William stood in the doorway, mouth opening and closing, staring at Borund.
“What is it?” Borund said, rising from his seat behind his desk. His voice was steady, but since I’d been guarding him, I’d learned to read the undertones. They were touched with dread, as if he already knew the news, or already suspected.
William must have noticed as well, for he sagged slightly and drew in a breath. “Marcus is dead.”
I frowned down at the floor, raced through all of the merchants I’d met. I’d accompanied Borund everywhere for the last two months—on excursions to the warehouses, to the docks to meet the ships, to the local taverns and the guild hall for meetings with merchants and captains and sources of information. I’d met dozens of merchants, some from the cities along the Frigean coast, others from more distant places, like Warawi, a city in the southern islands.
At first the outings had been tense, Borund expecting another attack. He’d gone to the palace to complain to Avrell but had been met by the palace guard instead. They’d sent for Baill, refused to send a message to Avrell or even the Second, Nathem, until we’d spoken to the captain.
I’d been on edge the entire time, eyes furtively scanning the guardsmen as they passed through the gates of the inner wall, expecting to see Erick, expecting one of the guards to gasp and point, then drag me away.
Instead, Baill had arrived, his bald head shiny in the sunlight, his eyes flat and impregnable. The moment I saw him, I knew we weren’t going to see Avrell or Nathem. We weren’t going to see anyone. Baill was a wall—dressed in armor, body solid, face scarred, but a wall nonetheless.
Borund sensed it as well. He straightened outside the gates, jaw tightening.
He told Baill of the attack at the tavern, told him of the attempt on his life, even implicated Charls.
“Can you prove it?” Baill had asked. His eyes were intent, attention completely on Borund and his story, noting everything—every frown, every glance, every nervous shift in position.
Borund motioned toward me. “Varis, my bodyguard, saw Charls outside the tavern, saw him give the order.”
Baill turned his gaze on me and inside I felt myself cringe. Baill was the man Erick would report to. If Erick had told anyone about me, about how I’d killed Bloodmark, it would be his captain.
But there was no recognition in Baill’s eyes. Nothing but the same harsh glare he’d given Borund. As if he were assessing me, deciding whether I was a threat or merely an inconvenience.
We were a distraction, one that he did not want to deal with right now. There was something else weighing on his mind.
“What exactly did you see?” he asked. His voice was low, rolled like thunder.
I told him—of the hatred in Charls’s eyes, of the nod.
Baill grunted, turned back to Borund. “I can’t arrest anyone based on a look and a nod.”
Then he headed back inside the gates, the matter already dismissed from his mind. In that single unguarded moment, when he was turned away, I saw something in his eyes. Fear, concern, uncertainty. Nothing but a flicker, there and then gone.
Borund watched Baill’s retreating back in shock.
Borund protested again, but there was no proof that the attack at the tavern had been anything but a simple theft gone bad, a consequence of the rich roughing it where they shouldn’t be. And when no more attacks occurred against Borund, the matter was shrugged aside by the guard.
The Mistress wasn’t informed. Any attempts to see her, or Avrell, or any of the rest of Avrell’s staff concerning the attack, were blocked by Baill and the guardsmen. Access to the palace had been restricted. On the Mistress’ orders.
Two weeks passed without anything suspicious occurring as Borund went about his business. No subtle threats except through words on the floor of the guild hall. No one following Borund or William on the streets between his manse, the wharf, and the warehouse district.
After a while, Borund began to relax, began to think that perhaps Baill was right, that perhaps having a bodyguard was unnecessary.
My stomach had tightened at the muttered thought, but he never approached me about leaving. He looked at me with a troubled glance, as if he didn’t know what to do with me, as if he wanted to let me go but found that he couldn’t.
Then the attacks had begun on other merchants. All of them had been described as accidents, or muggings. And all of them reeked of something else.
Borund stopped mumbling about letting me go.
He discussed the situation—Baill, the attacks, the threat—with William. We all knew who was behind it. But nothing could be proved.
Borund went back to the palace anyway, met with Baill again. But the answer was the same. There wasn’t enough to convince Baill that these weren’t simply random attacks. That had been four weeks ago, after the second death. Captain Baill had been so abrupt and condescending that Borund hadn’t bothered when the third merchant died. The palace guard wasn’t going to help.
Marcus. I suddenly remembered the dark blue-coated man at the merchant’s guild. The one with dimples. The one who didn’t want spice. From Marlett.
The attacks were no longer restricted to the merchants of Amenkor. They’d expanded to include merchants from other cities along the coast.
I heard something fall heavily, like deadweight, and glanced up. Borund had collapsed back into his chair.
“Marcus?” He stared down at the papers before him blankly, then said again, “Marcus?”
William moved into the room, shut the door behind himself.
At the small noise, Borund looked up and he slapped his palm flat against his desk, sat up straight. “That’s the fourth one since the attack in the tavern.
And he wasn’t even from Amenkor. This merchants’ war has gone too far. It has to end.”
“It’s not going to stop,” I said.
Both William and Borund looked toward me. I rarely spoke, kept myself in the background, uninvolved unless one of them addressed me with a specific question, especially when it dealt with Borund’s business.
But this wasn’t business. At least, not normal business.
Borund’s eyes held mine, mouth pulled down into a frown. He didn’t want to believe what I said, didn’t want to think that Amenkor had degenerated that far.
“No,” he said, turning away from my blunt stance. “No, it must stop. It’s gone on long enough. I don’t care how ‘accidental’ some of the previous deaths looked, they weren’t accidents. And I don’t care that we can’t prove anything, that it’s all hearsay and circumstance. Baill can just . . .” He paused, steadied himself with an effort, then asked in a harsh voice, “How did Marcus die?”
“Knife to the throat, on the docks. It happened a few days ago, or at least that’s when he was last seen. They found him floating in the harbor this morning. It looks like another random mugging.”
Borund snorted. “This was no mugging. We all know that. I’m beginning to think even Baill knows it, and he’s simply choosing to do nothing about it, for whatever reason.” The longer he sat behind his desk, the angrier he became. His fingers were tapping at the papers, his eyes flicking blindly from sheet to sheet.
Finally, he slapped his palm down on the desk again and stood. “No. It has to stop. Get Gerrold to ready the horses. We’re going to the old city.”
“The guild?” William asked, moving to the door.
“No. To the palace. I want to speak to the Mistress herself this time. Or at the very least Avrell. If I have to, I’ll tell Baill it’s guild related. He’ll have to let me in then. It’s my right as a member of the merchants’ guild, damn it!”
William paused at the door, back rigid in shock, but nodded and left without a word.
“My apologies, Master Borund,” Avrell, the First of the Mistress, said as he emerged from an open arch into the sitting room, “but the Mistress is not seeing anyone today.”
Borund rose from his seat among the pillows, stiff with angry irritation. William rose as well. I was already standing, back to a wall so I could see the entire room. It was small, scattered with low seats, piles of cushions, and tables holding pitchers of water and plates of fruit. A few lattice-worked screens placed near the corners of the room sectioned off areas where people could meet more discreetly.
“I don’t understand why it’s taken so long for someone to see us,” Borund said. “We’ve been waiting for an audience all afternoon!”
“I know. I was informed just now by the Second and came immediately.” The First bowed his head and cast a measured glance toward me.
For a moment, he stiffened, his eyes widening slightly in surprise. Then he seemed to catch himself, his expression going blank, revealing nothing.
I frowned, felt a tingle of worry across my skin. I concentrated, pushed beneath the river.
The First swirled both gray and red. When I shifted the focus to Borund, the First was simply gray.
Avrell had raised his head and was now regarding Borund, but his attention seemed fixed on me, as if he were still watching, still . . . assessing.
I shifted uncomfortably. The First wore dark blue robes, an eight-pointed star symbol stitched on the chest in gold. His hands were clasped inside the wide sleeves, hidden. But he wasn’t a threat to Borund, and wasn’t an immediate or direct threat to me, if the red-gray coloration was any indication, so I forced myself to relax.
Instead, I took in his dark blue eyes, the lines of his face, his dark features, eyebrows and hair black. I listened to his voice, steady and soft, and watched his movements, every motion precise, considered. Occasionally, he would look in my direction. Nothing direct, but enough to make me stir. After a moment I realized why.
I never faded into the background for him as I did with almost everyone Borund dealt with. I never became gray.
Avrell was far too interested in me.
“I’ve tried to see you or the Mistress repeatedly over the last few months,” Borund said, “and I’ve been turned aside by Captain Baill at every attempt. I’m beginning to think the rumors about the Mistress are true!”
Avrell froze, every muscle stilling with sudden interest. For the first time, his attention seemed to focus completely on Borund. “The Mistress is simply unavailable today,” he said, voice hard as stone. “And, in general, I have been extremely busy. As you know, the coastal cities are in a stage of flux, everyone uncertain about the meaning of the passage of the White Fire six years ago. Now we’ve lost contact with Kandish and the other nations on the far side of the mountains, and winter is bearing down on us. . . . It is a difficult time. Surely, as a merchant of the guild, you see that?”
Borund sighed. “Of course. Business has been rough lately. That is precisely why I wanted to speak to you. Forgive my irritation, but Captain Baill. . . .” Borund clenched his jaw, shook his head slightly.
Avrell’s stance relaxed, so subtly that Borund didn’t seem to notice. The First seemed relieved.
“Yes, Captain Baill,” Borund said shortly.
“He did not inform me that you had come to the palace to see me regarding guild matters before this.”
Borund winced. “This does not pertain directly to the guild. I used the guild to gain access to the palace. To you.”
Avrell did not react at first. “I see,” he said finally. His brow creased in confusion. “So what did you need to see me or the Mistress about then, if not for guild matters?”
Borund hesitated, shot a quick glance toward William and me, then straightened. “I trust you will bring this to the Mistress’ attention?”
Borund nodded in relief. “Another merchant has died. Master Marcus, a representative of Marlett.”
I felt the air in the room grow tense.
Borund stared at Avrell in shock. “Yes. I would have thought you would have been informed.”
Borund sighed, the sound short and sharp. “Marcus’ body was found this morning in the harbor, a knife wound in the throat.”
The First’s eyes narrowed. “Four? Amenkor has become extremely dangerous for merchants lately.”
Borund barked a short laugh that held no humor, then caught the intent look in the First’s eyes and went still. They watched each other a long moment, something passing between them wordlessly. Borund’s expression grew grim.
Eventually, the First stirred. “Thank you, Master Borund. I’ll see what can be done. I’m sorry to say that I’ve been extremely distracted lately with other matters pertaining to the Throne and outside the guild. But perhaps I can pay you a visit sometime, so that we can discuss this problem,” he cast a quick glance toward me, “and perhaps other issues, in more detail?”
Borund hesitated, then nodded. “Very well.” He wasn’t totally placated, that was clear in his voice, but he motioned William to his side. William nodded as well.
The First acknowledged them, then turned to leave, but not before glancing once more toward me.
I didn’t move, kept my eyes hooded, unreadable, stance rigid.
A slight smile tugged at the corner of the First’s mouth a moment before he passed through the arched opening into the next room. He seemed somehow satisfied, as if a nagging problem he’d been fretting over for days had just been solved.
“Do you think anything will change?” William asked Borund as we passed through the gates of the inner ward of the palace into the middle ward containing the guild halls. William and Borund were both mounted. I stood between the two horses and slightly forward, on foot.
“Perhaps,” Borund answered distractedly. He’d been deep in thought since the meeting with the First. “There’s more going on here than a shifting of power in the guild of merchants. Much more.”
Borund shook his head. “I don’t know. Something in the palace? Something to do with the Mistress? I don’t know. If Avrell and Baill are involved, then it must have something to do with the throne.” Borund’s voice was lowered, as if speaking to himself.
I was more concerned about Avrell himself. He’d watched me too closely, had been far too interested in me for comfort.
They fell silent and I scanned ahead. We were on one of the narrow streets behind the guild halls, headed toward the large market square with the horse fountain. The last of the sunlight was fading from the sky, and the shadows were collecting beneath the buildings, dark and thick like on the Dredge.
The thought sent a shiver through me, and with a cold start I realized the Fire inside my gut had shuddered to life. Low, almost nonexistent, but there, trembling.
I straightened. But there were few people out this late, not in the middle ward of the old city. The old city was dead.
I shifted back, moved in closer to Borund, William, and the horses. None of them seemed to notice.
Borund didn’t reply. Not even with a grunt.
William sighed and gave up, staring forward into the darkened street.
The Fire was burning higher now, curling up into my chest. We passed a cross street and I tensed, glancing down the new street in both directions, but it was empty. Most of the windows in the surrounding buildings were dark as well, only a few glowing with internal candlelight. Torchlight flickered on the old city’s surrounding walls, but it was distant, out of reach.
The cross street fell behind. I glanced back once, but saw nothing.
The cold Fire began to travel through my shoulders, prickled the base of my neck.
We passed into the shadows of the next building and I looked up, toward the thin band of the night sky, toward the stars. The stone of the buildings seemed suddenly too close, too confining, pressing down, cold and immobile.
And then I caught movement out of the corner of my eye.
My gaze snapped down to the street, to the sides of the buildings, and in the patterned gray I saw the darknesses: the arch on the left side that led to an inner courtyard, the niches on the right that led to small doors. The movement had come from one of the niches twelve paces ahead, but we’d already drawn abreast of the first niche, were pulling up alongside the arch to the courtyard.
The Fire inside suddenly flared, but it was too late.
I drew my dagger, yelled out, “Borund!” in warning, but the figures hidden in the niches and in the arch dove out of the darkness.
Borund’s horse reared as he pulled on the reins, then it screamed, hooves kicking the air, and came down hard, caught one of the men with a crushing blow, trampling him underfoot. The sharp scent of blood flooded my senses, staggering in its intensity. I turned and surged forward, but Borund’s horse foundered, fell to one side, knocked William’s horse away. Startled, William lost his seat, slipped sideways in his saddle as it danced for footing, but the motion forced me back.
And then I felt the man behind me.
I stilled, plunged deeper, beneath the scent of blood, beneath the chaos of the men and the huff and stamp of the horses. Like that first fight on the wharf, with the merchant’s sons, I sank deep enough I could taste the metal of the knives the men held, could feel their sweat, their desperation. Deep enough that I could sense their movements before they made them.
The man behind me swung, the blade silent as it slashed through air. With the cold grace and brutal quickness Erick had trained into me, I ducked to one side, beneath the man’s too wide slash, and thrust backward, hard, felt my dagger slip in and out of flesh, scrape against bone, and then I shifted forward, before the man had even gasped. I felt his knees hit the cobbles at the same time as William’s body struck the wall of the building to the right. For a moment, a horrible pain swept through my stomach as I thought he’d been crushed between the building and his horse, but Fetlock gained his balance at the last moment, William slipping gracelessly between the horse and the wall to the road, foot still caught in one stirrup.
One of the horses screamed again. The other snorted in terror.
My attention flicked to Borund. His horse had separated from William’s. Borund and the horse stood in the center of the street, one of the attackers crumpled at the horse’s dancing feet, three others closing in tight, hemming in the terrified horse. Of the three, two were too close, a danger to Borund. The third wouldn’t get to Borund in time. I could finish him off later.
One of the attackers reached up to pull Borund from his mount, and I moved.
The first never saw me, never heard me. My blade slid across his throat even as he took a step toward Borund. The man gripping Borund saw the movement, released Borund and jerked back, his face startled, but he was too slow. I felt warm blood on my hand as my dagger darted upward and across into his exposed armpit, sinking deep. It slid out, slick and smooth and silent.
I turned toward the last man, on the other side of Borund and his horse, but he wasn’t there, wasn’t where I expected—
No.
I halted, searching, feeling too slow, the same terror I’d felt when racing across the Dredge toward the white-dusty man’s house now mingling with the Fire.
William had regained his feet. His horse had moved a few paces farther down the street. William was still leaning over, gasping for breath, when the last man’s knife sank into his side from behind.
I felt the pain, tasted it, like stinging, bitter sap. It seared through me, through the Fire, through the terror, slashed into my side like molten metal, and I gasped.
William arched back, the shock on his face clear, so close, almost tangible. Neck muscles pulled taut with pain, jaw clenched, he stared toward me, toward Borund, then sank to his knees, arms lax.
The man jerked the knife from his side, shoved him forward to the cobbles, then ran.
For a moment, the narrow street was silent, still, nothing but the nervous snort of the horses at the scent of blood. Then Borund shouted, “William!” and stumbled down from his mount. He tripped on the cobbles, but lurched to William’s side.
Blood was already pooling on the street, dark and black and cold in the starlight.
The serpent of rage around my heart that I hadn’t felt since the Dredge uncoiled and slid free. I tasted the blood—William’s blood—tasted the scent of the man who had stabbed him.
The scent led into the night, down the street to another arch. I could almost touch it.
My nostrils flared. The same calm anger that had consumed me on the Dredge after finding the white-dusty man’s body enveloped me. I could hunt this man down, could find him no matter where he hid. . . .
I’d made it to the arch, not even conscious of moving, when Borund snapped, “Varis!”
I glared back at him, saw him recoil at whatever he saw in my eyes, on my face. I didn’t care. This was my hunt. This was what I was.
But then Borund gasped, “He’s still alive! We need to get him out of here and I can’t move him myself!”
The naked desperation in his voice, the pure pain and the force behind it, cut through the white-cold anger. My gaze flicked down to William’s face, held in Borund’s hands. Beneath the river, I could see William breathing, his breath like steam in the air.
“Please,” Borund whispered.
With effort, I let the scent of the man slip away, shoved the anger aside, and ran to William’s side.
“We have to stop the bleeding,” Borund muttered, shrugging out of his jacket with the gold embroidery. The white ruffled undershirt beneath was already flecked black with William’s blood. “Get his horse. I’ll have to hold him in the saddle as best I can while you run ahead to the house and tell Gerrold and Lizbeth to find a healer and prepare a bed.”
“I can get the guards,” I said, rising, but Borund’s hand clamped down hard on my wrist, halting me.
“Tell no one else!” he hissed, eyes black with anger. “Especially the guards. After what Avrell told us, and especially after dealing with Baill, I don’t trust the guards. Only Gerrold, Lizbeth, and the healer.”
I hesitated, ready to protest that there was still one man out there, that leaving him alone with William was dangerous, that the manse was too far away, but the desperation in his eyes halted me.
He’d never listen, and I already knew that the last man had fled.
We hefted William up into the saddle of his horse, Borund grunting with effort, Fetlock snorting and shying, eyes white at the smell of blood. I suddenly recalled carrying the dead girl back to her mother, remembered how weightless the girl had felt in my arms, as if she were nothing but an empty grain sack, loose and useless.
William didn’t feel empty, nor weightless.
Hope surged through me, like warm water.
Then William was seated as best we could manage and Borund snapped, “Go! Tell Gerrold to fetch Isaiah. Quick!”
And I ran, faster than I’d ever fled on the Dredge.
I stood inside one of the empty bedrooms at Borund’s manse, tight against one corner, and watched the healer lean over William’s body. He moved frantically, sweat dripping from his face, even though he wiped at it continuously with a cloth. His eyes were wide but intent, trained on his swiftly moving hands as they ripped clothes, pressed clean rags against the flow of blood, held them until they were soaked through, then tossed them aside. He whispered as he worked, short, terse statements that sounded almost like prayer.
