An Embroidery of Souls, page 27
He mailed a letter to Clara, the kind woman who witnessed our interaction in Dreiden’s market, and signed it as Johann. In it he asked her to retrieve some old potatoes from Johann’s cellar before they spoiled. She screamed when she opened the hatch and, instead of old potatoes, I rushed out, barely capable of words.
I wanted to crumble, cry, break. I can’t, I nearly sobbed, the belief pounding through me. But neither did I have a choice—which is why my mantra has changed. No longer I can’t, but now I have to, because Lukas and Johann are in danger, and they’re not the only ones. Mérecal’s people have been terrified, been murdered, had their souls ripped from their bodies long enough. If I don’t do something, no one else will.
So I’m determined to try.
That morning I packed my things. Fortunately, the tracker left my thread kit—he probably didn’t want to lug it around, or perhaps he suspected I’d delay my return to Mérecal if I needed time to reassemble it. Unfortunately, he stole the thread portraits of him and his past lover, the queen, along with both their locks of hair. A difficult blow, considering I can’t alter their souls or unspool their lives without pieces of their persons. Thankfully, I was at least able to re-create the lost portraits from memory, and now they sit, alongside Lukas’s, secure in my pocket.
I’m ready, and when my ship docks in Sallenda, I don’t hesitate. I’m the first to step onto the pier, my chin held high even as my heart races. It’s difficult to shake the vulnerability of walking out in the open like this, along with the fear that I’ll turn the corner and find the tracker there. By now he’s probably had Johann redo his tattoo. But even if he’s waiting on the docks, I doubt he’ll notice me—not with my new tattoo.
I had the idea back in Dreiden, when I first considered remaining there. Sooner or later the queen would come calling, so I concocted a way to ensure that when she did, I’d remain hidden. Searched for but never found.
Inspired by the tracker’s own tattoo.
Because while his conferred the qualities of a predator, I now have those of his prey. And though it may sound weak, there’s power in it, all embroidered onto my hip. Navy silence, taken from a deer. Flaxen speed, stolen from a jackrabbit. Mossy camouflage from a moth, so when eyes land on me, they have a tendency to slide away. And from a spider an earthy brown to mask my scent.
The tracker spun a trap in which I came to him, weak and afraid, but he never considered that in becoming prey, I gave myself strength. So despite everything, I smile as I slip down the pier, my new tattoo heating as it activates. I want nothing more than to run to Lukas, but I’m not a complete fool—I’m sure the queen has him heavily guarded. For that reason I don’t follow the tug in my chest but make my way to the Eastern District, where Lukas’s family is holed up in my mother’s secret apartment.
It’s not long before I’m standing on the threshold, and I force myself to take a breath and slow my tumbling heart before I knock.
Seconds slide by, and when the door creaks open, my face must be redder than a pomegranate. A girl answers—Emma, I assume. Her coloring is different from Lukas’s. Where Lukas is fair, Emma has coppery hair and warm brown eyes, but her cheekbones are equally sharp, her lips full in just the same way as his.
Her eyes narrow. “Who are you, and what do you want?”
I’m immediately grateful I practiced what I was going to say. “My name is Jade, and I’m a friend of Lukas’s. Can we talk?”
“Jade?” She opens the door wider, her gaze softening. “Jade Aguilar. The one who transferred me all the money?”
She looked at the bank slips, then. Lukas’s letter didn’t name me, but it would’ve been easy enough for her to figure out where the funds came from.
I nod. “Yes. That’s me.”
My head buzzes as Emma unleashes a barrage of questions. “How do you know Lukas? What’s going on? Do you know what he did? They won’t let me see—” She pauses, perhaps noticing my dumbfounded expression, and steps back. “Why don’t we talk more inside?”
I fight down a prickle of unease, not from Emma’s invitation but from her questions about Lukas. As I suspected, something’s wrong.
