Memories of Ash (The Sunbolt Chronicles Book 2) (26 page)

“Why’ve you got your pack with you?” the first guard asks.

“She doesn’t have a room yet,” Esra says. “But she’ll probably stay with me tonight.”

That puts his remaining doubts to rest. “I’ll let our next shift know to expect your return,” he says, gesturing us through.

I grin at Esra. She beams at me, her eyes alight with innocent anticipation for the Festival and its delights.

I stay with the group for a good half hour, following along as we cross the river and circumvent the western edge of the Grand Bazaar, closed for the day, its winding alleys lying quiet. It seems to be the only quiet place in the city
.

Street performers are out, juggling and doing acrobatics, and in the first square we pass, a wrestling match is about to begin. The wrestlers’ skin gleams with the oils they’ve used to help slide out of their opponents’ grip. They stretch, jump, and kick to warm up, then lift their voices in increasingly vociferous prayers that both ask for aid and describe how they will lay low their enemies. A couple of the girls in our group slow their steps to watch, but they get pulled along as we continue on.

We reach a broad avenue and come to a halt behind a wall of people shouting and cheering. Beyond them, huge rolling platforms pulled by multiple teams of oxen pass by. Each platform bears a giant wooden model of a brightly painted building or fortress, and from their rooftops and snug balconies and walls brightly clad men and women wave to the crowds, tossing out handfuls of items.

“Are those the fortresses that get burned?” I ask Esra as she waves her arms at the next building rolling our way.

“What? Goodness, no, this is part of the parade of guilds.” She throws me a laughing look. “This is— oh!”

She jumps higher as a handful of items fly through the air, her hand darting in front of the man’s before her. “Got it,” she cries, ignoring his irritated glance. “See, look! These are the jewelry guilds. They’ve made loads and loads of things to share as they go through the city to the king’s palace.”

She holds a pair of earrings made of bright metal wire and strung with glass beads. “It’s not silver or anything, but it will be pretty to wear now and then, don’t you think?”

“They’re just throwing them to people?”

“Uh-huh.” Esra pockets the earrings and rises on her tiptoes to watch the next great wagon rolling toward us. “That’s half the Festival. Didn’t you know? The guilds from each part of the city parade through on their assigned day, giving away what they’ve made right on up until they reach the gates of the palace to pay their yearly tribute.”

A cheer goes up as another guild member gestures toward us, holding up a handful of rings.

“I love this day,” Esra says happily, stretching up on her tiptoes again.

“Yeah.” Most of the other serving girls have fanned out along the edges of the crowd, waiting for their chance to catch a trinket. I slant a glance at the sky. “I’d better go. When will you head back to the Mekteb?”

“Before midnight,” Esra says, making a face. “We’re supposed to be back before the burning of the forts.”

“You’ll stay out as long as you can, then?”

“Of course.” She sighs as the man with the rings heaves them to the left of us. “What about you?”

“Probably.”

“If you get back early, wait in the common room for me. I’ll come get you so you can share my room.”

“Thanks.”

Esra waves me off with a grin. I peel away from the crowd, heading toward the nearest big street. It takes me a few tries and a couple of coppers to get directions to the Degaths’ residence, but the directions are clear and seem honest, taking into account the route of today’s parade. They deliver me into one of the wealthier neighborhoods of the city in a little less than an hour. Here, the road with its wide cobbled sidewalks and shade-giving trees lies mostly empty.

There are guards posted at the end of one of the streets. I meekly request directions of them, and after a question or two they direct me the final few turns to my destination.

Old Lord Degath must have managed his affairs very well. His heirs live in a great villa, the boundary walls covered in a colorful tiled mosaic of repeating geometric patterns. I come to a stop across the street, studying the house.

Whether or not they remember me well enough to recognize me, what am I really hoping from them? They’re nobles. They didn’t know the first thing about survival when we last met. I thought of them as children at the time — the Degath children, because they were the children of Lord and Lady Degath, but also because they hardly acted like adults at the time. Even though Saira was easily my age or a year older, and Tarek older than she, their initial bickering and silliness in the face of danger led me to consider them children. Only Alia had really been a child.

Now that they’ve lost their parents, and weathered Saira’s betrayal — if she is even still with them—what will they be like? The house before me suggests that they matured quickly, grew older and wiser in the space of days or weeks. Perhaps they have an older retainer or family steward who provided them with the counsel they needed to manage their wealth wisely and consider their political strategies. And no such advisor worth his salt would counsel them to help me. Nor do I think they know the first thing about actually effecting an escape.

That kind of thing had been the Shadow League’s work.

I run my hands through my hair, pat it back down again. All I can risk asking them — or telling them — is that I need the Shadow League.

Crossing the road, I knock at the gate. A moment later, the gatekeeper opens a small rectangular peephole, his dark eyebrows furrowing beneath a vibrant forest green turban. He says something in the local tongue, eyeing my faded and creased clothing with disdain.

“I require a few words with Lord Degath,” I say coolly in Tradespeak. “Is he in?”

A pause. “Who asks?”

“Hitomi. Of Karolene.”

He waits. After a moment, when it becomes clear that I’ve elaborated all I plan to, he mutters a suggestion that I wait on the bench and slides the cover over the peephole. I settle myself on the stone bench and rehearse possible conversations in my mind until he returns.

“Miss Hitomi,” the gatekeeper says, swinging open a small door built into the larger gate and waving me toward a another green-turbaned man, this one armed. His tunic and
selvar
are pristine, the cloth lacking even the finest wrinkle. Compared to him, I look like I’ve crawled out of the gutter. “This way.”

