by Melanie Card
She could stow away on a ship bound for the White Strait and the Misty Isles, where neither the Gentilica nor the Assassins’ Guild could reach her—or, rather, where their reach was diminished. There wasn’t a place in the Union the Gentilica didn’t control, but there was no way she was going to end up like John Tanner, who had snitched to the Quayestri about her father’s protection racket in the city’s fifth ring. His eyeless and tongueless body had been found in a manure pile. At least the Guild was professional enough to forego torture and just kill the target.
The necromancer scrambled down the ladder, missed the last rung, and landed in the stream of refuse, splashing it up the back of her legs. He coughed, his breath catching in his throat as if he was about to throw up. “What did I just step in?”
Did he really have to ask? She glanced up to see if he had at least pulled the grate shut behind him. A perfect circle of starlight, without the crisscross rungs of the grate, glowed above her.
“You could have closed the grate.”
“Oh.” His real hair, shorn to half an inch in length, stood in clumps at every angle. Not much of an improvement from the wig. He was the perfect image of a scarecrow, all arms and legs and not a thought in his head. Oh, he was good.
She grabbed the rail to climb back up the access pipe. The bark and whine of the family dogs drew close.
Damn.
It didn’t matter if she closed it or not. The dogs would follow her scent right to it. She had to move now and put as much distance between her and the access pipe as possible. “We have to go.”
She stepped into the sewage. A violent shiver wracked her body.
Gasping, she reached for the slimy wall. Above, the yells and barks of her pursuers grew louder, coming closer, ready to discover her still standing in the circle of starlight.
A weight landed on her shoulder and she forced her head to move the necessary fraction to see the necromancer’s long, delicate fingers.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She shrugged off his hand and pushed away from the wall. “I’m fine.”
A line formed between his brows.
Another shiver raced through her, and she grabbed the front of his jacket to keep her balance. She couldn’t make her mind work long enough to figure out what was happening. Everything grew distant, her vision dimmed, but the noises outside the sewer grew clearer, as if she were shaking herself out of her body.
More barks, even closer. The necromancer jumped. She sensed more shivers wash over her, but couldn’t feel them. She had shaken too far out of herself.
He scooped her into his arms, stepped into the shadows, and pressed his forehead to hers, somehow drawing her back into her body with the touch of his flesh against hers. She became aware of the pressure of his arms against her back and legs.
“Tell me what to do,” he said.
“What?” Her lips felt heavy, swollen.
“If you don’t tell me where to go, we’re caught.”
“Follow this to the end, then take the next three lefts.”
He glanced up, and she began to drift away again. Scrunching up his face, he stepped into the center of the sewer pipe. If she didn’t feel so strange, she’d have laughed. What was a little sewage compared to your life?
She shivered and drifted toward... toward what? A nothingness, a black and empty abyss void of light and warmth. There was no sewer, no necromancer, no body, and no Goddess. Where was the eternal love? The embrace of forgiveness from the Mother of All?
A sliver of light far, far away caught her attention, but when she turned to it, it was gone. The Goddess didn’t want her.
She gasped.
Her fingers and toes were numb as if they had fallen asleep, and she couldn’t see the circle of light from the access pipe. In fact, she didn’t know where she was. The necromancer, his face streaked with muck, leaned over her.
“I’d give you a minute but I don’t think we have the time.” He wiped a filth-covered hand across his forehead, leaving another streak.
She sat up and blood rushed to her hands and feet, setting them on fire with pins-and-needles. “We have to get away from my father’s house.”
He pursed his lips as if he wanted to say something, but thought silence the better option.
“What?”
“We are away from your father’s house.”
She glanced past his shoulder. Behind him the wall sloped, creating a small arch above their heads, and to her right lay a three-foot drop into the ancient sewer pipe. They were in a workman’s alcove, a place for the city’s maintenance staff to take a break or a meal, if they could stomach anything while surrounded by sewage.
“How?”
“Your fifteen minutes were up.”
“My...?” They had just been in the sewer on her father’s property. Where were they now?
The stinging in her hands and feet subsided. She must have passed out. The memory of the shivers sent an involuntary one down her spine.
“My fifteen minutes were up?”
“Yes, now—”
“So, I was dead?” It was true. A chill seeped into her gut. Whoever wrote that note had lied. She didn’t have a week. She had nothing. Except this strange young man who had woken her a second time. “Why?”
The necromancer looked confused and ridiculous, with his short, wild hair and mud-streaked face.
“Why did you bring me back?” she asked again.
“Look. Your family is still after us and I’m sure I didn’t get that far. ” He scrambled to the edge of the alcove.
“You could have left me for dead.” Which meant escape was no longer an option. She had nothing to live for, since she wasn’t alive.
“You only have another fifteen minutes. We need to get to a place where I can get the components for the Jam de’U.”
She grabbed his arm. “Why?”
“I don’t know how to get out of here.” He looked exhausted and worried and she couldn’t sense any insincerity in him.
Which didn’t mean she trusted him. It could mean he was an amazing actor. If she didn’t need him to keep her alive—well, perhaps not alive exactly, but animated long enough for revenge—she’d leave him.