Already, the floor was covered with blood-soaked rags. A black-red fan of blood stained the sheets of the bed, dripped with slow, viscous droplets to the hardwood floor. I stood still in the corner and watched the blood gather at the edge of the bedsheet, form into a pregnant drop, then stretch.
“Blessed Mistress, help us! Why won’t the bleeding stop?” Isaiah hissed to himself.
And suddenly it was too much.
I fled the room, startled Lizbeth in the hall outside as she rushed to the room with more linen. She called out, “Varis!” but I was already past.
I flung myself into my room, so small in comparison to the one that held William, but I wrapped the closeness about me as I crouched into the corner, pulled myself into a tight ball. Tears threatened, but I thrust them back, cloaked myself in the coiled anger that still simmered, hot and deep. As deep as the Fire.
In the harshness of the anger I saw the street again, saw the fight, saw the three men surrounding Borund’s horse. I felt my dagger slit the first man’s throat, shudder into the second man’s armpit. And the third man. . . .
I heard someone open the door to my room, slowly, hesitantly, and I pulled deeper into myself, the skin around my eyes tightening. Footsteps crossed the room, light and careful, and then Lizbeth murmured, “Oh, Varis.”
She hesitated a long moment, her uncertainty like a stench on the air, then touched my shoulder.
At Lizbeth’s touch I gasped, choked on the taste of thick phlegm in my throat, and crushed my knees in close.
Lizbeth sat awkwardly on the floor in the corner, hesitated again, then pulled me close to her chest, brushed my hair with one hand.
“I thought the last man was going for Borund,” I hitched between gasps, voice so thick the words were almost unintelligible. But I would not cry. “I thought. . . .”
“I know,” Lizbeth said. “Hush now. I know.” And she began rocking back and forth, holding me tight, like the woman on the Dredge had rocked as she held the dead girl with the green ribbon in her arms.
Slowly, reluctantly, I let the tension drain out of my body, curled tighter to Lizbeth’s chest.
A long time later, when the anger had finally settled, when my chest ached and I felt empty and weak, Lizbeth still stroking my hair, I glared out at the floor of my room, unseeing, and said quietly to myself, “I thought he was going for Borund.”
Borund sat at his desk in his office, the papers that littered his desktop forgotten. A large decanter of wine sat squarely on top of them, a glass to one side, mostly empty. Some wine had spilled, but Borund didn’t seem to notice.
I stood against one wall, a few paces distant, where I always stood. The large room, with the chairs, the tables, the scattering of statues and vases and shaped stones, felt hollow and empty.
Borund reached for the glass without looking, tipped it back with a violent gesture, and swallowed the remaining wine, placing the glass back on the table gently. His eyes never left the blank spot on the wall in front of him.
I shifted uncomfortably.
“He began his apprenticeship with me when he was nine, you know,” Borund said suddenly, his voice too loud in the silence.
I didn’t respond, watching him warily. It had been two days since we’d brought William back to the manse and Borund hadn’t left the grounds once. He’d barely left his office, Gerrold bringing him food and wine. Lots of wine. Borund had sent Gerrold and Gart back to the street where we’d been attacked with a cart to take care of the bodies, but when Gerrold and the stableboy returned, they’d reported they’d found only blood on the cobbles. No bodies. Someone had already carted them away. Charls wouldn’t have wanted Borund’s body to be found in the middle ward. Not when he needed everyone to believe that the deaths were accidents. He must have had a cart waiting, ready to transport the corpses.
He just didn’t get the corpses he expected.
A few doors away, William slept fitfully and deeply. Isaiah had stopped the bleeding eventually, had cleansed and sewn shut the wound, but he’d said it was up to the Mistress whether William would live. The knife had gone deep, and William had lost more blood than he’d ever seen a man lose before and still live. There was nothing any of us could do now except wait.
Borund smiled. “I remember him standing at the edge of the desk, barely able to contain himself, his hands twitching as he clutched them behind his back. He’d glare at me when I ordered him to stand still. Oh, not openly. When he thought I wasn’t looking. And he hated keeping the records, writing down all those numbers in the logbooks, keeping track of the price of acquisition, the price the goods were sold for, the amount of the sale and to whom.” Borund’s smile widened. “But he got over that with time.” His voice was slightly slurred, the imperfections caused by the wine barely noticeable.
He looked up at me. “You don’t read or write, do you?” He didn’t wait for an answer, merely grunted, as if he were disgusted with himself for not thinking about it in the first place. “We’ll have to fix that. But not today.”
It’s what he’d said about the horses. I hadn’t ridden one yet.
His attention faded for a moment, then focused on the empty glass. He shifted forward enough so that he could reach the decanter and poured himself another glass, taking a good swallow before dropping back into his chair with a heavy sigh.
“Nine,” he muttered, and his eyes darkened. “The bastard.”
I knew he wasn’t talking about William anymore. Over the last two days, he’d only talked of two things: memories of William. . . .
And Charls.
I shifted again, straightened slightly, suddenly attentive. The last few days I’d moved around the manse in a state of shock much like Borund’s. This morning, something had changed. I’d had an idea. But I didn’t know if Borund would agree to it.
“The bloody bastard,” Borund hissed. “Vincentt, Sedwick, Terell, Marcus . . . all dead. Accidents, my ass.” He took another swallow. “Charls has to be stopped.”
He didn’t seem to hear at first, his gaze fixed again on the blank wall. Then he looked up, almost startled. But the expression faded fast, smoothed out into cold consideration, the expression of a merchant, weighing options, gains, risks.
This didn’t last long either. The cold consideration of the merchant slowly shifted into dark anger. An anger I recognized. It was the anger that had seized me on the Dredge, when I’d gone in search of Bloodmark that final time, the same anger I’d felt on the street in the middle circle, when Borund had called me back from the hunt for the man who’d stabbed William.
“You can kill him? Without being seen?” he asked.
“It will take a little time. I’ll have to follow him, figure out his patterns. But I can do it.”
Something between us shifted. For the last few months, he’d wavered between ordering me to do things, and asking me, one moment laughing and joking with me, the next wondering whether a bodyguard was necessary, worth the expense. It had been awkward and unsettling. He didn’t know whether to treat me as family, like William, or as a servant.
But now, as he watched me, I saw his uncertainty over how to treat me, how to think of me, solidify.
He’d seen me kill before, had seen me stand over the bodies. And this was the image that settled into his eyes there, in his office, as he leaned slightly forward, one hand resting on the desk. He saw me as I was: a dagger, a weapon, a tool.
I’d never be family.
Some part of me twisted inside, tightened with regret. But it was small and was smothered by anger. At that moment, I wanted Charls dead as well.
“Then do it,” Borund said, and there was no longer a slur in his voice.
I straightened, hand resting on my dagger.
I would have done it anyway, no matter what Borund said.
But it felt good to have his approval.
I followed Charls and his men for the next two weeks, noted the taverns he liked to visit, the streets he traveled to get to his warehouses and the wharf, his manse behind the first set of walls in the residential district. At first, I stayed back, over fifty paces, just close enough I could keep him in sight. It wasn’t hard to track him; he always kept at least two men at his side, like that first night I’d seen him, outside Borund’s tavern. Bodyguards, like me. Gutterscum. But after a while I realized his bodyguards weren’t as wary as someone from the Dredge would be, and so I shifted closer. Not enough to catch their attention, but enough to note that I wouldn’t be able to kill Charls on the street, or at the warehouses or wharf. Not without being seen.
That left only one option: his manse.
At the end of one of these excursions, coming up onto the gates of Borund’s manse, I saw Avrell leaving through the side entrance to the gardens. He checked the night-darkened street, but didn’t see me. Then he drew a hood up over his head and moved away, toward the old city, his pace quick.
I frowned, wondered what he had come to Borund to discuss. But I said nothing.
That was Borund’s business. My business was Charls.
And I was ready.
I stood at the side of the bed and stared down at William, at his rounded face, his wild hair, his eyes closed in sleep. His breathing came in soft sighs, barely audible. Even in the moonlight that came in through the open window, I could see that the grayness of his skin had faded in the two weeks since the attack. He was still weak, could move about his room with the aid of the wall and the furniture, but it caused him extreme pain.
The anger inside me writhed as I remembered how his face had contorted the first time he collapsed. Sweat had drenched his skin just from sitting upright. His face had blanched. When he’d tried to shift his weight to his legs, his feet hanging over the side of the bed, they’d given out, folded like cloth.
He’d gasped as he was falling, but when he hit the floor, Borund not swift enough to catch him—
I flinched back, heard the scream again, heard the agony. And as I drew in a deep breath I smelled the stench of his pain—old sweat and rotten meat.
I shook myself. The anger held a moment more, then calmed. The remembered stench faded into the salt of the sea as a breeze pushed past the curtains at the window.
William.
His brow creased, face tightened. Sweat sheened his skin, and one arm twitched.
“No,” he murmured. “No!”
I reached forward, almost touched his cheek, but halted at the last moment.
Something twisted in my stomach and I snatched my hand back.
I’d seen the way he looked at me at the tavern, after I’d killed that first man. Not fear. I’d seen fear plenty of times on the Dredge. No. William was more than afraid, he was terrified. Of me. Of what I could do, what I held inside. He was afraid of who I was.
I crouched down beside the bed, shifted closer so that I could see William’s face better in the darkness. I could smell his sweat, his scent. On the sheets, in the air.
His face was still contorted, and this close I could hear him whimpering.
I’d come into his room every night since I’d offered to kill Charls, and every night William fell into nightmare. Borund didn’t know, but Lizbeth did. I wasn’t certain how, since I made certain no one was near before I came, but somehow she knew.
William shook his head, mumbled “No” again, but the tension around his eyes relaxed. His brow smoothed and his breath calmed.
I watched him a moment more, then looked up toward the window, out into the night.
Tonight.
Gerrold let me out of the side entrance, the one Borund and William had used to bring me to the manse. I stood in the shadow of its alcove and stared out at the side street. I wouldn’t move until the patrol had passed by.
A few days after the attempt on Borund in the middle ward, palace guardsmen began to appear in the city. Patrols had wandered the city at random before; that had started even before I killed Bloodmark and fled along the Dredge. I remembered the woman who’d halted one that first day in the real Amenkor, remembered watching them move on the streets after that, some on horseback, others walking. But after the attack on Borund. . . .
Now the guardsmen were everywhere, their patrols passing through the streets of the upper city at regular intervals, a few patrols scouring the wharf and docks below. Neither Borund nor I knew who had ordered them, Avrell or Baill. Perhaps it had been the Mistress. The guardsmen did nothing except ride by, watching, their eyes hard and dangerous, cold, their horses’ hooves clopping on the cobbles. No words were spoken, unless they were interrupting a fight. But they were felt.
Instead of making Amenkor feel safer, the streets now felt closed, somehow restrictive. As if the hand resting at the back of your neck, meant to be reassuring, had suddenly grown more viselike.
The first time Borund and I had seen them in the street, he’d watched them canter by with surprised approval. But when we’d passed the third patrol an hour later, he’d sent me a grim look, mouth pressed tight. “Heavy-handed,” he’d muttered.
The rest of Amenkor agreed. I could see it in the people’s eyes, in the way they kept their heads down, shoulders lowered. Hooded capes had become common almost overnight.
And it had made following Charls harder.
I pulled back deeper into the alcove as I heard clipped hooves on stone. A moment later, two guardsmen appeared on horseback, moving sedately down the street. One of the horses snuffled and nodded its head as it passed, scenting me, but the guards didn’t pause.
As soon as they vanished around the corner of the main thoroughfare, I slid from the alcove and into the lesser shadows of the street. I knew where I was headed: the outer circle of the old city, where most of the merchants had their own estates, including Charls.
The streets of Amenkor were empty. Completely empty. It sent shivers down my back as I moved. On the Dredge and the wharf there were always movements, a sense of motion, even if the alley or street seemed clear. Things moved behind the walls, sometimes in the walls—dogs and rats and gutterscum.
Here, there was no life. Nothing but stone.
I moved swiftly, but slowed when I neared the gates to the outer circle.
They were open. Occasional patrols passed through them, the guards saluting each other or pausing to talk in low, mumbled voices to the two sentries posted there. The sentries stood to one side of the open arch, but they were relaxed, occasionally speaking to each other. Laughter broke out across the street as I settled into shadow twenty paces away from their position.
I glanced up to the night sky, toward the slice of the moon and the stars. There were no clouds tonight, nothing to obscure the light.
I suppressed a sigh and crouched low, grew still.
I submerged myself, deeper and deeper, until the balance felt right, until I could see into every shadow, see every guardsman’s face as they passed by and the lines of exhaustion and boredom on the sentries’ faces.
Then I focused, felt the currents alter around me, bend and twist, tighten, so I could see what would happen—
There.
I relaxed, shifted where I crouched, and waited. Guards moved, chuckled quietly, slapped their horses’ necks, a steady flow. A few breaks occurred, where no one passed through the gate, but none long enough for me to move, and none where the two sentries were distracted.
A hundred measured breaths later, a pair of guardsmen disappeared down the street. As the last hoofbeat faded into silence, one of the sentries turned to the other, motioned out toward the city below, away from my position.
I moved.
As I slipped into the shadows of the outer ward, the gates behind me, I heard one of the sentries grunt and chuckle, slapping the other on his back. I paused a moment to make certain they hadn’t seen me, then continued on.
The streets of the outer circle were subtly different. Closer, near the main thoroughfare leading up through the old city’s walls, but then they widened out. As I moved, I found myself settling down into a familiar pattern, one I didn’t recognize at first. But, pausing at a corner, I realized that the tension in my shoulders, in my legs as I balanced on the balls of my feet, came from the Dredge, from Erick.
I smiled slowly. I was hunting.
Sliding from darkness to darkness, I came up on Charls’ manse, stared up at the top of the wall above my head. Reaching for familiar handholds, I hefted myself up to the top. I watched the building closely, my heart beating faster in my chest. As soon as I slid down into the garden I’d be in unfamiliar territory. I’d only come to the top of the wall in my previous excursions, watched the house from a distance to get an idea of where Charls’ rooms were, to get a feel for the movements of his servants.
The manse should have been quiet, but candlelight glowed in a few of the lower windows.
I hesitated, considered leaving.
I saw William’s face, eyes closed in sleep, brows furrowed and sweaty.
I dropped into the garden. The moment my feet hit the ground, the Fire awoke, spreading cold across my chest. I ran across the garden to the house, toward a side door used by the servants to get to the carriage house and stables. I sensed nothing, heard nothing.
The door opened easily.
Charls’ manse was similar in layout to Borund’s. I stood in a servants’ entranceway, a narrow door before me. Stairs to my left ascended to the servants’ rooms above. The kitchen stood on the other side of the manse, with another set of servants’ stairs there. The door before me should open onto a long hallway running the length of the house, intercepted only by the large open foyer with the main stairs leading up to the second floor. Rooms opened up on either side.
I stepped to the inner door, past the stairs, listened, then stepped into the long inner hallway. Two doors down, candlelight spilled out into the hall. I stilled, heart halting, but the hallway remained empty.
Silently, I edged up to the open doorway, heard voices as I approached.
“Tarrence has seized all of the available resources in Marlett. It took him longer than expected though, even with Marcus gone. Some of what we expected to find in Marcus’ warehouses had already been purchased by others.”
At the door, I settled down on my heels, one hand on the floor for support. I recognized the first voice as Charls, but didn’t recognize the second. Sliding deeper beneath the river, I stole a glance into the room.
Four men, seated at a round table in a room like Borund’s office, but more sparse.
“Regin, Yvan. And Borund.” Contempt filled Charls’ voice.
“Borund,” the second man said flatly. He watched Charls carefully as he spoke. He had a long nose, mustache, gray-streaked hair pulled back in a ponytail, vaguely familiar.
I frowned, then remembered: the merchant with the mustard-colored coat from the guild hall. The one Charls had spoken to at the edge of the room, before Borund had approached him.
The other two merchants were familiar as well, people Borund spoke to in the hall on a regular basis. Both shared a glance and shifted in their seats, but said nothing.
I pulled back, contemplated moving back to the servants’ entrance.
“Yes, Borund,” Charls spat. “He’s become increasingly annoying. If he’d only died that night in the tavern. Or at least during the ambush in the middle ward.”
“But he didn’t,” the other merchant continued. “In fact, since that night, the other merchants have begun hiring their own bodyguards. And Borund has increased his purchases of essentials like grain and salt and fish, storing them in the warehouses here in Amenkor rather than shipping them out to the other cities. This is why he was to be eliminated in the first place.”
I heard someone shift forward, his chair creaking.
In a much softer voice, the unknown merchant said, “In order for this to work, in order for us to gain and keep control of the city, our little group must be the only ones in the city with vital goods to sell. If we cannot get our hands on what Borund has stored away . . .”
He let the sentence trail off and I heard him shift again.
After a long silence, Charls said, “I’ll take care of Borund . . . and his bodyguard.”
A cold shiver of fear coursed through me, tinged with anger. Charls wasn’t going to let it go.
Then, farther down the hallway, I heard footsteps.
I spun and headed back to the servants’ entrance, closing the door softly behind me. But not before I saw a servant carrying a tray with a decanter of wine and four glasses into the room.
I paused in the small entryway, wondering if I should return to warn Borund that there were more merchants involved than just Charls. But I’d come for Charls, and now that I’d actually heard him threaten Borund, I found I couldn’t leave.
Warning Borund of the others could wait.
I took the stairs two at a time, easing out into the hallway at the top. It was a servants’ corridor, narrower than the one below, running the full length of the manse. The main hallway on the second floor par alleled this one, the two separated only by a wall. A single door on the left opened onto the main corridor at this end of the servants’ hallway, other doors on the right leading to the servants’ rooms.
Charls’ bedroom was the closest on this side of the house, off the main corridor.
I pulled open the door into the main hallway and peered out.
Nothing. But the tendrils of Fire inside my gut increased slightly.
I slid out into the upper hall, stepped to Charls’ bedroom door, and entered.
The room held a bed, a large chest at its foot, a desk, two chests of drawers, and a stone fireplace against the right wall. No candles were lit, but everything was clear. Papers and a small knife used to break wax seals sat out on the desk, everything organized and neat. Clothes were tossed onto the chest at the end of the bed. The curtains over the windows were drawn, letting in no moonlight.
There were no places to hide, no real darknesses except the room itself.
Frowning, I stepped to the side of the door and readied myself for the wait.
I’d shifted into a casual crouch by the time Charls finally retired for the night, my legs beginning to cramp from standing. I didn’t hear him approach. The door suddenly opened, swinging wide at my side, almost striking my knees.
I stood in one fluid motion, feeling the door before me, concealing me. On the other side, Charls sighed with exhaustion, stepped into his bedroom, and brushed the door closed behind him. No one else entered, and I heard no one else in the hall.
As the door swung away, revealing Charls, his back to me, I stepped forward, brought the dagger up, and sliced cleanly across his neck.
Charls hunched forward, a sickening gurgling sound filling the room as blood fountained, spraying his upraised hand, the edge of the bed, the clothes on the chest, the rug over the hardwood flooring. He staggered a step forward, stumbled to one knee, then twisted as he fell, a hand reaching toward the chest for support.
