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I had been compared to Lumi my whole life and not minded. But not Helia, his betrothed. He found me beautiful the first time we met because he mistook me for her—thought me royal and refined. The fake noble’s sigil hidden under my coat sleeve burned with lies and embarrassment.
I slammed my next priestess down, hunting his riders, as angry with myself as I was with him. We had a joined purpose, I had a personal one, and neither was romance. “What are the plans for tonight?”
“More questions as we have no leads.” He moved his rider across the game board. If he minded me redirecting the conversation, he did not show it.
I considered taking him to von Lemerch’s again, but what would that help if there was nothing to see? Three days and then I would have to bring him to meet Lumi. To have gained his trust.
While spying on von Lemerch last night, I’d turned Morovara’s words over in my mind. The cult she claimed worked with von Lemerch, who must be Ealhswip no matter what Lumi thought. They needed the Spirits of the dead for something, and the plague proved they were not content to let them die on their own.
“We could check the Archive for the Temple’s death tolls,” I suggested. “With the plague and immigrants, it should be higher than ever.”
“And?”
I licked my lips, unsure how much I could say.These are Morovara’s secrets, I told themagic,not von Lemerch’s. My own guesses and conjectures.“The undead we saw… The death carriers should take the corpses to the temple for them to sing the Spirits to peace, right? But instead, the dead walk. They must get the bodies somewhere.”
“The death carriers report each corpse they deliver to the temple, who signs before they’re paid—if the numbers are down, the priestesses are hiding something.” Dimitri narrowed his eyes in thought. “Only the plague victims are taken to the Ramparts instead of the temple. The risk of infection is too high to prepare them inside the city walls.”
“Unless someone is interfering with the bodies, and they don’t go where they’re supposed to. People talk of more Spirits than ever before. There should not be a decline in corpses from any neighborhood—but if the numbers in the Archive said there was...” I shrugged. “Perhaps there are tallies for each death carrier. We could follow them and the bodies.”
Hopefully one would lead us directly to von Lemerch’s door. From the twist of his mouth, he seemed more willing to blame my great-grandmother and the Temple.
“Thinking like a Roja now.” He smiled before giving the game board a final look. Five black against two white priestesses and one Goddess. Our round was almost over. “You could have taken that one.”
He pointed at the black rider I had pursued.
I shrugged. “Didn’t see it.”
But I had. The truths I wanted from him burned on my tongue.Did you love me? Could you now?Do you loveher?
With a course decided for the night, we left the game unfinished—he would clearly win, for only one of my pieces remained.Perhaps, we both wanted to extend it, afraid of the truths we might expose.
I left on his arm, knowing I could not let myself get any closer without falling all the way. Whatever tangled mess we had, it was good for neither and had no future.
We stayed on the main streets for each day made Tal wilder, as if the pressing summer heat drove the citizens and visitors further into passion, violence, and fear. On street corners below bloody stick figures, men and women stood on boxes and chairs, calling for justice, blaming the plague on the Goddess’s wrath, and called out the presumed sins of the man next to me. City guards patrolled, heckled, and hurried. Like Lumi told me at the start of summer, we outnumbered them, and for the first time, they seemed to feel it. Dimitri passed without comment, taking in the calls to bring down the royals under the wide-brimmed hat, muscles tensing under my fingers.
Popova’s water was boiling. Tal was ready to erupt. At least we did not come across another riot.
While fewer than feared had sickened with the plague, the death carriers came each dawn, filling their carriage all the same. Those bodies, like my mother’s, had only passed by the temples before arriving at the pyre to the south of the city. Downstream, the Taliell must run black, carrying away the ashes of the dead.
I, and now Lumi, alone knew it was a poison and not an illness, and I did not think von Lemerch would be satisfied with the fear around me. More death was coming, and the questions were still too many: Why did she kill so many? How did she deliver the poison? What werePopova and Lumi not telling me?
Sweat stuck my hair to my neck when we arrived at 15 Crown Street and the black-stone Archive—another building which had been a temple before divine rulings were replaced by bureaucracy. Newer houses had grown on both sides, transforming the street into a wall of stores and meeting halls with apartments on top. Behind, more houses mixed with trees, ending at the palace wall. I knew Upper Midtown—pressed between the markets and the palace—well. Lumi and I grew up a block from here, in the attic apartment of a yellow house with yellow roses and loving care we had not known since.
Rich merchants’ daughters and lower nobles passed, fine carriages took traders from their meetings, and well-to-do foreigners claimed their own halls, filling the air with the tongues of Kope and Sorach, a garbled version of our own.
This time, I was the one who felt like I did not belong. I had never belonged here, but once, I had pretended, blended, and dreamed.
While several side-eyed the well-dressed Dimitri leading a woman in men’s clothes too hot for the season, no one questioned us as we entered the stone arch of the Archive, as part of its collection was open to all citizens.
To protect the papers from the humidity, many of the documents were kept in the cavernous rooms below ground. In Rivertown and Lowtown, no one risked basements due to the spring floods, but this close to the palace we were on the toes of the mountains, above the river and on solid stone.
This was where Lumi imagined herself when closing off her magic. This place of knowledge was her safe space.How often had she come here without me knowing? What had she been lookingfor?
An archivist in training, androgynous and silent, stood in each room to guide and ensure no visitors forged or destroyed the information they guarded. They directed us to the second chamber one level down. A skull above the open arch confirmed this was the records of death. The swirly old writing, similar to the sigils, wrapped around its jaw.
“What does it say?” I whispered, the moving air, like an exhalation, cooling my heated skin.
Dimitri leaned closer, as if he also felt the dead’s eyes on us. “Enter the Goddess’s Gate, move forward but never return.”
