As Lani stretches her legs into a gallop, my own heart pounds. The soldier’s scream still echoes in my skull. My back is pressed to the scrollwork; my whole body is so tense I’m shaking. I keep expecting more shouting or shooting, for the capitaine to chase us down on a great gray horse, for Legarde himself to return and drag us back to the killing spot.
How could I have missed that Leo was the general’s son? They have the same jaw, the same nose—the same voice, the kind that can cut across a crowd. But where Legarde commands, Leo charms. Why hadn’t he mentioned it before? I shouldn’t have trusted him.
Then again, he hadn’t handed us over to his brother. We are still rolling on through the city, away from the wharf and the warehouses and the armée, and no one is chasing us—not yet, anyway.
Maman will be harder to escape. I swallow my heart and turn around on the bench, bracing myself for her reprimands. Leo’s question echoes in my skull: “What happened to him?”
I had acted on instinct—a hope and a prayer . . . and something else. Some dark draw—vengeance or just curiosity? Never before had I put a spirit into a body that already had a soul. Some people say that’s what madness is. Two souls in one skin. And a n’akela isn’t just any spirit.
Would it drive him mad? Or kill him—or something worse? Now I can begin to imagine fates worth than death. Nevertheless, that fate wasn’t ours tonight. I had saved us yet again. So I square my shoulders and open the panel, ready to reject Maman’s condemnation. But when my eyes adjust to the dimness inside the roulotte, instead of the anger I expect, Maman is curled against Papa’s side like a frightened animal. My tension slips into uncertainty. “Are you both all right?”
“I saw,” she says. Nothing more—but her eyes gleam in the slices of moonlight that slip through the scrollwork. I balk at the expression on her face. Fear. Is she afraid for me, or of me? For a moment, I wonder if she hates me.
But Papa shushes her, stroking damp hair from her forehead. “He was armée,” he says darkly. “He had a gun.”
I draw myself up. “If it was me or the soldier, Maman—who would you try to save?”
At my question, she lifts her head as though surprised. “You, Jetta. I’m always trying to save you.”
Her words leave me breathless. “From what?”
Maman only glances at Leo, sitting beside me on the bench, and I know she will not answer. I look to Papa for help, but he only sighs, nodding to his other side—an invitation. “Come, Jetta. Come rest awhile.”
Rest. At the word, my shoulders sink, losing some of the tension I hadn’t known I was carrying. I long for the comfort of my parents’ warm embrace. More than that—for the closeness of feeling like family. When was the last time I felt it? Years ago, before the fire and the souls. . . . It was during the Hungry Year—the day Akra left, and Papa, who had been so angry he hadn’t looked at my brother for a week, finally pulled him close and sobbed into his uniform. We had all wrapped our arms around one another—I can still remember feeling Papa’s ribs through his shirt. We were all so hungry, but we’d had one another.
Looking at Maman now, I think she needs comfort more than she can give it. I shake my head. “We can’t stop yet.”
“When?” Papa’s tone is pointed. “You need to sleep.”
I hesitate—I am tired. But my mind is still racing, and something about the thought of sleep makes my skin crawl. “Soon,” I lie, sliding the panel shut.
Turning, I face forward on the seat. Leo glances my way, but only briefly—maintaining the decorous silence of any gentleman who has overheard an argument. Together, we watch the town blur by, but only I see the vana swirl in the breeze of our passing. We’re moving fast. The roulotte is light with the arvana inside, and Lani has been resting all day. We’ve left the slapdash shacks of the dockworkers and the sugar millers far behind. Just beyond the telegraph office is the center of town. Here are old Chakran houses with upturned roofs, new Aquitan buildings of terra-cotta tile and white stone—fine homes for fine people. A perfect place to scatter flyers, if there was to be yet another show tonight. A laugh tries to scramble up my throat; I press my lips together to suffocate it.
But this road leads north, winding into the old mountains—in the opposite direction of the capital. If we go far enough this way, we’ll pass into the Tiger’s territory—beyond that, to the source of all the rivers, where old dragons live in icy pools in the caldera of dead volcanoes. “Where are we going?” I murmur to Leo.
“A secret route out of the city,” Leo says. “The capitaine will certainly have the roads watched.”
I hesitate, almost afraid to ask. “Did he tell you what he wanted?”
“I was hoping you would know.” Leo glances at me, then winces. Holding the reins in one hand, he tugs a handkerchief out of his breast pocket. “There’s blood on your throat.”
“Thank you.” Gingerly, I press the cloth against the cut, eyeing his battered knuckles, the swelling skin on his cheekbone just below his eye, the faint bruise mottling the bridge of his nose. “Are you all right?”
