Sumi
I had to.
The fire was destroying the granary. People were dying. And the magus was burned and helpless. I had to help.
I took the Green man and steadied him against me, then breathed with him, murmured in his ear. Delicately pushed my will at him— easier, with no layers in between us.
“Calm. Breathe with me. Shh. Do you push or pull?”
His eyes closed. “Push,” he whimpered.
I could work with that.
“Breathe with me now. Push the pain away. Come on, you can do this.” I ignored the heat from the fire, ignored the shouting and the water, quietly pushed his pain, pushed with him. Pushed him to do what I wanted. Quiet, careful, using all the tricks I’d learned here in the Rest Third.
His breathing slowed and he pushed with me. The man was quite strong— I could feel it in him. That would make this easier.
“Have you healed before?”
His eyes fluttered but stayed closed. He sank further into a meditative state. “Once. No, twice. In training I helped push a bone straight, then one of the Stonefields’ kittens was savaged by a dog. I did what I could.”
“Good. The heat in your skin, push it away. Slowly. Gently.”
He pushed and I steadied him. Guided him. Pushed and pulled with him, manipulating his burns until they sloughed off and new skin grew. I looked around us for magic. His healing rippled out, but felt like him.
No trace of me.
Thank the goddessi. If I could do it with small, intimate magics, could I do it with larger magics? “We need to bring moisture from the river to put out the fires.”
“Can’t.” He shrugged, jostling my contact with him. “Can’t pull.”
I bit off a string of curses and leaned into the contact. Skin to skin. One arm around his waist, my fingers up under his shirt. The other, holding his hand, and my chin on his collarbone. As long as Jay stayed busy with the hose, he wouldn’t notice this horrible intimacy. I hadn’t been skin-to-skin like this with anyone but my beloved in a long, long time. “Don’t think about it that way.”
“Don’t think.” He sounded dazed.
Perfect.
“Can you feel the water in the air? Water evaporating from the river, bunching up against the mountains?”
“Yes.”
“Push the water tighter.” With the tiniest needle I could manage, I reached through him and pulled water from the river. Pulled it toward us, overhead. Via the ground would do us no good.
He pushed and I pushed and pulled through him, a thing I hadn’t believed was possible and never would have thought of without the boys’ experiments. And still, our magic looked like his.
Then other magics joined ours— other magi, some blocks away, some closer— each pushing and pulling water into the air as their gifts allowed them, and then, between us all, we brought rain.
“Gentle,” I reminded him. Pushed the thought out through him to them all. We don’t want a deluge. Don’t want to ruin crops and cause mudslides. Just rain over the fire to put it out. Over the fire and nowhere else.
Goddessi— using my magic again was like drinking rainbows. The sheer joy of it shaped it and molded it through the Green magus, and caressed the others’ magic, as if I were sending sparkles into the air around us, and I felt their emotions back— shock, agreement, exhaustion. I reached out further, supported them while they supported us. Somehow it took less magic than it should have, or our combined magics did more than they should—
The last flames sputtered and died.
With a brush of my fingertips, I ran my magic through the Green man’s body and made sure I’d not injured him while working magic through him. I pushed and pulled gently on his mind, blurring what we’d just done. Blurring his memory of me. Then, as carefully as I had inserted my magic into him, I slipped out.
The Red woman who had been pumping water came back for the magus, and for a moment I wondered about their relationship. Her face— she took our intimacy the wrong way, so they had some sort of understanding. Not that it mattered, but a Red and a Green, a magus and an ungifted… she untangled him from me and they embraced. Did they face any of the challenges Jay and I faced?
Jay—
He stood with his uncle and a Brown girl who shared their coloring, the shape of their chin, the line of their foreheads. Another relative? Jay’s shoulders tightened and his neck flexed. Something was wrong.
Since so many magi had splashed their magic around, I dared to gently push at the Stonefields to let Jay go, and I walked toward him, slipping through the crowd like we were the only ones there.
Bless it, it felt good to use my magic, even if it was through someone else, so the goddess wouldn’t notice. Even if it left me feeling hollow in the middle. So hollow—
Wordlessly, Jay took my hand and guided me away. He paused to search my face, frowned heavily, then tugged me after him. We walked two blocks, up and over, and then he brought me around a corner and a different world opened up in front of us.
A riot of color, carefully tended.
He drew me forward. “Our Memory Garden,” he said, as if that explained it all.
