The interior of the coach is dim and thick with the scent of perfume. Lark enters first, her sword up. There are two high gasps.
“Quiet,” she growls. “All we need is quiet, and you will not be hurt.”
I step up behind her. It’s a tight fit, but both Kimela and her maid have shrunk against the far door, leaving the middle of the coach clear. Lark edges to one side to give me space, blocking the maid from my view. Kimela’s gaze falls on me. At first, there’s only the same terror as for the Sunshield Bandit, with no flicker of recognition.
“Hi,” I say flatly.
“What do you want?” Kimela asks sharply. “If you want the jewels, you can have them. But I warn you—the palace will not rest until they’ve tracked you down—”
“Quiet,” Lark orders again. “Your job is to listen to Tamsin.”
“Tamsin?” echoes Kimela faintly. “Who . . .” Her gaze travels to me again, and her eyes nearly pop from her head. She straightens up, staring through the dim light. Her rouged mouth drops open.
“Tamsin . . . Tamsin Moropai?”
I thin my lips as her gaze roves over me, from my homespun dress to my shorn hair. I’d like to think I look a little healthier than I did a week ago, but all the same, I’m certainly not the same person she remembers—I’m the face on the bounty sheet, the accomplice of the Sunshield Bandit.
“How did you . . . where . . . you died! Everyone said you had died!”
I shake my head grimly.
“But I . . . I saw your si-oque myself—they locked it in the case by your pedestal. It convinced Queen Isme to rush my appointment. She hoped it would draw out the prince’s kidnappers . . .”
I frown and hold up my wrist, where my si-oque rests just above my sleeve. Her gaze falls on it.
“But . . . ,” she says. “But then . . . how did the minister produce it? Whose did he have?”
“Who?” I ask.
“Minister Kobok—he received your si-oque in the mail anonymously. He presented it to the queen and suggested that expediting my appointment would encourage the kidnappers to come forward.”
Lark and I exchange a glance. Kobok, always an opponent of mine, miraculously produced a forged si-oque and claimed it was a sign to rush Kimela’s confirmation?
That seems awfully convenient.
“But there were other people who saw you die!” Kimela protests. She turns to her maid. “You said she had died!”
I crane my head to look around Lark. Kimela’s maid is shrunk against the seat, a look of dread on her face.
My next thoughts fizzle out.
It’s Simea.
My maid.
I go to declare her name and end up only sputtering on the s. She draws a deep, trepidatious breath.
“My lady Tamsin?” she whispers.
“I . . .” I begin. Lark cuts her gaze to my fingers as I move them numbly.
“Tamsin says she thought you died in the attack,” Lark translates, then glances back to me. “This is your old maid?”
I nod. I remember her body, heavy and stifling, as she collapsed against me, pinning me in the coach outside Vittenta.
“You said she’d died!” Kimela insists.
“I thought she had,” Simea whispers.
A creak of the coach and an angry mutter from up top whips me out of my thoughts. I can dwell on Simea later, but we have to buy ourselves time first. I shake myself and lift my hands again. Lark and I have practiced this part, and she barely has to take her gaze off Kimela and Simea to give them my words.
“Tamsin didn’t die, and she is not here as your enemy,” she says. “She commends your appointment to ashoki and hopes your career will be long. But Moquoia and Prince Iano Okinot in-Azure are in very great danger.” It does seem ironic to say this when Iano himself is just a foot above us, brandishing his rapier, but I go on.
“Tamsin needs to talk to you about the threat to the Moquoian court, and how it can be stopped—”
“I beg your pardon, I’m sure, but why are you doing all the talking then?” Kimela asks, her voice high but resolute. She’s regained some of her poise, a steely glint in her eye.
“Tamsin, if you did not know, had her tongue split in the attack outside Vittenta,” Lark says, shifting her sword the barest inch. Kimela’s eyes dart to its point. “She is speaking to you with hand signs. I am telling you her words.”
Kimela looks back to me again. Simea is sitting rigid in her seat, her lips parted in a sort of permanent, soft scream.
“Tamsin needs you to listen to her now,” Lark goes on. “We ask that you tell your guards to stand down.”
“I most certainly will not!” Kimela exclaims. “Not with the world’s most notorious bandit waving a sword in my face!”
I have to give Kimela credit for pure nerve, but I need her to understand what we’re here for. Despite her new career in theatrics, her shock is real, and with the news of Kobok’s miraculous possession of a forged si-oque, I’m now certain she’s not our blackmailer. If I can get her to calm down, we can all sit and think rationally about this. I dig in the pouch on my belt and come out with my pamphlet.
“This is an essay Tamsin has written,” Lark says as I hand it over, “explaining the root of the problem in Moquoia and the steps the court can take to fix it.”
Kimela’s gaze flicks to the pamphlet, then back up to me. She seems to gather herself to say something, but stops and looks again at the paper. She takes it, staring at the text.
“What on earth—who wrote this? Who can scribe like this?”
Oh, bless the colors, a lucky break.
Lark glances at my hands. “Tamsin says read it, and she’ll tell you.”
