The Drowning City - Amanda Downum [95]
“If I’m killed, it will be to protect your schemes. I’m lucky I’m not in the bottom of a canal already.”
Fei Minh’s lips pursed. “Zhirin, please. I understand that you want to help, but this isn’t the way. Look at how many are dead already—look at what happened at the execution.”
“That wasn’t the Tigers. And do you really think paying off the Emperor is any better?”
“It doesn’t end in bloodshed.”
“Really? Do diamonds grow on trees, then, and fall like mangoes? Do those prisoners who disappear spend their days picking gems in the shade and drinking hibiscus tea?”
Color rose in Fei Minh’s cheeks. “I don’t know which is worse—your misplaced idealism or your insolent tongue. I’ve worked for our family’s future longer than you’ve been alive. Just because you’re infatuated with some forest-clan mongrel with more mouth than sense, don’t presume to tell me what’s best for my clan or my country. I should have shipped you to the university years ago, if this is all your Kurun Tam education has been good for.”
If she’d been any closer, Zhirin might have slapped her. The impulse made her hands tingle and stung her cheeks with anger and shame. Her mother hadn’t struck her since she was five, and she’d never contemplated striking back.
“Mira—” She forced her hands open, stepped farther into the room. “Please, I don’t want to fight with you. Everything’s gone so wrong, so ugly.”
Her mother’s face softened. “Oh, darling. I know.” She rose and took Zhirin in her arms, pausing as she touched her damp clothes. “What have you been doing?”
She considered a lie for an instant, but what was the point anymore? “Rescuing the Viceroy’s daughter.”
The look on Fei Minh’s face was almost worth everything that had happened tonight. “You aren’t serious—Ancestors, you are. You found Murai?”
“Yes. She’s safe, I think. I sent her home with Asheris.”
“My daughter…” She pulled Zhirin close, heedless of damp and filth. “I’m very proud of you, then, even if you’ve been terribly foolish.” She drew back. “I doubt there’s much Faraj wouldn’t forgive you now. Just stay at home, out of trouble, and everything will be fine.”
They were the same, Zhirin realized, her mother’s schemes and her own. Both born of a blind and desperate hope that if they only did enough, did the right thing, everything would work out. She blinked back tears and swallowed the words that she needed to say.
“Yes, Mira,” she lied. It grew easier and easier. “I’m home now, and everything will be all right.”
Fei Minh smiled and caught a yawn with one delicate hand. “It’s been a long time since I stayed up till dawn. Shall we make some tea and see if we can manage?”
Their fragile conviviality lasted through tea and breakfast. Mau arrived just in time to save the day’s bread from Zhirin’s inexpert baking; if she was disconcerted to find her cousins giggling and silly from lack of sleep, she hid it well.
The respite ended with a messenger’s knock less than an hour before the dawn bells. Fei Minh answered the door, but Zhirin heard enough of the murmured conversation to send her heart to the bottom of her stomach. The Yhan Ti was leaving dock.
A moment later her mirror—carefully replaced after she’d bathed and changed—shivered in her pocket. She ducked into the hall to respond, but by the time she pulled it out the bronze was empty and silent. She whispered Isyllt’s name, but there was no answer. A second time, and a third, and still nothing. Something was wrong.
“What is it?” Fei Minh asked when she returned to the kitchen.
She swallowed. No use in pretending any longer. “I have to go.”
She ignored her mother’s angry questions and demands as she tugged on her shoes. As she opened the door she paused and risked a backward glance. “I’m sorry. I’ll be back when I can.” If I can.
Isyllt woke to a sharp knock on the door and the jangle of her wards. The bed creaked as Adam leapt up; her skin prickled with the sudden absence of his warmth. She scrubbed gritty eyes, but it only made them ache more. It felt as if she’d only slept a few hours, and from the darkness