Anhaga

by Lisa Henry

  Min fixed his gaze on a damp curl of Kaz’s hair. The fog shifted around them, and he was afraid of what he might see if he looked there instead—either the fae or whatever Min’s imagination conjured in their place. No. He watched Kaz instead and held him close. Stole as much comfort as he offered.

  He heard the distant thundering of hooves. He heard, closer than that, the sound of bells. And he heard, his blood turning to ice as he did, an exchange of voices somewhere close by that sounded like music plucked from some strange, unearthly instrument.

  Kaz shivered, and Min closed his eyes.

  And then everything went deathly quiet, and Min wondered if the fog had drowned him, pulled him under like a black ocean would a sailor, and left him senseless. He could hear nothing, see nothing. He couldn’t say how much time had passed, and only the faint click of Kaz’s throat as he swallowed—and the dip of the iron collar—convinced him that he wasn’t frozen. He opened his eyes and turned his head.

  Up on the rise of the road, a horse stepped through the fog. It seemed both taller and narrower than the horses Min had become unwillingly accustomed too. It was as white as bone. Its rider was tall, too, and as deathly pale. Min saw an angular profile: ageless, beautiful, terrifying. The fae wore a gold circlet around its head. Its ears were pointed. Its hair, the color of autumn leaves, fell in a smooth wave down its back. It wore robes that could have been cut out of a midsummer night’s sky the moment before the darkness overtook the last shade of deepest blue.

  And then the fog shifted again, and the fae rode on.

  Min’s heart hammered.

  Sudden birdsong broke the silence and broke the spell of fear that had kept Min frozen in place. He jostled Kaz farther down the slope, deeper into the cover of the trees, away from the road and from the fae who followed it. He hoped the fae were trailing Robert and his men and not the sound of the damp leaves and twigs that crunched under his and Kaz’s boots.

  They hurried deeper into the woods.

  “I DON’T blame you.”

  It felt like hours until Kaz broke the silence. They were picking their way alongside a narrow stream that seemed more sludge than water. Its surface was dappled with half-rotted leaves. Stringy grass bordered its edges, and Min’s boots slipped more than once on the muddy bank.

  “I don’t blame you,” Kaz said again, as though Min might not have heard him.

  “No offense,” Min said, his voice rougher than he intended, “but it wouldn’t change a thing if you did.”

  “I know.” For some reason that made Kaz’s mouth quirk in something that was almost a smile.

  Min slipped, his left boot dipping into the water. He caught a branch to steady himself. “We’re lost, aren’t we?”

  “Better lost than caught by the fae,” Kaz said wryly.

  Min huffed. He rolled his shoulders and squinted up at the sky. It was bluer than it had been when they’d set out from Pran, but the day was still cool and damp. The night, when it came, would be cold. “True.”

  Kaz walked in front for a little way, and Min wondered if he had any idea where he was leading them. Did he know the way toward Amberwich? And would he lead them in that direction even if he did? If Min had been in Kaz’s position, he wasn’t sure he would. What was worse? To be out in the wilderness hunted by the fae or to be imprisoned in iron in Edward Sabadine’s house? Kaz only had two choices, and they were both bad.

  “Do you even know which way you’re going?” he asked when they had left the little stream behind them.

  “No,” Kaz said over his shoulder. “But I think this way is southeast.”

  “You think?”

  “I can’t see the sun,” Kaz said, rounding on him. He shrugged, and the coins of soft dappled sunlight on his shoulders rolled with the motion. “But I think it’s this way. I did train as a hedgewitch, you know. Kallick taught me how to feel the leylines.”

  Min felt unease stirring in his gut. “But you’re bound in iron.”

  “Iron blocks my magic,” Kaz said. “Not the earth’s. I can’t use it, but I can feel it.” He wrinkled his nose. “I was a terrible hedgewitch, though.”

  “Were you?”

  Kaz looked down, as though he was embarrassed to admit it. “I was supposed to be able to follow the leylines, but usually I just found dead things instead. The first time it happened, I was nine. Kallick sent me to find the place where two leylines crossed, for part of a harvest ritual, and instead I found a dead badger.” He looked up again, a rueful smile on his face. “That was when he knew for sure that I was no hedgewitch.”

