Page 62 of These Divided Shores
She didn’t intend to run, but her body forced her into a sprint when Kari shouted her name, the sounds soaked in tears.
15
THE ROOM EMPTIED,leaving Ben alone with Fatemah, Edda, Vex, and Gunnar.
Ben weighed the path he had chosen. He could have sided with Lu and worked to give dangerous magic to criminals. Instead, he had stayed in this room with those who would still plot the assassination of his father, but without waiting for a war-changing weapon.
When this war was won, when the mantle of Argrid’s rule passed to him, he would spend the rest of his life working to make up for the atrocities he was about to assist.
Paxben—Vex—took one hobbling step forward. His focus was on the door, the path Lu had taken. Kari could be heard shouting Lu’s name.
Ben put his hand on Vex’s forearm.
Vex gave a weak smile. “I’ll come back.” He saw Fatemahand his shoulders drooped. “Or—I don’t have to go—”
“Yes, you do.” Ben pushed him a little. “Go find Lu. I handled Argridian court politics; I can handle raiders.”
Fatemah dropped into her now-vacant desk chair. For a moment, her attention was elsewhere as she shuffled through one of the bottom drawers.
Vex’s smile turned real, bright and invigorating like the Paxben from Ben’s memories. “Court politics. I haven’t thought of that drama in years. Do the nobles still try to outdo each other at that festival? Damn, which one was it—the one with all that awful-smelling garland?”
Ben grinned. Vex meant the Día de Dar, the holiday of Grace Neus, the Grace who had been sainted for embodying the Pious God’s pillar of altruism. Every year, the Church held a festival where nobles set up booths throughout the city, giving away food and drink and clothes, anything the poor might need. Pungent garlands of oleander, orange, and lavender decorated each booth, a sad attempt by the nobles to combat the body odor of so many people.
The nobles had turned the holiday into a contest. They all wanted to give away the most, the best, the grandest.
“Yes,” Ben said. “A duque gave away his mansion last year.”
Vex snorted.
“My father put him up in an apartment to keep the man from being impoverished himself.”
Vex’s snorts sharpened. Ben laughed too, swept away by an image from the recesses of his mind: laughing like this with Paxben, the memory blurry and weakened by time.
Edda cleared her throat. Gunnar looked past them.
Fatemah was watching them.
“Are our attempts to save lives from your king humorous to you?” she snapped.
The blood drained from Ben’s face. He’d been talking with Vex in Argridian. It had been so natural, to speak to his cousin in their language again.
Vex winced. “Sorry, Fatemah.”
But Ben pushed him toward the door. Vex needed to find Lu. He needed to mend whatever he could while there was still hope to fix them.
Ben’s eyes went to Fatemah as Vex and Edda left.
“Fatemah,” he beseeched her. “I don’t mean to—”
“I speak Argridian.” Fatemah looked back down at the paper she had removed from her desk. “Do not think you can plot secretly.”
Ben’s body went cold. She had understood what he had said to Vex. But they had spoken only of Argridian traditions. They hadn’t called each othercousin, nothing that would incriminate Vex as someone to hate as much as the raiders hated Ben.
“I wasn’t—” Ben caught himself. No excuses. He didn’t want to appear insolent. “I—”
Kari slid back into the room. Her posture was defeatednow, exhaustion darkening her face and a few strands of thick black hair breaking free of her bun. She scratched her forehead, eyes closing, gathering herself.
“That is the compromise, then,” she started, eyes still shut. “If we locate Elazar first, the Emerdian and Grozdan syndicates will join us in assassinating him. But if they create permanent magic first, we must join with them in attacking Elazar’s army enhanced with magic.”