He stared back at her with innocent, puppy dog eyes.
They were not going to work. “First, we need to find an access grate and see where we are in regards to the city.”
“There’s a grate ten feet that way.” He pointed down the pipe. “But I can’t lift it and carry you at the same time.”
“Oh.” Did thoughtfulness counterbalance his possible attempt to manipulate her? She didn’t think so.
He jumped down and reached out to help her. She ignored his hands, landed beside him, and slung her rucksack over her shoulder.
“Maybe you could suggest a hiding place,” he said, sloshing through the muck. “Someplace we can hide for a day. I think I’ll need the whole day.”
“What for?”
“The Jam de’U. If you factor in finding the components, plus preparation for the spell, and—”
“I get the point.”
Reaching the access pipe, she grabbed the ladder. Above glowed the soft yellow light of a lantern, which meant they were still in the second ring of the city or the palace ring, since they were the only rings that could afford street lanterns. At least he’d said something right. He hadn’t gone far.
She climbed to the grate, quieted her breathing, and listened for possible dangers. Wherever they were, it was quiet, with only the odd chirp of a cricket and the hiss of a few dead leaves dancing along the cobblestones. It might be too late in the evening for anyone to be up in the Nobles’ ring. She could only hope.
Bracing her legs on one side of the pipe and her back on the other, she reached up to grab the grate.
“What do you see?” he asked, startling her.
She clung to the grate to keep her balance, contemplating one of many possible nasty retorts. It was so difficult to remember it co
uld all be an act. If she was smart, she’d get rid of him after he’d done his spell. She couldn’t risk that her death wasn’t real.
“What’s out there?”
She had to keep manipulating him if she wanted to discover if he was after something. “Nothing,” she said in her sweetest voice.
The grate complained like the last one and she cringed. Please let no one have heard that. Thankfully, the street remained silent, so she poked her head out of the pipe and glanced around.
Sure enough, they were still in the second ring. The street lanterns looked like the ones at the bottom of her family’s driveway. Across from her rose a high brick wall with a massive coat-of-arms of crossed swords above an open goddess-eye built into the brick. Her mouth went dry and she concentrated on keeping her mind blank.
The idiot had taken her right to the front gate of the Collegiate of the Quayestri, home of the highest law in the principalities. All it took was for her to let her thoughts wander and for some inexperienced Inquisitor apprentice to lose control of his abilities and accidentally read her memories. Everything she’d done would be projected into the air with that Goddess-awful seeing-smoke, and every officer of the law would know what she was guilty of.
And with the way her evening had gone so far, it would be one of her first assassination assignments projected. Every Tracker in residence would be after her and if caught, she’d lose her head—and that was a death no necromancer could bring her back from.
It would be a perfect end to a perfect night: to have both of the principality’s most powerful forces chasing her. And no one but a two-bit necromancing player on her side.
THREE
Ward gazed up the access pipe at the outline of Celia’s shapely bottom. She was just so beautiful, and he was just so dumb when it came to women. A little pout, a few tears...
She was using him. He knew it the moment she’d disappeared into the sewer, but she’d called on the Oath and he had sworn it, even if the Society of Physicians had forsaken him. And, as always, he found himself ankle deep in—
It was like Bantianta all over again. Except then he’d been well rested and—his stomach growled—he’d had a full stomach. His head throbbed at the memory of the Inquisitor ripping into his mind to project him digging up that man’s corpse. It had almost hurt as much as the brand the Tracker had seared into the back of his neck. Justice was swift and public when the Quayestri were involved.
The rustle of fabric on stone made him look up. He hadn’t realized he’d looked away. Now was not a good time to get lost in thought.
With feline grace, Celia landed beside him. She shifted the rucksack strap across her shoulder.
“So?”
“You’ve taken us straight to the Collegiate of the Quayestri.”
Thank the Goddess. “Excellent. You can tell them about your murder. The Seers on the Grewdian Council will be able to help you.” With luck she wouldn’t ask him to come with her and he could avoid the law altogether, since there were still outstanding warrants for his arrest in other principalities. Thankfully, Ward’s little criminal activities of robbing graves and practicing necropsies had escaped the notice of any Seer’s Goddess-given gift to see the future so far, merely adding credence to Ward’s theory that the Goddess didn’t abhor surgery. But with the most powerful Seers in the Union, the Collegiate of the Quayestri, and the Prince of Brawenal’s personal Seer all situated in Brawenal, Ward didn’t want to press his luck. It had already been pressed far enough.
Celia sighed.
That didn’t sound good.
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“Of course it does.” Any nobleman could demand justice from the Council. He was sure a nobleman’s daughter had the same right.
“So you expect me to just storm in there and accuse my father, second counselor to the Prince, of murdering me?”
All right, maybe that could be a problem. The Grewdian Council probably wouldn’t trust the word of the walking dead, particularly when she couldn’t prove how she was killed. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure, boy,” she said, her tone low, dangerous. The pleasantries were over.
