Chapter 18
I can’t imagine that my life is anything like you’d envisioned it would be.
Instead of palace meals, I’m eating eggplant grown in the darkness and hastily consumed under moonlight.
Instead of romances, dances, and courtly intrigue, I’m fighting Salt soldiers in the pit for money.
Instead of you, I have other children without families, the ones that thieve from hags and ghouls before their hands are cursed off.
Instead of family, I’m alone.
—Letter from Kiyan to his family, unsent
Kiyan
I didn’t go back to the bazaar after speaking to Baghisha, returning instead to the palace.
If I could find the Queen’s vault, then there might be a chance we could overthrow the Salt Court—maybe without loss of life from River. I was still frustrated that my visit to Baghisha had come to nothing, and she hadn’t seemed to care that she had sent two boys from River to their deaths.
But at least I knew this key was for the Queen’s vault.
Now, I just had to find it.
I saw the human girl again the next day, following Ramishah around the palace.
This time she wore palace servant clothes consisting of dark blue linen trousers and a tunic with the Salt crystal emblem on the sleeve.
I watched her from afar, and just like at the bazaar, she no longer wore Queen Azari’s bracelet.
Which meant she’d hidden it somewhere.
I slipped into the bedroom she shared with Mishah and saw the satchel she had carried with her.
I rifled through it but didn’t find the haath phool.
Instead, I pulled out a small journal wrapped in wax-coated parchment. It was a brown leatherbound journal, and I flipped it open to the first page.
For Yaseema, I hope this helps you find who you are.
—Amma
I frowned, seeing the peri language of the River Court scrawled at the bottom of the page, a separate message.
Don’t try to find me.
It was odd to see my language in a human’s journal, especially when the rest of the book seemed to be song lyrics and folk rhymes repeated by humans to warn each other of the dangers of the peris.
I raised my eyebrows at reading the intricate tortures we apparently subjected humans to. I hadn’t thought about a human in a very long time, and this book made it sound like we had once hunted them.
What an easy thing to hunt.
There was a large section of letters between different people that I skimmed through, but much of it related to human affairs that I didn’t understand.
I closed it, wrapped it back up, and slid it into the satchel, placing everything back the way I found it.
I didn’t know yet how this girl—Yaseema, if the dedication on the notebook was to her—fit into everything yet or how she had one of the ancient Queen’s pieces of jewelry, but I was going to find out.
* * *
“You’re needed, dog.”
I bared my teeth at Faisal, acting like the name he’d given me.
“Another rebel for me to put down for you? I told you; I am the one tasked with finding them—you should go back to your job at the front, leave the fighting in River to me.”
I returned to my desk, pretending to study the map of the lower mountains, where I knew it was rumored the Red Jasmine camp was.
But Faisal stayed in my office, his heavily perfumed scent filling the doorway.
My nose wrinkled. “What do you want, General?”
“There are rebel spies in this palace.”
“Not this again.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “They aren’t able to get in and out without alerting me. I know everyone in this palace.”
“And you’ve interrogated everyone? Even in the kitchens?”
I blinked up at him, tilting my head. “By interrogate, you mean torture.”
He slammed his fists down on my desk. “I’ll be informing the Viceroy how little you actually care about the rebels who successfully took down two Salt guards last week, with a magic we’ve never seen before.”
I stood from my chair with a calm I didn’t feel, knowing that Faisal would step back once I towered over him.
“Careful. The rebels haven’t infiltrated the palace before, and the first time they do, you and your soldiers being here are the only difference. I would be hesitant to explain to Reza how there’s a rat in our ranks when you are among them.”
“Careful yourself, boy,” he growled, though the fear he meant to invoke was dimmed by the wariness that had entered his eyes. “I have the allegiance of Salt on my side. You are River scum who will be snuffed out at the slightest opportunity. Don’t make the mistake of thinking yourself important.”
“You don’t make the mistake of thinking you know this Court better than I.” My palm pressed to my chest, a humorless smile lifting my lips. “My blood runs through River. I am this land. There’s nowhere the rebels can hide from me. Soon I will snuff them out, and you’ll be eating your words.”
