At Cheeky’s insistence, we are carried into a long pavilion—a sick house, I realize. Or what the Aquitans called an hôpital. But in Chakran style, it’s built on a platform to keep the floor dry. The grass roof is held up by thick trunks, with the sides left open for circulation. Gauzy mosquito nets hang above soft pallets lined up in a neat row. Some of the beds are already occupied—we pass a man with no feet, a woman bandaged and moaning, a youth who seems uninjured except for the empty look in their eyes.
Are they all the victims of rebel torture? But if so, why would the rebels care for them? More and more, the stories of the Tiger’s hordes seem exaggerated—or at least, I had seen worse from the armée. It’s still hard to let go of the fear, but it is distant. Or maybe I’m too tired to carry it any longer. The sick house smells clean enough . . . moreover, it is a place to rest, and once I’m lowered into a bed, the night fades into a blur, seen narrowly between my heavy eyelids.
I rouse a little when a man comes into the hôpital—the docteur. Another old monk, though he hides his tattoos with a thin shirt. How many have the rebels collected? He leans over Maman first, his face serious but not severe. He treats Akra next, daubing his wounds with something that smells bright and clean. Then he removes the tattered shirt to check my brother’s ribs. Akra swears as the docteur probes the bruised flesh, but I am staring blearily at my brother’s scars. He seems sewn together—a patchwork of black and blue stitched with white, and something that looks like an old bullet wound in his shoulder. What had he suffered?
What suffering had he caused?
I close my eyes then, trying to shut out the world. How long had I been awake? Everything has become too much. For once, my mind obeys my wishes; I drift away into a soft and secret darkness. Then someone touches my hands and I jolt up, struggling, but the docteur whispers to me—hush, hush—and I stop fighting. Blackness pools behind my eyes and in my head, swirling like a dark galaxy as I slide into a dreamless sleep.
After a while, I am aware of light . . . sips of water . . . the docteur’s touch. But I don’t have the will or the strength to open my eyes for a long time. When I do, there is afternoon sun—gentle, golden—filtered through the gauze of the mosquito net. I am lying flat on a pallet, on the floor. Every muscle hurts with the deep ache of exhaustion and hunger. I feel reedy, thin, like even the light of my soul has dimmed.
But the camp outside is full of life, and with my eyes closed, it reminds me for a moment of Lak Na. Giggles and singing as children playing a clapping game—the slap and splash of laundry in the water. . . . Water. My breath hisses through cracked lips and I struggle to sit up. Someone sweeps open the netting, and I’m looking up into Cheeky’s face. “You’re awake,” she says, delighted.
“Water,” I reply.
“Right. May I?” At my nod, she slips a soft hand behind my neck, lifting my head off the pallet and bringing a cup to my lips. Greedily I drink—it’s juice from a young coconut, so sweet, tears start in my eyes. Too soon, it’s gone.
“More?” I croak, but she is already refilling the cup. My eyes focus on her hands—the nails chipped now, the pink stain fading.
“We brought food too,” she says to me. “Can you sit all the way up?”
“I think so,” I say, and I do—slowly, gingerly, with her help. Then I down the next cup all in one go. “Who’s we?”
“Me and Leo,” she says, and at his name, a jolt shoots through me, much like pain.
Cheeky pulls back the mosquito net, and there he is—leaning against one of the posts in the pavilion. He gives me a wan smile and steps closer, almost cautiously, holding out a bowl like an apology. “I’m glad you made it,” he says softly. I throw my empty cup at his head.
My aim is terrible, but Leo jumps back, and Cheeky scrambles to her feet. “What is this about?”
“My father’s still back there, thanks to you!”
“Me?” Leo raises an eyebrow. “What did I do?”
“You should have helped me!” I say, though the accusation feels hollow the moment I make it. Still, he shrugs.
“I did the best I could,” he replies quietly, tucking his hand into his jacket and pulling out a stack of paper. He tosses it beside me on the cot; it rustles there, and not with the breeze. My book of souls. Quickly I cover it with one hand. The pages settle. Then I look back up at Leo, searching his face.
“And my fantouches?”
“I threw your pack in the river,” he says. “I couldn’t carry everything.”
A pang in my chest—even though I’d never expected to see them again, the thought is still painful: the last of my old fantouches, gone. But this was why Legarde hadn’t known what I was. After all I’d done, Leo had kept my secrets for me.
Why? Was it kindness . . . generosity? Or did he want something? But I cannot ask him. Not in front of Cheeky. “Thank you,” I say instead, the words tasting odd on my tongue. I take a deep breath. “How did you escape?”
Leo shifts on his feet. “It’s a long story,” he says vaguely, and my eyes narrow. But he holds out the bowl. “You should eat something.”
Cheeky nods, handing me a spoon. “You’re a shadow of yourself. Pun intended.”
