The next few days were full of planning. Basil, Mack, Safia, and Carlow joined me, each of us avoiding Alistair. Not that he would’ve noticed; he was holed up with the Door, desperate to understand it now that his binding didn’t restrict his vilewright, and he sacrificed one of Will’s companions to it with a smile. The only one of us he spoke to was Hana, and that was only when he needed a sacrifice.
He did notice the unrest caused by killing the courtiers in charge of the bindings. The surviving courtiers could ruin my plans if they looked too hard at the recent movements of their soldiers and people. However, they were concerned about Alistair attempting to take over their holdings.
Most had retreated to their lands in preparation for a war that wouldn’t come.
“Wrought can’t last longer without food,” I said, scratching through one of the notes from Safia. “We can sacrifice our feeling of hunger but not our actual hunger, and the contract leaves us tired. I could never do it longer than five days.”
“Gods,” muttered Safia. “At some point, we need to discuss your childhood.”
“Do we?” I asked.
My life spent worried about money and where my next meal would come from was finally paying off, and I’d taken to poring over the ledgers detailing the food stored away by the Crown in case of tragedy at all hours. Alistair had at least left his mother’s last decrees alone. There was enough in the stores for all of Mori. The city would be fine so long as we could shelter everyone.
Today, five days away from the opening of the Door, we were fortifying the buildings of Formet district. Every single part of it was consecrated, and before we’d started, only one-fifth of the city would’ve fit in it.
Basil groaned. “Have you ever had sea foam candy? I’d do anything for that right now.”
“With the pecans!” someone shouted from around the corner. “Can we make some?”
“Later,” I shouted back. “Focus.”
The freed noblewrought had coalesced around the palace. Many had been working in Mori already, most as healers for the city’s populace but several as builders in charge of keeping everything standing. Those noblewrought bound to Order like Carlow and Basil, though, had been trained well in how to make the city more accessible and useful for Cynlira. Free of their bindings, they could do whatever work they pleased now, even if it didn’t pay. I’d helped one refortify the Wallows’ buildings against flooding this morning. The rest had started constructing barriers around the safe havens. One was focusing on cold cellars, wells, and water pumps.
“Don’t go too high,” said Carlow, face covered by a book so old the cover was hand-stitched and the pages parchment. “Once you hit three floors, the consecrated earth has to be in the floors of the higher levels. The farther you get from it, the less power it has.”
I didn’t wear my red glasses around her. Most of the time, Creek’s ghost, uninjured, trailed after her. Sometimes, though, I saw Creek’s corpse staring back at me from her cursed eyes.
I didn’t sleep. The courtiers and councilors were always there in my dreams, waiting for me in the dark.
“Noted,” said Basil. “It would take longer to build with stories, regardless. We don’t have time for that.”
Safia nodded. “It’s better to keep it a single story. We can make bunks, but hoists will be hard to construct quickly and stories harder to heat come winter. Definitely no stairs. Too hard to traverse.”
“Good point,” Basil said. “Single stories are easier to map too. We can lay tactile pavers to make sure people know the way in.”
“This is better than nothing,” I said, still focused on the ledgers before me.
Carlow exhaled loudly. “We can’t protect everyone.”
We couldn’t, not with the safe havens, but I could with all I had left.
“Is that why you’re not telling the noble houses?” Basil asked. “You think they’ll do the same thing as the council?”
“I think their involvement in our planning is irrelevant,” I said. “But yes, I imagine they would do the same as the council.”
“They have churches and graveyards, private plots of land none of us are allowed to even look at,” said Carlow.
I glanced at the inked-out spots on the large map Basil had pinned to the wall of our old lab. “Yes, we should use those places too.”
“Will they let us?” Basil asked.
I rolled my lips together, the lie stuck in my mouth. They wouldn’t have, but their opinions wouldn’t matter. Many were anxious, fleeing to their holdings to escape Alistair and ready their armies. Carlow glanced up.
