The woman slapped her palms on the table, throwing the quill to the ground. As she snatched the ink-soaked map into her hands, the door burst open.
"What the hell is going on?" the man exclaimed. His amber eyes were wide — anger was not the cause.
For a few seconds, the room stilled. Nobody dared shatter the delicate silence that had formed, for fear it would never be found again.
"Najia." The woman shoved the yellowed paper back down and fell on the chair beside her. "Najia, look at me."
"Leave me alone," she spat.
The man blew out a breath. The sympathy in his eyes was foreign, forming thin layers of moisture he was used to wiping off. He would let it show this time. Maybe, just maybe, it would save her.
The trees outside trembled with the force of relentless wind. "I'm scared," she murmured, her eyes tightly shut and her brows knitted. "What have we done, Erhan?"
For what seemed like the fifth time that day, I shivered awake.
The sun had sunk beneath the skyline, giving the stars their chance to dazzle. The bizarre dream still soared around my mind; its protagonists were so familiar, yet as the seconds ticked by, their faces blurred.
I rolled on my back to stare at the bottom of the deck's floorboards. Atulaji had thought it best to give the captain's cabin to Erhan, which meant I was now exiled to the hold with the rest of his silent crew. What have you done? a voice shrilled in my mind. I couldn't avoid it anymore. Any justification I had conjured up to console myself seemed laughable before the dull throb in my chest, the sick taste in my mouth.
Maybe there was still time to save myself. Look at me, Najia. The remnants of the fading dream persisted; a last chance disguised as a meaningless vision.
"Are you awake?" I whispered. It was a vague question; Atulaji was great at answering those.
"How could I sleep?" he hissed. I turned to glance at him. He lay against a barrel, his eyes wide and red-stricken. "I'm never doing charity again. Going wherever the wind takes him, he told me. Two-faced bastard!"
I sat up, my head filled with terrible ideas. "I'm going to talk to him."
The old sailor raised his chest and glared at me. "No! I don't want my ship in shreds. You stay where you are."
The wood creaked beneath my feet, accompanied by the scolding whispers Atulaji flung my way. I didn't listen; when did I ever? The chorus of hushed murmurs served as a funeral march as I ascended the stairs.
A few hours ago, my head was buzzing with wonder. Now all I could think was run away.
My pride wasn't that frail; I wouldn't allow myself to scramble back to the hold with nothing to appetize Atulaji's anxious queries. And, for better or worse, I stood outside the door to the captain's chamber before sense arrived to me. I raised a hesitant fist and tapped the oak. Swallowing down my reluctance, I announced, "It's me."
I heard a low shuffling from the other side. My pulse stirred and I stepped back, readjusting my posture to a more assertive one. It was hopeless. He would scoff at me anyway.
Yet the shuffling soon ceased, and the thick silence resumed its reign.
I inhaled slowly, leaning against the door. My lips trembled as I spoke, as if my body was trying to shake me back into sanity before I revealed my final card. "Who is Najia?"
I pressed my ear on the wood, scouring for a breath, a grunt, a sign Erhan was still conscious. Nothing. Not even the old bed frame made its usual obnoxious sound.
It was futile to waste my words. My head knocked against the door, a final plea for answers. Yet the more I stared at my bedraggled shoes, the more I realized I was building my hopes on a fleeting dream that meant nothing.
The door swung open.
I abruptly straightened my back. Erhan's cheeks looked sunken and the circles bordering his eyes had widened terrifyingly, cursing him with a sickly, weak appearance that did not compliment his smug behavior.
"Did you say something?" he asked drily.
"I, well—"
"I did not think so."
The door started to close, along with all my questions that would remain unanswered. "Wait," I uttered as I pushed my palms against the door. "I have a question."
He slowly pulled the door back open and stared at me through narrowed eyes. He didn't speak or blink — for a good moment, I thought he didn't even breath. At last, the clouds of his expression retreated. "It better be good, then."
I slowly stepped inside, glancing at the room I once occupied. No decoration had changed — Erhan didn't look like the type to instantly make stylistic alterations to each space he inhabited — yet the atmosphere was somehow different. The air smelled of burnt wood and alcohol; not the most comforting odor in a ship mid-sea.
Erhan closed the door and paced back to his bed, crossing his hands as he fell on it. "Go on, then. Quench your impossible curiosity."
I knew I only had one chance. Talking to the enchanter felt like poking a deceivingly friendly bear; when his patience dried out, it would be too late to stop. The swilling of the sea against the ship's hull and the clinking of small bottles lulled all the frenzied questions I had come to clarify. Only one remained — one I wasn't sure I wanted the answer to.
"Why? Why did you save me?"
