“No?” Isyllt cocked an eyebrow. Hard to meet the woman’s gaze for long, eyes paler than an animal’s, clearer and colder than river water. “I had the idea that some Sivahri were none too pleased with things Assari.”
“Some, of course. But the Assari’s influence hasn’t been entirely bad. They built Symir, if nothing else. It’s the Khas Maram we fight.” Not that
“The Assari are conquerors, but at least they didn’t betray their own blood. The Khas deny their clans, bleed the people with taxes.” Taxes that paid her mother’s government pension, taxes that had bought her clothes and childhood toys.
“They sacrifice our people in rice fields and mines. Many of the miners are prisoners, some arrested on ridiculous charges and forced into work camps. People die in the mines, more than the Khas will ever admit. Bodies are lost, never given burial rites. They disappear.” She glanced at her master and the stones glittering on his gnarled hands. Did he know about the diamonds? She didn’t dare ask, not yet.
The sorceress rolled her shoulders as if against a chill. Her companions-or bodyguards-watched silently. Zhirin couldn’t place the man’s features, but the woman was clearly forest-clan, though she hadn’t given a clan- name.
The sky darkened to slate and silver as the light died. Shadows thickened in the room for a moment before the lamps sprang to life, witchlight kindling to real flame.
“The Khas doesn’t care about the people,” Zhirin continued. The words felt awkward in her mouth-Jabbor was the one who made speeches. A mimic-bird, she imagined Kwan would call her. “Their only concern is wealth, theirs and the tithes that keep the Empire content.”
“Would this faction of yours rather see Sivahra independent, or only replace the Khas with less-corrupt officials?” Isyllt turned a cup of tea-doubtless long cold-between her hands and her ring gleamed. Zhirin had never seen a black diamond before, but she knew what they meant.
She paused in her circuit, shifting her weight with a rustle of cloth. “Of course we want to see Sivahra free. But our first concern is the people. We don’t want violence, not if there’s any other answer. There’s been enough bloodshed in Sivahra’s history.”
The Sivahri woman turned her head, lips tightening.
“Can we meet Jabbor?” Isyllt asked, leaning forward. By lamplight her face was an ivory mask; Zhirin wondered if her skin was cold to the touch.
“Yes. That is, I think so. I’ll ask him.” He hadn’t spoken of it last night, but she knew how much they needed the money they would have made from the stolen stones. Hard for the clanspeople to rise in revolution when they had farms to tend and no other way to eat.
She turned to Vasilios, who’d been silent for most of the conversation. “How long have you known, master?”
“Quite a while, my dear.” He smiled affectionately and she smiled back, though her stomach was cold. If he had noticed, who else might have?
Xinai couldn’t sleep, even after Adam snored softly beside her. His arm draped over her stomach, hair trailing against her cheek. Usually the press of warm flesh comforted her, but tonight she could barely breathe for the heat. Sweat-damp linen scraped against her skin, snagged on her scars.
Finally she rolled out of bed, groping for her clothes. Adam stirred, eyes flashing in the dark.
“I’m going out,” she whispered. “Go back to sleep.”
After a moment his breathing deepened again. She tugged on vest and trousers, stomped into her boots. Sandals would be cooler and less conspicuous, but she liked having a place for extra blades.
She leaned against the handle to keep the door from squeaking. Moisture warped the wood till nothing opened or closed smoothly. She turned her key in the lock and slunk down the shadow-thick hall.
She’d hoped-ancestors, how she’d hoped-but the witch’s contact was nothing but a foolish child. Didn’t want bloodshed. Xinai snorted softly. There was nothing without bloodshed, let alone tearing down the Khas and casting out the Assari conquerors. Freedom was measured in blood.
She pitied the poor dead woman, trapped now, forever cut off from her family and her homeland. She hadn’t had the heart to ask what would happen to her spirit once the witch returned to Erisin. An ugly fate.
But no worse than her own family had known. Did their ghosts linger still, haunting the jungles or the mines?
The night was heavy in her lungs as she slipped out the servants’ entrance to the street and turned toward the docks. But after a few streets she halted, frowning. She needed more than drunken complaints and rumors. She knew where she needed to go; she’d avoided it long enough.
Xinai turned and made her way to Straylight, and the Street of Salt.
Easy for the mageling to keep her idealism. No Laii ever lived in a tilting hovel that flooded with the rains, ever sent their children to the mines or fields to keep the lease on such a hovel. Easy for the mages to look down from their mountain and call Symir a jewel, when they were too far away to see the flaws at its heart.
She smiled at the missing signs and Sivahran writing, tried to imagine the whole city like that. No use. The city was Assari, from wooden pilings beneath the water to the rooftop tiles, even if it had been paid for with native blood. Perhaps it could be reclaimed, made Sivahri, but the jungle was her true home. She should go into the hills, find her family’s banyan tree. If it still stood. The spirit might have withered with no one to tend it.
She touched one of the charms around her neck, the oldest. The last of her mother’s work, containing bones and ashes of generations of Lins. She should have worn her mother’s bones in that pouch, but they were lost.
A pack of young men loitered on the corner, lounging against crumbling walls. Prides, they called themselves, like hunting cats. Clanless children who banded together for safety, formed families just as tight as blood-kin. She had feared them when she was young, but now she understood. She nodded acknowledgment as she passed and the leader nodded back.
The smell of herbs and witchery washed over her as she walked down the street and her eyes burned. Time pulled away like the tide, leaving a different Xinai standing on the pitted stones. Young and scared, torn and bloody.
She stopped in front of a narrow shop-front, swallowing the taste of tears. The sign was nearly the same as it had been twelve years ago, faded now and weathered. Lamplight flickered through the windows. Too much to hope…But she climbed the worn stairs and knocked.
For a moment she thought no one would answer, but finally the door creaked open. A stooped woman stood silhouetted in the doorway, her face cast in shadow.
“What do you want?” she asked. A familiar voice, like a cold blade in her heart.
“Selei?” The name cracked in her mouth, nearly shattered.
Silence stretched. Finally the old woman moved, let the light fall through the door.
“Xinai? Xinai Lin?” Her wrinkled brown face broke into a wondering smile. “Oh, child-” And she stepped forward to clasp Xinai in her arms, and pulled her into the shop.
The room was much the same as she remembered, clean but crowded, walls warped and water-stained. Fragrant herbal smoke drowned the mold-musk that lingered in older buildings. The last time Xinai had crossed the threshold she’d been barely fifteen, desperate and alone, her back bloody and slick with grease to keep her shirt from sticking to open wounds.
Selei had paid for her passage on a smuggler’s ship, sent her away before hate and grief poisoned her. It had saved her life.
The witch locked the door behind them and turned to study Xinai. Age clouded one eye milk-blue, but the other was dark and sharp as ever. Not blood-kin, but a friend of the Lin clan since before she was born, the closest thing to family she had left in Sivahra.
Selei’s gaze took in her jewelry, the blades at her hips. One bird-light hand caught Xinai’s, turned it over to trace the calluses. “You’ve done well for yourself.”
Xinai nodded, throat tight.
“But you came home.” Not quite a question, but her forehead creased in curiosity. Braids the color of steel and ashes rattled as she moved, woven through with feathers and bone beads.
Xinai felt the weight of age and experience in the woman’s mismatched gaze, felt herself being measured. She nodded again and found her voice.
“I’ve come back to help.”
