by Sarah Chorn
This wasn’t the richest part of town, nor was it the poorest; filled with a heady mixture of the two. She’d chosen a spot right next to the western gate, two soldiers standing on either side of it, with a row of them in an impressive line of flexed muscles and polished weapons before her. She watched as the city guards at the gate harassed a group who had approached them, intent on passing through, leaving the Reach behind before moving toward the trade road that would take them right past Amiti’s Inn.
She’d have to be careful when she left. Maybe she’d sneak out with a group, just one more kid among them. That way they wouldn’t think to look too closely, or notice her painted-on mark.
The shouting of the crowd and frantic energy grew more immediate, and she knew the parade, the Premier, was getting closer. Everyone yelling louder than their neighbor in an effort to show their loyalty to the state. It was overwhelming, that mixture of excitement and intense, incredible terror; like smelling too many flowers, and getting almost sick on their perfume. She liked it, she realized. Loved the way all that fear filled her up.
She stood on her tiptoes, trying to peer over the shoulders of the people pressing in all around her. Windows opened across the street, people hanging out of them to get a better view, waving flags of state or cloth in the appropriate red and white colors. Archers perched on rooftops, bows and arrows at the ready.
Panic started to flood her, though she wasn’t sure why. Religion was outlawed, but she let out a silent prayer anyway, praying to the Mother that she’d protect and watch over her, that everything would be okay. She was on the cusp of something, hovering there, waiting to fall. This was an important moment, and it demanded to be noticed.
Something was happening.
Two long rows of guards appeared from around a bend in the road, glorious in the regimental colors of the Premier—red and white, with a stripe of yellow through the sash. Long swords hung on their hips, gleaming like teeth, and they clutched spears in their hands. They marched in time, looking nowhere but forward, filling the air with the stomp-stomp of their boots, shaking the ground with their force. They looked terrifying. Menacing. Like an army, and she wondered what they could do if they were unleashed on the city.
She knew what they would do. There was no question, really. They would paint the world red.
Three horses came next, pure white with braided manes and tails, iron tipped shoes on their hooves, officials of some sort or another in the saddles, armed to the teeth. After that, further down the line, was Premier Eyad.
Mouse had never seen him before, but she knew him by the way he held himself, the way he lifted his chin and gazed down at the people pressing to get closer. Some men were born to watch the world burn, and he was one of them. She saw it in his eyes, in the way he scanned the crowd, seeming to drink in the chaos with calm satisfaction. He was perhaps Vadden’s age, with black eyes that seemed to see everything at once, and a tall, if slightly slender build. He wore a red, white and yellow sash and had a long, jagged scar marring one dark cheek; a brilliant crimson circle with a wavy line through its center on the other.
Mind talent.
She’d known he was one, but now, faced with him and everything that could happen, she needed to think about something else. Anything else.
The pie. Think about that wonderful, tasty pie…
Her heart started to beat a frantic rhythm. She was one more face in the crowd, but she felt naked before Eyad, exposed. Vulnerable.
Delicious pie. Nothing but pie…
Panic coursed through her, feeding on all the… whatever it was that she’d inhaled earlier. What the fuck was that all about? No. She couldn’t think about that now. She could deal with that later. She pushed her thoughts back, locked them in a box, and hoped that between that, her pie-thoughts and the crowd, it would be enough. Mind talents were rare. Very few things frightened her, street-hardened as she was, but mind talents were absolutely one of them.
Eyad was smiling, she realized, just slightly; a knowing little curl of his lips. She was close enough to reach out and touch his horse, close enough to smell the sweat and metal on him, to see the glint in his eyes, and notice the tiny hesitation as he slowed his horse just shy of the western gate. It wasn’t long, but just long enough.
Long enough for Mouse to look past him, past his huge black beast that was snorting and huffing in the abnormally bright morning light, and see a mop of brilliant red hair.
Seraphina?
She saw the harsh, sudden move of a body and heard a woman’s panicked cry cut the air. Louder and sharper than the crowd.
