“Shh,” Asher hissed, sending a wave of goosebumps prickling up her neck.
Twenty years a tunnel runner, and she trusted his reprimand. He hadn’t made it this far by being careless.
Slowly, in the distance, the sound of the angry ocean began to seep towards them, with it, iced water that could cover their heads, when all was said and done.
So started the clock.
Brine filled her nose as the roar grew louder, someone down the line unleashing the cover of the storm.
Freezing water up to their ankles, now, soaking mercilessly through the layers, and Asher’s voice was another cresting wave. “Move.”
Her hand swept down the slimy brick wall, boots splashing through the onslaught as they ran towards the flood. A sharp right, the tunnel narrowed, and it was up to her calves, her blood crystallizing, her breath catching as it frosted in the night.
Keep going.
There were only three, waiting at the junction. A man, a worryingly quiet bundle in his arms, and a little girl, blue lips quivering with tears, her rasping cries thick with mucus.
“Dose her,” Asher muttered, pulling the little girl out of the water and scooping her onto his hip. She was a rag doll in his arms, her struggling limbs and hyperventallic cries useless in the cold.
Risa, though, had already popped the cork from the vial. A few murmured comforts, and the girl downed it in one shuddering gulp.
She was silent a moment later.
Asher only gave the motionless bundle a quick side-long glance before turning to leave.
Water mid-thigh, and Risa was the last to follow, shooing the man and his bunch of blankets before her down the tunnel. The current dragged against her numb legs, ate away at the ground beneath her, and if she fell, they would never know. Never see. Never turn back and try to find her. And she would be alone.
Rescindant, the water seemed to hiss.
Rescindant.
This part, she remembered.
Rising out of the water, ready for the relief of dry land, only to find the biting air was merciless.
The staircase seemed to rise forever, her heavy, feelingless feet plodding against grated iron, and there was breathless urgency as her water-soaked lungs strained against the wet clothes, sucking the heat from her with frightening rapidity.
And she was alive.
Her muscles were burning as a shout echoed from behind them—so close, gods, they were so fucking close—
A concussive shock rippled through the underground, flecks of dirt raining down. The man in front of her stopped dead, clutching the bundle of blankets to his chest, petrified, shaking, because how far had he come? How much had he risked, what had he lost that made this look so gods-damned glorious, what made him drag his infant child across gods only knew how many miles to plunge through the icy sewer, praying that there’d be a tomorrow for them both—
“Go,” she snapped, fury in her voice, and he jolted into movement.
She could see it, the faint crack of light beyond as Factionist flares erupted to life behind them.
Solace.
Risa had never been very good at letting go.
Her grudges, to hear Nerene tell it, had been notorious as a child. And she obsessed, too—allegedly—would find any detail, regardless of how small, and allow it to consume her, devour her, tear her apart until she could see nothing beyond her own fanatic worship of minutia.
But above the infatuations, the fixations, the relentless compulsions that ground away the patience of anyone within earshot, Risa had found that nothing hurt quite so much as the letting go of a goodbye.
She hadn’t really known any of them, tonight. Hadn’t known the little girl wrapped in blankets, sucking down hot chocolates, giggling with an aunt who’d come through the tunnels the year before, Elementals, the both of them, from the north, with ties to the City that might’ve reached back before the walls. Before the wars.
Nor had she really known the man, smiling quietly as he bounced the cooing baby on his knee—alive and well, thank the gods. A Healer, hedging bets that this place of refuge was more than just a rumor. A father, hoping his talents were not the fatal affliction his wife had accused, that he had not damaged their baby girl with whatever lay coiled in his veins.
And it still stung, all the same, knowing she’d never see any of them again.
Asher, for all he claimed to be a hardened man, salted with age and experience, still looked a little teary-eyed when they’d parted ways.
Do you ever wonder what happens to them? Everyone you’ve brought in? It’d probably been an improper question. Propriety, though, had never stopped her.
I do, he’d replied.
She’d been surprised that he excused his staunch stoicism for an answer.
No complaints, though. And no remarks, either—chalk it up to expert interrogating skills, and call it a day.
I do wonder. It would be good, some days, I think, to see what a second lease on life looks like. But that is too much happiness for such a bitter old man. It isn’t my lot to know. And there’s always you, kiddo.
Risa had been the exception.
Forget that Nerene and Roger knew Asher from way back, that they were all of them Resindants, that anarchy ran in the blood of them all.
She liked to think it was because she refused to say goodbye.
He had carried her through the tunnels just like that girl tonight—except that was before they’d started dosing the kids, before tunnel running was a lethal marathon—and he’d carried her right on up to the front door of Nerene and Roger Barrett, right on up the carpeted stairs of their house by the sea, right into that abhorrently pink-and-white little room they’d painstakingly decorated for the little girl they’d wanted so badly, and when he’d gone to set her down on the bed by the window, she’d death-gripped his neck, like she had the moment he’d scooped her up, and refused to let go.
She’d done enough letting go, by then.
Asher, she’d learn later, had lost his brother. He’d lost his sister-in-law, and he’d lost his niece, and his nephew, and his parents, and his wife, too, and he wasn’t terribly keen on letting go, either, in a sort of reclusive and bitter almost-uncle sort of way.
