Page 22 of Invocation

“And when did you stop believing that?”

“Somewhat recently,” he said carefully. “But I never believed in the sorts of things that were done to that woman.”

“Doesn’t anyone do anything about it?”

“It is not illegal to discipline slaves as you see fit, within reason.”

“That was within reason?”

“But there are people who advocate for the rights of non-Varai. People who oppose slavery. My sister is one of them.”

She was surprised and pleased for half a moment before she heard the unsaid implication. “And you’re not?”

“It’s a complicated issue. This way, there’s a system in place to let non-Varai stay here, in the custody of a Varai who becomes responsible for them. Before slavery, all non-Varai were simply executed. There are still those who object to them being here at all and would prefer to go back to that policy.”

Novikke raised her eyebrows. She was getting whiplash. “Is your sister one of those?” she asked, alarmed.

He almost smiled. “She is not. Though she also does not think that non-Varai should be permitted in the forest.”

“That’s a complicated set of views.”

“To an outsider, I suppose it would seem so,” he said.

Novikke slipped a finger under her too-tight collar to pull it away from her neck. Aruna’s eyes landed on the strip of leather, then moved away again.

“You have a right to be upset,” he said quietly.

“Is that really what you think?”

“I should have better prepared you for what you’d see here. I thought… I thought that if you saw the city for yourself, you might feel more generous toward it than if I just told you about it. It’s a complex city full of different kinds of people. Not all Varai are the same. Just like you and Theros were not the same.”

She didn’t say aloud what she’d been thinking—that she had been questioning whether all of this was worth it. Destabilizing the Kuda Varai axis would harm Ardani and Ysura, too, but not as much as Kuda Varai.

She’d be betraying every other enslaved person here if she helped him. Which was worse: letting the forest die, weakening the night elves and opening them up to complete destruction, or helping them and therefore helping them continue raiding and enslaving non-Varai?

She felt the weight of Aruna’s eyes on her, and felt nauseous for considering leaving him.

But she also felt the collective weight of her people’s eyes on her. The other soldiers who might have been burned, like she was, or worse. The other people who might have encountered Varai on the roads near the border, and not been as lucky as she was. The humans—and sun elves, too—that she’d seen walking by with collars on their necks.

Maybe Neiryn was right. Aruna was the exception. He was the only half-decent night elf she’d met so far.

But then she thought of the mob of children at Rameka giggling and crying hellos at her. She sighed.

As if he’d been reading her thoughts on her face, Aruna said softly, “I like to think we are still worth saving, despite our flaws. Your people and mine.”

“I know,” she said, and tension drained from his face.

She crossed her arms on the table, still glancing nervously around the room. The air remained thick with discomfort on both sides of the table. Novikke was eager to put it behind them. “We… we did come here for some reason other than to torment me, didn’t we? So what do we do now that we’re here?”

“Well,” he began carefully, “first, we have to go see a priestess.”

“And then what?”

“It’ll depend on what the priestess says.”

“Glad you’ve planned this out so thoroughly. Do you at least know where to find a priestess?”

“I have one in mind.”

She nodded, mentally preparing herself to go out into the city again. “It’s good to hear your voice again,” she said.

He smiled, and her own lips copied the gesture automatically. She loved seeing his smile, even when he was annoying her. “Yours, too. Are you ready now?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

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