Kimela clucks her tongue in irritation, but nevertheless her eyes begin to dart down the page. Furrows form around her mouth, but I use her momentary distraction to turn back to Simea.
What happened outside Vittenta? I ask, and Lark translates.
She’s sitting pressed firmly against the seat, with her hands buried inside her cloak. “I was pulled out of the coach and bound by the attackers. I didn’t see what happened to you. When they said you’d died, I believed it.”
You fell on me, I say, lifting my eyebrows in surprise. I thought you’d been shot.
“I was trying to protect you,” she says.
I struggle to make sense of this, but as I’m placing her story alongside the events I remember, a distant, shrill whistle pierces the air. Lark and I go still, straining to hear. It’s that two-note birdcall, the one Veran told us is the cardinal. We exchange a quick glance, frowning.
All is well, I sign, and she nods. He must be merely keeping us updated about the guards around the bend.
“Wait just a moment,” Kimela says, now skimming the second page of my essay. “Look here, Tamsin, you completely gloss over the impacts that reducing bond labor would have on our social services, our health care system—you act as if it’s just going to create a dip in our economy, not undo centuries of social infrastructure . . .”
I jump to move my hands.
“Tamsin knows there are more considerations than are named in the text,” Lark says. “But the point is that these things are . . . lut’uw . . . sorry, Tamsin, I do not know . . . they are in to being fixed,” she stumbles, and then, on a whim, she goes off my signs, locking sights on Kimela. “And these things—people services, health system—these are not so important as the lives of slaves, the lives of families and children.”
“Not so important!” Kimela exclaims, her grip creasing the paper. Outside, the cardinal call comes again—Veran is being overcautious, it seems. “You were on this nonsense before, Tamsin, when you were ashoki. Do you know how it sounds to your colleagues in court, when you dismiss their industries as unimportant? I come from the rice families of Ketori. How dare you suggest dismantling such a pillar of Moquoian trade by wrapping it all up in laborer welfare?”
Just read the rest of the essay, I say, and Kimela flicks her hand at Lark as the words come out of her mouth.
“No, I will not. I can see where this is going. I am the ashoki now, Tamsin, not you, and I will inform you that I have brought some balance back to the court you rocked. Moquoia in danger, indeed! You’re the one who went and tipped it on its head!”
She closes the pamphlet with a curt slap and holds it back out to me. From outside, Veran shrieks the cardinal’s call again. My anger flickers briefly in his direction—if he’s not careful, he’s going to give away his position.
“Bond labor is wrong and has no place in Moquoia anymore,” Lark says carefully, watching my fingers. “But there are ways to undo it without destroying the country.”
“A fanciful dream of the unpatriotic and overemotional,” Kimela says firmly. “Moquoia wouldn’t be half what it is without bond labor. Blessed Light, do watch where you’re putting that thing!” she cries, leaning away from Lark’s sword, which has jumped toward her.
Lark drives it into the quilted seat back just a few inches from Kimela’s left ear. She leans forward, her teeth gritted over her red bandanna, and Kimela has the wherewithal to remember her terror. Lark spits a few words in Eastern. Veran whistles a fourth time, his call cracking on the final note—by the colors, what is wrong with him?
There’s a sudden shout from up top, and the whole carriage rocks. Something that sounds remarkably like a crossbow quarrel thumps the side of the coach.
“Tamsin!” Iano calls, his footsteps hitting just overhead. “Lark! Get out of there! The guards are coming!”
Lark reels back from Kimela, jerking her sword out of the seat back. At exactly the same moment, Simea flings herself from her seat toward me.
She’d have made contact if Lark hadn’t moved—instead, they collide, and all three of us ricochet in the cramped space, our legs tangling. I land against the door, and it hinges open, swinging over the empty space just off the road. Rain pelts my face. There’s shouting outside. I struggle to free my feet from the pile of us on the floor. It’s only as Lark gives her own yell, twisting awkwardly toward Simea, that I see the knife.
It’s wrapped in Simea’s fingers, and it’s arcing toward me. Lark launches herself off the bench and plunges the end of her sword into the dark folds of Simea’s cloak. She spasms and gasps. The knife falls. Kimela screams, high and long. The coach rocks, and the far door bursts open. A crossbow is thrust into the space, and Lark rushes to deflect it—but misses. Her fist swings by it ineffectively, as if she’d forgotten her shield wasn’t on her left hand. The quarrel fires, missing her head by inches, but the mistake has thrown her off balance—a black-liveried body barrels into the coach, slamming her against the edge of the seat. She gives a snarl; there’s a horrible groan as their grappling bodies land on the bleeding Simea. Kimela is still screaming.
Lark twists in the guard’s grip, his burly arms wound under her shoulders. Her eyes find mine. Her last movement in the tiny space, filled now with the tang of blood instead of perfume, is to kick.
Her boot hits my calf so hard I can feel the worn tread of her soles, and I slip backward, my fingers just missing the doorframe. One of my feet lands on the soft, perilous edge of the road—the other swings out into open air. The rain-soft mud gives way beneath me.
I fall, first through air and then through brush, rolling and tumbling uncontrollably into the fathomless forest below.