Sparkers (23 page)

H
alf an hour later, Azariah, Melchior, and I tramp through the city toward Horiel District. We gave up on finding Gadi Faysal and Banar Rashid and can only hope they'll eventually think to look for their sons at my apartment. The boulevards are as packed as the Ikhad on Tenthday. Apocalyptic scenarios and wild rumors circulate among neighbors and strangers.

“What news?” they call out to us. Have we come from the Assembly Hall? Can the cure be obtained closer to the river? Have the councilors made a statement yet?

“David is dead,” I keep saying. “The Assembly has fallen.”

People grab my sleeves, imploring me to tell them more, but I shake them off, walking forward in a stupor.

On the Street of Winter Gusts, a growing flock of Horiel residents is gathering in front of my apartment building. With the Rashid brothers on my heels, I push through the crowd, determined to reach the door. I didn't expect it to be wide open and funneling people into our entryway. As I cross the threshold, someone shouts, “It's the Levi girl!”

“Kasiri!” someone else cries.

Gadi Yared, our meddlesome neighbor, pounces on me, gripping my wrist. “Have you brought us the cure?”

I struggle to tear away from her, and then I see them, at the foot of the stairs. Mother, struck dumb in midsentence trying to fend off the inquiries of half a dozen neighbors. And Caleb.

“Marah!” Mother breathes. She takes a step forward, but Caleb dashes across the entryway and throws himself at me. I catch him in my arms. The foyer erupts. It's as if all of Horiel District is stuffed into this tiny space, clamoring for answers from me.

“Leave her alone!” Mother shouts as she fights her way to me. “Do you have any idea what she's gone through?”

The journey up four flights of stairs is nightmarish. On each landing, more tenants spill out of their apartments and join the train following us to our door. Here, Mother turns to face the onlookers.

“Leave us in peace!” she snaps. “My daughter and her friends need rest.”

Then she sweeps us into the apartment and slams the door in their faces. There is a muffled outcry from the landing.

Still clinging to my arm, Caleb leads me to the table. Mother busies herself at the stove, setting water to boil and heating a pot of something savory.

“Please sit down,” she tells Azariah and Melchior, who are still standing awkwardly by the door.

“We can't eat your lunch,” Azariah says. “You weren't expecting us.”

Mother shakes her head. “There's more than enough food. After yesterday's burial, the fane gave me six jars of soup.”

So she went to the cemetery yesterday. “The cure,” I say. “Have you . . . ?”

“I gave it all away,” she says. “To Maitafi congregations and to people in Horiel.”

She ladles up bowls of soup for everyone and begins frying bread with Caleb's spice mixture. “Marah, after the notice appeared in the newspaper yesterday, a mob passed through our street, headed for the District Hall. This morning I left for the graveyard, but the streets around the Assembly Hall were so crowded I turned back. Where have you been?”

Haltingly, I explain what took place after we printed the notice in the newspaper. Azariah and Melchior help me tell the story while we eat. They wait for me to sign what I can to Caleb. He and Mother listen without reaction, as though they've exhausted their ability to be shocked.

I'm stumbling over David's death and Yehudit Chesed's announcement when an engine rumbles in the street. Before I can blink, Melchior is halfway to the window. Azariah and I leap after him. In front of our building, Banar Rashid and Gadi Faysal are getting out of an auto, their black coats streaked with ash.

A few minutes later, they're embracing their sons in my family's kitchen. After I've made the necessary introductions, Banar Rashid takes a deep breath. “The eastern wing of the Assembly Hall is still burning, and there is rioting in the streets from the hall to Yehodu Square, but there is no doubt the plot to eliminate the halani has failed.”

No one replies.

Mother finally offers them tea, but the Rashids are weary and eager to go home. Melchior disappears into the stairwell. Azariah and I clasp hands on the now empty landing, and then he too is gone.

After they leave, I go to my room. Caleb follows me. I sink onto the blue-and-white quilt on the bed, my steadiness beginning to crumble.

I'm glad you're home
, Caleb signs, sitting next to me. His eyes are so serious, and the gentlest brown.

I wrap my arms around him. I'm so weary, so relieved, so happy that I'm alive and that he is and that the Assembly will never hurt my family now . . .

I pull away.
Do you know Leah is dead?

Biting his lip, he nods. He leans against me, his silky hair pressed against the wool of my sweater.
She's still here
, he signs.

I shut my eyes, hold him close, and rest my forehead on his crown.

We stay like that until Mother knocks softly on our door. “I understand if you don't want to talk, Marah, but it's your friends. From school.”

