8: Peaceful and Wrong

We make dinner in the upper room of the bell tower, Gaxna lighting coals in a little ceramic stove while I clean and gut the fish. My chore-time skills come in handy here, and I summon the deep breathing I’ve always done during food prep, appreciating the gold-red light coming through the hideout’s arched windows as I methodically peel and chop and slice. The ocean breeze is cool after the day’s heat, and I have a mixed feeling of hunger and tiredness and safety that makes me not want to be anywhere but right here.

The fish is fresh, and I can still read the barest twitches of life in its flesh as I gut it. The need for water, the confusion of air, the sense of being out of place.

I can relate. As peaceful as this all is, it still feels wrong somehow. Like I should be in the temple, should be fighting the traditionalists, should be doing more than wandering the city’s rooftops and learning to steal.

“Uje’s eyes,” Gaxna says behind me, and I start. I’m still not used to not hearing people through the water. “You got that all done already?”

The fish, garlic, carrots, eggplant, onions, curry leaves and lamb fat are all prepped in front of me, barley rolls neatly cut in half.

“Ah, yeah.” I hardly noticed doing it.

“Well, coals will still take a while.” She settles on an upturned crate, pulling out a stick of dark leaf, fatter in the middle. A clove twist. “Want a smoke?”

“Uh—”

She smirks. “Never smoked before? Cloves are about as strong as a glass of tea. You drink tea, right?”

I feel like a prude, but I don’t want to look like one. I need to be water, right? “Sure.”

She leans down and lights it on the coals, then hands it to me. I try a pull. It’s sweet and dark—and intense.

I cough, and she laughs. “Takes a minute to get used to.”

I grit my teeth and drink from the water gourd. It’s nice the second time, though I immediately notice the drowsy effect it’s supposed to have, my whole body kind of melting back into the wall. “Wow. It’s nice, though.”

“I buy the best Serei has.” She smirks. “Bet you don’t get these at temple.”

“Not the students anyway.” I try another pull. “Some of the full seers smoke them. I see them in the gardens at night.”

Gaxna nods and blows a cloud of fragrant smoke that catches the evening light. “So why don’t you just kill them? The new Chosen, I mean, or whoever killed your dad. I saw what you did today. You probably coulda taken down half that market.” She’s calm, but I see her watching me, fingering her spiked bracelet. Gaxna’s someone who’s had to watch out for herself her whole life.

Like me.

“I can’t. I mean yes, I’m trained to fight and if I got lucky, I might take down Nerimes or some of his allies. But I’m not even sure it was them.”

“What do you mean? I thought you said they set your dad up?”

I sigh. “That’s—mostly my gut, right now. I know they covered up his death, and they were going to kill me because I’m a threat to their power, but I don’t actually know that they killed him, or had him killed. That’s what I’m hoping to prove out here.”

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She pulls at her cloveleaf. “And when you prove it, that’s when you kill them?”

I take a pull myself, looking out at the city climbing the bay. “We study history as part of our training. And it’s full of people who kill each other for vengeance, or justice, or whatever. And whenever it’s political, it usually ends up failing. Or starting a cycle where they get killed a few years later, and on and on.”

Gaxna exhales smoke. “That’s why you have to kill all of them. I mean, they’re evil, right? They killed your dad.”

I laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “They’re definitely evil. I hate what they’ve done to the temple. But if I killed that many people, they’d think I’m evil too. And that’s not even the main thing. The main thing is that if I don’t prove to everyone that they were part of my dad’s death, then people won’t see the justice in it. I don’t even want Nerimes to die—harder for a man like that to live, seeing his own ruin.” I drink from a ceramic water pot she’s set out. “Though how I’m going to pull that off, I don’t know.”

Gaxna leans down to fan the coals, then puts a pan on top. “You said the witches were part of it?”

“Yeah. Nerimes—the new Chosen—said my dad was losing control, that the theracants were going to make a play to take over the city, and he wasn’t doing anything about it. It was one of the reasons the traditionalists used to oust my dad.”

“Hmph. That’s exactly what they told the witches last year.”

I lean forward. “What?”

“Yeah. The witches kept getting messages that the temple was going to try to shut them down. Kill them all or drive them up the peninsula or something. That’s why the guild started posting witches at every fountain, and… doing other stuff. They thought you were going to make a play. Or your dad, I guess.”

My gut says it’s wrong. That my father wouldn’t have done that. But this is the story Nerimes told too, and part of training is recognizing when strong emotion is clouding our judgment. What if it’s… true? Still, I’m not going to accept it without asking more questions. I just have to be careful, because Gaxna’s history with the theracants is obviously sensitive territory.

I bite my lip. “How were they getting these messages?”

She shrugs, stirring the fat where it’s startling to sizzle and render oil. “Witches have eyes and ears everywhere. Maybe in the temple itself. I wouldn’t be surprised if they got the blood of some monk in there and they’re forcing him to give them information.”

“A traditionalist,” I say, seeking connections. “It could have been one of Nerimes’ men, feeding them false information. I need to talk to the witches. Find out what they know.”

“No!” she barks, eye locking on mine. “Don’t talk to them. Don’t get anywhere near them. They’ll find a way to take your blood.”

I hold my hands up. “Okay, I won’t!” Though I’m going to have to find out somehow.

Gaxna leans back, rubbing at her missing eye. “Sorry. I—really don’t like the witches.”

“I noticed.” I wait for her to say more, but after a minute she just leans in and stirs the fat cubes, which are crackling good, covering the iron pot in oil. “Think we can put the onions in.”

I do. “So have you… saved many runaways?”

“Not enough,” she says, stirring the sizzling onions. “Forty or fifty now.”

That seems like a lot. “What do you do with them?”

She sprinkles on a pinch of salt. “There’s a place, up peninsula. A seamstress. Takes anybody on, if you can pay their upkeep for the first year.”

I can’t help goggling. “And you’ve paid all that?”

She shrugs, still stirring the onions. “My targets are usually a little bigger than food stalls. Hand me those carrots.”

We eat by candlelight, the sun well down by the time the fish is done and everything stewed in curry. It’s delicious, saltier and spicier than what we get in the temple. Exhaustion hits me like a wave when we’re done. I haven’t slept in what, two days? We crawl down the ladder to a lower room, Gaxna holding the candle, and I realize there’s only one bed. She starts pulling off clothes and I blush furiously, turning the other way. We never get naked in the temple, and that goes double for me, as the only girl.

“Oh, hey,” the thief says, probably noticing how stiff my back gets. “Slops. You don’t have to sleep in my bed, ah—”

I turn, and she’s blushing just as furiously, pushing crates and boxes out of the way. She pulls a few blankets from somewhere and soon I’ve got my own pallet, squeezed between piles of dusty bins.

“Thank you,” I say, hating myself for getting embarrassed, cheeks still burning. This is probably totally normal in the city. “For everything, today.”

Gaxna nods, tongue-tied for once. “You’re welcome. You—well. G’night.” And she gets into bed so fast you’d think I bit her, blowing out the light.

I pull off my clothes, grateful for the darkness. The pallet’s not as comfortable as my bed in the temple, but I’m not sure I even finish the thought before I’m out cold.