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“Chancellor Street, across from the Lafont Bookshop,” said Merren, and closed his mouth sharply, as if he had not meant to let that information out. “But we shouldn’t meet there. I know a tea shop—”
There was a knock on the door. Domna Alys’s partner, Hadja, peeked her head into the library. A band of colorful silk held back her cloud of curling dark hair.
“Sieur Anjuman,” she said, inclining her head in Kel’s direction, “the Prince awaits you outside.”
Kel scrambled to his feet. This was not at all part of his plan; by his calculations, Conor ought to have been distracted for at least another few hours. “Is something wrong? Why would he be leaving?”
Hadja shook her head, setting her gold earrings to swinging against her russet-brown skin. “I’ve no idea. I didn’t speak with him. One of the Hindish girls passed me a message.”
Kel felt in his pocket for his coin purse and tossed five crowns to Merren. “Half now, half when I pick up the doses. I’ll see you then.”
“Wait—” Merren began, but Kel was already out the door. He loped downstairs, cutting through the main room of the Caravel,where the hanging tapestries had been drawn back to reveal the raised dais of a stage. Props were being brought out; it seemed a performance was soon to take place. Odd that Conor would have chosen to miss it.
Still puzzling, Kel made his way outside, into the fading warmth of the night. He glanced up and down Hourglass Street. Light spilled in dancing squares onto the cobblestones, and laughing groups strolled by the canal water. In the distance, a black carriage rattled toward the Caravel; someone inside was singing a loud and drunken song. A light wind spun discarded paper into miniature funnels.
There was no sign of Conor, or the horses. Kel frowned. Perhaps Conor had grown tired of waiting for him; it would not be entirely out of character. Kel had half turned to go back inside the Caravel when he heard the screech of wheels. He spun around. Whoever had been singing inside the black carriage had stopped. It swung toward him, wheels skipping over the cobblestones.
They were painted blood red.
The body of the carriage skidded sideways, blocking Kel’s path. Black curtains shaded the windows; he could not see who was inside. He turned, ready to flip himself over the low stone wall along the canal—he’d take his chances in the water—but wine had made him slow. A hand caught the back of his jacket. He was jerked back, half flung through the open door of the carriage and onto the seat.
Kel scrambled up as the door slammed shut behind him. He was not alone. There was someone else in the carriage—two someones—and a flash of something silver. Eyes still adjusting to the dark, Kel saw metal gleam, and felt the point of a knife rest against the hollow of his throat. He closed his eyes.
For that moment, there was only silence, darkness, his own breathing, and the knife at his throat. Then the driver, overhead, shouted hoarsely; a moment later, the carriage jerked forward, flying over the cobblestones into the night.
—
“In times of old, the wrath of the Sorcerer-Kings scorched the earth,” Lin read, “for they had taken to themselves power that is not meant for men to have, but only Gods. Their fury boiled the seas and brought down mountains. The land was marked with Sunderglass where magic had scarred it. Each person on earth ran before them in terror—save Adassa, the Queen of Aram. She alone rose against them. Knowing she could not destroy them, instead she destroyed magic itself, rendering them powerless. All magic was taken from the earth, save that which Adassa had set aside for the use of her people alone: the magic ofgematry.And Adassa passed into the shadowed realm, where she became a Goddess, the light of the Ashkari people, who are her Chosen ones.”
Lin closed the book. Mariam, a small figure half buried beneath a massive pile of bedcovers, smiled faintly. “I always like the parts where Adassa is a woman best,” she said. “Before she becomes the Goddess. She had her moments of weakness and fear, like the rest of us.”
Lin put the back of her hand against Mariam’s forehead. It was cool now, to her relief. Mari had been crying out, feverish and delirious, by the time they had arrived back from Valerian Square that afternoon. There had been some consternation among the guards at the gates of the Sault over the appearance of a Palace carriage, but they had helped Lin carry Mariam inside. She’d brought her friend directly to her own house and settled her into bed in Josit’s room; her brother was away on the Gold Roads, after all, and she knew he would not have minded.
