Tali

  I suppose needing urgent medical attention might be quicker than asking strangers how to find Morton Street, but I don’t plan to do it that way again.

  Waking up on an unfamiliar couch in an unfamiliar sitting room with strangers watching over me was not my favorite experience. Waking up with a pounding headache and my stomach aching with hunger was even less so.

  I’m not thinking about any of that now, though. Right now I’m just desperately hoping my hours of unconsciousness haven’t cost Xan her life. It’s all I can do, with that thought accosting me every minute or two, to keep down the broth Magda fed me even though she insisted I take only small sips.

  Once I got my wits about me, I managed to communicate the urgency of the situation to the old woman who had apparently taken me in. She recognized Xan’s name and her eyes filled with alarm.

  Now I’m riding behind her on an older model glider, my arms wrapped around her waist for support, and Leon is driving another. I’m not entirely clear on the old woman’s relationship to the boy, but as long as he’s helping I don’t much care who he is.

  The gliders look like they might fall apart if someone were to jostle them, but they move faster and far more smoothly than mine ever did.

  I’m worried we won’t find Xan at all, considering my vague descriptions of where I left her and how I came to the Citadel, but Magda nods when I tell her about the mountain with the smooth side and steers with relative confidence, keeping the mountains on our right. When we find my abandoned glider I start to feel a glimmer of hope.

  She asks me questions as we go: what I am doing with Xan, what happened to her, how I made it to the Citadel and why. Answering them helps me keep the panic at bay, so I’m happy to talk. Before long, she knows a good bit of the story.

  We reach Xan and Lucas before sunrise, validating the old woman’s supernatural sense of direction. Maybe she went to mercenary school too. Or maybe in my exhaustion I took a longer route to the Citadel than necessary.

  When the glider stops, I tumble off of it and run to where Lucas sits beside Xan, looking haggard and scared. He leaps up to meet me.

  “Is she alive?” I demand by way of greeting.

  “Unfortunately,” says Xan weakly from her position on the ground.

  Magda, for all her apparent age, moves nearly as fast as I do. In half a moment, she’s kneeling next to Xan, frowning in concentration as she runs her hands over the mercenary’s head and face, then moves down to her throat before stopping at her chest, near but not directly over the wound.

  I watch, barely daring to breathe. Xan is lying on her side, the remains of her shirt now strapped over her chest like a bandolier, holding a blood-soaked wad of fabric in place over the hole.

  For a long time, Magda says nothing. I have to bite my tongue hard to stop myself from asking if she’s going to be okay. I realize Lucas is clinging to my hand and we’re both squeezing hard enough to cause pain—as if we might influence the outcome by crushing one another’s finger bones.

  “Leon, bring my bag please,” Magda says eventually, without looking up from her patient. She carefully removes the improvised bandage and replaces it with a small square bandage that seals itself to Xan’s skin.

  “Did you do this?” Magda asks, looking up at last to gesture with the bloodied shirt-bandage to Lucas.

  Against all odds, he somehow goes even paler. He swallows, then nods.

  Magda nods back, approving. I feel Lucas relax by about a millimeter. “What’s this that you used to seal it?” she asks.

  Lucas points to a small heap of disassembled leather near where he was sitting when we “There’s a sort of adhesive that’s used in cheap boots. I scraped it off and stuck it to the fabric.”

  For the first time I realize he's barefoot.

  Magda looks impressed. I gape at Lucas, and some of the color returns to his cheeks.

  “Stung like fuck, in case anyone is interested,” Xan adds.

  I find the comment encouraging. “Glad you’re still with us, Xan.”

  “That’s still undecided,” Magda says. “We need to get her back to town but I need to do some work on her before she’s stable enough to travel.”

  “Work?”

  “You three can go back to the house. I’ll meet you there when I can.”

  In unison, we ignore this suggestion. For the next few hours we sit in a silent semi-circle, a bedraggled coven watching Magda silently do… whatever she’s doing. Mostly it’s just moving her hands gently over Xan’s skin, her eyes closed in deep concentration.

  Once in Nokon City I saw a sign in a shop window advertising something called an energy healing wrap. What Magda is doing now looks a bit like I imagined that would look. Except that was bullshit, and this seems to be actually doing something.

  As we watch, Xan’s labored breathing begins to even out. Her fists, clenched in front of her, uncurl and her body begins to relax. I feel as if I can see the heat leaving her body and I wonder whether I’m just imagining the change I am hoping to see.

  After what feels like a long time, and also no time at all, Magda opens her eyes and her hands still.

  “Help her onto the glider,” she tells Leon. Xan sits up and Leon ducks under her arm to support her as she stands. Magda hovers over the two as they limp to the nearest glider, then climbs on so Xan can sit behind her and lean against her back.

  “You three take the other one,” she tells us, and then she’s off.

  “You’re driving,” I say to Leon and he doesn’t argue.

  “Where did you learn to do that adhesive thing?” Leon asks Lucas as we clamber into the saddle.

  “Mercenary Home School,” Lucas says.

