by Lisa Henry
“Oh.” A flush rose on Kaz’s throat, and he moved his hand away for a moment.
A feather. A small feather, intricately inked in delicate black lines against Kaz’s skin, with the point of its vane poking out from underneath his unruly hair. Another tattoo?
Kaz reached up and touched the end of the tattoo. He drew his hand back again, and Min saw the tattoo was no longer there against his skin. Instead, sticking to the ends of Kaz’s fingers, was a damp black feather.
Sons of Rus.
Min’s heart beat faster as he met Kaz’s gaze.
Kaz’s throat bobbed as he swallowed, but his gaze was steady. “They’re fae magic, I think. I’ve never heard of a Gift that could do it.”
“Do what?”
Kaz drew his fingers through his hair, and this time a clawed foot appeared from his hairline, followed by the tip of a wing, and suddenly a tattooed raven was tumbling down the slope of his neck, ruffling its feathers as it came to a stop on his shoulder.
Kazimir traced the raven on his shoulder, and the ink-thin lines thickened, morphed somehow, and then the raven was a solid thing, a real thing, and it was perched on Kaz’s shoulder. Its ink-black feathers shone in the sunlight, and it tilted its head to give Min a sharp-eyed stare.
Kaz tapped the bird’s head with his finger. “This one likes to be called Knifebeak.”
Min raised his eyebrows.
“His real name is Chirpy,” Kaz said. The raven squawked and snapped its sharp beak at Kazimir’s fingers, and Kaz’s mouth quirked. “It is! Chirpy!”
This one, Kaz had said, and Min thought suddenly of the warm little cat he’d dreamed had slept on him the night before. And there had been a cat before that, hadn’t there?
He put a hand on Kaz’s free shoulder and turned him.
The tattoo of the cat on Kaz’s hip was moving, like an illustration in a manuscript come to life, the ink twisting and turning on the vellum page that was Kaz’s skin. It stalked up his spine, tail lashing, and then it too was real, dropping to its feet on the bank of the stream and prowling forward to twine around Min’s ankles.
A little gray tortoiseshell cat, just like the one Min had seen in Pran.
“This one is Taavi,” Kaz said.
“How is such a thing possible?” Min leaned down to run his fingers down the cat’s arching spine. He could feel its rumbling purr under his touch.
“I don’t know,” Kaz said softly. “I never knew. I never knew anything.”
He turned away to pull his shirt on and possibly to hide the sudden shine of tears in his eyes.
And that, Min thought as Taavi the cat curled around his legs again, was just another tiny piece in the ugly mosaic that was Kazimir Stone’s tragedy.
Or his duplicity.
MIN HATED the woods.
It seemed to him an endless nightmare of tree roots, rough ground, hidden holes, and paths that ended in dead ends that necessitated backtracking and trying all over again. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find they’d walked for hours and barely covered a mile. He was tired, his feet ached, and there was a spider’s web in his hair.
He was also worried Kaz was still leading them in the wrong direction. Min was suspicious both by birth and by profession, and the fact he couldn’t understand the nature of Kaz’s Gift was troublesome. The iron collar should have prevented him from using his human Gift, and weren’t the fae supposed to sicken with the touch of iron? Iron had burned Kaz two days ago, and yet now he barely seemed to notice it at all.
Kaz could still follow leylines—perhaps not so unusual, and his explanation had seemed plausible. But he also had a cat and a raven that defied the iron collar he wore. Shouldn’t they have become as lifeless as Kallick’s dusty bones when Min had put the collar on him?
It was troubling.
It bothered Min that Kaz was either a naïf or that he was lying.
It bothered him even more that he even entertained the idea it was possible Kaz was a complete innocent. He was pretty, but Min had known plenty of pretty people. He’d never before second-guessed his own suspicious nature simply because he wanted to put his dick inside someone.
If Harry were here, he’d raise his eyebrows and make some comment about Min finally finding his conscience, perhaps. But Harry wasn’t here, and the last thing Min needed was to discover he had a conscience.
