“Tunnel rats. Threw them all off the mountain road,” the healer said with bored disdain. “Then, another one of us dies two days later. They’re toying with us.”
Off the mountain road. Her blood went cold upon recalling the abyss on the other side of the narrow path into Arsamea. Caelum had almost balked on the trip. “You murdered them?” she whispered.
Marus’s fist struck the table. She hated that she had to hold back a flinch. “Still fending for your fucking kind while we starve and die. They’re poisoning us. You’ll find where they are.” He snarled. “Least you can do after what you did to Cisuré.”
“She chose her road.” The hole Cisuré’s betrayal had made in her had barely clotted. “Don’t youdarepin that on me.”
“Don’tIdare?” He rose with the menace of a blackstripe bear. Past merged with present. This time, she failed to suppress a flinch when he approached with the same stride that had always promised pain. “I dare do a lot of things, patchwork creature. You’re going to scour every inch of this village for the rats who did this, and you’ll see that we’re compensated for the loss of our hunters by making the Tetrarchy send up more supplies. If you’re going to spread your legs for a madman, you earn us something and show gratitude for all we did—”
“Allyoudid?” Fury slid a noose around her throat. “I’ve earned every ounce of my power. You—” She froze when the tavern burst into guffaws. Eyes roved over her black and gold cloak and lit up with glee.
“You have no power. We don’t care about your big titles,Petitor Sarai.” Marus laughed, stepping closer. She involuntarily shrank back and hit the counter. “Everything you have comes from the man you’re fucking. You couldn’t stop us from tossing you into the tunnels if you tried. Blood will out, tunnel rat. Yours belongs with your own.”
He touched her, and she kept her word. Gripping his hand with her free one, she reached past skin into his tendons and flayed them open with controlled slivers of magic, just as Telmar had taught her. He released her with a roar, and she sprang for the door.
It flew open before she reached it. The Arsameans surrounding her reared back at the sight of six angry vigiles with their blades out. Behind them, Méherre looked strangely pale.
Breathing hard, Sarai faced the tavern. “You were saying?”
Marus sneered, Ethra bending over his ruined hand. “Run along, patchwork creature. You have no strength of your own.”
A bitter feeling, isn’t it? Powerlessness.She grit her teeth at the memory of Silvus’s comment.
Walking through the vigiles’ parted ranks, she went outside, making for the metal trapdoor that led to Arsamea’s underground tunnels. Crusted with trodden snow, it looked like it hadn’t been opened in days. And she knew. But she still tapped her foot over the door, her heart sinking with every second that passed without an answer.
Kadra’s vigiles helped her wrest it open. She called into the pitch-black space, telling anyone within that she could help them. A couple of vigiles nervously accompanied her down the ladder, sparks of lightning serving as their sconces.
During childhood, she had thought the tunnels to be mazelike and endless. Now, she saw the claustrophobic space for what it was—a prison, a punishment for poverty. She took in the piles of filthy clothing, the long-dried trails of blood leading toward the ladder where people had been dragged up. There was no one here. There would be no one here until one of the vaunted families in that tavern fell on desperate times and had no other choice. Then, they would understand. Then, they would search for a mercy they had not given.
Anger burned up her throat to sting her eyes.I should have returned sooner.Climbing up, she shook her head at the other vigiles’ inquiries.
“That’shomicidium.” One glared at the crowd amassed outside the tavern. “We could arrest them all. Get them to Sal Flumen.”
“I can bring your Magus Supreme,” Méherre added, a turbulent ocean in her dark eyes. “There’s enough reason to kill them all.”
“Like the north wouldn’t erupt into civil war if a Tetrarch wiped out a village? The trulyterriblething about having political power is that you have to preserve the rights of people you hate!” The lump in her throat threatened to choke her. She almost wanted it to. “I can only Probe everyone until I find who threw these poor people off the mountain and dosed the village men with whitesleep—” She froze. Turned. She stared at the group, yards away.
At the large, bearded men in their furs, at the women defiantly meeting her gaze. The answer settled in place, soft as a sigh.Cursed fucking village. Blood pounded in her ears. These people never changed.
She stalked back to them. “You can’t bedosedwith whitesleep, you fuckwits! It has to be rubbed on the eyelids. You searched below ground for someone to blame when you’ve been fucking them! Your women aresickof you! So, they made you sick!” And the perpetrators hadn’t cared about who ended up carrying the blame.
She halted before a proud-nosed woman. “Why?” she demanded and went cold when the woman smiled, something horribly blank behind her eyes. Not malice nor glee, butpeace. Her irises expanded until they grazed the borders of her sclera. Behind Sarai, Méherre inhaled sharply.
“It came to us,” the woman said dreamily. “Like a thought we forgot that we had forgotten.”
“What did?” Sarai whispered.
“The idea that wecould.”
True,Sarai registered. Marus had turned the color of ash.
Méherre’s throat worked before she undid the knot tethering Caelum and turned to her with grim eyes. Sarai needed no further convincing. Getting into the saddle, she raced down the street and through Arsamea’s gates before dismounting to bow toward the abyss on the right of the winding mountain road back to Sal Flumen.
“May the Elsar cradle your souls,” she whispered to the victims it had claimed.
She stood there until Méherre tapped her shoulder and opened a portal back to Sal Flumen, murmuring that she should rest. Yet, it wasn’t sleep that came in a too-quiet inn but visions of eyes with black sclera, a voice whispering to her that shecould, and Marus and Silvus reminding her of the same truth.
You have no power.