A horse moved, jerkily, uncertain; guided by a rider who obviously wasn’t used to riding. She watched as a woman clung to the horse’s back, feet kicking its flanks, urging it forward. The beast stomped for a moment, then it threw its head and bolted.
The crowd split down the middle, afraid they’d be trampled, and Mouse watched as Seraphina’s horse galloped past the guards, who were still drawing their weapons, at the western gate.
She heard Premier Eyad shout, his voice full of impossible fury. “Follow her!”
A flank of guards broke off from his personal troop, two on horse, the rest on foot, and clattered after the fleeing slave, still awkwardly clutching her horse’s back as it ran across the bridge. The crowd started to murmur and shift uncomfortably. Eyad’s gaze swept across them.
“Come here,” he ordered the two men at the gate, and they approached swiftly.
The Premier’s sword sung from its sheath, and sliced through the guard’s necks, neatly cutting off their heads. It was so quickly done she almost missed it. Their bodies slumped to the ground, dropped like sacks of grain, blood spurting from their necks, covering the hooves of his horse and splattering her face scarlet as they fell. She staggered back with the others nearby, shuffling away as Eyad straightened and moved on. He didn’t need to say anything. His message was clear, and it would spread like fire.
He looked angry, his face twisted with dark fury, but Mouse could taste satisfaction on him, smell the thrill of the moment. He was excited. Triumphant. She turned, pushing through the uncertain crowd, cutting a path toward the newly unmanned gate, following Seraphina. She looked over her shoulder once before she dashed out of the city, back at the parade, back at the face of the Premier.
His smile was a knife.
Vadden
“I need help!” someone shouted, their voice penetrating the front room of the inn from the road outside. “Help me!”
“Who is that?” Amiti asked, glancing immediately at the door. Kabir appeared from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a rag. The tavern was blessedly quiet, giving Vadden a sense of privacy after years on the run. Despite the shouting outside, these moments surrounded by people who were family were scarce, and he savored them.
“I’ll go find out,” Kabir said, his baritone voice sounded like boulders rolling down the side of a mountain. Neryan glanced at Vadden and shrugged, but he was already moving toward the back of the room, ready to bolt at a second’s notice. Vadden would follow, but slower; after he had some inkling of what was going on and what to expect.
Kabir hurried out the front door and Amiti leveled a warning glare at Vadden and Neryan. Neryan disappeared quietly down the hall and shut the library door softly behind him, leaving Vadden alone with Amiti, both of them waiting with bated breath.
His body was humming. Thrumming. Full of a nervous energy that needed an outlet. Little sparks fired from his fingertips in reaction, blue static borne of his anxiety and talent. He’d never been good at waiting, never been good at managing moments like this. All this intensity running through him with nowhere to go.
He was impotent. Caged.
Voices outside, loud and getting louder. At least one woman, and Kabir’s unmistakable growl. Vadden’s body, trained by years of covert movement, had slipped into fight or flight mode. His muscles bunched, ready to go one way or the other, energy building, preparing to burst out. Soon he’d be
nothing more than a reaction.
Kabir poked his head back through the open door, his face red with exertion, brow furrowed, lips pulled back, teeth showing in a feral growl, like he was struggling to lift something heavy. “How many guests do we have, Amiti?”
“Tonight? None.”
Truthfully, other than the weekends, business at Amiti’s Inn had almost dried up and was a second from blowing away. More and more guards patrolled the streets, keeping travelers away. Very few people had passes that allowed them to go between towns, and they scattered like rats when anyone in a uniform appeared. Plus, the prevalence of secret police kept them from trusting even their friends.
“Thank the Three,” Kabir puffed. “Keep Neryan away.”
“What?” Vadden asked, stepping forward, curiosity overpowering his fear of imminent danger. “Why? What’s going on?”
Kabir pushed through the door from the street, twisting his body to bring whatever he was carrying across the threshold without banging it into the frame.
Then Vadden saw.
