by Lisa Henry
Min took a moment to think through that. “I don’t know if you are consoling me or insulting me.”
“Why can’t it be both?”
“That’s fair.”
Harry gestured Freya over to the table. “May we have some water, please, Freya? Before Min drowns in his cups.”
Freya grunted in acknowledgment.
Min sighed. “I told him….” He was briefly distracted by Harry’s fluffy dandelion hair and reached out to try and pet it.
Harry ducked away. “You told him what?”
“I told him that I’d come back for him. Once you were safe.” He attempted a smile and couldn’t be sure how successful it was. “And do you know what he told me?”
“What?”
“He told me not to make promises I couldn’t keep.”
“That’s good advice, Min,” Harry said, raising his eyebrows. “But how do you know if you can keep your promises or not, unless you actually get off your ass and try?”
Min blinked at the water that Freya set down in front of him.
Harry made a good point, actually.
Chapter 15
MIN WOKE with a throbbing head and an urgent need to piss. The afternoon light flooded across the grimy floorboards of the garret room in a haze of gold. Min rolled out of bed and shuffled over to the pot in the corner to relieve himself. He was fairly sure he pissed straight beer. Swann could have bottled and resold it, and nobody would be able to tell the difference.
Harry was seated at a stool by the window, a book open on his skinny knees. “Eel?” he asked around a mouthful, holding the jar out to Min. “Saved you the brine too.”
Min’s stomach churned, but he accepted the pottery jar. He ignored the eels and swallowed down a mouthful of the salty brine they were pickled in instead. It was disgusting, but Min had never discovered a hangover cure as reliable. It was cheaper than visiting a hedgewitch too. The brine burned on the way down his throat, but Min kept it down.
“Ugh.” He passed the jar back to Harry. “Almost makes me miss the fresh snipe eels in Anhaga.”
“Straight from the nets,” Harry said, his cheek dimpling as he quirked a corner of his mouth. He dug around in the jar and pulled out a piece of pickled eel. “The beer was good in Anhaga too. The mind-numbing terror of the fae, though? Not so much.”
“Not so much,” Min agreed wryly, dragging his fingers through his sleep-tousled hair. “How long did I sleep?”
“A few hours.” Harry jammed the lid back on the jar. “Are you sober now?”
Min shrugged. “Sober enough.”
“Good.” Harry set the jar on the table, then stood up and crossed over to the bed. He crouched down in front of it and reached under the sagging frame to haul out the wooden box that contained the tools of their trade.
Min sat down on the second stool, and Harry unrolled a scarred piece of vellum over the table.
Ah. It was a list of members of the Ansgot House and a reminder of Min’s last big job. One of the scions of the House had helped themselves to his inheritance prematurely, in the form of an amber reliquary worth more than most houses in Min’s neighborhood. The elder Ansgot had rallied from his deathbed, fueled entirely by spite, and had shown both the decency not to order the innocent servants immediately flogged and the good sense to bring in Min to retrieve the reliquary so his family’s dirty laundry wasn’t aired out all over the city. Min and Harry had taken a fortnight to track down the culprit and another three days to steal the reliquary back. Last Min had heard, the third Ansgot son had mysteriously been sent to the countryside due to his heretofore unknown health problems. Min wouldn’t have been surprised to learn those health problems included multiple stab wounds and that the young man was actually buried out in the countryside, but that was really none of his business.
He and Harry had eaten well for weeks thanks to the Ansgots.
Min reached for the jar of eels and risked another mouthful of the bitter brine as Harry scraped the vellum clean.
Harry always looked attentive in moments like these. His brow was creased in concentration, and he used his thumbnail to pick at the little spots of ink that refused to lift under the blade of the knife. He was careful when he worked with vellum—though this stuff was old and had been cheaply bought to begin with—and Min had often thought that with his love not just of books but of all the parts of their creation, from the smell of the ink to the intricacy of their stitching, that if Harry had been born to a better station, he would have made someone a brilliant scribe.
