Chapter Five

Sumi

The fire burned high and the magic in it reached out to the magic in me, like hot sun on cold toes.

The magic might be warm, but I was cold. If I gave in, if Maldita found us— I fought it down, didn’t let it win. I’d pushed back the dark goddess Maldita Herself in Her rages. But my fear was harder to restrain.

Would anyone notice two boys doing magic? It was careful and controlled. If I hadn’t been so close, so sensitive, I wouldn’t have felt it. Would Thom? He had no magic, but he was smart— would he realize the flames were too bright, too hot? Who would he blame? Living with us in the heart of our house, in the presence of their magic, how could he not realize who I was and where I belonged?

I wasn’t going back.

I deserved this escape. The boys deserved it too, and they didn’t understand how badly they were jeopardizing it.

Nothing to be done now— not with the entire family looking on— except think how to get them to listen to me, so I let the fire rage and pushed my own magic down, down inside. Then followed Jay and the rest back into the house.

Amidst the silent scrubbing of the couch, the bleaching and recovering the cushions, the wordless communication while trying to feed all of us in too cramped a space, Thom called no alarm. No guards came to the house, nor priestessi of either temple.

Perhaps we were safe.

Four long, tortuous, wordless, grieving days.

Sometimes, I worried the boys weren’t sad enough— if that was a thing— because they didn’t grieve Jay’s mother the way the rest of the family did, and perhaps it was some fault of mine…

And then I remembered their upbringing, in the damned temple, where their own blood-mothers weren’t allowed to care for them, and the priestessi in charge of the children changed out every year or so. No wonder they weren’t so attached to Jay’s mother.

Absolutely a fault of mine, because I’d allowed it. And perhaps we’d damaged them irreparably, but I was doing my best now to love them and give them someone stable to love in return.

When I could stand it no longer, I took the boys by their hands and brought them to the back yard, pacing along the stones, stepping past the ashes of the pyre. The dirt was ready to be planted but Jay and his family wouldn’t start until after their grieving was complete, and I wasn’t sure exactly when that would be. The beginning of the fifth day? The end? Not till the sixth morning? There were so many things I didn’t know about the Rest Third—

I turned my back on the yellow flowering bush, the new budding brownwood tree, the house, the mid-morning sun and shadow, and broke their tradition of silence.

“What in blessed heaven do you think you are doing?” I hissed. “Magic, outside the temple?”

Wilyam glanced at Antero, then stared at his feet. “It was going to take days if we didn’t help.”

Antero nodded, his purple hair falling into his eyes. “Rot. Diseases. Ick.”

They both needed haircuts as much as I needed patience. “And what if someone noticed? You want to go back?”

“No!” Wilyam looked over his shoulder at the house and lowered his voice. “No. Just, we couldn’t— it wasn’t right—”

“We are careful.” Antero pressed his hand to mine and pushed quietly, gently.

My magic surged. I held it back. Fought my temper down, along with my magic.

Looking, he was right. He was being careful. His magic barely stirred against the rest of the world.

“It’s harder, away from the temple. Takes more work.” Wilyam’s shoulder twitched. “But, like Andy said, we’re careful. Quiet-like.”

We are being careful, he’d said. They’d been doing more magic than this and I just hadn’t caught them before. Because they’d been quiet-like? Hmm. Focus on the now. “Andy?”

Antero beamed. “Nickname.”

“They do that out here. In the Rest Third. Like Jay is really Bluejay? And Dee for Chickadee and Maggie for Magpie? He wanted one, so he picked Andy. I’m Wil.”

“Andy.” I tousled his purple hair. “Wil.” Tousled red. I didn’t have a choice really. They were using magic will-I nill-I. Didn’t want to stop. Maybe couldn’t stop. And I couldn’t make them, not without using my own magic and risking everything. So— “I guess we’d better start classes again. Writing and history and magic and all that.”

Antero— Andy’s eyes lit up and he grinned. Wilyam shrugged. Of the two, he was the more gifted but the less studious.