A few paces ahead, Kaz stopped suddenly. Min came up beside him.
They were standing on the edge of a small clearing, almost perfectly circular. There was a pool inside of it, and Min’s dry mouth tried its hardest to water at the sight of what appeared to be clean, deep water.
And yet something held him back.
It was the perfection of the clearing, he thought, and the fact he could no longer hear any birdsong. The sunlight gleamed on the surface of the pool, and Min felt an overwhelming urge to step forward and to fall to his knees and drink. It was a need that ran deeper than his thirst. The moment it came over him he knew he should fear it, and also that he would not be able to resist it for much longer.
Min felt a chill, his skin prickled, and he remembered suddenly the words of an old song one of his mother’s girls used to sing as she darned her stockings by the kitchen fire:
Light down, light down. We are come to the place where ye are to die.
He was so tired, though, and the water looked so fresh and cool. What would it matter if they stopped here for a while? He was so tired.
Kaz’s fingers curled around his wrist, as tight as iron. “We will not drink here.”
“No.” Min shook his head to clear it, his heart beating fast, and they made their way around the clearing instead of through it.
Whatever had been waiting for them in that clearing—the woods holding their breath in anticipation—Min hoped they had escaped it. Every flash of light through the canopy of leaves, every shadow slipping through the trees…. Min couldn’t shake the fae, could he? Whether they were really there or not.
He traipsed through the woods with Kaz, ignoring his dry throat and hoping they were still heading for Amberwich.
“Tell me about Harry,” Kaz said sometime later as they shared the last of Min’s stale bread rolls.
Min shrugged. “What’s to tell?”
“You show yourself to the world as a man who thinks only of himself, but you’re risking your life for Harry.”
Min didn’t like the way Kaz’s gaze seemed to bore straight through him.
“You read too many tales of heroes and villains,” he said curtly. He rubbed a piece of bread between his thumb and forefinger until it was a ball and popped it into his mouth. “Harry likes those sorts of stories too. But it’s a mistake to believe that a man can’t be entirely selfish if he thinks of others too. Harry is important to me. He’s my eyes and ears in Amberwich. He’s good company, and he knows more filthy jokes than my mother. I don’t want him to die because I would miss him but also because it would make my life more difficult in a multitude of practical ways. Make no mistake, it’s that selfishness that drove me all the way to Anhaga.”
“You think it’s selfish to love someone?”
“Yes,” Min said. “And before you counter that, don’t forget that I saw your old master’s skull land in a pile of dust. You were selfish too, sweeting. You didn’t even allow Kallick’s bones to rest when he died.”
Kaz’s dark eyes gleamed, and he blinked quickly. “He didn’t need his bones anymore.”
“You defiled his corpse. Some people might even say you defiled his memory.”
“I’m the only one who remembers him!” Kaz’s voice cracked.
“Selfish,” Min said. He resisted the urge to reach out and trace his fingers along the trembling line of Kaz’s jaw. “A selfish little child.”
“You mock me!”
“No. I’m a selfish little child as well, at heart. And so is every man, though few will admit it.”
Kaz huffed. “You think you’re so clever! You think it takes some special talent to see in
to the true hearts of men. It doesn’t! You’re just shallow and bitter, and you think the whole world is too!”
It was more words than they’d ever exchanged, probably, and Min was unsurprised it had led them to this moment. He’d goaded Kaz, because he was exactly the person he said he was: a selfish child. And in this moment he was a selfish child who was scared for Harry, scared for the inexorable arrival of the full moon, and scared for the moment the blood curse would activate. So he prodded and pricked because it was better to feel anger than despair, wasn’t it? It was better to feel like he had a purpose and wasn’t just wandering around lost in the fucking woods. And some might say—his own mother chief amongst them—that most everyone who met Min ended up hating him, so why waste time getting to the foregone conclusion?
Min curled his mouth into a mocking smile. “And you are either a fool, Kazimir—”
“I am not!”
“Or you are playing me for one,” Min finished. “You’re to be bound in iron your whole life, kept under the thumb of your grandfather, married to your own uncle, and you really believe there is anything in the hearts of men but greed and cruelty?”
