“Both,” said Janto. “Everything valuable I’ve learned so far has come from Rhianne. How’s Micah been since the sackcloth treatment? Will we need to repeat the treatment?”
“That first evening he came to hand out abeyance spells, his face was white as a pox boil,” said Sirali.
Janto nodded eagerly. “We scared him. That’s good.”
“Right, and a few days later, he did what we thought he’d do. He pulled a couple women aside and tried to get them to tack—”
“To what?”
“Change sides,” explained Sirali. “He offered them extra rations, special favors.”
“And?” This was the part of the operation that worried Janto most, that Micah might find one or two women willing to betray the others. If he could divide the women, he might regain his power over them.
“Linna was one of them he tried. He pulled her aside, asked her who set up that business the other night. She blinked at him, innocent-like, and said, ‘What business?’ He wouldn’t explain what he meant—couldn’t come out with it. He’d go at the subject sideways, and she’d sidle away.”
“Did anyone, uh, tack?”
She shook her head. “We agreed that if anyone did, we’d spit in her oatmeal every day, and worse.”
Janto feared for Sirali, since if Micah did convince someone to name the instigator, that person, not knowing much about Janto, would name her. But Sirali seemed not to fear this prospect. Janto had the impression that Sirali had already been through the worst life had to offer, so something like this didn’t intimidate her much. “Was that the end of it, then?”
“No,” said Sirali. “A few days later, he got cod-proud again and grabbed Mori.”
“Grabbed her! You mean—”
“Right, and I’m not finished,” said Sirali. “A dozen of us rushed him. We didn’t plan it. Didn’t even think about it. It was gods-inspired, like we all had the same thought at once. He let go of Mori’s arm and ran like a field mouse from a grass fire.” She grinned, exposing her crooked teeth. “He’s not touched a one of us since.”
Pleased, Janto held out his hand to Sirali, and they interlocked index fingers in the gesture of shared victory.
“I have figured something out,” said Rhianne as Janto materialized in her sitting room the next day. “You always arrive at mealtimes. I think you’re using me for food.”
“I’m definitely using you,” said Janto, lifting the cover off her dinner tray. “But not for food. It would help if your doors opened at other times of the day.”
“If you left me a note, I might know when to expect you,” said Rhianne. “Then I could arrange for the door to open at the proper time.”
Janto tasted her potato-and-leek soup. “I prefer surprising you.”
“If you wish to have dinner with me, there’s a price to pay,” said Rhianne.
He looked at her, eyebrows raised, with the spoon still in his hand.
“You will tell me something about yourself.”
“Tell you what?”
“I told you about my background, how Florian stole me away from my real parents, how Lucien and I were the terrors of the palace because we were the backup children, of interest only as future marriage prospects. But I know almost nothing about you.”
“I’m a shroud mage. I speak five languages. I climbed lorim cliffs as a boy—”
Rhianne shook her head. “I mean your family. It’s obvious you’re nobility. I want to know about the people close to you.”
Janto drizzled oil onto a slice of bread. “How much do you know about Mosari politics and history?”
“Almost nothing.”
“And the royal family?”
“There’s a king and a queen. Two princes.”
“Mosari nobility, what do you know of them?”
“Nothing.”
“I don’t want to lie to you,” said Janto. “I can’t tell you my zo name or the names of my family members, because if I did that, I’d be putting people in danger—”
“Your zo name?”
“You don’t know what that is?” He shook his head. “You’re supposed to govern my people alongside Augustan, and you know nothing about Mosar.”
“My uncle doesn’t believe in educating women, at least not about politics and other countries. That’s why I recruited you to teach me the Mosari language myself.”
“Well, when a Mosari mage soulcasts, if he does it successfully, he is given a new name. Like Ral-Vaddis—that’s a zo name. If you have a zo name, then you’re part of our zo caste. It means you’re a mage.”
“Is Janto a zo name?”
“No. I have one, but I don’t use it here,” said Janto. “Too dangerous.”
“Make up names for your family members. I don’t care,” said Rhianne. “Just tell me about them. What are they like? Are your parents still alive?”
“They were alive when I left Mosar.”
“Do you like them? Hate them? Why do I have to drag details out of you? You’d think I was performing an interrogation.”
“Of course I like them,” said Janto. “They’re good people.” When she glared at him, he added, “My younger brother and I were competitive. We’d try to seduce the same women.”
“Oh?” She felt a little jealous of those unknown women. “Who usually won?”
“My brother.” Janto placed a cheese slice atop a pear slice and ate them together. “He’s taller. Handsomer.”
“Those women were fools,” said Rhianne.
“Naturally,” said Janto. “Look, I’ll tell you a story that might actually mean something to you. I went through my magical training with one of my same-age cousins. I’ll call him Bel. Are you familiar with the root called jovo?”
“I’ve heard the name before, but I don’t know anything about it.”
“It doesn’t grow here. Only on Mosar. We warn our children not to chew it, but some do anyway. It has an effect like wine but more powerful. It fogs the mind and produces euphoria. If you chew it once, you feel compelled to chew it again and again. Over time it rots your teeth, and I think it must rot your insides too, because jovo addicts die young. Bel and I went through magical training together, and we became friends. He was, at the time, chewing jovo, but he was discreet about it, and I never caught on. He soulcast into a cliff bear, which made him a stoneshaper.” Janto stopped to take another bite of pear.
“We parted ways because our training diverged, but we stayed in touch. He became an accomplished stoneshaper, but his jovo chewing caught up with him. He was disciplined repeatedly for not showing up to work and for shoddy or unsafe workmanship. Finally he was brought before my father, an authority within our family.
“My father believed that the only way to induce Bel to behave more honorably was to remove him from the island of Mosar—get him away from jovo entirely. He wanted to send Bel to sea as a sailor in the Mosari Navy. After a year or two of no access to jovo, he might safely return to stoneshaping.”
“That sounds like a good idea to me,” Rhianne said.
“I thought so too. But Bel was horrified at the prospect of going to sea where his magic would be useless and he’d have to perform hard labor and be separated from his friends. He implored me to speak to my father and change his mind. He had learned his lesson, he said, and would never chew jovo again, if only I would spare him this fate. I liked Bel, and I believed him, and we were chronically short of stoneshapers. We needed several for a building project at Silverside Mountain. So I persuaded my father to find a spot for Bel at Silverside.” Now he paused to take a sip of wine, as if bracing himself.
“Several sagespans later, there was a cave-in at Silverside, in which we lost not only Bel but a dozen other mages. In the investigations that followed, we learned that Bel had been disciplined several times at Silverside for showing up under the influence of jovo and that his inappropriate thinning of a key structural pillar had caused the collapse.”