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The earnestness in his words softened some of her more annoyed edges. “That may be true,” she replied. “But you can’t force your way of thinking on anyone else. No matter how much you want to — or how much you think they need to hear it.”
“Easy for you to say when you’re not the one fighting the Laughing God for every life that passes through your hands.” The scissors trembled in his grip. “I just… If the One god or Seren or whoever gave me this power, that must mean I’m supposed to use it, right?”
She stirred, careful not to slosh any of the mixture over the cauldron’s sides. “You shouldn’t flaunt your abilities so freely. You’ll regret it when the wrong person discovers how valuable you are.”
“What’s the alternative?” he asked. “Let people suffer to save my skin?”
Verve watched the bubbling mixture, trying to ignore the bitterness in his voice, one matching her own. “Sometimes, suffering is an enemy you can’t escape.”
He was quiet. “Would you hunt me down, too? For the right price?”
She gripped the spoon handle like it was one of her daggers. “Do you really want me to answer that?”
“I guess that’s answer enough.”
Was that disappointment in his reply? She ground her jaw. Even if it was, why should she care what he thought of her?
Neither spoke for a few moments. Verve stared at the roiling water and the herbs within, and tried to wrestle with the echoing turmoil in her own heart. When she could stand the sound of the storm no longer, she cleared her throat. “Your parents kept a garden?”
“Aye, a huge one,” he replied, a smile in his voice. Like Ivet, Alem smiled so easily. As if on a whim, he set down the scissors and cloth, and approached Verve. He pulled back his coat to show her a tiny gold jessamin flower pinned to his shirt. “My mother loved them the most, I think. My father liked them because he found them practical, but my mother had a deep fondness for anything that smelled good and tasted better. Most of what I know of herbs, I learned from her.”
“When did they pass on to their next lives?” Verve asked.
He toyed with the pin. “How do you know they’re gone?”
“I heard it in your voice.”
He looked at the cauldron without seeming to see it. “I was eleven summers. My village—I was born near Fash, in Silverwood Province—had held on throughout all the mage fighting. We were isolated enough not to attract too much attention. Until the sentinels from Legion came. They were sweeping the province, searching for places they could fortify against the chaos caused by the mages — or so they said.”
Verve kept her gaze on the bubbling mixture in the cauldron; she could guess how this story would end. Alem continued, pushing the words out quickly. “They promised protection, but in exchange, they took everything: our coin, our crops, anyone old enough to hold a sword. They learned what I was and tried to take me. My parents…” He took a shaking breath. “They resisted.”
“And Legion doesn’t care for resistance,” Verve said softly.
“No.” Alem’s voice turned distant. “They killed my parents and burned our farm to ashes. But I managed to slip away. I ran… Oh, for a few days, I think. It’s all a blur, now. I ran until I couldn’t any longer. It was the very beginning of winter. At one point, I saw a burning light ahead, through the forest. I followed it. But I must have been near the river’s edge—near my next life—for I don’t remember reaching it. I only remember waking to see a man, very old, with the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. They glowed like the fire. The sight of him terrified me at first, then he spoke, and I…” Alem sighed again. “I wasn’t afraid any longer. He saved my life, brought me to Pillau, to the home there for orphans.”
“Pillau?” Verve couldn’t keep the surprise from her voice. “You lived in the Blue City?”
“Aye, and it’s even more beautiful than the stories,” he said, grinning.
“I’ve never been that far south,” she admitted.
“I’ve lived all over Aredia,” he replied. “And I’ve never found anywhere I loved as much as Pillau. Lotis is the only place that comes close.”
“You could return to Pillau.”
“Lotis is my home now,” he bit out. “These people depend on me.”
“Someone with your talents could find work wherever you wanted,” Verve replied, frowning. “Why stay here?”
“Other than it being my home?”
Point taken. Verve collected some of the bubbling mixture in the spoon and sniffed cautiously. A whiff of what must have been rotten feet hit her nose, and she pulled a face.
She glanced back at Alem. “Why’d you move around so much?”
He shrugged. “Lots of reasons. But I like Lotis. A lot, actually.”
Verve wrinkled her nose, and it only had a little to do with the fetid stink emanating from the cauldron. “What’s so special about Lotis, anyway? It’s a sodding swamp.”