He waves my concern away as if he doesn’t deserve it. “I should have checked the roof of the wagon. I should have known he’d have a sentry.”
I wet my lips. “Your brother?”
Leo stiffens. “I have no brother.”
I shift on my seat—but that is anger in his voice, not confusion. I didn’t misunderstand what the soldier had said. We roll along in more decorous silence. Vana buzz around my head, my neck. The cool night air kisses my cheek, and Leo’s shoulder is warm against mine. “I have a brother,” I say softly. “Or . . . I had one, once.”
All around us, the jungle is closing in, the fine homes turning back to modest cottages interspersed with stands of bananas along the hill. Luda has no walls, so the city is simply fading away. The road is rougher here too, rutted from long rains and little repair. I can smell the greenery, the scent of the flowers, the sweet hint of water in the air. Birds call to one another in the blackness, and insects bow their limbs over their legs, making music. Leo keeps his gaze on the road ahead, though his jaw is clenched. When he finally speaks, his voice is almost too quiet. “What happened?”
I take a breath. My memory feels strangely disjointed tonight. It’s all a jumble: the click of my brother’s lighter as he toys with the lid, his earnest smile, his hollow cheeks. The shame on Papa’s face when Akra first donned his newest costume. The way the uniform hung loose on his body. The way everything changed that day. “He joined the armée, three years back. During the famine, do you remember?”
“No room for rice,” he says, and I nod, remembering the whispers that swelled to shouts as the months dragged on. Rice is life—if there is no room for rice, there was no room for Chakrans. And while plantation owners moaned about their lack of income and how they couldn’t afford their dresses or their entertainment, the rest of us starved, unable to afford the rising price of food. That was the year the rebels coalesced around the Tiger—the year they first burned a plantation, the year they began to make war instead of trouble. “It wasn’t so bad at Luda,” Leo adds. “But we had a lot of country people move to town. That’s when Eve came to La Perl.”
I bite my lip, trying to imagine it. What would I have had to do to eat, if my brother hadn’t left? “That was before we . . . before the troupe was so well known. We didn’t have much, so he gave us his sign-up money, and sent us his pay at first—long enough for us to get by, till the rains came back. Especially since he ate so much,” I say, trying on a smile. It falls away quickly. “I kept all seven of his letters.”
“And the last one came . . . ?”
“Over a year ago.”
Leo bows his head under the weight of my words. “Did you ever hear anything from the armée?”
“No,” I say. “But sometimes silence says it all.”
“That’s true.” Leo sighs. “I suppose I could be grateful I was only disowned.”
My hands twist the handkerchief in my lap. “That’s terrible.”
“To be fair, the general’s original ownership was . . . tenuous.” Leo’s tone is deceptively light. “He would visit once or twice a year at best. When the rebellion started heating up, he was worried someone would use us against him.”
“You and the girls?”
“Me and my mother,” Leo says, and his laugh belies the pain on his face. “He told us we were on our own. Though he left us his gun. Self-protection, he said. Of course, that’s not how she used it.” Leo shrugs, his voice wistful. “She was a chanteuse, among other things. Very popular, before she died. Those were the glory days of La Perl. She always burned so brightly. It’s no wonder she burned out.”
My breath hitches; his words strike a chord in me. La Perl. His inheritance. And the red writing on the cracked mirror of the vanity in the basement: AU REVOIR.
The silence is delicate—the quiet of moonlight, of escape, of heartbreak and whispers. “I’m so sorry,” I say at last.
A smile twists the corner of his mouth. “Xavier never said anything, though I’m sure he prayed over it. But I had a letter from my . . . from Theodora. Just afterward.”
Theodora—La Fleur. His sister, I realize. “What did it say?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he says, but he’s a violinist, not an actor. “I never wrote back because I couldn’t find the words to . . . contain what had happened. To put it all down on a slip of paper. But I wonder what my silence meant to her.”
I stare unseeing at the winding road, trying to imagine posters of Akra, news of his wedding. Knowing he was alive and well—famous, even—but no longer mine. Hearing people refer to him by a ruler’s honorific, while never being able to call him brother. “You could still write back, when you think of something.”
“Maybe someday,” he says, in the way that means never. “And I still have the girls. They’re like sisters to me. Well, not Cheeky,” he adds. “She’s a human cannonball of filth and glitter, but I love her just the same.”
My ear tweaks at the word, spoken so openly. Is this a city mannerism, or is there something more between them? “Are you two together?” I ask carefully. But he only laughs.
“I’m not her type. You can tell by the level of sass. If she’s ever tongue-tied, you’ll know she’s found the one.”
