Sight Unseen Read online

  Alma couldn’t imagine herself doing anything so noble and self-sacrificing.

  “We all objected.” Driss jerked his chin at Ben. “Him most of all. But you said it had to be you. You were the only one who wouldn’t reveal anything under torture. You said you could guarantee it.”

  “Did it work?” Alma asked.

  “The rest of us escaped.” Driss shrugged. “It’s been more than a year now and Ozias hasn’t found us.”

  So she really had intended to wipe her memory. She’d always known that she’d cast the spell herself. She’d just assumed that it had gone wrong. But it hadn’t. At least, not entirely.

  Driss took a huge bite of the last sandwich and rummaged around in the saddlebags. He grabbed a package wrapped in burlap, tied with twine, and tossed it at her.

  Alma caught it.

  Driss picked up a pair of boots and, with a flourish, placed them atop the burlap package.

  “What’s this?” The boots were faded at the toes and heel, with creases at the ankle. Fine shoes but obviously well-worn.

  Driss smiled. “We thought you’d be wanting your own things back. To make you feel at home.”

  Alma put down the wrapped package and one boot, turned the other over in her hands, feeling along the edge of the heel where the wood sole had worn away. The leather had been dyed a rich burgundy.

  What a wonderful extravagance. She’d never owned anything so fine in her life.

  Driss coughed awkwardly. “I’m not sure the clothes will fit . . .”

  Because they weren’t hers?

  “You’ve, ah, lost a bit of weight.”

  “It’s the prison diet,” said Alma. “Very slimming.”

  Driss blinked, nonplussed.

  Alma took a good look at her feet, dirty and mud-stained, and decided she’d better wait until she’d washed to try the boots on. She opened up the wrapped package, instead. It contained a set of underthings made of patterned silk—patterned silk!—a short-sleeved shirt, a knee-length skirt made of some soft, swingy knit, and a well-tailored jacket.

  She’d grown up mining trash heaps for scraps of metal to sell. After her magic had come in, she’d done better. She’d worked as an apprentice to a street entertainer, Gadi, who’d also been a magician. She’d had a full belly, a roof over her head, someone to watch her back. Nothing like this, though. Nothing even close.

  Ben snapped his fingers in front of her nose to catch her attention.

  She looked enquiringly at the giant.

  He made a fist.

  “You want to punch me?” she asked.

  “That’s the letter ‘a,’” said Driss.

  Ben nodded.

  “You want me to learn the alphabet?” Alma asked.

  Ben raised and lowered his fist.

  “That means yes,” added Driss. “But I’d think twice before you let him teach you. Ben used to be part of Ozias’s personal guard—”

  Ben nodded his fist again.

  “Until Ozias had his tongue cut out because he wouldn’t stop telling bad jokes.”

  Ben signed to Driss.

  “Ben wants you to know he’s hilarious,” said Driss. “But I’m warning you now. The jokes will never stop and you’ll hardly ever laugh.”

  Ben turned puppy eyes on her, surprisingly effective for a man who looked like he could squeeze coal into diamond with his bare hands.

  “Go on, then,” said Alma. “What’s ‘b’?”

  Ben went over the alphabet several times. She was still reciting it in her head when she finally fell asleep.

  Chapter 4

  Alma woke in a cold sweat. She didn’t know where she was. She couldn’t hear the ocean. The birds weren’t right. All the open space around her made her want . . .

  Made her want her cell back.

  Idiot.

  She rolled to a seated position, rubbing sand out of her eyes and silently cursing herself. She did not miss the Safe House. She’d gotten out, she wasn’t ever going back.

  She fingered the clothes lying folded by her bedroll, stroked the fine leather boots. Time to wash the past away. Put on these new clothes.

  New old clothes.

  Whatever.

  She searched the packs for soap but didn’t find any. No matter. She’d make do. Scrub herself with sand or something.

  She carried her new-old clothes down to the pool of water she remembered from the night before. She picked her way over the uneven ground, careful of her footing, only to look up and discover that—oh. Oh.

  Driss had arrived ahead of her.

  He was crouching in the water, head tipped down as he worked soap into his short black hair, muscles moving under the smooth sun-browned skin of his naked back.

  She must have made some noise because his head lifted. “Alma? Is that you?” He swiped his forearm over his eyes, clearing suds away. “You must have come looking for the soap. I should have known you’d be wanting it—”

  It was an awfully intimate thing to say, delivered in the friendliest—the most platonic—of tones. He’d known some alternate version of her well enough to greet her arrival at his bath with equanimity.

  How strange.

  He blinked his eyes open and saw her. Or, more precisely, he saw all the differences between her and the person she was supposed to be, and he blanched in horror.

  He stood, slow and careful now. He wore thin linen knee-length pants with a low, drawstring waist. They concealed absolutely nothing.

  He offered her the soap as though she were some sort of rabid animal, liable to bite. “Here.”

  “That’s okay,” she offered. “I’ll wait for you to finish.”

  His jaw dropped.

  “Back at camp,” she clarified, hesitating for one last second before turning around. “I’ll wait back at camp.”

  And she marched back, not so carefully this time, pricking the tender undersides of her feet on twigs and rocks.

