“I’m sure they did.” Garran exchanged glances with Larkin. Larkin knew what he was thinking. As soon as Nolaa Farm was repaired, Melay would assign another batch of Empaths to tend the land, as if they were nothing but bodies. None of Larkin’s family had been reassigned yet, but the strands of luck she clung to were shredding beneath her fingers.
Garran put his hand on Larkin’s shoulder, and she knew he sensed her fury.
Anger changed nothing. Not in this damned gilded city.
The chamber widened. Adina was jostled into another line. Larkin and Garran only had time for a quick farewell before they found their own line to the smelter. She reeled from Adina’s story.
Nolaa Farm may have looked like it had been destroyed by a storm, but Larkin knew better. She’d heard about destruction magic of that scale once, several years ago—rumors of a young boy who destroyed an entire village in the foothills. Melay had the boy executed.
If the same thing was happening again, then perhaps an Empath was to blame. But destruction magic wouldn’t explain the missing harvesters.
“You think it’s magic,” Garran said. It wasn’t a question.
“I don’t want to think it’s magic,” she replied, ignoring the churning in her stomach that told her otherwise.
The cavernous mouth of the mine echoed with the conversations of hundreds of miners. Larkin sensed the usual bubble of anxiety. They were nervous to see how many marks they would be taking home.
She pressed a hand to her belly as it flipped. No, not anxiety. Confusion. Both roiled through her gut, but the confusion made her nauseous.
“Where are the guards?” Garran asked.
The smelters’ tables were always accompanied by a handful of city guards, but Larkin didn’t spot any today. Normally, she would be grateful for their absence—she hated the way their eyes followed her particularly close—but now it was troubling.
“I’m surprised a riot hasn’t broken out,” said Garran.
“Don’t give anyone ideas,” Larkin muttered. When there were riots, Melay’s soldiers converged at the capital and Empaths died. The last was a year ago, the memory still fresh and raw, the haunting stench of blood still potent.
Plus, she had no interest in rioting against the smelters. It was the guards who knocked the hilt of their swords against her head when she wasn’t walking fast enough, the guards who visited Empath homes to reassign mothers or fathers or children to the farms, tearing families apart with glee. Fantasies ran rampant in her head of what she wanted to do to them—what she could do to them—with the magic she possessed.
They approached the smelter’s table, and Garran dropped their bucket on the scale. A small man with sizable spectacles glanced inside, raising thick eyebrows. He made some charcoal scratches in his ledger. From his coin purse, he counted out twenty-four marks and placed them in Larkin’s cupped hands.
Larkin clenched her soiled fingers around the coins until her fingernails bit into her palms.
“I’m short,” she said.
The smelter shrugged and shooed her along with a wave of his hand.
Larkin’s pulse beat in her ears. She ached to siphon Garran’s disappointment. She needed to break something. Maybe the smelter’s spectacles.
Garran muttered a thanks to the smelter, shoving Larkin away and up the steps to the mine entrance.
Larkin took a few deep breaths of the dusty air. It’s not his fault, she chanted until the beat of her heart slowed. Smelters had no control over the wages. Only Queen Melay did.
“Tomorrow she could drop the price of ore to a quarter-mark an ounce,” Larkin said. “The mines would be filled with starved corpses because all of us would have to work until we keeled over—”
“Stop.”
Larkin turned to Garran, flustered.
He was smiling. “What’s in your hand?”
“Twenty-four marks, Garran. You were standing right there.”
“Exactly.” He gripped her shoulders. “Flour, meat, salt, oil … All of that will be fifteen marks at most. That’s nine left over.”
“Nine marks left over for what?” His giddiness, as weightless as it was, also annoyed all hells out of her.
He laughed at her. “Don’t play daft. For your birthday, or did you forget already?”
She didn’t forget. Seventeen felt old. Trees had rings, and she had another layer of soot on her olive skin, now sallow from days spent in darkness. Another hot coil of rage tightening around her heart. Was this what older meant—the same, but filthier and angrier?
She should save any leftover marks. That was the responsible thing to do. But Garran was right. She deserved something nice, and so did he. Vania, her mother, her father. These marks were for them.
Larkin funneled the coins into the purse on her belt. “I guess this could only mean one thing.”
Garran followed her up the steps to the entrance, satisfied. “Cake.”
TWO
The late sun clung to the sky like an overripe fruit. Soot from nearby smelteries curled up from limestone bricks and disappeared into the bath of light, and as Larkin emerged from the mine, her eyes watered.
It was her favorite time of the year: early summer. The dry city smelled of baked stone and pine. The sun’s warmth soaked her face as she lifted her chin. When her eyes adjusted to the still-bright evening, she saw a boy her age watching her from across the cobblestone path.
Larkin stalled. She’d seen him before; the capital was small enough that she recognized most faces, and he had a carefree one that matched the contentment Larkin sensed in him. He was much taller than she was, with bronze skin and eyes like smoked quartz, and he smiled at her like he knew her. Larkin felt herself smile back, her cheeks flushing.
“Ilona’s blessings!” he said. “Will I see you at the temple this afternoon?”
She froze. Turning on her heel, she grabbed Garran’s arm. “Walk.” They sped away from the boy, who still beckoned them toward the Temple of Light.
“Aren’t you going to say hello?” Garran teased.
“Sure, and then I’ll tell him to shove his goddess’s blessings up his—”
“Really, Larkin. He was only being polite.”
“Just like how the goddess Ilona wanted to politely smite our kind?”
“He’s an Empath, too,” argued Garran as they melted into the crowd’s current. “Clearly a miner. Did you see his clothes?”
“Then he’s a stupid Empath if he believes in the goddess.” All of the pretty ones are stupid, she thought. If Queen Ilona, the first in the dynasty, truly had been immortalized, surely she made the stupid ones pretty to spite Larkin.
It didn’t matter anyway. There was no time to be distracted by pretty Empaths. She had the market to visit and supper to help with.
“You were so captivated for a moment.” Garran elbowed her.
She pushed him away, rubbing at her side. “Don’t make me cuff you in luminite.”
Larkin ignored Garran’s smugness as they hiked past mine entrances. Workers poured from them and made their way up the mountain toward the market district.
Demura’s capital was etched into the mountain, every shop and building fashioned from granite. Queen Melay’s palace was built into the very peak, sculpted towers frosted with luminite balconies. The apex of the entire capital. The rest of the city coated the mountain like snow: the city gates and the gilded Temple of Light below to the east, the mining district down the north slope, and the canyon—her home—slicing through the mountain’s base to the west. Everything glistened with luminite, as though ready to melt and collect in the central canal that ran down the face of the alp, drainage and dust and sparkling minerals.