“Thank you.” I gently brush past her, and there’s a pinch in my chest as I step inside the apartment. I haven’t spent much time here, but my mother did, and her touch is heavy in the décor. The walls are painted a soft lilac—the shade of compassion—and hung with several thread works of the gods she most revered. Sunlight speckles the room, filtered through the white lacy curtains, and the entire space smells like her favorite vanilla soap.
My eyes burn. Because for a moment it feels like such a simple thing for her to walk through that door, sweep me into her arms, and kiss my brow. Here a little piece of her lives, and it hurts me as much as it heals me.
I blink, willing myself not to cry, and face Emma when the door clicks shut.
She looks at me, expression severe. “How do you know Lukas?”
My throat bobs, but I don’t break her gaze. “Lukas came to me for help nine weeks ago. He was trying to catch a murderer, and he wanted my assistance.”
The rest spills out from there. I don’t share the romance, but neither do I hide any of the other details—Cora, the tracker, queen, all of it—and by the time I stop speaking, my throat is dry.
For her part, Emma doesn’t interrupt once, doesn’t even break eye contact, unnervingly intense. She’s silent after I finish, then asks, voice level, “So you believe Lukas went straight to the queen when he arrived, and delivered himself into the true killer’s hands?”
It’s an effort not to reach for my chest, where Lukas’s soul is stitched beneath my shirt. His emotions have been a steady undercurrent, but they spiked seven days ago, and I almost spiraled into an episode, his fear was so intense. “Yes,” I tell Emma. “I’m almost positive that’s what happened.”
She swears and breaks my gaze for the first time. I give her a few moments to process. She brings a fist to her mouth, and her eyes are glassy when she looks at me again. “I suppose that would explain this.”
She reaches into her pocket and removes a piece of parchment, frayed from heavy use. A wave of cold hits me as she holds it out, and I already know that whatever’s written there, I don’t want to see it. I can’t rises up, a familiar echo, and my old instincts scream at me to get far away from Sallenda, from Emma and Lukas and my problems. It would be easy, and with this tattoo on my hip, I could live a life in the shadows, unknown and unfound. Safe.
But I nearly had that with Johann, and I was miserable. So while the I can’t is still there, it’s no longer alone. I won’t leave Lukas. I have to try. I will save him.
All those messages beat inside me as I take the paper from Emma. Though I was expecting the worst, I practically faint when I see what’s written there. An announcement for an execution.
Lukas’s execution.
My eyes burn as I scan the words once, twice, three times, taking in more fragments with each pass.
Responsible for the recent string of murders.
Summoned Vada’s dog.
Sentence: Death by hanging.
The queen is going to kill Lukas for the murders she committed.
The realization hits me like a poison, slow to spread but no less deadly for it. I should’ve expected this; her cruelty is boundless, after all, and I absently wonder what made her this way. If it was the death of her family, perhaps, swallowed whole in that vicious fire.
I’m trembling by the time I offer Emma the flyer, and her voice shakes too. “I’m not sure what to do,” she admits. “They went up all over the city a few days ago, and I just—Lukas was my rock, our rock.” She nods toward a closed door. “My mom and Artur are in there. She hasn’t left since she heard the news, and I can’t let this happen—I can’t—but I don’t know how to stop it either.”
All my life I’ve been sheltered. Protected. First at the orphanage, then by my mother, and later by Lukas. I’m used to others looking out for me, so it feels a bit odd when I put a reassuring hand on Emma’s shoulder and try to make my voice calm and soothing, the way Lukas would with me. “It’s okay,” I tell her. “I do.”
And by the gods, I really hope I’m right.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Lukas
The pit is aptly named.
When they first brought me here, the guards blindfolded me, so I don’t know where I am, but I do know this: It’s somewhere deep in the earth. The walls are made of blunted stone, dark save for the few oil lamps mounted between the cells. It smells of must, mold, rot, and other things I’d rather not consider.
