Chapter Eighteen

I sit on an infirmary cot while Teloh hunches before me, and tapes my index finger to my middle finger. He unwraps the old gauze around my palm to check it. The mark that Arisa carved is scabbed over in places and weeping in others. I let him brush my skin lightly with his thumb as he checks it over. Let him be cursed, I think defiantly.

Healers hurry past our door. They look in and then rush away at one glimpse of the assassin. They seem so nervous around Teloh that I wonder what other terrible things Arisa has made him do.

“There is no infection, but the spell was poorly done. I’m not sure it’s even complete.” He gently rewraps fresh gauze over my palm, careful to make sure it is secure. I grunt in reply.

“Come, let me show you a place I go to be alone.” He extends his hands to help me off the infirmary bed, but I stick mine into the folds of my malong. My heart tells me that he is tame, but my head laughs at the notion. A wolf is still a wolf.

I go with my head and hope that I don’t regret it.

We pass through the Autumn Palace and pause at a familiar set of doors. I realize that this was where he was headed the day he stumbled upon me, blood-splattered and exhausted. His face relaxes when he passes over the threshold.

The greenhouse feels different in the dark: warm, like a cozy blanket on a cold night. I follow closely and watch for creeping vines, but the trees remain asleep.

We follow a narrow stream lined with pebbles, past towering banana trees bent over with fruits and delicate orchids clinging to fallen logs, past ponds teeming with gold carp toward the edge of the forest. Teloh touches the trunks as if they are old friends as we walk. He seems alive now, alert, in a way his disinterested persona around Arisa would never suggest. This is a different Teloh. I have a feeling that I could spend a lifetime and not know every version of him.

A half-remembered dream bubbles to the surface unwanted. I imagine him curled beside me, asleep, eyes closed, curls unruly, his arm around my waist. I am grateful that the dim light hides the flush in my cheeks. I begin to wonder if forgetting our past lives together is a blessing or a curse.

“You said you would give me answers.” I walk up to the glass wall that separates the fortress from the ocean. I try to glimpse the water through the rippled glass, but the moonlight refracts wildly, revealing nothing.

Teloh leans so close that I can smell the coconut oil in his hair. He is an assault to my senses, and I take a small step back.

As if he hears my thoughts, he slides down to the floor to give me space.

I crouch nearby so that I can look him in the eyes to judge if he lies to me, but my eyes follow the curve of his nose down to the tired lines of his expression. He doesn’t sleep much, I think, and I make note of the small changes in his demeanor. His shoulders are relaxed, his breathing slow, and I catch the beginnings of a smile. He sticks a hand in his pocket and reveals a palm full of seeds.

“Watch,” he says and pours them into my hand. “Stay still.”

A small bird darts out of the shadows and alights on my hand. It is yellow-bellied and has orange spots on its wings. It is so delicate that I’m afraid I might crush it.

“Ask me anything you want, and I swear I will answer you, if you answer my questions in return,” he says.

“Another test?” I ask, and he grins so wickedly that his smile might be the end of me.

Traitor, I tell my heart’s furious beating, and I fumble for a question.

“How old are you?” I begin.

“Eighteen.” His lips drag upward as if it is a private joke. I’m not sure if he is lying.

“Is the rumor about the balete true? Was a Baylan truly cursed by Omu and turned into a tree?”

My skin prickles at the sound of his chuckle. “No, but it is a good way to keep them obedient.” It’s a relief to know that no human magic is that powerful.

I let out a breath. The moonlight highlights the curve of his cheeks and the line of his jaw. And I thought Tanu was beautiful? I can’t stop drinking in Teloh’s face.

“Do you really think Kuran is pretty?” I blurt and curse inwardly. I say such vapid things when I’m nervous.

“Yes, but most people would.” He seems too amused by this line of questioning for my liking, and I wonder what happened to my brain. Why does he unsettle me so? This might not be a test, but it is a game I am likely to lose.

There’s something wild about his eyes, but intimately familiar, too. What do I know about him? Everything, my heart says, and a picture comes to me of us huddled together on a lonely beach. Nothing, my head says as I watch the assassin recline in the greenhouse.

“You are not so tall, and there is no softness about you. Your mouth is crooked,” he says, but his tone holds admiration. “You are a swift-moving current that alters everything around you. You are interesting, Narra Jal.” His voice is decisive, and my pulse surges at the compliment.

“You knew me from the first moment you saw me, but I am no one. How is this possible?”

“You could never be no one.” He looks away, and it feels as if he’s ripped the bandages from my skin. “We knew each other in another life. Yes, I recognized you, but I had forgotten what effect you have on me. It makes it harder to hate you.”

The memory of Arawan burning shudders back to life. I picture him then, soot-stained and struggling to free himself of the rope I bound him with. His dark eyes burned with seething anger. I see the same defiance in him now, and I know that the vision I saw in the tombs was true.