  Min couldn’t stop himself from mirroring Kaz’s smile, though a more sensible man might have found more horror in the subject than amusement. Kaz was nothing if not contradictory, though. A shy, naïve boy without a whiff of guile about him, and he had been born with the darkest Gift known to the world. “He took it in his stride, though?”

  “He did. He was a good man. He taught me what he could about my Gift. He taught me how to hide it from people who would fear it.”

  “He didn’t fear it?”

  “He said….” Kaz swallowed. “He said it was a Gift, the same as any other, and that no Gift is good or bad of itself. That was before I… before….”

  Before you turned his corpse into a puppet, Min thought.

  “Before he died,” Kaz finished softly. “I just… I didn’t want to go back to my grandfather’s house. And I couldn’t. I couldn’t leave Kallick’s house, because he’d shown me how to use our Gifts to ward it against the fae as best we could. He didn’t think it would work, but it did. He said he thought it was my blood that did it more than our Gifts. When he died, I didn’t know what else to do except to stay there and to keep the wards in place. I wanted to be safe, but it was more than that as well. I didn’t want to be alone.”

  “Kaz,” Min said softly. “You lived almost a decade locked in a house, watching the world through a window and the eyes of a dead man. I think you were very much alone.”

  A shudder ran through the boy, and Min might not have noticed it at all if he hadn’t been watching him so closely.

  “Yes.” Kaz’s voice cracked on the simple word. “I think I was very lonely.”

  The silence between them was heavy with expectation, and Min felt the urge to reach out and gently trace his fingertips along Kaz’s jaw or the bow of his lips.

  Kaz stepped back before Min could move, flashing him a smile. “There was a girl I liked, from afar. She came to Kallick once and asked for a poultice. She had freckles on her nose. I could see her from the window sometimes. She used to walk down to the harbor with the fishermen at dawn, with the food she’d made them wrapped up in oilskins to protect it from the spray of the ocean. She would watch them as they set out for the day, and I would watch her.” He flushed. “And then, a few months later, I realized I was watching her brothers more than her and the way their shirts stuck to them when they got wet.”

  Min laughed, delighted at the revelation and at Kaz’s pink cheeks. “I do love the taste of salt.”

  Kaz laughed, too, although he dropped his gaze and dragged the toe of his boot through the dirt. “Well.”

  Min waited a moment, until it became apparent Kaz had nothing more to offer the conversation after leading it onto this interesting path. He dug around between his shirt and his tunic and pulled out a bread roll. “Hungry?”

  Kaz took it, his fingertips brushing Min’s palm. “Thank you.”

  Min tried not to look too hard at his ass as they continued walking.

  “WE ARE neither of us woodsmen,” Min decided that evening, squinting in the fading light at the rudimentary shelter they’d built. It was a lean-to of branches that would probably serve as no decent respite from the wind at all, and a paltry mound of leaves and bracken.

  “No,” Kaz agreed, picking a leaf from his hair. “But it will be warmer than the bare ground.”

  Min broke a bread roll in half and shared it with Kaz.

  “I wish w
e had some real food,” Kaz said as they huddled in their shelter. “A nice, hot stargazy pie.”

  “I prefer my food not to stare back at me,” Min muttered.

  Kaz huffed out a breath of laughter and ate the rest of his bread.

  It was no hardship to curl up next to Kaz. It was no mild torture either. Min was more than capable of keeping his hands to himself. Sleeping with Kaz was no different than sharing a bed with Harry, except Min was less likely to get cracked in the face with a flying elbow, which made for a pleasant change.

  He listened to the soft sounds of Kaz breathing, the leaves rustling under him as he shifted, and worried about Harry. He hoped Harry had gotten away from the fae. And he hoped Robert Sabadine understood that Min hadn’t spirited Kaz away out of his family’s grasp. He hoped he understood that Min would get Kaz to Amberwich in time to have Harry’s curse lifted or die trying.

