—No.
—Did you—?
—My mother is dead.
— . . .
—Say something, Zaga. It’s too quiet when you don’t talk.
—Perhaps anger is deeply tied to love. Perhaps you feel angriest at the people you love the most. Perhaps the love makes it safe to feel angry.
—Perhaps.
—And Quin? Do you love the prince?
— . . .
—You want to give a careful answer?
—My head hurts. Can I leave?
—No. Not yet.
—Follow the candlelight, Mia, to the silver basin beneath the waterfall. Do you see it?
—I see it. Wait—is this a trick? You said sight is an illusion.
—This time I want to know if you see it with your eyes.
—I do.
—Do you see the pink fish in the basin?
—Yes.
—Kill it.
—What?
—You said you know how to use your magic. Show me.
—I . . .
—As a Dujia, you have the power to take a life. Still the fish’s heart.
—I don’t want to.
—You are afraid of your own power.
—I don’t want to take a life. Even a small one.
—Yet you have spent the last three years honing your ability to do exactly that. You have polished your ambition like a stone. You live to kill the Dujia who killed your mother. A heart for a heart, life for a life.
— . . .
—Is this not true?
— . . .
—Am I not correct?
—I don’t know what you want me to say.
—What is hate?
—Hate is the antithesis of love.
—No. Hate is the perversion of love. It is love twisted in on itself, the feeling that floods the place where love once grew. If you saw her right now, here in this room, the Dujia who killed your mother . . . would you kill her?
—I . . .
—Every day for three years, you have thought of nothing else. It has commandeered your dreams and fueled your every step. It is what brought you here, to this village, to my island. If you hesitate, then why are you here at all?
—I’m so tired, Zaga. I only want to sleep.
—What is brilliance?
—I don’t know.
—What is seeing?
—I don’t know.
—What is love?
—I don’t know.
—What is hate?
—I don’t know.
—What do you feel?
—Confused. Exhausted. Angry.
—Good. You may take your leave. Tomorrow we commence your real lessons.
—My . . . real . . .
—If you want to face the Dujia who killed your mother, you must first learn how to be a Dujia yourself.
—But I . . .
—Go eat something, Mia. I hear the Blue Phoenix serves an excellent stew.
Chapter 40
River Rats
MIA WAS IN SHAMBLES. She’d spent the better part of the day in the Biqhotz, and when she emerged, the sky was purple and salted with stars.
Now she sat at the Blue Phoenix, brooding, her chair drawn a short distance from the toasty fire. She’d hardly touched her stew. For the first time in her life, she had performed poorly on a test. Her mind was tied in knots. For someone who claimed not to trust logic, Zaga had introduced one paradox after another, fraying ropes and securing new ones, then leaving Mia alone to unravel the snarl.
Refúj: where all your troubles will unravel.
Mia was not amused.
It didn’t help that Domeniq, Pilar, and Quin sat in a cozy circle around the fire pit, drinking libations and roasting shmardas: sugary egg pillows rimed in pink salt. Mia couldn’t get over how at ease the prince seemed, even in a den of Dujia. But why not? He no longer had a target on his back. He was safe.
But he wasn’t. Not really. Mia hadn’t chosen her faraway seat just to sulk; it afforded her the opportunity to listen in on the conversations unfolding around the tavern. In the corner closest, two women were speaking in low voices, casting furtive scowls at the prince.
“I’ve said it for years: we’re too close to the border,” said the woman with a tuft of stark-white hair and bronze skin, a loose tunic tied around her waist with a brilliant purple sash. “It was only a matter of time before their hatred and bigotry crossed the Salted Sea.”
Her companion, an older woman with a shaved head and rings of blue ink around her white arms and neck, nodded vehemently. “He shouldn’t be here. The river rats are snakes.”
“As shifty and treacherous as the rivers beneath them,” the first woman agreed. “The royals worst of all.”
Glasddirans weren’t exactly beloved, Mia was learning. She, too, was a river rat.
“Truce?”
Pilar stood before her, holding a glass of murky liquid freckled red.
“A gift from my failed assassin,” Mia said dryly. “Trying to poison me now?”
“If I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t need poison.”
“You might, given your success rate with an arrow.” She sniffed. “I don’t drink demon’s dwayle.”
It was true. The lady barkeep at the Blue Phoenix had looked at Mia strangely when she’d asked for a cup of tea, but she didn’t care. Her head was foggy enough without adding strange spirits to the mix. Not half an hour earlier, she’d watched Dom slam back a dram of muddy brown liquid with a sqorpion inside.
“This isn’t dwayle,” Pilar said. “It’s rai rouj, a Fojuen specialty. We’re not in the river kingdom anymore, Rose, with your diluted excuse for spirits.”
Mia accepted the glass, took a cautious nip, and nearly fell out of her chair.
Pilar laughed. “There’s a reason they call it red rage. You shave off flakes of fojuen into the liquor and let it souse. Nothing like a good punch to the throat to wake your inner Dujia.”
“I just drank glass?”
“It’s ground to a fine powder. No need to call the cavalry.”
Mia resolved to drink very slowly and keep her wits about her. She did not want to give this girl any leeway to punch her in the throat, literally or metaphorically.
“You should see what they drink in Luumia,” Pilar said. “That’s where my father is from. It’s so cold they drop slabs of butter into their spirits to keep up their strength. The Luumi drink three glasses of vaalk? every night: butter and fire.”
“Did your father come here with your mother?” Mia asked, genuinely curious.
“My father isn’t in Refúj.” Pilar’s face hardened. “Mind your own, Rose.”
She stomped back to the fire pit and settled into the chair beside Quin. She said something to him in a low voice, and—to Mia’s surprise—he laughed.
Then Dom was scraping his chair toward Mia, blocking Quin and Pilar from view. “Mind if I sit down?”
Before she could answer, he plunked the chair down next to her.
“I didn’t say yes.”
“I know. But you were about to.”
Dom was as cocky as ever. She’d almost missed it.
He brandished his clay tankard in her direction. “Care for a drink?”
“I don’t drink with murderers,” she said, “or the people who aid and abet murderers. Now that I know you were perfectly content to let me take an arrow in the heart.”
He rubbed his head. In the firelight, she saw his coarse black hair was shaved into intricate shapes at the back of his neck, a row of whorls and interconnected diamonds.
“I tried, Mia. I really did. I’m the one who first guessed you were a Dujia.” He touched the uzoolion charm at his neck. “I felt your magic tapping at my stone in the Grand Gallery the night of the final feast. I told Pilar they were wrong about you; that you were a Dujia. But by then the plan was already in motion.”
“How do you even know Pilar? You grew up in Glas Ddir.”
“I guess my mother knew her mother when they were younger. And I got to know Pil a bit when she was disguised as a scullery maid in the Kaer. She’s loyal to a fault—as long as you’re on her side.” He swigged from his tankard. “I never wanted any harm to come to you. But you know I’d do anything to protect my sisters.”
Mia softened. When they were younger, she’d watched Dom defend his sisters, especially when the other children were cruel to Sach’a on account of her legs.
“You’re a good brother,” she said. “I feel the same about Angelyne. I would do anything to protect her.”