37. Revelations and Repercussions (Vaye)¶
Vaye clutched her bandaged arm to her chest, trying to hold it steady as she jogged down the steep alleys into the heart of Thelenza. Every jolting step sent a spike of pain up her arm.
During the battle, her long-smoldering rage had exploded into a wildfire, consuming everything in its path. One moment she had been shrinking back into the tunnel, reaching for her mother’s tzashim in desperation, and the next, the daggers had been flying from her hands like Grandmother’s own vengeance. She’d felt glorious, incandescent, barely noticing the wound she took as she bashed a man’s skull in with his own helmet.
It was only afterward, when the rush had dissipated, that she had truly understood what she’d done. The dead weren’t just enemies, they were people, with friends and families who would never see them again. Sure, they had been trying to kill her, but that was their job. Her own actions had brought her there. As her rage evaporated in the heat of her shame, fresh nausea rushed in to fill the space.
Ahead of her, Jovadão and Gadarien argued as they ran. What little of their conversation she could hear was confusing, as though she were missing half of it. Vaye was consumed by questions she didn’t have the spare breath to ask. Why was Jovadão helping them? And what was his relationship with Gadarien?
They entered a part of the Cantereian Quarter she’d always avoided, a battered slum of narrow streets, crumbling stone, and peeling paint. The air smelled of mildew and wet garbage. The doors were painted with grotesque animal motifs in bright colors, winding around in interlocking circles. They reminded Vaye of the tattoos on Jovadão’s neck.
“Where are we going?” she finally gasped when they stopped for a short rest.
“A Feiçeira safehouse, in the old Cantereian Quarter,” said Jovadão, his voice sounding odd in a way she couldn’t place. He turned to Gadarien. “Didn’t you tell her anything?”
Gadarien scowled. “When was I supposed to do that?” His voice, too, was somehow strange, the rhythms and inflections subtly off-kilter. Jovadão abruptly threw his hands into the air and stalked off into an alley.
“Gada, what the hell is going on?” Vaye said. “What do you have to do with the Feiçeira?” She paused, her addled brain suddenly putting together one of the things that had changed. “And what the fuck happened to your accent?”
Gadarien looked at the ground and then up at the sky as though the answer were floating around him somewhere, sweat dripping from his curly hair. “There are things I haven’t told you,” he said at last. He spoke with native Sarmalic inflection, his charming lilt completely gone.
“No shit?”
The Cantereian smiled wryly. “I couldn’t share it with you before, even though I wanted to. It was nothing personal.”
“Nothing personal?” Vaye was suddenly so furious that she almost forgot about her arm. “Nothing personal? I’m in love with you, you shit!”
He straightened, his smile fading away like his accent. “I’m sorry, Vaye. I really am. I had to hide things from you, to keep you safe. You and Adranaya both.”
“Well, you know what, Gadarien? Right now I don’t feel very fucking safe!” Vaye cried, throwing her hands in the air and wincing as blood flew from her saturated bandage to spatter on the wall.
Gadarien moved toward her instinctively. His look of concern couldn’t have been more sincere, but she shrank from him, not knowing what to believe. He froze, then blew out a breath, pushing his sweaty hair back from his face. “Look, I get that you’re upset. But I don’t think you’re in a position to judge me for keeping secrets.”
She forced down a spike of anger, then nodded and looked away, cradling her arm. He was right, damn him. “Fine. But will you please at least tell me what’s going on?”
He sighed. “I’m a Feiçeira. It was me the Helix was looking for.” He registered her shock and crossed his arms, staring at the ground. “I was hoping to recruit you. You’re an outsider, like me. With the way your people are treated, you have plenty of reason to hate the Helix. And Adranaya is destined to be high up in Sarmalan society.” Gadarien paused, looking suddenly older. “Or she was. It was my mission to get close to people like you. I got a little too close, maybe.”
Vaye felt the world tipping away from her, as though she were shrinking into her own skull. Everything looked slanted and out-of-proportion, Gadarien’s head the wrong size for his body. “This whole time,” she said. “You were keeping all of this from me this whole time?”
“Vaye, listen. I’m still me,” he said, his voice urgent. “What we had together, it was no lie. Please. I really did—”
Jovadão popped his head around the corner. “What the hell are you doing?” he hissed. “Come on.”
“Vaye,” said Gadarien again. His eyes were shining with tears, but for all she knew, they were just as false as his accent had been. “Please.”