It had taken some arguing with Chana Dorin, who thought Mariam would be better treated at the Etse Kebeth, the House of Women. But Lin was used to arguing with Chana. Lin pointed out that she was a physician, that no one knew her skills better than Chana, and that here, in Lin’s small whitewashed home, Mariam would have peace and quiet and constant attendance.
It was Mariam who had put an end to the battle; she’d turnedover on the bed and, between bouts of coughing, announced: “Honestly, the two of you will still be fighting over me when I am dead and gone. Chana, let me stay here with Lin. It’s what I want.”
So Chana had succumbed. She’d helped Lin get Mariam into a clean nightgown, and wrapped her hands and forehead in wet cloths to break her fever. Lin had brewed evening primrose into poultices and placed them on Mariam’s chest to reduce inflammation; she’d fashioned tisanes of cinnamon and turmeric to make her cough, of ginseng, lemon, salt water, and honey to open her lungs, and spikenard to soothe her. When—despite the cloths—Mariam’s fever rose, Chana had gone to the physick garden to fetch willowbark to bring it down.
Mariam’s fever had broken after midnight, as fevers often did. The end often came in the late watches of the night, but so did healing: Life and death both struck in the shadowed hours. When Mariam had woken, restless and aching, Lin had decided to read to her from a book of the old tales she’d found on the windowsill. She and Mariam had loved the stories when they were small: tales of Adassa, of her bravery in defeating the Sorcerer-Kings of old, of her cleverness in keeping back a small part of the magic that had been destroyed by the Sundering and holding it for her people. It was because of her that the Ashkar could still work even small magics; without the Goddess, they would be as bereft as others.
“Do you remember when we were children?” Mariam asked. “We both thought we were certain to be the Goddess Returned. We would dress up in blue robes and try to cast spells. I spent several whole afternoons trying to move bits of sticks and paper with my magic.”
That was a long time ago,Lin thought. Not quite her earliest memory. Far, far back she could recall her mother and father; both traders on the Gold Roads, they had smelled of cinnamon and lavender and faraway places. She recalled them swinging her between them while she laughed; recalled her mother cooking, her father holding baby Josit up, his chubby hands reaching for the clouds.
She did not recall learning that they were dead. She knew it must have happened, that someone would have told them. She knew she had cried, because she had understood what was happening, and that Josit had cried because he did not. Bandits had overtaken her parents’ caravan near Jiqal, the desert that was all that remained of what had once been Aram. Their waggon had been seized, their throats slashed, their bodies thrown into the Road to be picked over by vultures. Though surely no one had told herthat;still, she had overheard whispers: Such a terrible thing, people said. Such bad luck. And who would take the children?
Children were precious to the Ashkar. They represented the survival of a people who had no homeland, and thus had been in danger of extinction since the Sundering. It was assumed Lin and Josit’s one surviving relative, their maternal grandfather, would take them in. Lin had even heard envious muttering. Mayesh Bensimon, the Counselor to the King. Save the Maharam, he was the most influential man in the Sault. He owned a grand house near the Shulamat. A lucky life they would have with him, surely.
Only he had not wanted them.
She recalled sitting in her bedroom with Josit in her lap, listening to Davit Benezar, the Maharam, arguing with Mayesh in the corridor outside.I cannot do it,Mayesh had said. Despite the words he was saying, the sound of his voice was, briefly, comforting to Lin. She associated it with her parents, with feast nights when the whole family gathered and Mayesh read aloud, as the candles burned, from theBook of Makabi.He would ask Lin questions about Judah Makabi, the wandering of the Ashkar, and the Goddess, and when she got the answers right he would reward her withloukoum,a sweet candy of rosewater and almond.
But: “No, no, no,” he said to Benezar. “My duties will not allow for raising children. I do not have time, nor attention. I must be at the Palace every day, at any hour they call me.”
“Then step down,” snapped the Maharam. “Let someone elsecounsel the King of Castellane. These children are your blood and flesh.”
But Mayesh had been curt. The children would be better served in the community. Lin would go to the Etse Kebeth, and Josit to theDasuKebeth, the House of Men. Mayesh would look in on them from time to time, as their grandfather. That was the end of it.