He recognized her instantly. She had the look of her brother written all over her. There was no mistaking that mop of brilliant red hair, or her nearly-colorless skin. She was passed out, cradled in Kabir’s arms, nothing more than a body taking up space. She was paler than her brother, paler than she should have been. As Kabir lay her on a table, she curled in on herself, pulling her knees up to her chest and letting out a little moan of pain before her features relaxed again.
She wore a long dress that had been shredded up to her thighs; destroyed, Vadden assumed, in a frantic flight from the city.
“I saw her escape,” Mouse said, appearing suddenly beside him. Vadden started and ran his eyes over the girl, wondering at how sick she looked. She had a yellow tint to her and while she’d only been gone two days, she’d visibly lost weight. Her skin sagged, her bones protruded, and her eyes held an exhaustion he couldn’t quite understand. She wasn’t tired, more like she was drained and disappearing. He opened his mouth to ask if she was alright but she cut him off, continuing with her story.
“There was this big parade,” Mouse said, waving her hand in the air. “They got to the western gate. She was on a horse behind the Premier. As soon as she saw the gate, she made a run for it. Eyad sent troops after her, but she didn’t last long on the horse—slipped off its back and the mad thing bolted. I followed her out, tracked her to a ditch where she was hiding under some bushes. The troops must have gone straight past. I waited until it was safe, then brought her here as quickly as I could. She made it almost all the way here before she passed out.”
Vadden shivered and looked back at Seraphina on the table, at her shredded gown and her hair that hung in tendrils and knots. She’d been lucky. They both had. Evading Eyad’s troops was hard enough, let alone when you’re a pale-faced, flame-haired slave girl in an elaborate gown.
Mouse yawned wide. “Where’s Neryan?”
He frowned at her. She seemed unnaturally calm, as though caring required too much energy. “Hiding in the library.”
“Can I go see him?”
Vadden paused, assessing and calculating. As soon as Neryan saw Mouse, he would want information. He would burst from the library, demanding answers as to why Mouse was here, and what the commotion was. He’d see his sister curled on the table, unconscious. The man hadn’t exactly been stable recently, and his reaction to this situation would be volatile and unpredictable, dangerous in the extreme. “I’m not sure—”
“I’ll make sure he keeps his shit together, Vadden.” She clapped him on the shoulder. “But I need to see my dad.”
He put himself between her and the library. “Mouse, are you well?”
“I…” she began, closing her eyes and swaying slightly on her feet. When she opened them, she looked longingly into the distance, as if she could see through the walls of the inn to something he could not perceive. “I’m fine. Just tired.”
And with that, she slipped past him and disappeared down the hall. Vadden listened to the library door click shut, heard Neryan’s muffled shout of surprise, and then silence. He turned back to the silent common room, and found Amiti and Kabir staring at him.
“Is that who I think it is?” Amiti asked, his voice shattering the silence, his finger jabbing toward the girl on the table.
Vadden cleared his throat. “I believe so, yes. This is Seraphina; Neryan’s sister.”
Amiti drew in a deep breath and sighed, sharing a knowing glance with his husband, who was chewing the end of his thumbnail and staring at the woman, regret swimming in his eyes.
“What do we do with her?” Vadden asked, suddenly uncertain. She was Eyad’s prized showpiece, unknowable and untouchable, and suddenly she was here, unconscious on a table in the inn. “Does she need a healer?”
Kabir sucked on his bottom lip. “I’ll check her over. We don’t want more people involved in this than there already are.”
Kabir knew about herbs and had picked up enough skills from travelling hedge witches to be useful for this sort of thing. Vadden nodded at him and he moved to Seraphina’s side, beginning his careful inspection.
Faintly, Vadden was aware of banging coming from the library. The door to the room opened with a crash and Neryan appeared, filling out the doorway with his broad shoulders, eyes wild, hair an unkempt mess. He looked like he’d just been through one of Mouse’s windstorms. He had eyes only for his sister, her body prone on the table. He took two staggering steps, then stopped and ran a hand through his hair.
