We drank sweet milk tea, and ate soft fluffy idli. Radha had packed us two little breakfasts, when we woke up at dawn and told her that Ash and I had to go. Niv had given us the last of his money. Enough to paddock Maraud in a safe place, and get a hotel room if we absolutely had to.
He’d hugged us. And I kissed him, in front of Radha and Ash. His smile was like the last gulp of air you take before diving under water, when you don’t know how soon you’ll be able to breathe again.
Logistics were worked out. Ways to get in touch. Worried looks were hidden away. We all kissed sleeping Connor on his forehead. And then we headed out, and went our separate ways, and Ash and I were alone.
And now we sat along the riversea, miles away from home, with no clear idea of where we were going. Drinking tea and pretending like we weren’t scared shitless.
“How do you feel, Ash?” I asked. All morning long she’d been present, saying little but responding in ways that made it clear she was aware of what was happening around her.
She nodded, then reached out her hand for mine. “I’m okay.”
“Better today than yesterday?”
“I can see and hear things . . . better.”
“Excellent.”
“What happened?” she asked. “Last night. The attacks, during my mother’s speech?”
That was the old Ash, all right. Concerned for everyone else’s safety. Worried more about her city and her people than about herself. I told her the little that we knew, from the news reports on the radio. Thirteen people were confirmed dead. Fifty-seven known instances of sabotage and terrorism. Monsters slaughtered, all over the city. DPD had made no arrests.
I took both of her hands in one of mine, and pressed them together. “There’s something I need you to remember. Something that I think will help. Will you let me try something?”
Ash nodded.
I shut my eyes. Breathed in, straightened my spine, focused on the sensations there. Tried not to try. Tried to just let it happen, like it had with the brontosaurus. Tried to feel happy, stable, strong. Things that would help her out, lend her the power she needed to break through the spell she was under, access her own ability. But where do emotions like that live? Wherever happiness and stability and strength were, I couldn’t snap my fingers and summon them up.
A breeze came in from down the shore, bringing with it the smell of the riverfront laundry vats, and I had my answer.
Because I thought of Connor. The day we met. When he was two and I was twelve. The clean-clothes smell of him. The happiness, coming off of him in waves, so strong that my sadness about being cast out of the Palace blew away like raptor feathers in the wind.
Memory can make you feel things.
“Shut your eyes,” I told Ash.
She did.
“Do you remember the time you found out your mother was going to let you attend a meeting of her governing council?”
“Yeah,” she said, and my eyes were shut but I could feel the smile in her voice.
I let myself drift back into the body of the boy I’d been. Only a month or so before my banishment. I could smell the familiar interior: stuffy like a bank, safe like a church. Summertime; thick stone walls kept the inside of the place a solid ten degrees cooler than the rest of the city.
I saw us, in front of a long line of mirrors. Because of course the queen had an entire room just for getting dressed. Ash stood there, holding a dress in each hand. One gray and one mauve. I was sprawled on a massive round blue velvet couch.
“They’re both awful,” I said.
Ash threw them both on the ground. “They are.”
We wore the simple tunics used by Palace guards and soldiers for their training. Ash had just come from there—the nine guards stood outside in the hallway, dressed identically—they’d spent hours drilling martial arts, but she still only had the one move, where she grabbed an attacker by the wrist and by the elbow and bent the arm the wrong way.
“You should wear that,” I said, sticking out my leg to touch the tunic with my toe.
“You’re ridiculous,” she said. “This is a very big day for me. I don’t want to meet them dressed like a soldier-in-training.”
“Why not? Is it better to meet them looking like a duchess whose mother is trying to marry her off? Go in there as the princess that you are, not the one your mother wants you to be.”
She nodded. Of course I was right. I was only repeating stuff I’d heard her say before. Ash understood things in a way I never would.
She tried on several more gowns, but I knew the argument was over. I’d won.
I let it swell and grow inside of me, the same pride I’d felt back then. In that moment I’d believed that I belonged in the Palace, that I was part of that world, that I had something to offer. That Ash and I would change our city, fix everything that was wrong with it.
My spine tingled. It got stronger and stronger—my hands turned cold and started to shiver, like a freak-out might be moments away, but I breathed deep and calm and soon the shivering subsided.
Ash gasped.
“What?” I said, opening my eyes, startled to see that we were still sitting beside the riversea.
“I feel something,” she said. “Like . . . a smell that’s not a smell. Or a sound that’s not a sound.”
“Another sense,” I said. “Right?”
She nodded. “I can see things. Almost. They’re there, in my peripheral vision, but they move when I turn to look at them. Like I can’t ever quite catch up.”
“You’ll get there,” I said. “You’re still coming out from under the spell.”
I had done it. I conjured up an emotion, and I used it to help Ash. I’d made her stronger. And the weird thing was, I felt stronger too. More confident in my ability. Strengthening her had strengthened me.
Thunder boomed in the distance.
“Storm coming,” said a woman with a shopping cart, picking up cans from the trash, accompanied and assisted by a small flock of gremlins. “Heard about it on the radio just now.”
“Thanks,” Ash said, with a smile.
“Here,” the woman said, shuffling over, and handed us a battered old radio, the size of a book. “Found this in the garbage. Looks like hell but works fine. Full battery. Got one of my own already.”
“Thank you,” I said. She could have sold it, gotten a moon cake or two. My people were the kindest and most generous in the city. It was baffling to me, how anyone could hate or fear us.
“Solomon,” Ash said, when the woman was gone.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks. For . . . everything.”
“Psssh,” I said.
She took my hand and held it. “I’ve got you. I may not have anything else, but I’ve got you.”
“Likewise.”
Lightning lit up the sky.