“Ah,” I say with a theatrical sigh and a tiny pang. But we were never staying in Luda. “So I never had a chance.”
Leo laughs. “Very few do. But that doesn’t stop most from trying. The girls adored the show, by the way. I saw them cheering. Too bad we didn’t have time for an encore.”
Usually I enjoy praise, but his makes me shy. “You too.” I nod at his violin case, nestled at his feet. “You play beautifully.”
“We could turn this into a tour,” he muses with faux seriousness. “Stop in a few towns on the way to the capital.”
“Dodging the armée wherever we go?”
“No, no, we have to charge them extra. We could make a mint that way.”
“Divided equally between performers?” I say with mock hope; he gives me a stern look.
“Between acts.”
“But I’m top billing,” I say. “After all, they’re looking for me.”
“Fine,” he says, trying to hide a smile. He holds out his hand. “We make a good company.”
We shake, Aquitan style—and this time, he does not kiss my hand. But his fingers are warm and calloused where he holds his bow . . . does he hold my hand a little longer than he must? In my stomach, a spark of light, like the soul of a butterfly. I tighten my fingers as though to crush it. With my malheur, is his company a wise place to be?
“How did you do it?” he says then.
I blink at him. “Do what?”
“The puppetry, of course! Cheeky was convinced it’s done with wires from the flies, but I don’t think you could have rigged pulleys. Is it hot air? Like balloons?”
I pull my hand away. “Trade secrets.” The words fall from my lips—a line learned by rote—but my heart isn’t in them. What would he say if he knew?
“She and I made a bet, you know,” he says with a wink. He leans close and lowers his voice, as if Cheeky might somehow hear. “I’ll split the winnings with you if you swear I’m right.”
“Or I could tell her you tried to rig the game,” I counter. “My silence might be worth the whole pot.”
“Vicious!” he says, pretending to be shocked, but his eyes are intent. “And what you did to Eduard? Is that another trade secret?”
My mouth goes dry. I pull back. “I—I don’t know what you mean.”
“All right.” For a moment, I wonder if he will ask again, but he is quiet, and the night flies by. Above the tree line, the glow of the rising moon smears the stars. Leo passes me the reins. “Hold these, will you?”
I take them, and he turns around to stand on the bench, looking back over the top of the wagon. “What’s wrong?”
“Just making sure we’re still alone,” he says. He slides back to his seat and I look at him sideways.
“Why?”
“Because.” He takes the reins back and turns Lani off the main road. The wagon bounces out of the ruts and onto a little path. “This is a trade secret too, remember?”
The jungle closes in overhead on the track; through the greenery, I can see lights glimmering. Souls? No—a little hut roofed in palm leaves, tucked into a clearing. Moonlight shines on a kitchen garden and a nearby shack, almost as large as the cottage. A goat house, perhaps, or a shelter for pigs. “Not a very well-kept one,” I say, but Leo only smiles as he pulls Lani to a stop.
Immediately, the water buffalo lowers her head, pulling up a wad of fresh grass as the cottage door creaks open. An ancient woman steps out—at least a grandmother, perhaps twice over. She’s holding a lamp in one gnarled hand, and a gun in the other.
“Daiyu!” Leo waves from the seat of the wagon; she squints at him in the dark. “It’s Leo,” he says; only then does she nod.
Tucking the gun into the rolled waist of her sarong, she totters over to the shed. Leo twitches the reins, urging Lani to follow. The water buffalo obliges, always ready to rest. I am too. I stand, preparing to hop down from the wagon, to unharness Lani, but Leo shakes his head a little. “Not yet.”
Frowning, I sit back as Daiyu hands Leo the lantern to fumble with the door. “You’re always hanging around with the prettiest girls,” she murmurs, shaking her head.
I try to hide my smile, but Leo winks as he hangs the lamp on the wagon’s eaves. “None to rival you, Daiyu.”
“I was talking about me, Leo.” She cackles as she swings the doors open. But instead of a pen and the smell of goats, a cold gust swirls out of the blackness inside, where a wide tunnel leads down into the dark. Spirits glimmer among the roots that writhe through the earthen walls.
“What is this?” I whisper, awed.
“I told you. A secret route.” Leo winks and flicks the reins; tentatively, Lani steps into the tunnel. “The Souterrain.”
I sit back on the bench. “You’re a smuggler too?”
“Music doesn’t pay all the bills,” he says with a winsome smile. “But what about you, Jetta? What are you?”
“Just a shadow player,” I say, but my voice breaks on the words. The fading light turns his smile wicked as we ride into the dark.