The fancy man kept watching. Watched me sit and cry. Open my basket and pull out a sock. Blow my nose on it. Put it back. Watched me watching him. He never moved. I’m not sure he even blinked.
Gave me shiverfeet.
“Nya?”
I yelped. So did the pigtailed girl I hadn’t noticed walk up beside me. A flock of bright waterbirds at the lake’s edge took flight, dozens of tiny wings flapping like sheets in a windstorm.
“Enzie!” I scolded. She’d shared a room with Tali for a while until a bed opened up in the wards’ area, the orphanage part of the League where they took in potential Healers. I’d never seen her without her League uniform on before. She looked more like a little girl with her brown hair bound in ribbons, and a simple grey shirt and trousers like mine. Hers were newer though and didn’t have patches on the knees and elbows. “For the love of Saint Saea, don’t sneak up on folks like that.”
“Sorry, Nya.” Enzie settled into the weeds beside me. “Tali asked me to give you a message.”
My chill returned. “Is she OK?” If she got into trouble because of me, I’d throw myself to the crocs right there.
Enzie nodded. “She wants you to meet her at the pretty circle at three. Under the tree.”
The flower gardens. Tali had called it “the pretty circle” when she was four. We’d had picnics there and sat on a soft blue blanket under the biggest fig tree I’d ever seen.
“What’s going on, Enzie?” Tali had never been sneaky before. She either spoke her mind clearly or didn’t speak it at all.
“I don’t know.” Her green eyes looked away and she sucked in her bottom lip.
“You can tell me.”
“I don’t know, honest. But I’m scared anyway.”
I leaned over and hugged her. Poor girl. She was only ten. She had talent, even if she couldn’t use it for two more years. It hummed in her like the thrum of a bridge when the soldiers marched over it. “It’s OK, Enzie.”
She sniffled and clung to me. I rubbed her back in small circles. The fancy man kept watching. I stared at him hard, putting a dare into it, though I couldn’t say what the challenge was.
Whatever he saw in it, he declined. He turned and walked away.
I hugged Enzie tighter, suddenly just as scared as she and not knowing why.
I walked the full three miles across Geveg to the gardens, on the opposite side of the island from Millie’s. Though the gardens were public property, they were inside the aristocrats’ district. Powdered women with pearls braided through their black, piled hair glared at me as I headed for the gates. Baseeri soldiers stood watch at all four entrances and kept out the folks aristocrats didn’t like seeing—which pretty much meant everyone who wasn’t from Baseer. They weren’t supposed to by law, and sometimes you could talk your way in if you looked clean and sharp and didn’t mumble your request, but nobody went in carrying a clothes basket. Squatters were not allowed under any circumstances.
I’d been inside three times with Tali since the war ended. She’d picked a lousy place for a secret meeting.
I dipped a sock into the lake and washed as best I could, then hid my basket under a leafy hibiscus bush not far from the eastern entrance. Clean? Somewhat. Sharp? Not at all. At least I didn’t mumble.
The soldier watched me walk up. I didn’t slow when I neared him, making it clear I planned to go inside and did so often.
“Pardon, miss.” He stepped forward and held his arm out across the path, looking a lot like some of the trees that grew inside. Tall, wide, brown, with a mess of gold on top. Unusual to see a blond Baseeri, but he did have the Baseeri nose and chin. Maybe he looked more like a bird than a tree. Or a bird in a tree.
“Yes?”
“Your business here?”
“I’m meeting my sister.”
He looked me over and reluctance flashed in his dark eyes. Kindness too, if I could make use of it.
“It’s her birthday.”
“I don’t think—”
“Our parents used to take us here every year for our birthdays.” The truth popped out on its own and I couldn’t stop talking. “We’d walk down from the terraces and if the wind was blowing just right, the whole bridge would be covered in pink flowers. They’d fall like rain and the air smelled so sweet it made your eyes water.” Mine were doing it now. I hadn’t thought about those birthday trips in years.
His stern expression wavered a little, then he dropped his arm and nodded. “Go on in. You tell your sister Good Birthday.”
“Thank you, I will.”
The gardens welcomed me back. The cool, green-tinted shade kept the rest of the city out and the air smelled exactly as I remembered. No carpet of flowers this time, but the grass looked thick as a rug and softer than any bed I’d slept in for a long time. Branches shook as monkeys chased each other through the treetops, whooping in high-pitched frenzy. I passed under arches of brown and the trees whispered in the way that always made me feel they had secrets to tell me. This time Tali was the one with something to say.
She waited on a red-veined marble bench under the big fig tree at the edge of the lake, a bright speck among the softer greens and browns.
“I got in, can you believe it?” I called. My smile was almost genuine.
“Oh, Nya.” She jumped off the bench and hugged me, her tears soaking the same shoulder Enzie’s had. I went cold. Had she been kicked out of the League?
“What’s wrong?”
“Vada’s gone.”
For a terrible, guilty instant, I was glad. Tali’s apprenticeship was still safe. Vada was her best friend at the League and too many of our recent visits had ended short with, Well, I have to go. Vada and I need to study…Wouldn’t bother me if Vada left the League, except I’d prefer it if it didn’t happen when apprentices were already missing. “Are you sure she didn’t go home for a few days?”
“She would have told me. We tell each other everything.”
Everything? “Did you tell her about me?”
“Of course not!” Tali wiped her eyes and dropped with a huff on to the bench. “This doesn’t have anything to do with you. Something’s wrong, I know it. She’s the fourth apprentice to vanish this week.”
Saints save us, it was happening again. But why would the League track and kidnap their own apprentices?
Tali twisted her skirt, her knuckles white as the fabric. “People are asking questions now. Four girls don’t just leave in the middle of the night and some of the boys say their friends are missing too. They’re even limiting the number of people to be healed because we’re so short-handed. The mentors tell us not to worry, but they act as if something’s wrong and they don’t want to tell us.”
My shiverfeet came back. Apprentices missing. Trackers following me. Verlatta under siege. Just like the war, only this time no cries of independence rang in the streets. Tali needed to be careful. We all needed to be careful if more than one Tracker was here. “Tali, there’s a—”
“I’m scared. I hear things from the first cords.” She leaned closer and cupped the side of her mouth with one hand. “They say the Slab sometimes turns Healers away. Like it doesn’t want their pain.”
“What? Tali, you can’t trust first cords. They’re barely older than I am. Listen, there’s—”
“But they’ve finished their apprenticeship. They