“What they want doesn’t matter,” I said. “Have you heard from out west? Any more wrought running around?”
“Two,” said Basil, smiling. “Both noblewrought.”
A dozen or so who’d been in hiding, living quiet lives outside Mori, had come forward to help the soldiers and wrought stationed in their towns once the messages reached the smaller towns. For so long, Cynlira’s common enemy to unite us had been each other. Vile were an easier target.
There were no other vilewrought. At least none that had come forward yet.
“Felhollow’s taken care of then,” I said, setting the letter from Kara aside and smiling at Mack. Old Ivy still wasn’t talking to me, but she’d live. I could stand silence so long as they all survived. “Between the church, graveyard, and soldiers, everyone there should be all right.”
Felhollow’s graveyard was larger than its smallest farm. No Felfolk would suffer Vile.
“What about Julian?” Mack asked. He’d been quiet with me, staring any time I spoke of the councilors and courtiers.
“Julian?” I hesitated so as not to sneer. That boy’s very name made my skin burn. I had no good memories of him, only fury and pain. My noblewright whimpered. “He’s still holding true to his path. I’ll talk to him one last time, but I don’t think he’ll listen. He listen to you?”
Mack shook his head. We’d visited Julian together yesterday, and he’d refused to speak with me. Will hadn’t.
Will had a lot of words for me.
“I’ll try once more,” I said and sighed. “He’s said a lot of terrible things these last few days, but I know you love him.”
Mack shot me an odd look. “You do too. Or you did. I imagine he’s said some choice things to you.”
“He did,” I said, hardly listening. I couldn’t remember a good memory with Julian Chase. There were no laughs or smiles, no late-night talks. I knew why—so many of my memories with my mother were stained by the same odd lack. “I have to go.”
I crept into the caves near the Door. Alistair was hard at work trying to shut it still, the clatter of bone against bone and swish of steel sliding over Hana’s flesh echoing through the area. The dim light flickered, and the other prisoners didn’t notice me. Julian didn’t either.
He was mottled like an apple left on the ground too long. I grasped the bars.
“Julian?” I whispered.
“Who have you murdered now?” He lifted his head, the eight lines he’d carved into the wall above his head like a crown.
“Are you still set on murdering over half of Cynlira?” I asked. “Or have you reconsidered what you want your legacy to be?”
He only laughed.
“Did I love you once?” I asked softly.
He collapsed at the back of the cell. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
I nodded.
“We were going to be married one day,” he whispered, “but I didn’t know you were vilewrought, and then the warrant showed up for my father.”
Yes, my lies were far greater a slight than his father’s crimes.
“I must have loved you.” I closed my eyes and tried to imagine it. “I came here instead of letting them take Will.”
“I like to think you did,” Julian whispered.
I peeked at him, taking in the tension of his arms and twitch in his calves. “If we left today and saved the councilors, would you still want to marry me?”
He launched himself at me. His hands smacked against the bars, and I stepped back. His fingers barely brushed my chest, and I jumped, knocking my penknife from my pocket. I stared straight at him and pretended not to notice. My noblewright whined.
“You betrayed me,” he said. “I would’ve given you everything. I was saving us. They’ll only weigh you down.”
“Then I’ll bear it, because I am a part of Cynlira and should gladly support my people,” I said. “We shouldn’t be measured by usefulness. There are thousands of Julians out there right now. Success is always an indicator of pure self-sufficiency. You’re not special, I’m not special, and you’re certainly not special enough to decide who lives and who dies. I’m done being quiet and unassuming. It’s what the council and court and crown always wanted, and I refuse to give them what they want now.”
He shook his head, an odd crook to it. “Lorena, how will they rule?”
“You’re obsessed with ruling. It doesn’t matter.”
“You then,” he said and laughed again.
“Five days before the Chase legacy dies,” I said and left. “I’m glad I gave up half my memories of you.”
It meant this hurt far less.