Waiting for me in the kitchen are Miriam, Devorah, and Shaul. Before I can greet them, Shaul envelops me in a crushing hug. He reeks of something I can't identify.

“Shaul, what—?”

“You brought down the Assembly!” he says in a choked voice. For a second, I think he's crying, but the idea is ridiculous. This is Shaul.

He releases me, his face radiating a kind of savage joy. “You're a hero, Marah!”

All at once I recognize the scents clinging to him: gasoline and smoke. The understanding of what this means hits me hard in the stomach. Overwhelmed with pride and sadness in equal measure, I almost burst into tears.

“We came as soon as we heard you were home,” Devorah says. “Since the newspaper yesterday, everybody in Horiel's been dying to see you.”

I don't know how to respond.

“The things you've done!” Miriam exclaims. “And who's Azariah Rashid?”

“Oh,” I say, even more at a loss. I glance nervously at Shaul, certain he would not react well to hearing Azariah's a kasir. “He's . . . Well, it's a long story.”

“I ran into my brother's friend Yoel by the Assembly Hall,” Shaul says eagerly, saving me from having to explain. “There's going to be a big meeting at the pharmacy tomorrow to decide what we're going to do. Yoel told me to invite friends.” Shaul grins. “Do you three want to come?”

Devorah, Miriam, and I look uncertainly at one another, and I feel a new wave of exhaustion overtaking me.

“Don't worry, you can decide later. Everything's going to change now,” Shaul says with elated optimism. “The sparkers are unstoppable now. The kasiri won't rule us again.”

I
sleep and sleep. I wake first in darkness, then in pale light, rising at last late in the morning. Mother has gone out and returned already, having gleaned all the news she could. The District Halls, half of which have had their windows broken, are dark and empty, she says, yet there's a mysterious order in the city. Possibly because most of Ashara is afraid to go to work.

The Rashids' auto arrives unexpectedly in the afternoon. I rush out of the apartment building into the cold sunlight. The mere sight of Azariah lifts my spirits.

“My parents want to talk to you,” he says. “And I wanted to see you.”

“Me too,” I say. Up and down the street, doors are opening and neighbors are piling onto their doorsteps. I pretend not to see them.

Melchior brought the auto, and his reckless driving out of the city triggers memories of Channah. I can picture her behind the wheel, a kasir and a spy, right beside me. A kasir and a spy, dead at my feet. I inch closer to Azariah, who is muttering what sounds like another attempt at the neutralizing incantation to himself. His nearness is comforting.

As we roll up to the Rashids' mansion, I start to see the autos. First one, perched lopsidedly on the edge of the driveway. Then two more, then four, then a whole fleet of black automobiles parked between the house and the outbuilding, not to mention two carriages.

“What on earth . . . ?” I begin.

“Mother and Father have a lot of people over,” Azariah says apologetically. “They came of their own accord. I should've warned you. We don't have to have anything to do with them, though.”

Melchior snorts as he cuts the engine. “If you want to avoid them, you'd better go through the kitchen.”

So Azariah and I enter the Rashid mansion the way Channah took me the first time I set foot here. The warm kitchen smells of mulled wine, but the cook is absent.

“Have you heard anything?” I ask Azariah as we steal down the hallway. “With half the government gathered in your house?”

He makes a face. “It's not half the government. They're mostly my parents' friends. They're all in the living room, so if we just—”

A stout kasir rounds the corner and plows into Azariah. He sputters an apology and then exclaims, “If it isn't the boy! And you must be Gadin Levi. You
are
a halan!”

I stiffen.

“Everyone's been waiting to meet you,” the stranger says, giddy. He seizes Azariah by the arm and, ignoring his protests, tows him toward the living room. I trail after them, glowering at the back of the kasir's head.

The living room is overflowing with kasiri: women in sober dresses, their hair pulled back into sleek buns; graying men in suits clasping goblets of mulled wine; even a smattering of what look like university students. If it weren't for everyone's solemn expression, it would appear the Rashids were hosting a party.

“Azariah and Marah are here!” the kasir clutching Azariah announces to the room. The response isn't what he hoped. The closest guests turn to regard us, and a number of them nod politely to Azariah in recognition. Then they resume conversing in urgent tones.

It dawns on me that, unlike the information-starved halani in Horiel, these people don't need us. They have Banar Rashid and Gadi Faysal to tell them about our exploits and Yiftach David's revelations. They know better than two Final students who the important political players will be in the aftermath of yesterday's events. I don't know whether to feel relieved or slighted.

