Underground?
Danello nodded. “Like the Sorillian resistance, right? My ma used to lecture on that, but the University Elders made her stop.”
All emotion vanished from Jeatar’s face. “Exactly like that. Some of them are even here.”
“I thought everyone in Sorille died?” Danello asked.
“Not everyone.” Jeatar turned away and walked towards a woman holding practice weapons.
Had Jeatar survived Sorille?
No one survived Sorille, Papa had whispered, unaware I was hiding under the table. Not even those who lived.
I’d seen Jeatar’s scars the day I flashed the Slab. Burn scars across his chest and shoulders. Some things never fully healed, even when you took the pain away.
We’d seen Sorille burning. Saw the glow from the flames, a sunrise in the darkest night. We smelled the smoke for days as it rolled across the marshes like mist on the lake.
“He couldn’t have!” Mama cried. “All those people?”
“We should have known.” Papa sounded angry and scared. I’d never seen him scared. “He should have warned us, sent word about this.”
“Unless he killed him too.”
There were knocks at the door then, and people came in who always made Mama and Papa nervous. Mama wanted to send help, but they refused. Said we’d need those supplies ourselves. Had they been Geveg’s Underground? Had Jeatar been part of Sorille’s, or had their underground formed after the Duke killed everyone in his city?
Not everyone.
“So they’re fighting the Duke too?” Aylin asked softly, her nervous gaze on the Baseeri staring at us with their cold blue eyes.
“They’re Baseeri,” I said. “Why would they fight the Duke?” But I pictured the boy who’d helped me, how scared he’d been of the Undying. The pack that ran in terror thinking I was one of “them”. A quirker. Even the jail guards had been afraid. What had the Duke done to his own people that he hadn’t done to us?
“You never should have brought them here,” the woman yelled.
“What was I supposed to do?” Jeatar folded his arms across his chest. His scarred chest. If he was from Sorille, why would he care about Baseer?
“Make them someone else’s problem.” She spoke lower this time, but we were all listening now.
For a moment they glared at each other, then Jeatar left her and knocked on one of the two doors in the back. A third was on the opposite side of the room next to the practice area. He waited a moment before going inside.
The Baseeri woman now glared at us. So did the others. A sea of black hair and scowls. They didn’t want us here, but now we knew their secret and they couldn’t just let us go.
“I don’t like this.”
Barnikoff leaned close over my shoulder. His lip was split and bruises darkened his eye and cheek, all caused by Baseeri soldiers. “We’ve got your back if you want to teach these reed rats a lesson,” he said. Others nodded and murmured agreement.
Aylin didn’t look as worried as the rest of us. “Nya, I don’t think they want to hurt us.”
We stared at the Baseeri. They stared at us. Nobody moved, except Neeme, who got up and carried a stack of uniforms to a cabinet and put them inside. She pulled another stack from a different shelf and carried them to the table. She reached into a stitching basket, pulled out needle and thread, and picked up the first uniform on the stack.
Mending them. Had she stolen old uniforms? But they looked new. Maybe she was tailoring them to fit. Having a few of those would make our lives in Geveg easier.
What was taking Jeatar so long?
The door opened and Jeatar stepped out. Another man followed him and my stomach quivered. He seemed familiar – tall, wide-shouldered, short dark hair. As he got closer, I caught a scent – metal, fire and smoke.
An enchanter!
“We’re going to have guests, so I expect everyone to show them proper hospitality,” he said to the scowling Baseeri.
The woman wasn’t any happier with him than she was with Jeatar. “But they—”
“Will not be here long.” He shot her a look.
“You can stay,” Jeatar told us. “We have rooms in the rear, but it’ll be crowded. In the morning we’ll see what we can do about getting you home, or finding transportation elsewhere if you prefer.”
“Told you they weren’t planning to hurt us,” Aylin muttered.
I glanced at the practice weapons and the uniforms. They were planning something, sure as spit. Something they didn’t want us to know about.
“Danello?” Halima said, tugging on his sleeve. “We’re not leaving without Jovan and Bahari, are we?”
“No, we’re not.”
“Good.”
The enchanter turned to Neeme. “Could you please show these people to the guest quarters?”
She nodded and jumped up, setting her mending aside.
“Follow me.”
Barnikoff and the others followed Neeme through the second door, next to the one the enchanter had come out of. I stayed behind, and Danello stayed with me. The enchanter might not have wanted to talk in front of the others, but I was ready for answers.
“What’s going on?”
“Let’s speak in my office,” the enchanter said, pointing to the open door.
So they didn’t want to talk out here in front of their others either. I looked at Jeatar. He tipped his head at the office.
