“I swear to the gods, if you don’t let it go—” Artemisia says.
“Not that. Something else.”
A frown tugs at my mouth. “A good something else or bad?”
Maile rubs the back of her neck. “Hard to say, to be honest. Perhaps it’s better to show you than to try to explain. Follow me.”
* * *
—
I remember seeing the Water Mine only once before the siege, before it was a mine at all and was just a cave with a temple standing, tall and proud and shining, around it. Those memories are distant and faded at the edges, but I remember the priestesses in their pale blue silk gowns that flowed around their bodies like water. I remember my mother standing in front of the temple, small and humble before it. I remember thinking it was the most beautiful place I had ever seen, even more beautiful than the palace.
But that temple hasn’t stood for ten years now, and the camp the Kalovaxians erected in its place could never be called beautiful. Its layout is similar to that of the Fire Mine camp, with rows of barracks that resemble blocks of gray stone—one of which Heron carries Blaise to, where he can rest until he wakes up. The Fire Guardians disperse to the dining hall, the twin of the one at the Fire Mine. We even pass the same Fire Gem–infused iron gate that surrounds the area where the Guardians and berserkers would have been kept. I want to ask Maile how many people she found there, but I can’t form the words. My mind is too busy turning over what she could possibly be leading me to.
Artemisia is quiet as well, though I’d guess that she’s less distracted about where we’re going than about the camp itself. I wonder how it looks through her eyes, years after she thought she’d left it behind for good. I wonder if she’s searching the faces of the former slaves we pass, looking for someone familiar. If she finds anyone, her expression doesn’t give it away.
“Are you all right?” I ask her, softly enough that Maile can’t hear.
She turns her dark eyes to me, though it takes her a moment to focus. “It’s strange,” she manages finally. “Being back here. The girl I was when I left is not the girl I am now, but I can’t help feeling like her all over again. I don’t care for it.”
“That girl survived,” I remind her. “That girl became strong enough to save the other people here.”
Her smile is sad. “Not all of them, though,” she says. “How many do you think have been killed since I left?”
“Their blood isn’t on your hands, Art,” I say. “It’s on the Kalovaxians’.”
“I know that,” she says, her hand idly finding its way to the hilt of the dagger at her hip. “And I’m ready to make them pay.” She quickens her pace to catch up with Maile. “How many guards are left alive?”
Maile glances at her, uncertain. “A hundred or so,” she says. “We’re holding them in a couple of the barracks, under heavy watch. We thought they’d be more valuable alive than dead.”
Artemisia looks put out at that, but she quickly recovers. “For now, maybe,” she says. “I want to see them after this. Wherever you’re taking us. Where are you taking us?”
Maile glances over her shoulder at me before looking forward again, nodding toward a building I recognize as the commandant’s office, just next to what must have been the armory, though there’s little left of it now. Artemisia’s aim was certainly precise.
“There were a couple of people here we were…surprised to find, to say the least.”
“Kalovaxian or Astrean?” I ask her as she opens the door and ushers us inside.
“Neither,” she says.
It takes my eyes a moment to adjust to the dim lighting, but when they do, I have to stifle a gasp.
There are two people waiting, their hands bound behind their backs. The man looks Gorakian, with the same golden skin and dark hair as Erik and Hoa, but the woman—at first glance, I think it’s Cress. She has the same porcelain doll’s face, the same gray eyes, the same yellow hair wound into two braids that hang down to her waist. But this woman is older, her expression lined around her eyes and mouth. Though her face is thinner than Cress’s, it’s softer somehow—at least, softer than Cress’s has been the last few times I’ve seen her. Instead this woman resembles the Cress I used to know.
There is something else about her, something familiar that prickles at my memory.
“Who are you?” I ask her, ignoring the Gorakian man entirely.
The woman’s eyes search my face, recognition sparking in her eyes. I don’t know her, but she knows me.
“My name is Brigitta, Your Majesty,” she says, lifting her chin. Her voice is like Cress’s used to be, too, melodic and soft, but the kind of voice that demands to be heard.
It takes me a moment to place the name, but when I do, the world shifts beneath my feet and I remember where I’ve seen her before—a small painting, no bigger than my thumb, that Cress kept as a charm on one of her bracelets, a token of her dead mother, who, I found out later, wasn’t dead at all.
Brigitta is the name of the previous Theyn’s wife, the woman who ran away with a Gorakian man before the Kalovaxians came to Astrea. Brigitta is the name of Crescentia’s mother.
BRIGITTA’S HANDS SHAKE AS SHE brings the porcelain teacup to her lips before replacing it upon its saucer with a rattling clink. We’re alone in the commandant’s office, her hands unbound, though Artemisia is waiting outside in case Brigitta tries anything foolish. I don’t think that will be an issue—there is not much fight in the woman. Even now, dressed in a rough-spun cotton shift, with weather-beaten skin and frizzy hair barely contained in its braids, she looks every bit the Kalovaxian noblewoman she was raised to be.
“Where did they take Jian?” she asks, gray eyes settling on mine.
Jian must be the name of the man she was with. The man I assume she left the Theyn for.
“We thought it best to question you separately,” I say. “To ensure you’re both being truthful.”
She arches her blond eyebrows the same way Cress does. “Truthful,” she echoes. “We were being held here, prisoners as much as the others.”
It isn’t that I don’t believe her. All signs say she’s telling the truth. But sitting across from her now, I can’t help but think about Cress, about one of the last conversations we had as friends, when she told me that her mother had left her. I can’t help but wonder how different things would have been—how different Cress would have been—if she hadn’t.
“You can’t blame us for taking precautions,” I say instead, sipping my own coffee. “You are Kalovaxian, after all.”