While the portly kasir makes vain attempts to interest nearby visitors in quizzing Azariah, I drift through the living room, listening and watching.

“—lack of democratic structures is at the root of all this. The Assembly is a self-perpetuating institution, and what we must secure for ourselves above all is the right to vote on who governs—”

“—don't trust her at all, why do you think I'm out here at Jalal and Nasim's and not in the city? There must be a total purge, in my opinion—”

“—realize David's plan would have brought about the economic ruin of Ashara, which just proves he was a lunatic who surrounded himself with lunatics. I have always said—”

As the Rashids' guests strive to outdo one another in condemning the councilors, I silently ask them where they were when Azariah's father was reprimanded by the Assembly. And as they trade ideas for reforming the government, I become increasingly aware of the fact that there are nothing but kasiri here. If these are the people who will rebuild the city, who have already taken it upon themselves as their natural responsibility, where do the halani come in? I should've asked Shaul to bring me to the pharmacy today.

Slinking past another cluster of kasiri, I notice a familiar figure hovering in the corner. It's Lavan, the Seventh Councilor's secretary. Whenever one of the Rashids' guests passes by, he smiles hopefully, and when the visitor inevitably refuses to acknowledge him, he slumps and takes a consolatory sip of wine. What is he doing in the home of the very people he was helping his employer investigate for disloyalty just a few weeks ago? Did he figure out which way the wind was blowing and abandon Ketsiah Betsalel?

Someone taps me on the shoulder, and I whirl around.

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean—oh, it
is
you. The name Levi . . . You're the little deaf boy's sister.”

It's the kasir from the Horiel District Hall, the one who delivered Caleb's summons and visited our Final class. I'm too startled for words.

“You don't remember me, of course,” the mild-mannered kasir says.

“I do,” I stammer. “I didn't know you were acquainted with the Rashids.”

“I'm not, really,” he says ruefully. “I heard there was to be an informal meeting of reformists here, and I finally mustered the courage to try to join their circle.”

I recall how this man offered to take Caleb to the District Hall and tried to answer Shaul's questions, and it strikes me that he isn't a bad person. But like so many kasiri, he was too cowardly to question the Assembly openly. He's almost pitiful, but I still resent him.

“The Rashids are very brave people,” he's saying, “as are you, Gadin Levi. I wish—”

“Excuse me,” Gadi Faysal says, materializing beside us. “If I might borrow Marah . . .” Her tone is chilly, and she looks pointedly across the room to where Banar Rashid is extricating Azariah from a clump of guests.

“Of course,” says the District Hall kasir, backing away from Gadi Faysal. “Forgive me.”

Azariah's parents whisk us away to a parlor at the back of the house where Melchior is already seated in a silk-upholstered divan. Next to him, a few logs crackle in the marble fireplace.

Banar Rashid joins Melchior, and Azariah and I sit down opposite them on an identical divan. Gadi Faysal draws an armchair closer to the fire and attends to the tea service on the low table before us.

“My thanks for coming, Marah,” says Banar Rashid when the steaming glasses have been passed around. “Nasim and I want to share with you what has transpired and come to light in the last day. I apologize for the crowded house, but it was something of a spontaneous reunion . . .”

“Go on, Father,” Azariah says.

“Well, the fires have all been put out,” Banar Rashid says. “The blaze in the hall's eastern wing saved us, of course, but even so, it's lucky there were so many people around to contain it. No one knows who set—”

Melchior clears his throat. “It was me and my friends. At least at first.”

His parents stare at him.

“Well, it was quite the diversion,” says Gadi Faysal, clutching her tea glass in both hands.

“Indeed,” her husband says, stroking his beard. “In any case, Yehudit Chesed, the Fifth Councilor, is in charge now.”

“Still?” I say in disbelief.

Banar Rashid looks taken aback. “It's only been a day, Marah.”

I shift on the divan, my stomach twisting
. I don't trust her at all
, one of the guests said. Surely he meant Yehudit Chesed?

“I understand if you're wary of her,” Azariah's father says, “but she's made it clear she wishes to leave the government as soon as possible, and there are many of us who would prevent her or anyone else from seizing power. She declared she had long had qualms about the scheme to destroy the halani, and then yesterday . . .” He hesitates. “Yehudit Chesed's change of heart was thanks to you, Marah.”

“Me?” I say.

Banar Rashid and Gadi Faysal share a significant look.