“It’s unfair to judge me on something I don’t remember. All my life, I’ve been shunned, when my only crime is daring to exist.”

They are pretty but empty words. They feel rehearsed, because they are my mother’s and not my own. I remain a monster in my own mind, no matter what my family might say. Every side glance, every friendship rejected, felt like a slap I deserved.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and curse him, he sounds as if he means it. He makes me dizzy, but he makes it all worse, too: the guilt, the loneliness, the confusion. “If returning to Bato-Ko has not brought back your memories, they may never come back. Or perhaps you do not want to remember.” He is still for a few moments. “Maybe to be reborn is a gift and forgetting is a mercy.”

“Would you forget if you could?” My eyes slide to the sleeves of his tunic, and I wince at his hidden bruises.

“It doesn’t matter what I want.” He shrugs and cuts off that line of questioning.

I take a breath. “What do you know about the Archivist Manong Alen?”

“I heard he was arrested for treason, but I only do as Arisa commands. She explains nothing to me.” Another shrug of his shoulders.

“Do you know why Shora Jal was arrested?”

“Not for certain,” he says. “Her mother, Yirin Jal, turned her over to us, and this caused quite a scandal, but I am not privy to the Interpreters’ courts.”

Yirin did this? I blink in shock. To think that I wrote to her for help and entrusted Kuran’s care to her. I truly believed that she might care about her only blood relatives, but I was wrong. My mother was right to despise the woman. I fume, vowing to spit on her name and pray to the Diwata Madur for justice. May she be cursed in this life and the next.

“Do you think my mother will be executed?” I ask.

“Few people are pardoned,” he says softly. “You Tigangi have become as hard as your land.”

We sit together in the silence for a time. The seeds are gone from my hand, yet I keep it outstretched. Tiredness peeks through the careful stitching of Teloh’s smiles. I wonder why he stays—if he was just another unwanted child turned over to the Baylan, or if he simply has nowhere else to go.

He clears his throat. “It’s my turn for questions, Narra Jal.”

I remember our game and nod, though my heart is not playful.

“Tell me about your life and the world beyond Bato-Ko. Perhaps I know who you were, but I don’t know who you are.” There’s a hungriness to the request that I don’t expect, a longing for more than the fates that bind us here.

“I am a cloth merchant,” I say. “I’ve twice crossed the continent with my mother and my sister. Inay was young when she had Kuran. I never knew my father, but I know they were deliriously in love. She never talks about him, but there’s this look she gets in her eyes sometimes when she sees things that remind her of him.” I think I understand what she was feeling now. When I think of my family, it fills my heart to brimming, and then I remember they are not here and I feel alone once again. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard her tell a joke. She rarely laughs. It’s been the three of us for as long as I remember, and it hasn’t always been easy.”

We loved each other, but we would fight like wet cats. I was never an easy child. There were so many times I raged at my mother. I wanted to see the world, to make friends, to experience every joy and pain, but she was always afraid I might be taken away from her. She held me so tight.

But there were good moments, too. I tell him about the caravan, and the time that I wrote an orasyon that turned Kuran bald, as vengeance for stolen cake. About the wardrobe of red clothes Manay Halna wears to keep bad luck away, and how the desert smells at night when the flowers bloom.

His laughter is halting, as if he hasn’t used it in too long, and his questions spin my words into a weaving of stories.

The hours pass, and I don’t even realize it.

“You better rest. I hear you have a healing test next.” He seems reluctant to stand, and I fumble with my footing. There are still so many questions I wish I could ask, but I don’t know how much I can trust him, or what he wants from me.

I find one last question. “Who gave you those bruises?”

“You know the answer. Arisa enjoys being cruel, but I heal quickly.” He pushes back his sleeves and reveals smooth skin free of purpling. “But you might not. Promise me you will be careful. No one can know that we’ve spoken.”

I realize how close he is sitting to me. How our knees have drifted to touch each other. Moonlight kisses his cheeks but not his eyes. It doesn’t matter, because they stare so intently that it feels like he can see into my soul. And I stare back, mesmerized.

In the darkness, the promise is an easy thing. I could swear on all my lives never to give him up to Arisa, even if he did not ask. He lets out a breath, and the tension in his limbs falls away, as if he’s let go of a great weight, but it is replaced by something tenuous and new.

He takes my hand in his warm palms and helps me stand. He doesn’t let go, and I don’t want him to. We walk in silence to the greenhouse door, and he turns to look at me one last time. His eyes fall on my lips, but he steps away and gently untangles our fingers.

“Goodnight, Narra,” he whispers.

And for some reason, I no longer feel tired. I wish he would say my name again, but he’s already walking away.

I don’t know if I’ve asked all the right questions or all the wrong ones. I don’t know if I have lost my chance to ask more. A hundred new questions spring up in my head, a forest seeded and blooming.

…

It’s early morning by the time I return to our room. Virian grabs me as I pass through the curtain, and I nearly topple over her. “We were so worried! Don’t you dare go wandering at night again!”

