by Kim Knox
His emotions swamped her. Warmth and protection surged and she turned and twisted them, creating a fierce curative, willing the child to heal. It flowed out through the contact of her hand against the panicking chest of the tiny child. Magic pushed under the baby’s skin. Ava could feel it pulsing, charging, surrounding her tiny heart and forcing it to beat, for her lungs to pull in air, for the magic to fill her small stomach. Willing the little girl to fight. To live.
The baby’s wails strengthened into cries and Heyerdar released Ava’s hand and pushed her away. He picked up the still-bloodstained little girl, cradling her to his chest. His lips pressed against her dark, downy hair, and the golden threads of his magic dipped over her. She calmed and a little gurgle escaped her before she settled.
Ava felt the warmth of the summer sun beating from him. The child’s skin glowed with its freshness. She ignored the tight fist in her gut. She was not jealous that a baby was sharing in magic that was hers. She wasn’t.
“All healed.” Ava scrubbed her fingers over her face and found it wet. Had she cried? The force of his energy tearing into her flesh had been powerful. He glared at her and she lowered her voice to a whisper. “She’ll be fine.”
Heyerdar looked to the beds that held the baby’s mother, her brothers and sisters. “Maybe. One day.” His own voice was just a rumble. He pushed himself to his feet, careful of the child in his arms. “Find something clean to wrap her in.”
Ava nodded and forced herself up. She found a chest beside one of the beds. Light slanted across it, and wooden hinges creaked as she pushed it open. Neatly folded clothes, sheets, a winter quilt filled the inside. She pulled a sheet free and folded it into a smaller square. “Here. Let me.”
“No.” Heyerdar’s eyes narrowed to slits of dangerous gold. “You don’t touch her.”
“I’m not going to eat the child, Heyerdar.”
His gaze moved to her neck. No doubt there was bruising from the hard grip of his fingers. The tendons ached and her skin was raw and hot. “You had to bite your own hand to stop yourself.”
She pressed her lips together to deny her reply. He could think what he liked. She was here to track down the thieves. The memory of the Words carved into the child’s skin pushed across her thoughts. They were familiar. Written into her. “What do you know of thieves, Captain?”
He frowned and took the folded sheet from her. With an expertise she hadn’t expected, he swaddled the baby to keep her warm and calm. He tucked the child back into the crook of his left arm, the little bundle almost lost against his massive frame. “More than the mages let you know.”
She ignored his dig. “Thief Words. The cuts in her skin weren’t random. They wrote something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “What were they doing here?” She stared at the beds, and the bile rose again. She remembered her role. “I have to...” She waved her hand. It’s what he had her here for, her reading of the dead. Looking at the face of Searlaim’s wife, so grey and wizened, wrenched her gut. She stretched her fingers, feeling the pull of her teken across her palm. She wanted to be back in the Institute. Ignorant of this horror. “We need to know who did this.”
His thick fingers closed around her wrist. “No. You do this with me, back at the vault. I’m not risking her further.” He glanced at the baby. Her eyes had closed, her long, dark eyelashes brushing her plumped and rosy cheeks. “Understood?”
“Can we get out of this room, then?” She didn’t wait for him to reply, but trotted down the narrow, creaking stairs to the small front room. The stink still sat at the back of her mouth, and she cut through the darkness to the small shutters. She yanked them open, the stench of shit and refuse from the alley better than the sickly sweet odor of too many dead.
“This place has to be thoroughly searched.”
Heyerdar looked to the baby in his arms and back at her. She could read his expression. He wanted to do his job, but he couldn’t let her anywhere near the child. She offered anyway, just to see his sudden flicker of disgust. “I could take her back to the palace.”
And there it was. His eyes gleamed and a wisp of fire threaded through his irises. “We’ll wait for the ward constables.” He stroked the baby’s smooth cheek with his fingertip, and her eyelids fluttered. His voice softened. “I’ll take her back. The Guard always has a place for orphans.” He looked up and the touch of humanity was gone. “You have interviews for the rest of the afternoon.”
