by Sarah Ahiers
“You’re late.” I pushed my mask to the top of my head and crossed my arms.
I thought he’d be apologetic. Instead, almost visible waves of anger rolled off him. It took me aback. I’d yet to see him really angry. Annoyed, yes, like when I’d first approached him, and disappointed when I’d stolen the coins, but never angry.
“Can we just get to work?” He rolled his shoulders and avoided my glare.
“Why were you late?” I wasn’t going to let this go. Not until he apologized at least.
He sighed. “It’s nothing. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
That was easier than I’d expected. And then I understood. It wasn’t his fault. “Did Marcello find out I’m training you?”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, a gesture so reminiscent of my father that I had to take a slow, deep breath to loosen my throat.
“You’re late because you were arguing with him,” I said. “About me.”
I could see the truth written in his face. “I was trying to get the Da Via location from him. He doesn’t know about the training, but he now knows I’ve seen you since that last time you spoke. He was . . . not happy.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He waved my apology away. “You have nothing to apologize for. It’s my fault, and really, it’s his fault for being so angry about it. He still sees me as a child, as that boy he found. When he’s reminded I’m not, it shakes him.”
My skin itched with the desire to leave, to take the firebomb and Les and head home to Ravenna. “Did you get any information out of him, at least?”
“No. I even told him if he just gave you what you wanted, you’d leave. But he doesn’t want to give in to you. Feels like you’re pushing him too hard.”
Of course I was pushing him! What didn’t he understand about the Da Vias coming for me and how that would be bad for him, too? His stubbornness overrode his sense of safety.
Les would have to try again. He would have to keep trying until he got what I needed. It was the only option.
“Can we do some training?” Les asked. “Otherwise I’ll never be able to compare to you.”
Training wasn’t really wasting time. If I was going to bring Les with me, the more he trained, the better he would fare in the fight to come. But after his failure to convince Marcello to give me what I wanted, everything felt like a delay.
If I was going to send Les to try again, though, I needed to keep him on my side. Which meant keeping him happy. And if training was the way to do that, then it was an easy enough task. And sometimes it was even enjoyable.
“You can’t liken yourself to me,” I said. “I was born into this life. And you are more skilled than you give yourself credit for. I’m sure there’s something you excel at.”
He smiled at the praise. “Why didn’t you ask sooner?”
At our spread of weapons, he picked up three knives well balanced for throwing. I groaned quietly behind my mask.
He set up a target across the roof, then stood beside me. He whipped the knives one after the other in rapid succession. Each struck the target near the center. Les strode across the roof and retrieved the knives before he returned to me.
“What do you think?” he asked.
I waved my hand. “Yes, yes, you’re good at knife throwing.”
He held out a knife to me. “There must to be something you can teach me.”
I didn’t take the knife. “No. You looked fine.”
“Lea, you’re supposed to be training me.”
“I am, I just . . .” I rubbed the crack on my mask. “I’m not the best knife thrower.”
Les leaned closer. “I’m sorry, what was that? Did you just admit to being bad at something?”
“I never said I was perfect.”
Les laughed louder than was necessary. I turned my back on him. “We’re done for the night.”
“Lea, no, wait.” He grabbed my elbow. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to insult you. I just honestly never guessed I’d be able to best you in anything. Come on, don’t leave me. I’ll give you some tips. No teasing. I promise.”
He passed me a knife. I sighed and showed him what I could do. It was worse than I remembered. I didn’t even hit the target. The knife skidded across the roof until it crashed into the rest of the weapons.
I frowned, but Les only nodded thoughtfully. “Take off your belt and weapons. They’re throwing off your balance.”
I did as he said and pushed my mask to the top of my head. He handed me another knife and this time he stood behind me. He lined his arm next to mine and grasped my hand and the knife.
His body felt warm and hard, pressed against mine.
“It’s a smoother motion.” He moved my arm with his. “Clean and quick. It doesn’t have to be powerful. That can come later.”
I let him instill the rhythm in my arm. He began to hum quietly, and when I was ready, I released the knife. The hilt crashed into the target and the knife dropped to the ground, but at least I’d actually struck what I was aiming for.
I smiled and Les whooped, spinning me around, my hand still in his grasp.
“See!” He grinned and squeezed my fingers.
This. It was so easy to feel carefree around him. But that wasn’t for me. I pulled my hand free, and the smile faded from his face.
“Something’s bothering you,” he said.
“It’s nothing.”
“Oh, it’s clearly something.”
I returned to the knives, packing them up. “It’s nothing and it’s everything. We’re running out of time here and Lefevre’s poking around, following me. I made a mistake when I first arrived, and now he’s trying to trap me or trick me into making another so he can pin a murder on me. Yours, actually. Well, not only yours.”
He straightened and frowned. “That sounds like more than nothing, Lea.”
“No, it’s fine. Really. I can handle him. And I don’t plan on staying long enough for him to charge me.”
He rotated a shoulder. “What if the firebomb fails? Do you have a backup plan for the Da Vias?”
“None of that matters unless Marcello tells you where to find them,” I snapped.
