At the end of our first week, Moonstrike is ordered on a trip to the edge of Havenspur, to gain a better feel for the area. Another piece of our Thurnian education. It’s a half-hour drive by vehicle, reinforcing how deceptively large the city is, the swelling mansions of the promenade giving way to skinny streets and tight alleys, mostly inhabited by exuberant kids and bored cats. We’re deposited, armed and perspiring, in an open market. The faint breeze is saturated with smoke and spice. Saffron, pepper, others I can’t place. The buildings around us are inlaid with mosaics, intricate spirals painted above doorways, laundry laid out to dry on wooden steps. Metal fans spit air through open windows, curtains fluttering.
Beneath the market’s fabric canopies, men and women laugh and chatter, their fingers stitching, smoking, strumming instruments, but their eyes watch us as we walk the square.
Cautiously curious.
I struggle to catch the fragments of wavering conversation, the offers made by vendors as they barter with customers, some of them even offering to me. I hardly recognize any of the words from my lessons, which annoys me. I’m supposed to be good at this language thing.
“Keep moving,” Wick instructs. “They know we don’t buy from them.”
That’s an easy order to follow when the sellers are old men. But soon enough, a little boy’s tugging at my arm, green eyes wide and expectant. He opens a case holding golden strands, a small stone on each end. Necklaces. Not very grand ones, but still pretty.
“For good luck,” he says in Landori, tiny smile bursting with excitement.
I have no choice. I hold out a few coins and let him decide what a strand’s worth.
Wick looks back and sighs. “Lieutenant. Don’t encourage this.”
I ignore him. The boy studies the coins, then carefully extracts two from my palm. I choose a necklace with an amber-coloured stone, and thank him in Thurnian.
He offers me a plucky salute, then he’s disappeared into the crowd again.
“Well done!” Greycap announces, his arm around my shoulder. “You got robbed blind. And it doesn’t even seem like your colour.”
“It was for a good cause,” I reply. “And it’s not for me.”
“Tell me who she is.”
“Who says it’s a girl?”
“Well, it wouldn’t look good on Fox either.”
I laugh, slipping the gift into my pocket, and suddenly wonder when, if ever, I’ll have a chance to give this to Ali. Frustrated by that realization, I change the subject. “I have no clue what anyone’s saying here, Nazem. Are you sure I’m studying the right books?”
“Different dialect out here. They have their roots further south.”
“How many dialects are there?”
“In Thurn? Five or six.”
God, this place is getting more and more complicated. What’s the point in trying? I’ll never be on the ground long enough to learn this. I’ll be thousands of feet up in the air, where I’m useful. Negotiating down here is an entirely different realm.
Sudden shouts erupt ahead, and my hand quickly falls to the pistol at my side. By an ancient fountain, two young women are arguing with a Landorian soldier of local background. One girl leads the charge, dressed in a flower-print dress and heels, brown hair in a braided knot, as impassioned as the soldier and hurling rapid Thurnian words into his bitter face.
“She says one of our soldiers stole from her display,” Greycap explains. “She says her mother is Landorian and we’ll be hearing about it.”
“You think she’s telling the truth?”
Greycap opens his mouth, then shuts it. He shrugs.
No one moves to intervene. Everything’s silent in the square.
The soldier switches to Landori and says, “You bleed for Seath!” loud enough everyone can hear, and understand, and the woman hesitates only a second before spitting on his boots. The other girl, much younger, searches the rest of us rapidly, looking for an ally, and her gaze falls on Cyar. I’ve only made it two steps for him when she flings herself against his chest. Her hands grasp his uniform, appealing in her local dialect, and only a few words register—“Listen, Savient” and “Help me, Captain.”
Cyar appears stunned by the girl suddenly in his arms.
I reach his side and she glances at me. Her eyes, amber like the necklace, take in my uniform, my face, my fist around the pistol. She says something else to Cyar. I don’t understand any of it. Cyar shakes his head at her, visibly torn. He glances at me with a question, but I can’t answer it. Neither of us can. This whole place is strange and confusing, filled with rules we don’t know.
Landorians. Locals. Nahir.
The vast majority could be one or two or three of those things at once.
Cyar shakes his head again. “Not a captain,” he says in Thurnian. “Not a captain.”
But it sounds more like an apology.
“They think you Safire are here to save them,” Wick says caustically on his way by, striding for the Landorian soldier with spittle on his boots. “We’re so wicked and cruel.”
He rolls his eyes and a hiss escapes the younger girl. Pushing back, she releases Cyar and runs into the crowd, heels clicking on cobblestone, swallowed by the saffron and smoke. The older girl moves like a cat. With cunning quickness, she snatches the soldier’s rifle right from his unsuspecting hands, then her flower-print dress disappears back into the crowd and she’s gone.
Local men swiftly close the gap. Staring down Wick.
The Landorian soldier glares at his empty hands.
Everyone else watches silently—above, below, to the side—but now with an edge of anger, their curiosity towards us disappeared.
Anger and betrayal have a palpable feeling.
Somewhere, a female voice begins to serenade the market—soft and clear, echoing off stone walls, luring everyone back to the sunny afternoon—and Greycap gives us a faltering smile. “Faria. Only women sing it. Come on, let’s listen.”
He tugs at our arms.
But I know the truth, and surely Nazem La’hile can see it also. It’s too much like Savient. Like Rahmet and Brisal. No one will live forever in subservience, their loyalty forced with a gun. They want something better, as we did. Stuck between worlds, the sides shifting every day, divisions disappearing, colours bleeding together and creating something infinitely more honest and alive and dangerous.
Cyar looks at me.
It feels like true revolution.
VI
EDUCATION
29
AURELIA
Hathene, Etania
Sun warms the deep places of the woods, casting scattered shadows across the dirt trail, filtering through leaves. I fiddle with the reins and press with my legs, and Liberty collects nicely on the bit even as his ears twitch rapidly at the symphony of forest sounds. He’s eager as a colt to be outside again. The jurica has worked, and I want to kiss Cyar. The groom’s impressed enough with Liberty’s progress to encourage these slow rides, strengthening his injured leg, and since Reni is currently in Classit, or perhaps Lalia, I’m the one to do it.
Violet trails behind on quiet Ivory. She’s a rather helpless rider, perched awkwardly in the saddle, and she keeps jerking at Ivory’s mouth every time my mare tries for a passing leaf. They both appear equally exasperated with each other, and I want to apologize to poor Ivory.
“Don’t pull so hard,” I say, halting Liberty by the river.
“She doesn’t listen,” Violet protests.
“Because you’re confusing her with your cues. You do nothing and then you suddenly yank.”
Violet sighs. She doesn’t like being hot and sweaty, or wearing pants. Today she has to contend with all three. “Is it true?” she asks instead. “You’re touring the University tomorrow with the Ambassador?”
I frown, walking Liberty on. “Who told you?”