My boys, now that Antero’s mother was gone and he had chosen us as his family.

They had so much energy, so much life, and it was my intention to protect that— to let them explore and grow without the shadow of either temple or goddess.

“Let’s start now. How many layers can you push and pull through, away from the temple? Can you feel the yellowbush through the ground? Don’t hurt it.” I looked, a passive way to see the magic around me. Waited to be noticed by Maldita.

My heart thundered, using my own magic, even in this tiny, soft way, but I needed to watch them use theirs. When no lightning struck me down, I tentatively believed She hadn’t noticed, so I looked some more. It was a little like a drug, this magic, this ability to do things others couldn’t, and I missed it. Craved it. How much worse would that craving be for two young boys who didn’t have my experiences? Away from Maldita’s influence, they could use their magic for good, not ill.

Wilyam— Wil— concentrated, his tongue caught between his teeth. “Four? The air, dirt, stone, dirt… almost the roots. Like they’re there but I can’t quite—” He screwed up his face with effort.

“That’s a good starting point. Anter— Andy?”

“Three. Air. Dirt. Stone.” He looked up at me. “Harder. Outside the temple.”

My own head swam a little— even passively looking used my energy.

Wil nodded. “It’s much harder here. Like there’s not enough magic or something. Makes it easier to be quiet-like, though.”

And they were ‘quiet-like.’ I saw what they were doing, but only because I was looking. They created almost no ripple in the magic. My own magic stirred again and I was tempted— so tempted!— but they hadn’t been sworn to Maldita, hadn’t been Her priestess, didn’t have the tenuous thread inside them I felt still connecting me to Her.

And it didn’t exhaust them the way it would me.

No.

No magic for me. It wasn’t worth the price.

“Good.” With a sigh for the washing I would have to do to clean my pants, I settled down onto one of the stones of the naked raised beds. “I want you both to push and pull rocks up out of the boxes so the vegetables will grow better. Quiet-like. Put the rocks out here, on the paths.”

“Yes, Mom.”

They pushed and pulled, Antero with his clenched fist and Wilyam with his tongue poking between his teeth, and I counted the rocks that eased their way out of the ground to the path.

One, two… ten, eleven, and my boys were sweating as if it was the height of summer, and everything took longer.

As extended as my magic was, I felt Jay and the rest come out of the house. Nearly panicked. Cleared my throat to ask the boys to stop. Had Jay’s family heard us break their silence? But Dee beckoned us over.

Jay scooped the ashes into the dirt next to the brownwood tree. He mixed them together, then set the shovel aside and crouched and thrust in his hand and brought out a fistful of ash and dirt, then tossed it over the tree roots. First Robin, then Dee, then Maggie mimicked him. After a significant look from Maggie, I followed, then the boys, then Thom.

Finally Jay took up the shovel again and finished piling dirt around the tree. Then he cleared his throat. “Resting betweens.”

“Resting betweens,” echoed his sisters.

He straightened, looked eased. “Thank you for joining us, Thom.”

“Thank you for allowing me.”

Jay held out his hand and I took it. “Fetch some water,” I told the boys.

Wilyam opened his mouth to protest. Jay nodded, more a dip of his head than anything, but Andy lifted his chin in response. They scampered away. I followed Jay into the house.

Five days of silence was hard to shed. We wordlessly washed our faces and put on sandals, then he took me along the path to the water fountain, where we watched the boys until they had filled their buckets, headed home.

Then we went on to the market. It was as small and tattered as the Rest Third itself, but after the death ritual, it was bright and loud and exciting. I found myself shying away from the people, weaving between them and making an effort not to touch, ducking away from the whoosh of landing pallets. The sun shone high in the sky but the spring day was still comfortable, the awnings overhead all different colors, and someone had been experimenting with dye because one was several shades, all blotchy and running together.

“They grow herbs and small vegetables in their houses all year round,” Jay said, pointing with his chin to a Brown couple. The women smiled broadly. “If you’re tired, we’ll get our starts for the garden now and go home—”

“More!” I controlled my breath, did my best to control my body.