Pursing my lips, I look down at the congee, warm and rich with bits of egg. My mouth starts to water. I lift the spoon—gently, so as not to disturb my healing blisters. Then I take a bite and blink away tears. The food is so comforting. “You’ve changed too,” I murmur between bites. “I preferred your other uniform.”
“Me too, to be quite honest,” she says, grinning. “But the mosquitoes are murder in the jungle.”
In spite of myself, her smile sparks a small one in return. “What is this place?”
“Remember all the people on the road from Dar Som?” Leo glances out over the camp. “Not all of them get past the soldiers at the gates.”
I frown. “And now . . . they’re all rebels?”
Cheeky hesitates. “It’s hard to say. First they were just refugees. But then the Tiger came.”
A chill goes through me at the name; my eyes dart left to right, as though he might be lurking in the corner of the hôpital. “What did he do?”
“He helped,” Cheeky says quietly. “Has his soldiers dig latrines. Build shacks. Bring rice. They send out patrols to keep us safe.”
I stare at her, trying to make sense of it: praise for the Tiger. “So you’re a rebel now too?”
She arches an eyebrow. “I’m a performer, Jetta,” she says, as though it’s obvious, but there is a bitter edge to her smile. “Just temporarily without a stage.”
I falter, glancing from her to Leo. He looks away. I swallow. “La Perl?”
Cheeky presses her lips together. “Gone.”
I set down the bowl. “Tia and Eve?”
“Tia’s out on patrol with the boys. They like her, and she likes the attention. But Eve . . .” Cheeky’s hand goes to the snake on her shoulders. She strokes the smooth scales. “She ran back for this ridiculous thing while the armée was trying to quell the unrest at the dock. She made it out, but by then the bullets were flying, and . . .”
The words fade into silence; she lets them go like birds from a cage. I look to Leo again, but his eyes are distant and angled upward. My spoon slips in the bowl, but it doesn’t matter—my appetite is gone.
Cheeky sighs; in her ears, the little diamonds sparkle. “You didn’t eat much.”
“Small stomach,” I say miserably.
“Try to keep going,” she says. “Why don’t you rest a little? I’ll come back again at dinner. Maybe by then the others will be up. Your maman, and a brother, right?”
Absently, I nod. But on the pallet beside me, Akra stirs. “I’m awake,” he says, his voice rusty. He pulls back the mosquito net; he is propped up on one elbow and blinking blearily. His hair is mussed in black spikes, and he looks at Cheeky through narrowed eyes. “You mentioned dinner?”
She opens her mouth, closes it—like a carp. Her face turns bright red, and she flees.
Akra watches her go, his brow furrowed. “What was that?”
I shake my head, confused, but to my surprise, Leo is grinning again. “I’ll go check,” he says, jogging off after her. Then I remember what he told me—was it only weeks ago? If Cheeky’s ever tongue-tied, you know she’s found true love. I do my best to muffle my smile as I hand over my bowl.
“What’s so funny?” my brother asks.
“Nothing. Just . . . eat your congee.”
Akra stirs the porridge with his spoon, though he doesn’t take a bite. Steam rises from the bowl, and for a moment, he looks so much like Papa. I avert my eyes; they fall on the booklet Leo brought back to me. Picking it up, I page through it—they’re all here, the souls of my fantouches, if not their bodies. The thought comforts me in a way that even the food did not. Then I pause, pulling something else out from between the pages: an envelope. Inside it, the letter from Theodora.
I stare at the paper; it seems years ago I’d first seen it. Why had Leo given it back to me? It might be the exhaustion—or the fact that after all this time, the privacy of a letter seemed like such a little secret to share—but I unfold the paper.
As I read, the laughter of children floats across the village, but the food sits like mud in my belly. Les Chanceux is not the only cure. I read the line again and again until the words seem burned into my mind. When Akra speaks, I jump.
“Why were you going to leave without me?”
Blinking at him, I stuff the letter into my pocket. My brother sets his congee down between us. The bowl is still full. “What do you mean?” I ask, buying time.
“That boat was going to Aquitan.” He takes a deep breath, wincing, as though the question hurts to ask—or maybe it’s only his ribs. “Did you even send a note?”
“A note?” I stare at him as fragments from his own missives scroll through my head; the armée food, bland enough for the Aquitan soldiers, the blisters from the new boots—we always went barefoot in Lak Na. And the way we waited for months for a letter that never came. “We thought you were dead.”
“What?” His expression is appalled. “Why?”
“We haven’t heard from you in nearly a year!” I throw my hands out, flustered, frustrated. “Why did you stop writing?”
“I didn’t! Every quarter, I sent letters with my pay!” On his face, confusion gives way to anger. “They never arrived.”
My mouth opens . . . shuts. “No.”
“Salauds!” He spits the word. “Bastards!”