With a sigh of exasperation, Risa tossed a wax-paper bag down on her desk, slumping into the leather armchair.
The Chancery was cold and deserted and worlds better than her stupid little apartment where stupid Lea should’ve been waiting with her stupid you were supposed to be home at ten and let me fix you a bite and it’d been a stupid, stupid, stupid mistake, letting that girl go, and Lea was needy and selfish and she’d cared, she’d cared that Risa ran herself ragged, she’d cared that Risa was beating herself up over every damnable failure, she cared—
No. No, she wasn’t going to do this.
The rough-textured numbers on the drawer lock moved silently, clicking open with a quick 0302 and she tossed the file onto her desk, fanning the papers out.
Elizabeth.
No last name, of course. Not that she needed it. No description, no age, no address, no indication of where she’d been left, and it was odd, seeing someone’s life laid out, not really knowing who they were.
A bright young girl, the oldest dossier began. The handwriting was elegantly neat, with loops and curls that only someone from the Quad would’ve taken the time to craft. She is taken with her books, and the idea that there is simply more. Unafraid and utterly resilient, I believe defiance is in her blood. Even under arrest for blatant thievery, her spirits remained unhindered.
Risa snickered, thumbing through the stack of parchment. Sam was a character. She’d been tossed the file three years prior, expecting clinical descriptions, only to find the waxing poeticism of one determined to chronicle life with all the artistic liberties they could muster.
She adores her brother, another read. Not a moment goes by when I see them willingly parted. He is defensive of her every move, and she of his—should one be slighted, the other
would end the offender without batting an eye. A formidable team, the pair of them.
Did he know, she often wondered. Did he know how much of himself he’d betrayed.
Her brother recently fell ill, as have many in the district. It seemed to be a small thing, brought on with the changing season. His absence from his place of employ led me to escort her home that evening, for which I rightfully received much admonishment on her part. I believe, though, her sustained lecture was, in part, in jest—my aim, it seemed, in accompanying her, was written on my sleeve.
The dilapidation of conditions was disheartening. Wind easily cut through the drafty walls, the pantry was painfully bare—though I knew their home before, my visits remained during warmer months, when time was spent in the cool glade by the river. Where their parents had gone, I do not know, but she had managed a watery, albeit hot, soup whilst I stoked the dying fire, trying to warm him with threadbare blankets.
I confess her denial of the gravity of his illness, and my own concern. I stayed, to see him through the night.
The most recent dossier sat atop them all, penned some six months ago.
There is happy news, I believe, on her behalf, though her reluctance to—
“Risa?”
She started violently, head snapping up as papers scattered in alarm across the floor. “What the fuck, Adrian,” she muttered angrily, stooping to collect the spilled file, “lurking on the threshold at two-fucking-o’clock in the gods-damned morning—”
“You have a correspondence, I was going to leave it on your…desk…” He trailed off, envelope forgotten in his hand, brows furrowing. “What happened to your hand?”
Her eyes flicked to the blood caked to the back of her hand, creeping down her wrist in several dark lines, dried and crusting in the cold air. “Had a run with Asher. Meant to clean it up, I just…”
“You just…decided you’d get a little work done first?” Adrian scoffed, snatching up the waxy parcel abandoned on the corner of her desk, extracting the bottle of emollient and roll of bandages.
“It was a long night, okay? Leave it be—”
“And you’re supposed to be a Healer.” He’d pulled up a chair adjacent to her, uncorking the vial before taking her hand in his, and slowly, he let the thick, purple salve drip down into the cut.
It wasn’t worth the fight, she thought, leaning back in her chair, her fingers limp in his. She was too tired to die on this pathetic hill of poor self-care.
“I can see,” he murmured, tearing off a piece of cotton bandaging, “why you weren’t fond of study at the Institute.”
Watching him work the flakes of blood from her hand with gentle sweeps, she raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“My understanding is that training for one with your talents typically involves, oh, I don’t know…actually healing.”
“I was never pent-up enough, or powerful enough, to mend myself,” she said dully.
His dark eyes flicked up to hers. The irony hadn’t been lost on him, it seemed.
“I was always painfully resentful of the Healers,” he offered softly, after a long moment. He’d returned to work, binding her chilled hand rather messily with a clean swath of cotton. “They wore their talents for the world to see. A sort of moralistic badge of honor.”
“Yeah. Well. Bully for them.”
He gave a soft chuckle, tying off the bandage. Then, a smile still lingering at the corners of his lips, he laced their fingers together, letting his eyes close.
And deep in her bones, she felt it.
To describe it as burning, as heat, as delicious warmth…it wasn’t right.
It was the absence of cold.
And in its absence, herself.
That deep ice that’d bled into her veins wading waist-deep through sewers of freezing saltwater was, at last, seeking refuge elsewhere—in him, as he siphoned it away, leaving her tired body to find some semblance of warmth once more.
A master of the ice.
“Thanks,” she said softly, watching his eyes open once more.