I stepped forward as he collapsed, his body turned toward me now, his eyes opened in shock, in terror, his face a cold white in the moonlight, the blood black in a sheet across his chest. I wanted him to see me, to recognize me. I wanted him to know.
And he did see. He jerked, shoulders pressing back, eyebrows rising.
Warmth spread through my chest, deep and satisfying.
I knelt a pace from him, a hard frown tightening my mouth, the corners of my eyes. “You should have left Borund alone,” I said. But I wasn’t thinking of Borund at all.
He sagged against the arm holding the chest, the other hand clutched against his throat. But the strength was leaving his body. He shuddered, lost his grip on the chest and fell to the rug. The blood began to pool, spreading.
The hand at his throat reached for me, trembling, grasping. His eyes caught mine, held me, pleading, and in their shimmering depths I saw—
I saw Charls. Not the businessman at the tavern, turning and nodding to the killer waiting for his instructions. Not the merchant on the guild hall floor, speaking quietly of threats and death. I saw none of these.
Instead, I saw Charls as he saw himself. A man who had clawed his way up into the highest ranks of the merchant guild. A man who had allied himself with someone too powerful for him to control and had found himself lost. A man who was even now trying to find some way to survive.
He’d let the face he presented to the world slip when he entered his own bedroom, had let it fall away when he knew he was a dead man but was unwilling to accept it.
I saw it all there, in his eyes. His dreams, his hopes, his desperation. He wanted to live, fought hard even as the strength drained from his arms and he sagged back against the chest. I saw the man beneath the merchant. The man I’d just killed.
The realization sent a shiver of shock through me, down to my core, and I jerked back. All of the satisfied warmth fled, gone in one gasp.
I stood abruptly, and Charls’ outstretched hand dropped to the floor, all of the life, all of the straining tension leaving his body. I backed away from the corpse. Panic tingled through my arms, through my skin, prickled the hair on my arms, at the base of my neck.
When my back hit the wall, I gasped and grew still.
And then I ran, out into the hall, to the servants’ passage, down the stairs, and out into the garden. I met no one, saw no one, not even as I dropped down from the wall surrounding Charls’ manse. I fled through the streets of the outer ward, barely seeing where I ran, moving without thought, hearing nothing, smelling only the dark, viscous scent of blood. I saw only the bodies, all of the bodies, but mostly Charls, his eyes, the thick spatter of blood on his sheets, on his clothes, saw his mouth working to say something, to draw in breath when there was nothing left to do but choke.
I rounded a corner, entered the main thoroughfare near the gates, and slammed into a guardsman. The shock of the collision sent both of us sprawling, my body hitting the ground hard, head cracking into the stone cobbles of the street. My teeth rattled, bit the edge of my tongue, and I tasted blood, like bitter copper. Back against the ground, I swallowed the blood, heaved in deep ragged breaths and stared up at the moon and stars, stunned.
I heard the guardsman curse, heard shifting cloth as he climbed to his feet.
Then he leaned over me, blocked out the night sky, and I froze with a sharp, drawn breath.
He stared down at me in shock, one hand reaching tentatively for my face, reaching to brush away my hair. “Varis?”
Erick.
The panic returned, sharper than before, seizing my heart, my throat. I couldn’t speak, and the breath I held escaped in a harsh rush that tore at my throat.
I had to get away. Guilt rose up, like acid, and I felt sick. I’d killed Bloodmark without Erick’s permission, without the Mistress’ blessing. Somehow, since meeting Borund, I’d managed to shove that fact deep down inside me, managed to forget it. I’d allowed myself to relax.
But now Erick had found me.
And I suddenly realized it was infinitely worse than just Bloodmark.
I’d just killed again. Not to save myself, not to save Borund. I’d killed Charls because I’d wanted to, because he’d hurt William.
I had to get away. The impulse was like a scream. I couldn’t face Erick now, not with blood on my hands, on my shirt and dagger.
But I couldn’t move. Erick held me with his eyes, softening from shock and irritation to something else . . . concern and wonder.
And then he touched my face, his fingers trailing down my forehead to my ear, and I broke, the tears coming harsh and hot and wet. My breath hitched in my chest.
“Varis,” he said again, without question.
“I killed him,” I sobbed, the words thick with phlegm, almost incoherent. “I killed him, I killed him, I killed him.”
“Who?” He was cupping the back of my neck now, had lifted me to his shoulder, my eyes closed. I held him tight, feeling as if I were fourteen again.
“Bloodmark,” I gasped into his shoulder. “Charls.” He grew still, but his hold didn’t lessen.
On the street, someone gasped, and I drew back from Erick’s shoulder sharply, the tears choked back, abruptly realizing I no longer held my dagger. It had clattered to the street when we collided, lay just out of reach.
Vulnerability hit me, even as Erick rose.
Twenty paces away, a man stood at the edge of a cross street, wearing a cloak with the hood pulled back. I could see his face clearly in the moonlight, recognized the arrogant stance, the shocked look on his face.
The merchant’s son, Cristoph. The man I’d fought in the alley on the wharf after first coming down to the docks.
I’d killed his friend.
And he’d heard me tell Erick I’d killed Bloodmark and Charls. I knew it as clearly as if I’d been beneath the river, had smelled it there. And there was something else, something that took me a moment to recognize.
Cristoph reminded me of the merchant with the mustard-colored coat, a younger version. That’s why the merchant had seemed familiar at the guild hall talking to Charls, why he’d seemed familiar tonight.
Cristoph must be that merchant’s son.
Erick took a single step forward and Cristoph turned and fled, his footsteps echoing off the outer walls before fading completely.
Panic seized me. I lurched toward my knife, grabbed the bloody blade in one hand and turned to face Erick in one smooth move. The urge to cry was gone now, the tears dried. Only a raw hollow near my heart remained, and I could feel myself pushing that away, discarding it, hardening myself against the pain. The emotion was useless.
I was no longer on the Dredge, no longer fourteen. I didn’t need Erick.
We stared at each other a long moment, and then I said, “You can’t protect me anymore.”
And I ran.
I dodged into the street where Cristoph had vanished, eyes hard and intent, Erick shoved into the back of my mind. I’d deal with his reappearance later. For now, Cristoph was a threat. He’d seen me, had heard me say I’d killed Charls. I wasn’t supposed to be associated with Charls’ death at all.
I saw a flash of movement farther down the street as someone dodged into an alley, nothing more than a flicker of a cloak. I focused, drew the river up around me, but saw no one on the street. Nostrils flaring, I dashed down to the alley, ducked around the corner and searched the darkness.
Nothing.
I drew a deep breath, sorted through the scents on the river. But there was nothing I could attribute to Cristoph. I didn’t remember him having a scent down on the wharf, when I’d killed his friend. But not everyone had scents.
Not willing to give up, I searched the alley, the recessed doorways, the alcoves. All of the doors were locked, and the alley ended at the edge of an empty street.
The pressure of running into other guardsmen began to assert itself. And then there was Erick.
Would he send the guard to find me? Would he warn the sentries at the gate? He knew I’d killed someone. He’d seen the blood, heard me confess.
The guilt stabbed again into my gut, sliced through the last of my hesitation.
Cristoph had escaped. I’d have to deal with him later.
I headed back toward the gates, approaching warily.
The two sentries remained on duty. They didn’t appear to be any more alert than when I’d passed through earlier that night.
I breathed a heavy sigh of relief, wondered why Erick had not warned them, but pushed the thought aside and concentrated on getting through the gates without being seen by the sentries.
I had to wait an hour, but eventually they were distracted long enough so I could sneak through. I headed into the outer city, back toward Borund’s manse to report.
I did not see Erick or any other guardsmen along the way.
Chapter 11
“ THEmustard-coated merchant’s name is Alendor,” Borund said, and sank back into the chair he’d had moved into William’s bedroom. “Cristoph is one of his sons, the youngest. And if Alendor’s involved. . . .”
He trailed off into silence. It was late morning, the day after I’d killed Charls, and I’d just told him what I’d heard at Charls’ manse, and that Cristoph knew what I’d done. But I hadn’t told them everything. I’d only said Cristoph had seen me leaving Charls’ manse, blood on my clothes. I hadn’t mentioned Erick at all.
On the bed, William struggled into a sitting position, using the pillows and the headboard for support. He grimaced in pain as he moved, a sheen of sweat breaking out on his forehead, but neither Borund nor I moved to help him, careful of his pride.
When he’d made himself comfortable and caught his breath, he asked, “So what does he intend to do? He’s buying up all available resources, gaining others from those who have it and aren’t willing to sell by intimidating them or killing them, but for what purpose? A monopoly?”
“Yes.” Borund nodded thoughtfully. “But a monopoly not just on a single commodity. He wants to control everything. He’s forming a consortium, a small group of people that will control all of the trade in the city, perhaps in the surrounding cities as well if he already has Tarrence working for him in Marlett.”
William snorted, then winced, one hand moving to his side. “That’s not possible, not in Amenkor. And not anywhere else either.”
Borund shifted forward again. “Isn’t it? Look at what he’s done so far. Besides Alendor, Charls, and the two other merchants Varis saw at Charls’ manse, who else in the city has—or had—any stock of fish? Or wheat?”
William frowned in thought. “We do, in the warehouses on the docks. I think Darryn has some in storage as well. . . .” His voice trailed off, and then he looked toward Borund, eyes wide. “And that’s it. Alendor controls almost all of the wheat and fish.”
Borund nodded, his voice grim. “And what about other resources, such as fruits and vegetables? Or wine? What about cattle or pigs? There haven’t been any drovers from the north since Regin purchased that herd in the spring. Since it’s now almost winter, we can’t expect to see any more herds like that for at least five months. Even non-food stocks, like cloth. We haven’t had a shipment of wool or flax from Venitte in over four months, maybe even six.”
“Six,” William said distractedly. He’d sunk back into his pillows as Borund spoke. “And since it is almost winter, there won’t be many ships in the coming months. We’ve only got a few weeks left of decent enough weather to risk sending out more ships, maybe a month at most. What resources we’re going to have are already in the city.”
They both fell silent.
In one corner of the room, I shifted my stance, uncomfortable. But not from the weighted silence. In my mind, I could see Charls reaching for me, his hand grasping at air. I could see his blood, black against his skin. Then there was Erick and—
“What about Cristoph?” I asked.
Borund frowned. “What do you mean?”
I straightened. “He knows that I killed Charls, knows that I killed his friend down at the wharf. He could go to the Guard.”
Borund shook his head. “He won’t. Alendor won’t let him. It would attract too much attention to his house. Right now Alendor must be wondering whether you saw him at Charls’ manse, whether we even know about the consortium. He’ll want to stay out of sight until he knows for certain. Alendor will handle Cristoph for us.”
I nodded, relaxed back against the wall.
That still didn’t solve the problem of Erick. But he hadn’t reported me to the guard after Bloodmark’s death, hadn’t warned the sentries at the gates last night. . . .
I sighed and closed my eyes, intent on pushing Charls’ pleading gaze out of my head.
When I opened my eyes, I caught William watching me.
He flinched away, turning to look down at his feet.
My stomach clenched and I stared down at the floor, mouth pressed tight.
Into the awkward silence, a horn blew, long and hollow and forlorn.
Both Borund and William looked up toward the open window. It looked out onto the harbor.
With a frown, Borund rose and moved to pull back the curtains. I followed, stood at his side. The first horn was followed by others, the sounds filling the room in a strange cacophony of noise.
“What’s happening?” William said. I could hear the impatience in his voice. He wasn’t used to being restricted to a bed, unable to move about.
“Something in the harbor,” Borund said.
“But what?”
“Wait,” Borund said, his voice lowering, his forehead creasing in confusion.
On the slate-gray water of the harbor, ships flying the Mistress’ colors of gold and white were preparing to make way on the docks. But these weren’t the usual ships I’d seen off-loading crates and barrels. These were smaller, leaner, and somehow more dangerous, more purposeful, their sails crisp beneath the white-scudded sky.
And more maneuverable. As we watched, they pulled away from the docks and headed straight out toward where the spits of land on either side of the bay curved in toward each other, creating an opening to the ocean beyond. They passed a large merchant ship headed toward open water without pausing.
Gerrold appeared at the door to the room. “Something’s going on in the harbor, Master Borund.”
Borund grunted. “Yes, I see. Send Gart to see if he can find out what’s happening. Quickly.”
“Yes, sir.”
Gerrold left, and Borund shifted forward, his stance going rigid, a dark frown touching his eyes, his mouth. “What . . . ?” he began, but didn’t continue.
The Mistress’ sleek ships began to slow, drawing up alongside the mouth of the bay. They began a slow pattern, weaving back and forth across the opening of the harbor. The merchant ship made slow progress forward, but when it got close to the line, one of the sleek ships broke from the formation and approached. The ships were too distant to see anything more than blurred movement on the decks. But there was movement, even as the merchant ship slowed to a halt, sails going slack.
Borund sucked in a breath, held it.
“What is it?” William barked.
Borund didn’t respond, simply shook his head.
On the water, the sleek ship backed away and the merchant ship began to move again. But the sails didn’t go back up in the same configuration.
The merchant ship began to turn, and Borund let his held breath out forcefully, as if someone had punched him in the gut.
Behind, I heard someone tearing up the stairs and down the hallway. The door burst open and Gart skidded to a halt just inside.
“The Mistress . . . has closed . . . the harbor,” he gasped, eyes wide in shock, fear, and a child’s uncontrolled excitement.
The gates to the palace were thronged by the time Borund and I made it up through the two outer wards. Most of the men yelling at the palace guardsmen lined up in front of the closed and barricaded doors were lesser merchants and representatives from the ships—both local and foreign—that were now locked inside the harbor, all with a sick desperation on their faces. Beneath the river, the mob was a nauseating churn of anger moving in strange, unpredictable eddies that tasted of salt and smelled of sweat. Tensions were so high I had edged in as close to Borund as I could get without touching him, leaving myself barely enough room to wield my dagger if necessary. He stayed back from the main crush of bodies, but even so I was jostled into his back once or twice.
Borund swore under his breath after scanning the mob, then thankfully turned and edged away from the gates. “We’ll never get into the palace. Captain Baill must have shut the gates before he issued the orders to close the harbor, and this crowd isn’t likely to disperse any time soon. Damn! I need to know what’s going on!”
I continued to scan the crowd, shoulders tense, uncertain whether I should make any suggestions. That was William’s job.
I caught Borund’s eye, saw the stress around the edges of his face, the darkness from lack of sleep. The exhaustion was clear. I suddenly wondered how often he had gone in to watch William sleep late at night, as I had.
I drew breath to suggest we go to the guild hall, but someone stepped up to Borund’s side, someone gray.
“Master Borund?”
The boy was short, dressed in ordinary clothes from the docks, with dirty hair and a round, grime-smudged face. His eyes were large and intent and flicked continuously over the crowd.
Borund frowned as he tried to place the boy. “Yes?”
“Avrell, the First of the Mistress, would like to see you,” the boy said. “He said to give you this.” He handed over a small chunk of stone, the outlines of an ancient snail embedded in one side, then darted back into the press of bodies near the gates.
Borund grunted. I recognized the piece of stone from Borund’s office.
And I suddenly recalled seeing Avrell leaving through the side entrance to Borund’s manse.
Borund motioned for me to follow.
The dock boy led us through the edge of the mob, at first heading toward the gates. But before the press became too close, the boy angled away and we passed into a side street of the middle ward running parallel to the wall enclosing the palace. Once we were free of the area in front of the gates, we moved swiftly, the boy motioning us forward while checking to see if we were followed.
I scanned behind as well but saw no one.
The boy ducked into a small building set back from the wall that was once a stable. The reek of manure still clung to the musty air inside, but there were no horses. Instead, the building was packed with marked crates, straw poking out through the cracks between the wood.
Borund gasped as the dock boy led us into a narrow space between the stacked crates. “Capthian red! Crates of it! I haven’t been able to get this since last winter, not a single crate!”
The narrow path turned, branched once, then opened up into a small niche that barely fit the three of us hunched over. The dock boy motioned us out of the way, then pulled at a chunk of the plank flooring. A section lifted away, cut with a ragged edge so that it couldn’t be seen when set in place.
The boy motioned us down into the rounded opening below. I could see that it dropped down into a thin tunnel, even though there was no light.
Borund hesitated, glancing at me for confirmation.
“It’s safe,” I said. “It drops down to a tunnel. There’s no one down there, and I can see a lantern ready to be lit.”
Borund nodded and, with a bit of maneuvering, managed to lower himself down into the hole. The dock boy stared at me the entire time.
“How did you know there was a lantern?” he finally asked. “It’s too dark to see it.”
I didn’t answer, simply dropped down smoothly after Borund once he moved out of the way. The dock boy followed, handing the lantern to Borund along with an ember box to light it. The ember inside was still glowing hotly.
The lantern flared just as the dock boy fit the cover to the tunnel back into place. Squeezing past both me and Borund, he took the lantern and said, “Follow me.”
The tunnel grew narrower at first, until we had to proceed sideways, backs scraping the rough-chiseled wall, then branched to the left and right. We’d followed the left path for twenty paces before I realized the wall to the right was the same eggshell color as the wall of the palace, but darker, not as sun-bleached as the walls above. More tunnels branched off to the left, but we continued forward for another hundred paces before turning away from the palace wall. After two quick rights, we hit stairs leading sharply downward. The twists and turns, darkness and narrow niches, reminded me forcibly of the Dredge.
When we reached the bottom of the stairs, Borund turned back and murmured in a subdued voice, “We’re passing under the palace walls.”
After twenty paces, a new set of stairs led up to a door set in the ceiling. The dock boy set the lantern carefully on a shelf, then rapped lightly on the door.
It lifted open, light pouring down into the mostly darkened tunnel. Blinking away the sudden brightness, I saw a palace guardsman kneeling, holding the door, and standing above him was the First of the Mistress.
“Welcome to the palace,” he said.
Then another guard leaned down into the tunnel with an outstretched hand to help pull us up.
“We haven’t needed those passages in years,” the First said, almost to himself.
We’d moved from the small room where we’d emerged, through a few short corridors lit with wide oil sconces, to a bare room containing wooden chairs and a table with wine and a platter of breads and cheeses. The room was dusty, the walls stained with old soot from torches.
I sat on my heels in one corner, quietly watching Borund and the First where they stood. The guards had been positioned outside, and the dock boy had split from the group on the way to the room. The only other person I’d seen was a woman robed in white who had brought the food and wine. One of the Mistress’ servants. She’d smiled as she set the platter on the table, but the smile had faded when she turned back to Avrell and gave him a solemn nod before leaving.
Avrell’s mouth had tightened . . . and then he’d pointedly ignored me.
“Why is the harbor closed?” Borund asked tersely. “Who ordered it?”
The First sighed and motioned to a chair. “The Mistress herself ordered it.”
“What! But why?” Borund shook his head in confusion. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“No, it doesn’t,” the First said flatly.
It took Borund a moment to catch all the implications the First had put into his voice, but when he did, he leaned back into his chair, the wood creaking in the heavy silence.
“So the rumors are true,” he finally murmured. It wasn’t a question.
