Focus.
“We should head out now, while we have cover. Just in case,” Rone said to the others. He slipped back into the room they’d just left and grabbed his packed bag. Rone picked up the emigration papers and checked that they were all there before cramming them into a pocket in his pack. It was unlikely, but maybe Rone could doctor them enough to make them passable. And somehow make a copy for Sandis. Then again, maybe the code stamped on the bottom of each page prevented counterfeiting. He wasn’t sure, but now wasn’t the time to worry about it.
He returned to the hall and watched the others prepare. Sandis rebraided Bastien’s thick mane. Kaili pulled on a tattered coat that looked like it’d come out of a low-end charity bin. She looked over the nook with a note of sadness. It wouldn’t be long before another drifter found the space and claimed it.
Rist said nothing, just took the lamp—it had a hook hanging off of it, so it was probably stolen—from Kaili and started down the length of the tunnel toward the grating they’d used to exit and enter.
“Rist,” Sandis said as they neared, “snuff the light.”
Rist grumbled, but did so.
For a moment, impenetrable darkness colored their path. Rist moved the grate, the sound of metal sliding over concrete too loud to Rone’s ears. His eyes slowly adjusted. He stepped out last, right after Bastien. This was a darker corner of the city, but it would only take a block or two to reach light.
Sandis was right—for now, the cathedral was the safest place for them, until Rone could scout out something better. It’d buy them an extra day. Hell, maybe if their options became too few, they’d do the pilgrimage all over again.
But they couldn’t hide for long. Each day they spent cowering was another day Kazen had to find a way to summon his monster. And if the macabre nature of his near summoning with Sandis was any indication . . . that man would do anything to win.
“Be quiet, but keep your head up,” Rone whispered after dropping the grating back in place. “We don’t want to draw attention, but if we do, we don’t want to look guilty.”
“You should be a scholar,” Rist quipped, leading the troupe out of the alley and down a narrow street clustered with empty garbage bins.
Rone held back a retort and increased his pace. Sandis paused at the corner. For a moment Rone thought she was waiting for him, but as he neared, letting Bastien get ahead of him, he noticed the tightness of her shoulders. She’d folded her arms, hugging herself, her fingernails digging into the skin above her elbows. Her eyes were cinched closed.
Rone touched her. She felt feverish. Gripping her upper arms tightly, he said, “Sandis, you’re here. Stay with me.”
She shivered. He moved one hand to cradle her face, feeling the tautness of her jaw.
“Sandis.”
She relaxed. Opened her eyes. This time they brimmed with conviction, not fear. “I’m all right,” she whispered. “It’s gone.”
Rone kissed her crown. “You’re safe. Just stay close.”
She nodded.
They turned onto a larger street, this one dimly lit by a few shops that had brightened their doorways to discourage burglars, as well as a small tavern at the end of the row that bustled with conversation. Wasn’t that the same one where Rone had met Sandis?
Their small group pulled away from the tavern—the cathedral was in the opposite direction—but Rone looked long enough to catch movement near the gutters across the street. Light from the tavern windows highlighted a man’s dark jacket and . . . scarlet pants.
The policeman looked directly at them, even stepped farther into the street for a better vantage point.
Rone stiffened but kept moving. Act natural. We’re just out for a good time—
The policeman turned around and ran the other way.
Rone slowed, watching him go. He ran, not walked. Rone and the others were the suspicious ones, dressed in ill-fitting clothing and traveling the dark streets with an unlit lamp. Rone’s picture had been circulated by Kazen, too. So why did this scarlet run the other way? For backup?
Why didn’t he have a partner?
What exactly had he been waiting for?
Rone’s stomach sank. “He’s been paid off.”
“What?” Sandis asked.
Rone spat a curse like old tobacco and grabbed Sandis’s hand, hurrying her toward the rest of the vessels, who had kept walking while he dallied. Reaching them, he said, “Go faster. Move.”
“What’s wrong?” Kaili asked.
