The Theft of Sunlight by Intisar Khanani (story reading .TXT) 📕

and then set off without direction, filled with nervous energy. At least I can walk right now, my foot aching but not actually hurting. The healer-mage’s intervention has certainly helped, and the velvet-lined shoes, made to the shape of my old slippers, are cushioning my feet properly. I’ll make myself stop before I get to the point of starting new blisters.

Eventually, I find my way out through a side door. I’ve left my cloak behind, but the sun has finally come out, and while it’s cool and the ground is wet, it isn’t too chilly. I follow a path and find myself intersecting another pathway I recognize: this is the way I came when Kirrana showed me the side entrance to the palace complex on my first, miserable day as attendant. Was it really only four or five days ago?

I follow the path away from the palace, past what I now recognize as practice fields for the soldiers—they had only looked like a dark expanse when I passed them that night—and around a curve to a series of buildings. Benches are set out across from them, right where the sun warms them. I sink down onto the nearest, stretch my legs out before me to rest my foot, and try to think about what I’ve learned today.

In the end, it isn’t as much as I’d like: I want to know how the boys came to be where they are, what they know of the people who snatched them, how many other children are held helpless within the city and across our kingdom. I want to know who has knowingly kept them where they are, and who has been unintentionally complicit. I want to break them out of their prison, consequences be damned. If only I had the ability. Or my sisters with me.

Between Niya’s quiet, steady focus and magical talent, and Bean’s drive to right all wrongs, I would have the support I needed to do something. God knows we’ve helped others before. At least I might have had a chance of helping these boys with my sisters’ aid. But it’s just me here now, on my own in a strange city, and I don’t know what I can accomplish alone.

“Kelari? Oh, it is you!”

I look up with a blink in time to realize it’s Kirrana, a tiered metal container in her hands, before she plops down on the bench beside me and opens up her container. She separates the tiers to reveal a generous meal of spicy fried potatoes, a separate dish of chickpeas, and a cloth-wrapped set of flatbreads.

“Would you like some lunch?”

I look at Kirrana, and it occurs to me that she isn’t looking at me at all. She’s very carefully not looking up. Ah, the bruise on my cheek.

“It’s all right,” I say. “I don’t mind if you stare.”

She flicks me a glance, her gaze skimming over my cheek, and then she hands me a flatbread. “Eat.”

“No questions?” I ask as I tear off a piece and scoop up a bite of chickpeas.

She shrugs. “I find that food usually helps when I’m feeling low. You can talk, though, if you want to. I’m pretty good at listening.”

“Let me guess: You’re an older sister?”

She grins. “No, I’m the youngest. You’re the oldest, though, aren’t you?”

“Well, yes.”

“See, that’s older sisters for you, not believing the young ones can listen.”

“That’s not true at all,” I protest.

She grins and prepares an especially large bite for herself. “I’m listening right now,” she says, and pops the bite into her mouth.

I can’t help laughing, my bruised cheek aching, as she watches me patiently and chews. And chews. She raises her brows, her left brow arching over her eye patch.

“You’ve figured out who I am,” I say.

She swallows. “It’s not like you made it a secret. You did tell me your name. I’m sorry, you know. We all heard what happened.”

I nod. “It’s—that’s not why I’m here.”

“So why are you here?”

“I don’t know.” I look across at the buildings and find that I do want to talk. “Do you think the snatchers are a real threat?” I ask abruptly. “Or just a fiction?”

“They’re real,” she says, her voice low.

“How do you know?”

A pause. She sets her flatbread down, her expression still. “My brother was snatched when he was eight. I was three. We know he didn’t run away.” She swallows. “My mother still mourns him. We all do.”

“I—I’m sorry.” I hadn’t meant to dredge up such pain for her.

“Not your fault,” she says, and picks up her bread again, but she doesn’t eat it, just sits with it in her hands. “Why do you ask?”

“A girl disappeared from our town just before I came here. And today, when I was out in the city, I saw some boys who . . .”

She looks at me sharply. “Who what?”

“Who might have been snatched. They were working, and the man who kept them said they owed him a debt, but the way he kept them—” I swallow hard. “They couldn’t leave. And they weren’t from the city, had no one here to protect them.”

“They couldn’t leave?”

I nod.

“Have you told anyone? Someone ought to be able to help them.”

“I will. And that might help these particular children, but . . .”

“You think there are more in the city?” Kirrana demands.

“Perhaps. And there are certainly more who are smuggled away.”

Kirrana looks down at her half-eaten flatbread, thinking. “You want to find the rest, help everyone.”

I nod, even though it sounds absurd spoken aloud like that.

“The princess might listen to you.”

“Yes, but to help anyone else, she’ll need more information than I have. She can’t launch an investigation without evidence, without proof that the snatchers even exist.”

Kirrana looks across the way at the buildings, one of which must be the tax office. “I wish I knew how to help you.”

So do I. I brush the crumbs off my skirts. “It’s all right. I’ll keep trying, and perhaps I’ll find out something more.”

She puts out a hand, just barely touching my arm as I rise.