“I what?”
“My office, with a supply of food, paperwork and guards. Until I return.” His frown was back. “I can’t trust you. Not around people they’ve killed.”
“That’s...”
“Outside the vault? And a minute ago, I had to pin you to the fucking wall to stop you. No more.” His jaw tightened as the baby stirred in his arms, disturbed by the tight anger in his voice. He blew out a terse breath. “You’re trouble. And I don’t want to see more babies like...that because I have to rein you in.”
“This is a joint effort. The Mages and the Guard. Right and Left. You can’t kick me out.”
Heyerdar snorted. “You think this is open to discussion? You’re wearing my uniform.”
Anger burned in her gut. She wasn’t his lackey to be ordered about. She was in the employ of the Highest Mage. “Want me to strip? Again?”
His gaze narrowed. “Don’t make an enemy out of me, little thief.”
“I don’t want to make anything out of you. I want to do my job.” She closed the short distance between them. “Don’t forget, without me, you wouldn’t be here.” She stared at the sleeping baby, her cheeks rosy with warmth. Ava dropped her voice, but the hard edge remained. “You wouldn’t have found her. For all your strength, without my skill as a thief, she wouldn’t be alive.”
Anger pulsed around him, the streams of his magic thickening. His right hand clenched around his sword. “Don’t—”
The front door slapped back and a disheveled constable lurched into the room, shoved there by three grubby children. “What the...? Stinks like the emperor’s shriveled old balls in here!”
Heyerdar hushed the startled baby. “Quiet.” The word was a low growl aimed at the constable. “How many men do you have?”
“Who...?” The young man stared at Ava, his face red as he realized what he’d just declared in front of members of the Guard. “I’m...”
Heyerdar pulled free the sheaf of gleaming paper from his tunic. “I act with the authority of the Left Hand. Your men? How many?”
“Six.” The constable tugged at his patched and stained tunic, his face still fiercely red. “Stationed throughout the ward.”
“In the nearest alehouse? Where the children found you.”
The man briefly closed his eyes, but he didn’t try to lie. “Yes, sir.”
Heyerdar looked to the hovering children. “A tanner for each of you when you get them here.” The children vanished. “Now.” He took a step closer to the constable and the man shrank in on himself. “You and your men will guard this building. No one will come in. You are to stay here and touch nothing. Do not go upstairs.”
The constable blinked. “It smells of death in here, sir.”
Heyerdar leaned in close and the constable started to shake. He rucked up the front of the man’s tunic in a thick fist. “Do you understand?”
The constable jerked a nod. Outside, shouting and the shrieks of children echoed and chased through the alleys. Five children burst through the open doorway and clustered around Heyerdar.
“When I get—” A fat constable lumbered in. His mouth clamped shut and he smacked a sloppy salute to his forehead. “Sir!”
Ava stopped herself from rolling her eyes. He was drunk. The fumes of cheap beer wafted around him. And Heyerdar wanted to leave these incompetents in
charge of the house because he didn’t trust her. She caught his dark look. Seemed he was going to do just that.
He unclipped a roll of metal from his belt and opened it with one hand. A surge of magic touched the thin sheet and the baby against his chest stirred. Ava had heard of this device and knew mages who would kill to play with it. It was doubtful they’d be able to activate it. Without an elemental’s magic it was simply a very fine sheet of copper.
“Captain.” The tinny voice shocked those surrounding Heyerdar into silence. At least one drunken man stepped back. “What do you require?”
“Vedas, get the Guard to this location. Secure it and await my return. Nothing is to be disturbed.” The surge of magic over the copper flared and Ava winced against the brightness. “The Watch are here.” The edge of derision in his voice made more than one constable open his mouth, but quick and painful elbows to the ribs reminded them this wasn’t an ordinary guard. “Move fast.”
“Understood, Captain.”