“Adriel David witnessed you giving his father the cure,” Banar Rashid says. “It was an extraordinary act. He was so affected he sought out the other councilors to tell them what you had done. Only Yehudit Chesed was moved by his account of your actions. The shock of hearing that a halan girl had offered the cure to David finally convinced her to abandon the Assembly's plot.”

Azariah throws me a stunned look. My heartbeat is very loud in my ears. So healing David counted for something after all.

“I understand,” I say at last. I still don't like that she's in charge, but I remind myself that Channah changed her mind and decide I can wait to judge Chesed for myself.

“What about the rest of the councilors?” asks Azariah.

“The Third, Fourth, and Sixth Councilors have disappeared,” his mother says. “They may have fled to other city-states. Ketsiah Betsalel remains, and after she acknowledged the plot was wrong, Yehudit Chesed placed her under protection.” The tightness of Gadi Faysal's jaw suggests she doesn't think Betsalel deserves it.

“How about Hoshea?” Azariah says. “And Tsuriel, the captain of the Corps? We saw—”

“Tsuriel was bludgeoned to death,” Gadi Faysal says abruptly.

“Nasim,” Banar Rashid protests as I cover my mouth.

His wife ignores him. “Hoshea made the same choice as Yiftach David.”

So much death. Banar Rashid sighs and closes his eyes, as though plagued by a headache. Azariah mutters something under his breath. I gulp down a sip of tea.

“Yehudit Chesed has revealed many details of the Assembly's plot,” Banar Rashid finally continues. “It seems the Assembly phased out the neutralizing spells two centuries ago by claiming that magical advances had rendered them superfluous. Within two generations, few even remembered their existence.

“Meanwhile, candidates for the Assembly were closely observed until it was certain they could be included in the conspiracy. Additionally, in each generation, two or three kasiri who had proven their trustworthiness and loyalty to the Assembly were selected to preserve knowledge of Hagramet.”

“Hoshea was David's lead Hagramet scholar,” Gadi Faysal breaks in.

I murmur in surprise. There's so much to take in.

Banar Rashid's gaze is sympathetic, as though he understands. “I only have one more thing to tell you,” he says. “It seems the District Hall firings were connected to the dark eyes. The halls were destined to become centers for distributing the cure to kasiri, so the Assembly decided it could no longer risk employing halani in them.” His expression grows pained. “They were also preparing for a day when there would be no halani to do administrative work.”

I can't believe it.
This
is why Mother was fired?

“That's disgusting,” Azariah says, recovering first. “But surely halani will be in the government now? Actually governing, I mean?”

“There are already halani involved in forming the provisional government,” Melchior says.

“Good,” I say, for a moment acutely conscious of what divides me from the Rashids. It's not enough to have liberal-minded kasiri on our side. We need our own voice.

“Now, Nasim and I were asked to approach you two about something,” Banar Rashid says delicately. “The dark eyes epidemic is not over. The Fifth Councilor has gathered the best pharmacists in Ashara in preparation for producing the cure in large quantities, but they need the instructions from you.”

“We could get the translation to them by tonight, if you would deliver it,” I tell Banar Rashid.

“Of course,” he says. “My thanks. I'm sure they would want me to express their gratitude as well.”

“Ashara owes you a great debt,” adds Gadi Faysal.

The idea both frightens me and fills me with pride. There's a shadow of a smile on Azariah's face that must reflect my own. For the briefest instant, though, his mask slips, and I glimpse the pain etched in his face. Our grief is still raw under our happiness. And suddenly it feels like this revolution has come at the price of Leah's and Sarah's lives.

I set down my tea glass and stand up. “My thanks, Banar Rashid, Gadi Faysal. I'd like to go home now.” Before they can offer me a ride, I add, “I can walk.” I know the way now, since Azariah and I walked to the city after escaping the storage room.

“Don't be silly,” Banar Rashid says, getting up. “I'll drive—”

“Father, we'll walk together,” Azariah says.

“And how will you get home?” Gadi Faysal asks.

“I'll walk back.”

“It'll take you hours,” she says.

Neither of us says a word. When his parents realize we won't back down, they let us go.

Outside, the western sky is just turning rosy as cold blue encroaches in the east. We skirt the battalion of automobiles and set out on the road to the city.

“We did it,” I say.

“We did,” he says. “There's still so much work to do, though.”

“I know,” I say. But a powerful swell of hope rises in my chest.

A sense of tranquility settles over us as Azariah and I tramp through the quiet, snowy world. A lone automobile glides past us on the road. Azariah murmurs to himself every so often, but I don't ask what he's saying. Above us, the first stars are winking in a dome of blue silk. From time to time, we lift our faces to their cold majesty.