Harry selected a pen from the scant collection in the box and a small pot of ink. He uncorked the ink, dipped the pen inside, and closed his eyes for a moment as though recalling details to his memory. Then he began to draw, and Min watched as a map of the Sabadines’ house appeared in thin lines on the vellum.
Harry had a good eye for detail, but he couldn’t have seen that much from his few days locked in a room or his furtive nocturnal visits to Talys that had started this whole mess.
Harry looked up and smirked, as though he knew exactly what Min was thinking. “I rode beside Talys once we lost you and Kaz. Robert was so beside himself he hardly spared us a glance. We had hours to make sure I got it right.”
Clever boy. And clever girl too.
“And Talys knows exactly which room the servants were preparing for Kaz.” Harry tapped on the map. “It’s in the middle of the house. No windows, of course.”
“Of course. And what sort of wards do the Sabadines have?”
“I don’t know. I never came across any, but Talys says her grandfather’s rooms and his treasury are warded.”
“But not her room?”
Harry shrugged. “I guess he cares more about his purse than her safety.”
Min wasn’t entirely surprised. What was Talys but another chattel? And Edward Sabadine probably preferred possessions that couldn’t talk back.
“I only saw the one sorcerer when I was there.” Harry touched his cheek and shuddered. “It would be strange if they had more than one in their employ.”
“Hmm.” In Min’s experience, the sort of people who relied on powerful wards relied on them a little too much, making it easier for Min to slip past them. One sorcerer or an army of them, it made no difference to Min’s ability to get into the house. Of course, getting in was never going to be the problem. Min wondered if Harry, for all his planning, had considered why Min had asked about the wards. He let it pass for the moment. “The Sabadines have household soldiers too.”
“At least a dozen are quartered in the house,” Harry agreed.
“A dozen? How rich is the old snake?”
“Rich enough to be very paranoid.” Harry continued to work on his map. “He is a powerful man, and he has the king’s ear. He has a lot of enemies.”
“All well-deserved, I’m sure.”
Harry’s mouth quirked in a quick grin. “No doubt. So, a dozen soldiers and about the same in servants. Plus Robert, who is the only son still living there.”
“The others managed to cut their leading strings, did they?”
“Oh, there’s a story there,” Harry said. “Robert married without his father’s permission, didn’t he? He went away on some business of the king when he was a young man and came back home a widower with a brown daughter. Edward wanted him to say Talys was illegitimate, because he was supposed to have been promised to some woman from a noble House the whole time, but he refused to do it and the woman’s father broke the engagement off because of the slight. Talys says that Edward has been punishing him for it ever since.”
It was hard to imagine Robert Sabadine as a rebellious youth and even harder to imagine him as ever standing up to his father. But it was all too easy to imagine him bending to his father’s will to guarantee his daughter’s legitimacy. Edward Sabadine didn’t inspire loyalty; he forced it by taking hostages. Min knew that all too well.
He looked back to Harry’s map. “So a dozen soldiers?”
Harr
y nodded and chewed his lip worriedly.
“Hmm.” Min leaned over to inspect the map. “I’ve been in houses with about as many before. It’s not impossible.” He jabbed at a room on the map. “Talys’s room?”
Harry nodded. “She’ll open her window when it’s time. And this is the room where Kaz is being kept.”
The room was closer to the heart of the house. Windowless, as Harry had said, and Min would have to pass through most of the main rooms to get to it. He wondered if he could be lucky enough not to meet anyone coming the other way.
Min chewed on his thumbnail for a moment. “And how will Talys know when it’s time?”
“Her bedroom window overlooks the street. Neither of us can be seen in the street, of course, but all we need to do is pay that brat Aulus to wear a red scarf around his neck and go and stand there for a while. When Talys puts a white shawl out of her window, we’ll know she’s received the signal that it’s happening that night.”
Min was silent for a moment, then he shook his head. “You two really have put a lot of thought into this, haven’t you?”