The magic faded and the sheet was simply metal again. Heyerdar reclipped it to his belt. He met her look with his usual deep frown.
Ava’s mouth tightened and she pushed her way out of the foul stink of the room to the warm, shadowed stink of the alley. Heyerdar ordered the men around, paid the grinning children and followed her outside. He strode away.
“I could search here.”
He stopped and turned, his expression cold. Ava tried not to groan. The nonspeaking messenger. That was who she was supposed to be. Yet another fuckup of a day. Vaguely the idea caught her of draining enough magic from him to start the day over. She enjoyed the cold, dark thought. Drag enough energy from him and she could step back a month, more, and grab Reist before his thoughts even turned to Fallon...
Taking Heyerdar like that would kill him. Her gaze flicked up to the overhanging balcony. The image of the little bodies, ripped, torn and wizened burned across her thoughts. And she wasn’t a killer. Not like them.
She forced her feet forward. Fuck. She’d just consented to an afternoon of paperwork.
Chapter Seven
Heyerdar was agonizingly efficient. Dispatch boxes for the day, filled with reports of bodies from the vaults, were stacked at one end of the Left Hand’s wide desk. Ava pulled them apart—each one thorough to the point of making her hungry—and formed her own theories and questions. Each guard, from whom she had to extract verbal information, stood to easy attention and answered her every query clearly and succinctly. It was a new experience not having to twist and drag out her answers.
Ava watched the last of the guards turn on his iron-shod heel and march from Heyerdar’s office. She rested her elbows on the heavy table and let her head drop into her hands. Were they any further? The five male victims hadn’t known each other, didn’t share guilds, their movements in the previous days hadn’t intersected. They were complete strangers.
She needed time with Searlaim’s wife. The thought of that woman’s pain, the horror of knowing that her children were about to die caught a heavy breath in Ava’s chest. Or worse, her touch would experience the woman’s agony as she watched the thieves eat her babies.
Ava groaned and she pushed the unwanted images from her head. At that moment, Heyerdar’s insistence that he stand with her was a relief. Not that she’d tell him. She frowned. Or think it.
She glanced at the dispatch boxes. The male victims had been witnessed near brothels on the south wall. But brothels were tight-lipped about their patrons, a part of their city pledge. Senior guards were working on them.
But the men’s homes, such as they were, were owned by a branch of the Treasury. Nothing unusual there. The emperor—and the favored few—owned swathes of the imperial city beyond the palace walls. Still, it was a connection. One they would have to look into.
The thief Words...she knew nothing more than the vague feeling that they were somehow a part of her. Her request for books from the library had been denied. The returning guard, his eyes wide, had said Master Dorien had spat on the official seal of the Left Hand. That fact forced her mouth to lift. His disrespect would get back to Heyerdar. The ancient mage had insulted the wrong man.
She sat back and shuffled the sheaves of paper into a neat stack and dropped them back into the metal dispatch box. The sun had moved across the sky and she frowned at the shadows cast across the room. It had moved past the tenth hour of the day. Reist would be wondering where she was.
She climbed out of Heyerdar’s deep leather chair and stretched her arms above her head. Her joints popped. She hoped Reist had been wondering, and perhaps even worrying a little, about her working with the elemental. Something about Heyerdar had pricked at Reist. The bruises on her neck had grown more obvious as the hours slid by. Maybe she could use them to her advantage.
She popped the final slice of lamb heart into her mouth and wiped her fingers on a napkin. Heyerdar had kept her fed. A nervous runner had appeared on the hour with a platter of still warm and practically raw meats. She hadn’t had such easy meals in a long time.
But now it was time to leave. His desk was neat. The leads she’d discounted, the maybes and the slim Treasury connection she’d listed on three sheets of paper and stacked them beside the dispatch boxes. She remained Reist’s lackey for a reason. She could be efficient too.
It was a relief to find the shadows of the Institute again, even if she didn’t have her cloak. She still wore the messenger uniform. Another conscious choice to remind Reist that his rival had her.