Narrow paths wound their way through and here and there, and benches sat next to the path. Jay towed me deeper in, then settled us on a bench under a brownwood tree. Purple and yellow violets sprawled around the feet of the bench. Across the way, red, green, yellow and even blue orchids ran along the path, and behind them a bush of orange roses.
“A Memory Garden?” Smoke had roughened my voice.
“When a loved one passes, those who don’t have the land, they plant their memories here. After a birth, they remove a memory to make space.”
“But—” Trees and shrubs and flowers in all the colors, and so many I didn’t recognize. Purple wisteria, a red burning bush, a green weeping willow… I craned my neck around, winced when it cracked. Hibiscus and hollyhocks and dahlias and hellebore, and all the colors mixed together.
Birds called from the trees, and one red-bellied seed-eater fluttered down to dig at the path, then strutted along it, twisting its head, looking for treats. It startled and launched itself into the air.
Bees buzzed from flower to flower, then back to a box that was probably the hive. Vaguely I wondered if my blood-sister had her bees like she had planned. Someone in the rest third knew how to cultivate them… had she found someone to teach her?
My shoulders relaxed. I leaned into Jay. We both smelled like smoke and sweat and I didn’t care because the fragrance of the garden wafted around us and for a moment, we held peace. “It’s beautiful.” The garden was exactly what the City of Temples could be— a mix of Colors and carefully tended.
An old couple teetered their way through, both Yellows faded by age. They walked hand in hand, and we watched them come, pause in front of a cluster of yellow orchids, and go.
Finally Jay sighed. “The fire today,” he said softly, “was a distraction. They stole the Stonefield histories.”
I felt myself tensing, reminded myself to relax. I couldn’t do anything about it now.
“My uncle thinks I’ll ‘save’ them,” he continued, “find their papers, arrest the perpetrators, commit justice.”
I grinned. Commit justice— an odd phrase that summed up Jay’s outlook: justice needed action. Then I sobered. While we were sharing— “I used magic today. Through that magus. I had no idea it was possible, but I did it.”
“Will they come for you?”
“No. The priestessi and magi felt his magic, not mine.”
“And the goddess?”
“Didn’t stir.”
“Resting betweens. I nearly lost you again and didn’t even know it.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and curled my fingers in his. “Never.”
Jay sighed. “I met a blood-cousin. Nick’s girl. She looks like him.”
“So do you.”
“I suppose.” Jay clenched my fingers briefly. “I don’t understand the way they think.”
“Do you want to?” Careful. “Do you want to get to know them better?”
Jay shifted, pulled me tighter, and avoided the question. “Thom knows who you are, or thinks he does. No other reason to set Mal on me like he has. I don’t like it.”
My stomach soured. More people who knew my secret. “We’ll deal with it.”
“I would fight them all for you.”
“You shouldn’t have to.” I twisted to rest my hand against his chest. “Thom is a good man. We’ll just have to trust him.”
“Trust him? The man I thought I knew wouldn’t have a boy following me through the city.”
“Mal is old enough to be a guard. He’s old enough to make his own choices.”
His chest hitched. “It would break me to kill him.”
“You won’t have to.” I would not cause him more pain. “Cruel of him, to set Mal on you. He’s the guard who admires you, isn’t he?”
“Not anymore. Not if Thom told him—”
“But will Thom tell the damned?” Jay might not admit it, but he needed to be liked. Almost as much as he needed to protect us— his family. I had to distract him from Mal. “Or will he ask me to use my magic? Or will he settle for glaring at me across the dinner table?”
“You want to invite him to dinner?”
I shrugged and closed my eyes. But that brought the smell of the fire back, so I opened them again and looked at the plants cultivated in memory of loved ones.
No Memory Garden in the Temple of the Damned.
His fingers traced over my arm. “Thom and Mal and the rest—”
It would eat at him unless I gave him something more important to think about. And it was time to tell him anyway. I whispered, “The magic I teach the boys? Mouse is learning too. And those thieves from the market— Tasha and Gui.”
Jay groaned.
“If I didn’t teach them, the thieves would have brought the priestessi down on us by now. They’re quieter than before, and they keep their magic to themselves.” Except I’d asked them to find the demon hunters and spy on them. I had to believe their loyalties lay with us.
Had to.
“I wish we could stay here. If we move, it will all come crashing back down on us.”