“We have,” Harry said. “The hardest part is still yours, of course. I can’t go into the house, or at least into the part where Kaz is kept, without running into the wards, but—”
“No,” Min said. “I don’t want you anywhere near that house again, Harry.”
He’d half expected Harry to argue, but the boy only nodded. “Fine. I can show you how to get in, though, and how to get to where Kaz is being held.”
“And then what?” Min asked quietly, his stomach sinking.
“What?”
“I’m a void,” Min said. “I can get in and out without tripping a single ward. But Kaz can’t.”
Harry looked down at the map and then back up at Min again. “No, I thought about that too. He’s not a void, but he’s a necromancer.”
Shit. Min knew where this was going. “Harry….”
“No, listen. Necromancers are more powerful than sorcerers. You’ll just have to take his collar off!”
“He’s a necromancer!”
“Yes,” Harry said. “That’s my point, Min.”
“It’s mine too,” Min shot back. “You want me to uncollar a necromancer? Have you any conception of what he could do?”
Harry’s brow creased. “But we’re rescuing him. The collar would have to come off some time anyway, wouldn’t it? Min? Wouldn’t it?”
Min closed his eyes for a moment. All those fantasies of Kaz burning the world? Sons of Rus, but they’d felt good when Min had thought Harry’s life still hung in the balance. Now, though? Now Harry was safe, and Min had selfishly remembered that, though the world was imperfect and cruel, it was the only one he had to live in.
“No!” Harry slammed the pen down. “You love him!”
“Harry.” Min looked down at the ink-splattered map and the pen that was still spinning on the vellum. “I barely know him.”
“But you want him to be free, don’t you? Don’t you?” Harry’s face was red with anger. “Because if you take him out of that house but keep him in a collar, you’re no better than his grandfather! Free means free, Min! It doesn’t mean just chained up in a different place!”
“He could destroy the city. He could probably destroy the world if he put his mind to it.”
“He could, but that doesn’t mean he will.” Harry jutted his chin out. “He could have raised an army of the dead in Anhaga—hundreds of them or thousands—but he never did, did he? He just hid in that house and made poultices for fishermen.”
Min sighed and closed his eyes again. Harry was right. Of course he was. Kaz was a necromancer, but he was no monster. He was a boy, shy and sweet in the darkness but with a spine of steel when it mattered. He was a boy who had protected himself from both the fae and the Sabadines before Min had come along and—Kallick’s dry old bones aside—hadn’t harmed another person to do it.
So there was that.
There was fear too, though, dark and nebulous like some shadow rising from the deep, and Min couldn’t quite shake it.
But Harry was right.
Harry was right.
Min studied the map again, following the path he’d need to take from Talys’s room to Kaz’s. Removing Kaz’s collar wasn’t even an option, after all, if Min couldn’t get to him.
One step at a time.
Those dozen soldiers were worrisome.
What Min needed was a distraction. And for that he needed just the right hedgewitch.
THE EVENING service was just finishing at the Shrine of the Sacred Spring when Min and Harry arrived. The torches along the wide tree-lined avenue leading off the street and to the temple entrance had been lit and glowed more strongly as the dusk softened into night. The air smelled faintly of smoke and damp earth.
Min and Harry bypassed the temple and headed for one of the side buildings. The door was open, and so they entered and hurried up the stairs to Aiode Nettle’s room. Min rapped sharply at her door and plastered on his most charming smile as she wrenched it open.
“Well, fuck me sideways,” Aiode said, ignoring Min’s smile completely and instead reaching out to grip Harry’s chin and turn his unblemished cheek toward the light. Her freckled face lit up with astonishment. “You actually did it.”
“One reprobate prentice successfully returned to the Sabadines,” Min said dryly. “Right from under the eye of the Hidden Lord.”
Aiode released Harry and regarded Min curiously. “There’s more to this story, isn’t there?”
“Oh, much more,” Min said. “Buy me a drink sometime and I’ll repay you with all the lurid details. In the meantime, I need a favor.”