Les waved his hand at me. “I know, I know.”
I shrugged. “I might just walk in there and face them head on.”
“What?” he barked. He opened his mouth to say something else, but then he closed it and looked away.
“What were you going to say?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head and smiled at me. But the smile was forced. He was trying to be nice, but he was keeping something hidden.
“It’s not nothing,” I said. “Don’t lie to me.”
His smile vanished. “I’m not a liar.”
“Yes, you are. I can tell you’re hiding what you really think.”
His eyes flashed and his jaw tightened. I was so used to him being friendly and nice that this new Les made me step back. “Fine. Lea, you’re crazy. You’ll get yourself killed.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Well, until you get the location of the Da Vias, none of this even matters! And so what if I die? I don’t see why that’s any concern of yours.”
“You don’t see . . . Lea . . . Argh!” He threw his hands into the air, then snatched his cloak from the roof and walked away from me.
“Where are you going?”
He looked over his shoulder. “For someone so smart, you can be ridiculously idiotic sometimes.”
He jumped to the nearest roof.
Blood rushed to my face. How dare he? I was his teacher—he couldn’t speak to me like that!
“Les,” I shouted. “Alessio! Don’t you walk away from me!”
He stomped away faster.
I pulled my mask down and raced after him, trying to close the gap. He sped up, determined to get away.
Oh no you don’t!
He couldn’t outrun me, not when I was this mad and this determined to catch him.
He dropped off the roof int
o an alley between the two buildings. I blindly jumped after him, trusting there would be ground beneath me.
I landed in a crouch. The alley was a dead end, empty except for a door boarded up with a single piece of lumber. Alessio stood before me. I grabbed his shoulder.
“Les, what the—”
He gripped my wrist and pulled me beside him. “Shut up!”
At the entrance to the alley floated the white specter of an angry ghost.
It was a man, or had been a man at one time. I could clearly see his trousers and vest. He hovered quietly and seemed asleep, or adrift.
My heart raced. Being so close to one again brought back memories of my flight across the dead plains. My burned hand pulsed in pain, and I clenched it into a fist.
“Where’s the nearest canal?” I whispered.
“Just stay quiet. Maybe it won’t see us.”
We stood still, the sound of my heart and quiet breathing matched by the sound of his. We huddled like statues, willing the ghost to leave. Les clutched me to his side, the solid strength of his body pressed against mine. I pictured the celebration on the roof before, my hand in his, his arms around me like they were now.
I blushed behind my mask and pulled away.
“Lea, don’t—”
The ghost blinked its phantom eyes and faced us.
Maybe it couldn’t see us in our leathers against the dark alley.
It screamed, a sound that emanated from somewhere in the heart of it. It raced our way.
“Oh gods!” Les shouted. He squeezed his eyes shut against the ghost. He was so frightened of it, so scared. And I was too. But it was my fault, and if I could distract it, he could flee.
I pushed Les aside and confronted the charging ghost. Les grabbed my right hand, shouting something in my ear, but I focused on the ghost.
I remembered the ghost who tried to pull me from Butters’s saddle, remembered how tightly I’d gripped Safraella’s coin and prayed for Her to grant me a fast rebirth. I prayed again, now, and stepped forward. I met the shrieking ghost with my hand across its chest, willing it to stop its attack.
The ghost shot away from us, repelled out of the alley and out of sight, leaving nothing behind but a quickly fading echo of its screams.
My chest heaved with rapid breaths and my mouth ached from dryness.
“Lea . . .” Les loosened his grasp on my hand. “What did you do?”
My arm flopped to my side and I swallowed deeply. I shook my head. It was a good question.
He stepped beside me. “How did you do that?” His voice was tinged with awe and something else. Fear maybe.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure it was me.”
“I don’t understand. . . .”
I lifted my mask to the top of my head and brushed a lock of hair from my eyes. “It happened once before. I was on the dead plains, racing from the ghosts.”
“Wait. You crossed the dead plains at night? Are you crazy?”
“I didn’t have much choice. It was face the angry ghosts or face the Addamo Family.”
“I don’t—I don’t even know what to make of that, so I’m going to set it aside for now.” He made a motion of pushing something invisible away. “Let’s get back to how you saved us from that ghost.”
“It wasn’t me. I think it was Safraella.”
He gestured for me to continue. I sighed.
“When I was on the dead plains, I was injured and the ghosts were trying to pull me from the saddle. I thought I was going to die. And I was upset I wouldn’t have a coin for Safraella, for a fast rebirth. Which was stupid. I’m Her disciple. I don’t think She would begrudge me a coin in the midst of fleeing for my life.” I shook my head. “Anyway, I managed to clutch a coin in my hand. And it burned me.”
I slipped my glove off and stuffed it in my belt. He took my left hand gently and traced my healing palm and fingers with his own. Val used to trace my knuckles with his thumb. I was glad for the darkness in the alley so Les couldn’t see the color that had risen to my cheeks. I took a breath.
“How did it burn you?” He followed the shallow shape of the coin around my skin. I pulled my hand away.