Jay ran his hand over my hair. “We’ll stay. For just a little longer.”
* * *
Jay
He sat with Sumi in the Memory Garden for as long as he could stand his own stench. She looked like she’d not eaten for a week, but her eyes were quiet again, so the stop was worth it. He helped her up and tried to stretch. Bruised and strained muscles protested. Took more than a few steps to shift from hobbling to walking. The streets were quieter now. Everyone recuperating from the fire. Planning the future. Worrying.
Jay counted coins in his head— they’d put most of Lena’s damned money aside for emergency expenses, but he should have enough to stop at a bathhouse. Guided Sumi that way, and they managed a quick shower under tepid water. When they emerged, his Sumi smelled of nothing more offensive than cheap soap. Worth the coin.
Her stomach gurgled and she looked faded, bony where she had been soft only a few hours ago. He needed to feed her. Working magic in the Rest Third somehow ate through her energy in a way it hadn’t in the damned temple.
No food vendors along these streets— had they all disappeared because of the fire? Or something worse?
And where was Mal? The boy hadn’t followed them into the Memory Garden, or he was getting better at hiding. Would he catch them here in the streets or at the house? And what had happened to the demon hunter spy?
Jay set it all aside when they opened the front door. Home had problems of its own.
Robin was out— no doubt with her lover. If he thought about it, it set his teeth on edge. The boys’ boots slumped next to the doorway, so they were home, up in their room. Dee sat at the table, darning socks.
He should check to see if Mouse was home too… but he didn’t want to see her right now. He’d guessed from their conversation this morning— was it only this morning?— that Sumi had been teaching her magic, but Sumi admitting it made it more real. Cramped his guts. Better he give it some time.
Wordlessly, he handed Sumi a bowl of early-harvest berries and sat next to her while she ate like she hadn’t eaten in months. When she finished the berries, he handed her the last two meat pockets, saving the bread ends for the boys. He’d need to buy more food tonight— tomorrow— bread from the neighbors two houses down and meat pockets from the woman who didn’t sell rat.
Still quiet, they washed their hands, then gathered their own mending and plopped onto the couch. The middle sagged. He’d need to repair it— or pay someone to repair it— soon. Jay started the patch on his worst pair of socks. Gray guard socks, of course.
“Impatient stitches,” Dee murmured.
Jay grinned. At least something was normal. He pretended to snarl back at her— “No one will see them under my boots—” like any other day without a fire or magic or goddessi.
Maggie came home and— for a wonder— stayed. She dumped her gear in her room and joined Dee at the table. Watched while he and Sumi slumped closer and closer to each other on the couch. His shoulder touching Sumi’s made the corner of her mouth quirk just so, until he wanted to kiss her senseless, so he shifted away again. Kept darning. Felt himself falling toward her again. Smiled.
Maggie fetched her own socks and yarn, claimed her chair again, and sighed. “Prices are going up again,” she muttered.
Sumi scowled at her socks. “Thrice-blessed demon hunters mucking everything up.”
Maggie frowned, looked like her older sisters. She lifted her gaze from her socks and glared at Sumi as if she were a new kind of weapon— unfamiliar and dangerous.
Ugh— the way she looked at Sumi... Thom had told her something.
Her chin lifted. “What if they’re right?”
The resting people who burned the grain and burned the magus and burned anyone they thought was in their way? The same people who had stolen histories from all the wealthy homes in the Rest Third? The ones who had tried to kill Sumi— and him— last winter? “The demon hunters? You think they’re right?” When everyone stared at him, Jay realized he’d shouted. And snapped the yarn. He’d have to pick out and start the patch again. “Let’s say—” Let’s say they are right and the goddessi are just demoni. “Let’s just say they were right. They tried to kill us all during that storm—“
“They tried to kill the priestessi of Maldita,” Maggie snapped. She side-eyed Sumi. “They’re welcome to them.”
Yeah, she knew. Or suspected. Rest Thom to the betweens. “I was there too, and Dee and Robin—”
“They wouldn’t have hurt any of us if we’d stayed out of their way!”
“They stole—”
“Prove it.”
“And blew up the granary just today!”
“No one died.”
Jay gaped at her. No one died? If that was true— and he wasn’t sure it was— it was because Sumi had used her magic. Without her rain, they might still be there, throwing water on the smoldering flames of their grain reserves and seed reserves. How could she? “You weren’t there,” he snarled.