  Driss arrived a few minutes later, still naked from the waist up, a sarong tied around his waist and the soaked pants over his shoulder. “Sorry—” he began.

  “For what?” she snapped, as aggressively as possible.

  Driss fumbled.

  “Do you have the soap?” she asked.

  He did.

  “Great.” She took it. “Thanks.”

  She walked away.

  Her bad mood washed away in the stream. She hadn’t had a proper bath in—well, it had been at least a year and anyway, this didn’t count as a proper bath. But she had soap and she didn’t have a leering soldier standing over her, so it felt pretty fantastic.

  The clothes were proportioned oddly. Alma smoothed her palm along the rich fabric of the skirt and shivered. Who was this other Alma? This daring woman of high morals who led her rebels in costly raiments?

  She remembered sitting by the hearth with Gadi, her wiry, gray-haired mentor. He’d been stirring the supper simmering in their one cast-iron pot, steam saturating his mustache and making it droop. He’d reached sixty without going mad—a miracle for the ages, if any of the scholars who wrote the history books had only known.

  Never cast on yourself, he’d said. You’ll get better at spelling other people. Taking their measure. Knowing where they’re headed a step before they arrive. Don’t let that fool you. You’ll never see yourself clearly. Never.

  We all hide parts of ourselves. Sometimes just out of sight, like a spot of dirt on your nose. You look right past it but everyone else can see. But some parts of yourself are buried so deep you’ll forget where you dug the hole.

  When you cast on yourself, the magic will find those buried parts. It’ll grab hold of your words and your wishes and twist them in ways you’d never expect. That’s how we go mad, do you understand?

  Magic only worked on the living—and, in a limited fashion, the remains of the living—and it depended on two things. The word and the wish.

  First the caster put her desires into words. The target of the spell had to hear those wor
ds. What they heard—more precisely, what they understood—determined how the spell would manifest.

  You know how it goes, Gadi used to say. We hear what we want to hear. And with magic, that mattered. It mattered a lot.

  Cast a spell to levitate and the target might find her mood lifted with her body. The problems compounded from there. How to reverse the euphoria? Cast another spell to make the target sad? Even-tempered? Reasonable? Each additional spell further distanced the target from her original self, her original personality.

  Everyone knew the story of Shirin the Tyrant. She’d started out as a spy for Tenem. One day, tasked with a dangerous mission, she’d asked a magician to make her invisible. All had gone as planned and her mission had been a success. But the spell to make her visible again had touched something inside of her. The desire to be seen had blurred into a desire for attention. She’d developed a charisma so intense that anyone who came near her was overwhelmed by a powerful urge to please her. Shirin had reveled in her new power and used it to assume control of the country for nearly two decades.

  Alma had always followed Gadi’s rule. She’d learned from those examples. And yet, a year ago, she’d cast on herself. She had apparently intended to erase her memories. But some part of her—some deep, hidden part—had seized the opportunity. Some part of her had wanted to go back in time. To erase herself, to undo what she’d made, to start over.

  Some part of herself, hidden but powerful, had been full of regret.

  But why? Until she knew, she couldn’t trust that other version of herself. She couldn’t tie herself to her rescuers or their rebellion.

  Alma balled up her prison shift and carried it back to camp, where Ben handed her a baked oat bar packed with—she took a bite—chopped dates and honey. Driss had busied himself loading up the horses.

  “So,” she asked, kneeling to roll up her bedding. “What exactly do the rebels need me for?”

  Driss paused his work. “Need you?”

  “I assume you rescued me for a reason.”

  “We’re your friends,” said Driss. “That’s what friends do.”

  “And?” Alma prompted.

  “You’d have done the same for us.” Driss’s voice climbed in volume. “Listen, you might not remember but we’ve been through a lot together and—”

  Ben made a slicing gesture and Driss cut himself short.

  We owe you our lives, Ben signed, Driss voicing his words in a monotone. We pay our debts.

  That silenced her.

  Ben handed the reins of a short, stout, medium-brown horse to Alma. He led another to Driss and folded the other man’s hand around the reins, finishing with a soothing pat.

  “We should think about the next leg of our journey,” said Driss. “High road or low road?”

  Ben made a sort of pancaking gesture, driving one open palm down to the other.

  The low road, Alma guessed. And, since Driss snorted, intended as a joke rather than an earnest answer to the question.

  High road’s no fun, Ben signed.

  “Jokes aside, we need to avoid the capital. That means detouring north through the mountains or south via the caves.” Driss grimaced. “I say we err on the side of caution. Take it slow and do some scouting. See where Ozias’s search parties go.”

  Ben signed quickly in response, but Driss replied directly instead of translating, so she couldn’t follow.

  “We won’t need provisions for a week. I’d rather wait.” Driss turned to Alma. “What do you think?”

  She dodged. “You’re planning another attempt on Ozias’s life?”

  “Of course.”

  “So we wouldn’t just be traveling companions. I’d be joining your rebellion.”

  Has prison improved your opinion of the king? Ben signed, with Driss interpreting. That would be a first.