“Don’t,” she snapped. “Just don’t.” She turned, grimacing at a fresh throb from her arm, and followed Jovadão, Gadarien trailing along after her.
They emerged into an unpaved yard where three mangy cats yowled and scratched at each other in front of a derelict building. A dead tree with flayed bark stood solemn watch outside the door. Jovadão ignored the building and performed a complicated series of knocks on the tree, humming something under his breath. The roots swung up from the ground, revealing a hidden stairwell. Swaying, Vaye followed Jovadão down the stairs, gingerly sliding her good shoulder along the wall.
The safehouse was humid and filled with the sharp tang of sweat and rust. Cheap oil lamps provided more smoke than light. Numerous Cantereians with tattooed throats lounged around on crates or piles of equipment, sharpening weapons or playing shells. They were thin and angular almost to the point of starvation.
Her eyes met the hard stare of a familiar, wiry man with a mustache and glittering dark eyes. She gasped as she realized where she knew him from. “Ruelso? What are you doing here?”
“I would ask you the same question, but I think I already know,” he said, turning his baleful glare on Gadarien. While not exactly warm, Ruelso had always seemed wryly affable, but now his thick Cantereian brogue sounded aggressive, even threatening. “The real question is whether we can trust you.”
A wave of faintness rolled over her. What was the kitchen staff from the Hall of Vapors doing in the safehouse? Nothing was making sense, and the cloying air wasn’t helping. She felt like she couldn’t get a full breath. “Trust me for what?” she managed.
“Not to sell us out,” Ruelso said.
“You can drop the accent,” Jovadão told him. “She already knows.”
Vaye looked at Gadarien, her confusion and dread mingling in a chaotic jumble. She blinked hard and shook her head, the pain in her arm taking up more and more of her attention.
“We’re all on the same side here,” Gadarien said.
“I’m sure your family said that,” Ruelso replied, his accent gone, “before they were burned as traitors.”
Gadarien stiffened. “And I’m sure it was some donkey-shit like you that turned them in.”
Ruelso grinned, fingering the wicked-looking knife at his belt, but his smile shrank as a stocky older woman emerged from a dark corner. Teira looked different, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes less like laugh lines than the trails of grief, the scar on her jaw standing out like a threat. “Enough,” she said. Her charming accent, too, had been replaced with a no-nonsense Sarmalic intonation. The smile she turned on Vaye was one born of tragedy. “So now you know.”
Vaye looked at Gadarien again, suddenly noticing things that had always been there, but that she had rationalized away. His hands, a little wrinkled, not so young as hers. The skin around his eyes, not quite smooth enough. The knowledge in those eyes, a bit too deep. He had always seemed too wise, too confident for his age. “How old are you?” she asked, her voice far calmer than she felt.
Gadarien glanced at Jovadão, and the Preceptor looked at Teira, who nodded. “Tell her,” said Jovadão.
“Twice twelve and seven,” Gadarien said quietly.
All Vaye could do was nod. The year Vaye had been born, Gadarien had already been the age Vaye was when her mother died. The boy she had loved was an illusion.
She looked around at the safehouse, the pain in her arm echoing the pain in her chest. This was not just a safehouse, but a community. These people all knew Gadarien, and not only had she never met them, she had only been aware of them through his vague references to his “friends” in the city. Did they know about her? About Adranaya?
“All those times you disappeared, this was where you were?” she said, her voice barely in control. She felt so stupid. The edges of her vision were wobbling, little worms of color approaching from all directions.
“Vaye, this might not be the best time,” Gadarien warned.
“I thought you were so mysterious,” she said. She chuckled darkly, trying to suppress a rising hysteria. She wanted to shriek, perhaps throw something against the wall. But she suddenly wasn’t sure she could lift her limbs. Why was everything so bright? Hadn’t it just been dark in here?
Suddenly she was lying on the floor, Cantereians crowded around her. “Give her some space!” Gadarien said, pushing back the crowd.
Jovadão lifted the edge of Vaye’s bandage. “She’s lost too much blood.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Ruelso said.
Jovadão shushed him. “A set of medical thorns,” he said, gesturing across the chamber. “And a lantern.”
Vaye was dimly aware of motion around her. Jovadão’s face, his brow creased and lips pursed in concentration, came into view as he swiftly pinned her forehead and face. The pain vanished, then so did everything else.
Beta Readers: Click the that appears beside any paragraph to leave a comment. You're already signed in — no extra account needed.
Your comments are private — only you and the author can see them, and you can edit or delete them at any time.