He might have been wrong, but erring on the side of caution had saved his life almost as many times as the amarinth had. “A scarlet ran off at the sight of us. The stranger, Verger, might have a network of them.” Kazen sure as hell did. “We need to get to the cathedral now.”
Could he hire a cab to fit all five of them? But he’d have poor luck finding one this late at night, especially in the smoke ring. No one who could afford a carriage spent their time or money here.
And even if Rone was wrong about the scarlet, literally every single one of them was a criminal in one way or another. Best to leave the police to themselves.
Rone took the lead. He pulled the group down a few side streets, doubling back only once to cover their tracks. Couldn’t do it too much, or they’d never get to their destination. The Central Cathedral of the Celestial wasn’t exactly next door.
They ran for a bit. Sandis did the best at keeping up, thanks to all the running for their lives they’d done recently. Kaili, despite her long legs, was slow, but Rist took her hand and pulled her along. Bastien puffed like he couldn’t get enough air. He didn’t protest, however, even when he tripped on the leg of a sleeping beggar and nearly broke his nose on filthy cobblestones.
Roofs. They should have gone for the roofs. But with this group, maybe it would have slowed them down.
They switched to a fast walk when they reached a main road, trying to catch their breaths. They crossed a bridge over a branch of the canal. All the while, Rone looked back and forth, but he didn’t see any other scarlets or lurking shadows. The sight of the cathedral spire up ahead encouraged him to pick up his pace a little, and the others followed suit. They rounded a corner. A merry glow met their eyes. The cathedral windows were always lit for wayward pilgrims or those seeking forgiveness or whatever other nonsense the Celesians preached. Odd that Rone couldn’t remember anymore. Once upon a time, he could have recited every service provided by the cathedral in alphabetical order.
He didn’t feel bad, forgetting.
“Okay,” he said between breaths, still jogging, “we’re from Unstacht, swung south to pick up our Godobian convert. We’re so sorry for being late, got it? If you can’t act the part, then don’t talk—”
Horse hooves. Barreling closer. Too close. Why hadn’t he heard them before?
Rone turned around to see a black gelding galloping down the lane, an equally dark rider astride it.
Verger. Aimed right for them.
“Go!” Rone shouted. His grip on Sandis’s hand tightened, and he hauled her toward the cathedral. Toward sanctuary. Kaili yipped and nearly tumbled over herself. Bastien huffed, too slow, too slow.
Metal horseshoes struck cobblestones. Right behind them. Sandis was the easy target.
Rone yanked her into his chest and dropped, rolling over the hard street while protecting her with his arms. His head hit on one of the rotations, and the stone battered his wrists, but the horse passed.
They stopped rolling, and Sandis sat up, gaping at him.
Kaili screamed.
Verger had a handful of her dark hair in one hand, and the other grabbed her collar and yanked her onto the horse with him. Rist bellowed after them. One moment Kaili was struggling, and the next she fell limp across the saddle. Verger galloped at alarming speed down the street.
“No!” Rist sprinted after him, but even if he hadn’t just run four miles trying to get to the cathedral, the horse was too fast. Verger disappeared at the next intersection, the thundering of hooves fadi
ng to memory.
Still, Rist ran.
Sandis pushed Rone off and ran after him, her rifle bouncing against her back. “Rist! Stop!” She charged after him. Bastien fell to his knees right in the middle of the road, heaving hard enough to puke.
Rone ran after Sandis.
Rist’s body tired, and he stumbled, not even halfway to the intersection. Sandis ran around him and grabbed his shoulders.
“We can follow him!” She wheezed. “Rist, let me summon Hapshi into you. He can fly.”
Rist stared at the empty road ahead of them. Panted. Shook his head. “I’m still bound to Kuracean.”
Sandis fumbled over the pocket of her dress before turning to Rone. “Knife?”
Rone plucked one from his boot and handed it to her.
“I’m going to cut it,” she told Rist. “Just enough to break the bond. Okay?”
“Do it!” Rist snapped.
Pulling away, Rone scoured the street for the other preparation they would need for the summoning. There, a loose cobblestone. Rone pulled it up and found a worm wriggling beneath it—just enough to summon a level-one numen, if Rone understood his occult. He grabbed it and ran back over.
