Had Lu any other choice, she would not have been so eager to buy botanical magic from someone who had stolen it out of the island’s riverbeds. Riverbeds that belonged, now, to the Grace Lorayan Council.
The threat of a storm made the air harsh, tasting of rank river water with the added bitterness of electricity, of a spark about to light. A cluster of half-dressed girls and boys sauntered past the end of the dock, whistling at sailors and vendors.
Lu tucked stray pieces of black hair into the knot at the back of her head, fighting to regain her composure. “If I wanted to spend fifty galles on a single dose of what the apothecaries mislabel a sleeping tonic but is actually weak chamomile tea barely infused with Narcotium Creeper, then yes, I’d be in the more respectable parts of Grace Loray. But I can’t imagine you’d survive long in this profession if you made such inquiries of all your customers, raider.”
Lu might have regretted speaking so rashly, but the vendor clearly had made up his mind about her, too. With the wooden toggles in his long blond beard, his pale skin, and the decorative pieces of fur on his clothing, the vendor was clearly part of the Mecht syndicate that had claimed the area from New Deza down to the southern coast as their “territory” on Grace Loray.
“I wanna make sure you ain’t getting in over your head,” the vendor said. “I can’t go selling to anyone for so little, least of all to someone who might hurt herself wif magic.”
“Hurt myself?” Lu whipped out her copy of Botanical Wonders of the Grace Loray Colony, the reference book penned by the island’s first settlers. “Your bloodshot eyes say you are aware of Narcotium Creeper’s hallucinogenic properties—but did you know it can be combined with your overpriced Drooping Fern to create a tonic that—”
—will help my friend get some sleep. She’s dying up at the infirmary, and this is the only tonic that might help—
Lu stopped, desperation getting the best of her.
Clusters of Grace Lorayan soldiers moved across the muddied wharf, passing the end of Lu’s dock. The next dock over supported oceanworthy craft, and one, a three-masted ship, bellowed a horn of greeting before lowering its gangplank.
An immigrant ship from the Mechtlands, the northernmost country on the Mainland, carried those who fled their country’s clan wars for Grace Loray’s freedom.
The vendor waited until the soldiers had passed before he surged toward Lu over his table of wares.
“Quiet, girl! You Argridians are too good at gettin’ people in trouble.”
Offense surged hot into Lu’s chest. “I am not Argridian. I am Grace Lorayan.”
“What does that even mean, sweetheart? You look Argridian. Maybe Tuncian, too. Means somewhere along the way, you owe yourself to one of those countries, just like I owe myself to distant clans in a war-torn icy wasteland, no matter that we’re on this island. Ain’t no one from Grace Loray. Now, Argridian, you gonna buy something from me or not?”
Lu’s vision went red.
When Grace Loray had been discovered centuries ago, an uninhabited island with magic in its waterways, this land had stood for possibility.
When immigrants from the Mainland had flocked here, it had stood for freedom.
When, after two hundred years of tentative peace between the five Mainland countries, Argrid had claimed the island for itself and called it Grace Loray after one of its saints, this land had still managed to stand for hope.
And when, after fifty years of calling Grace Loray their colony, Argrid’s Church had decided magic made people impure and pushed them away from the Pious God, this island had stood for resistance.
That was what it meant to be Grace Lorayan. To believe in what this island used to be, and what it could be again. A country of unity, of acceptance of its wonders, of hope.
Lu was not Tuncian, and she was most certainly not Argridian, no matter that her mother’s heritage had given the Tuncian golden hue to her brown skin, or that her father’s heritage had given her the sharp Argridian angles of her features.
Her parents were Grace Lorayan now. And so was she.
“How can you stand here”—Lu leaned closer to the raider—“and sell magic freely (albeit illegally, as we both know you are a criminal) while dismissing the blood and sacrifices that went into giving you this freedom?”
The raider scoffed. “Oh, and you understand the sacrifices made, little girl? How old were you when the war ended, eh? Nine? Ten?”
“I was twelve when the revolutionaries overthrew Argrid,” Lu told him. Her grip tightened on Botanical Wonders, the cover worn and soft under her fingers. “But I was Grace Lorayan long before that. And I will be Grace Lorayan long after you realize that the Council provides the protection and security of your syndicate, only better.”
The raider syndicates began when Argrid first turned this land into the Grace Loray colony. They protected their own on an island where one oppressively religious country had broken the unspoken rule of peaceful cohabitation. The syndicates worried that Argrid’s colonization would mean oppression.
And they were proven right when Argrid’s Church started cleansing people.
But the revolutionaries won the war and formed the Council to enact laws, levy taxes, spread jobs and growth and assistance—to help everyone on this island. Grace Loray had no need for raider syndicates anymore. It was a country now.
The raider’s top lip curled. “You know what? Fine. Take the Drooping Fern for six galles, and get away from my boat.”
Lu buried her thoughts, her anger, her sadness. She plunked the money into the vendor’s outstretched palm.
“Thank you,” she said.
He rolled his eyes. “Just let me carry on my business in peace.”
Lu took her purchase and turned down the dock.
No one wanted to interrupt this man’s business. The Council merely wanted him, and all raiders, to contribute to Grace Loray as a whole, functioning country, not four separate raider syndicates all vying for resources and warring with each other.
As she slipped the Drooping Fern into her satchel, Lu looked up, cradling her book, her finger worrying at the bullet hole in its cover.
The new Mecht immigrants had gathered near the market stalls. One child knotted her fingers in her mother’s petticoat. Hope, her wide eyes said. Wonder.
Lu’s heart ached. What would that family do once their hope wore out? Not everyone who immigrated to this island from the Mainland joined the syndicate that operated for their country of origin. And many raiders had given up their lives of crime once the Council had presented the chance to be Grace Lorayan. The island was alive now in citizens and immigrants with jobs, proper housing, and respectable, productive Grace Lorayan futures.
But almost a century of loyalty to syndicates could not be countered entirely.
Regardless, the Council would bring order. They would complete this peace treaty with Argrid. And Lu looked forward to focusing on something innocent—like botanical magic concoctions.
Lu closed her fingers tighter around Botanical Wonders, the mud of the shore pulling at her shoes as the market crowd enveloped her. Her hand dipped back into her satchel, to the vial of Drooping Fern.
But she found another set of callused fingers there already.
“Oh,” said the owner of the fingers, his lips curling into a smile. “This isn’t my satchel.”