The Mecht flew up and slammed his body into Ben. Though his wrists were lashed to his back, that didn’t affect the strength of the man’s muscles—or his Eye of the Sun.
Ben careened toward the ship’s railing, the Mecht shoving with every bit of anger he had repressed as he knelt. The Mecht’s face was so close that when he breathed, heat brushed Ben’s forehead, his senses flaring with ash and flame.
Memories ruptured in Ben’s mind. His uncle and cousin writhing on pyres. Screams.
Panic overtook him. His spine connected with the railing, and the Mecht exhaled a stream of fire that Ben dodged instinctively. He jerked to the left, the flames biting over his shoulder, and the Mecht stepped back in surprise. Ben regained enough control to plant his feet and jam his elbow into the Mecht’s stomach. The fire cut off as the man let out a strangled cough.
“Bring the barbarian down!” a defensor shouted.
“Hold!” Ben countered. He flung himself up to sit on the railing while hooking his leg behind the Mecht’s knees. The Mecht buckled, thrown off balance, and as he dropped, Ben rammed his other leg into the man’s stomach. This laid him out across the deck, with the defensors training a dozen different weapons on him.
Ben eased off the railing. “This is the evil forcing him to lash out,” he barked. “This man will still have the opportunity to repent, along with the rest of you. I beseech you all: see through the Devil’s corruption in your hearts, repent, and choose freedom. Otherwise, you will burn.”
Had Ben saved the raider now only to have him die in front of a jeering crowd later?
Though he didn’t care. If raiders wanted to burn, let them burn—Argrid offered a way to survive, if those convicted weren’t so proud.
Three defensors dragged the Mecht away as others moved toward the rest of the crew.
Ben tugged his hat lower, the deck spinning.
Jakes bumped his shoulder. “This will please your father.”
“Why?” Ben honestly wanted an answer. “I did nothing. Ever since the Church did away with any real due process of justice, I have no use.”
Jakes’s eyes widened. “You’re going to be king someday—”
“Of a country built on ashes and fear. I—” I don’t believe magic is evil. And I miss it.
He’d never be drunk enough to say that. Especially not to Jakes.
A low hum came from Jakes, the lilt of a Church hymn. A tic of his—when he was nervous, or anxious, or thinking too hard about responsibilities that should have been Ben’s alone.
“If the treaty with Grace Loray happens,” Jakes said, “we won’t arrest every sailor from there. Evil won’t be as easy to identify. They’ll need Inquisitors to judge cases again.”
Ben sighed. “Wishful thinking, Defensor.”
The Church had ultimate power now. Any treaty with Grace Loray would mean more of this, only on their shores. Patrols. Purity. Cleansing.
Did Grace Loray know what was coming for them?
3
THE STABLES PROVIDED the quickest route to the infirmary’s Shaking Sickness wing. Lu hurried down the aisle, stirring up dust as she passed drowsy horses flicking their tails in the heat.
A little boy plunged down in front of her, hanging by his knees from a rafter. “Gimme yer plants!”
Lu screeched and dropped the parcel in her arms.
“Oh, Lu!” Teo said. “You’re not the nurse.”
Her surprise eased into a laugh. “And I have no magic plants for you to steal.” She bent to salvage the treat she had picked up on her way here. The filling in one of the pastries had leaked, making the parchment wrappings sticky, the air overly saccharine with sugary coconut against the sweet smell of straw. “Yet you are quite fearsome—tell me, raider, who are you?”
Though she knew—Annalisa’s brother always chose to be the same raider no matter the game.
He isn’t the first boy I’ve encountered today who’s pretending to be Devereux Bell, Lu thought.
Teo swung up, grabbed the beam, and plummeted to the ground, surprisingly nimble for a six-year-old boy. “I’m Devereux Bell!” he confirmed, closing one brown eye and stabbing his fist into the air. “Uncatchable! Undefeated! So scary I don’t need any syndicate to protect me!”
“Among other things,” Lu added, but she smiled at his delight. “As I said, Mr. Bell, I am but a simple lady. May I interest you in a treat instead?”
Teo dove to his knees, leaning over the two small pastries she managed to recover.
“Luuuuu,” he sang. “Can I have one?”
“Yes.”
“Anna gets the other one?”
“Anna gets the other one.”
He moped. “But you don’t get any.”
Lu passed him the largest pastry. “I already had one, Tee, but you’re sweet to worry.”
“Teo Casales—oh, there you are!”
The nurse he had been playing with appeared at the stable’s door. Her smile struggled to hide her fatigue, brought on from too long tending Grace Loray’s needy.
When Annalisa fell too ill to care for herself, she had insisted on staying at the infirmary where she had volunteered, the one that served the impoverished of New Deza.
“If I have good days, I can lend a hand,” she’d said.
If it gives you hope, Lu had thought, then anything.
“Lu brought treats!” Teo leaped up to show the nurse.
Lu rose and smoothed the hair away from his face, freeing the black strands that stuck to his cheeks as he chomped a mouthful of the chocolate-covered pastry. Whether his skin’s red undertones were from childish exertion or an Argridian heritage was almost difficult to tell.
Almost.
“Why don’t you go out to the garden?” Lu told him. “I’m sure they could use help.”
The nurse nodded when Lu looked up for encouragement.
Teo’s eyes widened. “Maybe we’ll find magic plants! I know they’re only in rivers. But maybe. You never know.”
Lu smiled. Garden plants had their uses but didn’t offer the guaranteed and unnatural effects of Grace Loray’s magic. And even if the infirmary could grow healing magic plants, none had any effect on Shaking Sickness.
Lu had spent enough time looking.
“Maybe,” she told him. “The gardeners will appreciate your help regardless.”
Teo took off but slammed to a halt and looked back. “Thank you for the treat!” he called, and resumed running, the pastry clutched in both hands.
The nurse’s expression tightened. “Have you brought more treatments today?”
Lu’s lips straightened. “Soon.” She wouldn’t be able to create the sleeping concoction with the ingredients from the market for a few days. “What’s the count?”
As if Lu might have forgotten how long Annalisa had been in the hospital. But she always hoped she miscalculated.
“Twelve days, miss.” The nurse bit her bottom lip. “We lost another this morning. A man who had been here for”—she wrung her hands—“ten days.”
Shaking Sickness was as mysterious as Grace Loray’s magic. No treatments, magical or otherwise, affected it; it didn’t spread from person to person; some patients suffered with it for years, others were taken in days. The only predictable thing about it was that it manifested in tremors at first, which eventually deteriorated a person’s bones until they could no longer stand or walk on their own, confining them to an infirmary bed. Once that happened, it was a matter of days before the disease claimed its victim.