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For River
Make your own fate
ONE
The docks were no place for a lady.
My great-aunt Sariah’s words fell with the beat of the heavy rain as I snatched up my skirts, realizing the hem was soaked through. It was one of many lessons she’d imparted to me in my years beneath her watch. But while my great-aunt was many things, she was certainly no lady.
A rivulet of water rippled down the steps, where I stood beneath the harbor’s entrance, trying to stay out of the downpour.
I pulled my skirts up higher, looking again to the street. The city of Bastian was gray, its pointed rooftops cloaked in a thick, white fog. I’d arrived on the Jasper on schedule, but despite my uncle’s claims, there’d been no one waiting to receive me.
I shifted to the side when a cluster of men barreled past me and their eyes cut back, raking me from head to toe. The ridiculous frock Sariah had me wear was completely out of place among the hucksters, fishermen, and trading crews who filled the docks. But I’d spent my life not belonging anywhere and all of that was about to change.
The wind picked up, stinging my cheeks and pulling strands of hair loose from where they were tightly pinned back. By the time Murrow showed up, I’d look like I’d been hauled up out of the water in a fishing net. My skirts were growing heavier by the minute.
I cursed, reaching into my pocket for the letter. It had arrived on my eighteenth birthday, as expected. From the time I was a tiny girl in a ruffled frock learning to hold my teacup without spilling, I’d known about the letter. It was a harbinger that followed me through every one of my memories in Nimsmire.
The morning I woke to eighteen years of age, I’d come down the stairs of the gallery to find it sitting unopened on the breakfast table. My great-aunt sat beside it, spectacles propped up on the tip of her nose as she read the morning reports from her many enterprises. As if it were any other day. As if the very air we breathed hadn’t shifted the moment that wax-sealed envelope was delivered.
But it had.
I found the softened edges of the parchment, pulling it free. It was worn from where I’d unfolded it over and over. And though I had the words memorized, I read them again.
Bryn,
It’s time to come home. I’ve booked you passage to Bastian on the Jasper out of Nimsmire. Murrow will be waiting at the docks.
Henrik Roth
It wasn’t an invitation or a request. My uncle was summoning me home—part of a deal he’d made after my parents died. The penmanship was almost flawless, the script slanted in perfect black ink on pearl-white parchment. But there was an unruly flick of the quill at the ends of the words that was unrefined. Brutish, even.
The thought sent a chill up my spine.
I refolded the letter and slipped it into my cloak, gritting my teeth. He’d called me back to Bastian from Nimsmire, but he hadn’t had the decency to show up and greet me himself. From everything Sariah had told me about her nephew, it didn’t exactly come as a surprise.
Ahead, the great city I couldn’t remember hid beneath the mist, stretching along the rocky shore and disappearing into the hills. It had been fourteen years since I boarded a ship in my great-aunt’s arms and she took me from this place. She’d made me a promise as a child—that she’d never lie to me. Through the years, she’d answered my questions with a darkened gaze about the family we’d left behind here. But her answers often left me wishing I’d never asked. Because though I was the niece of one of the most respected aristocrats in Nimsmire, there was one thing I’d never been able to wash myself clean of: my name.
Bryn Roth.
I’d never had a choice in the matter. It was a truth as simple and as evident as the fact that I had brown eyes or that there were five fingers on each of my hands. While the girls in Nimsmire’s merchant families were being matched and given their own business ventures, I waited for my uncle’s letter. I’d known all my life that one day, I’d go to Bastian. I’d even hungered for it, longing for the day that I could disappear out from under Sariah’s attentive gaze and escape the dismal fate of my peers.
The harbor bell rang out, signaling the opening of the merchant’s house. There was already a long line of traders waiting to pick up their inventories before they set out for the next port city on their routes. More than one of them glanced at me, eyeing the trunk at my feet. It was filled with frocks and shoes and jewelry—things Sariah had packed for me. My armor, she’d called it. All the things she said I’d need if I was going to be of use in Bastian. That’s why I was here, after all.
I stared at the trunk, considering whether I could carry it. Certainly not in these blasted, heavy skirts. If no one was coming for me, I’d have to hire someone to deliver the trunk to Lower Vale. If I did, I figured I had about as much chance of seeing it again as I did of getting the mud out of the hem of my frock. For a moment, I thought maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.
“The long-lost Roth!” A smooth voice carried on the cold wind, finding me. “Come home at last.”
I dropped my skirts and turned in a circle, searching the faces on the street until I spotted him. A young man with a fine wool coat leaned against a lamppost ahead, one foot crossed over the other as he watched me. His hair was shorn to the scalp on both sides, but its top was a mound of dark, loose curls.
I scowled as he grinned up one side of his face. “Murrow?”
He smiled wider. “Bryn.”
“How long have you been standing there?” I snapped, climbing the stairs and abandoning the trunk.
He had a sharp, handsome face, but it was his eyes that caught my attention. They were a pale, silvery gray that caught the light in a flash. He nodded in greeting and stood up off the post, sliding his hands into the pockets of his jacket.