Sumi reached over and put her hand on his thigh. The muscles jumped. He closed his eyes. Relaxed his fists.
“What have the damned ever done for us?” Maggie slammed her hands down on the table, scattering her own yarn and needles, shot to her feet.
Dee gaped at Maggie, then cocked her head at Sumi, inviting her to answer.
“Let’s say you’re right.” Sumi’s voice was cool, composed. It was her teaching voice, and Jay marveled she could use it while he was still reeling from his little sister’s attack. “Leaving aside how they go about it, let’s say the demon hunters kill the goddessi. What then?”
“If these mystical creatures even exist—”
“For argument’s sake, let’s say They do.”
He and Sumi had already hashed this out, but Maggie needed to think about it too.
His little sister scowled. “Then the priestessi can’t use them for an excuse any more. All the sacrifices stop!”
“And then?”
“We take back what’s ours.” Maggie grinned sharply.
Resting betweens, he’d known she was spoiled, but this? Take back what was hers?
Sumi was still calm. “What is yours, exactly?”
“The…” Maggie waved one hand vaguely. “People. The servants. The animals.”
“All right. You didn’t tithe the animals, so you don’t get them back. That would be stealing. But someone takes them back.” Sumi’s voice was dry and factual, her gaze flicking between her darning and his youngest sister. “But you take back the people. One of the functions of the temples is to teach magic. You don’t want that anymore?”
“No! They take our best people. You— they took Jay! No more. Not people or our money!” Maggie glared down at the woman who used to be the high priestess of Maldita.
She knew.
Jay wanted to defend his wife, but anything he said now would confirm Maggie’s suspicions. His little sister might know or think she knew, but she was still here, listening.
More than he’d expected, from her.
“So you don’t want to pay the temples for anything. What happens when the pipes to the bathhouse clog?” Sumi cocked her head.
Dee watched intently.
Maggie lifted her chin. “We have people who know how to fix them.”
“What if they can’t?”
“They can!”
Dee snorted— she’d seen push-pull magic at work— but Sumi flicked a let me look at her and Dee subsided.
“All right. What are you going to do when your swords break? Your windows and mirrors? What will the people in the other Thirds do without those things?”
Maggie blinked. “Get new ones?”
“Where do guard weapons come from?”
Jay hid a nasty grin. He saw where Sumi was going with this. He didn’t want to feel bitterly satisfied, eager to watch the woman he loved school his spoiled little sister. But she’d chosen the demon hunters’ rhetoric over her own family… He should be better than this, rest it. He stuffed his rage down in his gut.
Breathe.
The lines between Maggie’s eyes deepened. “The… market?”
“Who makes swords? Knives?”
“Er.” His little sister’s eyes went wide, but she closed her mouth on the words and refused to say them.
Now Sumi canted her head toward Dee, who answered for her. “The temples. The magi. The priestessi.”
“Who makes the best glass?”
“The temples.” Dee pulled out her favorite knife and examined it as if making her point.
Sumi went on. “What is the biggest export of the Damned Third?”
“Weapons.” Jay answered this time. “Blessed Third too. Weapons and anything made with glass. Windows, mirrors, jewelry, lanterns—”
“So?” Maggie stuck her lip out. “That’s them. Not us.”
“What about the things the Thirds trade with other cities? What will we use to trade? How will we cross the deserts? Who will make the flying carpets?”
“We don’t need flying carpets. Other cities don’t use them.”
“You want to run everywhere while you’re patrolling?” Jay snorted.
Maggie tossed her hair. “Other cities use horses or camels.”
Sumi inclined her head. “What will we trade for them?” She reached out and tugged at Jay’s shirt. “What about linen? The bulk of the cotton? We don’t grow enough to clothe us all.”
“But—”
Sumi went on, implacable. “How do we get water to the fields?”
“Irrigation.” Maggie smirked, sure of herself now.
“What about in the fall? Dry season is coming. The boys have started carrying buckets of water to the garden. Because the irrigation has stopped but the plants still need water, right? Who is going to carry buckets of water to each plant in those fields? The massive fields you just took from the temples?”
Dismay crossed Maggie’s face, then she lifted her chin. “The Yellows and Oranges.”
“Are you going to tell them that? From what I’ve seen,” Sumi drawled, “they struggle to keep the Rest Third fields watered already.”