The First nodded. “I wasn’t certain, can’t be certain, even now. The Mistress has been acting erratically since the Fire, but nothing alarming, nothing that couldn’t be explained at the time as rational, if a little odd. But recently . . .” He sighed, his rigid stance sagging slightly. He moved to a chair. “Maintaining the Skewed Throne is not as simple as it would seem. The Mistress has always acted strangely in the past, given orders that made no sense at the time. But later you could always look back and see why the order was given. And none of the previous Mistresses . . . changed while seated on the throne. Not in any significant way.
“But since the Fire, this Mistress has. Her orders no longer make sense. There is no reason to close the harbor, and no real reason to saturate the city with the palace guard.”
“So that wasn’t you,” Borund interjected. “Or Baill.”
Avrell shook his head. “No, that came directly from the Mistress.”
He paused, as if undecided whether he should say anything more. He watched Borund carefully, and Borund stirred in his seat under his gaze. Then he turned to me.
I held perfectly still, tried to remain expressionless.
Avrell considered me a moment more, then straightened and turned back to Borund, as if coming to a decision. “In the past few months, the Mistress’ actions have shifted from simply eccentric to truly bizarre. She ascends to the tower and stares out at the sea at odd hours, even in the dead of night, in the rain, remaining there until one of the servants or the guards is forced to drag her back inside. She roams the halls of the palace, mumbling to herself, laughing, sometimes singing, sometimes growling, often in languages that no one understands. I’ve placed guards at the door to her chambers, to follow her, to make certain she does not harm herself, but somehow she manages to elude them. I ran across her in one of the gardens not two days ago, staring down at the roots of a tree when she was supposed to have been sleeping. She told me the sea was red with blood, the throne was cracked, and that the garden had once been a plaza. I took her back to her rooms, and the guards assured me they had not seen her leave. Nothing like that happened before the Fire passed through the city.”
Borund had grown increasingly uncomfortable as the First spoke. “Why are you telling me this?”
The First kept quiet for a moment, then smiled grimly. “Because more is going on than it would seem. If it was the Mistress, and only the Mistress, I believe I could handle the situation myself. But no. There’s too much going on in the city. You told me yourself about the attack in the Broken Mast, and the deaths of the merchants.”
“Yes.”
The First nodded. “I heard nothing of it until our meeting a few weeks ago, the night you were attacked in the middle ward and your assistant—William, I believe?—was wounded.”
Silence, as both Borund and the First watched each other.
The First stirred. “There is a conspiracy among the merchants, an attempt to seize control of trade within the city at a time when trade, not only here in Amenkor but everywhere on the Frigean coast, is in peril. At first I thought it was something that should be left to the guild to be sorted out. Guild politics in play, if you will. But after speaking to you a few weeks ago at your manse . . .”
He let the thought fade, but Borund picked up the thread.
“You think that this conspiracy—I’ve been calling it a consortium—extends into the palace itself.”
“Consortium,” the First muttered, as if trying out the word for the first time. He smiled. “I like that. But, yes, I think this . . . consortium is much larger than a few merchants, and has connections in the palace. In particular, I think it includes the good captain of the palace guard, Baill.” Avrell’s voice twisted with distaste at the captain’s name.
Borund’s face darkened as well. Reaching for the glass of wine that had so far gone untouched, he drank, brow creased in thought. The First eased back in his seat and waited.
After a long moment, Borund glanced in my direction.
I dove deep beneath the river, shifting the currents toward Borund as I went, then turned toward the First.
In the swirling gray currents, the First appeared gray.
As I let the river go, I felt something tug at the currents, heard a vague noise, like the dry rasp of dead leaves blown across stone, like a voice . . . or many voices. But it faded.
I nodded to Borund, Avrell watching the exchange with interest. He said nothing, but his gaze was intent, much more focused than before.
I sat back and dipped beneath the river again, but the sound of dead leaves was gone. I shrugged it aside.
“Charls is dead,” Borund began.
The First straightened slightly. “So I heard.”
Borund grunted. “I thought he was the man behind the deaths of the other merchants, and in one respect I was right. He was the one organizing and ordering the deaths. He tried to kill me at the tavern on the wharf, but failed due to Varis’ intervention. I suspected he was behind the deaths of the other merchants after that.”
Borund paused, and the First glanced toward me. I didn’t react.
“I see,” he said. And he did see. I could hear it in his voice.
“Only after the fact did I learn that it wasn’t really Charls giving the orders, that more merchants were involved.”
“And do you know these merchants?”
“Yes. But the only one of consequence is Alendor. He controls almost half of the trade in Amenkor himself. If you factor in all of the other merchants I believe he has sway over . . .”
“He can control the entire city, especially if he feels he has power over the guard.”
Borund nodded in agreement. “There are only three significant merchants left in the city not under his control: myself, Regin, and Yvan. I had thought that if the three of us allied ourselves together, we could send out what ships remained under our control still in the harbor before the weather changes. Perhaps we could find enough resources, buy enough staples, that the city could survive the winter months. William and I were just beginning to discuss this option when we heard the noise in the harbor.”
The First grimaced. “By order of the Mistress, the harbor has been closed. Not even Baill expected this. He protested more than I did.”
Borund leaned forward, placed his hands flat on the table. His face was drawn, his voice so intent it almost shook. “I’ve calculated what stores Regin, Yvan, and I already have here in the city.”
“And?”
Borund shook his head. “The city will never survive the winter. There will be famine. At least half the city will starve, and that’s assuming the winter is mild.”
“And where there is famine, there will also be plague.” The First frowned, looking down at the floor. “What of Alendor’s stores? Would the city survive if we could seize control of what this consortium holds?”
“I cannot say. Based on what we know they hold, perhaps. But I don’t have access to Alendor’s books. Nor Charls’.”
Avrell’s frown deepened, his shoulders tensing as he thought. Anger and desperation flowed off him in waves, tightly controlled.
Borund stood. “We have to get our ships out of the harbor,” he said, voice tight, “or the city will starve.”
When Avrell glanced up, his eyes were dark. “I believe that Nathem, my Second, and I can deal with the Mistress. Somehow, we will get her to open up the harbor again. But even if we succeed with the Mistress, there is still the consortium. We need their stocks, and if Baill is in league with them, we cannot take them by force. We have to break the consortium itself. Now.”
Borund nodded grimly. “In my opinion, the best way to do that is to eliminate Alendor.”
The First’s lips thinned.
And then they both turned toward me.
On the walk back to the manse, Borund muttered to himself continuously about what would need to be done once Alendor was dead, but I ignored him. I watched the street for threats, but did not see it. Not really.
I had agreed to kill Alendor. Another hunt, like Charls. Only this one would be worse. Because now I wouldn’t see the man threatening Borund and William and the other merchants of the city. I wouldn’t see the man attempting to gain control of all of the trade, the man willing to starve all of Amenkor to do it. No. I’d see the man underneath as well, the man that would plead for his life at the end if he had the chance.
We reached the manse, Gerrold opening the iron gate outside to let us in. Borund had ordered it kept locked since the first attack.
As we passed inside, something drifted through the river, a scent I felt I should recognize but couldn’t, like lantern oil and straw.
I straightened, halted just inside the gate and stared out at the street, gaze flickering swiftly over the few people, scanning the few alcoves where someone could hide. But I saw no one, and the scent—so vague—was already fading.
“Varis?” Borund asked behind me. “Is something wrong?”
Frowning, I turned and said curtly, “No. Nothing’s wrong.”
He pulled back, hearing the lie in my voice. But he said nothing, confused, as I moved past him to the house, Gerrold shutting the gates behind us.
I went to my room, that had once been Joclyn’s—a servant’s—room, and stood inside the doorway. Nothing in the room had changed in the past few months except that now there were a few clothes folded in the chest of drawers. I moved to the chest and opened up one of the drawers, stared down at the pouches inside, pouches full of coins. Lizbeth placed them there on a regular basis, but I hadn’t used any of them. Borund provided everything I needed: clothes, food. I’d never needed anything else.
Looking down at the pouches, I suddenly realized I didn’t like Borund.
I closed the drawer, glanced once swiftly over the room, and then wandered out into the hall, turning toward William’s room without thought.
William was sitting upright on the bed, sheets of paper scattered all around him. He smiled when I knocked and stepped inside the room.
“Varis,” he said, his voice weary but light. Something had changed around his eyes though, something subtle. They were no longer wide and bright and open. Instead, they appeared pinched and dark.
It could have been simple exhaustion, but I didn’t think so.
His smile faltered slightly, troubled, but remained. He motioned me inside. “Come in. I need a break.”
I moved a few steps closer, but didn’t approach the bed.
“Borund wants me to kill Alendor,” I said.
His smile froze, then faded. His shoulders slumped and he turned to stare out the window. He’d had the bed moved since that morning, so that he could see the harbor and the Mistress’ ships guarding the entrance to the bay.
“And what did you say?” he asked. His voice was flat, without inflection, without judgment.
I swallowed, standing rigid. “I’ll need to know where I’ll most likely find Alendor this evening. Borund said that you would know, that you know what inns and taverns most of the merchants frequent.”
Silence. William didn’t turn, but after a long moment nodded, as if to himself, as if he were finally accepting something that he had not wanted to believe. In a voice a little rougher and softer than the first, he said, “Alendor will be near the warehouses tonight. He usually checks on his own stocks, then finds his way to the Splintered Bow for dinner.”
I nodded, then hesitated, waiting for more, but William stared stoically out at the harbor, what I could see of his face hard and harsh, closed off. All traces of the smile were gone.
I turned to leave, feeling a warm pain deep inside my stomach, as if I’d been stabbed and was bleeding on the inside. And the blood flow wouldn’t stop.
I’d almost reached the door when William said, loudly, “Varis?”
I stood still, looking out into the corridor through the open door. I could tell by William’s voice that he’d turned toward me, was staring at my back, but I didn’t turn around. “What?” I was surprised at how thick my voice sounded.
“How . . . ?” he began, but he didn’t continue, struggling.
I looked down at the floor and closed my eyes, then turned toward him purposefully. “When I was six, my mother was killed by two men when we were returning from a trip to Cobbler ’s Fountain. We lived on the outskirts of the slums, near the Dredge. Or at least I assume so, since that’s where Cobbler ’s Fountain is. I don’t remember much from before.” I paused, seeing again in my head the two red men, heard myself say in a child’s innocent voice, Look, Mommy. Look at the red men.
Then I focused on William’s face again, on his steady, green eyes. “They killed her for what little she’d carried with her . . . some coin perhaps. They did nothing to me, left me with her body in an alley on a backstreet I didn’t recognize. I didn’t know what to do, didn’t know where to go, where to run to, so I stayed there, next to my mother’s body, until the guardsmen came.
“They didn’t know what to do with me either. They were arguing about it, trying to decide, when a woman that my mother knew showed up and offered to take me in.” I shuddered. “The guards handed me over without much hesitation—what else were they going to do with me?—and for a while I lived with this woman. She wasn’t bad I guess, but she had five kids of her own already.”
“But what about your father?”
I thought immediately of Erick, of the white-dusty man, but grimaced. “I don’t remember my father. I don’t remember much of anything from before Cobbler’s Fountain and the night my mother was killed, mainly flashes of scenes, nothing significant. So I went with the woman.”
I clenched my jaw at the memories—resentment and pain held tight but still leaking out into my voice. “After about a year—a year of defending myself from the other kids when she wasn’t looking and fighting to get enough food to eat—I decided I’d be better off on my own. So I left. I ran away, moved deeper into the slums beyond the Dredge. I lived like an animal there, scrounging in garbage heaps, eating anything I could find, scraps you and Borund wouldn’t even feed to a dog. I was dying and I didn’t even know it. Then I ran into a street thug named Dove and his gang. They showed me that I could do much better if I was a little more daring. They taught me how to survive, how to steal, how to pick pockets, how to be quick and subtle, and how to distract. I was especially helpful to them for that. All I had to do was sit in the shadows of an alley and cry and someone would come in to investigate.”
Some of the hardness had seeped out of William’s eyes, but for some reason that didn’t make me feel any better.
“So what happened?” he asked after a moment of silence.
I looked away from him. “Dove took one of the setups too far. One of the takes decided to run and it awoke something inside Dove that I didn’t like. I told him I wouldn’t help him hunt the woman down and so he abandoned me.” I winced, feeling again Dove’s fist as he struck me after I’d said no. “But it didn’t matter by then. I was almost eleven and I’d learned everything I needed to know to survive in the slums.”
The room fell completely silent. I could feel William’s eyes on me, but did not look up. Strangely, the anger I’d felt had died, along with the tension in my shoulders, in my jaw. As if telling William had released me somehow.
“So why did you leave the slums? How did you end up on the wharf, where we found you?”
I did look up at this. I didn’t want to tell him about Bloodmark, about Erick. So instead, I said, “Someone pushed me too far. And I finally realized that I didn’t want to just ‘survive’ anymore. I wanted something else.”
And now I found myself in the same situation, I thought wryly. I didn’t want to go on killing. I wanted something else.
William said nothing, trying to understand, the intent clear on his face. “So you . . . grew up in the slums?”
I laughed, the sound without humor. “I survived the slums,” I said with force. “Any way I could.”
“But . . . how can you do it? How can you—”
“Because it’s what I am. It’s all that I know.”
A pause, and I turned to go. Then, in a voice much less harsh, he said, “But you have a choice now.”
I tried not to sigh. “No. I don’t.”
And I left.
I waited outside the Splintered Bow in a darkened side street, leaning against a wall. Outside the tavern, torches flared and spat in the breeze coming off of the water, and clouds roiled overhead, blocking out the stars and the moon. Winter clouds. The air tasted of rain, a cold rain, but it was still distant. Alendor had entered the tavern an hour before, with three others—another merchant, one I’d seen at Charls’ manse, and two men I didn’t know—and so I waited, trying not to think of William or Borund, Erick or the white-dusty man. I tried not to think of anything at all, submerging myself beneath the river, floating there.
On the side street, no one tried to approach me. A patrol of palace guards on horseback sauntered by, but they said nothing, only watched me with contempt before turning and vanishing up the main thoroughfare, heading toward the palace.
The tavern door banged open and I shifted away from the wall as Alendor moved out onto the street. He stood straight, a cloak draped over his merchant’s coat. The other merchant followed a few steps behind him, like a mongrel. The remaining two men moved like guardsmen, casual and deadly, eyes always watching.
I frowned, suddenly glad there were clouds. I’d need the darkness. In the warehouse district, there were few places to hide. I’d discovered that when trying to follow Borund.
Alendor turned and said something to his bodyguards, then motioned back toward the warehouses near the docks. When they headed away from the tavern, I fell in behind them, far enough back that the guardsmen wouldn’t see me.
At the same time, the Fire inside stirred. I’d been expecting it.
They moved slowly, warily, deeper into the warehouses, taking side streets, doubling back once. I pulled back even more, allowed them to get farther ahead. I knew the main thoroughfares here from accompanying Borund and William, but Alendor wasn’t using the main streets. He used the narrows, the alleys between the large buildings.
As I followed, the Fire continued to grow, tingling down along my arms.
Ahead, Alendor and his group turned into another alley, this one half the width of the street we were already on. I waited to see if they would double back, one hand resting on the wooden wall of the warehouse to my left.
After twenty slow breaths, I sidled forward in a crouch, shifted around a rain barrel and glanced down into the alley.
Nothing but a stack of broken crates. They’d already moved out the far side. Or entered the building through a door I couldn’t see.
I ran into the alley, already searching for Alendor ’s scent.
The Fire surged, burned down my arms to my fingers. I kept moving, thinking the sudden blaze was a reaction to Alendor ’s disappearance. I didn’t realize it was something else until someone stepped out from behind the stack of crates into my path.
I slowed to a halt, the figure five paces away. I didn’t recognize him, his face shadowed, dark with a trimmed beard and mustache, shaved head. A few scars marred his cheeks.
The Fire flared even higher as I plunged myself deeper, drawing my dagger, and I suddenly felt more men.
I spun, slipping into a crouch, as three more stepped out of the darkness into the end of the alley. Without turning, I felt more behind me, stepping up to join the man with the beard.
The Fire churned in my chest, and my stomach tightened, a different sour taste flooding my mouth: fear and despair, dark and wet and acidic.
It tasted of the Dredge.
My gaze flicked to the alley walls, looking for an alcove, a niche, a hole, a darkness. But this wasn’t the Dredge. The buildings weren’t crumbling to ruin, full of empty doorways and shattered walls.
The desperation clawed at my throat and I shifted my attention back to the three men before me, face hardening. My nostrils flared.
Then someone behind me laughed.
My head snapped back to the bearded man, to the two men who’d joined him. I thought it was the bearded man laughing, but it wasn’t. Someone else stepped into the alley, wearing a cloak.
Cristoph.
I felt a sliver of surprise course through me. I’d expected it to be Alendor.
“It’s not just me and a friend this time,” Cristoph said. His voice shivered through me. I remembered it from the alley on the wharf so long ago, from that first kill in the real Amenkor.
The men began to shift forward, and Cristoph removed his cloak as he said, “Careful. She knows how to use that dagger.”
I blew out a harsh breath through my nose and then dove deeper.
They came all at once, crowding into the narrow alley, laughing, bodies rushing. I felt them surge around me, felt their movements, tasted their blades, but there were too many of them. It became a mad rush and I spun, slicing out with short arcs, dagger gripped loosely because I had no real target, only a shifting, startling world of reds.
The dagger cut deep as hands grappled me and I cried out. The river was suddenly flooded with the stench of blood. And then even that was overwhelmed with sweat, with raw grunts and curses and shouts. I flailed, felt my dagger connect again, a shallow cut, heard someone bellow and felt emptiness as they pulled back, but then someone shifted and closed in and the river broke, became nothing but a wild current of sound and scent and rough skin.
The first punch caught me on the cheek and I gasped, growled low like an animal, and dug my dagger down and into someone’s side. A scream and more copper-tasting blood, hot and fluid, and then a fist connected with my side, my shoulder, another to my back, low, and pain shot up through my spine. I cried out again, felt hands grappling with my arms, felt wetness against my side—someone else’s blood—and then there was only weight, pressing me down, hard.
I hit the cobbles of the alley with a grunt, on my stomach, my face to one side, bodies crushing my legs, my chest, a hand splayed over my head. It gripped and lifted and thrust my face into stone, pain shooting down into my neck as my lip cracked and split, blood flooding down into my throat, coating my tongue. Someone laughed and then the weight shifted off my body.
I bucked, but there were too many on my legs, too many holding my arms, and then any thought of movement halted as a foot connected with my stomach from the side.
I gasped, sprayed blood and spit onto the cobbles from my lip, and couldn’t catch my breath, my chest seizing. A sheet of white pain spiked into my skull, blinded me, and after a horrifying moment something in my lungs tore and I heaved in air.
A foot stomped down onto my back, flattened me to the cobbles, and I lost my breath again, coughed it out with a hacking wheeze.
A pause, but the hands on my arms tightened and the weight on my legs didn’t move. I heard footsteps approach, realized I still held my dagger in one hand in a death grip.
Someone leaned down close, breath against my neck.
I strained, struggled to move, neck straining with effort. Someone chuckled and I spat out blood in frustration.
“This is for Bellin,” Cristoph whispered into my ear. “And for Charls.”
He shifted away, but not far.
A hand closed around my neck, tightened as I gasped and tried to pull away, then held me still.
