Emilia grins and lowers her arms.
“I knew it was loose,” she says, and chuckles when Jules scowls. “I know every step of this wall. Every crack in the mortar. Every creak in the gates. And I hate it.”
“Why do you hate it?” Jules looks back at Bastian City, the light and shadow slatted across it by the setting sun. To her it is a marvel, fortified and ordered, built-up buildings of gray brick and timber. The marketplace with stalls covered over in red cloth, the shades as differed as the offered goods as the dye fades with age.
“I love Bastian,” says Emilia. She jumps down. “I hate the wall. We keep it up now because of the gift, because to be ever prepared is our way. But a wall isn’t needed when we have the mist. So it just seals us off.” She clenches a fist and pounds the stone. “Until we forget the rest of the island. The wall makes the people turn their backs, lazy and safe, and who cares if the gift grows weak? Who cares that another poisoner wears the crown?” She watches Jules run her fingers along the mortar lines. “I suppose there are no walls at all in Wolf Spring.”
“Not like these.” Only fences made of wood or pretty, piled rocks to mark the borders between farms. Easily jumped by a horse, or by a person with enough of a running start. “When we rode into Indrid Down to save Mirabella from Katharine in the duel, we passed what was left of the wall that once enclosed the capital. It was overgrown with grasses and weeds. Half-buried. There’s nothing else on the island like this. Not even the ramparts that protect the Volroy fortress.”
“I have heard they still have a fine border wall in Sunpool.” Emilia sighs. “Oracles. They are a paranoid lot. Are you going to do what you came out here to do or what?”
“Can we go down to the beach?”
“Not today. I did not send scouts. There could be others down there in the dunes. Others to recognize you and your cat and send word back to the Volroy. The longer the poisoner queen thinks you left on that boat with her sisters, the better.”
“The longer the better.” Jules takes the pair of silver shears from her back pocket. “How about forever?”
“Nothing lasts forever. Why do you want to go down to the beach?”
Jules pulls her long brown braid over her shoulder.
“I don’t know. To cast it out into the water, I guess.”
Emilia laughs.
“Are all naturalists so sentimental?” She gestures toward the shore full of red and white stones. “Throw it anywhere. The terns will tear strands of it to line their nests. That should please you. Though you don’t have to do it at all. That braid is the last thing that will give you away. More likely are those two-colored eyes of yours.” She nods at Camden. “Or that.”
“I’m never going to put Camden aside, so you can stop hinting about it,” Jules snaps.
“I’m not hinting about anything. I like her. Only a war-gifted naturalist would have a familiar so fierce. Now get on with it.”
Jules touches the end of her braid. She wonders how long Emilia’s dark hair is. She always wears it pinned to her nape in two small rolled buns.
She sets the braid between the open blades of the shears, just below her chin. Arsinoe used to do this. Every season, she would hack off what had grown, anything to avoid the sleek, groomed beauty expected of the queens. One year she left it cut so crooked that it looked like her head was perpetually cocked. Her Arsinoe. She would be so proud.
Jules takes a deep breath and then cuts off her braid. She throws it out as far as she can, out toward the water her friend sailed away on.
The family house of the Vatros clan is tucked into the southeast quadrant of the city, along the wall. It is a large house, with many floors and rows of brown-shuttered windows. The shingles of the pitched roofs are deep red. And it is old, some parts older than others and made of the same gray stone as the wall. The newer additions have been constructed in white. It is one of the finest houses in Bastian City, but all houses seem quite fine to Jules, who is used to clapboard and paint faded by damp, salty breezes. The war gift may have diminished over the centuries, but they have done what they can to not let it show; it is only visible upon much closer inspection, in the patched masonry in the walls and the stitches over stitches in their clothing.
“Attack at half speed.”
Emilia turns the sparring stick over in her hands. It is a clever weapon: sturdy, oiled wood joined in the center as a long pole and able to be twisted apart quickly into two shorter staffs for dual striking.
Jules does as she is told, though her own sparring stick feels heavy and clumsy. She sweeps low for the legs twice, then blocks Emilia’s attacks and dodges an attempt to pop her in the chest. Emilia nods, the only encouragement she ever gives.
“You never ask me to use my war gift,” Jules says. “You never tell me when to use it.”
“You’ll use it when you use it.” Emilia twists her pole into separate staffs. “And you will know when.” She comes forward, still at half speed, but even so, Jules’s arms cannot keep up. The poles crack against each other.
“Though it would come easier if we could get your mother to lift the binding.”
Jules lowers her staff. She flexes her fingers and tucks her hair behind her ear. When she cut it, she cut too short, and now it escapes from its ribbon. She does not like it. Camden does not either. The mountain cat licks it every night when they go to sleep as if she is trying to slick it back into a braid.
“Stop asking that,” Jules growls.
“I am only teasing.”
Except that she is not. At least not entirely. Jules rubs the ache in her poison-damaged legs. Bound gift or no, she might never be the warrior Emilia hopes she will be, thanks to that.
“Come on,” Emilia says. “We don’t have all day.”
They square off again. They do not have all day, but they have most of it; the afternoon sun burns bright and hot against the top of Jules’s head. Emilia’s dark hair shines like a mirror, and knowing how skilled Emilia is at combat she will probably figure out how to blind Jules with it.
As they circle, Jules’s eye wanders to the tree. One lone tree in the private, walled-in courtyard of uneven bricks, not as full as it could be, as it should be, in the height of summer. She could make that happen. Make it bloom with leaves that instant. They would have shade, and Emilia might be distracted enough that Jules could land a decent hit.
“I never ask you to use your war gift,” Emilia says, and Jules looks away from the tree. “But you never use your naturalist gift either. Why? Do you think the other gifts offend us?”
She strikes twice, and Jules blocks them.
“Maybe not.”
“Maybe not,” Emilia repeats. “Maybe not normally, you mean. But in you it would, with your legion curse.” She moves in quick and effortlessly smacks Jules right between the eyes. Behind her, Camden begins to growl.
“Can you blame me?” Jules scowls. “My own family feared the curse. My own town turned their backs on me for it. I still don’t understand why you—and the warriors—don’t.”
“We look past it because of what you have done. The great things that you will do. It was you who boosted the weak queen. Arsinoe,” Emilia adds when Jules’s eyes narrow. “And even bound, your war gift is as strong as mine. You could use it now. Push my staffs off course, if you wanted to. If you would.”
Something sharpens in Emilia’s eyes, and she comes for Jules in a flurry. No longer fighting at half speed or half strength, she drives Jules back, using her advantage in skill to push Jules until her knees bend. And as her heel slides in against the gravel path, Jules feels a spark of familiar temper.
She dodges and pivots as Emilia keeps coming on. Jules waits until she is positioned just right. Until Emilia has allowed herself to put Camden in a blind spot.