  The trip back to Morton Street feels about twice as long as the trip out. I don’t know if that’s because we’re actually going slower for Xan’s sake, or because now that the panic has subsided, I have room to feel my own exhaustion. It’s probably a little of both.

  By the time we get back to Magda’s house, I can barely walk straight.

  “You look like shit,” Lucas observes in a friendly tone.

  “Oh yeah? You’re not looking so great yourself.”

  He grins. “You look like a light breeze would knock you into your grave.”

  “You look like a Pall ridden gutter rat,” I fire back.

  “You look like…” before he can finish, Magda interrupts us.

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  “It’s a small house and it’s going to be a tight fit,” she says. “You two will share the spare room. Xan can have my bed, and I’ll take the sofa.” She turns to Leon, “you’ll have to go home. I don’t have room for you.”

  Leon nods, understanding but still looking slightly crestfallen.

  “You can stay for dinner though,” Magda tells him. “And I owe you for today. I’ll make it good.”

  Turning back to me and Lucas she points down the hall. “It’s the room on the left. Just next to it at the end of the hall, you’ll find the bathroom and you can shower there. The water isn’t hot but it’s not cold either.”

  “As long as it’s wet, I’m happy,” Lucas says and despite the lightness of the words, I hear the sincerity in them.

  “I don’t have any clothes that will fit either of you, so you’ll have to make do with what you have.” She says it matter-of-factly, stating but not apologizing. “When you’re ready, come out for dinner.”

  Lucas and I take turns showering. I let him go first, not because I’m trying to be nice but because I don’t want to rush on my turn.

  The shower water is lukewarm with a slight brownish tint, and quite possibly the best thing that’s ever existed. Better than Cabe’s Falls. Better than the Talavar. I let it run over my sunburned face and through my hair until it runs clear. And if I cry just a little, well… I’ve earned it.

  Stepping into the filthy linen trousers and tunic that was my makeshift prison garb in Sunward is decidedly unpleasant, but I do it eagerly. The scent of food wafting down the hall is causing my still mostly empty stomach to clench painfully.

  Dinner is chicken, tender and shredded over rice cooked in saffron broth with peas and bits of onion mixed in. I force myself to eat slowly, conscious of my delicate stomach. Magda, Leon, and Lucas drink beer but she insists it’s water only for me. I don’t mind. My body is craving water.

  Leon, being the youngest and least wrecked of us, tidies the kitchen and the rest of us head to bed. Lucas and I have spent enough nights sleeping back to back on the road by now that neither of us feel the need to have an awkward conversation about who gets the bed and who gets the floor. We both get the bed. We crawl into it, both too exhausted to care about the other’s existence. I pull the blankets over myself and I’m asleep within seconds.

  I wake to the smell of coffee and the sound of voices. Lucas is gone, so I have room to stretch luxuriously.

  The muscles in my legs are sore from my desperate trek to the Citadel, but whatever Magda did to me must have worked because I feel better than I should. Or maybe that’s just the mundane magic of a meal and a good night’s sleep.

  I’m considering joining the others in the kitchen, when something about the timbre of their voices catches my attention.

  They’re speaking in low tones, presumably to avoid waking me, or Xan, or both. But there’s a tension to the cadence that suggests an intense argument.

  What would Lucas and Magda be arguing about?

  I throw off the covers and swing my legs over the side of the bed. At the same moment, the voices pause. There’s a shuffling like a chair being pushed back from the table, and I hear Lucas’s by now familiar tread in the hall.

  When he opens the door, his expression is a mix of trepidation and apology that I cannot parse.

  “Don’t freak out,” he says, causing a stone to form in my gut just as it has in the gut of everyone to whom those words have been spoken throughout history.

  “About what?”

  He glances over his shoulder before answering. His tone is that of a prisoner resigning himself to an unpleasant fate.

  “Nev is here.”

  Nevalya

  Nev is no more pleased than Tali is by the unexpected reunion. Magda’s house is, after all, a place of refuge for her and has been since Halim’s death. It feels like an invasion when an outraged Tali, clad in what appear to be dirty pajamas and with sleep-ruffled hair sticking out at all angles from her face, marches into the kitchen to confront her.

  That the younger woman feels entitled to be outraged by Nev’s presence in a house she entered for the first time yesterday is just so like her.

  “What is she doing here?” Tali demands, pointing a shaking finger at Nev. The words are a direct echo of Nev’s own query from an hour ago, but now she favors Tali with a serene smile. She’ll be damned if she’s going to let the other woman see how shaken she is.

  “Would you like some coffee?” Magda asks her.

  Nev almost laughs out loud at the battle on Tali’s face between her need to demand answers and her evident need for coffee.

  “It’s really good coffee,” she says helpfully, ignoring the pleading ‘that’s not helpful’ look from Lucas. Tali’s outrage and bafflement increase in equal measure and the coffee loses the battle.

  “This is all her fault!” Tali exclaims, looking in Nev’s opinion more and more like a petulant child tattling on a sibling. “She set me up…”

  “Yes, yes,” Magda waves a dismissive hand. “You can thank her later. The important thing is that she’s here as my guest and so are you, so you can have some coffee and eggs, or you can go back to bed until you’re ready to join us.”