“How?” he breathed.
Then, without waiting for an answer, he flung himself at Seraphina, his knees hitting the floor with a thud that would echo forever. He clasped one of her hands in his, and pressed his lips to it, whispered something, weeping like a child, his entire body shaking with the force of his emotions. It wasn’t a pretty sight, but it wasn’t ugly either; just raw.
Vadden suddenly felt like he was intruding on a very private moment. He turned to leave, and Amiti met his eyes and motioned toward the hallway. A knot formed in his gut.
He followed Amiti to the library, pushing down on his anxiety as he walked. Beyond the door, they found Mouse straightening up, shoving books back on shelves haphazardly, and Vadden wondered for a second how long it would take Amiti to get them all back in order.
“Sorry,” she said sheepishly, a dark corkscrew curl falling over one eye. “I had to call down the wind to hold him back until he swore he’d calm down. He was really upset.”
She looked even worse now, as though calling down the wind, something that was usually second nature to her, had been a struggle that had almost killed her.
“It’s fine, Mouse. Can you leave us alone for a moment?” Amiti’s voice was even and calm, seemingly unbothered by the ruin wrought on his precious library. Mouse nodded once, glanced at them both, and then left in a rush, shutting the door behind her.
As soon as it clicked shut, Amiti started moving, pacing back and forth, back and forth, pulling on his lower lip, his eyes seeing something Vadden couldn’t.
“Out with it,” Vadden finally grumbled.
Amiti started and looked at him, his face transformed by a deep, pervading, fatal worry. They had been friends for years, since the day Vadden had run away with blood coating his hands. In all that time he had never known Amiti be anything but amiable. Occasionally things worried him, but never this much. Never enough to cause the man to dig a trench in the floor with his feet.
“Amiti, what’s wrong?” Vadden asked, softening his voice, talking like he would to a wild animal.
“I’m sorry, Vadden. I know you have enough going on without me adding to it but…” his voice trailed off and he clasped and unclasped his hands.
“But what?” Vadden pressed. It was late, and a lot was happening that was demanding his attention. Here and now, though, he was just tired; that bone-deep exhaustion spreading through him like poison. “My friend,” Vadden rested a hand on Amiti’s shoulder
, and was startled to realize that he was actually shivering. “Talk to me.”
“My inn has almost no business. We are running out of food. Our rations are being cut, and soldiers from the Reach are passing by more and more often, chasing off any trade. I am earning less, but taxes haven’t changed. I am positive that when I do get travelers in here, more than half of them are secret police sent by the Premier. Vadden, I love you like a brother, but I can’t have two pale-faced slaves in my inn. One was bad enough, but two is too much of a risk. Especially with Seraphina’s escape.” He paused, licked his lips and shook his head sadly, his long black hair falling over his shoulder with the gesture. He squeezed his hands together, his brown knuckles going white with tension. “I’m sorry, but I have to ask you to leave. It’s too dangerous now, for all of us.”
Vadden had known this was coming, but it still hit him like a punch, knocking the air from his lungs. Amiti’s Inn was a safe haven, a place of shelter, away from the storms that buffeted his days. Amiti had never turned him out before, even when guards straight from Eyad’s palace had been eating in the common room. Amiti had kept him upstairs, safely tucked away.
Now, they were walking different roads; Vadden going one way, and Amiti going the other. With a pang that nearly brought tears to his eyes, he realized this might be the last time he ever saw his friend. He swallowed hard, burying the thought down deep, saving it to deal with later, in privacy.
“You should come with us,” he said suddenly, his mind scrambling, the words bursting out before he knew he was saying them. “Close up the inn, bring Kabir. We’ll go into hiding. I know people…”
What he didn’t say was, staying here will be your death. He didn’t need to put that into words. They were already squatting between them, thick and unavoidable as a brick wall.
“No.” Amiti shook his head. “This is my home. This is my inn and I will stay with it. I’ve talked to Kabir and he agrees. It’s not just about the business, Vadden.”
