Swallowing hard, Tobek moves for the stairs, but North hangs back, ducking into the parlor full of broken glass and overturned furniture. A bookcase hugs the far wall, its contents spilled across the floor save a few trinkets and porcelain saints that were spared destruction.
North continues into the next room, a kitchen, but I linger behind, approaching a heavy desk sticky with spilled ink, covered with papers whose edges have curled from heat. A map hangs on the wall above the desk, also warped, and I flatten it back with one hand.
Avinea. Its previous owner marked the places where the Burn has taken the kingdom, much like North marked mine, but where my map lacks specifics, this map lays everything out in minute detail beneath an overlay of grid lines, to include Avinea’s proximity to all the lands that converge in the Havascent Sea.
North returns, joining me at the desk, moving papers aside, paging through the books. Books are his weakness, he told me once, because nobody prints them anymore.
When he sees me still staring at the map, he pauses. “Looking for home?”
I don’t answer; I can’t. My eyes retrace the entire western border of Avinea where Brindaigel should sit.
There’s nothing there but water.
North watches me another moment before turning his attention back to the books. “Where did you dock?” he asks lightly.
“What?”
“Your ship. What harbor did it sail into?”
“We didn’t come by boat,” I say.
“Then how did you get here?”
“We fell from the sky,” says Bryn.
I jump, spinning to see her standing in the parlor doorway, arms folded across her chest.
North’s smile turns strained. “Like the giants.”
“The giants?” I repeat, bemused.
“When the gods went to war, they destroyed everything in their battle for dominance. Nothing survived except”—North reaches into his pocket and retrieves a small rock, pinching it between his fingers for emphasis—“a single seed that a farmer found buried in the ashes. But it couldn’t grow without sunlight or water, so he went to the gods and he made them an offer: If he could defeat their strongest warriors, they would call a truce. Tell would rule the earth and Rook would rule the sky, and neither one would be more important than the other. They would be balanced.”
“Farodeen the First,” I say.
North smiles, pleased that I know his mythology. He wouldn’t be so pleased if I told him the rest of the story we’re taught, that Farodeen was sacrificed by his more powerful brother, Overen, the king of Brindaigel, and that Avinea was a consolation prize to his heirs. They would be destined to be farmers like their father.
“Farodeen wrestled Rook’s giants out of the sky,” North continues, “and they damned Tell’s volcanoes, ending the war. To reward him, the gods threaded their magic through his veins: starlight from Rook and fire from Tell, so if they ever went to war again, man could fight too.”
“Shimmer and burn,” I murmur with a chill.
North looks at me, expression unreadable. “But the gift came with a caveat,” he says. “Farodeen’s heirs would have to kill the gods’ greatest warrior to prove themselves worthy to inherit their magic.” A wry smile crosses his face. “They would have to kill their father.”
That, at least, is shared between our kingdoms: The gods love sacrifice.
Bryn snorts, and North gives her a look of polite exasperation. “Perhaps you know a different version?”
“I know that gods do not make kings,” Bryn says, dropping her arms. “Men do.”
“Do you not pray, Miss Dossel?”
“I kneel to no one,” she says, turning away.
I listen to her footsteps receding, biting my cheek. In Brindaigel, chapels were reserved for the nobles who could afford time to pray. Those of us in the Brim bought totems and statues of saints who embodied our own lacking virtues in the hopes that their grace might transfer to us while we weren’t looking.
Here, every night without fail, North prays while Tobek mumbles a self-conscious benediction of his own. Their faith is not so much in Rook and his virtues of ambition and courage and pride, but in Tell and her patience, temperance, and compassion. Perrote would call it the poor man’s religion, praying to the dirt rather than aspire to the sky; and yet, the sky and its stars have only ever inspired my vices: greed and the burning desire to be more than I am.
I’m beginning to prefer the earth, grounded and certain and well within reach.
The ceiling creaks as Tobek inspects the second floor, but North doesn’t move, fingers tented on the edge of the desk, leaving tracks in the ash that’s settled there. He stares at the map, expression grim.
“I need that seedling,” he says. “I need something to plant, Miss Locke. Something to grow, or Avinea will never recover.”
“I gave you my name so you would actually use it.”
“I can’t do that.”
Annoyance colors my voice: “Because that would cheapen its value?”
“Because it would strengthen its power,” he replies, straightening. “You’ve already threatened to steal my magic and you’ve admitted your king supported Corthen in the war. As a devout loyalist to Avinea and its current regent, I have no choice but to view you and all your actions as a potential threat to Prince Corbin.”
I frown, watching him from the corner of my eye. I can’t tell if he’s serious. “He can’t be too concerned if he trusts his kingdom’s defenses to a glorified seamstress like you.”
“One of the best.” His half smile fades, eyes hazy as they linger on my face, before he clears his throat and drops his gaze.
A splash of warmth fills my stomach and starts to spread. “My father was a tailor,” I offer.
“Literally or metaphorically?”
I open my mouth, but pause. “I don’t know,” I admit, even as I wonder, what if? If my mother was a magician, is it possible my father was too? “Magicians aren’t nearly so coveted in Brindaigel as they are out here. If he was a spellcaster, he never told anyone.”
“Smart man.” Bracing the crossbow against the desk, he rests his hands on the butt of the tiller and his chin on top of them. “But what were you, Miss Locke? Before this, I mean.”
I hesitate, considering the question. I’ve been a lot of things, and I’m beginning to realize that most of them distill to one truth. “I was my mother’s daughter,” I say at last. A liar and a thief, an insatiable heart that always craved more.
North watches me, eyes half lidded, and I shift uneasily, looking away. What does he see when he looks at me? An investment, or something more? I know what I see when I look at him: a boy just like Thaelan, risking everything for a world that no one else believes in.
“I should check on Tobek,” North says finally. Straightening, he adjusts his grip on the crossbow and moves past me, angling toward the stairwell.
“North?”
He pauses in the doorway, eyebrows raised.
“Back home, they added ash to the soil every spring, to keep the ground fertile. Maybe . . .” I pause, feeling foolish, but he doesn’t laugh and I force myself to finish the thought. “Maybe things will start to grow again.”