  A terrible, twisting thought dug into Min’s mind. What if Harry wasn’t in Amberwich when Min got back? What if he hadn’t survived the fae? Well then, Min supposed, all his ugliness would be free to manifest, wouldn’t it? He wondered if Kaz would help him seek his revenge, in return for removing the collar. And so what if it destroyed the world and Min along with it? If he had failed Harry, what did he care if he died? And what did he care for anyone else who got in the way at all? Other men, Min supposed, might have consciences that spoke in soft but stern voices at this point, but Min had only ever heard silence, a void inside him that had nothing to do with being impervious to magic.

  Well, perhaps not a void. Perhaps there was something there. But Min was a pragmatist, and he’d gone to sleep most nights on a full belly because of it. He would allow the voice inside him to call Kaz a regret, but he would not allow him to become a call to action. Not when Harry’s life hung in the balance. And that, Min thought, was as fair as he could be.

  The canopy of leaves above them sighed, and shifted in the breeze like the surface of the ocean. It parted here and there and allowed glimpses of starlight. It was quiet and beautiful, and a lovely boy slept at Min’s side.

  And that, Min thought, was as far as he could let that go.

  “I am not a good man,” he told the sleeping Kaz. “But I’m not bad enough to choose you over Harry.”

  The moonlight slanted over Kaz’s face, illuminating his cheekbones, his snub nose, and the bow of his lips. He looked delicate, ethereal, beautiful in a way that reminded Min of the fae, without tipping over the edge into something alien, something cold and terrifying. Whatever else he was, Kaz was too human for that.

  Min dozed at length, and slept, and the whispers of the night around him—alive with insects and the soft footfalls of small animals—filtered into his mind and gave him strange dreams of feathers and fae and a small gray cat that curled up in a warm lump on his stomach and purred.

  When he woke up, Kaz was gone.

  Chapter 12

  IF THERE had been anything in Min’s stomach, he was sure he would have vomited it all over his boots as he paced the small clearing where they’d built their shelter. He felt nauseated, almost feverish, his scant grip on this entire situation unraveling faster than a ball of yarn in the clutches of a cat. Kaz was gone. Kaz was gone, and Min was in a fucking forest, and Harry was as good as dead, if he wasn’t already actually dead.

  Min stopped and dragged his fingers through his hair. Forced himself to take a breath.

  Stupid.

  He should have known Kaz would run. To where, it didn’t matter. It didn’t even matter that it would probably just deliver him faster into the claws of the fae. How often had Min thought of Kaz as an animal caught between two traps? And of course Kaz was driven by fear. Of course he would run. Any little animal would.

  Min sucked in another deep breath and stared around the clearing in the early morning light. Dew glistened on the ground and dripped off the ends of leaves. A spider’s web glittered between two naked branches. The light filtered down through the leaves, not bright enough to make the damp woods gleam or to entirely lift the chill. Tiny hollows held puddles of mist still, and the air smelled of petrichor.

  There were no footprints Min could see in the damp earth. No flattened patches of grass. No helpfully snapped twigs on the bushes that might indicate which direction Kaz had taken. Of course not. He was a human being, not a deer, and Min was no huntsman in any case. Not in this environment, at least. Give him a tortuous maze of dark alleys and rain-slick cobbles and he was in his element, but here? Min had no fucking idea.

  Min could do nothing except choose a direction and follow it.

  He thought he was walking the same direction as yesterday, but that was only a guess.

  He was lost. He had lost. The knowledge of it sat in his guts as heavy as lead. Min had always hated to lose, but this was like no loss he’d faced before. This wasn’t about his pride or about money. This wasn’t about having a few lean weeks where he avoided his landlord and lived on porridge at the Footbridge Tavern. This wasn’t about having to abase his dignity and ask his mother for coins, like some beggar pleading for alms. This time, losing meant losing Harry, and Min had no idea how to even accept a loss like that, let alone recover from it.

  Harry was a fool. A stupid little fool with all the common sense of a dog in heat, but he was Min’s fool, and Min couldn’t envision a life without him.

