She plopped him onto the dock. He wavered, looking up at her with glassy eyes.
Goddamn it, Edda, go and break the kid’s heart—
“But,” Edda continued, thumping Teo on the head, “you’re also a helluva lot braver than most of the raiders back in the sanctuary. So c’mon, Raider Teo.”
She snatched his hand and dragged him onward. Teo glanced back at Vex with a smile.
“His insolence reminds me of someone,” Ben whispered.
Vex chuckled. “I was never as selfless as him.”
Ben went silent. Vex snuck a look at him.
“Yes, you were,” Ben said in Argridian.
A weight pushed Vex’s heart down into his stomach, low, throbbing heaves in his gut.
“Let’sgo,” Mani demanded. He and Zey shot off, catching up with Edda and Teo.
Ben touched Vex’s arm as he disembarked. Vex clambered down and marched up the dock next to his cousin and Gunnar, letting that brief levity of an idea overpower the ricocheting pain in his legs.
Had he been selfless? Something about Ben thinking so made it seem like Vex’d been... Rodrigu. Like he’d embodied more of his father than he thought.
17
BEN AND GUNNARshuffled in the middle of the group as they made for the fort’s open doors. Mani and Zey took up the rear; at the front, Vex hid his eye patch under his cloak’s hood, Teo pinned between him and Edda. All of them watched the people who pressed inside Fort Chastity.
The circular entryway showed five doors that Ben knew led deeper into the fort, thanks to the map tucked into his shirt. One stood open, the crowd funneling through. Here were the first signs of Elazar’s presence: a defensor stood on either side of the open door, hands behind their backs, eyes pierced ahead. To the right, on an overturned crate, a priest held his hands out over the crowd.
“The light has come to Port Mesi-Teab!” the priest bellowed.
“Elazar’s light,” Vex hissed back at Ben. “It’s happeningnow?”
Mani cursed. “Zey—use the Budwig. Send a message to Fatemah. Shit, we aren’t ready for an attack yet.”
“I don’t think it’s an attack,” Edda whispered. “You see any armies?”
Zey put a hand over his ear and mouth, whispering quick and low into the Budwig Bean that reached back to the sanctuary. But Mani frowned, and Ben shared a look with Gunnar.
There had been no armies in the villages Elazar had paraded Ben to, either. Just Elazar, a handful of defensors, and righteous certainty.
“She says we go in,” Zey huffed. “Stick to the plan. Keep an eye out for Cansu or any of the missing raiders. Leave if things get dangerous.”
Ben pulled his chin to his chest, hoping his cloak’s hood kept the soldiers from recognizing him. But the defensors didn’t flinch; the priest didn’t pause in his shouting.
Ben’s group moved from the entryway into the fort’s central room, a large open space with a mezzanine framing the upper reaches and the ceiling open to the pink-blue evening sky. A place for public executions or announcements, with a platform at the far end.
Here, the crowd stopped. People packed the room so thickly that Ben and his group could take only a few steps inside, the door close to their backs. Which was preferable, despite their unease at seeing so many of Port Mesi-Teab’s innocents gathered here.
Everyone was quiet, exchanging whispered words as they eyed the empty stage. Torches lit the area as the sun slipped away.
“Defensors above,” Ben whispered back at Mani and Zey. He jutted his chin upward, to hidden forms in the mezzanine’s shadows. “If my father keeps his normal security for public functions, there will be one standing every seven paces, armed with two pistols and a sword. The ground floor will have the same.”
Mani nodded. Zey held a distrustful gaze on Ben before sweeping his eyes over the mezzanine and shifting his grip under his cloak, flashing the pistols strapped to his own waist.
“You’re the prince,” came Teo’s soft voice.
Vex shushed down at him. Mani and Zey went rigid.