Rist didn’t even flinch as Sandis pulled his collar back and dug the knife into the very edge of the tattoo marking the skin above his script, the brown-inked Noscon symbols reading, “Kur-A-Cean.” She handed the blade back to Rone, and he exchanged it for the worm, which she tore in half and dropped at Rist’s feet. In a fluid series of movements, Sandis grabbed a vial of purified water from her pocket, uncorked it with her teeth, and dumped the liquid over Rist before pushing her hand into his hair.
Rone thought he saw her lips move to the words of a prayer before she began the Noscon incantation that somehow pierced the ethereal plane. Rone stiffened—if this didn’t work, Kaili was lost—
A flash of light burned his eyes. Through the residual spots of color it left in his vision, he saw the oversized hamster appear on the street, right in view of any who thought to look out their windows.
“Sandis—”
“We’re going to follow them.” She motioned Rone forward before mounting the beast, but when Rone saddled up behind her, the numen could barely even walk. Bastien had been wrong about its ability to support two riders.
Sandis turned around, terror written in her features.
Sandis was lighter. Hapshi would go faster with only her.
“Go,” Rone said, hopping off. “Get some altitude first. The longer we wait, the harder he’ll be to track.”
The terror in her eyes morphed into determination. She nodded, dismounted, and grabbed the loose skin over Hapshi’s neck. She led the creature over the gutters and down another street. She nearly knocked over a man, who yelled after her to watch her dog. Rone followed, but when Sandis raced up the exterior stairs of a theological library, he stayed on the ground so as not to be an obstacle. She climbed up to the second story before remounting the rodent.
This wasn’t going to work. The little monster didn’t have real wings—
The numen leapt off the stairs and splayed out its limbs, the flaps of skin on its sides extending. Defying physics, it soared straight, gaining height slowly, and flew in the direction Verger had gone, never so much as flapping its arms.
Rone stared after Sandis as she vanished. His mouth was dry. He’d never get used to the occult. Never. Please don’t do anything stupid. Please come back to me.
Bastien limped up beside him, strands of loose strawberry-blond hair sticking to his face. “W-What do we do now?”
Rone sighed. “We wait.”
Sandis’s fingers dug into a row of rough feathers and gripped the loose skin beneath. She pressed her knees into Hapshi’s sides until her thighs hurt. Her skin tightened and pebbled with the cold wind, and she could barely keep her eyes open for all the stinging smoke that amplified the darkness.
In another world, this would have been bliss. Flying over the city, free from its chains . . . but this was a chase. This was Kaili’s life.
It scared her.
The height, the flight, the lack of things to hold on to. Her unfamiliarity with Hapshi, so different from Ireth. She had none of Rist’s blood beneath her skin, so she could only guide him with the tug of her hands and lean of her body. Smoke stung her nostrils and amplified the darkness; it took all of Sandis’s concentration to keep her eye on the stranger—Verger—without letting him sense her presence. She and the others had managed to thwart him twice, but one-on-one, Verger could overwhelm her easily.
She heard the occasional shout down below, but whether someone had spotted her or had nearly been run down by Verger’s mount, she couldn’t be sure.
Hapshi seemed to like her company, or at least the opportunity to stretch its legs. When Sandis tugged its skin to the right, it turned right. When she coaxed it higher or lower, it obeyed. And if only for its own preservation, it naturally avoided spires and smokestacks that Sandis might have run them both into.
The galloping horse helped her pursuit. When she passed through puffs of smoke or poorly lit chunks of buildings, she followed the hammering horseshoes barely audible over the wind singing in her ears. She didn’t dare release her grip on Hapshi long enough to use her rifle. Her fear of falling aside, it was too dark, and the distance—she was about eighty feet off the ground. She could hit Kaili, and she’d never practiced firing while moving. And if she missed altogether, it would spook Verger and ruin her chances of hunting down his hideaway. So the rifle stayed at her back, and her eyes and ears remained trained on Verger.
Maybe now, at least, she would know where Kazen was hiding.
