Page 17 of These Divided Shores
Vex swung on her, one hand rigid on the boat’s railing. “She told me what you made her do. The way you used her to be a soldier for your cause. Your ownchild.You’re a monster. How could you live that life and make those decisions for her? Didn’t you see what that did to her? Couldn’t you have been a normal parent? Couldn’t you have made herhappy?”
Edda stood. Nayeli hesitated, hand braced on the deck, and in the dimness of the pilothouse’s single lantern, it looked like she was crying.
Kari’s eyes were glassy too. “I will never forgive myself for what I let Adeluna do. But the life I chose—to fight injustices and pain—Ihadto. I never would have been able to look at her, knowing I had been too afraid to try to make this world better for her. And”—Kari stared at him as if she could see the thoughts bruising his mind—“I suspect your father felt the same.”
Vex flew to his feet and spun to face the calm lake.Shut up. You don’t know a damn thing—you didn’t know him at all—
“I didn’t know him,” Kari said, following him up. “But I read his correspondences with our revolutionaries during the war. I worked with the refugees he sent here. He was passionately in favor of a new world full of promise and peace. Such hope could have only come from a man who was fighting for someone he dearly loved.”
Vex shut his eye.Love.Rodrigu hadn’t loved him. If he had, he would’ve put Paxben above his plan to depose Elazar. He would’ve been careful and not let Elazar find him out.
Vex hated Rodrigu for that. He hated him for dying and leaving him alone in a world of sinners and burnings. For not being on the deck of this boat, right now, in the same way he’d hated Rodrigu every minute since his death. In a way that felt too much like a love so strong it cored out hisinsides and made his tremors feel like they’d kill him then and there.
Vex had been ignoring so much—his father, his real identity, his illness—and now that he’d acknowledged them, they demanded six years’ worth of attention at once.
“You all right, Captain?” Edda asked, her face open and sad with her own lifetime of regret, her pain coming from the moment eight years ago when she’d murdered her husband and had to flee the Mechtlands. Nayeli was silent behind her, echoing Edda’s expression. Their individual wells of regret were what linked the three of them most.
Vex sniffed.Are any of us?
But Kari spoke instead. “What is the plan now?” She rubbed a hand over her face and folded her arms, gathering herself up. As though she hadn’t lost her daughter, her husband, and her country before getting dragged into war plans.
Vex shook his head, incredulous. “How do you do that? Plunge on ahead, no matter what bad stuff has happened. She did it too.”
At the mention of Lu, Kari’s facade rippled. Tears rushed into her eyes, but she held on to her soft smile. “I do it for her. I do it for the people I love.” Her smile slipped. “How have you been getting by all these years? Haven’t you been fighting for anyone?”
The memory of Ben punched through Vex’s thoughts. When Elazar took everything from him, the fact that Benwas alive had comforted him. That one day, he might see his cousin again, and convince Ben not to trust Elazar, and they’d beirmáns, brothers, like they used to be.
That goal had faded the more Vex had to fight just to survive. His goals became smaller, until he fought only for himself, Nayeli, and Edda.
“Who are you fighting for now?” Vex didn’t realize how insensitive a question it was until he asked it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Lu,” Kari answered. Her focus shifted back to the horizon. “I’ll still fight for her, so her death isn’t in vain.”
Vex had never let himself think about that. That his father’s death had been a waste. Nothing had come from his heresy.
Vex’s focus slipped. When he came back, Edda was giving Kari a neutered explanation of the plan they’d come up with to defeat Argrid.
Well, it was Cansu and Fatemah’s plan. Vex’s interests had been narrow: to free Kari, to find Ben. He’d try to focus on the bigger war now, though.
“We have Cansu’s syndicate based out of Port Mesi-Teab,” Edda was saying. “We know the Mecht syndicate is allied with Argrid—they were all over that burning at the castle. The other syndicates, the Emerdians and Grozdans... we aren’t sure where they fall. It doesn’t seem like Argrid’d be able to convince more than one syndicate to join them, so best chance, they’re both viable allies. That’sthe goal, anyway—to get the syndicates united, to create a strong enough force to fight against Argrid. Like you did, during the revolution.”
“Fatemah said she’ll send raiders to Port Camden,” Nayeli explained. She slid up next to Vex. “If the Emerdian syndicate sided with Argrid, the Tuncians will back us up; if Emerdon wants to fight, the Tuncians will help us break into the prison. Either way, we’ll get into that prison, grab our people, and reconvene in Port Mesi-Teab—the sanctuary is hidden from Argrid.”
Kari’s eyebrows rose. “Sanctuary?”
Vex eyed Nayeli, who bit her lips together and shrugged as if to say,What the hell?
“A refuge the Tuncians built for their needy,” she said. “We’ve kept it... secluded.”
Kari’s eyebrows stayed up. She nodded, logging the information.
“How will we know if Cansu’s in the prison?” Edda asked. “Or what if the rumors are wrong, and Argrid is using the building as a garrison, not a jail? We could walk into a trap.”
Vex hadn’t thought of that. God, he’d always been terrible at stuff like this, big-scheme planning. Throw him into a situation, and he could improvise his way out; tell him to get one person out of a jail, and he could coordinate enough to do it. But his father had made him play this awful strategy game when he was younger, one where players hadto map out ten, twenty moves in advance while considering the moves of their opponent and different traps on the board. The memory sent a dull ache into Vex’s neck—and a sharp whimper into his throat.
His father had been so damn good at the game. Vex had never won against him. Elazar’s defensors had still gotten hold of correspondence between Rodrigu and the Grace Lorayan rebels, or found plants Rodrigu had illegally stashed to use against Elazar, or whatever it was that had condemned him, and Vex’s world had crumbled.
What hope did Vex have of coming through this war alive?
