To Kill a Kingdom(59)
My skin is flushed red from sun and my hair is stiff with the saltwater breeze. I step forward and touch the glass with spiny fingers, blinking rapidly as I take in this version of myself. Legs and feet. Eyes, each the same color. A human heart beating somewhere underneath it all, ready for my mother to take.
In the reflection, I see Elian. He stands behind me with an amused expression, leaning against the doorway, his arms tangled over his chest. He doesn’t say anything, and we continue to watch each other through the pathway of glass until an odd feeling washes over me, worse than dread.
Soon we’ll be in Psémata, and that means Págos won’t be far off. Then the Cloud Mountain. The Second Eye of Keto. Elian’s certain death. Each point of my deception is so seamlessly plotted that I should feel prepared. But I don’t. Everyone I’m going to betray is too close. My mother may even be watching, and that means there’s a chance she could discover my plan. It feels like a miracle that she didn’t smell it on me before, or hear how fast my human heart beat. And then there’s Elian, who gave me a blade instead of stabbing me with it, standing behind me now. The mercy he practices and the loyalty he has earned are both ideals that my mother would sooner burn out of me – because mercy is never an option, and loyalty is always taken – but those very emotions my mother said made me weak seem to make him strong. He’s a warrior who is my opposite in every way and yet, in some ways, maybe fierceness alone, we seem to be the same.
In the mirror, Elian continues to stare. I frown when I realize that my back is to him. I’ve never been able to turn my back on my mother before.
I spin to face him. “What?” I ask.
“Are you done admiring yourself?”
“Never,” I say, though truth be told, I’m glad to be distracted from my thoughts.
“We’re about to dock at Psémata. Try to remember what I told you.”
As though I could forget. What he told me was to lie, which I had enough practice in to not think of it as something that needed to be done, but something that always was.
“If Psémata is so dangerous,” I say, “then why are we stopping there?”
“Because we need to get something.”
I shoot Elian a skeptical look. “You mean we need to steal something.”
“Good,” he says. “You’re learning.”
I follow him out onto the main deck, where the crew is gathered. Kye tucks his sword into the strap across his chest and slips a pistol under his coat. Rather than go to his side, Elian avoids eye contact with his bodyguard, choosing to stay beside me. Kye doesn’t move to shadow him either, suddenly preoccupied with adjusting his coat collar.
“You’d think the land of lies would be a little more forgiving when it came to thievery,” Madrid says. “But apparently not.”
I give Elian a scathing look. “You stole something last time you were here,” I say. “And now you’re going to do it again?”
“Who said I was the one who stole something the first time?”
His voice is indignant, which doesn’t fool me. I roll my eyes to illustrate this, and Elian sighs.
“Look,” he says, “all that matters is that the Saad isn’t welcome.”
“The Saad,” I repeat. “Or you?”
“You say that like there’s any sort of difference.”
“I suppose there isn’t.” I twist my seashell between my fingers. “You’re both equally dense.”
Elian laughs. Loudly, monotone, and in a way that’s nearly as mocking as my comment. “Come on,” he says. “We don’t have time for you to learn how to be funny.”
PSéMATA IS A VERY peculiar shade of gray.
There’s color, but it’s diluted into an eerie film of black. Like a just-visible cloud coating the land in a tint of shadow and dust. It reminds me of looking through murky ocean water at twilight, or the feeling of staring straight into my mother’s eyes. A darkness that seems ever-present.
I rub a knuckle in my eye and when my vision refocuses, everything seems darker than it was before. The more I try to make the shade disappear, the stronger it gets. It’s no wonder this is the land of lies and treachery, with air as gray and smog-like as the scruples of the people who breathe it.
The wind sweats as we weave through the streets, avoiding eye contact and the usual noise Elian and his crew enjoy making. Only a dozen of them are with us, the others waiting on the Saad. They move like wraiths, floating instead of walking. Gliding across the hardstone pavements. I stumble to keep in step with them, nowhere near as graceful, but every bit as invisible.
As we make our way across the square, I tip my hat farther down my head. It’s ridiculous, I realize, because there isn’t a human alive who can recognize me. If anything, I’m the most ghostlike of us all. Still, I do it anyway, thrilled by the slight jump of my heart when someone lingers their stare on our group for too long. When I look to Elian, his face is blank and stoic, but his eyes are nowhere near as dead. They flicker with the same dirty pleasure. It’s this, I realize, that draws the crew as much as the ocean. The pleasure of becoming as elusive as they are notorious.
We turn into an alleyway, where a man waits for us. He’s dressed in a long black coat with a white pressed-down collar, and his heavily ringed hand rests upon a cane that is the same sandy shade as his hair.