“You knew my sister.”
Vex frowned, steering theMeanderdown the narrow dock lane. “What? I told you I haven’t known Teo that long.”
“Teo, maybe not. But you knew my sister. Bianca. And her daughter, Annalisa.”
There, that space ahead was free, and Vex didn’t see any defensors on the dock. What he did see, up the wharf, weredecorations. People scurried about, hanging banners in indigo and gold, the colors of Grace Loray’s pillar of purity.
Vex tamped down his growl of disgust and twisted the helm to the left.
Wait—a memory scratched at Vex’s mind. Why did he know those names?
Jakes must have seen the confusion on Vex’s face. The map table groaned as he pushed off it, coming to stand next to Vex, near the helm. “You don’t remember them. Of course you don’t. I shouldn’t be surprised—your father cared little for my family, too.”
TheMeanderstopped in line with the other vessels on this dock. Vex needed to leap onto the wood and tie it off, but he was stuck at the helm, one slow tremor walking up his left leg.
Vex saw a knife, glinting in the torchlight of the Grace Neus’ holding cells.
Rodrigu had been in a cell across from him. His father had been so relentless, even there. Spewing sureties.“Things will get better, Pax, don’t you worry, we’ll get out of here—”
“He’s a child! Asentzio—the Pious God wouldn’t let you harm a child!”
“He isn’t a child,”Elazar’s voice said in Vex’s memory.“He’s a heretic. And I know there are others hiding in my court.”
Two monxes held him down as another came at him with the knife. Elazar wasn’t the one to do it. He instructed the monxe on what to cut, though—“Slower, press the blade harder.Yes, just like that. What did you say, brother? What name was that?”
Rodrigu had screamed four names below Grace Neus Cathedral. Over and over, his voice had broken apart while Elazar had the monxe gouge anXinto Paxben’s eye.
Bartolomeu Montero.The comodoro from Elazar’s navy. He was arrested before monxes were even done bandaging Paxben. His pyre burned the same day Rodrigu’s did.
Alexandre Nuñez.The priest who ran the Grace Ismael Cathedral. When Paxben had been stuffed into a cell on a ship bound for Grace Loray, defensors had told him that if he was quiet, he could hear Alexandre screaming from a pyre a few streets away.
Estevo Ochoa.The wealthy conde who owned a prolific mine in northern Argrid. Months after Vex left Argrid, he heard that Estevo and his family had been murdered in their sleep.
Raya Cuesta.The last name Rodrigu had screamed, the duquesa who had overseen charity to the poor.
Paxben had known all of them. Raya had brought him a birthday present, a gilded dagger with his initials carved on the handle because her son had gotten one just like it and loved it.
Raya and her husband were thrown beneath the Grace Neus Cathedral as Paxben and Rodrigu were led out to their pyres. Defensors returned Paxben to his cell afterward, of course; his death had been staged. And in the bowels of Grace Neus, while he waited for Elazar to decidewhat to do with him, he listened to Raya lie.
“We are loyal to the king. My husband and I were not part of any resistance! We serve the Pious God and the Eminence King. No—no, I have no other family. No one was involved!”
“Bianca Cuesta,” Vex said aloud now. He wanted to see Jakes’s reaction. Heneededto see Jakes’s reaction. “That was the daughter of Duquesa Raya Cuesta. My father’s ally. And—”
He struggled. Raya had had a son, too, a little older than Vex, and Rodrigu had mentioned once that they might get along.“Paxben, you should meet him—he is new to Deza, and from what Raya tells me, Jakome is quite shy—”
“Jakome. Jakome Cuesta.” Vex’s hands fell off the helm, his soul flickering out as he stared at the planes of Jakes’s face. He felt naked now with his scar bare, and every look from Jakes felt like Elazar’s fingers pressing on the corner of his eye, marking him.
Jakes smiled. There was no emotion in it as theMeanderbumped into the dock, rocking with the current. “At least you remember me. I’m flattered.”
Vex’s mind hummed—he had another memory, fuzzier, further, of Raya weeping in the foyer of Rodrigu’s mansion when she first joined his resistance. Something about her daughter and granddaughter dying. Paxben had watched from the stairway railing as Rodrigu ushered Raya into his study, promising her they would get justice for Bianca and little Anna—
They hadn’t died, though. They’d been on Grace Loray, as Bianca and Annalisa Casales. Menesia. Elazar had to have given them Menesia.
Vex staggered, legs aching. “Why?”
“I couldn’t parade myself around Deza with the name of convicted conspirators,” Jakes said, assuming his question had been more direct. “So I made my mother’s name my last name. You aren’t the only one who became someone else to escape his past—though, in my case, I didn’t change so much toescapeas I did toembrace.Your father”—Jakes rounded on Vex, and he showed emotion now, emotion that had Vex slamming back into the wall—“your coward of a father gave them up. And I’d almost be able to appreciate the irony in him betraying the people who betrayedhimif I hadn’t had to watch them burn.”
Vex had never found out how Elazar had discovered that Rodrigu was heading a coup against him. He’d always assumed defensors had uncovered a paper trail or rumors.