“Long enough.” He walked toward me slowly, and it was only when he was standing a few feet away that I realized how tall he was. He towered over me, tilting his head as he looked down into my face. “It’s good to see you, cousin.”
I glared at him. “Henrik’s letter said you’d be waiting for me.”
“And so I am.”
Sariah had told me about Murrow. A rascal, she’d called him. He’d been a boy when she left Bastian for Nimsmire, but the entire family tree was etched into my mind, each of the names that lived there branded into my memory. To me, the tales of the Roths were like the fantastical myths of the sea that the traders lived by. Except these tales were true.
“Sariah didn’t come with you?” he asked, absently checking his pocket watch.
“No.” In fact, Sariah had refused to come. She’d sworn when she left Bastian that she would never step foot in the city again and that was another promise she intended to keep.
“Just as well.” He breathed out a sigh. “Come on.” He jerked a chin toward the entrance to the harbor and started up the docks without me.
“But my things.” I turned back, only to f
ind the trunk that had been sitting at the bottom of the steps was gone. When I searched the street for Murrow’s head bobbing above the others, two men were striding ahead of him, my trunk poised ungracefully on their shoulders.
“Wait!” I called out, rushing to keep up.
Murrow slowed just long enough for me to fall into step beside him, pulling his hat low over his eyes. The rain beaded on the dark gray tweed like tiny diamonds and the chain of his gold pocket watch glimmered as it swung from his vest pocket. At first glance, he was as elegantly dressed as any of the young men in Nimsmire, but there was a roughness to his countenance.
Murrow tipped his hat at a man passing us and the man promptly frowned, edging a step away.
Murrow laughed, clearly amused. “He won’t like it if we’re late.”
“Who?” I looked back at the man, confused.
“Henrik.” Murrow said his name with a finality that made me pause.
My uncle Henrik was the patriarch of a generations-old trade in fake gemstones. He’d inherited the business from his father, Felix, my great-aunt’s brother. When my parents were killed in a scheme gone wrong, Sariah struck a deal with Henrik. If he let her raise me in Nimsmire, away from the dangers of the family business, he could have me back on my eighteenth birthday. He’d kept his end of the deal. Now my great-aunt had kept hers.
“How was the journey?” Murrow picked up his pace.
I hauled up my skirts as we plowed into a puddle, dodging a rickety cart of red plums on the walk. “It was fine.”
I’d been on the ship only one night and hadn’t slept, instead staring at the stars out the window of the private cabin Henrik had paid for. I’d been thinking of Sariah. How she’d pulled me close and kissed me on the cheek before she let me go. It was a rare show of affection that had made my stomach twist with dread. Her soft skin had been cold against mine and fleetingly I had thought, This could be the last time I see her. Even so, I’d parted from her without so much as a single tear. In addition to teaching me how to read, write, and name every gemstone, Sariah had also taught me to behave. And there was no one so unbecoming in her eyes as someone who refused to accept their fate.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” Murrow said suddenly, coming to a stop in the middle of the street.
I stared up into his face, my eyes searching his. I didn’t. There were moments when I thought I remembered the time before Nimsmire. I’d wake from a vivid dream, with distantly familiar images dissolving before my eyes. But they always slipped away just as I reached for them, lost to the past once more.
“No,” I answered. “Do you remember me?”
Murrow’s eyes narrowed, as if he was sifting through his memories. “Maybe.”
Without another word, he turned onto the next street. A half-bewildered laugh escaped my lips before I followed. He might pass for well-bred in appearance, but Murrow was a different creature than the ones I’d been brought up with. There was a sly humor about him, and I wasn’t sure if I found it a relief or an irritation.
I followed him beyond the iron archway ahead, where a knot of tangled streets lay between the rows of buildings. The filtered light cast a glow over the rooftops, reflecting on the hazy glass windows. In every direction, the walkways were filled with people, and the smell of seawater and baking bread was thick in the cold air.
It was nothing like the small, quaint city of Nimsmire, with its well-groomed thoroughfare and small harbor. And for the slightest, fractured moment, I had the feeling that I could remember this place. As if I could see myself standing there at four years old, pulled along by Sariah’s hand, toward the docks. But again, the threads of the image were frayed, unraveling each time I tried to hold them in my mind.
Ahead, Bastian unfolded like a book and a small smile lifted on my lips. It was a city of stories. But not all of them had happy endings.
TWO
The house wasn’t a house at all. Not the kind I was used to, anyway.
Murrow stood before the narrow slab of brick wedged between two other buildings down an alley paved with cracked cobblestones. The rain had finally stopped, but it still dripped from the corners of the roof overhead, where three rows of windows looked out over the street. It was the ancestral home of the family, first inhabited by my great-grandfather Sawyer Roth. According to Sariah, there would never come a time when the Roths didn’t live beneath its roof, but compared to the estate in Nimsmire I’d grown up in, this was a hovel.
My hands fisted in my skirts as I studied the face of the dark row house. It was the subtle shift of a curtain in one of the windows that drew my eye. But behind the glass, there was only darkness.
