20: Not A Wound We Can Heal

I’m tearing in half.

We eat breakfast, or lunch now, sausage and figs left over from last night. Gaxna carefully doesn’t say anything else about my plans, and I carefully don’t bring it up, but it hangs between us like fog. This is why I never got into relationships back in the temple, because I knew they’d only complicate things. That my life is hard enough as it is.

I know what I need to do. It’s the same as I’ve always needed to do: find the truth. Find my father’s killer and expose the traditionalists. Get my home back. The way to do it is different now—instead of rising through the ranks of seers and finding out what happened from inside the temple, I’m doing it from the outside. I don’t know if I’ll ever be a seer now, or if the temple can go back to how it was, but I have to try. From the outside, now.

There’s just one thing left to do: meet with Arayim. If it turns out like I expect, no one will be able to deny the traditionalists bribed, lied and murdered their way to power, whether they were in control or the Seilam Deul were. Half of me is dying to shove this in their faces.

But the other half of me, the deeper half, glows every time Gaxna looks at me, melts at every touch, asks Dashan’s question deep inside. What is life for, all this questing for truth and justice, if it means turning down happiness? A year traveling with Gaxna would be bliss. We would be loaded to the gills with money, seeing the whole world, and we’d have each other, with no one threatening to kill us or seize control of our bodies. It would be glorious.

Except that I’d never forgive myself.

So I keep ripping in half.

After lunch we pull on disguises, Gaxna going for an older Bamani woman and me putting on a porter’s garb. There’s a moment when I have my shirt off and she’s only half-dressed, and we almost don’t get anywhere, but I pull away, and she doesn’t question it. I need clear-headedness right now, clarity, and every time I touch her, I get rich fuzziness instead. I find out I can’t ice these feelings either. It just doesn’t work. Maybe that’s why most seers only take lovers.

“There’s something I need to do today,” I say. “Someone I have to meet.”

Her gray eye is unreadable. “A witch?”

“Arayim.”

She pops a knuckle. “We could go to the stainer instead. Fence this barometer and get you safe first.”

“You go. Fence it and meet me back here. I just—I feel like my head will be a lot clearer once I find out what’s going on.”

She presses me close. “Be careful, okay?”

“Always.”

Serei is the same as it’s ever been, markets crowded with afternoon shoppers and patched canvas awnings flapping in the breeze. I take the rooftops, streets too dangerous despite my disguise. Every overseer in the city has to be looking for me now, if they weren’t before. Floods, I fought one of them last night. And cut another one off a rope thirty feet in the air.

Then again, the worst thing they can do is kill me, and they were already planning to do that.

The Crier’s Guildhouse is a long squat thing a few blocks up from the Blackwater. It’s still early afternoon, so I settle onto a sheltered rooftop across the street to wait, thawing my emotions from last night with careful breathing. A few criers work the front of the guildhouse, their news troubling.

“Seilam Deul inventions stolen! Merchants Guild denies involvement! Authorities cracking down!” But it’s the last one that gets to me. “Overseers killed!”

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A cold hammer hits my stomach. The fall couldn’t have killed that overseer. Right? And I know I didn’t kill the second one. But hearing this over and over for an hour rattles my nerves. It’s all I can do to keep from climbing down and confronting the criers, bribing them to hear the truth.

I keep my peace instead. Arayim is more important. A hooded man who walks like his hips hurt.

I finally see him as the sun is dipping toward evening. It’s not a hood so much as a cowl, hiding his whole face, but there’s no mistaking the walk. He doesn’t strike me as old, but he moves stiffly, like every joint in his body aches.

I slip down the rope I’ve tied in an alley, try to remember my disguise as I cross the street. Remember my plan. I ice anticipation three times on the way across the street.

“Excuse me,” I say, taking him by one sleeve. “I’m looking for a man named Arayim.”

The hood turns toward me, and I get a quick impression of a youthful, bearded face.

He punches me in the chest and runs.

It’s so unexpected I almost lose my feet. But the forms are too deep in my bones for that. I sprint after him.

Fortunately, he runs like he walks, jerkily, and I gain on him quickly. People seem to get in my way more than usual—a foot here, a bulky porter there—but I duck and weave and use some of the new balance I’ve learned running roofs to get past them. I need to end this chase quickly and privately. Learning what Arayim knows won’t do me any good if overseers find us and put a knife in my back.

I leap over an old woman who suddenly stumbles, squeeze through two swerving carts, and finally lay a hand on him. I throw myself to the left, using Wave Strikes Stone to spin him around me and into a crevice between two buildings.

He gets up quickly, but not before I am on him, praying we didn’t make much of a scene in the street. I will have to do this quickly.

“Who are you,” I growl, kneeling on his arms and seizing his throat, “and who paid you to bribe the criers?”

He says nothing. Wide, panicked eyes stare up at me, and in another moment the watersight comes up blank. Not the intentional absence of a waterblind, just—blank.

I’ve felt this before, somewhere. I narrow my eyes, pressing down against his wild attempts to rise. The bloodborn in the streets, the day after I escaped the temple. Bloodborn read blank like this in watersight. And they have the same wide, panicked eyes.

Shock makes me lose my grip. Arayim’s not a Seilam Deul, or some up-country traditionalist I’ve never heard of. He’s a bloodborn.

Which means he’s being controlled by a witch.

“Who are you?” I snarl, grabbing him again and shoving down harder. “Why are you doing this?”

He starts to choke, and I remember Gaxna saying the witches can’t make bloodborn speak. I’m also not pressing hard enough to make him choke, so they must be doing it. Making him choke himself.

“Uje,” I curse, leaping off him. I can’t learn anything from this man, and I won’t be responsible for his death. “Go! Don’t kill him, you witch! Go!”

The bloodborn turns to me, as if uncertain, but I have a staff in my hands. Whoever is controlling him, she probably realizes her bloodborn will be no match for me, despite our difference in size. The thing called Arayim turns and runs.

I stumble the other way then climb the wall, head spinning. The witches control Arayim? Which means they bribed the criers to proclaim my father a heretic? And they floated the merchants to keep them in business? What’s their connection to Nerimes and Ieolat?

More importantly, what did they have against my father?

I leap a gap between rooftops, then balance along the long eave of the dyer’s guildhouse. It doesn’t make any sense—getting rid of the witches is one of the core tenets of traditionalism. Why would the witches help them take the temple? And where did they get the money for all that? Unless they’re both in the pockets of the Seilam Deul?

I walk the railing of a high balcony, then jump and catch the roof of the opposite wall. But what would the Deul want from the witches? They’re marrying into the temple, not the Theracant’s Guild.

And most importantly, why would the witches help the temple? They are sworn enemies.

I don’t know. I don’t have answers to any of these questions, but I know who does: the Theracant Guild.

I need to know what they know.

“I’m sorry, Gaxna,” I whisper as I change my course. She would feel so betrayed if she knew. But this is where the evidence leads. And I need to know more than I need love, or safety, or any of the happiness I’ve found out here. At least, I think I do.

The tearing I’ve been feeling all day rips deeper. This might not be a wound we can heal. But I think we both already have some of those. We’ll get through it. And this is the only way I’ll know if there’s any reason to stay here and keep fighting the traditionalists. If there isn’t, I’ll be free to go with her, to travel like she talked about. My heart beats at the thought.

And if there is, I’ll have everything I need to destroy my father’s killers.