5: You Need To Come With Me

A baby wails somewhere in the buildings above me. I crouch behind a broke-wheeled pushcart in an alley near the docks, trying to make a plan.

It’s dawn in Serei and the city is still cool, shadows long, the smell of ocean and hearth fires in my nose. The baby’s cry sounds strange—there are no babies in the temple. I haven’t heard one since I came out here on my tenth nameday, seven years ago. Acolytes aren’t allowed into the city. It breaks our concentration, they say.

Or it keeps us from escaping.

Running was easy in the night. The streets were empty, and the few people out didn’t seem to notice my robes. Now, with the sun up, I feel like a crab in a cattle market.

Or a girl in a temple. I should be used to it, but the rules are different here. Worse, I don’t know what they are. Just that I don’t look right, I don’t talk like the dock workers passing on the street, and I don’t have a job or a home or money to buy breakfast. And if I make a wrong move out here, the overseers will find me.

I’ve seen two pairs of them already, shaven heads high, walking with hands out to brush merchants and townspeople, using watersight to read thoughts through their skin. It looks normal—this is how Ujeism has kept Serei so safe, how we got our reputation for peace and justice. The overseers patrol the streets, reading minds, punishing anyone who’s committed a crime and warning those who are thinking about it. If there are any emergencies, you stick a foot in the water trough and think panicked thoughts, and they come and punish whoever’s guilty.

Only today, my guess is they’re looking for more than guilty thoughts. They’re looking for sightings of a violet-eyed girl in monk’s robes. And the first whiff they get of me will start a chase I can’t win. Not against an overseer’s size and strength, and their knowledge of a city that feels foreign to me, though I’ve lived on the cliffs above it my whole life.

I’m out of my robes, at least. I felt bad, but I pulled a shirt and trousers from a clothesline on my way here. They don’t fit right, and I’m realizing not many women wear trousers, but they won’t give me away at first glance. At the end of the alley, women pass in flowing, open-bottomed blouses, with colorful wraps covering their legs. The men here are mostly laborers, with dark tans and muscled shoulders sticking from short vests.

I’m in the Blackwater, a slum near the docks, so I might be able to get on board one of the ships crossing the strait to Bamani. Or I could wait till night, climb the streets to the Dry Quarter, and haggle for a place on a Daraa caravan leaving the city. I don’t have any money, but with my training I could probably work as a guard.

I adjust my crouch behind the pushcart, muscles cramping. What I know is that I can’t stay here. I’m parched and hungry, and sooner or later, someone will notice I’ve been hiding back here for hours and get curious.

So I take a deep breath, turn my fear and anxiety to ice, and step out into the street. I half-expect to see a pair of overseers waiting for me around the corner. I don’t. Instead, I see Serei—not the sprawling city of white marble curled around an azure bay you can see from the temple, but a cobbled lane crowded with vendors and workers and people of every dress and skin tone. Three-story wood shanties lean overhead with red awnings tied between them, snapping in the ocean breeze. Dogs and chickens and camels jostle people for space in a street that winds stepwise down the steep slope toward the bay.

This is my city. Or the city I want to serve, anyway. I’ve trained my whole life to be a seer, to spend my days meeting with these people, using watersight and thoughtful questions to counsel them through their problems. Being a woman always complicated that, but I’d get through it. Even father’s murder didn’t change that, it just meant I had to be that much better.

But now? There’s no place for me in the temple. Not the way it is now.

I turn a corner, scanning the street for overseers. They murdered my father. Nerimes wouldn’t admit to it, even if he owned up to covering it up, but it’s too convenient that his party was ready to seize power just as father died, and they were obviously ready to kill me for being in the way.

For dissenting. What did Nerimes say? Dissent is the ultimate heresy. Not dissent with our principles or practices. Dissent with his power.

And that’s heresy if I’ve ever heard it. Ujeism has always been about the search for truth, which means welcoming all kinds of opinions on the way.