The man raised his head. Under the low lamplight, his eyes looked as if they had stolen the color of fresh honeycomb, bustling with shades of orange and dark brown. They betrayed no response; simply sorrowful humor that almost stirred pity in my heart.
"Well," he said, popping open the cork of a bottle on the table beside him and pouring some of the dark liquid into a glass. "Would you rather I had not?"
"That doesn't answer my question."
Erhan took a sip of his drink, maybe because he wanted to save time, maybe because he hoped to drop the matter altogether. "I needed this done and you happened to be there. Is that good enough for you?"
Was it good enough to blame chance for the trouble that had stricken me? My chest itched with the ache of injustice. If only I had stayed in the tavern until noon, if only Lyra had chosen another day... "So you were just looking for someone hopeless," I said flatly. "Is that what you're saying?"
"That is precisely why I came to Metsuva, dear. Nobody living in that slum has anything to live for."
Bitterness still stung my heart as I stared at him. "And what about you?" I said, the uninvited words spilling out of my mouth.
He turned to look at me. "What?"
The curtness of his tone almost made me retreat. And yet the insatiable hunger for an explanation willed me to push forward. I crossed my hands, slowly pacing towards him. "What do you have to live for? Why do you need a soul so bad?"
The lamplight blinked. My body was heavy, beaten and torn and in dire need of a good night's sleep. Yet now I stood before him and I wouldn't cave under the tremor that stirred my bones if I didn't get a word, a sign that sense claimed at least a small part of him.
He regarded me with a deadpan. His cheeky smile had vanished long ago. "I would consider my own liabilities if I were you," he said as he lowered his body against the frigid mattress.
I rubbed my forearm, feeling the cold sneak through the hem of my skirt. "How am I supposed to do this if I don't know—"
"Goodnight," he said and dropped his head on the pillow. Now, the honeycomb of his eyes was swarmed with bees. Warning laced his tone, making me quickly step out of the captain's cabin and pull the door shut.
And despite having been scared out of my interrogation, the shiver rattling my spine served as a grim reminder; I would be finding out soon myself.
❧
I was not ready.
The ship sailed across the ocean for many dawns and sunsets. Time slipped by like water on slick marble; a pleasant surprise, considering the only thing Atulaji trusted me with was boiling water for our food. The weather might have been favorable, but the storm had decided to migrate inside my mind instead. Worries and scenarios tormented my soul every minute I spent staring at the sailors at work. It was a miracle Lindy floated into the bright docks of Sisarah before my thoughts consumed my only leverage over Erhan.
Now me and my blackmailer sat in a crammed carriage lurching down a ragged path. I latched onto my seat as the coach bounced up another hill. My body wasn't in the best condition — my head still pounded and the bones of my back screeched when I moved a little too sharply — and neither was my mind. Through the anguish this plan had caused me before even starting, all I could be certain of was one thing; I was not ready.
"You look a little jittery," Erhan ribbed. The trembling of the carriage only seemed to excite him more.
I gave him a weary look. "How can you not?"
"I have taken this road many times before, Miyu."
The trees zooming past us began to thin out, revealing rich plains of tall, pale grass. Bees swirled around the dry flowers, searching for one last taste of nectar before autumn batted down their food. "That's not—" I muttered, realizing the futility of conversing with someone like Erhan mid-sentence. "Never mind."
He laughed, jabbing his elbow into my side. "Cheer up! Why the long face?"
"I have to slaughter a man."
"That is not how it works, actually," he clarified pleasantly. "I just need you to have him make a deal with me. The transfer has to be consensual, sadly."
I stared. It was one thing to murder a man in cold blood, and another case entirely to convince him to kindly hand over his soul to a stranger. My fingertips throbbed with adrenaline as I sluggishly brushed my hair back, failure already reserving a place in my mind. My breath deepened, scraping my lungs for the oxygen Erhan's words had stolen.
"Oh, Saints," he recoiled. "Are you going to vomit?"
The golden fields blurred before my eyes. "I can't do it," I blurted out, and my voice curled into a whimper.
"You can't vomit? That's unfortunate."
"No! I can't lie. I can't fool anyone." I couldn't even fool myself into thinking this was a good idea; manipulating another human was neither something I could do nor something I wanted to do.
Lately, though, it didn't seem to matter what I wanted. I was carrying burden on my back now; the burden of duty, for one, but most importantly the burden of what I would lose, were I to give up so far into the insanity I had bound myself to.
"Try to think of the quid pro quo." Erhan shifted his body towards me, his lighthearted grin enduring through the gloomy mood. "If you help me, I can give you whatever you desire. Unlimited money, a beautiful estate next to the sea..."