Cold metal touched my throat.
In the chaotic roil of the river I tasted the blade, gasped in the sharp scent of lantern oil and straw: Cristoph’s scent.
He hadn’t had one before, but he did now.
I sobbed, the sound thick and distorted.
The blade began to press down, and then I scented something else.
Oranges.
“Let her go,” someone said, voice calm and cold and dangerous, like the Dredge. And I felt a blade slip through the currents, swift and smooth, another dagger, distant—
And someone screamed, a gargled, bloody sound.
The knife at my throat jerked back suddenly, and Cristoph roared, “Kill him!”
And suddenly the weight holding me down released, pulled back sharply with the sounds of scuffling feet and grunts and the focused intensity shifted away from me, one step, two, down the alley.
I tried to roll onto one arm, felt pain sear through my chest from where the men had kicked me, and choked on my own blood. Pushing the pain away, I drew the river close, pulled it in tight, and concentrated on the struggle only three paces away.
Cristoph and his men had surrounded Erick. One man lay slumped to one side, his throat cut, but there were still six men left.
Too many for Erick to handle. Too many.
I rolled onto my side and gasped at the renewed pain but dragged myself up onto one arm, to one knee.
I still held my dagger.
I pulled myself into a crouch, turned toward the fight. The men were closing in.
And then Erick saw me. “Run!” he barked. His voice cracked with command, the voice he’d used to train me, to drill me, more a growl than a shout. His eyes flashed and he shouted again, “Run!”
One of the men turned—Cristoph—and I spun, stumbled, caught myself, and ran. I obeyed without thought. It had been drilled into me.
Behind, I heard a clatter of blades, heard Erick cry out in pain, heard someone roar in triumph.
And then I was in the street, fleeing down narrows and alleys I didn’t recognize, running without a place to run to. Pain flared at every step, in my stomach, in my chest, across one shoulder. My face throbbed, and blood trailed down from my lip, down my neck.
I stumbled to a halt, gasping, in a narrow a hundred paces out when I realized no one was following me, leaned over near a wall, one arm out for support, and coughed. My eyes burned and my hair was tangled and matted. My lip throbbed with a pain unlike anything I’d ever felt before, and there was a thin sliver of cold pain up along my neck from Cristoph’s blade, but the pain in my chest receded as my coughing fit ended, each breath no longer so piercing. I didn’t think anything was broken inside, just bruised.
I drew myself upright, suddenly fourteen, back on the Dredge all over again.
And then I heard William’s voice: You have a choice now.
My breath caught and I stared out into the black street. I choked, coughed hoarsely, and spat more blood, winced at the bruising in my chest, and thought about Erick, about Alendor, about Cristoph.
Suddenly, the pain in my chest didn’t seem so harsh. Because I wasn’t fourteen anymore, waiting for the next kick, the next shouted “whore!” Because I didn’t have to listen to Borund . . . or Erick.
I shoved myself away from the wall, staggered back toward the alley. By the time I’d reached its entrance, I’d let the writhing snake of anger inside me uncoil and drawn the river and the Fire up around me like a cloak. It subdued the pain, pushed it into the background. But it was going to cost me. I could feel the nausea rising even now, a nausea I hadn’t felt in over a year, since Bloodmark. But I’d never pushed myself this deep for this long into the river ’s depths since then.
And it didn’t matter. All that mattered was Erick.
I rounded the corner, moving with the quick, quiet stealth I’d learned from the Dredge, as fluid as a cat. At the far end of the alley, I could see the men that surrounded Erick’s body where it lay, laughing as they kicked him, muttering to each other, goading each other on. Cristoph stood back from the group. Only four men left, besides Cristoph. Two other bodies lay scattered through the alley.
Erick had little time. He’d be dead in the next twenty breaths if I didn’t act. Cristoph would kill him. Even as I watched, Cristoph smiled. The same slow, cruel smile I’d seen on Garrell Cart as he gazed down at the little girl with the green ribbon.
I pushed away from the wall, the last vestiges of the pain smothered. Everything became focused, became clear.
Twenty breaths.
The first man died two breaths later, my dagger slipping up and in and out. He jerked forward, arched back, began to fall, but I was already moving. I felt Cristoph see me, heard his drawn breath like a gasp in my ear. But he was the farthest away, and not close enough to harm Erick.
The others first.
The second man heard the first one’s startled gasp, but he wasn’t fast enough. My dagger punched into his neck even as the muscles there contracted and his head began to turn. He staggered back, hands shooting to the spray of blood, struck the wall to the left of Erick’s crumpled body, slid down its side. His pulse thrummed through my head, a dark ripple, and I tasted the heat in the air, the sweat.
Eight breaths.
“ ’Ware!” Cristoph shouted, sharp and brittle with tension, anger, and terror.
I spun, caught his eyes.
He saw something there, deep inside me. The harshness tinged with annoyance in his gaze vanished like a burst bubble, replaced solely with fear.
He stepped back.
At the same moment, the third man snarled and lunged for me.
Almost without thought my blade sliced up and into his side. I caught his weight as he fell into me, felt his last gasp of breath against my shoulder and neck. It smelled of garlic and potatoes.
He was heavier than I’d thought and I staggered, sliding to one side, out from underneath him as he fell. His blood coated my hand, slick and coppery.
Twelve breaths.
And then the river echoed with running feet. Slipping my blade free of the man’s side, I rolled his body away from me, turned to see Cristoph and the last man dodging around the corner of the alley.
My nostrils flared and I drew in the deep scent of lantern oil and straw.
I smiled and turned away from the fleeing men, kneeling down at Erick’s side.
His face was a bloody mess, cuts and gashes and dirt and pebbles mired across the scars he already had. The whites of his eyes were startling, his breath coming in short gasps. Blood dripped from his nose to the cobblestones, and his arms were hunched protectively about his body. Every breath he drew sent a shudder through his chest, his legs twitching.
“I told you to run,” he wheezed.
I leaned in close and smiled. “And I told you you couldn’t protect me anymore.”
He stilled for a moment, regarding me, and then he chuckled, the sound wet and thick. The chuckle edged into a moan and he rolled onto his back, straightening slightly. “The Mistress’ tits, it hurts,” he gasped, then winced as he moved his arm.
I dove deeper, focused as I laid a hand on his chest to keep him from moving. Nausea bubbled up, but I thrust it aside. I still had work to do tonight. The scent of oil and straw pulled me.
I could see that Erick wasn’t as hurt as he looked, beaten but not broken. Cristoph had been the real threat. Erick would survive if he’d stay in the alley and wait for me. No one would disturb him here.
I relaxed and leaned in toward him. “Don’t move. Stay here and wait for me. I’ll be back to get you.”
He looked at me a long moment, surprised, but then nodded. “I’ll stay,” he muttered.
I pushed away, but he halted me before I’d moved two steps with a barked, “Varis!”
I turned back, face creased with annoyance. The scent of oil and straw was strong, almost overwhelming.
“He’s a mark now,” Erick gasped, so intent on what he said that he’d risen slightly, his upper torso wavering a few inches off the ground.
I smiled and nodded. “I know.”
He collapsed back to the cobbles with a groan.
I’d reached the end of the alley and turned before I realized that I’d spoken to him with the same harsh crack of command he’d used to train me.
Lantern oil and straw.
I drew in a deep breath, glanced upward toward the roiling clouds. The pressure of rain weighed down on me, heavy and cold. I was barely keeping the nausea at bay now, drawing more and more on the protective Fire to keep it back.
I had to find Cristoph. I wouldn’t be able to hold on much longer.
I dodged across a main thoroughfare, ducked through an alley and sped down the street on the far side. Cristoph was moving deeper into the warehouse district, traveling fast. The other man was still with him, his scent warm, like stagnant water, and not as strong. But Cristoph’s scent intensified as I ran, seemed to be gathering like a pool of water not far away.
Another street, down the edge of a long warehouse, through another alley—
A warning pulse in the Fire and I slowed, felt a shudder as the scent of stagnant water suddenly sharpened. I tasted metal.
The man that had fled with Cristoph was quick. His blade flashed out from behind a stack of empty crates and caught me in the arm before I could jerk back. I felt the tug as it sliced through my shirt, through skin, tasted my own blood, but the silvery jolt of pain was smothered almost instantly by the Fire.
I stepped back from the crates as the man moved out of hiding. He growled, a low, dark sound, and his eyes flared with hate. But I could smell his fear in his sweat, thick and putrid. It was the bearded man, the one who had first stepped from hiding in the alley where I’d been caught.
He circled me and I turned slowly, followed him. In the darkness, he could barely see me, was listening more than he was seeing. I could see it in the turn of his head. His breathing was harsh, drowning out most sound.
“Where are you, little bitch?” he hissed, almost too low to hear.
I grinned.
He lunged forward, knife striking. I parried, ducked to one side, sliced up and out toward his chest, but he was already moving, grunting with the effort, pulling back.
My blade caught his shirt but nothing else and then we were circling again. My grin was gone. He was breathing harder, but there was a change in his stance. He wasn’t trying to see me anymore. He’d given up, was relying on his other senses.
His nostrils flared and I suddenly wondered what I smelled like, but then he dove, moving in tight and close.
My blade grated across his and I felt his breath on my face, the stench of stagnant water overpowering. His free arm snaked around my back, jerked me in tight, our blade arms caught between us. Just as I began to twist out of the hold, his foot caught the back of mine. He turned, spun me in the direction I’d been about to twist, and I tripped over his foot.
I landed hard on my shoulder, gasped as numbness sank into my flesh, my arm going dead for a moment, then tingling along its entire length. I felt my dagger slipping from my numbed fingers, heard it clatter to the cobbles of the street, but I didn’t hesitate. I rolled onto my back, reached up with my other arm and caught his wrist as he struck downward, dug my fingers into tendon and muscle. He hissed and dropped down onto my chest, knees to either side, but he didn’t lose the knife. My grip was too tenuous, my fingers in the wrong place.
He leaned forward, arm trembling, and forced his knife closer. His other hand clamped onto my arm, tried to wrench it free, but I held tight. He snarled in frustration, his knees tightening about my sides. Sensation began returning to my useless arm, a horrible burning fire, but I fought it back and began scrabbling for my lost dagger. Giving up on wresting my hand free, he pulled back and punched me.
The sheeting white pain from my already split lip almost wrenched me from the river. The Fire wavered and I spasmed, bile rising to the back of my throat. I choked it down, seized the river again, the protective Fire returning just in time for me to halt his knife a few inches from my chest.
He shifted, laid his hand on my chest, and put his entire weight behind his knife.
It was too much. I couldn’t hold it. My arm was trembling already, weakening. I could see the strength flowing out of it in tendrils. I could smell my own sweat, tainted with terror.
The knife lowered, touched my shirt, pricked my skin. Blood began to stain the cloth, and the man smiled, a wicked, vicious smile. I strained harder, the muscles in my arm burning, but the knife sank lower, digging in. The tip of the knife scraped bone.
The scent of blood intensified. White-hot pain began to flare through my chest, so hot the Fire couldn’t hold it back. I gasped, my eyes going wide—
And I pulled the river close, formed it into a hard, solid ball between me and the grinning face of the bearded man, and punched it forward.
The man jerked back with a gasp, the knife tip sliding free of my chest as his arm went weak and I thrust him away. My other hand found my dagger and with a heave I pulled myself up off the ground and into a crouch, weight in my heels.
The bearded man never had time to recover. He was still gasping, arms cradling his chest where I’d punched him with the river, when I slit his throat.
I stepped back, staggered under a sudden weight of weariness, but forced that back as well as I caught myself against a wall. The scent of stagnant water was fading, the lantern oil and straw now so strong it overwhelmed everything else, even blood. Using the wall for support, I stumbled down the street, turned, and saw the door.
I halted. The warehouse took up the entire block and had two floors. Lantern light glowed through the few windows surrounding the doorway. The entire building reeked of oil and straw.
I pushed away from the wall and moved across the street. I was no longer moving fluidly. My arm still tingled with the last traces of numbness and my chest throbbed with a dull, hideous pain that the Fire could not suppress. My face had begun to throb as well. But the writhing coil of anger urged me forward.
I didn’t hesitate at the door. Instead, I kicked it open.
At the far side of the little room beyond, Cristoph jerked around. He held a lantern and was just about to step through a second, open doorway into the warehouse itself. The room we were in held two desks and numerous ledgers on shelves.
When he saw me, Cristoph bolted through the door, taking the lantern with him.
I staggered past the desks to the door, stared out into the warehouse beyond. Crates filled the immense room, stacked high, so that the warehouse was nothing but a warren of narrow walkways and niches. But Cristoph’s scent was strong, and I could see the flicker of lantern light clearly.
I slid forward.
Cristoph turned and twisted through the passages, ducked and doubled back. But he couldn’t hide. Not with his scent so strong. As I got closer, I could hear his breathing. It was panicked, punctuated with gasps and moans.
I moved faster, my nostrils flaring. I was close. I could almost taste him.
Then the sounds of panic quieted. I paused, edged around a corner.
He stood in the short passage on the far side, and the moment he saw me he heaved the lantern at me.
I ducked under it, sped forward, heard it shatter as it struck the crates behind me. The scent of lantern oil was suddenly stronger, as intense as the blood earlier—
And then there was a faint whoosh of sound. A wave of heat washed forward and I paused.
Ahead of me, a look of horror passed over Cristoph’s face as the sheen of light intensified. He held still in the flicker of flames, then dropped his gaze to me and fled to the left, down another passage.
I turned back, smoke suddenly choking me. The entire passage behind me was consumed in flame. And it was spreading. Fast.
The entire warehouse would burn. And it wouldn’t end there.
I spun and rushed after Cristoph. He was too close to let go now. And he knew the quickest way out.
I caught up to him twenty steps farther on. He was trapped at a dead end, backed up against a wall of crates.
“Please,” he gasped.
The wall of heat from the fire pulsed behind us and now the river was saturated with the sounds of wood crackling, splintering.
Cristoph glanced toward the fire, then seemed to sag, the panic pulling back. “We’re trapped. The only way out was back through the fire.”
I frowned, then stepped forward. He only had time to tense, to draw in a sharp breath, before I struck.
I made it as painless and quick as possible. He was a mark, nothing more.
When his body slumped to the floor, I stood over it a moment. But I felt nothing. No satisfaction. No anger. No remorse.
Then I turned to look at the fire. I could see its light at the end of the passage, could see the light flickering on the wood of the ceiling high above. I could feel it pushing toward where I stood, a ripple of heat and smoke and light.
I glanced up to the top of the crates. They were stacked high, but not all the way to the ceiling.
I was small, thin. I could fit through narrow spaces.
I stepped over Cristoph’s body and began pulling myself up.
I stumbled out of the warehouse through a back entrance, where goods were loaded and unloaded. The smoke on the air was heavy and thick, cloying beneath the river, but I didn’t dare let it go. I still had to reach Erick, and the fire inside was raging, had already spread to the warehouse on one side.
The entire warehouse district might go up in flames.
I shoved the thought from my mind, gathered the Fire and the river about me as tightly as I could, and set out at a half run toward Erick. Halfway there, shouts began to rise in warning. Someone ran past with a bucket and I snorted, feeling a shiver of guilt. But there was nothing I could do. And the bucket wouldn’t help.
I stumbled into the alley where I’d left Erick, half expecting him to be gone, but he wasn’t. He was sitting up instead, back against the alley wall. I knelt beside him and he chuckled when he saw me.
“You look like hell,” he said, and I grinned. But it was weak. I was barely holding on, the nausea and pain steadily overtaking the Fire.
“Come on,” I said, pulling him upright. He groaned, rolled to his knees, and then with help managed to climb to his feet.
“What in the Mistress’ name did you do?” he wheezed as we staggered out onto the street. He was supporting me more than I was supporting him. The fire could be seen clearly beneath the lowering clouds.
“Cristoph started a small fire.”
He laughed, winced, then shook his head.
We made it to the edge of the warehouse district before I lost the river completely. It slid away without a sound, even as I reached for it, and the sudden pain and nausea was instantaneous. I vomited in a corner, Erick leaning over me, while people on the street panicked. The fire lit up the clouds behind us, thick smoke roiling skyward, reflecting the flames.
“What did you do?” Erick said again in awe as he watched.
From where I knelt, hunched over my own puke, I glanced up at him. I wasn’t going to hold out much longer. “Get me to Merchant Borund’s manse,” I croaked.
He nodded.
I felt the first fat drops of rain strike my face and then I let the nausea and pain overtake me.
I never felt myself hit the ground.
I woke when the first tremors hit.
Erick was carrying me. He clutched me tight at the beginning, but then the spasms became too violent, my arms twitching, my back arching, and he was forced to set me on the ground.
“Gods,” he muttered. His voice was muted, as if coming from a distance. In the background, I could dimly hear screams, running feet, the roaring crackle of fire. Rain poured down, sluicing my face, dripped from Erick’s hair as he knelt over me, his hands pressing me down, trying to hold me still. Fear was stamped across his face, stark and surreal.
Eventually, the tremors passed. The last thing I saw before weariness claimed me again was Erick, staring down into my half-lidded eyes, his face grim.
The second time, the tremors were worse. I never opened my eyes, couldn’t open my eyes. My body was so taut I could feel the cords of muscle in my neck. My teeth were clenched so tight my jaw ached and tears squeezed from between my eyelids. Erick didn’t set me down this time, and there was shouting.
“Open the damn gate!” Erick bellowed, but again everything was distant, removed.
A clatter of metal, a screech as I was jostled in Erick’s grip, his balance shifting. He must have kicked the gate the moment it was unlocked. And the next instant he was running.
“What is this?” someone demanded, a voice I recognized, but it took a moment. Gerrold.
“Varis,” Erick barked. “Are you Borund?”
“No.”
“Get me Borund!” The training voice.
“What’s this?” Lizbeth now, her voice harsh but shrill.
I felt the tension in my neck relaxing. The sensation of rain had stopped. We were inside.
Someone else approached. “What is the meaning of this?” Borund demanded.
“Varis is hurt.”
“What?” Borund’s voice moved closer. I felt a hand press against my face. “By the Mistress . . . Gerrold, go fetch Isaiah.”
“But the fire—”
“Now!” I couldn’t be certain, but I thought I heard true agony in his voice.
Perhaps I was something more to him than a tool, a weapon.
Receding footsteps. My neck muscles had almost completely relaxed.
“Lizbeth—” Worry now.
“Towels, hot water, I know.” Not as shrill as before. Determined and grim. Even with my eyes closed I could see her hitching up skirts, darting off toward the kitchen.
“Right. Now. You, Guardsman—”
“Erick.”
“Whatever. Follow me. We’ll take her up to her room.”
More jostling. We’d almost reached my room when I began to thrash.
“Gods!” Borund gasped.
Erick shoved someone out of the way and tossed me onto the bed. “Hold her, damn it! She’ll hurt herself!”
Hands clamped down onto my shoulders, a body pressed down over my chest. More hands gripped my legs.
“Gods, she’s strong,” Borund muttered. One leg tore free. My knee connected with something soft and fleshy and I heard Borund bark, “Shit!” before he recaptured the leg.
I heard Lizbeth gasp as she returned, and then there was a flutter of quick movements and a moment later, still thrashing madly, someone pressed a hot cloth against my forehead, water drenching down into my hair.