  Tali’s head snaps back slightly as if the old woman had slapped her. Nev makes no effort to suppress a smirk as Tali engages in a second battle with herself in as many minutes. Tali has a right to be angry. Nev knows that. But she did what she had to do and she can’t start apologizing for it now. Not when there’s still so much left that needs doing.

  “It’s okay Tal,” Lucas says, placing a steadying hand on her arm.

  Well that’s interesting.

  “You need to eat. We can talk afterward.”

  Tali casts a scathing look at him and for a moment Nev thinks she might slap him. Instead, she turns on her heel and marches back down the hall, slamming the bedroom door behind her.

  Nev shrugs innocently at Magda, who scowls back at her. The look of annoyance is for Lucas’s sake. Nev knows the old woman well enough to recognize the mirth behind it.

  “You two have gotten awfully cozy,” she says, turning to Lucas.

  “Why antagonize her for no reason?” he demands.

  “I’m not the one who charged out here demanding to know why anyone else was allowed in the house.”

  His incredulous expression says he finds this argument less than compelling.

  “I wonder why she was upset. It’s not as if you completely fucked up her life and she’s been dragged around Salus for months, been imprisoned, and nearly drowned, and attacked by weird antler people as a result.”

  Nev arches her eyebrows in indignation but mentally makes a note to ask about the antler-people thing later. That sounds interesting. “Excuse me? I fucked up her life? You played a pretty pivotal role there, friend. Or did she bat her eyelashes at you and you forgot?”

  He flinches—that one hit—but stands his ground. “At least I’ve tried to make it up to her. It’s one thing to treat her like collateral damage in your personal revenge mission or whatever it is but you don’t have to cogging taunt her about it too.”

  Nev shrugs, pretending Lucas’s obvious change in allegiance doesn’t sting. He was her first friend on the Talavar and the first person since Magda that she trusted with even part of the truth. She left the most crucial details out—the Custodian and the lies about the Siphoning—but she told him enough. She confided in him about Halim, about who she had been before meeting Magda (or at least who she had been pretending to be out of necessity), and that Charlie’s role on the Committee made him complicit by default, in her opinion, in Halim’s death.

  She had trusted Lucas with a glimpse of the real her, and he had helped her. Now she wonders if he ever cared about her or if he just saw a chance to ingratiate himself with a pretty girl before switching his attentions to an easier target.

  She sips her coffee, wearing nonchalance like armor and saying nothing. Magda leans against the counter watching them both with apparent amusement.

  “I’ll go talk to her,” Lucas says after a pause. He walks toward the hall but turns back to say, “If I can get her back out here, can you please tone it down just a little?”

  Nev’s smile is tight; noncommittal. Lucas sighs and turns away again.

  “Did you enjoy that?” Magda asks when he’s gone.

  “Of course not.” Nev crosses her arms across her chest and leans back in her chair. “So are you going to tell me why exactly they are here?”

  “Same as anyone. Needed medical help.”

  Nev tilts her head. “They look fine to me.”

  “Because they got medical help. The first one—Tali—turned up on my doorstep already unconscious.”

  Nev arches her eyebrows. Bypassing the ‘already unconscious’ part, she asks, “The first one?”

  “Yeah, the other one is the mercenary traveling with them. She’s one of my regulars.”

  “They have a mercenary?”

  “Yes,” croaks a voice from the doorway and a red-haired, tattooed, topless woman who has clearly had better days stumbles into the kitchen. “And she’s hungry. And cranky. And her head hurts.”

  Nev examines her with frank curiosity. She’s wearing the same soft linen trousers that Tali and Lucas were wearing, and nothing else. A bandage over her left breast speaks of a harrowingly narrow miss.

  “Did you all join a cult that was run from a pajama factory?”

  The woman snorts and sits at the table where Magda brings her a mug of coffee and a plate of hot, egg-like food.

  “Yeah, kind of,” she says, and takes a bite of her breakfast. There’s no hostility or suspicion in her voice. She seems downright amiable for someone who just declared themselves to be in a bad mood. Nev likes her immediately.

  “I’m Nev,” she says. “Also one of Magda’s regulars.”

  The woman’s eyes flick up at Nev’s name, a spark of curiosity in them.

  “Nev as in Nevalya? From the train?”

  Of course. She’s traveling with Tali, she’s probably heard all about the evil, black-hearted Nevalya.

  Nev performs a mock bow, or the closest to one she can come from a seated position.

  To her surprise the other woman laughs. “Well shit. I guess that explains all the door slamming.”

  “What can I say? I leave an impression.”

  Magda sits down at last, bringing the carafe with her to top off everyone’s coffee.

  “You feeling better Xan?” she asks.

  “I’m upright aren’t I? Mostly. Thanks for that by the way.”

  “It wasn’t free.”

  Xan grins. “It never is. What’ll it be?”

  “Well,” Magda says, looking back and forth between the two women. Nev already doesn’t like where this is going. “Now that it’s just us grown-ups, I think you two can help each other.”