  Min’s eyes stung as he stumbled down a slope that was steeper than it looked, dirt and grit slipping under the soles of his boots, and caught himself on a branch to prevent himself from falling. He turned and looked back at the slope and saw that his were not the only boots that had left gouges in the earth. His heart tumbled over its newfound hope. Was it possible he was inadvertently following Kaz’s footsteps? He had taken the most likely looking path—probably not an actual thoroughfare so much as the path of least resistance through the tangled undergrowth of the woods—so perhaps Kaz had done the same?

  Min refused to hold on to that hope for now. It would only be more bitter in the end if he nurtured it now. Min was a pragmatist.

  And yet….

  He followed the path cautiously. Sunlight flared up ahead, and Min stepped out of the shadows of the trees and found himself on the bank of a stream. Not the same one as yesterday. Where that had been a narrow, murky sliver cutting through the mud, this was wider, deeper, and the water ran clean and clear. It was wide enough that the sunlight hit it and it shone.

  There was a bundle of clothing on the bank: boots, a cloak, an undershirt, and a grimy green kirtle and a belt.

  And on the bank of the stream knelt Kaz, scooping up handfuls of water and splashing them on his face and torso. If the sunlight shone on the surface of the water, then it gleamed on Kaz’s pale skin, painting him with a brilliant sheen. Min wouldn’t have been surprised to discover he was as iridescent as mother-of-pearl.

  Relief hit Min, hard and fast. He feared his legs suddenly didn’t have the strength to hold him, so he clung to a tree for support and tried to remember how to breathe.

  Kaz hadn’t run.

  It took Min a long moment to come to terms with that realization. Perhaps Kaz should have run, but he hadn’t, and if Harry was still alive after yesterday, then there was a chance Min could keep him alive. Could get the curse removed and save his idiot nephew.

  Kaz could have run, but he had stayed, and Min was overwhelmed with both gratitude and pity, neither of which he was accustomed to entertaining. He swallowed, his throat dry, and watched Kaz.

  Kaz was kneeling with his back to Min. His breeches hung low on his hips, covering enough of him that his modesty was more or less protected but offering teasing glimpses of the top of his thin braies when he leaned forward to scoop more water toward him. His skin wasn’t unmarked: Min saw the blue-black lines of ink on the curve of his hip that disappeared into the fabric of his breeches and remembered the night in the hut outside Anhaga when he’d discovered Kaz had a tattoo. He’d thought it was on the other hip, but he must have been mistake
n.

  Kaz leaned forward, cupping water over his head. Bright droplets sprayed around him like rain as he straightened up again, and water sluiced down his shoulders and back as he squeezed it out of his hair. Even his iron collar gleamed with it.

  Enough.

  Min felt like an interloper. He lifted his hand from the rough bark of the tree and stepped forward. “Kaz?”

  Kazimir twisted around, wide-eyed, his damp hair flying. “Min.”

  He scrambled to his feet and then stooped to collect his clothes. He hugged them to his chest, his damp hair sticking in tendrils to his neck, and Min tried not to notice the inviting angle of his collarbones and the dip in between them that he would very much like to have explored with his touch. And possibly his tongue.

  “Here you are,” he said dumbly.

  Kaz’s eyes widened even farther. “You thought I’d run?”

  “It crossed my mind,” Min said, the echoes of his cold fear reverberating through him even now.

  Kaz creased his brow. “Where would I go?”

  Min appreciated his honesty and the fact he didn’t treat Min like a fool. If Kaz had stayed it was only because running might mean exchanging his terrible fate for one infinitely more horrifying. Kaz knew exactly what waited for him in Amberwich—a chain, metaphorical if he was fortunate, but possibly literal—but the fae? The fae might want to tear him into pieces and feast on his blood and bones. Min couldn’t blame him for choosing to live, even if that life would likely be a miserable one. Min had thought perhaps he’d panicked like a little animal, but no, Kaz was at least as much a pragmatist as Min. A wretched, bleak pragmatist.

  Min smiled at him slightly. “True.”

  Kaz hugged his clothes to his chest with one arm and raised his free hand to rub awkwardly at the back of his neck. “I think that—”

  “What’s that?” Min stepped closer, drawn to some mark on the side of Kaz’s neck, just behind his ear.