Death and the Merchant (River's End Book 1)

by C. H. Williams

  There was her brother, the one she loved. There was her other brother, the one she loved, but who didn’t love her back. Her friend, the one who loved her brother, and loved her, too, a mother, a father, a girlhood companion, a neighbor, a teacher, and yet, it was Percy, who stuck in the recesses of his mind.

  She was a fighter.

  He’d been a fighter, once, too.

  He’d been a fighter, swaggering into the stables with all the arrogance of barely-twenty. He’d been a fighter, slinging his leg atop a freshly groomed Valoxus, the warhorse’s coat shining like onyx in the small winter sun.

  He’d been a fighter right up until the moment he’d seen the encampment.

  In that moment, there’d been a decision. Go back for aid, and risk losing the camp, or take the camp with the three cadets riding patrols with him.

  A scraggled old man had been hunched over a fire, his fur ear flaps almost frozen to his head, his beard a forest of icicles. It hadn’t been a pot of soup he’d been warming atop the campfire, though.

  The Woodshade humans were sick.

  Their minds were twisted, addled by magic that wasn’t theirs, and so they would take the blood, storing it in massive clay vats until it could be distilled, boiled down, spiced with herbs and sacrificial meats, fermented, and bottled. It was not the pure burgundy tears the Master cultivated, where the body itself housed the change, lest the magic seep from the blood as it drained.

  The magic of the Woodshades was crude. Old.

  And lethal.

  One by one, he watched as they drained the cadets, like lambs for the slaughter. It had taken days for them to die, bleeding out and freezing in the heavy spring snows.

  The Woodshades had taken the horses, too, save Valoxus, who remained a fighter, even after everything. He’d put a dinner-plate hoof through a man’s chest when they’d converged, humans skittering out from their lean-to village in the trees. They’d managed to pull Augustus down, but Valoxus bolted.

  It’d been Valoxus at the side of the Commander who’d found them. Him. Not them, because they had all died.

  Him.

  Valoxus had been devoid of a rider, refusing to be mounted, refusing to be stabled, and so they’d had no choice but to bring the stubborn beast along.

  You fight well, he could recall the old man saying.

  In time, he’d come to realize, that was why he’d been taken.

  They didn’t want the weaklings, separated from the herd. They didn’t want the vulnerable or the sick or the old, because they saw there was no pride in taking down easy prey, no victory in seizing those already half-way to falling, no use in blood so craven.

  They came only for the fighters.

  As if there is strength from taking down someone so strong.

  He shook the thought unbidden from his mind.

  The time for doubts had long since passed, and he would not sell his kingdom down the river for the life of one girl.

  Even if she was a fighter like him.

  TEDDY

  “Funny, how the world works. To venture a thousand miles but to find a familiar face—that, I think, is the sweetest kind of irony.”

  ~Theodore Alderton

  The bitter wind of Caelaymnis was all ice and pine, and Teddy shoved his hands a little deeper in his coat pockets, trying to stave off the chill, just as he’d done every day for the last seven days.

  Knit cap pulled low, scarf wrapped nearly to the point of strangling, he shot a side-long glance at Risa, looking perfectly content to stroll down the freezing avenue in nothing more than a stylish woolen coat and a pair of thin ivory gloves. “Have you ever been to Thallassas?”

  “I have,” she said coyly, a smile on her lips. Her blue eyes sparkled in the afternoon light as she spared him a playful glance. “Dreaming of warmer shores?”

  “Something like that,” he muttered. Not that Caelaymnis wouldn’t have been lovely in the summer—the cool mountain air would’ve been a pleasant change from the stifling Valley heat—but it was difficult to appreciate the impressive vista with the ever-looming threat of death-by-ice.

  The streets would’ve been a welcome distraction, too, if it hadn’t been for the bitter temperatures that had plunged Caelaymnis into a veritable icebox.

