“I’m Odalian, milo—I mean, sir.”
“I’m Jolyon.” The man bowed. Unlike Aden, his beard was black, carefully trimmed and shaped so they were thin lines that crisscrossed his face.
“It’s hard to tell who the locals are in Ankyo,” Isamu protested. “Look at Knox here. He’s as black as night, but he comes from Yadosha like the rest of you.”
“Yadosha is also a melting pot,” Jolyon observed. “Not like you people in Arhen-Kosho. You all look the same.”
“That is not true!” One of Isamu’s countrymen extended his arm out, palms facing upward. “See? My skin is darker than Isamu’s!”
“I can’t tell the difference!” Aden complained. “Isamu, hold out your arm alongside Eito’s.”
Fairly soon, all the men in the room—all respected merchants, all rough-and-tumble men of influential standing—had their arms out, comparing skin tones. I had no idea what was going on.
“Aden’s arm is much darker than his face, see? He doesn’t even have the same color on himself!”
“I work outside! My face isn’t covered the way my arms are!”
“Polaire, what about you?”
“I think I will go and dunk myself in the spring outside if the lady asha is darker than mine—”
“Maybe only in the places that count,” Eito said slyly. That was enough to set the men off again.
“We apologize,” Knox said to me. “We have known each other for years.”
“I remember now,” Aden said. “Isn’t Tea the Dark asha who nearly obliterated the Falling Leaf tearoom?”
I winced. “I’m sorry.”
“Now, now,” Jolyon said. “That wasn’t her fault. And no one blames you, little miss. In fact, people have been asking for you, wanting to know if asha novices can be invited to the cha-khana regularly. I’d say you’ll have mistresses of the other tearooms knocking at your door, demanding that you wreck theirs too!” He laughed when I turned red. “Ah, don’t mind me. I say these things just to make the pretty girls blush. Here, have some alut.”
“I’m afraid Tea is still too young for your horrible drinks, gentlemen,” Polaire said primly. To my horror, she went and smacked the man lightly on the nose when he tried to hand me a glass, anyway. “You Yadoshans! Always looking for any excuse to get drunk!”
“But that’s why you like us, Polaire,” Aden said childishly. “Jolyon is offering to pay for all our meals, so let’s grub up some cants that the ladies might like—would that be apology enough, Lady Polaire?”
Polaire’s response was to tap him playfully on the cheek, and the men laughed again.
“Yadoshans like to fight and argue,” she explained to me after the party ended and we were walking back home. “Arhen-Kosho tend to be more reserved as a people—until they get drunk. You cannot treat everyone in the same way when you entertain them, Tea. Yadoshans sulk and get bored easily when you do not share in their revelry. Treseans are superstitious and like to get straight to the point in discussions but drink even harder than the Yadoshans. Drychta are—well, I’m sure you can already imagine what the Drychta are. There will be a few exceptions, but this is the general rule. What can you say about your own fellow Odalians?”
I thought. “Hardworking for the most part but very concerned with money. They’re suspicious of outsiders and of magic. No—they’re only suspicious of magic that other people use but not when they do.”
“Exactly. Would you say that your family too or your friends in Knightscross can be described in this manner?”
“But my family are nothing like that at all! The people in Knightscross aren’t—” and then I paused. I thought about their distrust of bone witches, their hostility toward me. Were they any different, after all, than the cold treatment Lady Mykaela and I received from strangers in Kneave?
She nodded at my growing understanding. “That’s right. Over the course of your life, you will meet many, many people. The trick an asha must learn is to read people accurately. So if a Tresean comes in and consumes a stupid amount of kolscheya and grunts at everyone in the room, then he is a typical Tresean to whom small talk will have no effect, and if you understand Treseans, you will wait patiently until he finally chooses to speak. But if he is a Tresean who is fond of chatter and has an eye for fashion, then you must ask Rahim what he is doing at such a party.”
I giggled. Polaire flicked her dark hair over one shoulder, the diamonds in it twinkling in the twilight. “Everyone is a puzzle, Tea, made of interlocking tiles you must piece together to form a picture of their souls. But to successfully build them, you must have an idea of their strengths as well as their weaknesses. We all have them,” she said, adding almost as an afterthought, “even me.”
She carried another vial in her hands. Black liquid sloshed inside from one of the many cauldrons that had gutted the landscape with its smoke and odors the last couple of days. We stood before the hulking carcass of a mastodon-like beast. Only its rib cage remained intact, wide enough for us to pass through. Two brown tusks lay nearby; the ends of one lay broken, the other buried so deep underneath the sand that only its tip gleamed out at us through the muddied churning of seawater.
The girl lifted the bottle to her lips and drank until there was nothing left. When she was done, she let it fall from her grasp, and before it hit the ground, she was already moving, performing the same ritual as she had with the taurvi.
Something that resembled lightning lanced through the bones, circled the massive ribs, and struck at the barely visible tusk. And then the skeleton moved. It struggled to stand, and the tusks rose, attracted to the rest of its body like a magnet. It settled atop the bony jaws. One by one, like a life-sized puzzle, it built and took form. Femurs attached themselves to pelvic bones and tibia, vertebrae lining up to collarbone and neck spurs. What it could not find, it created out of thin air.
And throughout it all, the girl never stopped. Her fingers danced and her feet moved, and she circled her creation like a parent awaiting the birth of her child until the massive being rose before her, whole and complete, magic spun into flesh.
“Imagine if you had the power to control daeva like these. Imagine the kingdoms that would quake and tremble before you. With such a threat at their borders, how quickly do you think they would mend their ways? Would more people fall under King Aadil of Drycht’s iron grip? Would he look out from the windows of his castle and see us at his gates and still send innocents to the headsman’s block? Would he still exile those like you who strive for a truth he does not wish to see? Would murderers in his kingdom still go unpunished for killing their daughters?