That night, I collected every scrap of paper I could find that had those circular symbols scribbled on them. I
lined them up outside, looking at them. Every single one was different — the markings going through their center in different shapes and orientations.
I still had no idea what they were, or what they did, other than that Nura used one to bring us here. And that they were the most concrete example of something important that I didn’t know how to do.
So, for whatever reason — perhaps simply because I needed a solid goal to latch onto — I channeled all my energy into understanding them. I copied every single one, imitating each stroke with exact accuracy. In some cases, I even layered the paper and traced them, stroke for stroke, line for line.
Hours passed. The sun set. I lit lanterns. I wouldn’t go inside because I didn’t trust myself not to slap Max if he snickered at me.
I repeated those symbols over and over again, the same way I had practiced my dancing steps for hours and hours, forcing them, hammering them, shattering them and myself until we were melded together. I would do the same damn thing with these stupid symbols.
I had to.
I wasn’t sure how late it was by the time I heard the door open behind me. By this time, I was surrounded by paper, stacked up all around me in piles, like a gate locking me in.
“Not that it’s my business, but do you plan to stay out here all night?” I heard Max ask.
I didn’t turn around. My steady hand did not waver as it traced another circle. Calm. Methodical. I had a system — combining each symbol with each type of ink. “If I must.”
“I’m exhausted just looking at you.”
I had no response to that. Anger simmered deep beneath my skin.
“Do you even know what those are?” he said.
My fingers tightened so hard around my pen that I nearly snapped it in two. “No. And I think you probably will not say.” The words came out in a low snarl.
“The Orders probably won’t ask you about them.”
Before I could stop myself, I jumped to my feet, whirling to him, the pen still clutched in my hand. “I know. I need to
— need to—”
The Aran words eluded me, driving my frustration to thrash up against my surface. I glared at Max, who leaned against the doorframe.
I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to ask, Who has ruined you so badly that you can’t do anything but stand in the way of people who have actual important things to do? Why do you feel such a pervasive, petty need to shove your petulance in the Orders’ faces? And why the hell do you need to bring me down with you, too?
Instead, the Aran words that came out sounded something like, “What so many hates do you have?”
“Huh?”
His confusion, understandable as it was, infuriated me. I let the pen drop violently to the ground. I hammered every Aran word home, slowly. “Why do you hate the Orders? Why do you hate me so many? What is wrong with you?”
“I don’t hate you,” Max replied, which made me even
angrier.
“That is not true!” I shook my head. “That is not true. I don’t care if you hate me— hate me here.” I touched my heart. It was the only way I could think to convey what I was saying. “Or here.” I pressed my fingers against my temple. “But you hate me in what you do. Why? What wrong did I do to you?”
“It’s not about you.” Something shifted, softened, in Max’s expression. But I was past looking for scraps of kindness.
“It is about me! This is my life, not only yours.” I blinked and all I could see was Esmaris’s body, Serel’s face, hands and skin of every man I danced for to earn the money to leave. “I was slave in Threll. Did you know?”
He didn’t answer. Just stared at me, with one deepening line in his brow.
“Did you?”
“No,” he said, quietly.
“I did many things to come here. I killed for coming here. My friend—” I didn’t have the vocabulary to describe what Serel had done for me, given for me. “I left my most important people. They need me. I cannot fail them. To help them, I need this.” I thrust my open palm down to the piles of drawings. “I have nothing without the Orders. No power. I need this. They need this.”
I didn’t make myself all of these terrible things — a whore, a killer, a traitor — just to be ignored and discarded before it could be worth something.
Max’s mouth thinned. I couldn’t read him, and I did not try. I was long past caring what he thought. In that moment, I didn’t care what any of them thought — all of these people who, my entire life, had used me as a part of their stories, had assumed that I was a set piece in their lives. Like Esmaris did. Like every lord I seduced. Like Nura, using me to get under Max’s skin. And now, like Max,
who saw me as a representative of some petty grudge and not an actual human being.