  “No. I still want to kill him.” She’d have to forget her whole stinking life before that changed. “Look, I don’t mean to be rude but . . . seven years to stage a coup that failed? Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.”

  “It took seven years to build a movement that could survive a failure,” Driss said fiercely. “Seven years to stockpile resources, so we can afford to regroup and recover. Seven years to establish trust with our allies, so they didn’t abandon us at the first sign of trouble. We did it together, you and me—”

  Ben clapped Driss lightly upside the head and began to sign. After a beat, Driss translated. Before the rebellion, when a citizen got angry, he’d attack a soldier from his local garrison and get killed. Maybe he’d head to the capital, hurl curses at Ozias from the palace gates, and get killed. Today he comes to us.

  “We take him in,” Driss added, his voice rising subtly in pitch as he began to speak for himself again. “We find a use for him. We grow stronger every day. That hasn’t changed.”

  “Doesn’t answer my question.”

  “Ozias knew we were coming,” said Driss. “He was ready when we arrived.”

  “So you were betrayed? By who?”

  “We’re not entirely sure,” said Driss. “We think one of our couriers was captured.”

  Alma chewed her bottom lip.

  “Come along,” Driss urged. “Meet everyone. There’s a good chance you’ll like what you see—you built it.”

  She’d also wanted to unmake it all.

  Ben signaled for her attention. We try. We fail. We try again. He drove the fingers of his right hand into his left palm, sharp and emphatic. Then repeated the gesture. As many times as it takes.

  It was a good attitude. Persistence and resilience and all that. But the words sent a chill down her spine.

  Driss took her hand, squeezed. “Give us a chance.”

  He spoke in a tone of earnest entreaty leavened with charm. But charm couldn’t sway her. The shadow in his eyes, though, the hint of need and fear—that called to her more profoundly than she could understand.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll come.”

  Chapter 5

  They began their descent toward the plains, weaving through the mountains until they reached a spur of rock that overlooked the sparsely populated hinterlands. Right in front of them, almost at eye level, a hawk wheeled lazily on the rising air currents.

  Below them, black smoke billowed up from the nearest town It wasn’t much to look at, just a handful of mud-brick huts clustered around a fork in the only road in sight. One branch continued to the coast and the Safe House, the other turned south, to the mines and the chimneys.

  The whole town had been set ablaze, bright flames flickering through the obscuring haze. From their high vantage point, the people scurrying wildly through the unpaved streets appeared no larger than mites.

  “They’re trying to smoke us out,” said Driss.

  Ben signed.

  Driss stared ahead, stone faced. “That’s what the soldiers want us to do.”

  Ben signed again, his gestures broader and more deliberate—a hand-talker’s version of shouting. Alma couldn’t understand, but the contrast between the two men was sharp. Ben was all emotion. Just looking at the destruction below seemed to hurt him. While Driss stood stiffly, shoulders squared, mouth grim.

  “All right.” Driss’s voice had changed. He spoke faster, with a staccato crispness. “Ben thinks we should help. If you lead the soldiers away, we’ll deal with the fire.”

  Alma blinked. “What?”

  “Lead the soldiers away,” Driss repeated, as though she’d misheard.

  She’d heard just fine. She just didn’t understand how he expected her to manage it. “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “Like the Barstou—” Driss cut himself short and winced. “Sorry. You don’t remember.”

  “Barstou?” The guards had teased her about the Barstou raid—and it had been real? Longing hit her, sharp as hunger pains. She could find out the truth of what she had done. “What happened? What did I do?”

  Driss rubbed the heel of his palm against his forehead. “Chan
ge of plans. I’ll go with Alma. Once the soldiers are well away, you can make yourself useful.” Driss paused. “We’ll lead them toward the witches’ chimneys. Lose them once we reach the caves, then circle back around to the mountain route.”

  Ben signed his agreement.

  Driss dismounted and Alma followed suit. They waved at Ben and set off on foot, cutting away from the swerving trail to make their own way down the steep slope. Alma scuttled and stumbled in Driss’s wake, dirtied her fine new boots. The smoke thickened as they descended, acrid and gritty, making her eyes smart with tears.

  “What happened during the Barstou raid?” Alma asked.

  Driss shot her a sidelong glance. “Who told you about the Barstou raid?”

  Alma shrugged.

  “The Barstous played a dangerous game,” said Driss. “A noble family, outwardly loyal but privately dedicated to revolution. They supplied us with food and information, gave us free passage through their lands. This went on for years, but eventually they were discovered.

  “One of our spies reached us with a warning, but Ozias’s soldiers were already on the march. It would have been a massacre, exactly what happened to my family. So I took a few people to the Barstous while you went, alone, to buy us some time. You intercepted the soldiers and led them around in circles for two days. We rescued the whole family.”

  So the guards had lied. Word and wish. She’d refused to believe their awful stories. But she’d never been sure. The relief was . . . profound.

  “They’re alive?” Alma pressed.

  “Gerald—the patriarch—died at the villa, during the coup,” said Driss. “But Helia, his wife, is still with us.”

  “Any children?”

  “Moz. Ten at his last birthday, much too young to fight. He’s fine.”

  “I suppose you kept most of their possessions,” Alma ventured.