“The rebels?” I ask him, trying to make sense of it. “People say they waylay the post—”
“The damn armée,” he mutters darkly. “The white tort à dieu who hire us to die. I heard my men complaining they were being shorted of their wages. That the armée was skimming their cash to pay for the war machines. I told them they were liars.” He curses the armée again, in their own tongue. “I knew I should have left earlier.”
“Then why didn’t you?” I say then, my voice soft. “Why didn’t you come home?”
Akra clenches his jaw, that scar twisting his old smile into something cruel, but there is a haunted look in his eyes. He looks at Maman then, and back to me. “It isn’t so easy to leave,” he says.
I raise an eyebrow, incredulous. “You think the general would have tracked you down in Lak Na?”
“Maybe not,” he murmurs. “But just because he wouldn’t follow doesn’t mean I can escape. Everyone there would have known where I’d been. What I’d done. And I can’t forget either.”
There is a bitter taste on the back of my tongue. I look again at his scars—more painful than tattoos, remembering the words of the rebel who’d found us. How had he made capitaine? “What is it you did, exactly?”
“Besides,” he says, pointedly ignoring the question. “I thought it was better for you. With the extra money I was sending, and one less mouth to feed. I started hearing stories about the troupe—that you were doing so well. . . .” His voice trails off into silence, and I know then what he’s going to ask. “How did you manage that, Jetta? With just the three of you? Some of the stories I’ve heard, of your shows . . . and back at the workshop. How did you make that bamboo scrap heap fly?”
I look to Maman, as if for permission. Of course she says nothing—though I hear her voice: never show, never tell. But this is Akra; this is my brother. Still, the words do not come. So instead I take the book of souls and untie the ribbon binding it together. Finding one—the hummingbird—I slip it free and fold it into a butterfly. “Up.”
For a moment, the paper wings flutter on my palm, then lift into the air, dancing in the space between us. Akra’s brows dive together as I send the page spiraling above my open hand, trembling between us. A child runs by the open side of the sick house, and I snatch the paper out of the air.
Akra jumps. The afternoon light is reflected in his wide pupils, but awe creeps over his face. “Is it magic?”
“Magic?” I turn the word over in my head as I tuck the folded paper into my pocket. “I suppose so. But it has to do with spirits, not spells.”
“The vana, the arvana? Like Maman talked about?”
“Yes . . . but . . .” I hesitate—how to explain? I watch the little souls around us. They drift and flutter through the sick house. “You remember the story of the Fool Who Could Not Die?”
“Of course,” he says. Then he frowns. “You met the spirit maiden?”
“No . . . I . . . no. But . . .” My hand creeps up toward my shoulder, the rippled burn hidden now under the uniform. Then I clench my fist and drop it back to my lap. My scars are not half so bad as my brother’s. “I faced the trials he did. The three deaths.”
Akra straightens up in bed, concern in his eyes. “What happened?”
“I don’t remember the first two. But after you left, there was an accident on stage.”
“How bad?”
“No one died. But the scrim caught fire. I hadn’t tied it right. I wasn’t careful enough, all by myself. Too impatient.”
He gives me a rueful look. “That sounds like you.”
“Well.” I make a face. “Ever since then, I see them. The spirits. Like the fool in the story.”
“And . . . you talk to them?”
“I can tell them what to do,” I say. “Once I give them new bodies.”
“Mon dieu, Jetta!” Akra shakes his head; on his face, awe mixes with fear. Then he jerks his chin at Maman. “What does she think about all this?”
“She hates it,” I say, slipping the book under my pillow. Then I frown. “You know why.”
He picks up the bowl again with a sigh, dragging the spoon through the porridge. Still he doesn’t eat. “It’s one of my first memories, you know. Meeting Meliss. Holding you. Papa saying I had a new sister.”
I lean close—eager for the story, though it doesn’t feel like mine. “Tell me.”
“I hardly remember myself. I wasn’t even four, and you were . . . new. But I asked Papa about it a few years ago.” Akra pauses, his voice going distant. “He told me we were in Nokhor Khat for a show when the coup happened. The capital was in upheaval. We fled, and Maman came with us, though I do remember she was just Meliss back then. He never told me exactly what she was running from. And I didn’t know that after all these years she’d still be trying to get away.”
“She told me we were going to find a cure for me,” I say softly. “Les Chanceux. The healing spring.”
But in my mind, the words repeat: Les Chanceux is not the only cure. Akra raises an eyebrow. “What do you think is more dangerous?” he asks me. “Le Trépas, or your malheur?”
I open my mouth—the answer should be easy. The killer of children, the stealer of souls, the nécromancien who terrorizes the country even now, behind the walls of his prison.
But what about my actions on the ship—the servant I’d threatened, my certainty that I alone could stop a dozen rebels, Leo’s words to me? This is madness. I do not have a response to Akra’s question. But it wasn’t Le Trépas’s fault that Eve was dead or La Perl was lost or that we’d left Papa alone with a gun in the bowels of Hell’s Court.