Another shiver rattled my spine. Not because dread tormented my soul, but because Erhan's words melted it so quickly. I could return to Kasa and give my family everything they deserved. What would my father say, knowing I had to bring a man to his death in order to give him and Hai a future? What would he do when he learned how eager I secretly was to go against everything he had taught me?
I was seven when I first stole. It was nothing grand; a half-decomposed herring the fish gutter had laid on the pavement as he honed his blade. I had snatched it and ran off to our cramped shack, because the gutter had a lot of fish and we had only their bones.
When I presented it to my father, he frowned. "Where did you find money to buy food?"
"I didn't. I took it."
He knelt to my level and glanced at me. "We can't take other people's things, no matter how much we need them."
"But..." I pouted. "Hai said he was hungry. I had to help."
"Why help yourself and hurt another?" He wiped a smudge of tar on my cheek. "You need to be fair, Yumi. No matter how much you suffer, you need to find a way to survive and still be fair."
Yet now, eleven years later, I could not think of any fair outcome to my situation.
"Do I really look like that kind of person?" I asked.
Erhan looked at my through curious eyes, the muscles of his lips twitching. "No. But need can force your hand."
The moments rushed by as the coach led us through calm fields. More green plants emerged, as well as short cottages and stone sheds. Even torn to shreds by the brutal reality I was facing, I allowed my humming head a moment of blissful ignorance, staring out at the unfamiliar architecture of Sisarah. Domes were supposed to be sacred; that is what Lyra had told me. Here, they were used generously, as if everyone wealthy enough to afford a house in the capital reigned with the Saints.
A pang of envy squeezed my chest. If things were only slightly different, if I lived in a city a little to the north, perhaps I wouldn't be sitting in a carriage with a deranged criminal.
And soon, the palace blurred into view.
I wasn't surprised. Erhan clearly came from the royal court — based on his attire and nothing else — and somewhere deep in my mind, the suspicion lurked since Sisarah was mentioned. But as the horses brought us closer to the estate, a strange warmth flushed across my chest. A palace — which upon closer inspection looked more like a fortress — made entirely of stone and wood sat on the top of a hill, fully surrounded by thick foliage. It looked like a small city in itself; rectangle towers and boxes full of arches and bridges laid in the embrace of the forest.
Paint laced with gold and silver swirled in graceful patterns on the walls and tall pillars watched over the estate. Deep within me I knew that all the precious metals and intricate architecture aimed to deceive, to distract from the rusted hearts of the courtiers and the sins that the Saints so greatly worshiped there would recoil at. Yet I allowed myself to be led astray by the boldness the palace boasted with such brashness; I thought it wise to exhaust my vulnerability before I stepped foot in the Empire's most dangerous city.
My heart twitched with each turn of the coach's wheels. I wiped a hand across my forehead, trying to keep my jaw from becoming as unhinged as the man staring at me with an amused arch to his brows. "Not what you expected?" he said.
I gathered my wonder the best I could. "Kasa's architecture is better," I whispered.
A lie. I would have to become used to those.
The carriage rolled into a stone path shaded by lemon-colored leaves hanging from sturdy branches. My head whirled with amazement, and my heart yearned for a still moment in these roads, a moment without the impending mission nudging me. In any other circumstance I would lean back and enjoy the view; now I devoured it, knowing well it could be my first and last time witnessing the emperor's summer estate, Keiha Palace.
For a fleeting, dazed moment I glanced at Erhan. His lips were tight and his jaw clenched and relaxed rhythmically, and blurry grief painted the unreadable narrowness of his eyes. A blend of conflict and awe swam in his amber orbs; fear and eagerness; drab, bitter familiarity.
My gaze snapped back to the road. Some moments weren't meant to be witnessed.
Sooner than my heart desired, the carriage rolled to a stop. I stuck my head out of the window and gaped at the immensity of the palace. A pair of fountains framed our path, and their glossy surface glinted with the honey and gold of the morning sun. Dragonflies swiveled across the green, and for a bizarre moment I found myself envying them. How simple it was, their life.
But beauty lurked in detail, and the imposing building before me strove to prove that.
"Gather your jaws from the ground, Miyu." Erhan scooted towards me, laying his elbow on my shoulder. "You will have plenty of time to gawk at the palace, believe me."
I tilted my head to glance at him. His face was bitterly stony despite his tone as he stared at the palace's garden, the soft grass seeming withered in his brown eyes.
Bleak realization settled. The coach's door swung open, letting cold air rush into the narrow space, and the momentary bliss I had found slid from my grasp.
Relief held no space in my mind; only fear, gloom, and a weak, droll spark of hope.
❧
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