Dayen blinks sleepily but lurches to his feet, forgetting his crutch. Tanu is there, too, and he rushes to my side.

“What happened to your hand?” Tanu’s blue eyes go wide. Behind him sits a pile of fresh clothes and a familiar folded green-and-gold cloth. It’s my best malong. He must have gone to see my sister just as I asked. My heart catches in my throat.

“Reshar caught me sneaking around and took me to Arisa. She had me punished,” I say.

“N— Kuran, you can’t go off like that. I promised your sister I’d look out for you,” he says.

I bite my lip. “She was mad, wasn’t she?”

“Very angry at the both of us.” He does not repeat the curses that were sure to accompany Kuran’s wrath. He thrusts the malong toward me. “She wanted you to have this. She said that if you’re so keen to throw away your life, you might as well die looking good.”

I snort and choke back my tears. Of course she would say such a thing, but I can’t bear to take it. It’s a reminder of my life before the fortress, of my family, and so far my attempts to help both Kuran and my mother have come to nothing. I need to warn her about Yirin. I need to ask her what she knows about my mother’s past. I need…her. My mother is the glue that always kept our family together, but Kuran is my heart, my best friend in the world. I miss her so much.

Tanu sets the malong back on the foot of my bed with the rest of the clothing he’s set out for me. The tunics and trousers look borrowed from some Baylan’s dusty closet. Serviceable and well-made but not very colorful.

“She asked me to pull you out, but you are marked. I explained to her that there would be…” He pauses. “Complications.”

That’s a mild way to put losing your memories. I touch the wrapping on my hand. My skin still feels so tender that I may be scarred forever. If my mind were broken, who would I cry out for, and who would come? I banish the thoughts because they lead to nothing good.

“I don’t need watching.” I glower instead.

“You need to know magic to survive, and you never paid attention when I tried to teach you. To get hurt, all you need to do is choose the wrong door.”

I grimace at his choice of words. An omen or another coincidence?

I mumble a warning for him to send to my sister about our grandmother. He nods, and I sigh as he departs.

Virian inspects my taped fingers. “What is this, just a bandage?” She wrinkles her nose. “I’m no expert in healing, but I know a thing or two that might numb the pain and bring down the swelling.”

She picks a writing charcoal from her pouch and draws an orasyon on my bandage while Dayen flaunts a collection he’s started. It’s a small arsenal of dull dinner knives, bottles of paint, papers, rolls of cloth, brushes, and a small dead bush in a pot. I raise an eyebrow.

“It’s a warning system, just in case,” Dayen says. “Wear the flowers, and they’ll bloom in the presence of big magic.”

“And I thought the flower was a gift for me.” Virian sighs dramatically. She wears a dried bloom in her hair. He looks chastened by her words but also pleased. He presents one to me as well, but I notice how careful he is to avoid touching my skin. For all his friendliness, I can still sense the fear he hides for Virian’s sake.

I weave a flower into a tangle of hair and thank him anyway. “That is a very smart idea,” I say, and he blushes. His cast came off while I was gone, and he’s walking well without his crutch. The farm boy is taller than I guessed, a giant in comparison to the rest of us, but still all elbows and knees.

“There were Baylan searching the hallways last night. I don’t know what’s happening,” Virian says. “More of us have gone missing. I asked my cousin about it, and even he’s worried. He asked me to keep an eye out. I don’t believe they’ve gone home.”

“I don’t, either.” I shiver. They’re not supposed to. Not one of the candidates is supposed to leave the fortress either alive or dead until the Sundo is complete. There is something very wrong going on this year, and I would bet it has something to do with either Reshar or Arisa. Reshar exposed his true self the moment he demanded a bribe. He didn’t have to turn me over to Arisa, and yet he did, when he was the one sneaking around at night doing magic. And Arisa? I think that power is all she cares about.

I look at our measly defense system and hope we will never need any of these things. “I did find out one thing last night. There’s the Healing test this morning. Rumor has it.”

Dayen sighs, and Virian echoes it. “If it requires magic, then it’s a good thing your left hand was ruined, not your right.”

I grimace again, though the pain has subsided. My mouth dries.

“I’m left-handed.” What an easy mark I’ve been, so easily lulled by a fine smile.

Teloh knew.

Here I thought I’d finally found someone who could see past my curse. Who did not willfully ignore it, but who understood what it was like to be forsaken.

I stare at my hand. The spell of laughter in the moonlight dissolves. Even if what the assassin told me is true, even if there is some fate that ties us together from life to life, he still wants me to fail the Sundo. Little does he know, I hardly care about winning, only surviving long enough to do what I came here to do.

I know where my mother is being kept; now I need a way past the guards. A schedule, perhaps, or another way in.

Enough. Be still, I tell the ghosts of my past lives and collapse onto my cold bed. For once, they listen.