On my fifth day here the tracker visited. He boasted of his escape and capture of Johann, though he refused to tell me where the queen’s keeping him. I sat there, seething through it all, until he told me what he did to Jade. How he left her, terrified and alone, in that cellar. At that point I couldn’t hide my fury any longer. I lunged at the bars, screaming. Even now I can still hear the tracker’s cold chuckle as he walked away.
I spent another day after that in quiet misery, no visitors save for the guards who bring my meals—until now. Day seven. My heart jackrabbits when the door creaks above, because this time it’s not simply a guard delivering my meal. There’s the telltale jangle of chains that suggests another prisoner. I can’t breathe as I imagine Jade, bent and scared as the tracker leads her to a cell.
I brace myself, taut as I watch the stairs and wait for her to appear. But when the prisoner rounds the corner, it’s not Jade. Nor is it someone I thought I’d ever see again, or wished to. A wave of frosty surprise hits me, followed by a tsunami of rage and a trickle of…relief?
Because while it’s not Jade, it is someone I’m familiar with.
Her mother.
Not dead as Johann believed, but here, alive. The queen’s prisoner.
She’s different from the last time I saw her: no longer tall and proud, but hunched, with an ashy hue to her dark skin. I’m not sure where they’ve been keeping her, but it’s clear she’s been captive for a long time. Her hair’s become matted, and her gray eyes are tired. I watch, barely able to process what’s happening as the queen’s guard leads her to the cell across from mine, locks her in, then departs.
Leaving me alone with her. This woman who let Lina die. Who had Jade murder my father. She must’ve noticed me, but she hardly spares me a glance. My rage boils over, my skin burning as I stand and approach my cell bars.
Zamora doesn’t look up, not until I clear my throat. “Zamora.”
Her gaze darts to mine. I don’t expect her to remember me, but recognition flickers across her features. “You.”
Her voice is rough, but there’s depth to it. Surprise.
“You remember me?” I hate how breathless I sound. Hate the fact that she knows me too. It was easier to despise her when she was heartless, and the tenderness in her gaze has my walls going up.
“Of course.” She shifts closer to her own cell bars. “Your sister was ill, but I turned you away. I agonized over that decision for months afterward.”
Only months? For me that agony has never stopped. “Oh yes, I’m sure that was horrible for you. Letting a young girl die all because we couldn’t pay.”
She recoils but doesn’t respond immediately. When she does, her voice is solemn. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry. Truly.”
I sit down, suddenly dizzy. This is all too much, everything I thought I knew tilting. I’ve imagined this moment hundreds of times, and in it Zamora always responded with anger and condescension. Of course I let her die, she’d say in my head. She wasn’t worth saving.
In a strange way that fantasy was preferable to this reality. At least then I had a release for my anger, but this, her sorrow—I don’t know. I don’t want to accept the fact that she’s conducting herself outside the role I set for her, so I pivot the conversation to something safer. “How are you alive?”
Her eyes narrow. “Why wouldn’t I be alive?”
Shit. I walked right into that one. I settle on a lie, since I’m not ready to tell her about Jade. “It’s not a secret you’ve been missing for months. Everyone assumed you were dead.”
She sniffs, pieces of the regal woman I met that night returning. “They assumed wrong.”
Some of my earlier rage rekindles at her tone, and it’s almost a relief. “Yes, well, you’re here,” I point out, then gesture to a puckered scar beneath her collarbone. “And it looks like you were injured, so maybe the assumptions weren’t entirely unfounded.”
I know you were shot, I want to say. Johann told me, so you can give up the act. But if I admit that, I’ll have to reveal the rest, so I’m thankful when she caves with a sigh.
“My friend was captured by the queen. I knew of this place, because I’d meet her here whenever she had secret or unsavory jobs for me. I came here to rescue him but was shot in the process. Johann—my friend…I didn’t think he’d leave me. So I held in my screams, hoping he’d think me dead and run, and it worked. I woke up to the queen’s private medic tending to me, and I’ve been here ever since.”
“You weren’t here when I arrived.”
