Page 113 of These Divided Shores
Most of the refugees had left by now, retreating to homes and buildings across the city, or maybe out onto the island to take their chances in another town. The rest of Port Mesi-Teab still spewed hatred whenever raiders emerged from the sanctuary, blaming the raiders for the attack and the lives lost.
Vex hated them. But he remembered that Rosalia and Nate hated them, too, and being similar to those two made him ignore his own anger.
Raiders had cleared the rubble and debris out of the sanctuary’s largest square. A pile of scraps filled the middle: pieces of canvas, blankets, torn-up sacks, all things that had covered the dead until their bodies had been moved to aboat, to be taken out for a sea burial.
Vex stood at the edge of the circle. People pressed in from the side streets; some sat on top of buildings. He spotted Rosalia across from him on the feeble-looking planks of a hut’s roof. Emerdian raiders surrounded Nate and Pierce. To Vex’s right, Kari folded her arms over her torso, orange lantern light wreathing her in flame and shadow. Lu wasn’t here—Vex had seen her slip into a hut somewhere behind him, and honestly, he’d almost not come to this, too.
Nayeli was not far from Vex, standing with a group of Tuncian raiders. He wanted to go to her. They’d lost Edda and Fatemah. They needed to—he didn’t know. Mourn together? Something. But seeing her with the Tuncian raiders...
Vex didn’t move. She was where she needed to be—even if it felt like he’d lost her, too.
A wash of heat came seconds ahead of Gunnar, who shouldered his way in next to Vex with Ben.
The lanterns made the cloths look like they were breathing in the undulating light.
“Your friend,” Gunnar whispered, “Edda? I am sorry you lost her. She was good-hearted.”
Vex smiled a sad smile that shot tears into his eye. “Did you meet her? She left the Mechtlands because she... um... disagreed with the whole Eye of the Sun thing.”
Gunnar gave a half smile. “Yes, I met her.”
Ben frowned down at his boots, hands in his pockets.He didn’t react to this exchange or look up at the gathered crowd. Was he praying? Towhom?
They fell silent. Everyone around the square wavered in that place of grief, whispering to each other, going quiet, sniffing back tears. This vigil was a chance to mourn. Kari had said it would be cathartic. But the longer Vex stood there, his eye shifting from person to sobbing person, the more his chest filled with a crushing weight. They were just supposed to stand here, wallowing in what they’d lost? God, this was miserable—
On the roof across from him, Rosalia started to chant.
She leaned forward, hands to her chest, belting words in Grozdan that Vex could only describe as lamenting.It sounded a lot like Grozdan war cries—he’d heard enough of those from his time with her—but there was a desperate twist to her wails, and the words he caught were things about the afterlife and being heralded and glorious, glorious, over and over.
Her incantation ended, and silence reigned long enough for Vex to manage a breath.
One of Nate and Pierce’s raiders started to speak. Vex didn’t know Emerdian well enough to translate anything, but he caught the wordsPious Godand knew it was a prayer.
As the raider belted out words every bit as mournful as Rosalia’s, a Tuncian raider started to thump softly on an overturned crate.
Vex had heard that before—here, actually. A Tuncianfuneral rite—drums to alert the gods to a soul’s departure from earth.
The crowd stood frozen, caught in the lingering wails of the Grozdan funeral chant, the continuing Emerdian prayer and Tuncian drumbeats—
Gunnar pushed ahead of Vex and Ben. He took one step outside the circle, lifted his hands, and shot a stream of fire at the pile of rags. It caught, a small smoldering flame at the very top that stayed just there, neither raging nor dying. Gunnar must have been controlling it.
Vex heard gasps of grief. The crushing weight in his chest became unbearable, and with every pounding beat from the Tuncian drummer—growing stronger now, the raider losing himself in the thudding rhythm—Vex fumbled to think. All he could see was a small, cold cell on a ship leaving Deza, and a little boy curled in the corner, the wound throbbing where his eye had been. The ship had rocked and he’d been sick in the waste bucket, but he’d whispered a song to himself. A song he’d heard at Argridian funerals over the years, a hymn he’d always hated for how it made him cry.
He didn’t like crying. He didn’t like thinking about death. But he’d sung that song in the ship’s cell, choking on the stench of bile and salt, because he knew no one would sing it for his father—and no one would sing it for him.
“Look to the depths,” Vex started under his breath now, his eye closing. “Look to the sky. Look—” He faltered. “Look to the—”
A hand slipped into his. He gripped it, grounding himself here, with Ben.
Grozda had been represented. Emerdon. Tuncay. The Mechtlands.
“Look to the Graces,” Ben picked up, “humble and high.”
The people here probably hated them for it. Vex didn’t know if the Tuncian drummer meant to drown them out. But Ben kept singing, and Vex linked his voice with his cousin’s, the two of them pushing louder, louder.
“Find me in the sun,” they sang. “Find me in the shade. This end, this triumph, this final gain—”
Edda would’ve been proud of him. To stand there, in front of the raiders of Grace Loray, and belt out an Argridian piece of his soul.
