“Identify yourself.”
Heavy wings of panic unfurled in my throat. Though our movements around town weren’t constrained by an official curfew, not many risked a late-night stroll. The Nizahl soldiers usually patrolled in pairs, which meant this man’s partner was probably harassing someone else on the other side of the village.
I smothered the panic, snapping its fluttering limbs. Panic was a plague. Its sole purpose was to spread until it tore through every thought, every instinct.
I immediately lowered my eyes. Holding a Nizahl soldier’s gaze invited nothing but trouble. “My name is Sylvia. I live in Raya’s keep and apprentice for the chemist Rory. I apologize for startling you. An elderly woman urgently needed care, and my employer is indisposed.”
From the lines on his face, the soldier was somewhere in his late forties. If he had been an Omalian patrolman, his age would have signified little. But Nizahl soldiers tended to die young and bloody. For this man to survive long enough to see the lines of his forehead wrinkle, he was either a deadly adversary or a coward.
“What is your father’s name?”
“I am a ward in Raya’s keep,” I repeated. He must be new to Mahair. Everyone knew Raya’s house of orphans on the hill. “I have no mother or father.”
He didn’t belabor the issue. “Have you witnessed activity that might lead to the capture of a Jasadi?” Even though it was a standard question from the soldiers, intended to encourage vigilance toward any signs of magic, I inwardly flinched. The most recent arrest of a Jasadi had happened in our neighboring village a mere month ago. From the whispers, I’d surmised a girl reported seeing her friend fix a crack in her floorboard with a wave of her hand. I had overheard all manner of praise showered on the girl for her bravery in turning in the fifteen-year-old. Praise and jealousy—they couldn’t wait for their own opportunities to be heroes.
“I have not.” I hadn’t seen another Jasadi in five years.
He pursed his lips. “The name of the elderly woman?”
“Aya, but her daughter Zeinab is her caretaker. I could direct you to them if you’d like.” Zeinab was crafty. She would have a lie prepared for a moment like this.
“No need.” He waved a hand over his shoulder. “On your way. Stay off the vagrant road.”
One benefit of the older Nizahl soldiers—they had less inclination for the bluster and interrogation tactics of their younger counterparts. I tipped my head in gratitude and sped past him.
A few minutes later, I slid into Raya’s keep. By the scent of cooling wax, it had not been long since the last girl went to bed. Relieved to find my birthday forgotten, I kicked my boots off at the door. Raya had met with the cloth merchants today. Bartering always left her in a foul mood. The only acknowledgment of my birthday would be a breakfast of flaky, buttery fiteer and molasses in the morning.
When I pushed open my door, a blast of warmth swept over me. Baira’s blessed hair, not again. “Raya will have your hides. The waleema is in a week.”
Marek appeared engrossed in the firepit, poking the coals with a thin rod. His golden hair shone under the glow. A mess of fabric and the beginnings of what might be a dress sat beneath Sefa’s sewing tools. “Precisely,” Sefa said, dipping a chunk of charred beef into her broth. “I am drowning my sorrows in stolen broth because of the damned waleema. Look at this dress! This is a dress all the other dresses laugh at.”
“What is he doing with the fire?” I asked, electing to ignore her garment-related woes. Come morning, Sefa would hand Raya a perfect dress with a winning smile and bloodshot eyes. An apprenticeship under the best seamstress in Omal wasn’t a role given to those who folded under pressure.
“He’s trying to roast his damned seeds.” Sefa sniffed. “We made your room smell like a tavern kitchen. Sorry. In our defense, we gathered to mourn a terrible passing.”
“A passing?” I took a seat beside the stone pit, rubbing my hands over the crackling flames.
Marek handed me one of Raya’s private chalices. The woman was going to skin us like deer. “Ignore her. We just wanted to abuse your hearth,” he said. “I am convinced Yuli is teaching his herd how to kill me. They almost ran me right into a canal today.”
“Did you do something to make Yuli or the oxen angry?”
“No,” Marek said mournfully.
I rolled the chalice between my palms and narrowed my eyes. “Marek.”
“I may have used the horse’s stalls to… entertain…” He released a long-suffering sigh. “His daughter.”
Sefa and I released twin groans. This was hardly the first time Marek had gotten himself in trouble chasing a coy smile or kind word. He was absurdly pretty, fair-haired and green-eyed, lean in a way that undersold his strength. To counter his looks, he’d chosen to apprentice with Yuli, Mahair’s most demanding farmer. By spending his days loading wagons and herding oxen, Marek made himself indispensable to every tradesperson in the village. He worked to earn their respect, because there were few things Mahair valued more than calloused palms and sweat on a brow.
It was also why they tolerated the string of broken hearts he’d left in his wake.
Not one to be ignored for long, Sefa continued, “Your youth, Sylvia, we mourn your youth! At twenty, you’re having fewer adventures than the village brats.”
I drained the water, passing the chalice to Marek for more. “I have plenty of adventure.”
“I’m not talking about how many times you can kill your fig plant before it stays dead,” Sefa scoffed. “If you had simply accompanied me last week to release the roosters in Nadia’s den—”
“Nadia has permanently barred you from her shop,” Marek interjected. Brave one, cutting Sefa off in the middle of a tirade. He scooped up a blackened seed, throwing it from palm to palm to cool. “Leave Sylvia be. Adventure does not fit into a single mold.”
Sefa’s nostrils flared wide, but Marek didn’t flinch. They communicated in that strange, silent way of people who were bound together by something thicker than blood and stronger than a shared upbringing. I knew because I had witnessed hundreds of their unspoken conversations over the last five years.
“I am not killing my fig plant.” I pushed to my feet. “I’m cultivating its fighter’s spirit.”
“Stop glaring at me,” Marek said to Sefa with a sigh. “I’m sorry for interrupting.” He held out a cracked seed.
Sefa let his hand dangle in the air for forty seconds before taking the seed. “Help me hem this sleeve?”
With a sheepish grin, Marek offered his soot-covered palms. Sefa rolled her eyes.