I take a breath and force my back straight again. Forget running. I will be a true Ujeian. Maybe the only one left now, with their corruption spreading through the temple. I’ll find the truth about my father’s death and use it to expose Nerimes and take my temple back. Because I have no doubt they were behind it. I just have to prove it now.

I pass a pair of girls fanning coals under a stack of bamboo dumpling trays, and the savory steam that rises from them makes my parched mouth water.

The question is how to prove it. Whatever I learn, I can show to the temple in watersight, and memories are incontrovertible evidence. But there’s no way I can talk to the theocrats or members of Nerimes’ cabal without getting caught. Going back to the temple would only get me killed.

I turn a corner onto a broad street lined with fruit vendors. Which means I have to do it out here. If my hunch is right that Nerimes set up the conditions to seize power before he had my father killed, then people in the city will have been involved in every part of that. He talked about my father giving the witches too much power, hurting the city’s trade, and being a heretic. If it was a set-up, someone in the Merchant’s Guild will know, and the town criers, and the witches themselves.

I have no experience gathering clues like this, and I’m not good with words, but I do have an edge here: no one knows how to block watersight. I can read their thoughts and collect memories of them admitting the traditionalists bribed them, or scared them, or whatever they did, then expose those memories to the temple in watersight. No one will be able to deny me then.

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I duck behind a display of Bamani rugs at the sight of shaven heads down the street. It’s a good plan—I just have to stay alive long enough to do it.

I could go to the witches’ guild. The Theracants’ Guild is their actual name. The female side of Ujeism, women who read blood instead of water, skilled at healing but also able to use their magic to control patients’ bodies. They are ancient enemies of the temple, and they’d probably be happy to help if they knew I was working against Nerimes. I have to be careful, though—if any seer thought I was in league with the theracants, my lifetime of service to the temple would mean nothing. I get called a witch as it is, just because I’m a woman.

Or I could go to one of the other guilds, try to convince them of the justice of my cause. But none of them have watersight, so it’d be my word—daughter of the ousted Chosen—against Nerimes, who controls the overseer police and the temple tax guilds have to pay.

So no, I’m going to have to do this alone. Which first of all means finding something to eat. And since I don’t have any money, I guess I’m going to have to steal it.

Sorry, Uje. Sorry, dad. We have a principle against stealing, but I guess I’m a heretic now. I hate the idea, but I hate the thought of Nerimes controlling the temple and city worse.

There’s a market ahead, with rows of stands and carts circled around one of the city’s wide fountains. I make for it, weaving through tables piled with colorful fabrics and leatherworks, trying to be unobtrusive. I’ve never stolen anything besides the clothes I’m wearing. Actually, I’ve never bought anything either. The temple has always provided. So not only do I have no experience stealing things, I don’t even really know how people buy them.

Thankfully, the market is a solid press of bodies—if things go wrong, I doubt anyone could chase me for long in this. If it wasn’t for the overseers, they’d probably have a huge problem with crime. But thieves lose their hands, and anyone who suspects something can just stick their foot in the water channels and call for an overseer.

So I have to be smooth. Or fast. Hopefully both. A fruit peddler notices me looking at his colorful stacks. “Mangoes? Limes? Bananas still green from the Bamani jungles?”

“Ah,” I say stupidly, stomach growling. “I don’t—”

He frowns, and I move on. I need to be smoother, faster. There’s a samosa cart ahead, fried triangles of dough smelling like nectar from Uje. I reach for one, trying to look innocent, and a hand grabs my wrist before I’ve barely touched it.

“Thief!” the old woman snaps. “I’ve got a thief!”

So much for smooth. Fast, I do better.

I dart left, weaving between people, clutching the samosa in one hand. It isn’t as easy as I thought: the crowd is thick, and everyone heard the woman shout. Some of them start trying to block my way. I use elbows and knees, apologizing and actually feeling sorry but needing to get out quick.

I break through the carts to the fountain in the center of the plaza. A woman in long skirts glances up. Her eyes narrow. “You,” she says. “You need to come with me.”

Surprise stops me dead. A witch. And she knows who I am?