“That would be nice.” I said.
I walked inside. It was warm, with worn books on the walls and carpet on the floor.
“Are you OK?” Danello whispered in my ear. His breath tickled the hair along the back of my neck.
“I’m fine.”
But he did make it hard to concentrate when he did that. I just didn’t like being in a room where the only person I knew I could trust was him. Or having thirty Baseeri between me and the exit. Or not knowing where my sister was.
“Who are you?” I asked the enchanter as he sat behind his carved wooden desk.
“Onderaan Analov. Please, sit.”
Breath left me. Analov? That was my name. Nya de’Analov. How could he have my name? How could a Baseeri have an almost Gevegian name?
I sat, but didn’t stop staring.
“Nya?” Danello touched my arm.
“You’re their leader?” I said, finding it hard to speak at all.
“I’m the leader, yes.” He folded his hands and placed them on the desk. “You’re their leader?”
“No.”
He smiled gently as if he didn’t believe me.
“Um. What are you doing?” I hated the way my voice sounded. Squeaky. Cracked. Not like me at all. “With all these people, I mean… and uniforms and things?”
“Trying to get a snake away from the chickens.”
He sounded like Grannyma. No…
His voice sounded like Grandpapa. Looked like him too. Same eyes, same nose. Papa’s eyes, Papa’s nose.
My chest tightened. “You’re really fighting the Duke? You want him gone?”
“My family has fought the Duke for seven years, since the day he seized power that wasn’t his. His father never intended for him to rule. My father never wanted it either. When he died, I swore I’d drag that greedy, warmongering fiend off his throne if I had to do it with my bare hands.”
I knew that voice. That anger. I’d heard it before.
So much yelling from the first floor. I lay in the shadows at the top of the stairs and listened, like I always did. This time Grandpapa wasn’t there. Other men were. They smelled like the heavy black smoke that had been blowing over Geveg all day and night.
“We can go right now and rip that murderer off his throne.”
“How? Our forces were in Sorille. We can’t launch an attack now.”
“He killed them, Peleven, he killed our parents.”
Peleven was Papa’s name. The other voice had to be—
Onderaan. I trembled. No, it wasn’t possible. “Your family is here, too, then? Helping you?” That wasn’t what I wanted to ask. I wanted to ask about the uniforms, and what they were doing, and maybe even ask for help saving Tali. But I had to know if his family was alive. If they were, then he couldn’t be—
“They’re dead. He killed them all.”
Not everyone.
I squeezed my eyes shut. It was all a coincidence. This man was Baseeri, with hair dark as night. Papa’s hair had been… I sucked in a breath. Bald. Burned it all off at the forge, he used to joke. Mama was the blonde one. Tali and I got our pale curls from her.
“Jeatar says you lost your family as well,” Onderaan said, his voice softening a little. “That your sister was recruited by the Undying. He says you need our help, but I’m not sure what we can do.”
I’d been in Baseer long enough to know I’d need help to save Tali. I didn’t know the secrets of the city, the patrol routes, which soldiers were lazy and which would run after you. He knew all that – and more. It shouldn’t matter who he might be. “There has to be something you can do. You have uniforms, weapons, all these people. You know things.”
“It’s not just her family,” Danello added. “They have my brothers too. They have lots of other people’s brothers and sisters.”
“I understand, but the Duke guards his Takers well. We’ve been trying to get someone inside, but it’s impossible.”
I scoffed, my face hot, my hands cold. “All you had to do was send in a Taker.”
Onderaan’s kind demeanour flickered. “It’s not that easy.”
“We sent some in and we weren’t even trying.”
That shut him up. Onderaan stared at me, his mouth slightly open. Jeatar’s eyes widened. Even Danello seemed surprised.
“Um, Nya?” he said. He shot me a what-in-Saea’s-name-areyou-doing? look.
I had no idea. I was just angry. “You have people and money and resources and all the things you could possibly need to save those Takers.”
Jeatar put his hand on my arm. “Nya, you don’t understand.”
“I do understand!” No one in my family would sit back and let innocent people suffer. He was not family. He was not my father’s brother.
I was not half Baseeri.
“You think it’s too hard,” I continued, “or too dangerous for you to risk your fancy villa and save people you know need saving. People who could help you stop the Duke!”
At some point I’d jumped to my feet, though I couldn’t say when. I stared down at Onderaan, into brown eyes that were not the same shade as my father’s. As Tali’s. As mine.
“You’d rather sit here in your safe chair in your safe cellar while cities burn and lives are ruined and say you tried to help, but it was too hard!”
Onderaan stared back, jaw tight, eyes hard. “No, child. We just don’t have any Takers.”