CHAPTER 35
DAVINA
Now
“THOSE SEVEN PROPERTIES TRANSLATED INTO SIX WHOLE DAYS OF KWABENA, Zephyr and I rummaging through them. Armand joined in, occasionally, when he felt strong enough to leave the toilet,” I say, suppressing a wince at the memory of the noises that came from his room in the middle of the night.
“The medicine helped him for a while, but after a few days, the illness returned in full force. I was starting to suspect there was something else than the venom going on. The wounds on his thigh had scarred at that point and . . .”
The captain clears his throat, and I look up and find irritation written all across his features.
“What?” I demand.
“You can spare them the details of Armand’s indisposition. Focus on the investigation.”
My teeth clench, and I start to count in my head. On number nine, I manage to remind myself of the uselessness of arguing.
“We did find clues. Plenty, scattered across the various properties. Even a small store of sap, in the single one that had not yet been ransacked by the Sapless.
“By then, it was impossible to deny that there had been a collaboration between the doctor and the rebel group. We found spotless, non-coded registries of exact locations and dates where exchanges had taken place, with the exact amounts of sap that has been delivered in each. Sometimes, even large sums of coin.”
My mouth dries at the mere memory of the onslaught of emotions that coursed to me, back then, only ever growing as the search progressed and evidence against the doctor began to pile up.
Even more disturbing were the numerous diaries from the doctor we found, where he’d clearly stated the reasons why he was doing it. Big words like equitative distribution of sap, fighting for the right cause, or no child should die for lack of inked skin came up, and they did so often.
Enough so for the Kobrants to categorize the doctor himself as a rebel in his own right.
I’d turned those pages with stiff fingers, because woven between the lofty ideals were stories . . . terrible, ordinary stories that refused to leave me during the subsequent long, sleepless nights.
A midwife who’d begged for an inked mender while two babies fought to be born; the call for help was rejected, and three lives were lost.
A coastal village was flattened by flood, and the psychokinetics sent to help rebuilt the homes of the inked, only, leaving the Sapless to dig out their own.
A mine collapsed; metallokinetics were sent to clear the shafts for the foreman and other inked supervisors, but abandoned the trapped laborers to their luck.
Nausea had churned in my stomach with every new, horrible story we uncovered.
Could I have gotten it wrong from the start?
For days upon days, questions with no answer circled relentlessly in my head.
Is this just Kobra?
I’d never seen anything of the sort in the Republic, but the doctor’s script was clear: it was equally bad back home.
But then, why have I never seen any signs of such thorough, cruel unfairness?
I saw proof of the disparity on my second day in Kobra, from the podport of Kipiramida, but I’d lived my whole life in Widesight. Surely, that was more than enough time to have witnessed several cases like the ones portrayed in Sircelen’s files.
Then again, the one moment of single, greatest unfairness and violence I’d ever witnessed was quite the opposite.
The night I lost my own mother.
The night a Sapless riot sneaked into our home and a bottle of flame erased it from existence, taking my mother with it. To this day, I don’t know how I made it out alive.
All my life, I’d known that it was their rage, their violence, that had taken her from me.
That would have been reason enough for me to want to hunt them.
Them being one of the reasons why sap was so scarce only settled my resolve further.
But I started to wonder, then . . . could both things be true?
Could the Sapless be victims in one continent and murderers in another?
Or did it just depend on who was spinning the tale?
Bound and defenseless, under the unyielding scrutiny of Captain Zephyr Kentar, I do not bring any of this up. Instead, I continue my narration with, “What we did not find was the damn stash, or any other clue that might lead us to it. We were forced to—”
“Wait.”
My stomach drops at that single word. Dread chills my skin despite the heat in the room. If he makes me recite those stories with the truth-teller in the room . . .
“There’s something I want to know.” It takes everything in me not to react to his words, to drown the fear in my soul. “When did you realize the doctor was a rebel?”
I swallow my unease. “I suspected it in Keftara, and confirmed it on the first property we searched in Kamar.”
It’s instantly obvious that my answer is not enough. Zephyr’s eyes narrow on me, that calculating look pinning me in place. “And how did you feel, upon learning it?”
Bleeding sap.
Every day and month and year of training coalesce into an iron mask onto which I hold with tooth and nail. Think, Davina. Think, think, think.
I keep my eyes away from the truth-teller seated on Zephyr’s right, sifting through my brain for every possible answer and picking through the ones less likely to end with me dead on the spot, or sent to a Kobrant prison.
Ironic, how I have had so many criminals in this same position, hated them so much, only for me to—
“Now, Lachlan.” The clear threat in the captain’s tone has cold sweat breaking across my forehead.
“I . . . I don’t know.”
“Lie.”
No amount of training can keep a wince from my face at that one-word sentence.
Zephyr’s chair creaks when he leans forward, green irises cold as gems as they pierce me with their sharpness. “Try again.”
It’s not a request.
I am done, done, done.
The mantra repeats in my head. If I can’t come up with a truthful enough answer that will not have them labelling me as a rebel myself—which I am not— . . . Hell, I didn’t even have the time to look into the truth behind those stories. Everything happened so damn fast.
Just in The Powder last month, I was stopping a Sapless cell that was set on shipping away any amount of sap they could get their hands on in order to destroy it.
So why did every piece of evidence we found sound like what the Sapless wanted was a fair distribution of the substance, rather than its destruction?
“Davina.” Zephyr is losing his patience. It’s written all across his face. In his tightly clenched fists.
For the first time in my life, fear of the consequences has my lips frozen, any potential words sealed behind my teeth, refusing to come out. I am not a rebel, but doesn’t having doubts about the fairness of either nation make me a partial traitor to both?
“I . . .” It takes everything in me to utter that single word. Anything else refuses to come forth.
Zephyr stands up from his chair, closing in on me.
“I felt upset,” I admit in a soft whisper.
At the sentient’s silence, Zephyr demands, “Elaborate.”
He looms above me, but I cannot meet his gaze.
“The stories narrated in those journals were . . . wrong. I struggled to see the truth in them, but I also could not ignore what I knew of Dr. Sircelen. His career, contributions to the limitation of sap, immaculate records. When he moved to another continent, no one could dispute he’d earned whichever retirement he desired.
He’d done enough.” My tongue was a file inside my mouth as I uselessly tried to gather moisture.
“For him to have risked it all for this . . . cause.” The word feels like chalk on my tongue.
“There must have been something pivotal happening. Something I don’t know.
I cannot speak for Kobra, but I struggle to believe the Widesightian Sapless are as innocent and repressed as his words portray.
Or that the chancellor and his Senators make for such an evil entity. ”
When the truth-teller remains silent, and no weapons make it into calloused hands, some tension melts away from my gut, boosting my confidence.
“Nor do I think they’d allow situations such as the ones described in those pages to happen, or to unfairly target the non-inked.”
I’d have seen it if they were, damn it.
“Go on.”
Fuck. “I also do not believe the doctor was a madman. So I just . . .”
Words fail me. Not because fear stops them, but because they do not exist. Because I have not had the time to process all of this.
“You just what?” Zephyr presses.
I crane my neck, finally meeting his gaze. “I need to know more, in order to form a definitive opinion.”
Silence.
A few seconds later, it’s clear a lie will not be called, for there was none to be found amidst my words.
I do not have a definitive opinion.
And no one asks about the latent one.