Jay nodded, and we went on. My eyes drank in the sights and my nose the scents and if I flinched back, no one said anything about it.

“We’ll come back later on our way out then,” he said over one shoulder, as much for them as for me.

But other things had already caught my attention— shirts and pants and skirts and shawls in yellows, browns, oranges, greens. Small mirrors— the glass bubbled and flawed compared to what magi and priestessi could create, but mirrors all the same. Wooden swords and knives, for practice, and in the same stall, clever wooden puzzle boxes and games and carved animals.

Real animals, in their own pens at the edges of it, two horses and several pigs and a cow. Goats and chickens and squirrels everywhere.

Meat pockets and whole turkey legs and flatbread with melted cheese. Berry pies from last year’s berries and spun sugar and custards and cakes and tarts. Raised breads and braided breads and sweet breads and salted beef and sausage and eggs and all of it made my mouth water.

People, mostly Oranges and Yellows and Greens, but Browns and the occasional Red, too. And an entire section of stalls run by Blues and Purples, some of them looking enough like Thom to be family, with imports from outside the city— castoffs from selling to the damned and the blessed, surely, but here and interesting and new.

All rubbing elbows with me.

The longer I was among them, the more I realized they had no idea who I had been, and the less I flinched from them.

For the first time in a long time, I was entranced instead of afraid, and I reveled in it, darting from offering to offering, laughing and delighted.

Perhaps if I hadn’t just been looking at the boys’ magic, I would have missed it, but someone pushed at me, a sort of look-away push, and then I felt ghostly hands at my waist.

I had no coin to carry, so the thief got nothing.

Whoever it was pushed against Jay next but the magic slid off him. A light Purple sharp-boned girl— young woman?— brushed her long fingers across his belt pouch and pulled and his hand clamped down over hers.

My gaze traced back to the other thief, the one using push magic, the young, squarely built Orange man just behind her, and if I hadn’t felt them, I’d never have believed they were working together.

After Lena’s and Jay’s and Dee’s stories about capturing criminals, I knew not to look at him directly. Instead I pretended I was interested in something beyond him, took two steps, and grabbed his hand just as hard as Jay had the young woman’s.

Then, as if we’d practiced it a hundred times, Jay and I met each other’s eyes, he flicked his toward a gap between the stalls, and we shoved our captives into the makeshift alley.

“You’re thieves,” Jay said flatly. “Tell me why we shouldn’t call the guard.”

I clamped down on my surge of fear. I couldn’t say anything about their magic— shouldn’t— these two might be smart enough to realize what it meant about me— but they had to stop

The fear rose up in my throat again and despite myself, I blurted out, “Why are you using magic? Why aren’t you at a temple?”

* * *

Jay

In the shadows of the makeshift market alley, the Orange man twisted his arm and escaped from Sumi’s grip, but he stayed. Hovered near the entrance to the alley as if he was still captive too, blocking out the light, thanks to his wide frame. Jay bent the Purple woman’s wrist so she would hurt herself if she moved.

“Wasn’t stealing.” The man flipped his orange hair out of his eyes. “No proof.”

“Don’t need proof to call for a magus,” Jay drawled.

“Let’s not be hasty.” The Purple woman looked Danya’s age— sharply reminded him of her— but sounded older than she looked. As if he didn’t have her wrist captive, she casually leaned against one of the awning poles. “If you know we used magic, then you use magic.”

The Orange man gaped at them. “My spell didn’t work on you.”

“You need to stop.” The tiny muscles at the sides of Sumi’s eyes tightened as if she was doing magic, then she wrapped her arms around herself, shook her head. “The thieving and the magic. Just stop.”

“Why should we?” The Purple woman moved to cross her own arms, came up against his hold, changed her mind. “Woman’s got to eat. You don’t look that much better off than us. Are we cutting in on your territory?”

“What? No!” Sumi glowered.