“She’s sweating up a storm,” Lizbeth said.
Erick only grunted.
I felt the tremors easing again, felt the strength draining away, leaving me empty.
“I think it’s stopping for now,” Erick muttered, and he drew his body weight off me, carefully.
I began to sob, the tears hot and salty, my chest hitching painfully. I tried to speak, but the strength was draining away too fast.
“Shh,” Lizbeth murmured, her voice close, her breath tickling my ear. “Hush, you’re safe now.”
Exhaustion dragged her away. Just before it claimed me again, I heard Erick say faintly, “That’s not the end of it.”
And it wasn’t. I rode the waves of tremors and exhaustion as I’d done before on the Dredge, waking enough that I could hear things faintly. But the pain was too intense. I never opened my eyes, only listened.
“. . . in bloody hells happened!” Borund, voice vehement.
“It was an ambush,” Erick spat back. “They were waiting for her!”
“Who?”
“She called the one Cristoph.”
“Cristoph? But she was supposed to be following Alendor!”
Erick grunted. “He knew. He must have led her to the alley where Cristoph was waiting.”
Silence. Then Borund said, “Cristoph is Alendor’s youngest son. Perhaps Alendor is more daring than I thought. Or more desperate.”
Another silence. “She’d be dead if I hadn’t intervened.”
Someone else entered the room. “Master Borund. The fire has spread through the warehouse district and entered the wharf. All ships have taken to the harbor, but, of course, with the blockade none can leave.”
Borund swore. “Damn Avrell! Why can’t he get the harbor opened? All our ships are safe?”
“Yes.”
Borund sighed, began pacing. “What about the rain? Is it helping? Are we safe here?”
“The wind is blowing the fire toward the wharf. There’s a chance it will jump the river to the other side of the harbor, but the rain seems to be keeping the fire damped. It’s hard to tell. . . .”
I felt Borund approach, stand over me. But I could feel myself fading. “We’ll stay here as long as possible. I don’t want to move her.”
A breath against my face as someone leaned close. Then I heard Borund whisper, “You damn well better come back, Varis. I can’t lose you. Not after almost losing William.”
His voice was choked.
Darkness. Soft darkness, like cloth.
Then a patch of light.
“How long will she be like this?” Borund asked.
Someone’s hand pulled away from my chest. The trembling fit had abated and I could already feel the exhaustion pulling me down, the cloth moving back over my head.
“Hard to say.” Isaiah, the healer. “But the seizures aren’t as strong now as before. She’s recovering. . . .”
More darkness. I pulled its cloth close, smothered myself in it. But another patch of light intervened.
“And what about Alendor?” A new voice, smooth and careful. I struggled with the cloth of darkness, pushed it back. It was Avrell, the First of the Mistress.
“No one’s seen him since the fire,” Borund answered.
Avrell sighed. “Parts of the warehouse district are still smoldering.”
“Thank the Mistress for the rain. All of Amenkor might have burned.” Borund had moved closer. “But it doesn’t matter,” he added. “With the warehouse district gone, we’ve lost most of our food stocks. The consortium is dead whether Alendor survived the fire or not. There’s nothing left in Amenkor for the consortium to control.”
“He’s still a danger.”
“I won’t kill him,” I tried to say, but the darkness was returning. I couldn’t tell whether anyone had heard me, whether I’d even spoken out loud.
Borund leaned in closer. “Not anymore.”
I fought the darkness, screamed at its resilience. “I won’t kill him!”
Avrell moved closer as well. “In any case, we still have the problem of the Mistress. Nathem and I have tried to replace her, to seat someone else on the throne, but it isn’t working. And the current Mistress still refuses to release the blockade.”
Silence. “And what do you expect me to do about it?” Borund sounded tired and distracted.
I felt Avrell leaning over me, felt his presence like a weight. “Remember our discussion when I came to your manse a few weeks back? You told me that Varis once said she sees people as ‘red,’ and that is how she knows who to protect you from.”
Borund grunted.
“I questioned that Seeker who brought her to you. He told me a similar story, that Varis claimed one of the Mistress’ marks that she helped him to hunt down was ‘gray,’ that Varis told him that meant the mark was innocent. I’d heard of this before, so when you and Varis came to the palace, I had one of the Servants check to confirm my suspicions.”
I stilled, felt the darkness drawing in close and tight and struggled against it. But I was still too weak.
Avrell leaned back, his clothes rustling. “I know what needs to be done now.”
Before Borund could respond, or Avrell could continue, the darkness claimed me. One last time.
When I woke again, it was from true sleep. No feeling of cloth darkness shoved aside for a brief moment. No patch of light. No uncontrollable trembling. Instead, there was weariness, sunk so deep into my bones I could barely move. But I opened my eyes.
Sunlight. It flooded the room . . . my room.
I blinked up at the ceiling, let the throbbing of my face, my chest, my entire body flood through me. The pain in my chest was edged and concentrated. The pain in the vicinity of my lip was dull and spread out. The rest of my body was simply bruised, muscles and flesh worn and tired and completely drained of strength.
I lay a long moment and simply breathed. The air was tainted with smoke.
“Welcome back.”
I turned my head, ignored the warning pangs from my neck.
William sat in a chair on the opposite side of the room, watching me. He smiled, and I felt something inside the empty hollowness of my gut warm. “Aren’t we the pair,” he added, then laughed.
I smiled, or tried to. There was more wrong with my face than the split lip. I remembered the bearded man punching me and lifted one arm tentatively to my cheek. It felt swollen and hot to the touch.
I let my hand drop back, more for lack of strength than anything else.
“How long?” I asked.
William leaned forward. “Five days. The first two days we were afraid we’d have to move you because of the fire, but the rain halted that, or at least held it at bay. By then we realized that the seizures weren’t as bad each time and were spaced farther apart. We figured it was only a matter of time.” He hesitated, then asked, “What happened to you?”
I turned away, stared up at the ceiling again. A surge of fear rippled through me, but not as strong as I expected. I’d never told anyone about the river, about what I saw. Not directly.
But Avrell knew now, and I assumed Borund. I found it strange that they had not told William.
“I don’t see things the same way you do,” I said. I paused, but the ripple of fear was smothered by the warmth. “When I want to, I can make everything a blur, as if I’m staring through water. Only the things of importance are clear. But it isn’t easy. Sometimes, when I push things too hard, or when I do something unexpected, something I didn’t realize I could do before, I get sick.”
I waited, not certain what to expect.
After a long moment of silence, I turned back to see William still sitting forward watching me. He smiled again, then stood.
Moving carefully, one hand holding his side, he came up to the edge of the bed.
“I’d better go tell Borund you’re awake. He and Avrell want to talk to you.”
My stomach clenched and I thought, I won’t kill him, but then William reached forward and gently brushed my hair away from my face, distracting me. A light touch that sent shivers down my neck and shoulders and into my back.
I held myself perfectly still and watched as he left the room.
I stood at a window in the palace and stared down at the city and harbor below. It had taken three days to recover enough so that I could get out of bed, and another two days before I felt well enough to come to the palace with Borund in order to see Avrell.
Borund had tried to push me. But I didn’t listen to Borund anymore. I made my own decisions.
On the harbor below, patrols still blockaded the inlet, the sleek ships flying the Mistress’ colors weaving back and forth beneath the sun. On land, a large chunk of the city close to the water was blackened, a few charred walls and half buildings still standing. Some warehouses had survived, and most of the docks, but close to a quarter of the city had burned.
I thought of Cristoph heaving the lantern at me and frowned.
I thought of Erick and bit my lip. I hadn’t seen him since that night, had only heard him in the days that followed. And he hadn’t been there at the end, when the tremors weren’t as bad. I’d only heard Borund and Avrell.
Behind me, Borund suddenly blurted, “Where in bloody hell is he?” and stopped his pacing.
As if he’d heard, the door to the little room opened and Avrell stepped in. He was followed by Erick.
I shifted away from the window unconsciously, but halted. Erick’s face was set, grim and determined and dangerous. The same face he wore on the Dredge, when he was about to kill a mark. As if he were about to do something he regretted, but that he felt was necessary.
His eyes caught mine but revealed nothing. He didn’t even nod in acknowledgment.
I settled back as Avrell moved forward, suddenly uneasy.
Avrell approached Borund first, caught his gaze, and said simply, “It didn’t work. We’ll have to do what we discussed earlier.”
Borund tensed. “Are you certain? There’s no other option?” He did not look toward me as he spoke.
“I see no other way,” Avrell said.
Borund sighed, shoulders sagging, and nodded. Then they both turned toward me.
I straightened at the looks on their faces, felt my bruised shoulders tense, felt my face set into a guarded expression. I watched Avrell, but it was Borund who moved forward.
“Varis, we need your help.”
My stomach tightened and I drew in a deep breath, anger flaring, but before I could say anything, Borund continued.
“The fire that was started in the warehouse district . . . it burned up a significant portion of our reserves. The food we’d put aside, the food that had become scarce even before the fire, all of that . . . is gone. If we gather together everything that’s left, from all the merchants in the city, and if we buy and ship as much as we can from the nearest cities, we might be able to survive until the spring harvest. But in order to do that the ships have to leave within the next five days. They have to leave now or they won’t make it back before winter makes the seas too rough. Do you understand?”
I shook my head, the tightness in my stomach beginning to sour. Because a part of me did see, already knew what was coming. “No, I don’t understand.”
He sighed heavily. “We can’t buy and ship what we need when the harbor is blockaded.”
I glanced toward Avrell. “Then unblock the harbor. Let the ships out.”
Avrell didn’t move. “We can’t. The Mistress ordered the harbor closed. The Mistress has to order the harbor opened again. Baill won’t listen to anyone else, including me. He doesn’t have to listen to anyone else, not when given a direct order from the Mistress.”
My gaze darted back to Borund. “Then get her to change her mind.”
“She won’t,” Borund said. “We’ve tried.”
The room fell silent. I knew what they wanted, but I wanted to hear them say it.
“What do you want me to do?”
And now no one wanted to speak. Borund drew back, breath held. Avrell stilled. Erick stood by the closed door and watched me, his expression still hard, closed.
“She’s insane, Varis,” Borund finally managed. I was surprised. I’d expected Avrell to speak first. “We want you to kill her.”
“No.” I said it almost before he finished, and he stepped back at the vehemence in my voice. “No, I don’t want to kill for you anymore. Find some other way.”
“There is no other way!” Borund said. His voice became hard, commanding, desperate. “We’ve tried reasoning with her, we’ve tried countermanding her orders. We’ve even tried replacing her—”
“Enough.”
Avrell’s voice cut Borund short and he turned, angry and belligerent, but Avrell ignored him. Instead, he watched me.
“You heard us discussing this before. The Mistress is insane. Something in the White Fire six years ago drove her insane. She ordered the palace guard into the city, infiltrating the streets when there was no serious threat. She ordered the blockade of the harbor, for no reason whatsoever. But that isn’t the worst.” He stood, moving forward, taking the place of Borund, who fell back.
Behind them both, Erick perked up, suddenly attentive.
Avrell stopped in front of me, held my gaze. “When the fire started in the city below, the Guard instantly responded. We moved to form brigades to the harbor, lines of men to pass buckets of water to help put it out, or at least try to contain it. But the Mistress ordered the guardsmen not to help. And so they didn’t. I stood on the tower beside the Mistress, stood there in the rain, and watched the city burn, let it burn. Because that’s what the Mistress had ordered. And do you know what she did as it spread toward the docks? She smiled.” He paused, and I saw rage in his eyes. “She let the city burn, Varis. If I had any doubts about her sanity before, they’re gone now.”
“Then replace her,” I said.
He shook his head. “I tried. Everyone I seat upon the throne dies. Horribly. The throne twists them somehow, tortures them without leaving a mark upon their bodies. Looking at the histories, no one has ever tried to replace a current living Mistress. The Mistress has always been dead before a new Mistress was named. No.” He shook his head again. “No. The current Mistress has to die before I can replace her.
“I’m sworn to protect the throne, not the Mistress.”
I looked into his eyes and saw how much it had torn him inside to admit it. A deep tear, as deep as anything I’d learned on the Dredge . . . or in Amenkor. Because in the end both the Dredge and Amenkor were the same. The people were the same.
My gaze shifted toward Erick, took in his rigid stance. “Find someone else to kill her. Like Erick. Make her one of the guardsmen’s marks.”
Avrell shook his head. “No. It has to be you, Varis.” He shot a quick glance toward Borund, who shifted uncomfortably. “Borund told me that you see the world differently, that you say those that are dangerous to you and to him are ‘red’. Erick says you told him something similar when you hunted for him on the Dredge.”
I felt a hot shudder of betrayal snap through me, shot a glare at Borund, then Erick, but Avrell had already continued.
“The Mistress knows when someone is approaching, so someone like Erick won’t be able to get close enough to kill her. No. The only one who might have a chance is someone like you, someone who uses senses other than the normal senses.” Avrell had shifted close to me, stood directly in front of me so that I was forced to focus on him, not Erick or Borund. “I don’t know how this . . . talent of yours works, but it’s our only chance to kill her. You are the only one capable of getting close enough to try. It has to be you, Varis.”
He felt me hesitate, and so added, “You wouldn’t be killing her for us, Varis. You’d be killing her for Amenkor.” Then he backed away.
I sagged slightly, turned toward Erick, appealing to him for help, for support.
His expression was set, hard and unforgiving. “I’ve seen her, Varis. She truly is insane. But you already know that. You saw it first, there on the Dredge. Remember Mari?” He drew in a breath, let it out slowly. “You told me she wasn’t a mark. I didn’t believe you then, but I do now. The Mistress was wrong. Mari shouldn’t have died. Someone who can’t see the difference shouldn’t be sitting on the throne.”
I frowned at Erick, feeling cheated somehow, the sense of betrayal deepening, and turned back to Avrell.
Something else flickered behind his eyes, something deeper, as if he hadn’t told me everything, as if he were still holding something back, some hidden purpose.
“Find someone else like me,” I said, but my voice was defeated. I’d already decided.
“No.” He shook his head, a smile touching his lips, and I saw again that flicker in his eyes, as if he were leaving something out, as if he’d lied in some way. But he’d heard the defeat in my voice as well. “There is no one else. It has to be you.”
I stared at them all, one by one—Borund, Avrell, and Erick. Something wasn’t right, something that I couldn’t see.
This is what I am, a small part of me murmured.
But this time it was my decision, my choice.
I sighed, the sound heavy, and asked, “How do you intend to get me into the palace?”
The Palace
TWO days later, I found myself tucked into a niche in the palace, squeezed into shadow, knees to my chest, looking down on a corridor lit by oil sconces. I’d come in through the passage beneath the wall. Avrell had given me a rough sketch of the palace, page boy clothing, and the key to a linen closet. I wasn’t to be seen. No one was to know I was there, especially not Baill. And I had to kill the Mistress tonight. The ships had to be released in the next three days. There was no time left.
Almost the moment I started the hunt, a passing Servant saw me, asked for my help. But the marks were my choice now, and so after helping her with the baskets I let her go. I waited until she was gone, then headed for the linen closet.
I passed through rooms, gardens, halls. I slid into a familiar waiting room, ducked into shadow, listened to Avrell tell Nathem he had ordered the Mistress’ death. After they’d passed, I slid from room to room with less stealth and more speed, until I’d found the linen closet Avrell had told me about, the one with the arrow slot I could squeeze through to enter the inner sanctum, the true palace.
I’d entered the throne room, seen the Skewed Throne itself, listened to it.
And now I stood before the Mistress’ own chambers, dressed in a page boy’s shirt and breeches. The hallway blazed with light, every sconce flaring high, flames flapping and hissing. The entire palace was lit, every hall, every corridor, every room. I could feel the energy in the building, people searching, scouring the halls, the audience chambers, the storage areas. I could feel them, guards and servants, everyone Baill could call to hand, even though I held the river at bay, the voices of the throne there too strong, too demanding for me to trust myself beneath its surface. I hadn’t used the river since entering the palace.
No one stood guard over the Mistress’ chambers.
I didn’t hesitate, even when a shiver of doubt coursed through me. Someone should be here, watching. Avrell had said he’d placed guards here, to watch over her. But it didn’t matter. Part of me already knew what I would find.
I plunged into the rooms, into the antechamber with trailing curtains, soft scattered pillows, tables of fruit and drink and platters of cheese. Empty. I slid without sound to the bedchamber, drew close to the veiled bed itself, drew back the curtains.
Empty.
And then I knew.
Baill wasn’t hunting me, he was hunting the Mistress. She’d slipped past the guards at the door again, just as before, had hidden herself somewhere in the palace.
And I knew where she would be.
She’d been calling me all night. I’d just refused to listen.
The Throne Room
THE corridor to the throne room was still empty and I stepped up to the wide double doors without skulking, standing straight, back rigid, blade drawn but held loose at my side. I stood in front of the wooden doors banded with delicate ironwork for a long moment, staring at the subtle curves of the iron, the gleam of the rounded metal studs that held it in place, the polish of the wood beneath. Old wood, the age obvious. But the grain still glowed with an inner warmth.
The Mistress waited for me inside, with the throne. I hadn’t seen her before, but I knew she was there. She’d been calling me with the voices—that dry rustling of leaves—since I’d entered the inner sanctum of the palace. Avrell had said she knew when someone was approaching, and she knew about me, knew I was here. The river hadn’t masked me from her at all. Nor the Fire.
Fear crawled across my shoulders, making the muscles tense and twitch. My hand clenched the handle of my dagger, then released.
But then why were there no guards to protect her? Why hadn’t Baill and a retinue of twenty guardsmen been waiting for me outside of the Mistress’ chambers if she knew I was coming?
I glanced down the empty hall, suddenly wary. Someone should have been here. Unless . . .
I turned back to the iron-banded door with a frown.
Unless the Mistress wanted me to come.
I suddenly thought about the ease with which I’d moved through the palace, the lack of guards, the way Baill had drawn them away from the entrance to the audience chamber. At the time I had thought the lack of guards was fortuitous, or something arranged by Avrell himself, but now. . . .
What if the Mistress had arranged it all, instead of Avrell? What if she’d somehow led Baill astray?
I shivered, steeled myself, shoulders tightening. It didn’t matter. I had agreed to kill her, to save Amenkor. If I could get close to her, I still might have a chance, whether she knew I was coming or not.
I reached for the ornate wrought-iron handle of one of the doors and pulled it toward me. The wood groaned, the sound loud in the empty corridor, but I didn’t cringe, didn’t duck into the nearest shadow. I stepped into the throne room instead, pulling the Fire that still curled deep inside me around myself in a protective wall.
The force that was the throne, that writhed and warped within the throne room and pricked the back of my neck, came suddenly, but I was expecting it this time. With a horrifying weight, it pushed me down, tried to force me beneath the river. For a moment, it almost succeeded, the Fire I’d raised to shield myself flickering as if doused with water. I grunted under the onslaught, brought my hands up to ward the intense pressure away, even though there was nothing physical for me to fight against, but the Fire held, drawing strength as the pressure relented, backing off.
But it didn’t leave. I could feel it, filling the room, saturating it. I tasted it with every breath, felt it prickling against my skin, alive and predatory. It sent sparks of static through my skin, like lightning. I shivered at the sensation, tried to brush it aside.
