12: Something Almost As Good

Gaxna is still waiting in the hallway, and we get out without a hitch, pulling off clothes to reveal old women costumes. She turns on me as soon as we’re back on the roofs. “What the hell was that? You could have gotten both of us caught.”

“But I didn’t, right?” I’m still too pleased to care. A successful heist and another lead in finding out the truth. Even if it’s a confusing one. “I needed to find out what he knew.”

“And put us both at risk? That’s not what you do to a partner.” Her face is flushed and her fists balled.

I slow down. “Are we—partners?”

“No! I mean, yeah. For now, at least. That’s what I’m training you for, right?”

There’s something vulnerable behind her anger, and I feel bad. Did I break her trust somehow?

I grab her arm. “Hey. You waited for me back there. Thank you. And I’m sorry, I just—I really need to know what happened to my father. Whoever did it is still out there, and the traditionalists are still in power in the temple. It’s not right.”

“Is that all you care about?”

“No. But it is important.” Something tells me now’s not the time to say I still don’t feel at home out here, much as I’ve gotten good at stealing and disguises and living without being seen. This isn’t home. The temple is. Or it was, until they took it from me. And as much as I want justice for my father, I want my home back even more.

“And you’re willing to risk your life for that?”

I shrug. “You risked your life for me, when you thought I was a theracant runaway.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

She sighs. “You’re a flooding idiot, you know that, Aletheia?”

I smile suddenly, thinking of Dashan. “I’ve been told that, yeah.”

“Just don’t do it again, okay?”

I clench my hands. I can’t make that promise, but I owe her something. I did put her in danger back there, and that wasn’t fair. “I’ll do my best.”

She eyes me a moment longer, then shakes her head. “Come on. Let’s get this loot sorted and out of our hands before the flooding overseers track you down and arrest both of us.”

We start across the roofs again. “So is this going to be enough to pay the eye stainer? That was a pretty good haul.”

Gaxna snorts, backing up to take a running start at a wide gap. “This was nothing. At regular fence rates, you’d need thirty times this to pay what the stainer wants.”

Slops. She leaps a gap and I follow, used by now to the disorienting feeling of one building dropping out below me before the next one flies up. Thirty more like this? Or is she just cutting my share because she’s upset?

We climb the tower and in, Gaxna dropping to the lower level while I clear a space up above for lunch. She curses.

“What?” I call down the hole.

There’s no response.

“Gaxna?”

“Somebody’s been here.”

“What?” I crawl down the ladder. The place has been ransacked, boxes spilled, everything turned over. Fear grips me, and I grab a staff. “Who? Who knows about this place?”

“No one,” she says grimly, as if she knows exactly who does.

I meet her eyes. “The overseers?”

“The witches.”

“Uh,” I say, noticing something on the floor. “Anything to do with this?” It’s a folded piece of paper, with a single symbol in the center, a triangle inside a triangle.

Gaxna sees it and freezes.

“What is it?”

“Floods,” she breathes. And then she’s up the ladder.

“Hey, Gaxna! Wait!”

She’s already down the tower and running by the time I get up. “Gaxna!”

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She leaps to the next building over and I curse, running after her. “Gaxna, don’t be stupid!”

She keeps running, already two buildings ahead and climbing. I run after, leaping alleys, skating roofs, climbing as fast as I can, just barely keeping her red-wigged head in sight. “Gaxna!”

There’s no response. I’ve never seen her move this fast. You’d think there was a bloodborn army behind us, the way she runs. I climb an aqueduct to keep her in sight and sprint the narrow length, buildings ten and twenty paces below me, grateful for our training. She’s heading steadily up, out of the middle-class districts and into Qarte, the richest part of New Serei, right under the rocky rim where the hillside meets the plateau. Where is she going?

My aqueduct branches and I leap onto a rooftop fifteen paces down, rolling to break the fall and sprinting after. Gaxna’s just barely in sight as she drops into the streets and pounds up the road onto the plateau.

I follow and give it my all, ignoring the startled looks of the well-dressed men and women this high up. This is stupid—we’re drawing attention to ourselves despite the costumes—but if something does happen, Gaxna’s going to need me there to fight her out of it. Like I need her to help me survive in the city, and find the stainer, and gather more evidence against Nerimes…

And though I wasn’t sure about it when she said we were partners before, I’m realizing it feels right. I’m not going to let her run off and do something stupid like this.

I catch up to her as we sprint through the tangle of rickety wooden shops and burlap lean-tos built to serve the Daraa caravans, the peninsula’s plateau spreading out beyond. Is she trying to get on a caravan? Is that what this is about?

“Gaxna!”

She doesn’t respond, and I’m feeling pretty done with this, so I kick out her left knee and pin her to the dirt.