The Purple woman grinned toothily. “You let us go and we won’t come back to this market. Promise.”

“Tash—”

“Shut up.” The Purple woman tugged her arm, ground the bones of her wrist against his fingers, grimaced in pain. “Takes a thief to catch a thief, eh?”

“Tash,” the Orange man hissed. “I can’t get him off you. Like my magic don’t affect him at all.”

“Which he knows now. Thanks for telling him.”

“I knew already.” Jay snorted. Sumi had made him her Shadow— her magic-husband— while they were in the Temple of the Damned, and had given him a shield that made him immune to magic. Immune, he’d thought, just to the magic of the damned, but now he wasn’t so sure. He gripped the girl’s wrist, grinding her bones enough to get her attention. “Tash, is it? You look like you belong to the Yulian family. Thom is a friend of mine.”

A spasm of fear crossed her face. “Call the guard then,” she snapped. Sheer bravado. “You didn’t call them at first, so I bet you don’t want them involved any more than we do. What they gonna find on you?”

Sumi opened her mouth to protest, but Jay caught her eye and shook his head. They should have called the guards in the beginning, before all the talk of magic, but now— there would be awkward questions and Sumi was already terrified of being discovered.

Rest it. If it was so important Sumi would tell them to stop— admitting her own magic— then they needed to stop. But how to convey that?

“Thom will know you? He should know someone is using magic in this market.” Jay watched his captive’s face.

She blanched again. Brought her free hand to her captive. Sawed at his grip with both. “Call him then. Go ahead.”

“Stop.” He clamped his other hand down. “Stop fighting me. You’re hurting yourself.”

“Better than what Cousin Thom will do to me.”

“You are a Yulian.”

“A distant cousin. A poor one.” She stilled, glared at Sumi. “You asked why I didn’t get sacrificed to a temple? Now you know. The Yulian name. Enough to get me out of a death trap but not enough money to keep a roof overhead.”

Tash short for something?” Jay shifted, not yet ready to believe the Purple woman.

“Tasha Yulian,” she muttered, sarcasm lacing her voice. “At your service. And that’s Gui.”

“You have to stop using magic.” His Sumi looked a little wild-eyed. “You’ll call them down on us.”

“What?” Jay gaped at Sumi. “What?”

Tasha flinched. The Orange man— Gui— shuddered, stopped doing whatever he was doing that made Sumi so anxious. “Call them? Call who? How?”

She’d pled with them. The woman who used to be able to command, reduced to—

“You’re loud. Like… throwing a rock in a pool of water. When you use your magic it ripples up against other magic and they can feel you.”

Gui snapped his mouth shut, then drawled, “Nah. You’re lying for sure. Or they’d’a already come.”

“The damned have been busy,” Sumi hissed. “Things… happened. But someone felt it. Someone— they’re coming now.”

“Let me go.” Tasha stared up at Jay with big purple eyes. “We have to go.”

If the damned and the blessed could feel their magic, he had one more thing to do to protect Sumi before he let these little thieves out of his sight. “Let’s say this is our territory then, shall we?” Jay bared his teeth. Waited for their hurried nods. “Get out. Don’t come back.”

Then he released her.

The two thieves ran out of the alley and disappeared into the crowds before he could say another word.

Jay wrapped one arm around Sumi. Felt her suck in a deep breath. “Let’s go.”

She nodded and walked into the sun with him. Her eyes darted back and forth as if everyone near belonged to a temple. Rest it, if she could feel them coming, if she could feel the thieves’ magic, then she still had her own.

As long as she was free from the dark goddess, he didn’t care.

She was free, wasn’t she?

He guided her toward the little plant seller. Felt her stiffen.

“On your left,” she said softly, ducking her head to his chest.

He stepped into the stall and picked up a baby tomato plant in a pot already too small for it. Hefted it and examined the leaves. Shifted so he could look.

They weren’t subtle.