“But—” Maggie looked at each of them. “But all those people we free—”
“Those people—” Now Sumi leaned forward— “and I used to be one of them— use magic every day. They don’t carry buckets of water to every bit of field, except every few years to protect the plants from a nasty freeze.”
Jay twitched— Sumi had done just that last fall, and she’d worked twice as hard as the haulers, using her magic in ways he hadn’t understood.
She continued, “The magi and priestessi trainees push water to the fields. The apprentices clear the pipes, use push and pull magic to cool and heat the buildings.”
Dee bent over to touch her toes, then straightened. Ready to start practicing fighting again. “Healers.” She side-eyed Sumi, but didn’t say anything more about Sumi’s power. Continued, “Just because they don’t help us much doesn’t mean they shouldn’t help someone.”
Jay scowled. He still despised the healers for refusing to help his mother when she was sick, refusing to help Dee when she was injured. Thank the goddess— demon?— Sumi had been able to heal Dee.
“Instead of having the Rest Third struggling to live,” Sumi said, “you’d have the whole city struggling to live if you outlawed magic… and those who are used to having are more likely to take from you.”
“Would magic users follow laws forbidding their magic? Who would force them if not the high priestessi?” Jay clenched his jaw. And who would give that power to the high priestessi if not the goddessi?
Maggie glanced at him. At Dee. “But—”
Sumi went on. “The damned guards and the blessed guards have better weapons. The rich in the other Thirds have magi in their employ. How will they react when you try to take that away?”
“But—”
Sumi shook her head slowly. “It’s not this or that. It’s not goddessi or prosperity. It’s complicated and anyone who is telling you it’s simple is lying.”
“But it’s broken the way it is!” Maggie wailed.
Finally, she was starting to understand.
Jay rose, leaving his socks behind. Set a hand on her shoulder. “It is broken. And we want to fix it.”
“Agreed.” Sumi nodded. “But it’s complicated. You can’t tear down the temples without putting something in their place. Something better. So we can all have enough to eat and roofs over our heads and something better to live for.” Now she looked away. “I don’t know if anyone has the answer to that right now.”
“It’s like the taxes,” Jay said slowly. “People complain about taxes when they forget what taxes pay for— guards and roads and fixing the city pipes, and I don’t even know what else.”
“It’s easy to say it’s broken.” Dee sheathed her knife. She had furrows in her brow like she was thinking hard. “But harder to fix it. The Damned Third and the Blessed Third are used to looking to the high priestessi, but in the Rest Third, we’re used to looking out for ourselves.”
“We still look to certain families,” Jay pointed out. He’d never realized it before his time in the damned temple, but now it was glaringly obvious. “The Yulians, because they head the merchants.” His lips twisted. “The Stonefields because they control the granary. The one that burned today.”
Maggie scowled.
Dee cocked her head, then nodded. “We do look to them, don’t we? They make up most of the Council.”
“Revolutions are easy.” Sumi stood up and shifted like her back was hurting. “Look at Breadia to the north. They rebelled against their kings. Then they rebelled against the replacements. They’re still in upheaval. We rarely trade with them and we probably won’t until they figure it out. It doesn’t make any sense to work out new trade agreements every time because your contact was killed between trips.”
Jay put his hand on Sumi’s back. “I didn’t know that.”
She smiled at him. “They keep it quiet. I— ah, overheard a couple priestessi talking about it last year.” She’d made the decision herself, as the previous high priestess of the Temple of the Damned.
“And who says the City of Elements isn’t using this as an excuse to invade us?” Dee said suddenly. “We have the river, the fields, the mines— if they could walk in and take it without a fight—”
Yes. Someone else saw it too. Jay nodded. “The goddessi are bad, but what would the Elementals be like as conquerors?”
“Maybe they’d treat us better?” Maggie’s voice was small. “They can’t treat us any worse than the blessed and damned do now.”
“They could. Disarmed and at their mercy? A whole city of people they consider heretics?”
“I guess they could.” Maggie rose suddenly. This time, when she stared down at Sumi, her face twisted into speculative lines. “Thank you for talking to me about these things.”
“All you had to do was ask.” Jay felt the last of the resentment in his gut ease. She’d listened.
The Elementals were telling one story, the guards another, but she’d listened to Sumi’s story too. How would she choose between them?
Something had to change and the more people who were actually thinking about it, the better chance they had to push that change in a good direction.