a laugh, he raised a hand. Tension thrummed through him. Her eyes widened when a shimmering lattice unfolded beyond the tree’s cover, curving high around them to form a dome. It hovered above the ground, sparking and hissing when rain struck it. Not one drop made it through.
“I didn’t think lightning could be used this way,” she breathed.
“Every element can.” Kadra dropped his hand, and the shield vanished, rain returning to pile on them. The rigid line of his shoulders eased. “I’d keep it up, but I need to see if a bolt gets too close. After all, we are under a tree .”
If he wasn’t all that was keeping her standing, she’d have throttled him. She settled for a scowl, painfully conscious of his arm around her waist. The man who might have destroyed her body, holding it. The gods must be cackling.
“Take tomorrow to rest,” he murmured.
She looked up at him. “Why? I’m well.”
He directed a meaningful glance at her hands, which seemed to be performing an interpretive dance.
She clenched them into fists. “It happens. ”
“When you’re overworked.”
How often had he been staring at her hands to figure that out? “I don’t shirk my duties.”
“In which case, you should take tomorrow to go over next week’s petitions. The Hall of Records will have them.”
For a second, she thought she’d been struck by lightning. The Hall of Records. Her records of the Fall. Her answers would arrive tomorrow. She waited for elation, but the deep-seated ache she’d battled hours earlier resurfaced. She hated that she knew why. Kadra, will I find your name in those records?
“Very well,” she muttered.
A dull hum suddenly filled the air, throbbing in an eerie rhythm. Kadra’s arm around her turned to steel.
“Close your eyes,” he ordered and raised a hand, sparks flying at his fingertips.
She’d barely complied when blinding light flashed beyond her shut eyelids. Kadra’s hand moved from her waist to the back of her head, pressing her into his chest. A terrifying snap of sound followed. The mud beneath their feet trembled in response. She snuck a glance in time to witness the lightning bolt that had tried to strike them fly back up to the sky and crack it open, branching into a thousand filaments.
Dropping his hand, Kadra exhaled heavily. Kadra’s a talented magus , Cisuré had said. But this was beyond talent. What monstrous power.
A tinny noise started, similar in vibration to the buzz they’d just heard. Another bolt . But farther away, she realized, eyeing the blurred shape of a thick oak in the distance. She stiffened in preparation for the tree to go up in flames when Kadra’s hand rose again. Lightning arrowed down, ready to claim its victim when it warped and fled upstream to strike the clouds.
Another low breath left him. His sleeve fell back, the runes on his armilla blazing in the rain. Red had entered a few, and she realized that he must have drained himself controlling the first storm, before they’d gone to see Livia’s mother, and was doing so again. How he wasn’t comatose was beyond her.
As she stared, the hand gripping the back of her head returned to her waist. She withdrew, pretending she hadn’t just been face-first in his chest.
“You’re safe.” His hand found the taut line of her spine and settled there. “That’ll be it for some time.”
Safe . The simple word struck her with the weight of a sledgehammer. Conflicted, she stared at him. When have I ever been safe?
In the downpour, Kadra’s features looked crueller than ever, watchful gaze trained on the sky. Magnificent. The realization clenched around her heart like a fist. If she were a bolder woman, she’d have risen on her toes, pressed her mouth to his and lost herself entirely.
But she wasn’t. She was a Petitor out of her depth, under an illusion. Her face, her reasons for being near him, none of them were real.
At her silence, he gave her a quizzical look. “I didn’t think this would frighten you.”
It took her a second to find her tongue. “I’m not frightened, just—”
“A little unnerved?” He quoted her response from her first night in his study.
“And of course, you aren’t.” He was stormfall itself. More exhilarating and terrifying than lightning. He probably didn’t have even a passing acquaintance with fear.
“Sarai.” His voice went lower, softer. Her name hung between them, transformed to music. Pulse ricocheting, she raised her head, and it felt like jumping from a cliff.
His gaze singed her. “Are you afraid of me?”
Rain slicked them both, but whereas she probably resembled a drowned rat, he exuded power, control. Safety. Just as he had the night they’d met when she’d believed him to be a mere magus. And she gave him the truth as she had then.
“I should be.” It was a relief to finally admit it. “I keep having to remind myself that I should be terrified. ”
“Why?” The question sounded almost stark.
“Because I don’t really know you,” she whispered. “I don’t know whether you treat me as an equal because you want to use me or because you see me as one.” A stray droplet glided down his cheekbone, and she cursed her yearning to trace its path.
“What if I told you that you were safe with me?” His voice was a low rasp. “What if I said no harm would come to you at my hands?”
A shaky laugh left her. “You’re too late, Kadra.”
Glancing up as his features closed, she laid out the worst part of it all in weary capitulation. She had no reason to trust him, and a thousand to fear him. And yet …
“I already believe you,” she said bitterly.
A fierce spark lit his face. When she shivered under the weight of her sodden robes, she found herself tucked closer, under his cloak, which he curled around her. Gritting her teeth, she hated herself and hated him as a host of unwanted emotions swelled. Weariness. Comfort. Safety.
You’re safe. She felt the truth of those words, because he wasn’t just stormfall. He was a tree with roots that extended far below the waterlogged soil. Secure, unshakable. Ur Dinyé’s homicidal son and its fiercest protector.
Tomorrow, she might remind herself to fear him once more, outside the shelter of this tree and his arms. But perhaps it wasn’t so wrong for her to take his safety today.
Her last ounce of resistance vanished. She relaxed against him, watching the sky unleash its fury. And an aching warmth that felt almost like peace filled her when he seemed to do the same.