The carriageway circles around a wide pleasure garden, a tiled fountain at its center. A myriad of flowering bushes line a paved walk that crosses to the fountain and continues to the villa. The house itself is a grand structure, at least three levels, with wide open windows — missing the latticework I remember from Karolene. A central balcony on the second level is built into the building itself, making a floor of the first level’s roof. I scan the building, checking the windows. In one, a figure stands in shadow. A slight movement on the balcony draws my eye. The door stands open, and I could almost swear I saw the swish of robes disappearing within.

It would make sense for the Degaths to bring a mage into their service. And wise of them to be careful of unknown visitors. Especially a visitor claiming to be the girl who they believed died a year ago helping them escape from Blackflame.

The guard leads me through a richly appointed foyer and into an empty sitting room. “His lordship will be with you shortly,” he tells me, and departs at once.

I stand, staring around the room, feeling more at home than I ever did at Stormwind’s. I was comfortable there, and it never occurred to me until this moment that I had not been completely at ease. But this — the stiff rectangular cushions lining the wall, the slightly plumper cushions scattered below them, embroidered in a multitude of colors — this speaks of home in a language deeper than words. I turn slowly, my eyes traveling over the carpets lying two and three deep, the low wooden tables inlaid with brass, the ornate lanterns hanging by long chains from the ceiling.

I don’t remember these things precisely. I suspect I rarely spent time in such rich surroundings, but the comfort of sitting on the floor feels suddenly and completely
right
. I sink onto the carpets, leaning my head back against the wall cushions, and close my eyes. Sandalwood scents the air, faint and yet warm as the sunlight falling through the windows.

I want to go home. And I don’t even know where that it is, or if it exists.

I open my eyes, glare fiercely at my hands on my lap. This isn’t the time to get all mush-brained over echoes of things past. I’m here, with troubles that aren’t going to blow away with the first puff of a breeze. I have a key, a charm, the beginnings of a plan, and half of an idea of a way out. And a fractured memory that affords me this: I’ve never been the best of planners.

I straighten my back, take a few slow, calming breaths. I put all thoughts of the homes I once had and lost behind me, and let myself drift into the resulting lull. The cushions against my back are firm and supportive, the faint brush of magic against my skin — utterly unexpected. I focus on the walls, then the hanging glowstone lanterns, and the faint, pulsing magic beneath the carpets themselves. Magic is woven into the very walls of the room, into every permanent surface, like a series of interconnected spiderwebs, and at the center of each web shines a sigil.

I’m sitting in a trap. I flinch back reflexively, pulling in my senses, and the room remains still around me. But that doesn’t change what I’d glimpsed: sigils of protection and defense surrounding me. This isn’t just any sitting room, it’s the one where the Degaths meet those they’re unsure of, their enemies. It’s the one they invite mages into, because the very protections held by the walls would throw the mages’ spells back on them. It’s brilliant, and absolutely terrifying.

“Hitomi of Karolene.”

My eyes snap to the door. Tarek Degath stands at the entry. I have no idea how long he’s been there. I rise to my feet and offer him a slight bow, the fingers of my right hand touching my heart. “Lord Degath.”

He is head and shoulders taller than I am, still slim and clean-shaven as I remember. He wears the traditional dress of Karolene, his clothes of the formal cut, a long flowing robe, the neckline embroidered with circles and swirls that flow partially down the front, loose-cut pants peeking out from below, and an embroidered cap. The fall of the cloth merely accentuates his elegance.

“We have met,” Tarek says. It isn’t a question, except that his expression tells me he wants an answer.

“A lifetime ago,” I agree. “We were taken prisoner together and I helped you and your sisters escape.”

“But you yourself did not.”

“No. I was given to Kol, as was their agreement.”

Tarek takes a step or two into the room, comes to a stop. He’s still wary of me, ghost that I must seem to him. “We learned as much, but that was all. When the High Council sent their mages to investigate — far too late, but still — they informed us that you must have died.”

I shrug, half-smiling. “Fortunately for me, they were wrong. I escaped, but I lost a great deal: most of my memory, my health. I didn’t remember Karolene for…
.
” I think back. “Months.”

“And yet you remember us?”

“Of all the memories I have, I remember most clearly the events leading up to the spell that took my memory.”

He nods slowly. “Then you remember that I betrayed my family.”

“Y-you?” I stutter.

He looks at me, unblinking.

“No, it was Lady Saira. She and Blackflame spoke — I remember that. It had nothing to do with you.”

He tilts his head, his expression unreadable. “Well, you know that much, but so do Blackflame and his supporters. Why should I not consider you,” he waves one hand to the side, half-dismissing me, “another trick sent by Blackflame, meant to finish the work he began a year ago? Can you give me some reason to trust you now?”

And there’s the crux of the matter. What can I tell him that hasn’t already come out from the stories they told, the petitions they made, the investigation they launched to find me.
To find me.
I stare at him. When Stonefall told me, the truth of it hadn’t registered. The weight of it. The Degaths demanded an investigation, pushed the High Council itself to track down Kol. Of course they wanted to bring him to justice for what he did to Alia, but they had hoped to help me as well.

Now I’ve come back from the dead, and Tarek can’t believe it. Nor do I know how I can convince him. The dead don’t rise.

“You have no reason for me to trust you?” Tarek asks, his voice quiet.

I shake my head. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have come. But someone told me you were here, and I thought you might still have some connection to … my old friends.”

“You need help,” Tarek says abruptly.

I feel suddenly small. As if I came here to use him — which I did. “It’s not help you can give me directly.”

His gaze is as sharp as a diamond blade. “I will not endanger my family.”

“And you don’t trust me. I don’t blame you,” I say, holding up a hand. “It’s that there is someone I need to help, and I don’t know anyone else here. I only arrived two nights ago. There’s a great deal I can do, but I can’t do it all on my own.”