Cansu pushed her way into the hall. “Two guards outside her room. Easy to eliminate.”
“Eliminate?” Vex gawked. “Stand down, Cansu. No bloodshed if we can help it.”
“We need to take out as many enemies as we can when we have the chance. You know Argrid wouldn’t hesitate to stick knives in our backs.”
“We aren’t Argrid,” Vex snapped. “And we aren’t your raiders, either. No killing.”
Cansu’s golden skin reddened. “You gave us the castle’s layout. You gave us the basics of the plan. But don’t you dare go getting it into your head that you’re in charge of this mission.”
“Oh, and you are?”
“You bet your unaligned ass I am.”
White-hot loathing descended over Vex. This was why he’d never joined a syndicate—he wasn’t about to follow orders with no questions asked. On a good day, he’d have laid into Cansu until someone—probably he—ended up bleeding. But with the added fury and grief and terror of Elazar’s takeover, Vex couldn’t have stopped himself.
Nayeli could stop him, though. She shot forward as he opened his mouth, and one hard look from her sent his insults sinking back down his throat.
“So help me,” she started, “I’ve had enough of you two and your verbal pissing contests. Cansu’s in charge because we’re using her syndicate’s resources, but gods damn it, we aren’t killing anyone. Now let’s get Kari before I change my mind on that last bit and kill both of you.”
Cansu flicked her short flop of dark hair out of her eyes and plodded back through the door.
Vex stayed long enough to sulk at Nayeli. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
She should’ve rolled her eyes and called him an idiot for challenging Cansu. But she gave him the same look that Edda wore, one filled with apology and sorrow.
Vex stomped after Cansu. Enough of this. Enough pain. He couldn’t handle it.
Tall windows lit an ornate hall of marble and gold. Cansu stood over the collapsed bodies of two soldiers outside a closed door.
“Cansu! Goddamn it—”
“They’re only unconscious.” Cansu waved her fist. “Stop. Questioning. Me.”
Vex snarled at her, but Nayeli slid between them. “Gods, stop.” Her dark eyes went to Vex and she motioned at the door. “You want to be the one to—”
“Yeah.” No. But he walked up to it and tried the handle. Locked. Which he made quick work of with picks from Cansu, and when the gold-lined door opened, he took a step inside—
Something iron-hard swung him around and trapped his neck in a vise grip.
Vex yelped, but the sound weakened into a choked gargle.
“Wait!” Nayeli shot into the room after him. “Kari, right? We’re friends of your daughter! Let him go—gods, now I see where Lu gets her temper.”
“Adeluna?” The grip released. “How do you know her? Why are you here?”
Vex stumbled away, clutching his neck, half certain it was indented now.
“Rescuing you,” Cansu said as though it should’ve been obvious. She shut the door and marched across the room to yank open one of the balcony doors.
A gust of hot lake air swirled in, along with sensations that reminded Vex of memories from another life. Smoke. Fire. Screams.
“Today we commit the following raiders unto the Pious God’s mercy” came a different voice. A priest, likely, to oversee the proper disposal of heretics. “Vina Uzun; Branden Axel—”
He kept reading off names. Kari must’ve recognized one, because she pressed a hand to her chest, rocking forward.
“Can we get out that way?” Nayeli asked Cansu, as if people weren’t dying.
“The escape boat’s in the lake,” Cansu said. “You have that Aerated Blossom?”
No one saw Vex falter. He’d planned their way into the castle—steal servant uniforms and sneak in with the crowd that had come to see the burning—but all he’d known of their way out was that an escape boat would be waiting. But this was how Cansu planned to get to it—she’d loved his story of how Lu had used Blossoms to jump off the Schilly-Leto waterfall. Vex had been terrified. But Lu—she’d been fearless.
The crowd in the courtyard let loose a pained wail. Vex felt a blossom of relief that the burning repulsed them, despite their silent, dangerous agreement earlier. Their complacency about Argrid’s seizure of power was surface level.
“Who are you?” Kari demanded. Her face showed her calculations just as Lu’s did. “Stream raiders? From the syndicate associated with Tuncay? Are you here on Cansu Darzi’s orders? Has my daughter become entangled with the Tuncian syndicate?”
“We’re not here on Cansu’s orders,” Cansu said. She turned from the balcony. “I am Cansu. The absurdity of a raider Head rescuing a Senior Councilmember is not lost on me, but that’s why we’re here. Because your daughter, along with these idiots”—she gestured at Nayeli, Vex, and Edda—“convinced me that the best way to stop Argrid from overtaking the island is to unite the Council and raiders and everyone who calls Grace Loray home. Figured Kari the Wave would be the most capable person to do that.”
The Argridians had put Kari under house arrest—but she meant a lot to Grace Loray, so they hadn’t killed her. She was Kari the Wave, a nickname she’d earned during the revolution because of her guerrilla-style ambushes that had whittled away Argrid’s forces. The only reason the rebels had beaten Argrid the first time was because Kari had gotten the volatile, bickering stream raiders to ally with each other, becoming a force too powerful for Argrid to defeat.
Between border skirmishes, burning each other’s steamboats, and other messier crimes, relations among the raiders had always been tense. Vex knew, for instance, that Cansu hated the “thieving” Grozdan syndicate with “the intensity of nigrika”—a Tuncian spice so hot Vex hadn’t been able to taste anything for a solid two days after he’d eaten a pinch. If the raider syndicates had any hope of unifying to stop Elazar again, they’d need an intermediary, like Kari.
But the deeper reason Vex had suggested freeing Kari was because he knew Lu would’ve wanted it. It was that simple. That selfish.
Vex’s vision faded. He lost sight of the room in favor of a sword, shining with Lu’s blood, dripping scarlet circles on the deck of a ship—
“Other councilmembers can help.” Kari composed herself, spine straight, again like Lu. “They are locked in rooms along this hall. They can be trusted to—”
“Trust? What do you know about trust?”
Kari snapped a look at Vex. Edda and Nayeli did, too, but Edda’s focus went back to Kari, and Vex could see her thoughts spin. Should she intervene?
Vex didn’t care. He hadn’t meant to speak. But here he was, staring at a person who was as responsible for Lu’s death as the man who’d stabbed her.
“Devereux Bell.” Kari’s fingers curled into fists. Last she knew, her daughter had freed him from prison and run off with him. “What do you—”
“Who do you think you can trust? Your husband?”
“Vex,” Edda tried.