He swallowed back a huff. He might be young but he was more than just a boy. Besides, she looked to be the same age as he was. In the very least, he could start standing up for himself. “I’ll have you know I’m a trained physician and powerful necromancer. I am Ward de’Ath, the fourth Edward de’Ath in a long line of powerful necromancers and—”
She grabbed the front of his jacket and yanked him closer. “Yes, yes.” Her grip softened and she stroked his lapels with her thumbs. “That still doesn’t solve the problem. We’re on the wrong side of the second ring and we’re standing outside of zealot mind-reading central.”
“Fine, what do you propose?” He straightened and leaned forward, standing nose-to-nose with her, the beautiful, mesmerizing Celia Carlyle.
She ran her palms down his chest, past his waist, and down each thigh.
Glorious heat washed over him. His body responded to her touch and he yearned to hold her, caress her, be with her...
And less than an hour ago, she’d been dead.
He jerked away, stumbled on something submerged in the sewage, and fell backwards against the sewer wall. Slime oozed between his fingers.
“On the other side of the ring,” she said, her words slow and enunciated, as if she thought him an imbecile, “is a place where we can hide.”
He pushed away from the wall and peered around in the darkness for something to wipe the muck off his hands. The back of his pants and jacket were covered in filth. His throat tightened. He’d inherited the jacket from his father, along with the wig. Now one was filthy and the other crammed without care into an inside pocket. In the blink of an eye, his life had fallen to ruin, and it was all Celia’s fault. And he couldn’t just leave her. She’d called on the damned Oath. To make it worse, only she could convince the authorities he hadn’t stolen her body—and with luck, she’d do so without him present.
Unfortunately, she didn’t seem interested in his feelings, let alone his life.
He bit the inside of his cheek. He could deal with this, figure a way out. Until then, he needed to keep on her good side... if she had a good side. “So, where is this place?”
“I just told you. Weren’t you listening?”
Before he could respond, she climbed out of the access pipe.
“Of course I wasn’t listening. I was thinking again.”
Without any of Celia’s grace, he clambered out. She was already across the cobblestone road, barely visible in the shadow of one of the many walls lining the street. If he’d taken a moment longer, she would have been gone and he would never have been able to find her.
He staggered to his feet and moved to brush off the back of his breeches, then remembered they were beyond help. Like his jacket, his shoes, his career, his life.
A hiss came from the shadow where he had last seen Celia. He could only presume it was her. And she was right. What was he thinking, standing in the middle of the street covered in human waste? Really, he was smarter than this. He’d been at the top of his class before he was expelled. He’d known his letters and numbers before he could walk.
And now he was reduced to...
He swallowed the lump in his throat and, squelching as the sewage in his shoes oozed through his stockings and between his toes, rushed to her side. “Remind me again—”
Celia crouched against the wall, her forehead on her knees.
“Celia?”
She didn’t respond.
He knelt beside her and, with a tentative hand, touched her shoulder.
Nothing.
Great. Her fifteen minutes had expired and he still had no idea where to go.
He glanced up and down the street. It was wide enough for four carriages to pass without trouble. The cobblestones were even and well-tended, and high walls with heavy iron gates lined either side, blocking views of the groun
ds and mansions beyond from curious eyes. Which meant anyone watching was a wealthy potential client.
On the street proper, dotting either side, were the famous second-ring street lanterns: oil lanterns hanging from carved maple poles, reproductions of the lanterns in the palace ring. They illuminated a trail of slimy footprints right to his hiding spot. He huddled deeper in the shadow, but there was nothing he could do about the trail.
All was quiet. But for how long? With his luck, it would be Celia’s family who appeared. How had he gotten himself into this situation again? Oh, right. He hadn’t. She had, and now he was stuck with her. For a moment he considered leaving her and running away, but then he’d have broken his Oath—that damned, Goddess-forsaken Oath—and if his word wasn’t any good, he was no better than a common criminal. He couldn’t very well leave his morals behind when things became a little difficult—all right, a lot difficult.
He leaned her back, unsheathed his small utility knife, and contemplated which finger he should prick this time. How many times was he going to have to wake her before they reached their destination and he had time to prepare for the Jam de’U? It would be so much better if the next time she awoke it was for more than fifteen minutes.
He would show her he wasn’t simple of mind. And that began with putting his foot down and not letting her manipulate him. He would prove he wasn’t some commoner trying to rise above his station, even if he really was. She would be so grateful she would want to clear his name and free him from his Oath to her.
He sheathed the knife, gathered her in his arms, and staggered to his feet. He’d show her. Really.
All right, so that was all a fantasy, but it was at least something to hold onto.
He took a few steps out of the shadows into the lamplight and froze. He didn’t know where he was going or what he was doing, and now he stood in the middle of the street carrying a corpse.
Shit.
He scurried back to the safety of the shadows. Thank the Goddess Celia hadn’t been awake to see that. First thing first, he needed a place to go, somewhere the wealthy Carlyle family wouldn’t look for him. Or better yet, a place where the residents wouldn’t notice the smell of a body in the early stages of decomposition. Not to mention the reek of sewage he was sure emanated from his very pores. There was no way he was going back into the sewer—even if he smelled like it. He didn’t need to be standing in human waste to get the job done. Surely there were places that smelled worse than he did.