“Not soon enough.”
He stormed out of my office, and I stared at the door he slammed behind him. Rubbing my eyes, I leaned against the window looking out over the forests of the River Court.
I am this land.
He didn’t know how true that was.
But still, my distraction with Baghisha’s key had sped up the timeline. If I didn’t have something for Reza soon, the Viceroy would come down hard on the Court.
I was still no closer to finding a way to bring our magic back, or a plan to fight Reza when we couldn’t raise a hand against him.
Anger flooded my veins, and thick green vines with heavy thorns curled against the windowpane.
I moved from the window and out into the hall, thoughts of the general’s words in my head.
You’ve interrogated everyone? Even in the kitchens?
I didn’t find anything when I’d looked through her bag, but perhaps it was time I questioned the little human who had found her way into the kitchens. She certainly didn’t seem like a dangerous spy—she seemed less trained in physical combat than a forest fawn.
But she was hiding something, and if she had Queen Azari’s bracelet, she potentially had a way to find the Queen’s vault.
I strode through the palace toward the kitchens, not relishing the conversation I was about to have with her. When I was almost there, the human in question stepped out from the kitchens and into the corridor. I stepped back in the shadows, observing her.
“Are you done, Yaseema?”
“Yes, Zafreen asked me to fill another bucket.”
She walked by me in the hall carrying a large tin bucket.
Her footsteps were unhurried, and she didn’t even glance my way when she passed.
She was back in her human clothes again today, her long skirt hugging the curves of her hips and drawn in tightly at the waist, the white blouse contrasting with her dark hair which she’d braided again.
A moment later she put the bucket down, empty, and swept her gaze back and forth down the darkened hallway.
She wouldn’t have seen me—from what little I knew about humans, they didn’t have great eyesight in the dark. Though I wasn’t sure what that golden jewelry on her face did for her vision, as she seemed to require them for sight. She seemed in a rush to get somewhere else.
The girl strode down the hall heading to the west side of the palace. I stayed in the shadows while following her, my curiosity pulling me behind her more than anything. Where could she be possibly going in the palace?
I’d searched every inch of this building myself, and there was nothing she could possibly want.
When she reached the east wing, she ducked into a room—a small library barely ever used—leaving the door ajar. The hallway was cast in darkness until a strange golden light emitted from the room, casting an eerie glow to where I was standing.
I pushed the door open slightly and nearly stumbled back in shock. Bright threads, like golden chains, curled around the air. It was as if my vines had flooded the library, lit up from within with magic—like a golden web that covered the entire room.
It wasn’t possible that it came from her.
And yet, there in the center, the threads of yellow light pouring out of her like a river, stood the girl.
Yaseema.
They curled around her dark hair, kissed the curves of her hips, and stroked her legs. If I didn’t know better, I would say they were alive. They were like Baghisha’s hair, like the current of the River, like the vines that I called to me.
They were magic.
“Anything here? Keep looking.” She muttered the words, unaware that I watched her.
This girl was no human.
As far as I knew, humans didn’t have magic of any sort. Some had even worshipped peris, building temples in our honor, awed by the power we possessed.
But this girl had magic flooding from her fingertips.
It wasn’t like any power I’d seen, not in all the peri courts. Certainly not from the Court of Salt, where their power sucked out and drained life, mimicking the power of others, growing poison and stealing language instead of bringing life.
But this girl talked to her magic, followed it, studied it as it whipped around the stacks of books.
One by one the threads of her power began to disappear, as she looked at various manuscripts and parchment scrolls in the library.
I stayed in the shadows, watching as the light in the room slowly winked out.
When the last golden wisp of her magic faded, the final glow of gold highlighted a tear streaking down her cheek. I stepped back fully into the hallway, not wanting to listen to her sobs as I headed back to my office.
She was looking for something, was so desperate to find it that she wept when she didn’t.
And the more I watched her with her magic, and listened to the words she spoke, I realized what it was her magic did.
It helped her find things.
If she had the power to locate lost objects, that would explain how she wore the Queen’s bracelet when I’d first seen her. And if she could find hidden objects, she was much more useful than I’d ever imagined.