I suddenly remembered that I’d felt the presence once before, weeks ago, when I’d come with Borund through the passage beneath the palace wall to meet with Avrell that first time. It had tasted me then, when I’d used the river to make certain Avrell was sincere. I remembered hearing the brush of dead leaves on stone.
It hadn’t been certain then, had withdrawn, but it wanted me now.
The thought raised the hackles on the back of my neck, set every instinct for danger I’d learned on the Dredge on edge.
I could feel it pacing the room, felt its presence like the growl of a feral dog, but I forced myself to breathe, to scan the room.
Eight thick granite pillars rose to the vaulted ceiling, four on each side, resting at the top of three tiered granite steps, surrounding the wide flagstone walkway from the doors to the throne, just as before. But now every sconce along the hall had been lit, the throne surrounded by bright candelabra; only a few of the candles had been lit when I passed through the room before. The white-and-gold emblem of the Skewed Throne hung above the throne, the folds of the banner sharply defined in the light—a banner I had not seen before, in the darkness. I refused to look at the throne itself, at its shifting shape. I could already feel the feverish heat against my skin, the same heat I’d felt when I’d entered the room before.
The hall was empty, the two doors on the other side of the room—one of which I’d used to enter the throne room earlier—both closed.
A wave of uncertainty passed through me. I suddenly felt as if I were being hunted, as if someone were watching me from the shadows.
I hated being stalked.
I took one step forward, searching the darknesses behind the pillars to either side. The weight in the air surged forward like a tide, restless, the growl vibrating in my skin, but abated when I winced but did not waver.
My grip shifted on my dagger, slick with sweat.
I moved forward, not pausing now, searching the shadows behind the pillars, searching the niches. But the room was truly empty.
I halted in the center of the throne room, confused. I knew the Mistress was here, could feel her eyes on me. I could feel the throne as well, somehow heavy and solid, even though I could see it shift at the corner of my eye, could feel it gnawing at my stomach. It felt more real than the room itself.
I swallowed, turned away from the throne, back toward the door I’d entered through—
And a laugh echoed through the room, soft and cold. The laugh of a child. Behind me, the door groaned and pulled itself shut with a hollow thud.
My mouth went dry, my tongue parched. My breath quickened and something hard and hot lodged itself at the base of my throat.
The laugh came again, closer, and I spun, settling into a light crouch instinctively. I reached for the river, out of habit, out of necessity, and the pressure stalking on the air surged forward again greedily, rising high, the world shifting into gray and a roar of wind before I jerked myself back with a shudder. Pulling the Fire closer, I shot a glare of anger out into the room, drew myself up straight, and searched the room again.
The laughter had come from inside the room. Someone was here.
I stilled when a new voice filled the room, singing quietly to itself.
“. . . o-ver the water, o-ver the sea,
Comes a Fire to burn thee.
White as whitecaps, harsh as the scree,
Here it comes to judge thee.”
The woman’s voice finished with a chuckle. The sound filled the room, throaty and deep. Totally unlike the child’s laughter a moment before.
“It came for me, Varis,” the throaty voice said. My flesh prickled, my hackles standing on end at the sound of my name. I tasted my fear, like old musty cloth. “Oh, yes, it came. And it destroyed me.” Another laugh, this one bitter and choked, dying off harshly into nothing.
Calming myself, I grew still and listened instead. For a breath. For a rustle of clothing. For the tread of a foot. But there was nothing, the voice echoing strangely, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
I turned. Someone watched me, was judging me, and I struggled not to slip beneath the river as I would have done on the Dredge, because I could feel the throne watching as well, circling patiently.
“What’s the matter, Varis?” the woman’s voice said smoothly, mockingly. “Can’t you see me? Can’t you find me?”
I clenched my jaw in anger, tightened my grip on my dagger.
Another chuckle, again soft and throaty, cut off sharply as the woman barked, “Perhaps you aren’t using the right Sight!”
I halted my slow, careful spin and the voice laughed again, this time the sound draining down into choked sobs.
Enough, I thought.
Standing straight, I chose a random spot between two pillars on one side of the room and stared at it resolutely, my breath tight and angry.
The sobbing ended and the air in the room shifted from confrontational to curious. I felt the shift like a wind across my back and shivered.
“Not going to play, are we?” A different voice, aged but still strong. The voice harrumphed, like an old woman. “We’ll see about that!”
I jumped, startled, my hand raising the dagger defensively. The last statement had come sharp and close, as if the old woman were standing right beside me. But before I could even catch my breath I saw movement at the base of one of the pillars, heard the rustle of cloth.
A woman uncurled from a hunched-over posture, the folds of her dress falling to her sides. She was clothed in white, with long hair as black as pitch, the simple dress stitched with smooth, curved lines of gold at the throat and at the hem, the lines curling upward like fire, as if she were surrounded in the vague outlines of flames. Her skin was smooth, not aged with wrinkles as the voice suggested, and her cheekbones were high.
But it was her eyes that held me. A depthless brown. The darkest features of her narrow face somehow, even against the ebony hair. They captured me, didn’t allow me to look away. They commanded me, ordered me to obey even before she spoke.
“You’ve come to kill me,” she said, her voice neither the child’s voice, nor the singer’s, nor the old woman’s, but a strange mixture of all three, resonating with even more voices underneath. “So do it.”
The muscles on my shoulders crawled, an unsettled feeling trailing down my back. I’d walked right past her when I’d searched the room, close enough she could have reached out and touched me . . . killed me. I hadn’t seen her, hadn’t even felt her. My back stiffened and I suddenly felt vulnerable, exposed.
And angry. She was toying with me, batting me about like a cat with a rat.
“Why couldn’t I see you?” I asked, voice harsh. But inside I was reeling, trying to figure out what she wanted, what she needed. Was she insane? Or was she simply having a little fun?
Her brow creased a moment, but then she smiled. “Because you chose not to see me. You’ve come to kill me, but you don’t want to. So much easier not to kill when you can’t find the mark, isn’t it, Varis?” Her head lowered, her eyes narrowed. “But you see me now. And you haven’t got much time, Varis. I can occupy the guards only so long. They can’t be held at bay forever. Even Baill.”
As if she’d called them into existence, guards pounded on one of the side entrances to the throne room, voices muffled by the door. The door began to rattle as they tried to force it. The sounds echoed loudly in the room.
The Mistress didn’t move. “Kill me now, Varis. They’ll find their way in eventually.”
But I didn’t move. I didn’t trust her. The image of the cat and the rat was too vivid in my mind.
The rattle at the side door stopped. Shouts rang out. Someone called for Baill, someone else for Avrell.
“You have to kill me,” the Mistress said, her tone soft and reasonable. “You have to kill me or the city will crumble. It’s already started. You’ve seen it. On the Dredge, on the wharf, even here at the palace.” She raised her head, held herself imperious and still. “And I want to die, Varis,” her voice still calm. “I want you to kill me.”
Cold shock ran through me, from my neck down to my toes. The dagger felt suddenly heavy in my hand, weighted, my body somehow light.
“Why?” I asked, my voice sounding distant, removed.
She smiled, and at the edges of her eyes I saw the insanity I’d heard in the laughing child’s voice, in the song, in the old woman’s voice. I’d seen it enough on the Dredge, recognized it as easily as I recognized the feel and weight of my dagger, cold and deadly and familiar. I recognized it now, staring up into her face, and realized that she held the insanity at bay. Somehow the real Mistress had found herself amid the madness, and she was clinging to herself with a cold, granite desperation that was steadily slipping away from her. If I didn’t act soon, she would lose control completely.
“I’m destroying Amenkor, Varis,” she said, her voice strong but wavering. “The Fire did something to me and I can no longer control the throne. It’s begun to take over, to consume me. You need to kill me before it takes over completely.”
I hesitated, still uncertain, and her face suddenly hardened into a frown.
“Do it,” she barked, her voice filling the room, the command clear in her voice, in her stance. “Please.”
It was the tremble in the last word that convinced me, the way her lips pursed at the end, her muscles rigid with effort. I still didn’t trust her, the cat and the rat image still too real, but I had to try. It was an opportunity.
I gripped my dagger firmly, stepped forward, up the tiered stairs, watched her warily as I moved to her side. She drew in a deep breath and as I shifted in behind her, I realized sweat lined her forehead, stained her dress with fear and the effort to control herself. She lifted her head, exposed her pale neck, her stance taut, breath coming in gasps through her nose, and closed her eyes.
I drew up close behind her, but halted.
She was too tall, at least a foot taller than me. I couldn’t reach her neck.
I shifted my stance, changed tactics, adjusted so I could slide the dagger into her back, low and quick, but she must have realized my problem. She sighed and grabbed her dress in two fists, kneeling in front of me. Tossing her head back to clear her hair, back straight, she exposed her neck again.
“Do it now,” she said, and the strain in her voice was clear, made worse when the main entrance doors began to thud.
The guards were at two of the entrances now, were trying to break through with what sounded like a battering ram.
“Quickly!” the Mistress spat.
I reached forward, around her head, one hand on her shoulder to steady her, the edge of the dagger against her throat. I felt her heat through the cloth of the dress, felt the embroidery. Her pulse shivered up the blade of the dagger into my hand.
I drew a short breath, tensed the muscles in my arm, but hesitated.
It felt wrong. Too deliberate. Too manipulated.
It felt like the eyes of a cat, watching coldly, body perfectly still, as the rat began to twitch, to gather its muscles for a darting escape.
It felt like entering the alley while following Alendor. An ambush.
Fear suddenly spiked through me and I tensed, muscles contracting, ready to slip the dagger across her throat in one smooth motion—
But I was too late, too slow. The cat pounced.
A hand clamped down hard on my wrist, locked so strongly I felt my forearm go numb. At the same moment, the Mistress shuddered beneath my other hand, her muscles pulling taut.
I had a fleeting moment to think, Trap!, a fleeting moment to feel terror cascading down through my muscles like ice—
And then the Mistress wrenched the arm holding the dagger out and away, snapped it around with enough force to pull me off-balance. I lurched forward into her back with a gasp, lost my hold on my dagger. It clattered to the floor, down the three tiers of steps to the walkway.
Terror slid into panic. I froze.
The Mistress reached around her own shoulder with her free hand and grabbed my shoulder. The shuddering thud of the battering ram echoed through the room. Wood splintered, groaned. Metal shrieked. The Mistress jerked me around in front of her, my arm twisting. She shifted her grip on my wrist, pulled it up sharply behind my back, and drew me in close, our foreheads touching. Her sweat dripped onto my cheek, her wavy black hair tickling my neck. She smelled of wine and cheese.
“Not quite yet, little hunter,” she gasped in the throaty voice. “Not unless we have to. There’s another way now that we’ve gotten rid of your dagger.”
And I looked into her eyes, body still in shock, muscles still frozen in panic.
She hadn’t lost control. The real Mistress still held the insanity at bay.
A sharp grinding pop filled the hall and the Mistress pulled back as something heavy and metallic hit the floor. The noise from outside in the corridor grew suddenly louder: shouts of triumph, a bark of command.
I recognized the voice. It was Baill’s.
“Not much time at all,” the Mistress murmured to herself, then turned back to me. With a thin smile she flung me down the tiered steps to the walkway, in the direction of the throne, away from my dagger.
I landed hard, unable to control the fall. But as I hit the flagstone, the panic that had seized my muscles released, replaced with anger.
She’d tricked me. And now I had no weapon.
I snarled, twisted out of the sprawl into a crouch, and caught the Mistress descending the tiered steps slowly, almost languidly. Behind her, my dagger lay on the floor, and farther down the hall a glittering hinge from the large doors. The base of one of the doors was skewed into the hall, wood splintered.
The door shuddered again, bucking inward. The men outside bellowed.
I focused on the Mistress. Her face had turned solemn, grim. “It’s time, Varis.”
My gaze flicked to my dagger, so far out of reach, then back to her face. Desperation clawed at my arms, at my chest. My breath came ragged and torn through my nose, my jaw clenched, anger a hot lump in my throat.
The Mistress halted between me and the door. The Skewed Throne stood behind me.
“It’s time,” she said again, with a hint of sorrow, and then she raised her hand.
I reacted without thought, not certain what she intended, what she could do, only knowing that without the dagger I had only one defense: the river.
I dove beneath its surface, pulled the Fire around me as closely as possible as I felt the currents envelop me, smother me, the world graying, drowning. I dove deeper, and deeper still, using the force of my anger, my fear, noting the details in the stone, in the door, in the floor, in the light, as they shifted and clarified. The sounds of the battering ram, of the men in the hall outside the two doors, of the guttering flames in the sconces and on the candelabra, collapsed into the vibrant background wind I’d known since I’d almost drowned in Cobbler’s Fountain.
For a moment, the river held me as it had always held me, warm and comforting, like my mother’s embrace.
But then the other pressure—the throne—pounced down upon me, a surging, growling ocean of sound and sensation. I screamed, the sound reverberating around the room, and drew the White Fire up as a shield against the onslaught. But the pressure, so vast, so dark, so like the ocean, smothered me, crushed me flat against the flagstone of the hall. Granite cut into my back, each minute crack in the time-worn flagstone like a chasm, each grain of dirt and grit like a boulder. I screamed again as the pressure built, but the scream faltered as the breath was pressed from my chest.
And then I realized that the Fire still held, that it formed a thin shield between me and the howling pressure of this other presence on the river. Trying to draw breath, strange spots already forming on my vision, I pushed the shield of Fire upward with all my strength, pushed it away a hair’s breadth, another, then an inch. I gasped through clenched teeth, desperately sucked in air, and pushed harder, straining at the forces, at the eddies and currents that wove around me in a mad frenzy. I shoved the Fire upward until I could finally draw myself up and settle back onto my heels.
Breathing hard, I glanced up at the Mistress, my anger unleashed, coiling and spitting inside me. I intended to kill her now, no hesitations, no doubts.
She’d halted a few steps in front of me. Behind her, the door shuddered again, but the noise was relegated to the background, so muffled by the raging voices I held outside the Fire it almost couldn’t be heard.
The Mistress frowned, her hands at her sides.
I didn’t give her a chance to think, to respond. As I’d done with the bearded man on the street, I pulled as much of the river as I could as tightly to my chest as possible, compacted it down, and punched it toward the Mistress’ chest, my eyes dark with intent.
She raised one hand casually, palm flat, facing toward me.
The hard ball I’d thrown at her hit an unseen wall a foot from her hand and stopped. A backlash of force surged toward me, hit me hard in the chest. I gasped, in surprise and in pain, landed hard on my ass, coming up sharp against the first step in the dais to the throne.
A cold wave of real fear coursed through me, cutting through the anger like a scythe.
The Mistress knew of the river, could use it as I could.
I licked at something warm at the edge of my mouth, tasted blood. Ignoring it, I narrowed my gaze, concentrated through the pain in my chest and the taste of blood, and focused on the area in front of the Mistress’ hand.
Faintly, I could see lines of force, almost nonexistent, woven so elegantly and so tightly they seemed to merge with the raw energies of the river around her. The energies formed a solid wall.
The gathered ball of energy I’d flung at her seemed suddenly childish and frayed.
“What is that?” the Mistress asked quietly, advancing forward. Her tone was hard, demanding. “What is that around you? It tastes familiar. . . .”
I scuttled up the steps of the tier, to the base of the last step, but the Mistress continued her advance, the subtle wall protecting her moving with her. I could feel the Skewed Throne at my back. It was a vortex of energies, white and blazing, the focus of the prowling pressure that had tried to overwhelm me and still beat at the shield of White Fire that protected me.
The Mistress halted, the wall of force she held before her inches in front of me. I couldn’t back up any more. The throne blocked my way.
The Mistress’ frown grew deeper and then she locked eyes with me. “What is it?” she demanded again, voice as hard as stone.
I didn’t answer. My eyes were hooded, the anger back. My gaze flicked toward my dagger, so clear beneath the river, too distant to retrieve, then returned to hers.
Neither one of us moved for a long moment, our breath the only real sound. Somewhere in the background, another grinding pop reverberated through the room, followed by a much heavier clatter. Ripples of force shuddered through the flagstone up the hall to the dais and the throne as one of the main doors pulled free of its last hinge and struck the floor. Men shouted, surged into the room. I could taste the steel of their blades, the tincture of their armor. I breathed in their sweat and fear and confusion as they halted, taking in the Mistress and me on the dais. I felt the air shift as they moved aside, letting Baill and Avrell move to the front of the room. But it was all muted, flattened somehow.
The only thing that mattered was the Mistress. Her eyes, her will, her intent.
She watched me silently.
Then her mouth tightened. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
And she reached forward, her flat palm changing into a clawed grip. The wall she’d used to protect herself released and she grasped the front of my shirt, lifted me up, and thrust me back onto the throne.
For a moment, the room held, the Mistress taking one step back. No one else moved. The throne beneath me twisted and shifted, the sensation sending a feverish heat through my skin, making it crawl and shudder, prickle with sweat. The river held unchanged as well, the energies roiling.
Then the river exploded.
The Fire flared, rising to consume everything in sight as the swirl of gray energy that had once been the river blackened, charred, became a frenzy of pure motion that refused to resolve into images, into sight. The throne room fell away, and the voices that had plagued me since I’d entered the palace surged forward. As I cowered behind the Fire, I realized that was exactly what they were: voices. A thousand voices, more, all screaming to be heard, all hammering at the shield of Fire, demanding my attention, howling for it. It created a maelstrom of vicious wind, a hurricane force that threatened to overwhelm the Fire, to overwhelm me. And I knew with sudden certainty that it would have crushed me if not for the Fire.
I strained against its force, held the Fire rigid and impenetrable, and after a while realized the Fire would hold.
I relaxed, eased back within the confines of the shield. It still took effort, but not as much as I’d thought. I couldn’t hold it forever, but for now. . . .
I drew a deep breath, let it out in a slow sigh.
Varis.
In the white of the shield, the voice was barely a whisper, a rasp of dead leaves blown against cobbles.
Varis.
I shifted toward the voice. The throne raged around me, the voices angry. Some spat curses, others howled, others whined. A group joined forces and surged against the Fire and I was forced to fight them back, tasting sweat against my lips, tasting blood. They retreated.
Varis.
I found the voice. A woman’s voice, deep and throaty. A voice I recognized. It was the woman who had sung earlier. Not the child, nor the old woman. And not an amalgamation of many voices. A distinct voice, soft and calm, but tinged with fear.
Varis, there isn’t much time.
I’m here, I thought, pausing at the edge of the Fire. The woman’s voice came from the far side, among the whorl of the other voices.
A sigh, a hint of wine and cheese, of desperation. You have to take control. I can’t hold it any longer.
I shuddered. Control of what?
The Skewed Throne.
I don’t understand. The Fire wavered. I flung it back up, tasted more sweat at the effort, salty and sick.
The throne. That’s what this is, Varis. All of these voices, all of these people. They are the men and women who created the throne, the women who have sat upon it since that creation. All of them—all of their thoughts, their hopes, their dreams. They are the throne. But they need someone to control them, someone to order them, keep them in check.
You control them.