After nearly half an hour of pursuit, the galloping slowed. Sandis panicked, for in that moment she could neither see nor hear Verger. Pushing down into Hapshi’s shoulder blades, she coaxed the numen lower, her eyes watering as she held back a cough. She blinked and saw shadow move against shadow. Heard the faintest nicker of a horse.
They were still in the smoke ring, outside a brick wall. From the street, Sandis would have thought the wall another factory, but from the air, she could see it masked a short building within.
Licking her lips, she pulled up on Hapshi’s skin folds, her knuckles aching with the strain. “Come on, friend. We need to get back to the cathedral. I need you to fly as fast as you can.”
Hapshi didn’t understand her, of course. Not without the blood bond. But the numen didn’t complain when she directed it back the way they’d come. She tried massaging her knees into its sides to increase its speed. When that didn’t work, she dared to release one sore hand and scratch the beast behind its ear.
Hapshi let out a soft sound, something between a purr and a giggle, and zoomed through the sky.
When Hapshi landed on the street a short ways from the cathedral, Sandis clung to its feathered fur and coughed smoke from her lungs until her stomach nearly emptied itself onto the poor creature’s head. She pried her hands from its neck, her fingers stiffened into crooks. Sliding off the numen’s side and onto her knees, she winced at her sore muscles and the tendons running up and down her legs.
Hapshi began to pull away from her, its attention caught by something else. Sandis clung to the creature. “No, stay. Please.”
Hurried footsteps sent a spike of alarm up the back of her neck, but the two men running toward her were Rone and Bastien. A small sigh of relief escaped her. Small, because Kaili was still in danger.
Bastien went straight for Hapshi, grabbing the numen’s ears and forcing it to stay where it was. Rone knelt on the cobbles in front of Sandis, who nursed flexibility back into her hands.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I found her.” She coughed again. “He went west, I think into District Two. Some . . . short building, square, surrounded by a wall. It’s dark.”
Rone ran his hands down her arms, his touch almost too warm against the chill in her skin. “Could you find it again?”
She hesitated, dra
wing out the flight in her mind. “I think so. Yes. But Hapshi can’t carry us all.”
Rone and Bastien exchanged a look.
“Okay,” Rone said. “You fly, we’ll follow.” He put up his hands. “Don’t get mad, but I’m going to steal a horse.”
“A horse?” Sandis repeated, then glanced to the cathedral behind him. “From the pilgrims?”
Bastien, wringing his braid in his hands, looked down the street with trepidation. “W-We can’t argue about this. Kaili.”
Biting her lip, Sandis nodded. She dug into Rone’s pack until she found a few smashed crackers. The food commanded Hapshi’s attention, and she led the numen back to the building with the stairs as Rone and Bastien hurried back toward the cathedral. Once Sandis had fed Hapshi its treat and mounted, she again heard the sound of horseshoes against cobbles.
She scratched Hapshi behind the ears. “Let’s fly.”
Sandis landed atop a brick building—no, that was the wall she’d spoken of. Rone scanned it as he pulled back on the reins of the mare he’d commandeered. While Bastien didn’t know how to ride a horse—Rone himself barely did—he knew how to saddle one, which had helped immensely. Rone didn’t think he could have ridden the horse bareback.
He’d stopped the horse some distance from the wall, not wanting the sound of its approach to alert anyone. The mare heaved in protest from having carried two grown men on her back in the middle of the night, but she’d gotten her revenge, as Rone discovered when he awkwardly dismounted. Groaning, he resisted the urge to rub his crotch. That was going to hurt in the morning.
“H-How do we get in?” Bastien sounded like he might pass out if given an answer. He’d pull his braid right from his scalp if he didn’t stop tugging on it.
Rone shook his head as he led the horse to a sign hook above the door of a nearby building. He looped the reins around the hook and then carefully approached the wall, keeping one eye on Sandis. “I don’t know.”
The thing wasn’t scalable in the least. Could the numen carry each one of them up? But it couldn’t take off from the ground, right?
Myths and Mortals (Numina Book 2) Page 22