Her boot slipped on the stone step leading up to the Highest Mage’s office. Not that he had had her. She pulled in a calming breath, the threads of his power, the taste of him on her lips and tongue somehow still there. Was she insane for going to him, for offering such a dangerous deal?
The thief in her didn’t think so. Which proved it was a shitty idea.
Mage-light flickered over the solid wooden door to Reist’s chamber. She rapped her knuckles twice and lifted the latch. Reist, if he hadn’t been called away, would be settling down to finish off the niggling scraps that had appeared during the day.
The door creaked inwards and Ava slipped inside.
For a moment, the shadows held her invisible. It gave her the time she needed to get her heart beating again and for her to remember how her lungs worked. Fallon was in the chamber. In the month of their relationship, she’d never set foot...
Reist stood at his desk, leafing through imperial documents. Light edged him, the steady glow of a lamp pushing back the first of the shadows across his desk. It warmed his skin, drew gold across the perfection of his profile. But Ava couldn’t let herself enjoy his beauty. Fallon stood beside him, resting her chin on his bent shoulder, her fingers absently teasing through his hair. Her happiness shone.
The intimacy stabbed Ava in the gut and she fought to keep her eyes dry. She had to remain calm, controlled. Reist couldn’t suspect how much he was hurting her. She wanted to feel guilty. She should let him go...but she couldn’t. He was hers.
Ava formed her protecting mask. The icy calm and clear head let her breathe again. Even as the idea of using the slivers of power still riding through her to stab nails into every inch of Fallon’s skin burned satisfying images into her brain.
“First day and I’m still alive.” She grinned and turned her neck, aware that the fading light from the narrow windows caught on her skin. “Well, almost.”
They both looked up. Something flashed through Fallon’s eyes that Ava couldn’t name. She picked at it, quick to analyze the emotion. Fear. Why would Fallon feel fear? Was it fear of how Reist would react to the marks on her neck? How it would pull Fallon away from him and towards her?
“What happened?” Reist’s eyes had narrowed on her throat.
“I’m a thief. Heyerdar doesn’t like thieves.”
“He what...?”
; Fallon slipped away, moving quietly to the windows that looked down onto the curtain wall of the palace. She hadn’t left the room.
“I reacted to the bodies.” Ava kept her body relaxed, her voice calm. “Reacted to finding one of the victims alive.”
Reist frowned. “There were more?”
She handed over the folded sheets of her report to him and followed it up with her verbal account. She left out the kissing and the threat Heyerdar had made to fuck her on the guildhall steps.
“So your next move is Treasury records.”
Ava nodded. “I also need access to the special collection in the library. Master Dorien refused.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Fallon stiffen.
Reist paused. She was surprised to see something darken in his gaze, something that looked suspiciously like unease. “You don’t have the authority to look at those books.”
The Highest Mage voice. She wanted to ask what he was hiding from her. A month before she would’ve done, but there’d been a shift in their relationship. Though a month before she could never have believed he would hide anything from her. She cursed it. Her work dealt in deception and lies. Reist had been the one thing, the one person she’d always relied on to tell her the truth. To keep everything straight. Now he didn’t.
And there was something about being a thief they didn’t want her to know.
“Heyerdar then.”
“Ava...”
She stopped herself from pinching the bridge of her nose. She was tired. She ached. Having Fallon in the same room and fighting back the need to rip out her magic ate at her. She wanted to wash and sleep.
“Get some rest.”
Her mask had to be slipping if Reist could see that. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. It shifted his expression, brought warmth to his gold-lit eyes. Her heart tightened. He was a bastard for not seeing how much she’d always wanted him.
“And get something to eat.”
“Heyerdar kept me fed all day.” She let out an even breath, not wanting to dwell on the fact that Reist’s need to feed her had never been born from a concern for her welfare. Like Heyerdar, he was worried what would happen if the hunger took over. “I’ll report in the morning.”