Murrow drew a key from his pocket and it clicked as he turned it in the lock. My trunk had been waiting beside the steps when we turned the corner and I’d instantly frowned, disappointed that it hadn’t been carried off to the market. Its contents were like a chain around my ankle, keeping me from venturing too far from the role I’d been born to play.
This end of the alley was empty, tucked away from the busy main street of Lower Vale, and the mud wasn’t pocked with footprints. It was apparent that there weren’t many who passed by this way, and there wouldn’t be. Those who had business with the Roths weren’t the kind of people who’d knock on this door in the daylight.
It opened with a sharp creak and a small, scowling face peered out of the darkness. A smile broke onto the boy’s lips when he laid eyes on Murrow and he opened the door wider. But my brow furrowed as I looked him over. He couldn’t be any older than ten years, but he was dressed in the same tailored jacket and trousers that Murrow wore, his made of a deep blue tweed instead of gray. Even the boy’s white shirt was spotless and unwrinkled.
“Is this her?” His wide eyes moved over me from head to toe, like I was a tea cake waiting to be eaten.
“Yep,” Murrow answered, mussing the boy’s perfectly combed hair as he pushed inside.
The boy groaned, pushing him off, and I hesitated before I took the steps. With the door hanging open, the house looked like a beast, mouth open and tongue unrolled.
“You coming?” Murrow didn’t wait for a response, disappearing into the shadowed hall.
I glanced up and down the alley again. For what, I didn’t know. The Roths weren’t just residents of Lower Vale, they were its keepers. There probably wasn’t a safer place in this part of the city than under this roof. So why did I feel like I was crossing a dangerous threshold?
The boy closed the door behind me as I stepped inside and I unclasped my cloak, letting it slide off my shoulders.
“I’m Tru.” He watched me with a bright grin, thumbs hooked into his suspenders. Aside from the playful twinkle in his eyes, he looked like a miniature man.
Tru. I found the name in the mental register I kept of the family. He was the eldest son of my uncle Noel. “I’m Bryn. Nice to meet you.”
“Don’t you have work to do?” Murrow arched an eyebrow at him, unbuttoning his jacket so that it fell open more comfortably.
Tru gave a sigh before he turned on his heel and reluctantly went up the stairs. They curved as they rose and he disappeared, leaving only the sound of his footsteps beating behind the walls.
The house was cold, pricking over my flushed skin as my eyes trailed across the entry. Old wood paneling reached up the walls like the cabin in a ship, but the hallway was papered in a rich garnet. It rippled with the damp and curled at some of the edges along the ceiling, where a few oil lamps were lit on brass mounts. They badly needed polishing.
“You’re the same, you know,” Murrow said, suddenly. He held out a hand for my cloak.
I gave it to him, feeling the heat come up into my cheeks. “So, you do remember me?”
“Oh, I remember you.” He gave me another wry grin, hanging the cloak on one of the pegs in the wall. “Remember that temper, too.”
I frowned. If Sariah were here, she’d give me a knowing look. My temper was the one wrinkle she hadn’t quite ironed out of
me.
I didn’t like the idea that Murrow might know me in a way that I didn’t know him. I’d grown up with tales of the Roths, but what stories had they heard about me? Maybe none. My great-aunt hadn’t spoken to the family since we left, except for essential correspondence with Henrik about their overlapping business.
Her residence in Nimsmire and her ability to run her family stake away from Bastian was a privilege granted by her brother, Felix, but now that he was gone, it was sustained by Henrik. From what I could tell, she knew better than to tempt my uncle’s wrath by refusing him anything. It was the reason she hadn’t hesitated to pack my things when his letter arrived. That said more to me about the Roths than the whole of what she’d told me over a lifetime.
Murrow led me down the dark hallway, past the kitchen, where a small woman stood at a butcher block kneading a round of dough. Strands of icy-gold hair fell into her eyes as she glanced up at me, but Murrow didn’t stop, breezing past the opening. I followed him around the corner, and he waited before a set of doors that were painted black and fitted with bronze handles.
It wasn’t until that moment that I realized how quiet the house was. It didn’t have the feeling of being lived in or a sense that there were people between its walls. It was unsettling, as if the rooms had been empty for years, the hearths cold. When Murrow reached for a handle, I stopped him, setting two fingers on the crook of his arm.
“What’s he like?” I asked, trying to keep my tone more curious than wary. The truth was, I was half-terrified. And I wasn’t even sure why. I’d been invited here, but the unfamiliar atmosphere of the house made me feel like an intruder.
Murrow let go of the handle and he turned toward me, his face only half lit by a beam of light coming from a high window. “Henrik?”
“Yeah.”
For a second, he looked almost suspicious of the question. His head tilted a little to one side, but when his mouth twisted, I realized he was really thinking about his answer. “He’s … serious. Resourceful. Intelligent. Nothing matters more to him than loyalty.” There was a calm honesty in the words that almost put me at ease. But when he reached for the door again, he hesitated. “But, Bryn?”
The Last Legacy Page 1
