Page 55 of These Divided Shores
Whatever the reason, the fight in front of them was between Tuncians, Emerdians, and the final and farthest removed of all the raider syndicates: the Grozdans.
On the Mainland, Grozda sat in the southeast, an inhospitable country of half mountains, half coastline. The sheer bleakness of Grozda’s terrain had created a people of relentless courage, with their leader—called the Gloria—determined by trials of physical prowess every few years. Grozda was small but packed with warrior-citizens who sold themselves to anyone with enough coin. They were aggressive, fearless mercenaries.
And their counterpart syndicate on Grace Loray embodied that.
Vex’s heart dropped into his stomach. He knew the plan was to unite the raider syndicates to push back against Elazar—but he hadn’t thought past finding Ben. He needed to get better at big-picture planning so he could be more prepared for situations like this.
The girl he’d seen in the brawl, the one with the gold stud in her earlobe, leaped up onto what might’ve once been a market stall. She bellowed a phrase in Grozdan that meantglory in the attack—god, she still shouted that?—before kneeing a raider in the face.
Rosalia Rustici.
A dozen different memories flooded Vex, a wave of dread tinged with disgust.
He disliked the syndicates for various reasons. The Tuncians treated Nayeli like shit; the Emerdians put more value onthingsthan on the people they were supposed to protect; the Mechts were mostly high on Narcotium Creeper—and had sided with Argrid, of course. But the mission prison on Grace Loray where Elazar’s cronies had tossed Vex six years ago had been in the northeastern part of the island—smack in Grozdan syndicate territory.
When monxes had labeled Vex redeemed, branded him, and released him into the jungle, they’d freed Edda with him, and she’d taken pity on him. The two of them hid out together in various ramshackle towns until the war ended. In an alley near New Deza, Mecht raiders had outnumbered a fifteen-year-old runaway who’d tried to rob them—Vex and Edda had saved Nayeli, and the three of them became something like a family.
When they ended up back in Grozdan territory, it’d seemed like fate. They weren’t in Tuncian territory, so no tension with Nayeli; they weren’t in Mecht territory, so no tension with Edda, who’d left the Mechtlands to get away from her countrymen.
Sixteen-year-old Vex had told himself he wanted to join the Grozdan syndicate because he had fond memories ofhis first experience with Grace Loray outside the mission-prison.
Sixteen-year-old Vex had been a love-struck dumbass.
Someone fired a pistol into the air, silencing the area. Raiders froze mid punch; others dropped to the ground, instinctively ducking.
Fatemah stood in the center of the square, the smoking pistol in her hand. “You come to my sanctuary,” she said, not quite shouting, but not speaking softly in any way, “and you force me tofire a weaponwhen we are trying to stay hidden. Youruinmy home”—she gestured at the disaster of the fight—“and you take resources away from Tuncians who need it! Get out! Get out of my sanctuary! Get—”
“You aren’t the Head here, Fatemah!”
Vex went rigid. Rosalia leaped off the stall and shoved her way through the raiders.
“Cansu sent for me. She promised she’d make it worth my time.” Rosalia turned to the crowd. “Come out, Cansu! Make Port Mesi-Teab worthwhile!”
Uproarious laughter came from the Grozdan raiders. Vex frowned.
“She’s talking like she’s the Head,” he whispered to Nayeli.
But Nayeli looked at Vex, desperation in her eyes. “Cansu sent for the Grozdans. She must’ve done it before we left to get Kari from New Deza. Gods, Vex, Cansu wants to unify—she wants this—”
Nayeli put a hand over her mouth and spun away. Vex wanted to go after her—of course Cansu would come to her senses about everything she and Nayeli had disagreed over after Cansu had beencaptured—but his legs were still unsteady.
Nayeli’s movement away from the crowd drew some attention. Fatemah, Kari next to her, Lu—and Rosalia.
Rosalia hooked her eyes on Vex and beamed, all flashing teeth and sharp blue eyes and a deepness to her tan skin that was less blush, more intensity. Even when Vex had been, as Edda had said,smittenwith Rosalia, her smile had seemed possessive. Cruel, almost.
“Cansu is not here,” Fatemah snapped. Rosalia held Vex’s gaze for another second, two, three, before she faced Fatemah. “I am acting Head in her absence. And I am telling you to go.”
“If they are Grozdan representatives,” Kari tried, “we need them. We have to unifyall—”
“Likehellam I going to ally with the Grozdans!”
The shout—scream, more like—came from Nate, who barged out of the crowd, straightening his curved leather hat. Pierce ran alongside him, his hair ripped free from its ordinarily pristine braid and flailing around him in a white-blond flurry.
“You knew the plan in accompanying us here, Head Blaise,” Kari said.
“We didn’t have a whole helluva lot of choices. Stay inPort Camden and get slaughtered by Elazar, or run with you. But if you want the Emerdian syndicate’s help now to push out Argrid, you’re gonna have to get rid of these brainless mountain hermits.”
The only mountains on Grace Loray were volcanic peaks far north—Nate meant the mountains in actual Grozda. It was another slur.