Kaz swallowed, his throat bobbing. He lifted his chin. “I believe that not all men are like them.”
“Then I fear you will be disappointed,” Min said. “Over and over again.”
“Fuck you,” Kaz said. He clenched his jaw tight for a moment, the muscles in his cheeks trembling. Then he opened his mouth again: “Fuck you.”
And he turned and stalked away.
Min followed him, because what the hell else was he to do?
THE AFTERNOON shadows deepened in the hollows on the ground. Min’s feet hurt, and his throat was as dry as a gravel pit. Kaz hadn’t spoken to him in hours, and Min wished he could say the silence was a blessing. It felt more like a burden, though, as if someone had thrown a heavy blanket over Min and blocked out the light. Kaz’s silence felt as oppressive as an overcast day, or one where a thick haze of smoke lay in the air. Min was used to people who used words as weapons, not silence. But then, Min had been raised in a brothel, surrounded by women with tongues as sharp as their wits. Kaz had grown up with a corpse for company.
Even a corpse might be more talkative than Kaz right now.
At the top of a slight rise where the trees thinned a little and the dry leaves were thick underfoot, Kaz stopped. He bowed his head and rolled his shoulders, then unfastened his cloak and dropped it to the ground. He was wearing his shirt pulled through the iron collar again, like a ruff. His kirtle was unlaced. He raised a hand to the back of his neck and tapped his fingers on his nape. Then paused and did it again.
“What are you doing?” Min asked.
“Come on,” Kaz murmured. “Come out, Chirpy.”
He tapped his fingers against his pale skin a third time, and a sharply inked beak followed the path of them, snapping. Kaz curled his long fingers and was suddenly holding a handful of squawking raven. A tiny black feather spiraled to the ground.
Kaz brought the bird around to his front and raised it so he could look it in the eye. “Find water.”
The raven glared at him.
“Knifebeak,” Kaz said, his voice cajoling, his eyes wide. “Find water, please.”
He tossed the raven into the air, smiling as it took wing and cleared the trees.
Impossible, that he should have had the magic to conjure life into the bird with the iron collar around his neck. But the cat and the bird were different from Kallick, weren’t they? Kallick had been a puppet. The cat and the bird did not seem to be controlled by Kaz’s will at all. They simply were, and they were as confounding as their keeper.
Kaz’s blood, part fae and part human, seemed to not follow the rules of either.
Kaz peered up at the sky, squinting into the light.
Taavi the cat slipped out from underneath Kaz’s kirtle, dropping softly to the ground and sitting on his boot. Kaz dropped a hand to his side, and the cat stood on her hind legs to butt her head against his fingers.
“Are you talking to me yet?” Min asked.
Kaz looked away, but Taavi strutted over to him and curled around his ankles.
“At least one of you is, hmm?” Min scratched the cat’s head.
“I am not sure what we have to talk about,” Kaz said, still looking away. “Words cannot change the path we are on. Maybe I am a fool, though, because I didn’t realize you hated me.”
“I don’t hate you, Kaz,” Min said. His throat ached from more than his thirst. “But I can’t be your friend.”
Kaz turned his head to meet his gaze. He looked suddenly, achingly young. “Why not?”
“Because….” Min shook his head helplessly. “Sons of Rus, Kaz! Because it would be fucking heartbreaking!”
In the sudden silence, a bird chattered from somewhere nearby, and Min felt he had revealed way too much of himself to Kaz’s wide gaze. He felt almost naked, stripped bare.
“Oh,” said Kaz quietly at last. He crossed his arms over his chest and hugged himself. “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t—I didn’t understand.”
“I don’t hate you,” Min said. “But I can’t be your friend.”
Kaz nodded, his gaze dropping.
Min looked up as he heard the piercing cry of a raven overhead, and moments later Chirpy dove down, alighting on Kaz’s shoulder and chattering in his ear. He ruffled his feathers and nipped at Kaz’s earlobe.
“Good boy,” Kaz murmured. “Clever bird.”
