Hiren, on the other hand, slides smoothly from his chair and walks toward us. He winks at Riya, a reminder that he got to sit in this meeting and she didn’t, even with her promotion.
“Lady Adraa,” he says as he walks past, his black cloak, a tad too long for him, dusting the ground.
I nod in indication that he should hurry it up, but he stops instead with a grin. “You’ve got some dirt on your forehead, you know.” He reaches out a hand.
I push his shoulder and he chuckles. Hiren may be older than I am, but he still acts like a child. I don’t know why Prisha respects him so much.
“Move it, Hiren,” Riya says.
He gives a little salute, and I think I catch another wink before he disappears.
I sit a few chairs away from Father. Don’t really know why; feels more official this way, I guess. He eyes Riya as she sits beside me.
“She stays,” I tell him.
“All right, what is the dusk-level emergency?” he asks.
“Basu is in the Dome.”
Father’s eyebrows knit together. “Go on, you’ve learned how to hook my attention.”
* * *
On the way in, this felt like such a long story because of its heaviness, but after a few sentences, with some details omitted, I’m done.
“As a future maharani, what would you do next?” Father asks. Gods, everything, even life falling to pieces, is a lesson. He continues after seeing my irritation. “Or better put, what are you requesting of me?”
“Nothing. I wish to consult with Maharaja Naupure to see if he can give me more information about this Nightcaster.” I don’t mean my tone’s sharpness. But I can’t help it. When I talk to my father of politics and agendas, it feels that’s what I become too. He wants me to learn the game. Right now, I’m playing it. I already know how I will investigate.
“Why Naupure?”
Another question to which I can’t tell the whole truth. I need my answer to sound good and convincing. “As our greatest trading partner and the man who helped me set up the firelight distribution, Naupure might know more about any connection between Basu and the Vencrin. He could provide a clue I’m missing as I begin my investigation.” It’s a lie. What I need to do is talk to a man by the name of Sims, who runs the underground cage-casting ring. But I can’t tell my father how I will put myself in danger. How I will lie and manipulate and bleed so everyone can access my light once again.
“Granted. Talk to Naupure.”
“Fine. Thank you.” I hate counsel with this version of my father, when the political raja emerges. I’m just another witch requesting another thing. I place two fingers on my neck and search for the laugher in his eyes. It’s unsettling that I don’t find it now, but I reassure myself it will return at dinner. The idea that one day it will be gone forever frightens me. I walk to the door. After all, I have a letter to write.
“Adraa?” Father calls.
I turn back.
“I’m sorry. I know how much your firelight initiative meant to you. Bad people are always trying to corrupt good things. This setback shows us how good firelight is for Belwar, though. Don’t let this deter you. Don’t let it—”
“Basu was your friend. How can you be so…so nonchalant?”
“Basu was another trading partner. The term friend is used loosely to craft allies. Truthfully, I always thought he was a mucky little fellow.”
The crinkle around his eyes appears and relief tugs at the corners of my mouth. There he is. There’s my father.
The incident with the girl has become a distraction, a centerpiece on which to focus so my mind doesn’t wander to the peripherals where the anxiety of homecoming gobbles up space like air, invisible and all consuming.
We have tumbled through Belwar’s East Village, North Village, and a bit of the West, and then, finally, entered the mountains. We trudge along Freedom Pass, which skirts the foot of Mount Gandhak and then stretches across my country. It’s named for the trail that people seeking religious and social freedom used to flee from northern Moolek. Those trailblazers believed all nine gods should be respected equally and each forte had a place in society. The people of Moolek think some gods, particularly Htrae, Retaw, Ria, and Erif, deserve privilege over the others since they are the original four fortes. It’s been four hundred years since this path was used for freedom and I’m still glad I’m not my uncle, who rules over Moolek’s lands, however vast they may be.
As a white forte, I might have been banned from ruling Moolek. There, being an orange, purple, black, white, or pink forte is a mark of inferiority from the start. Naupure might have its own problems with judging and devaluing people based on how many of the nine they cast, but right now white ribbons and brocade banners frame doorways. One fountain glistens, frozen with sunlight charging through. All in my honor; all for my name.
The academy resides in the flowing fields and lush marshes of Agsa, which means that for nine years I lived in the open. I forgot the cluttered squish of people when they mob the capital’s streets, blurring in a faceless mass. One hard bump knocks me into Kalyan, and I straighten my kurta, the heavier one with the Naupure emblem. Itchy and constraining, that’s all I can think about it.
The carriage jolts again as if the wheels have caught a stone in their shoe. We limp along painfully. It was a miracle when we broke through the mountain terrain, but the cobblestones might be even worse. I can understand a little of what my ancestors must have thought after traveling so far to find their place in the world, but I had forgotten what it would be like coming back to my own city.
I have only skimmed along Mount Gandhak, an hour by skyglider at the most, and yet, Naupure is different, the air not as thick with the smell of fish, spices, and dyes. The houses are squatter and angled to climb the slopes of mountains. The streets are narrower, stair-entrenched and brighter, both in colorful paint and lack of litter. My people are louder in their hails, not only because I’m their heir but also because Belwar has a different sort of reverence for those chosen by the gods, one that makes their voices and cheers softer and themselves less hungry to see my face and know me. If the girl were to have saved the boy here, the crowds would have knocked us over to find out what was happening. And that difference in mentality stems from Belwar having the largest population of Untouched in all of Wickery. When half of a city can’t do magic it naturally separates itself between the haves and the have-nots. Naupure teems with talent. Our ancestors were the outcasts whom Moolek tried to segregate and still does today. We slowly discovered this mountainous land and spread out, finding its pockets of habitation. Belwar grew from coastal opportunity, melding Pire Island explorers, Agsa businesspeople, and Naupure adventurers.