Page 85 of In Her Own Rite

She shakes her head, lifting a hand to say ‘no.’ The other hand, tied together at the wrist with rope, comes with it. I see that the skin under the rope is red and chafed.

“Okay,” I say, setting the bottle down. “So. You wanted to talk.”

She nods, looking up at me. “If you can guarantee safety for me and my sister on the islands. Then yes.”

“I can’t decide that on my own. That’s a council decision.”

Her posture stiffens. “So then why are you wasting my time?”

“I got permission to ask you what you want from us, in exchange for information.”

She gives me a look, like I’m unbearably stupid. “A-sy-lum,” she says slowly. “Like we asked for in the last two petitions, and like I told you when you slammed my body down in the street. You have a thick skull behind all that hair, don’t you?”

Her accent is faint, but it’s there: a slight, lilting hint of French influence, from the way the southern islands were first colonized, the way ours were by the Danish and Dutch.

“Okay, but what does that mean?” I ask. “You want, what. A house? A place to stay, for you and your sister? For how long?”

“I want it agreed that we can live here safely,” she says. “I don’t need a house or a hand-out. We can work and save money to earn our own keep and buy a place. I hear there’s a lot of empty houses on the islands.”

That’s true. The Fakari population has been slowly shrinking for years. One of the other ongoing issues we have to discuss in council meetings—what to do if our way of life is no longer sustainable.

“You know it won’t be that easy, right?” I say, sitting back. “No one’s going to want to hire someone who set the dock on fire and tore into thereijna’s son at the common house.”

“I’ll make it work,” she says icily, staring down at her feet.

“For what? To live between people who resent you? Who you had to bribe for a home?”

“I know it will be hard,” she says, looking up at me with ice in her eyes. “Imagine the hell we are trying to escape in the south, if I’d rather be hated among strangers here. But sometimes you have to do tough shit to protect the people you love.”

I watch her face, studying her. Somewhere in the back of my mind, it registers: a protector, like me.

“Tell me about your sister,” I say.

“Why?”

I let out a sigh. “Because I’m trying to get to know you,nagaaya.”

“Her name is Noémie,” she says finally. “We call her Nomi. She’s younger by four years, and she’s an adult now, but she became my ward when we were still teenagers. You have someone you would do anything for?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know how it is,” she says with a nod. “I got us to these islands. I will get us a place here. For her.”

“Why do you want to leave so badly?” I ask.

Her eyebrows raise in surprise. “Ah. So the man they send to interrogate me hasn’t even read my petition.”

“I wasn’t on the council yet when you sent it,” I say, but I feel my own irritation as I say it. She’s right. I could never bother with this stuff, but I should have made the effort. “Why did you want to meet withme, anyway?”

She sighs, and I can scent the anger coming off of her. “Because you made me a promise, and I could see in your eyes that you meant it. I trust you more than the elders who withhold food and water from us in a musty basement.”

“Okay,” I say finally. I have no idea what to do with this. I have no idea what Icando with this. “Listen, I want to help, if I can. But how do we know that the information you have is worth trading?”

“It is.”

“But how do we know? How can we make sure we don’t make a deal and you end up giving us information that’s worthless, and then we let two terrorists onto the Fakaris?”

“I’m not aterrorist,” she snaps.

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