“Let me go!” she spits, fighting like a caged beast.

I don’t. “Breathe,” I say, getting in her face. “You’re safe, you’re okay, but your emotions are ruling you. Find your breath.”

Her eyes dart around for a second, body still struggling, till they find mine. She relaxes some, but still shakes her head. “Have to get out. Get away. They know.”

I frown. “Who knows, Gaxna? What?”

“The witches. They must have figured out I’m helping runaways. They’re coming for me.”

“That’s fear talking. Think. If they wanted to take you, they would have waited. Or sent bloodborn after us. And if they were planning to surprise you, they wouldn’t have left that paper behind.”

“Either way, we’ve got to run. Let me up.”

She’s starting to sound more like normal-Gaxna, but I shake my head. “I’m not letting you up till I know you’re not going to do something stupid.”

“Like what?”

“Like run away on a Daraa caravan, or whatever you came up here for. Now breathe.”

She breathes, miraculously, and I guide her through the Basic Tide. “In, out. Deep, slow. Calm, focus. Here, now.”

After a minute I can see it take effect, and I drag her over to a bench partially hidden behind a burlap tent. A few caravansers gawk at us, short oily-skinned men in heavy jewelry. I ignore them. Gaxna takes a minute to dust herself off, and I’m relieved to see she didn’t bring the statue. There’s no way it would have survived that run in one piece.

“Better now?”

She nods.

“Good. I want to show you something. Something you can use in moments like that, if you have control of your breath, to keep your fear from taking over.” And I teach her the icing technique, taking the physical sensations in your body and visualizing them as ice, to be melted and dealt with later. It seems to work.

“Why did you run?” I ask once she’s calm. “There was no one there, and we weren’t in danger.”

Gaxna takes a deep breath and shudders. “Because it’s proof they’re still watching. That they still want me.”

“Who? The theracants?”

“The witches,” she says, stressing the word. “They’re witches, Aletheia. They use their powers to get your blood and control you.”

I flex my fist. This hasn’t been safe to talk about before, but maybe now… “And they did that to you?”

She looks down. “Yes. When I was a girl. I was—I wanted to be one of them. One of the witches. I didn’t have any money, you know, neither me or my mom, so life was hard. And when they said they’d take me”—she laughs, but the sound is bitter—“I had no idea what they wanted me for.”

“What did they want you for?”

Gaxna rubs at her missing eye. “Let’s just say I left on bad terms. And I’ve been waiting for them to come for me ever since.”

“That sounds hard.” It’s not the right thing to say, but I suck at words. “But they didn’t come for you. They didn’t attack. Didn’t make any bloodborn attack. They just came and looked through your stuff and left.”

“And made sure I knew it was them who did it.”

“Yeah, isn’t that kind of strange? What if it was someone else, trying to pin the blame on the witches?”

Like the traditionalists.

That sits her up straighter. “That could be it. Maybe it was someone else.” Ironically, this seems to cheer her up. “You’re right.”

“Okay,” I say. “Can we go back now?”

Her face closes. “No.”

“Gaxna, we’re not leaving on a Daraa caravan. I’m not at least.”

She doesn’t say anything, looking at the circles of canvas-covered wagons. Would she really drop everything and leave? I know I can’t. This is where I need to be.

I try again. “I can’t do this alone yet. I need you. We’re partners, right?”

She chews her lip a moment, looking away, then nods. “Partners.”

I realize as she says it, with the internal awareness that comes from years practicing the breathing, that there’s more to it than that. And that I have to say that part too. “I don’t want you to leave. I like life with you.”

For a second there’s such an expression of fear in her eyes that I almost hug her. Then she firms up and smirks. “First rule of thievery: never trust a flatterer.”

“I’m almost relieved enough not to be annoyed by that right now. C’mon, let’s go. There’s a falafel wrap I’m dying to eat back there.”

She shakes her head. “We can’t go back to the tower.”

“What? We have to. All our stuff’s there—the loot we just took? The statue?”

Gaxna sets her jaw. “I’ve got other places. We can get other loot.”

We argue about it on the rooftops back to the city. She leads me to a walled-off room in the side of a three-story dockhouse close to the Blackwater. It’s not as nice as our last hideout, but it’s safe, and full of Gaxna’s signature crates of junk. Plus, the roof has a great view of the bay, and the temple hanging from the cliffs on the far side.

After getting my bearings, I leave Gaxna, who’s still moody, and get as much of our stuff as I can carry, including the statue. I almost feel sad, leaving the tower. This place felt safe, for a while. The first safe place I’ve had since… I don’t know when. Since my dad, I guess, and I’ll never get him back. But climbing up to our new hideout, sack loaded with gold and jewelry and a strange crystal statue, I realize I have something almost as good: a friend.