Her expression darkens. “No. I haven’t done as the queen’s asked, and she punished me by putting me in a cell even deeper. One they keep pitch black.”
Zamora let Lina die. Made Jade kill my father. I shouldn’t feel any sympathy for her, and yet there’s a small twinge of it inside my chest, because I arrived seven days ago. To be kept in the dark that long—
No.
She nearly fooled me earlier, but I need to remember what she is. I scoff. “You speak like you’ve done something honorable, but you’re forgetting the fact that you abandoned your daughter.”
Talking with Zamora, I’m not sure how to feel about Jade, all my fury with her bleeding into confusion. Above it all, though, I remember the way she looked the day we met. So terrified and alone. Zamora would’ve known the risks when she rescued Johann, but she still left Jade to fend for herself.
Zamora’s eyes flash. “You don’t know what you speak of—I would never do anything to hurt my daughter.”
“Really?” I stand again, my own fire igniting. “Then why’d you make her kill my father? She was only twelve years old, and you made her do it.”
I realize my mistake when Zamora’s mouth falls open. She’ll have questions now, but I’m past the point of caring. So I wait, burning, as she collects herself. Slowly, she straightens her spine, then asks, “How do you know about that?”
She doesn’t even try to deny it. I shake my head, too angry to look at her. “The queen’s tracker told me.”
It’s better than admitting my relationship with Jade, but Zamora’s perceptive. She hears what I don’t say. “And why would he tell you that?” A pause while I study my shoes before she adds, “You know her, don’t you? You know Jade.”
I don’t answer, but I can’t stop the involuntary jerk of my hand toward the thread tattoo on my chest. I should’ve severed the bond, but I couldn’t—can’t. I’m too weak, and suddenly all the anger drains out of me, leaving nothing but exhaustion in its wake.
Zamora doesn’t miss the gesture, and her next words are sharp. “What is that?”
I glance at my chest, where the edges of Jade’s soul peek out, and sigh. “You know what it is.”
I tug my collar to the side, and she gasps. Her eyes water, revealing the caring mother Jade has such adoration for. “You don’t just know her, you love her.”
“Yes.” There’s no point in denying it, no matter how shameful it is. I’m in love with the girl who killed my father.
I’m pathetic.
“And she loves you too?”
I consider her question, all my memories of Jade whipping together, a frenzied collage inside my mind. When it fades, I know the answer to her question.
My eyes sting, and I wipe away a tear as I meet Zamora’s gaze. “She does.”
She never said it, but she didn’t have to.
Zamora’s inhale is jagged. “You should know the truth, then, about what happened. About your father.”
Hope is a strange, fragile thing, because somehow once it’s broken, the shards of it rip you up inside, worse than if you’d never hoped at all. Perhaps that’s why I tense up. “I already know the truth. Jade killed him. You made her.”
But Zamora’s shaking her head before I even finish speaking. “You’re wrong. Alejandro told you that, but he doesn’t know the whole story. I do.”
I can barely breathe, and I definitely can’t find the words to say anything, which Zamora must sense, because she continues.
“As thread speaker to the Crown, my duties go beyond what the public knows. I collect punishments at the courthouse and do tattoos for the wealthy, as is expected of me. Sometimes, though, when the queen needs someone dead and it has to look natural, she brings me in. It’s only happened a few times over the years, and I’ve never had a choice in the matter. Denying the queen would’ve put Jade in danger, so I always obeyed.”
My stomach churns. The tracker made it sound like Zamora was willing to kill for the right price. If she’s telling the truth, this is a different matter altogether. She seems genuine, too, her eyes misting as she speaks.
“When Jade was twelve, I received a message from the queen. She wanted your father dead, and she wanted Jade to be the one to kill him. Training, she said, for when Jade would become thread speaker to the Crown. I begged her to reconsider, but she refused. Alejandro was there with your father’s hair and saw the interaction unfold. All these years later, he must still remember it.”