  As it was, though, he spared nothing more than a glance into the window of the weaver’s shop, a massive loom propped in front of the glass for the passers-by to see. A woman on a stool sat in observation, her fingers strumming the air like a harp, watching as the shuttle dipped and dived through the threads, leaving in its wake a half-finished tapestry of otherworldly yellows and greens.

  A week in the City of Lights, stomping down the familiar path to the cells day in and day out, and he found himself watching as a picture took shape across the loom, worked with unseen dexterity by the loomstress.

  It was hopeful, in a quiet sort of way. Like even amid the futility and frustration, it was still possible to create.

  “It’s too bad Sam isn’t here,” Teddy remarked, voice muffled through the scarf. Too bad my husband isn’t with me. That’s what he’d wanted to say.

  “A brother visiting his sister, they can overlook,” Risa sighed. “Beyond that, though, and we’re pushing our luck.”

  The limestone steps descending into the cell block beneath the military compound came too quickly. Through a thick, plated door, and another, down the barren corridor, through yet another door, and they were stopped by the same old guard, reeking of juniper mints, who took their bundlings and bags, whose rough hands gave an indelicate search for contraband, and then through a silver, grated door, Teddy had found the cells once more.

  His stomach was an uncomfortable knot that had nothing to do with the silver grating that barred the rows of curiously empty cells.

  Seven times, he’d had to bring bad news, and each day, it only got worse.

  Fletcher sat on the small bed, back against the wall and knees tucked to his chest, his perpetual motion back and forth kicking into gear once more at the sight of them. “El?”

  Teddy shook his head.

  There’d been no sign of her.

  No record of her being held within the compound prison, no trace of her as Risa had walked row after row of cells, not a whisper of where she might’ve gone from Rodion or Isa or Mia or anyone else, for that matter.

  Save for the blood-soaked order sitting on Risa’s desk, not a shred of evidence existed that she’d even been taken.

  Arms folded tightly across his chest, wishing the warden hadn’t snapped in broken Vernacular to take off the woolen sweater, Teddy noted the tray of untouched food still sitting on the ledge. “You have to eat.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Teddy raised an eyebrow, pulling the sleeves of his tunic further down his wrists, as if the extra half-inch would be the difference between freezing and not. It was hard to blame Fletcher’s loss of appetite, though, in this place.

  How do you hold a prisoner that can bend the fabric of the world to their whim.

  Something Teddy had not truthfully considered until he’d crossed the prison threshold.

  It was like getting punched in the gut.

  His ribs ached.

  He couldn’t breathe.

  Even now, the Thread guttered feebly, sputtering as it was leached away.

  Whatever Isa had done, drawing his magic from the palm of his hand up and away, easing the overflow, the prison seemed to execute the trick tenfold.

  It was the bars.

  Set into the stone, encasing them all, the blackish-gray rods criss-crossing back and forth were greedy, stealing what they could from anyone inside.

  “What,” Fletcher frowned, glancing between them. “I told you, I’m not hungry.”

  “You’re a gods-damn liar,” Risa cut in, rubbing her hands together as she approached the grate, heels clacking against the stone. “Choke it down, Highness. No use withering away.”

  They’d gone through the same thing yesterday, of course. And
the day before that. And the day before that one, too.

  Glowering, Fletcher rolled off the bed, shuffling towards the bowl of soup. He’d learned quick not to go head-to-head with Risa—even if it meant forcing down winterbean soup.

  Not that Teddy could blame him for refusing the paste-of-a-soup. It seemed to be a popular staple, eateries offering their own variant, each claiming to be the oldest or most authentic or the most revered by whatever patron mystic frequented the shop, and it was truly remarkable, really, it was, to find so many different flavors of bland. A city where anything might be possible, where looms wove themselves and the streets were lit not with lamps but with lucents, and nobody had thought to just add a pinch of salt to their winterbean soup.

  “Today’s Council session was a bust.” Risa was watching Fletcher pick gingerly at the bowl of mush, her eyes icy. “Her, uh, colorful recreational activities haven’t exactly been endearing.”