“This is not only yours,” I spat. “So tell me what is on
stupid test.” Silence.
My rage receded, slightly, like a wave falling back after crashing on the shore. In that brief reprieve, I cursed myself for losing my temper, wondering if I had forever ruined the ability to mold my relationship with Max by showing him something so raw and impulsive.
He just stood there. Staring at me. “You were a slave,” he repeated.
I paused, taken aback by the look on his face, still exhaling the remnants of my fury. “Yes,” I answered, at last. “And your plan is to join the Orders and then use their
influence to help the other slaves in Threll.” “Yes.”
He tucked his thumbs into his pockets, letting out a breath that was too long and slow to be a sigh. The unforgiving hardness of his features cracked, shifted. Just slightly. “It won’t work.”
“I will make it work.”
“That’s not how it goes. It’s not that simple.” “I do not care.”
“They aren’t going to make this easy for you.”
I scoffed. That was certainly already clear. “I know.”
“The Orders are…” He paused, shaking his head. “They aren’t good. Maybe once they were used to accomplish great things. But now, they’re a tool used and run by very flawed people.”
Those bright eyes went far away, as if lost in the past.
As much as I wanted to deny it, I was sure that in some ways, he was right. Perhaps the Orders were not the benevolent organizations that they once were. But I needed them.
And maybe, in a way, they could need me, too. Maybe I could make myself into something valuable.
“Perhaps they could do great things again,” I said.
A bitter laugh slipped between Max’s teeth. “Maybe.” He didn’t sound convinced.
“I have no other choices.”
He looked down at his feet, hands in his pockets, and there was a long, long silence.
When he lifted his head again, his gaze met mine with a stronger determination, fragile but fierce, like a sheet of cracked glass. “You’re really going to do this? Force the Orders to do something worth doing?”
“Yes,” I replied, without hesitation. “I don’t know why I believe you.”
But I could see in his face, in that eggshell hope, in the near-invisible bob of his throat, that he did.
“Well.” He shook his head, then turned to the stacks of papers. “These are Stratagrams. They’re used to direct magic for more complex spells. Kind of like instructions.”
I looked down at them, rustling in the breeze around my feet. “I’ve seen them only one time. On Valtain slave. Complete Valtain, not like me. On her arms.” I extended my forearm, demonstrating where I had seen the marks tattooed up and down the woman’s albino skin. I had tried to talk to her, then, excited to meet someone else like me. But she had only looked at me with dead eyes.
A muscle twitched at the bridge of Max’s nose. “If she was a slave, it was probably meant to cripple her power, direct her magic away from being anything useful. Imagine tying a cow’s head to its tail. But as a tool, they’re more commonly used by Solarie, since our magic is so much more external than yours.” When we looked at each other again, the corners of his lips were curled in a confident smirk. As if that brief of flicker of vulnerability had never existed. “But, these are very advanced. We won’t start here.”
We won’t start here.
My heart leapt. I nodded eagerly, so grateful to have an ally — any ally — that I didn’t even care that he was overwriting my plans.
“Come inside. Get some rest. If you’re done littering up my garden, anyway.” He opened the door, stepping aside for me. “We’ll have a long day tomorrow.”
I went to the doorway, then stopped before I entered, turning to Max and regarding him in silence. Shadow doused the hard panes of his face, but his features were so sharp that they sliced through the dusk, meeting mine with equal determination and wary curiosity. We stood only inches apart, each allowing the other to peer into a rare, guarded honesty.
The urge to thank him lingered at the tip of my tongue. Don’t thank him for doing what he should have done to begin with, a snide, colder part of me hissed.
I don’t know why I believe you, he had said. But I knew. He believed me because he wanted to believe me — wanted to believe in the possibility of something better, however unlikely it was.
And that?
That was something that sank into my soul like water after miles and miles of parched, desperate desert.
“Thank you,” I said, and went inside.