He gave her fingers as squeeze before letting go. “Anytime. Just don’t tell the Healers,” he teased, as an afterthought. “They’d tell me to stop meddling with things beyond my ken.” Rising with some effort, he tapped the envelope on her desk. “Speaking of…”
The parchment gave beneath her fingers as she tore into the letter, grimacing at the familiar scrawl atop a gilded card.
Ms. Theresa Barrett is cordially invited—
“Oh, you have to be fucking kidding me…” Turning the card over, her eyes flew across the chicken scratch on the back.
You will find, in attendance, Clark’s handwriting read, and she could almost hear his salacious drawl, see his smirking grimace of satisfaction, the last dossier.
ELSIE
“There is nothing so unnerving as returning to a place familiar, and seeing how much you’ve changed.”
~Risa Barrett
The first sugared flakes of snow were beginning to drift gently down beyond the frosting window panes as the world at last relented to winter, and Elsie sat with her head in her hands, entranced as she watched the magic filling Sam’s apartment from her seat in the dining room. Wave after wave of brilliant little motes were sent whirling in tiny little puffs, her brother’s eyes flaring with concentration, Fletcher occasionally murmuring some inaudible instruction, moving every now and then to guide a wave of sparks with a soft gesture of his hand until they coalesced into a humming little swarm of merry light.
“It’s…ugh, come on,” Teddy was muttering, flexing his fingers as he sat cross-legged on the sofa. An unseen breeze seemed to ripple through the motes, drawing them into a hazy cloud—that was until, with vivacious rebellion, one flew violently from the pack, burning out like an ember from the hearth as it finished its chaotic arc through the air.
A quiet snicker of delight escaped her upturned lips and her brother glanced over, a smile dancing in his eyes.
There was no terror in his gaze. Nothing but brilliant determination, and a sort of peace she didn’t know if she’d ever really seen.
“Good,” Fletcher nodded, and Teddy’s eyes snapped back to the task at hand. “Don’t be afraid to coax it with a physical gesture, like you did that last time. Shaping a lucent can be quite abstract, and I often find pairing it with a tactile movement immensely helpful.”
Exhaling deeply, her brother nodded, shaking out his hand before starting again.
She could’ve watched them all night. Had, in fact, watched them for hours as they worked every evening after dinner.
It was a funny kind of new normal, magic in the living room.
There was a smile tugging at Sam’s lips as she joined him by the sink. Grabbing a dishtowel, she plucked a still-steaming plate from the stack of dripping dishes and began to dry.
“So,” she began idly. “Tomorrow.”
As if it was just another day.
“Tomorrow,” he echoed, smile faltering somewhat. But he said nothing else as quiet fell between them, the sound of soapy dishes and the squeal of her cloth against porcelain overtaking the conversation.
Only when a stack of dried dishes sat gleaming on the countertop and Sam had plunked the baking dish into the soapy water with a quiet thunk did he break the silence.
“Not to be untoward,” he asked in an undertone, hands braced on the edge of the sink as he met her gaze, “but can I ask you something, El?”
She nodded, leaning against the counter.
“Did you go back often? To the farmhouse?”
“No. Not since everything with Fletcher,” she said simply. It’d been a fracturing point. And it didn’t matter. They hadn’t wanted her there, she hadn’t wanted to be there…and now they were ashes in the ground.
Occasionally, they’d sent half-baked regrets of her absence from Tom to Teddy, and from Teddy to herself. But it was mutually acknowledged that they were nothing more than the lines to be said at the given moment, and in time, the fe
igned concern would fade to mutual animosity, then to distant memory, and eventually, to nothing.
Like they’d never even existed.
“When…do you know the last time Teddy went back?” The question had been poised on her lips, a thought snapped forward in the spur of the moment.
Sam glanced at her before fishing the pan from the sink. “It’d been a bit. Couple months, maybe?”
“Not that they were fussed,” she put it, straightening up to hoist the stack of plates into the cupboard.
“Oh, gods, no,” he agreed.
“He could be bedding down with a rabid dog, and they wouldn’t have said a peep, so long as it had a healthy inheritance.”
Snickering, Sam shook his head. “True. Rest their souls, it’s very true.”
Elsie’s fingers lingered on the ridged handle of the cabinet as she gave him a side-long look. “Why did you ask about me going home?”
“Just…thinking,” he mumbled, eyes focused on the task of scrubbing brown-melted cheese and baked-on potato from the glass dish.
In her mind, he was always taller.
It was the fault of memories, she mused, that stretched him out. They made him a bit older, too.
But he’d hit five-and-a-half feet and stuck, something almost petite lurking distantly behind the well-muscled body he’d grown into.
He was still one of the strongest people she knew.
“So.” She watched as he rinsed the suds from the dish, his hands red from the hot water, the sleeves of his tunic rolled up past his elbows to reveal tanned forearms. “Tomorrow.”
He passed the dish to her before pulling a cloth from the stack, drying his hands. “Tomorrow,” he agreed softly.
THE MASKS
Traditionally hosted by the district Commissioner, an introduction is the single most important moment in the life of every merchant’s child. It is a moment of becoming. Becoming eligible. Becoming an adult. Becoming who it is you truly wish to be.
Death and the Merchant (River's End Book 1) Page 25