Aiode arched her brows. “A favor? I’m not sure you understand the nature of our relationship, Aramin. As in, we don’t have one.”
Min knew he liked Aiode for a reason. He had always been unreasonably attracted to snark.
“Not a favor, then,” he said, putting his foot in the door before she could close it in his face. “An opportunity.”
She looked dubious. “An opportunity for what?”
“When I first told you about all of this, you called Edward Sabadine a poisonous old toad. It seems there’s no love lost there.”
“I’ve actually never met the man,” Aiode said, “but I know his reputation. And I find him detestable, yes.”
“Then how would you like the chance to help me get my revenge on him for what he did to Harry?”
Aiode was silent for a moment, and then she smiled slightly. “What is it that you need?”
“Saltpeter,” Min said. “As much saltpeter as you can get me.”
“Saltpeter?” she asked. “Well then, I think your story just got even more interesting.”
Min smirked and gave her a slight bow.
Later that night, two temple servants, looking nervous as kittens that had tumbled into a dog pit, turned up at the Footbridge Tavern with a small sack of saltpeter each. Min thanked them, pressed a coin into each of their palms for their troubles, and hauled the sacks back to the garret room where Harry was waiting with the pots.
THERE WAS a shaded corner a block down from the Sabadines’ house. Min took up residence there the next day and occasionally glanced down the street to where Aulus, the tiny scoundrel, was walking back and forth in full view of Talys Sabadine’s bedroom window, wearing a bright red scarf.
Talys’s window remained closed all day.
It remained closed the next day too, and the next.
The full moon Min had been dreading for so long came and went, and still Talys’s window stayed closed.
Finally, seven days after Min had delivered Kaz back to the Sabadines, a white shawl lay discarded on Talys’s windowsill, the edges fluttering in the breeze.
MIN AND Harry didn’t usually work with anyone else, but Aiode Nettle wasn’t like anyone else. Since she had supplied the saltpeter, she said, she was going to see how they used it. And it’s not like she and Harry would act
ually be inside the house at all, and Min could hardly stop her from loitering on a public street in the middle of the night, could he? And she’d given him such a sharp look when she asked that he’d admitted he could not.
Their plan would draw a hell of a crowd anyway, once it was underway, so it wasn’t as though she would stand out.
Min parted with them at the corner of the block. He turned down the side street, making his way to the back of the house, where Harry promised the wall was easy enough to climb, and Talys’s window overlooked the back garden. Harry and Aiode would be busy at the front of the house, leaving Min to hopefully get in and out undisturbed.
The wall, as Harry had said, was no challenge. Min climbed over it and dropped soundlessly into the garden below. The night was bright. Min could see easily enough and would have to take care not to be seen in turn. He kept to the shadows of the hedges and shrubs as he treaded quietly toward the back of the house.
Talys’s window was still open, and the shawl was still hanging out of it.
A handy tree, its boughs broad and strong, gave Min the boost he needed to reach the windowsill, and from there it was a simple enough matter to climb inside. He swung a leg through the window, shifting his weight, and then the toe of his boot found the floor and he was in, standing in the darkness and waiting for his eyes to adjust from the comparative brightness of the moonlight outside.
He didn’t have to wait, as it happened.
A lamp flared suddenly, and Min lifted a hand to shade his eyes even as he squinted toward the figure seated on the bed. “Talys?”
“Is there a Decourcey yet who hasn’t climbed through that window looking for my daughter?”
Not Talys, then. Min lowered his hand, staring warily at Robert Sabadine and wondering just how much damage he’d do to himself if he leapt straight out the window again.
“Well, she’s probably safe from my mother,” he said.
Robert’s answering snort didn’t convince Min that he’d quite developed a sense of humor over the situation yet. Robert rose to his feet, and Min was very glad to see that he didn’t appear to be armed. Of course, he was a Sabadine. He probably had six different knives strapped to six different places Min couldn’t see. He probably slept with them.