A snort, a sigh. That scent of wine and cheese again. I did control them. But not anymore. Something happened. Something happened to the throne when the Fire passed through it. But it was too subtle a change. I didn’t notice it, not until later, when it was much too late. By then, there was nothing I could do. And the other voices—oh, gods. . . .
Dread bled through the Fire, pooling like oil, thick and viscous. I heard sobbing.
You have to take control, Varis. I can’t hold them together any longer. There are too many. Far, far too many! I barely managed to keep control in the throne room tonight.
I was already shaking my head. No.
You have to. And now the voice was harsh again, cold. The voice of a woman used to being obeyed. You have to take my place, become the Mistress, or Amenkor will fall. I’ll destroy it, without knowing what it is I’m doing. I’ll destroy it, Varis, without meaning to. It’s already started. You have to stop it.
No.
Silence. Then you’ll have to kill me.
I winced, felt sweat prick the corners of my eyes. I blinked back tears. And if I kill you, what happens to the city?
A pause. Something beyond the Fire shifted, a shuddering, gathering of forces that was vaguely familiar, something I’d done on the river many times, only this was much more powerful.
The Mistress pushed herself forward, to see what would happen. For a moment, the voices surging all around the Fire quieted, expectant.
The city will survive, the Mistress said with a heavy sigh, the energies shifting back. But barely, and not as it is now, not as Amenkor. It will be changed, completely. And many will die.
The voices hesitated, as if stunned, but then roared back to life.
Why?
Because the city needs a ruler. I’ve done so much damage—
No, I broke in. Why me?
Silence. Because you have the Sight, what you call the river. Because you know how to survive. The woman paused. And because the Fire changed you as well. I felt it before I pushed you onto the throne, but I didn’t recognize it. The Fire is protecting you. I can sense it clearly now. It has to be you, Varis. I don’t think anyone else can handle the throne anymore. It’s too powerful. It will kill anyone else. It has killed everyone else. Avrell tried with others that had the Sight, many times, but the throne overwhelmed them all. It crushed them. Killed them. But you have the Fire to protect you. They didn’t.
Her voice, so soft and clear at the beginning, had become strained.
I’m not going to be able to hold them off much longer, Varis. I felt a surge on the other side of the Fire, like a punch. The voice gasped. Oh, gods! I can’t—
Then the voice was lost, torn away violently. I reached out, tried to hold on to her, my breath caught up short.
At the same time, a shudder ran through the Fire again and I was forced to hold the Fire steady instead. I stood behind it, frozen, feeling suddenly empty, drained, and lost. Abandoned.
Despair washed over me. I was trapped in my own little niche.
And then I thought about the Mistress.
She’d given me a choice.
I listened through the Fire to the voices. Thousands of them, howling and jabbering. Their noise increased, roaring even higher as they assailed the Fire. I felt it beginning to give. They wanted me, needed me. I could feel them pulling, trying to draw me in and consume me.
I shuddered.
Kill the Mistress, or take the throne.
There was no choice. Not in the end. Not if I could save the voice, the woman whose throat had already felt the touch of my dagger. Not if I could save Amenkor at the same time.
I rested my head forward, sighed heavily, then looked out into the black maelstrom that was the Skewed Throne, the thousands of voices that had sat upon it, that had become it. The thousands of voices that could consume me utterly, as they’d consumed the women Avrell and Nathem had tried to place on the throne before me.
For a moment, I heard those women screaming, so hard their own voices tore their throats. I felt them convulsing, muscles spasming, twisting them, contorting them. I tasted their blood as they bit out their own tongues, gouged out their own eyes, clawed their own faces.
Then I drew in a deep breath, steadied myself, and dropped the shield of Fire, exposed myself completely to the river, to the throne.
I didn’t even have time to gasp. The throne pounced and sucked me in.
It was like the time I entered the tavern behind William. The sensations—the sounds and sights and smells—overwhelming. I thought I would be crushed, but it was infinitely worse. Instead, I was picked up by the maelstrom of voices, tossed about on the wind of their noise, turned and twisted until I was completely disoriented. My breath came in short little gasps and I felt my chest constrict, my throat tighten.
And then the images began. Only they were more than images. They were parts of the voices, parts of their lives.
And I didn’t simply witness them, I was forced to live them.
A scream and I stared across a wide round room made of black stone toward Silicia a moment before she collapsed to the floor, a trickle of blood snaking from her mouth where she lay. But there was no time for concern. The power in the room was too great, shuddering beneath our control. I winced as it stabbed a dagger of raw hate down my left side, the pain visceral, enough to make me stagger, but I held firm. My gaze flicked around the room, toward the five others that still stood with me, encircling the two thrones that stood in the center of the room.
The power grew, surged higher, oppressive and dark, and as one, those of us that remained focused the power on the thrones, concentrated it, wielding it like a sword or hammer.
Sweat broke out on my brow, and another sheeting dagger of pain coursed down my side. I gasped, felt my hands clench into fists, felt my back arch as every muscle in my body pulled taut. But still I forced the power down, compacted it, squeezed it into the granite of the two thrones.
Thunder rolled through the room, vibrated in the obsidian floor. Someone else cried out, the shout cut short. Garus, I thought, my love. A different pain shot through my heart, but I couldn’t turn to see him. Not now. The power was too intense, the construction of the two thrones almost complete. A moment more, just a moment, and we would be finished. . . .
Something slipped, a barrier dropping away as the power culminated, crested, and suddenly it began to funnel into the thrones, fast, faster than we had calculated. Those remaining in the group gasped as one, and through the sudden funneling roar of energy I felt one of the others—Atreus?—struggling, trying to pull herself out of the construct. But it was too late, far, far too late.
The funneling of power increased, surging forward, sweeping down and down until it split into two distinct vortices, one for each throne, the power seeping into the simple stone of the two thrones, saturating them, and still the thrones wanted more.
I began to feel it pulling at me, felt myself caught at its very lip. With a gut-wrenching churn of despair, I knew none of us would escape. The thrones needed too much. But I began to struggle anyway, like Atreus, tried to draw myself up over the edge of the funnel, the whirlpool of energy. New pain shot into my side, paralyzed my left arm with a burning tingle. I collapsed to the floor, juddered there, seizures racking my body. My head pounded into the black stone. I felt blood seep, felt my hair grow matted, felt warm coppery wetness slip down my back.
Then the funnel took me.
I screamed, my roar echoing in the cavernous room, and for an instant I saw my lifeless body crumbled to the stone, saw my empty eyes, saw my face stained with blood, my silk shirt soaked, the fine yellow stained a deep red.
I had a moment to think, We are the last. What have we done?
And then I gasped, the vision tattering away as I wrenched myself from the maelstrom.
I had time for a single desperate breath, a single desperate thought—Two thrones?—and then
Someone wrapped their thick-fingered hands around my throat from behind and squeezed.
I gagged, hands flying up to scrabble at the heavily-muscled forearms, managed to suck in a strangled, weak sliver of air—
And then the muscles in the arms bunched and the man flung me into the wall to the right. I struck the rough eggshell-colored stone hard, my head cracking against an edge, and then I was falling, slumping downward, my vision spinning.
It’s dark, I thought, staring up into the night sky. Through blurred vision, disoriented, I noticed stars, saw the edge of the palace. I recognized the architecture: one of the balustrades before the palace, on the promenade. Flames from the oil sconce flapped raggedly in the wind, like a banner.
Then someone kicked me, the pain sharp, drawing me up out of the daze, and I screamed, the terror I’d felt an hour before as the strange White Fire swept over the city returning. I could feel the city surging in my blood, could feel its terror, and I screamed again as the foot dug deep into my side, rolling me over onto my stomach.
The blood-pulse of the city thrummed in my ears, and beneath that the thousand voices of the throne, all screaming, all horrified. But I still held them under control, still contained them.
Then the hands returned to my throat, crushed it closed. I gagged again, felt the hands shift until only one held me by the neck, fingers large enough to squeeze out all but the barest of breaths. The other hand began tearing at my robes, ripped them back from my shoulders, the man behind me, pressing his weight down hard into my back, grunting with the effort.
The hand at my throat lifted me roughly, my back arching. The other hand reached around and cupped my exposed breast, then squeezed it with bruising force.
“This,” a ragged voice hissed in my ear, spittle flecking my cheek, “is for refusing me.”
My eyes widened in shock as I recognized the voice.
Neville.
Neville twisted my captured breast viciously, then thrust me hard to the stone of the portico above the promenade, hand still tight across my throat.
A fumbling of clothes, a shifting, and I felt night air against my exposed legs. Blind spots began to appear in my vision and I sucked in a hard breath under the grip of Neville’s hand.
And then he thrust, penetrated with a guttural, visceral grunt of pure pleasure, and I screamed, screamed so hard my throat tore, his hand jerking my head so far back I could no longer breathe.
The scream cut short. The blind spots wavered and grew as he thrust again, crying out. Something tore, deep inside, and I felt blood, but the blind spots were widening, reaching out to engulf me. Another thrust, another tearing, and the voices of the throne inside me screamed
I spun away, caught and pulled and throttled by the maelstrom.
Panic began to set in. I felt myself fraying, felt everything I knew—the Dredge, the wharf, Amenkor—losing cohesion, tattering and ripping under the force of the voices.
I was losing myself to the throne. I couldn’t control it.
It was going to win.
I stood on a tower overlooking the night harbor. Light reflected on the water from lanterns on ships. Lights glowed in the windows of the houses below the palace.
A breeze touched my face and I lifted my head to meet it, closed my eyes.
In the darkness of my mind I could hear the throne, could feel the entire city resting below me. It throbbed and flowed, beat with its own pulse. A living thing that I could feel in my blood. Amenkor.
I smiled, drew in a deep satisfied breath of clear, salty sea air.
And then, far out over the sea, there was a pulse of power.
I opened my eyes, the smile fading away. I watched the horizon.
An invisible wave, like a ripple on a pool of water, rushed out from the ocean, brushed past me with a gust that pushed me back a step. I blinked at it, frowned at its taste. Something powerful, something immense. Something greater than the throne itself. Older. Ancient.
I waited. Dread stirred in my stomach, thickened in my throat.
In the back of my mind, the voices of the throne paused.
Some of them recognized the taste of the power, but not what it was for. One of them knew it personally, had seen it before.
It had spelled her doom.
I leaned forward, hands resting on the top of the tower. I waited.
There.
The western horizon was tinged with white, as if the sun were beginning to rise.
But the sun rose in the east.
My hands tightened against the grit of the stone wall.
The white light grew, spread across the sky, a wall of pure white Fire. It swept in from the sea, swift, stretching from the ocean to the clouds, immense and horrifying.
The voice in my head that had seen it once before cowered before it in gibbering fear.
The Fire struck the bay, surged through the harbor, seared its way forward, utterly silent. It swallowed up the ships, swallowed the docks, scorched onto land, up toward the palace, sweeping forward with swift, cold intent.
I gasped the moment before it consumed me, stepped back—
And then it filled me, burned down to my core, wrenched me open and exposed me, exposed all of the voices of the throne. For a moment, everything was silent, the voices stilled for the first time since they’d tossed me on the throne to see if I’d survive. I tasted the Fire, felt it burn deep, deeper, felt it judge me.
I felt its purpose. Nothing to do with Amenkor, nothing to do with me. It was residual energy, the remains of an event so powerful it had stretched across the ocean, burned across the sea from a distant land. The consequence of a magic that no one in the throne knew the intent of, that was totally unfamiliar. It was nothing to us.
I felt it beginning to fade, felt the voices of the throne returning to normal.
Then something inside the throne twisted and tore. Pain lanced up from my stomach into my throat and head and the Fire left me, passed on, sweeping across the city behind and onward, toward the mountains. I staggered into the stone wall, felt its rough surface bite into my arms, and almost vomited over the side. Breathing shallowly, I pulled myself upright.
The pain receded, drew away almost as swiftly as it had come.
I frowned, tested the throne, tested the voices. They were quieter than usual, but that wasn’t unexpected. The one that had recognized the Fire was utterly silent.
When I freed her, I found her lying on the steps of the promenade leading up to the palace, her robe torn and ragged about her waist. There were bruises on her neck, on her breasts. And there was blood.
I pushed her back, shuddered at her pain.
The Fire had destroyed her. The guard Neville had raped and killed her over a thousand years before.
I turned and stared in the direction of the mountains. The Fire was a white light beyond their rim, fading even as I watched.
I reached for the city, felt its pulse. I could hear screams already, could see lights appearing in all quarters. The people were panicked, some driven mad. I could feel the disturbance, the throb of the city swift and erratic. It would take time to settle.
But at least the Fire, wherever it came from, whatever it had done, had done no harm here.
I cried out, wrenched myself away from the maelstrom and the memory of the Mistress. My breath came in ragged gasps. More memories surged forward. I saw a thousand deaths, saw the city burn, the palace gates collapse, walls crumble, the palace rebuilt, the palace expanded, another tier of walls go up, all in a blinding flash. Sunsets roared across my vision, starscapes, gardens, streams, grottoes, storms, lightning flaring sharp and smelling of seared air. I was slapped, choked, knifed, spat upon. I was kissed, hefted up into an embrace, dropped down to a bed, to a rug, thrust to a stone wall, onto the seat of a rattling carriage, onto cool grass. I was held to a wall and lashed, held to the ground and raped as I screamed, moaned and bucked, gibbering in fear. I was tortured, hot iron pressed into flesh, charred and blinded, my toenails ripped out, wood shoved under my fingernails. I was kicked, feet driving into my stomach. I was drowned, water closing up over my head, cold and terrifying and inviting. I heard my mother’s laugh.
I latched onto the memory, onto Cobbler’s Fountain. I latched onto the sensation of water, filling my nose, my ears, muting out the sound of the world, everything collapsing down into a blur of wind, a wash of gray filled with ripples from the surface of the water above. I saw shadowy shapes there, saw sunlight reflected, refracted, dazzling and bright. But that was above the water, removed.
Beneath the water, it was just me. Not the man being sucked into the two thrones at their creation. Not the woman being raped above the steps of the promenade. Not the woman who’d witnessed the Fire from the tower of the palace.
Just Varis.
I felt something else struggling deep inside me, pushing forward. Someone young, no more than six. Someone who had died that day at the fountain, when she had witnessed her mother’s death in the alley at the hands of the red men.
Ash.
The name was no more than a whisper, spoken with my mother’s voice. The name I had been given, that I could not reveal to Erick when he asked. But the little six-year-old girl who had tripped and fallen in Cobbler’s Fountain eleven years before stood beside me now. I could feel her.
We were both drowning. Varis and Ash. We were dying inside the throne, together, as one.
I could let the throne consume me. There would be no more deaths then, no more marks. There would be nothing.
But then the Mistress would not be released.
No, not the Mistress. Her name was Eryn. Eryn would not be released.
And then what of Amenkor? The Mistress had said it would survive, but barely. It would survive but would not be the same.
I stared up at the shapes moving above the water, blurred beyond recognition. The shapes of the people inside the throne, those that had created it, those that had sat upon it or touched it since its creation.
If I stayed, I needed to find a way to control them, and I suddenly realized I knew how. It was just like the crowd at the tavern. It was a choice. I could be Ash, sit back and watch, hover around the dead body of Amenkor and do nothing, let the throne overwhelm me, let the guards send me where they willed.
Or I could be Varis. Ruthless. Hard. Forceful. I could seize control.
This is who I am.
I drew a deep breath and pulled everything that I thought of as myself, all of my memories of the Dredge, all of my emotions, everything that was me together, wove it tight.
And then I pushed myself up through the water. I left my mother behind. Left the six-year-old girl named Ash behind. That wasn’t me anymore. I’d changed.
At the last moment, just before I breached the surface of the water, I felt the Mistress’ hands—Eryn’s hands—reach down to grab me beneath my arms and help pull me up into the sunlight.
Welcome to the throne, Varis.
And it was just like the tavern.
I opened my eyes to the throne room in Amenkor. Baill and Avrell stood a few steps down from the dais, watching me carefully. Baill’s sword was drawn, but he was a step behind Avrell, the First of the Mistress holding him back with one hand. The rest of the guards were farther back, clustered around the broken throne room door and the pillars to the right and left.
I glanced down. The Mistress had collapsed to the floor, her figure crumpled. Her face was worn, sheened with sweat and tears.
Beneath me, the throne no longer twisted and turned, warping itself into different shapes. It had solidified into a stone curve with armrests and no back, the edges of the armrests curled under. My arms rested lightly on its edges, hands gripping the ends. My back was rigid.
I felt a heavy throb beating all around me, recognized it from Eryn’s memory of the tower.
It was the city. Amenkor. From the Dredge to the palace. A steady pulse of teeming life. I could reach out and touch each one of those lives if I wanted, could watch them live, could help them. Those in the slums, rooting through garbage. Those on the wharfs and in the ships blockaded inside the harbor. Even those sorting through the burned-out rubble of the warehouse district.
I drew in a deep breath, felt the city warm and vibrant inside of me.
I let the breath out with a sigh. The city could wait.
I turned toward the Mistress, who began to stir. On the river, lines of energy entrapped her, bound her to the throne. I began to pull the threads apart, carefully. The voices fought me, but I knew myself and ignored them, thrust them into the background as I’d done my entire life with all the noises of the Dredge that were unimportant. Just like the tavern.
By the time the Mistress roused completely, sitting upright with a groan, she was no longer the Mistress. She was Eryn again, wholly her own.
She raised a trembling hand to her head and gasped, shooting a glance toward me. Avrell stepped toward her, one hand outstretched.
“Mistress?”
She turned toward him, then shook her head. “No,” she said, then sobbed, hiding her hands in her face.
Avrell’s hand dropped and he stood up straight, turning toward me. His face became a solemn mask and he folded his hands formally before him. He bowed his head slightly.
“Mistress.”
I turned to Baill, eyes hard and intent.
He glanced toward Avrell with a frown, then lowered his sword and sheathed it. He bowed down, the motion quick and barely deferential. “Mistress.”
Behind him, the guards that had gathered, mixed with a few white-robed servants, bowed down as well, a clatter of sound and shuffling cloth.
I wondered briefly how many of those servants were true Servants, young girls and women who had a touch of the power like me, who had been brought here to be trained with the hopes that one day they could control the throne.
I wondered how many of those Servants had died on the throne when Avrell and Nathem had tried to replace Eryn.
Avrell stepped forward to catch my attention.
“What of the city?”
I felt the city rushing inside me, hurt but vital, beaten but not destroyed.
I smiled and thought of the Dredge, of the wharf, of the palace itself. I felt the scar of the fire in the warehouse district, felt the ships gliding on the waters of the bay, felt the River surging through the center of the city. I heard the steady pulse of its blood in my ears, full of heat and strength.
“It will survive,” I said, and behind my voice I heard other voices, all of the women who had sat on the throne after its forging, all of their strengths, all of their memories.
It would not be easy.
But it would survive.
1
Forthcoming in hardcover from DAW Books
Copyright © 2005 by Joshua Palmatier.
All Rights Reserved.
DAW Books Collectors No. 1350.
DAW Books are distributed by the Penguin Group (USA)
All characters and events in this book are fictitious.
All resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
First paperback printing, November 2006
DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED
U.S. PAT. OFF AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES
—MARCA REGISTRADA
HECHO EN U.S.A.
S.A.
eISBN : 978-1-101-08711-4
http://us.penguingroup.com