Guards dressed head to toe in white, hands on their swords, glared about suspiciously. They moved in formation, then as one of them bobbled a step, parted. At the center, the palest Purple woman he’d ever seen. Flowing linen, no weapons other than herself, white streaks in her hair.

Not a magus then. A priestess.

“Resting betweens,” he swore.

“Bless it,” Sumi mumbled against his shirt. “We’re in trouble. Seems like they’re tracking more on where than on who, or they’d have stopped Tasha and Gui.”

“And we’re coming from the area.” His mind raced. “Will they recognize you?”

She shuddered. “Shouldn’t. I don’t look like my blood-family. Now.”

He had to ask. “They won’t feel your magic?”

Sumi peeked at the priestess, then gazed up at him. “Hope not. I’m hiding it.”

“Right. She’s looking this way. Kiss me— someone who had just done magic would be running away, not smooching in plain sight.”

She winced, and he knew she wanted to run away. Then stood on tiptoe and pressed her mouth to his. At first, obligatory. Then her lips softened. Parted.

Desire swept him, hard and fast. If they weren’t in the market— weren’t hiding in plain sight from a blessed priestess— if she wasn’t still recovering from dying—

He could imagine exactly what he wanted to do with her and the way she nestled against him, ran her hands up his back, pulled him closer, he knew she’d agree. Had forgotten the blessed were anywhere near her.

Before his hands could do more than trace over her excellent ass, he eased away. Stared down at her and needed.

She blinked up at him, her luscious mouth swollen and demanding more kisses. He almost gave in, but remembered the blessed priestess. Guards. Who were spreading out through the marketplace, questioning shoppers.

“Come,” he growled, taking her hand possessively. “Let’s finish this someplace private.”

Her eyelids lowered and her flush subsided. She’d remembered their audience. But then she smiled up at him like she hadn’t and his desire surged again. He tucked her in beside him, splayed his hand across her lower back, shifted it to her hip, and tried to not think of sliding it down.

They walked together away from the sunset into the shadows. Let the blessed stare into the sun— make it harder to describe a Brown man and a Red woman other than their Colors.

A guard shouted. “Stop!”

Sumi tensed, but Jay muttered, “Keep going,” as if they hadn’t a care in the world. One step, then another, until he thought they’d made it—

A hand fell on his shoulder. “Stop,” the blessed guard said again.

He dipped his shoulder and turned, putting Sumi behind him. “Easy there, Brother,” he said, leaning hard on the hope the blessed guard would not force him to draw his blade.

The guard backed up a step but had his hand on the hilt of his own sword. “You a guard then?” he demanded. The man was young and a Yellow, so likely looking to prove himself.

“I am.”

“So you know to stop when I say stop.”

Jay bit back his first reply and his second. “I know we aren’t doing anything the blessed would be interested in,” he said softly. Looked at the man’s trousers until he flushed. “Unless you want to join us?”

“N-no. Just—” The blessed guard swallowed. “The priestess said to question everyone…”

“If she can keep up, she can join too!” Jay forced a hearty laugh. “Though I’ve heard the blessed claim not to enjoy matters of the flesh. Still, there are more of them every year, so they must engage in those matters whether they enjoy them or not.”

Sumi moaned throatily behind him. Wrapped her arms around him and let her hands wander. “Joining us or not?” she murmured throatily.

He captured her hands. Walked her back to the nearest wall and pushed her up against it, pinning her hands overhead. Glanced over his shoulder. “Well?”

Sweat glistened on the guard’s face and his mouth gaped. “No— Brother—” he gasped, shifting to hide his rising— ahem— interest. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

Then he was gone.

Jay leaned into Sumi. Nuzzled her neck. Felt her arch against him. “Gone?” he whispered.

She trembled against him and he wasn’t sure if it was arousal or fear or both. “Gone.”

“Then we should be gone too.” He eased back and adjusted his clothes. Thought of nasty things until his desire vanished. Used his body as a shield for Sumi to recover. Then took her hand and led her into the maze away from the blessed.

Eventually toward home.