Page 53 of These Divided Shores
But he took off, shoving through the mass of people and vanishing into the sanctuary.
“Teo!” Lu shouted. The crack in her voice, the wobble of tears, made Vex heave forward.
Edda gave Lu a sympathetic look before she jogged after Teo.
Kari beat Vex to Lu. “Give him time. He has been through more than anyone his age should. He needs—”
Lu shook Kari off and turned away.
Vex’s grip on Ben’s arm tightened. To stop a tremor, and to hold himself there, and to make sure Ben was there, too.
“What happened to her?” Tears blurred Vex’s vision, but he looked at Ben and saw the same exhaustion that weighed down Lu’s shoulders. “What happened to you?”
Kari heard him ask, and she hesitated.
Memory passed over Ben’s face like a shadow. Vex almost stopped him—it was too soon, they’d just gotten free—but Ben closed his eyes.
“Elazar tried to get us to make permanent magic for him,” he said. “He had... incentives. Lu’s father. General Ibarra. Beatings.”
Vex thought he might be sick right there, all over the wall of a tenement.
Lu lifted her head to the sky, seemingly unaware of their whispered conversation.
Vex squinted at Ben. “You were out of the cell when we found you. How’d you escape?”
“Lu made the magic that Elazar wanted. She made a permanent magic potion with Powersage and Aerated Blossom.” Ben’s face grayed. “And took it herself. It was how we got out of the cell—she kicked through the door.”
“It didn’t work.”
Kari, Ben, Vex, and Gunnar spun toward Lu. She still had her back to them, but she held up her hand now, examining her palm.
“The potion I made,” she continued, eyes fixed on her skin. “It wasn’t permanent. I might have lengthened the effects, but that’s all.”
She said it with noticeable disappointment.
Vex’s heart cramped. He was scared for Lu, of course, and damn furious at Elazar for putting her in a situation where she’d try to ingest permanent magic—but there was something else. Something that sounded like Rodrigu’s voice in a dim room long ago.
The fire in the hearth of his father’s study had made the whole room sweltering. Paxben had sat in a velvet chair before it nonetheless, his shirt unbuttoned, his buckle shoes discarded, his legs bent underneath him. His father’s steward had ushered in the usual group of Rodrigu’s allies—a comodoro from Elazar’s navy; a conde who owned the richest mines in northern Argrid; a duquesa who funded the poorhouses and hospitals in Deza’s slums; and even a priest from the Grace Ismael, the small cathedral that overlooked Deza’s port.
All people who wanted Rodrigu to serve as regent over the too-young prince and usher in an era of magic tolerance and acceptance.
Rodrigu insisted on Paxben being present for his meetings, hoping he would learn something. But Paxben had to pretend he was a spy to pay attention, hiding in the shadows. He still remembered stupid details—the duquesa always wore her hair in a jeweled redecilla, a hairnet with gaudy rubies the size of acorns; the priest was shifty and stood closest to the door, as though he might sprint out at the first startling noise.
Rodrigu was sitting behind his desk, asking after the war on Grace Loray, when the comodoro rose from his chair.
“We’re here to see if you’ve reconsidered,” the comodoro had said.
Rodrigu sighed to the papers spread before him. “You’re asking me to carry on with one of my brother’s goals—everything he touches is steeped in madness, which is why we have formed this resistance at all. My answer is as it has always been—no. I will not continue Elazar’s experiments with permanent magic.”
The comodoro looked at the duquesa, who gaped, horrified.
“You still say no?” Tears choked the duquesa’s words. “You spend too much time in your gilded mansion. You do not walk the streets, watching people shrivel away, cast out after Elazar finishes using them as his playthings. You would deny them healing?”
“The experiments to make permanent magic have caused Shaking Sickness,” Rodrigu had said. “The cure cannot lie inmorepermanent magic. You are asking me to create a deadly weapon in the faint hope that it could save lives—where is the wisdom in that?”
A desire to bring understanding and magic to Argrid had united Rodrigu’s group, where the Church wanted to keep everyone in fear. But some of Rodrigu’s conspiratorshad wanted him to take up Elazar’s quest of making the effects of Grace Loray’s plants permanent, even after they overthrew the king.
Rodrigu had been adamant.“It’s a deadly weapon,”he had said any time the others pressed him. They would make magic legal for everyone to use, but he would not stretch its powers to dangerous limits. That had been the cause of dozens of late-night arguments that Vex had eavesdropped on, up until Elazar found out about the resistance and killed them.
