14: The Pieces Don't Fit

We’re back in the upper part of the city, dressed as two merchant’s sons, in flowing trousers and sleeveless shirts. The tight vests we wear to hide our figures make it hard to breathe, but it’s no worse than the way the close-cut wigs make me sweat. The city is lively here, children screaming in the fountains and vendors calling out wares while wealthy men and women browse the indoor shops. There are even a few Seilam Deul in the mix, the milk-eyed technocrats from the mountains to the north. An Uje preacher stands on one corner, proclaiming the Deluge to all who will listen.

“—will wipe out the unbelievers, the dry-minded, the weak! Repent now and bear faith in the waters! No one knows the day or the hour, but children we know His wrath is great!”

Gaxna frowns as we pass him. “Flooding Ujeists. Ain’t going to be no flooding deluge.” She speaks in the gruff voice she uses for male disguises.

I shrug, practicing what she said about men swaying from their shoulders, not their hips. “Most seers don’t think there’ll be another deluge for centuries yet. Maybe never if we keep the faith.”

Though Nerimes said something different about my dad—your father’s doomsday fears about the deluge.

“Uje,” Gaxna snorts, doing a better job than me of sounding male. “I don’t think there ever were floods. It’s just something they use to keep us in line.”

I raise an eyebrow, and not because Gaxna casually snags a pomegranate as we pass a fruit stand. “How do you explain the Fist, then?” Uje’s Fist is a giant metal thing sticking from the ocean a few miles out in the bay, hexagonal beams making a fist-like shape.

“Rocks,” she says, carefully not looking at a witch attending the next fountain we pass.

“Rocks?” The fist is ten times the size of a ship and clearly made of metal, though under all the bird slop and barnacles, there’s not a spot of rust on it. “There are no rocks like that. Or metal either.”

“So I’m supposed to believe it was made by some super-advanced civilization that got wiped out in a flood?” She nods toward an overseer ahead, and we step into a luthier’s shop. I have to ice my fear despite the disguise. My eyes are still a dead giveaway—I’ve seen one other violet-eyed person in the city since I came here, and I think he was a sailor from abroad.

The overseer passes and we move on. I want to ask Gaxna where we’re going, who this person is and what they have to do with me not wanting to leave, but I know better than to ask in public. Instead, we keep arguing about the deluges, an old argument between the faithful and nonbelievers. When I was still a second-year they took us to the Serantei isles off the west coast, to see the strange square pillars rising from the ocean, covered in rust and salt and bird slop, impossible but undeniably manmade. A drowned city, and a drowned people with it. I don’t know if keeping to Ujeism will save us from the next flood, but I don’t doubt it’s coming.

Gaxna slows down outside a normal stone house on an average street in the upper part of the city. “Here?” I ask.

“Here. Stay outside and practice your disguise, okay? This could take a while.”

She goes in and I find a seat with my back to a wall next to a noodle vendor. I try to relax and really get into the character of a merchant’s son, but my mind keeps going back to my father, to the traditionalists, to what I’ve learned. That someone named Arayim gave that merchant money to keep his business afloat through the trade slump—like they knew it wouldn’t last long and didn’t want the city’s merchants to take real damage from it.

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What does that mean? That someone was affecting trade itself in the city? That would be a much bigger move than just paying off some criers.

And who is Arayim? I thought I had it figured out, with either the merchants doing Nerimes favors before his rise to power, or vice versa, but the guild head swore Arayim wasn’t from any guild, and he would know.

So who else would Arayim be serving? And does that make him Nerimes’ puppet, or the one pulling the strings?

One thing I know for sure, Arayim is not a name connected to the temple—I would recognize it, even someone from our upriver posts. Which brings my thoughts back to the crier I talked to days ago. He never answered me directly about who was paying to have my father’s heresies played up. But knowing that would give me another stream to follow in figuring out who was behind all of this.

I stand up. I’m not great at this disguise, and the city’s not safe, but it will never be safe, and I need to know. Gaxna said it would take a while.

So I head for the Blackwater. I think I can find the fountain where I talked to the crier, and I’ve got money to bribe him now. I try my best to keep my head down, to swagger like a merchant’s son, and to watch the street for witches and overseers. Taking the roofs would be easier, but I need to get better at this in case Gaxna does finally freak out and leave.

I see one overseer, but detour around him without incident. The same crier stands by the fountain, still yelling about a giant squid. I catch his eye across the square and nod toward an alley. He frowns for a second, then probably recognizes my eyes and heads over.

“Got some money for me then, lass? Or is it lad?”

“Doesn’t matter,” I say, pulling him further back in the wedge between buildings. “But yes. I need a name.”

He rubs his hands together. “And I need money. A crier’s got to eat.”

I fish in my pocket for one of the necklaces we lifted back at the merchant’s house. The stone in it is small, but his eyes light up when he sees it. “This enough?”

He snatches it from my hand, glancing back toward the street. “Where did you get this?”

“That doesn’t matter either. Now who paid you to bend the news about Stergjon?”

He grins. “Not me. The whole guild.”

Floods. “Fine. Who?”

The crier narrows his eyes. “Why do you want to know, anyway? You going to expose me?”

“It doesn’t flooding matter. And no, I’m not going to expose you. Call me curious. And I’ll call you overpaid either way.”

“Don’t know much about him, really. Just shows up with money now and then. Arayim’s his name.”

It’s everything I can do not to goggle. “Arayim?”

“Yeah. You know him?”

I flex my hands. “No, but I need to. Where can I find him?”

The crier raises his eyebrows. “That’s valuable information.”

I grit my teeth. I could force it out of him. Grind his face into the cobblestones till he tells me. But that’s not the way the streets work, and I need to not stand out here. To be water. I fish in my pocket and pull out the other thing I slipped from the loot. A solid gold statue of Uje in dragon form—small, but surely more valuable than the necklace. I should ask Gaxna more about what things are worth.

His eyes pop, and he snatches it up. “Evening after next, Crier’s Guildhouse. He usually comes at sunset, meets with the president. Look for a tall man with his hood up, walks like his hips hurt.”

“Are you sure?”

“I don’t flooding lie kid, unlike you, whoever you are. But mess with me and I’ll start crying the news that some violet-eyed girl is asking too many questions.” He narrows his eyes. “You the one that they’re looking for then? Escaped from the temple last week?”

Fear grips me, and I think for a second I’m going to have to knock him out so hard he forgets all this.

Then he smiles. “Don’t matter to me, as long as you keep the gold coming. I know lots.”

I release my fists, palms aching where my nails bit into the flesh. “I bet you do. Thanks. If Arayim isn’t there, you can bet I’ll be back.”

I’m pleased to see the hint of fear that enters his eyes, and he scurries out of the alley.

I climb to the roofs just in case, my head spinning.

Who is Arayim? Where did he get the money to bribe an entire guild and float a bunch of merchants? Not even the temple has pockets that deep.

Which makes it feel a lot more likely Nerimes is a pawn in whatever game Arayim’s playing, not the other way around. If he has that much money, he’s not going to be interested in getting a few lucrative favors from the traditionalists once they’re in power.

I grab a roof pole, swing myself to a higher roof. Unless this is about more than money? Could Arayim just be a devout as well as very rich Ujeian traditionalist?

The pieces don’t fit, but I have a date at least. Morning after next, a hooded man with a limp outside the Crier’s Guild. Arayim.

I wouldn’t miss it for the world.