Edo had helped Amara twice. Of course the marshals couldn’t let that slide. And now she dared ask for more help?
She nodded a second time, then took off toward the other pub. Good thing she was Elig. People expected them to be quiet. Quiet and frail and distant.
But good at surviving.
Amara found Edo sitting at the bar. He stiffened when he saw her, then slid off his stool and left his drink untouched. “Let’s head out, eh?” he said. His breath stank of beer.
They walked to a quiet spot in the dunes where she could sign unnoticed. There were no diggers on the beach this late, just bugs, spiders, terns, sandpipers, and other shorebirds she didn’t recognize, scouring the sand with long beaks. Dune grass tickled Amara’s hands. It felt almost soft, nothing like the razor grass from before, but she still felt the hairs on her arms prick upright.
“What happened to the princess?” Edo asked urgently.
She died. As a toddler. Smothered to death.
“Ruudde has her at the palace. I escaped.” Amara paused. “I’m sorry for what happened to your pub.”
If Cilla’s capture shocked him, he didn’t show it. “I knew the risks. What can I do?”
“I need to find mages. Ones not allied with the ministers.”
“That’s a good number of them. The ministers don’t exactly abide by their oaths.” He glowered. “I think I know exactly who you’re looking for. She’s not far.”
Amara crushed a fistful of dune grass. “When can I meet her?”
That afternoon, Amara sat at Edo’s dining table and gawked at the woman across from her. Thin braids. Rings in one nostril.
“You’re alive,” Amara signed.
The Dit mage fingered an odd-looking bracelet. Occasionally, she looked around the room as if admiring the wall drapes or sculptures, but mostly she just seemed to avoid Amara’s eyes. “About what happened at the market—I thought I was protecting the princess! I’d never have touched her if I’d known she was telling the truth. Do you understand? You do, don’t you?”
“I assumed Jorn—J-O-R-N—had killed you.”
“Jorn? Is that the mage who attacked me at the market? No, no, even mages can’t get away with killing each other that easily.” She seemed to relax now that she saw that Amara didn’t plan to push her about the slap. “I got away, but the next day, the marshals tried to arrest me. The ministers or that Jorn must’ve set them on me. I’ve been in hiding since then. Edo’s been helping me. When he explained what’d happened at his pub, I realized that your friend really was the … was Cilla.” The mage took pride in that word. Amara tried hard not to avert her eyes at the sting of guilt she felt over making the woman say a dead toddler’s name.
The mage prattled on. “I was quite surprised to notice marshals were after me, because mostly they let us mages handle things on our own, you know, but—oh, of course you know. You’re a mage yourself. And an escaped servant, to boot. I didn’t say it at the market, but that was very brave of you. These ministers, they don’t respect the notion behind Alinean servants …”
She went on for too long, talking too quickly, and Amara got the odd feeling she was being buttered up. Was this what associating with a princess was like?
The moment there was a pause in the mage’s speech, Amara jumped in to sign, “Do you have many contacts? Mages have been working together to kill Cilla. I need to find them.”
“Princess Cilla,” Edo corrected, returning from his kitchen. He offered them each a small cup of tea.
“Aside from the ministers themselves, who would want to kill her?” Amara went on.
“Certainly not mages! Most us have a deep respect for the Alinean monarchy, you know. Their take on oaths is particularly—well, of course, there are exceptions among even Alinean mages, but …”
“These people are definitely mages. I’ve counted at least a dozen. They cursed Princess Cilla as a toddler and have been tracking her ever since the coup.” Amara saw no sign of recognition in the mage’s face. Would it help if she explained that Cilla wasn’t the princess at all? No—she couldn’t risk losing the mage and Edo’s help. “I have descriptions, if it helps, and names. Only three.” Nolan had overheard the mages shouting at one another years ago. Amara didn’t even remember the incident. “One Dit man, short. Shorter than me. His name sounds like K-IE-R-S-T.”
The mage sounded out the name and shook her head. “No, no. I can ask around, though.”
Amara tried the next name. Chire. It sounded Alinean, though she couldn’t be sure, and it didn’t matter—the mage shook her head a second time.
Amara hesitated before the final name. “Alinean,” she said, “a woman. Tall. Thin. She carries a hooked blade. I-L-A-NN-E.”
The mage’s face lit up. “Yes! I’ve heard of Ilanne—here’s the sign for her name, by the way. She’s near Bedam. Not many Alinean mages are willing to use their magic so freely, you know. She’s, ah, one of those exceptions I mentioned. Sometimes I wonder what her oath said, ’cause it’s nothing like mine, I can assure you.”
Amara swallowed. The image of the knifewielder—no, Ilanne—lanced through her, as it had so often. She didn’t want to ask this next question. “Can you help me find her?”
“Anything to help one so dedicated to serving.”
I’m not serving, Amara wanted to shout. It’s not about that.
“Thank you.” She took her teacup in both hands, a good excuse not to speak further and to banish the image of Ilanne from her mind.
“We need more servants like you. You know, wanting to do the spirits’ bidding, put the Alineans back on the throne.” The mage winked. “But we’ve already talked about you and spirits, of course. Did your spirit ever come back?”
Amara sipped her tea, ignoring the question. “The signs of possession you saw in me … Did you see those in any of the ministers?”
“Yes, in one, but that was a long time ago. It’s probably gone.” The mage’s brow furrowed. “My mentor said Ruudde has acted as a vessel, too, if you can believe it.”
“What about other possessions?” If there were other travelers like Nolan—ones not possessing the ministers—they might give her more information. Having more healers on her side might even help her stop Naddi.
“Oh, I don’t know. My mentor rarely spoke to people while their spirit was present, sadly, but the stories they told afterward …” The woman’s smile stretched as if she was recalling a particularly fond memory. “The spirits touched them with the gift of life. They healed in the snap of a finger. Some of them even communicated—beyond just through the roar of the sea or the spinning of the winds …” There was that wistful look again. “The spirits want to try a mortal life, you see. If they’re going to help us, they wish to know what it’s like to be us.”
Amara mentally repeated the words, wading through the talk of spirits to reach the core truth of the travelers. By now, she doubted spirits used vessels at all—these possessions the mage talked about must all be people like Nolan. “Can I talk to a vessel?”
The mage fingered the handle of her teacup. “I’m not sure where any of them are now. Aside from Ruudde, my mentor hasn’t met any vessels since the Alineans held the throne. What we suspect, see”—she leaned in conspiratorially—“is that when the ministers took over, their abuse of magic made the spirits wary. It would explain why the spirits rarely use us as vessels anymore. That’s why I wanted to talk to you so badly at the air-train.” She smiled ruefully. “How long did you pull the spirit in for, anyway? Hopefully not so long that it scared you. Some of those people who approached my mentor—they were adults, see, educated adults, and they were petrified afterward.”