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

their prison with them, a trauma they may struggle against the rest of their lives.

I kneel beside Bren. One by one, they admit their stories. One boy joined a pair of travelers who promised to help him find work in the city and then sold him to a middleman whom the brickmaker bought him from. But every one of the remaining five were snatched from the villages where they lived, hidden in false-bottom wagons and then moved to riverboats. All five lived north of the city, and were brought down the river to Tarinon.

Riverboats and false-bottom wagons. No people yet, no names, but a mode of transport is something.

“We should proceed,” the Speaker says, one hand gripping the cup. She’s filled it, droplets of water shining on its side.

Bren nods, glancing back at me. “Rae?”

“Yes, go ahead,” I say.

I’ve never watched the Blessing to cleanse a child of the Darkness. It’s curiously simple. The Speaker presses the opal to the youngest boy’s forehead, murmuring a prayer, speaks another prayer over the cup, and passes it to him to drink from. What’s far more disturbing is the shudder that runs through him around his third or fourth sip, the way his hand sags and the Speaker rescues the cup from his uncertain grip without letting a drop spill.

He looks around, his eyes huge and wary. “What’s happening?” he asks in a high, wavering voice. “Where is my mama?”

“We’ll send you home to her,” Bren says, one hand reaching to rest on the boy’s arm. “You’ll be all right now.”

I cannot quite place his tone, the timbre of his voice. There is an ache there that makes my own heart clench.

The Speaker moves on to the next boy, quickly dipping the cup into the bucket and beginning over again. He reacts with similar confusion, though he narrows his eyes as he looks at the other boys around him. Perhaps he has been with the brickmaker long enough that the Blessing does not reach as far back as the days when he was free.

On the third boy, something goes wrong. He grunts as he holds the cup to his lips, his whole body jerking. The Speaker leans forward, grabbing the cup and shoving it between his lips as his eyes roll back. And the other three unblessed boys are seizing up as well. I freeze as the men surge forward, each reaching for a different boy.

The Darkness. It’s rising up in them, and the boys cannot drink now, cannot control their bodies at all.

Bren grabs the third, half-blessed boy, holding his head straight as the Speaker pours a sip of water in his mouth, one hand locking the boy’s mouth shut so that, a moment later, he swallows. “Another,” Bren says roughly, opening the boy’s mouth. He’s shuddering but not seizing up anymore, and he’s able to take the next sip with only a little help.

But the other three boys are wheezing and crying out, their bodies jerking, their eyes rolling back. Artemian holds the eldest gently, allowing the boy’s body to twist.

The Speaker starts on the fourth boy, her hand shaking as she pushes the opal against his forehead, her words tripping over themselves as she rattles out one Blessing and then the next, the cup in her hand, pouring water without concern now, because if he inhales the water that is less danger than if he does not drink at all. Finally, horribly, the boy’s body relaxes and he coughs and coughs and coughs, but his eyes are his, and the Speaker turns to the fifth boy, Bren moving with her.

I glance between him and the eldest, the sixth. There is saliva dribbling from his mouth now, his eyes disappeared beneath slits. Please, no. Artemian huddles over him, and the boy’s body seizes up again.

I grip my skirts, wishing there was something, anything, I could do. The tips of Niya’s story sash brush my fingers. I look down. Her sash, with magical wards that she created, new and unusual and unknown. Enough so that Stonemane noted them. Maybe they can’t do anything, but maybe they can. I look up to the boy, jerking on the floor, and past him to Bren, holding the fifth, his lips white and his eyes dark. They are thieves, their whole lives dependent on secrecy. And lies. They will never reveal the secret of my sash.

I tug it open as I scramble forward, using one hand to slide it under the boy’s neck as he jerks, and twist the ends together around him.

Artemian looks up in surprise. “What are you—”

The boy takes a gasping breath, and then relaxes. Together we stare down at him. He gives a little shudder, but it isn’t a seizure. His eyes look back up at us, afraid and very much still him, still knowing and focused and there. I let out my breath with a half laugh, tinged with hysteria, and tamp it down at once. “You’re going to be all right,” I say as the Speaker turns to us, her eyes wide.

I had forgotten to consider her.

No matter. I’ll take Niya’s sash and walk away from here, and she’ll never see me again.

But she heard Bren, knows I’m connected to the princess. She’ll figure it out—

“Give the Blessing,” Artemian says sharply. The boy sits up, Artemian’s arm around him, his other hand sliding over mine to hold the sash together. I release it and move back. Bren watches me from the other side of Artemian, his gaze sharp and thoughtful.

The Speaker goes through the Blessing quickly, and when Artemian hesitantly unwraps the sash a few breaths later, the boy remains sitting, his memories gone but his mind still his. Bren reaches out and takes the sash from Artemian.

Oh no. He is not taking that from me. I cross my arms and meet his gaze.

He dips his head, but when he speaks, it is not to me at all. “We thank you for coming here,” he says.

“What is that sash?” the