She cleared her throat, both to distract herself and to get Cilla’s attention. There was something she needed to ask. She chose her gestures with care, though tension showed in every flick of her fingers, and said, “If those blackouts happen again, Jorn will punish me.”
Anything more explicit was too dangerous.
Amara stared right into Cilla’s eyes. Looking away meant disrespect; it meant fear. Fear meant distrusting your betters. That was unacceptable. She’d already taken a risk saying this much without a lead-in or a specific request for Cilla’s time.
Cilla lowered the brush, looking surprised. “I … understand.” She bit her lip, then caught herself. Teeth and skin were a risky combination. “Well, I’m certain you won’t black out again.”
Promise? Amara wanted to ask. Promise you won’t tell him if I do?
It didn’t matter. Cilla could swear up and down that she’d keep quiet, but she’d already told on Amara once, and she was still her better. She remained a danger.
“Let’s hope,” Amara said, and checked the bowl near Cilla for pinkened spit. Clean. She picked up her needle again.
Cilla lowered her head, her expression hidden behind pointy locks of hair that Amara could never make sense of. Most Alineans wore their hair shorter than Cilla’s chin-length locks, even shaving the sides; since they tattooed their servants’ necks, long hair meant you had something to hide. When the Alineans had crossed the Greater Ocean and founded the Dunelands as a trading outpost, they’d taken both their servants and hairstyles with them. The shorter hairstyles had rubbed off on some settlers from the Continent, but most of them wore it long, especially given the Dunelands’ persistent, wet chill.
Amara didn’t know whether it was a statement or vanity, but Cilla had opted for the middle road: short enough to reveal her neck, long enough to run her fingers through. Amara’s hands twitched wanting to do just that. Her feet twitched, too. She couldn’t sit still. She had all this pent-up worry and anger and nothing to do with it, nothing but pricking this stupid needle into Cilla’s scarf, studying patterns that reminded her of flames—nothing at all like her own scarf, which was drab and thin.
Her legs wouldn’t stop moving. Muscles pulling, her feet wrenching back and forth. Amara held them down, but then her head shook, too, tiny tugs in all directions. Her sight faded for a second without her ever shutting her eyes. She willed her neck still.
It didn’t work.
She wanted to raise her hands to press them to her cheeks, but they hung unresponsive by her sides, as though she’d slept in the wrong position and a million needleseeds were about to stab her skin with every movement. Those pricks refused to come. Her arms simply didn’t listen.
Her head stopped moving. It came to a halt with her face turned right, looking at Maart still cleaning the fish on an old grain cart across the room.
“Amara?” Cilla made a sound of hesitation.
Amara’s lips moved. But she didn’t move them.
It wasn’t just her head or her arms she couldn’t use. She tried to wiggle her toes. To direct her eyes back to Cilla, who was getting up from her seat, based on the sound of her chair scraping against the floor. None of it worked. This wasn’t like needleseeds. This was worse.
Amara felt her heart speed up—so maybe she could control that, at least, her heart was still hers, still listened to her panic—and then her hands rose, and her head turned back to Cilla, all of it without her say-so.
Amara stumbled, and for that split second she was falling to the floor and couldn’t stop herself, couldn’t move her feet forward or extend her arms or cover her face—
She caught herself. That unseen something tugged at her lips again. Like fingers playing with her face, pulling her muscles left and up without her consent. She was trapped.
And this time, she was aware of every second of it.
“Eh worrgee,” her mouth said, pushing air from her lungs past her lips. What did that mean? The sounds came from her own mouth, but they sounded alien, foreign—Jélis, maybe, or some language from the northern continents.
Her hands still hovered by her chest, then spread apart. They signed, unfinished and too quickly and nothing like her normal gestures, “It’s working. I’m here. This is me I’m doing this I’m using her hands, this is working, it’s working—”
“Amara, what are you—what do you mean?” Cilla’s voice caught.
Behind Amara came footsteps. Maart. Her body turned to face him a second later than she would have. “Anything wrong?” Maart asked.
Yes, she wanted to say. This isn’t me. I’m trapped. This isn’t me!
Instead of signing, Amara stomped her feet. Her hands clapped. Her lips pulled in a grimace. She filled her lungs, held that breath, let it shudder out. “It’s real,” her hands said. Her eyes looked at those hands, moving without her commands. She never watched her own signs. There was no point. But now her eyes stayed glued to her hands as they tumbled over themselves. “It’s real it worked I’m here.”
“What are you talking about?” Maart asked.
Cilla shuffled closer, but not too close, leaning in with only her head and her still-bare shoulders. She laughed nervously. “How many mushrooms are you on, Amara?”
Amara’s head shook, slowly at first, then stronger, enough to send hair slapping against her cheeks. She laughed. The sound was not her own. “No. Not Amara.”
What kind of spirit would take control like this? What kind of mage would have her stand here laughing and make her smack her lips?
“I think you’re doing something magical,” Cilla said slowly. “Something mage-like.”
Amara’s hands said something else, but with her eyes sliding up to watch Cilla’s face, she couldn’t see what. Cilla’s nostrils flared, and she kept her distance.
Amara concentrated on sensing her hands to identify their movements. The signals didn’t come from her, but she could recognize the tug of her muscles, the brush of skin. “—but doesn’t know. She never knows,” her fingers said.
Amara wanted to scream.
Someone was doing this to her. Someone was pushing and shoving around her muscles. Someone was shutting her out.
“Stop this,” Maart said. “Jorn will be back soon. Please stop.”
“If you’re not Amara,” Cilla asked, “are you a spirit? A mage?”
Amara felt her lips stretch. Was she smiling? She never smiled like this. Not with her lips parting, her teeth visible.
“Then who?” Maart shook. Frustration—and fear, too, Amara thought, but she couldn’t comfort him, couldn’t tell him his fear and anger helped as little as her own.
“I am not a mage. I am—” Amara’s hands paused there. The next movements came slowly. “N-OO-L-U-N. S-A-N-D-I-AA-K-OO. The letters aren’t the same. We have a separate letter for the d. It’s a hard sound, like in Maart, and the k is softer. But this is close. This is how you’d say it.”
“Nolan,” Cilla repeated, almost a question.
Nolan, Amara repeated to herself. She didn’t know the name. How could she not know the name? This person was in her body. This person was in the tips of her fingers and the heat of her belly and the squish-and-pull of her lungs.