I run the other way. Behind me she barks something and an ordinary man leading two dogs on a single leash turns, eyes going wide. He grabs for me.

My stomach lurches—blood magic. The witch is controlling him. What does she want?

I dodge—his grab is slow and clumsy—and push into the carts on the far side of the fountain, icing another wave of panic that rises up in me. Someone’s called the overseers by now. The man bellows behind me, and I glance back to see him forcibly shoving through the crowd, eyes still wide with the witch’s control, dogs forgotten behind him.

Fear twists through my core. The temple I understand. But why do the witches want me?

I get out of the market and sprint down the street. The wide-eyed man follows, but he’s not very fast—apparently blood-witchery doesn’t help with that. I pelt around a long team of camels plodding uphill and look for a place to lose him.

On the far side of the street, I see a bald man charging toward me, robes flowing behind him, eyes deadly. An overseer—already here from whoever called him in the market. Probably already under orders from Nerimes to bring me back in.

Floods. I switch directions, cutting into a narrow side street between alleys, leaping barrels and trash heaps and a pair of slat-eyed cats. The overseer saw me, though, and crashes into the alley behind me. I come out in a busy street and try staying low, slowing down to not to make a scene.

He finds me anyway, fifteen paces behind and gaining, eyes peaceful in the steel grip of concentration.

Two can play at that: I ice everything inside, make my mind a waterfall in winter, let myself run full out.

It works: I run faster, weave more smoothly, dodge better than before, totally free from fear. Until I turn to check on him and my foot catches a peddler’s broom. I slam into the cobblestones, breath clapping out of me.

He’s on me an instant later, eyes still calm, hands clamping on my arms. Desperate strength wells up in me, but I don’t fight. There’s no point fighting an overseer, especially without my staff. I’d just lose with more bruises. I try reading him when our skins touch, but his blind is a stone wall.

“Aletheia Vjolla,” he says, lifting me from the center of a rapidly clearing circle. “You are wanted in the temple.”

“They’re lying,” I gasp, desperate. I push my memories into him, the scene from last night. “The council is trying to kill me! You can’t take me back to them!”

The overseer pauses for a moment, considering, then shakes his head. “Those are matters for the theocrats. I obey the law, and the law says you are to be brought in for sentencing.”

“The law is wrong! It’s based on lies!”

His eyes stay calm as lakes. “That is a matter for the council.”

My stomach churns. This cannot end this way. Not with what I’ve learned. I open my mouth for one more try, and the overseer’s head snaps forward. His hands go limp, and he drops to the street.

The wide-eyed man stands behind him, fist deformed where the force of his blow broke bones, chest heaving. “I told you to come with me,” he says in a haughty voice. A woman’s voice. The witch.

I run. I’m not about to trade Nerimes for whatever the witches’ guild has in store for me. Plus, I can outrun this guy.

Only as I sprint away, another man goes wide-eyed down the street, and turns for me. I dodge past and he runs after. A woman and her teenage son ahead suddenly look at me, eyes going wide. The shopkeeper across from them reaches for a heavy club with bulging eyes.

Floods. I duck left into a warren of houses, sprinting down narrow lanes. They charge after, a motley pack of wide-eyed people yelling something in unison. I don’t waste my time listening.

Until I hit a dead end. The street ends in a brick wall going up twenty paces on all sides. I spin to find the witch-controlled people closing in, shouting in unison. “Told you to come with me, girl!” “Hey!”

I start climbing, heart pounding, but the brick offers no good grips. I curse, trying to wedge myself up using the corner as leverage.

“Come,” the mob chants, closing in. I hear the “Hey” again, more insistent, coming from above.

As in, not from the possessed people.

I look up. A black rope dangles from the edge of the roof like the helping hand of Uje. I grab it and pull myself up. One of the possessed seizes my leg. I kick him off, but not before I read an awful blankness through his skin, as if his mind has been painted over. Another one lunges for me and I scramble up.

I don’t know who threw this down, or why, but they can’t possibly be worse than staying here.