But Lu could keep them all safe. Thiswouldkeep them all safe.
Nayeli occasionally came with news. The raiders were setting up lines of defense and patrols to fortify the sanctuary. They arranged barricades of furniture, wood, odds and ends; they worked together to make it known to Argrid that here were those plotting against Elazar, a hive that would break open and unleash fury on his bid for Grace Loray.
That was where the cooperation ended. Kari and Fatemah sought to locate Elazar; Ben and Vex prepared for a mission to determine what the coming light would be. At the same time, Nate and Rosalia let their raiders do whatever they liked when they weren’t expanding Port Mesi-Teab’s perimeter. Half-drunk raiders lounged in tents or picked fights with each other across the sanctuary.
“People are crying to expel the other syndicates,” Nayeli grumbled the third morning after the meeting in Fatemah’s office.
Lu sat on the floor and watched coals flicker orange and yellow in the shack’s central firepit. The fresh clothes Nayeli had found for her bunched when she leaned forward,the loose white shirt bagging around the navy-blue vest and dark breeches.
“But at least your mother and Fatemah have a plan,” Nayeli continued. “I swear, the only plan Nate, Pierce, and Rosalia have is to take permanent magic and go on a rampage. Which would beswell, seeing as how Elazar’s been spreading a general distrust of raiders. The families here are terrified of them. Nate’s pissed that anyone’d be against them, ’cause he thinks it means they’reforElazar, and he wants to outright kill any dissenters. Kari, of course, ain’t about to let that happen, so now we got some people under our protection who think we’re becoming too raider-focused and not— Hey, you listening?”
Lu used tongs to adjust a metal grate over the coals. On it, a pot of Tuncian spices, Powersage, and Aerated Blossom had been brewing since dawn while she kept the temperature as close to the Emerdian brick instructions as possible. Despite their promises, neither Rosalia nor Pierce had found Visjorn bear blood yet, but maybe this combination would be effective.
Lu didn’t look up. “Hmm? Yes. You mentioned—”
She gaped at Nayeli, at a loss for what to say or what they had even been talking about.
Nayeli’s face softened. She folded her long legs under herself as she knelt next to Lu. “If you’ve started having doubts about making permanent magic—”
“I haven’t,” Lu said.
Nayeli cradled her hands in her lap. After a long while, she spoke, her voice small. “Vex and I had a bet. Who could get Rosalia to fall for them first. I’m glad now that I didn’t win, seeing what a shitty person she turned out to be, but I don’t usually lose that bet. One time, there was another girl, at a tavern in New Deza. I’d had a huge fight with Cansu, and I was...” She gave a halfhearted chuckle. “Vex spent the whole time talking to that girl aboutme.How great I was.‘Because there are other people in the world than Cansu,’he told me later. That idiot.”
Tears rimmed Nayeli’s eyes. Lu forced herself to draw air into a body gone rigid.
“We’ll find Cansu,” Lu promised her.
“That isn’t why I told you that.” Nayeli stilled. “I’ve never disagreed with Vex like this. Every time I see Rosalia, every time I talk to Nate and Pierce, I want to projectile vomit. All they really care about is getting their syndicates through this unscathed—they’d sell us all out if it meant they’d be the victors. Are we doing the right thing by working with them?”
“There is no right thing in a war. There is only what you can live with.”
Nayeli turned her teary eyes to Lu. Lu’s numb heart cracked to see so much emotion from her. “And after the war, will you be able to live with this?”
After the war.Lu had been thinking in day-by-day increments—the farthest ahead she had gotten was imaginingElazar’s defeat. But beyond that? What would happen when she stood before Vex in a free Grace Loray and she had even more atrocities tethered to her soul than now? Would he look at her with the fear he had shown in Fatemah’s office? Would he ever be able to touch her, knowing how many lives had ended because of the weapons she made? Would she one day be an anecdote from his past, like Rosalia?
It didn’t matter. None of the victory was Lu’s to enjoy—she knew that. Her purpose was in bringing peace to Grace Loray, whatever it required of her.
Nayeli rested her head on Lu’s shoulder. Lu closed her eyes.
The door of the shack banged open, followed by a triumphant “Who’s the greatest?”
Nayeli sat up and gave Lu an exhausted look. “Go lick the poison off Digestive Death leaves, Rosalia.”
“Only if you lick something for me first.”
In an instant Nayeli was on her feet, a knife out. Lu scrambled up and grabbed Nayeli’s wrist.
“Don’t you want to knowwhyI’m the greatest?” Rosalia pressed. “Another group of my raiders just got in—with news that they saw a whole heap of people disembarking at Fort Chastity. Rumors are that two of ’em are General Ibarra and Tomás Andreu.”
Lu’s grip on Nayeli’s wrist slackened. “He’s here?”
Rosalia beamed.
The world contracted. To no one in particular, Lu said,“We’re going to Fort Chastity.”
“What?” Nayeli and Rosalia asked simultaneously. They glared at each other.
“You finished the potion?” Rosalia asked.