  “Though ‘endearing’ is a matter of opinion,” Teddy put in, thinking back. “Sam always found her pastimes rather charming.”

  The first time, it’d been an act of desperation.

  ‘Course, it wasn’t like anyone had bothered to tell him, not until his burgeoning friendship with Sam had been on the verge of collapse. It wasn’t like he’d had a choice—he’d searched the streets, the bookstore, the fountain, all her favorite haunts, and the pair of them were nowhere to be found until Sam strolled into the store two hours past when he’d been due with El, talking about how he’d lost track of time. Two weeks of silence, and they’d finally had it out with each other, yelling at each other in the back room of the store, and what did Sam do but let slip what’d really happened.

  It was a hell of a lot easier to forgive him after that.

  Elsie seemed to sense, at least to a certain degree, that her secret had been spilled, but she seemed content to play innocent for her big brother, and he wasn’t about to go stirring things up when really, she’d just been hungry, and there’d been no harm done, anyway.

  Sam always seemed to be a little proud of her, rebelling against the district, even if it’d been sort of futile in the end—though there was an undeniable poetic justice to padding the prison ledgers with the Commissioner’s own funds.

  Their visit with Fletcher went the way they always did. They talked about the unwillingness of anyone to cooperate, the oddity that nobody seemed to be able to find her, the murmured hopes that she was alright, wherever she was, the unspoken petrifying fear that she wasn’t. They reminisced about her, relived the masquerade for the hundredth time, and at the end, bid each other goodnight, praying they’d wake up to find her home.

  Stepping into the night, leaving Fletcher and the juniper guard and the limestones steps behind, it was clear, why they called it the City of Lights.

  Great streaks of purple and green blanketed the stars, illuminating the snow-capped peaks in another-worldly light, and it almost made the bone-snapping chill worth it, walking with Risa beneath the ribbons in the sky.

  The moon was beginning to crest, too, and waxing full, the streets of Caelaymnis were hardly in need of their lucent-lamps, glowing soft in the snow-spritzed mist, shadows cast instead by the beams of cold light funneled down the mountain slopes.

  “The moon like milk,” Teddy whispered under his breath, a reflex as he watched the world leeched of color.

  “What?”

  He glanced to Risa, the corners of his mouth twitching up. “The moon like milk. It’s just this stupid thing from when I was a kid. The moon like milk, the sun like honey…”

  Risa gave a quiet half-laugh, her eyes tracing the basin edges.

  The moon like milk, the sun like honey, and rain to wash you free,

  Bless this table, bless this hearth, and great the bounty be.

  “It is funny, the way those silly things worm their way into your brain,” Risa was saying, running her fingers through her hair. “You go along, thinking yourself grown up, and a moment later, you’ve got a childhood rhyme stuck in your head.”

  Teddy stopped, the clicking of her heels falling short as she turned to look back at him. I never said it was a rhyme.

  Stop it, another voice seemed to chime in, dismayed. You’re hurting. You’ve lost your parents. Elsie’s missing. You are drowning, and you’re grasping at straws.

  The Thread gave him a nudge. So grasp, then. She’s a healer, too. There’s that.

  That, there was, indeed.

  And there was no rule that said healing couldn’t be the story he spun inside his head.

  Spin it, then.

  There was no denying the name. No denying those loose, coppery curls, cut to her collarbone, the deep blue eyes that went from ice to ocean without warning, the magic she didn’t seem to like to practice.

  “Your parents,” he said softly. “You always call them Nerene and Roger, never ‘Mom and Dad.’ Why?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “That’s how they were introduced to me. It sort of stuck, I guess.”

  “How—”

  “Teddy.” She took a step forward, shaking her head. “Don’t.”

  “I—I’m just trying to get to know you better—”

  “And I’m telling you to stop.”

  His eyes were stinging as he looked away, nodding. “Yeah. No, of course, I’m—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “Let’s go,” Risa said softly, gesturing to the edge of the compound after a moment. “Sam’ll be waiting.”

  His feet were numb, finding the smooth paved walkway.