“I’m not sure. I spoke to a priest at a monastery on the dead plains. He wasn’t sure either. Maybe some sort of holy fire? He’d never heard of anything like it happening before. But when my hand was burning, a ghost reached for me and suddenly it was gone, flung away across the plains. Before I had time to think about it, I was in the monastery.” I shrugged.
Les stared at me. “That’s it?” He shrugged, mocking me. “You can just shrug it off?”
“What do you want me to say?” I snapped. “That I understand everything about Safraella and how She works? Or that I have some sort of magical clipper magic and you will too, as soon as we somehow get you a mask?”
He tightened his lips. I’d hit a tender spot. He had thought one of those things.
“I don’t understand how you can do something so amazing,” he said, “like stopping an angry ghost, and just shrug as if it’s no big deal. As if you’re not worried about it, or fanatically curious. You did something amazing, miraculous, and you treat it as an irritant at best.”
“Because I don’t have time to figure it out! I don’t have all the answers, Les. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m barely getting by. I just need to focus on doing what I came here to do.”
“Killing yourself, you mean.”
“What?”
“That’s what you came here to do, right? Find the means to kill yourself at the hands of the Da Vias?”
He was ridiculous. He didn’t understand anything. “I don’t want to die.”
“Don’t you?”
He stepped into my personal space. He was so much taller than me, but I stood my ground. I wasn’t that easy to intimidate.
“There are other solutions, if you’d only stop and think.”
“I don’t have the time!” I yelled. “The Da Vias already know a Saldana survived the fire. If they haven’t spoken to the Addamos yet, they will soon, and it will be obvious I came to Rennes. The Da Vias aren’t the Addamos. They have more clippers, more money, more resources and power. If they want to find me, they will as soon as they connect all the loose threads I’ve left trailing behind. I have to get to them before they reach me, otherwise it’s all pointless. Otherwise it’s all been for nothing and the Da Vias will have won.”
“I’ll be with you, though. It won’t just be you, alone. That could change the outcome.”
I shook my head. “I came here looking for Marcello not just because he knew how the find the Da Vias but because he was a Saldana clipper with skills that should at least match my own. And I needed him to help me. Even with my training, Les, you’re a half clipper at best.”
Behind us, the sun crept above the roof of the buildings, casting beams of light in the shadows. We’d stayed out too late. We needed to get to our homes.
“No one’s going to be ready for this, Lea. Not even you. And damn you for writing me off like that!”
I stepped back at the anger in his voice.
He followed me, leaning over to look in my eyes. “You don’t get to roll over people. Just because you have permission to end lives doesn’t give you the right to destroy them first.”
He was breathing heavily, staring at me. Was he right? I thought over the path I’d traveled to get here.
The Addamos . . . I’d definitely done some damage there. But they’d brought it on themselves. They were the ones who’d attacked me.
Brother Faraday had said priests weren’t allowed to take sides, but he’d bent the truth for me.
Les was wrong. “You don’t make any sense. I’m making you a better clipper. How is that a bad thing?”
He closed his eyes. “Do you really not see it, kalla Lea? Are you truly that blind?”
I’d been blind to things before, and I’d made terrible mistakes. “Maybe I am blind,” I whispered, “but you don’t understand.”
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“I don’t understand? Lea, I think I probably understand better than most.”
“No, you can’t. It’s my fault.”
“What’s your fault?”
“My Family. Their deaths.” I coughed and took a breath. “Val took my key from me. He must have made a copy or something. And because he was a secret, my secret, I didn’t tell anyone. The Da Vias got inside because of me.”
There. My darkest, heaviest secret bared for his judgment. Now he’d see me for the failure I was.
Les rubbed his neck. “It’s not your fault.”
His words hit me like a gust of cold air.
“You didn’t kill your family, Lea, the Da Vias did,” he continued. “Lay the blame where it belongs, not at your feet, but at theirs.”
I exhaled slowly. He made it sound so easy. But it was my fault. I’d had a hand in the deaths of my Family. When I closed my eyes, all I could see were their faces, and then I couldn’t help but imagine their last moments. Had they burned to death, their skin crackling, their lungs filling with black smoke? Or had the Da Vias killed them first, their knives and swords carving into their flesh? Had Emile been scared? Had he cried, fat tears rolling down his face as he called for his papa?
And how could Les just push my failings aside like that? Like it didn’t even matter to him.
To our left someone applauded slowly. I yanked my mask down as we turned.
“Bravo. This has been better than a stage play.” It was Captain Lefevre and six other men. “And look, you even have costumes.” He gestured to our leathers and my bone mask. I cursed my damn foolishness. We should’ve been long gone before the sun had ever risen so high.
I’d played right into his hands, standing in a secluded alley, with no witnesses to whatever he planned.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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twenty-five
“LEA, LEA, LEA.” LEFEVRE STEPPED INTO THE ALLEY with his men behind him. None of them wore uniforms. This was about something else, then, and not the murder investigation.
One of the men was a giant, nearly filling the small alley space. Beside me, Les moved closer.