Chirpy preened.
“Did he find water?” Min asked hopefully.
“Better,” Kaz said. He pointed. “He says the road’s just over the next rise, and there’s a carter coming this way now.”
Min stooped to pick up Kaz’s cloak. “Then let’s move. My feet are killing me.”
Kaz flashed a wavering smile and fell into step beside him.
Chapter 13
JODERMAN THE goose farmer was not a talkative man, bless him, but his one good eye lit up when Min produced three shiny quadrans from his purse and asked for a ride to Amberwich. The back of Joderman’s cart was filled with crates of geese he was transporting to market in Amberwich, and Min had never been happier to be hissed at and abused. He and Kaz sat in the back, their aching feet hanging down, and drank Joderman’s watered-down beer and ate the corned mutton and bread his wife had packed him for the journey. Joderman had apparently weighted Min’s three quadrans against the cost of an empty belly and discovered he liked the result.
Min had managed to ascertain from the brief words he’d exchanged with the man that they were no longer on the road from Pran. They must have cut through the woods instead of doubling back to the road they’d fled. Joderman came from a village called Halford. Min had never heard of it and didn’t particularly regret the gap in his knowledge. The important thing was they would be in Amberwich by nightfall. Joderman, like many of the farmers who came from miles around to sell at the markets every nine days, would camp outside the city walls overnight, only taking his cart inside the city just before dawn to set up. Min and Kaz, unencumbered by a cart, a horse, and over thirty angry geese, would part company with him at the gate and continue on to—
Min’s heart tumbled over a missed beat, and his stomach clenched.
They would continue on to deliver Kaz to Edward Sabadine, that venomous snake, and Min would never see him again. He would be kept collared—no doubt about it now that Robert knew he was a necromancer—and treated as a prisoner in the cold bosom of his family. Min wished he could believe Kaz would at least be given a gilded cage, but he’d felt the ice in Edward Sabadine’s stare. There wasn’t an ounce of compassion in the old man’s body. He was cold-blooded.
But Harry would live.
Harry would live, and Min had to believe that was worth it. He couldn’t afford to falter now, to stumble on the final steps of this loathsome endeavor.
The day drew on, and Min was rocked into a doze by the sway of the wagon, back and forth, back
and forth as it juddered over the road. They passed fields of crops and of goats and sheep and cows. They passed cottages and shrines and once, a group of barefoot children carrying fishing poles. Once or twice riders on horseback appeared in the distance behind them, growing closer and closer until they drew alongside the cart and then overtook it. The road became a little wider and a little busier with each slow-passing hour.
Kaz sat in silence, twisting pieces of straw into shapes and then straightening them out again and starting over.
Min drew his legs up and shuffled around so he was facing the front of the cart. In the distance, the walls of Amberwich glowed in the afternoon sunlight, a smoky haze hanging above them, and Min had never seen a more beautiful sight. They were still too far away for Min to make out any landmark except the Iron Tower, which rose above all the other buildings in the city, strong and forbidding. The king himself dwelt there, where the iron not only protected the city from the Hidden Lord, but also protected the king from the Gifted. The history of Amberwich had been a bloody one at times, and no king, Min supposed, slept entirely soundly.
The sun was setting by the time Joderman drove the cart off the side of the road into a field already full of carts and carters, horses and livestock, crates and bales. Min slid down from the back of the cart, landing in something soft that he hoped was mud rather than the alternative. He held his arms up for Kaz, helping him down to the ground.
“Thank you for the ride, sir,” he said, and Joderman nodded in acknowledgment and made a noise that sounded something like “yarp.”
Min and Kaz continued toward the city walls and the old portcullis gate. This wasn’t Stanes Street, but Market Street. Market Street cut through the western quarter of Amberwich. Their route to Sabadine’s house from here would take them within spitting distance of the Iron Tower on the King’s Hill. Strange that the Iron Tower was so visible from outside the city; from within, under the eaves and the awnings and the overhangs of houses and shops and inns and taverns, a man might never even catch a glimpse of it.