  If the moon was milk, and the sun was honey, he felt blind, not knowing whether he was sitting in the dark or not.

  I told you not to.

  She was sweet, like chocolate and wine, falling into step beside him, her shoulder brushing against his as they walked.

  They’re not even hers, by blood. So, there’s that, too.

  She was right, you should stop—

  Risa kicked a piece of ice with the toe of her shoe, sending it skittering along the path before them. “We need to be very clear. It doesn’t matter what I call them, because Nerene and Roger? They’re my parents.”

  “I didn’t mean to say they weren’t,” Teddy muttered, giving her a side-long glance.

  “I love them deeply.”

  He pursed his lips. “I loved mine, too.”

  Quiet fell between them, a renewed gust of wind making the basin roar, and her eyes flicked to his. “Loved,” she echoed.

  “You’re a hypocrite, Theresa Barrett. You’re happy to keep your secrets, but you can’t help sticking your nose into everyone else’s business.”

  The remark made her smile. “At last,” she sighed, relieved. “Someone who understands me.”

  “They’re dead,” he said hollowly.

  Her smile faltered, and she stopped, coming to a halt on the compound path. “What?”

  “I loved them, past tense, because they’re dead.”

  Such strange words, so heavy on his tongue, and yet they flew into the air like they’d been waiting there for years.

  Had he wished them dead?

  Was that what it meant?

  That was impossible, though, because if he’d wished them dead, there wouldn’t be this grief, rearing its head, conjuring ghosts on sidewalks and straws for the drowning and stories for the desperate.

  “When,” she breathed, brows knitted, tone flat.

  “Few weeks ago. They…” He shook his head, trailing off, his eyes burning with tears as they found hers.

  But she said nothing. She only turned on her heel, making for the gate.

  “That’s it? I—I tell you they’re dead, and…and nothing?” He had to jog a few steps to catch up to her, anger sparking in his chest.

  “Condolences,” she clipped, voice cold, and with a word, she’d curdled the moon like milk.

  SAM

  “Destructive and powerful, thus fire is a double-edged sword.”

  ~Greysha Boewliç

  The days were ac
cumulating, gathering with ominous strength into something that was starting to look suspiciously like a week. And as is the consequence of such phenomena, Sam had found patterns emerging from the chaos of Elsie’s arrest, patterns that he did not care for one bit.

  It was this wretched routine of grieving, interspersed with anger and regret and the bitter taste of failed hope.

  Grimacing, Sam let his fingers trail along the bloodied hole through the side of the jeweled bodice.

  She’d been cut out of it, the remnants left limply on the back of a chair in one of the more lavish guest rooms of the manor.

  Like it mattered if she had a sitting area and a fainting couch when she’d been skewered by the chandelier.

  Desi lay resting in the feather bed, tended to by a very grim-looking Isa, who’d been quick to shoo away the physicians doting over how many gold coins it’d take to find some gin and a saw for the hack-job amputation they’d been planning.

  The Captain, nor the diligent work of Risa and Teddy, hadn’t saved the arm. But at least this way, it’d been taken with a little bit of dignity. Rather than a physician and a hack-saw and wagers on the outcome, it’d been done cleanly, with sutures and tonics and poultices and in the privacy of the manor room.

  Desi’s face had gone from porcelain doll to bruised apple—though with time, that, too, would heal.

  “Sam.”

  It took him a minute to recognize who’d spoken, because that wasn’t the girlish lilt he knew from their hours before the mirror.

  The voice was quiet. Solemn.

  He found her hand atop the covers as he sank down beside her, and it was an effort, summoning any semblance of a warm smile to give her. “Hey.”

  “Sam.” There were tears in her eyes as they flitted to the bandaged stump of a shoulder.

  “I know,” he whispered, smile faltering.

  “I just wanted to dance.” Her curls were straggled across the pillowcase, frizzed and messy, her lips split and raw as she breathed the words.

  He gave her fingers a squeeze. “You will again.”

  She shook her head, shoulders starting to quake with tears.