Page 19 of The Isles of the Gods
Port Naranda, Mellacea
Everything hurts, inside and out. The aches of the fight are kicking in properly now, and my gut is clenching like I’ve been punched again. I’m taking one step after another, driven by this urge to get back to my mother—even though I know she won’t have any advice, any way out of this.
I just want to see her.
As we leave the club behind, we’re hit by the full light and noise of the city. Horns blare, horses stink, and the sidewalk is packed with people pushing their way past, rushing home or on their way to a fun night out, ready to dance and drink until they forget their fears. I half close my eyes against the assault, replaying the conversation in my head as I try to make myself understand what just happened.
Ruby wants me to murder Leander and everyone else on his fleet. That could be half of my class from school.
We cut away from New Street, leaving the noise and lightbehind us once more as we make our way toward the tenements. It’s like we’re going a lot farther than six blocks, the world growing quieter, dirtier, darker. Battered shop fronts with their names painted in faded letters are closed up tight for the night. They use a lot of bars on the windows around here. There are no autos—they don’t fit down the back alleys, and nobody here could afford one anyway. The air is cooler, to go with the quiet.
I look up when we pass the church, by far the grandest building in the slums, though I’m sure it was built here because the land was cheap. The building itself is painted black, to symbolize Macean’s slumber. The usual statue of Macean himself, breaking the bonds laid on him by Barrica and awakening, is out front. Beside it stands a green sister, who nods to us politely as we pass by. Does she know who we are?
Ruby’s little sister—no, Ruby’syoungersister; I’ve made a mistake in underestimating her, and maybe a fatal one—drops a coin into the sister’s bowl without a word. I know she goes to church regularly, though Ruby doesn’t share her faith. She’s smart, to have found a way to align Ruby’s interests with the church’s.
The question is what she’ll do when the demands of her sister and the demands of her god begin to diverge.
For my part, I’ve never spoken to a green sister before today, and after meeting Sister Beris, I don’t want to ever again. It’s been years since I went to temple back in Alinor, but the fat, friendly priest at school in his mock military uniform was as different from her as it’s possible to be.
We turn a corner, and I turn my thoughts to a more immediate issue. I’m going to have to bring Laskia upstairs with mewhen we arrive. Every part of me recoils from letting her inside our apartment—I don’t want her anywhere near my mother, and the part of me that grew up across the sea doesn’t want her to see how we live—but if I leave her standing in the street, in those nice clothes, there’s an even-money chance someone will try to mug her while I’m gone. And however that ends won’t be good for me.
“This the place?” Her voice surprises me, and I look up to realize we’re here, sooner than I thought, or perhaps sooner than I wanted.
She solves my problem of what to do with her by holding the door open for me and just inviting herself to follow me up the stairs. She doesn’t lose her breath, steadily climbing all six flights, and since leaving her in the hallway would provoke more gossip than leaving her in the street, I jerk my chin to beckon her in after me when I open the front door.
She stops just inside, pushes the door closed, and leans against it, shoving both hands into her pockets. She’s a slim figure in her flawlessly cut suit, dark waistcoat over the crisp white shirt rolled up past her forearms. Everything about her is precise, and everything around her looks shabbier by comparison.
Our place is two rooms—this one holds a small table, a stove, and the sofa I sleep on. I leave Laskia and make my way through to the other room, where Mum lies in bed.
She’s staring out the window at the dark night sky, but turns her head as I enter. Her golden skin is sallow, her eyes shadowed, and she looks smaller than I expect. She always does when I come back in from the city outside, so full of life.
I only hazily remember my grandmother, who we visitedhere in Port Naranda when I was young. She was a tiny woman, made even smaller by age, who had made the long voyage from Cánh Doin the south decades before, married a local, and stayed. She sat with the other grandmothers all day, issuing commands and criticisms with clear enjoyment. I always thought my mother would be the same one day. But though she’s just as small as her own mother once was, instead she’s fading away to nothing.
“You’re bleeding,” she says quietly, pausing to cough.
I wince, cursing myself for forgetting to wash my face, and sit on the edge of the bed. She coughs again, and I slide a hand behind her back to help her sit up. “It’s nothing,” I say when she’s done.
“You can’t fight the whole world, Jude,” she says softly, settling back in against her pillows.
“Why not?” I murmur. “The world threw the first punch.”
She gazes up at me, and I let her study my face. And I bite my tongue against all the reasons I have to fight—all the reasons Iwantto fight.
“What else should I do?” I ask her. “Just accept it? Let them do what they want to us?”
Like you do.The end of that sentence hangs between us, unspoken.
“Not everything can be blamed on someone else,” she counters.
“How can you, of all people, say that?” I ask. “He abandoned you. He made promises, and when you needed him, what good was his word? Why shouldn’t you blame him?”
She gazes up at me, silent, her breaths coming slowly and painfully. We both know we’re not talking about my father,though only one of us knows why Leander’s on my mind tonight.
When we left Alinor, Mum wanted it to be a clean break. She was desperate to leave her hurt and heartbreak behind, and to her, that meant fleeing to Port Naranda, the city of her birth. I lost count of how many times she said we had to look forward, not back.
I felt the opposite—I’d have done anything to hold on to my old life. My father had always paid my school fees, paid our rent, but he’d never had anything to do with us, no matter how often I dreamed of the day he’d show up at school, of the way he’d be amazed at my sporting trophies, my grades, the stupid little things that mean nothing now. A tiny part of me always foolishly believed he was going to accept me in the end.
But instead he died, and left us nothing. When we needed him most, he forgot us.
