“You’ll need sewing up,” said Degan, “but that’ll have to wait.” He wiped his hands on one last piece of sash, then stood. He helped me to my feet and over to Larrios. My leg held me better than I expected, as long as I went slow.
Larrios was still lying where the Sashes had left him. He was on his side, partially curled up, facing away from us. I resisted the urge to kick him, since it would have hurt me more than him at this point.
“Larrios,” I said. Nothing. “Larrios, you remember me?” I cooed. “I’m the Nose from Fedim’s shop-the one you lied to; the one you ducked out on.” I put an edge in my voice. “And the one who’s going to make you wish the Sashes were still alive if you don’t tell me what I want to know.”
Larrios lifted his head and rolled over onto his back. “They’re dead?” he said. His upper lip was split, the lower one was swollen, and his right eye was already starting to puff shut. He’d been kicked and battered and bruised, but none of it looked old. Degan and I must have arrived just after the Sashes-they’d barely started to soften him up.
“Don’t get too excited,” I said. “You might be next. I took a sword in the leg to talk to you: I’m not in a generous mood.”
Larrios smiled as best he could through his broken mouth. “You took a sword for me? Really?”
I turned to Degan. “Kick him for me.”
Degan cocked his leg.
“Wait!” cried Larrios. “Wait-I’m serious! I owe you-those bastards were going to dust me whether I talked or not.”
“Then talk to me instead,” I said. “Where’s the book?”
“The what?” said Larrios.
I glanced at Degan. He kicked Larrios in the side hard enough to move him two feet across the floor. I limped closer.
“I told you, I’m not in a generous mood,” I said. “Now, where’s the book?”
Larrios had his eyes squeezed shut. He was gasping for breath, arms wrapped around his ribs. He groaned.
I sighed. “Look, no one’s walking out of here until I hear what I need to hear. So you can roll around and groan and bleed all you want, but we’ll keep beating the crap out of you until you talk.”
Larrios cracked his left eye open-the right was completely swollen shut by now. I shuddered at the image, remembering what Athel had looked like at the end, and kept my face impassive. I didn’t want it to come to that again.
“I need to get out of the city,” Larrios said. “There’re too many people after me-I need out.”
“Too many people?” I said, exchanging a glance with Degan. He didn’t look reassured. “What kind of people?”
Larrios coughed and spit out a bloody gob. He levered himself slowly into a sitting position. I watched, letting the pain of his efforts do the work for me.
“Them, for one,” he said, gesturing at the dead Sashes on the floor. “Then there’s you; that fucking big Arm, Ironius; his Ten Ways allies; Kells; the-”
“Wait,” I said, standing up straighter. “Kells is after you?”
Larrios nodded. “As of two days ago. He was nicer than most. He put word out that he’d pay a third of what the book’s probably worth. Most people have just gone straight to the knife.” Larrios shook his head. “I should have taken the offer. Fuck.”
I let out my breath. My first thought had been that Larrios had somehow linked Kells and me, but that clearly wasn’t the case. Still, why was Kells after the book all of a sudden? I’d only mentioned it in passing before…
“Then there’re all the loose Kin,” continued Larrios. He looked darkly at me. “I have you to thank for that-they wouldn’t be hunting me if you hadn’t put a price on my ass.”
I blinked. The room had started to lose its focus all of a sudden. Blood loss? Fatigue? I put my hand to the wall and slowly lowered myself to the floor.
“Duck out on a Nose,” I said as I leaned back against the wall, “and that’s what you get.” The room began to steady itself.
“Hey,” said Larrios, peering at me in the dim light. “You look like shit, too. What happened?”
“The book,” I said, refusing to get distracted.
“I told you, I need to get out of town.”
“And I told you, no bargains.”
“Then you might as well dust me right now,” he said, “because I’m dead either way.”
I looked up at Degan. “You heard the man.”
Degan had just begun his downswing when Larrios yelled out that he’d take us to the book. The sword buried its tip in the wall three inches to the right of Larrios’s ear. Degan smiled, and we all left.
I sat inside the ruined warehouse’s doorway and stared out into the rain. Larrios sat behind me, hands bound, legs shanked together with a length of sash long enough to let him walk, but not run. His remaining good eye was almost completely swollen shut now, too, but I still didn’t trust him not to run, even half blind and bound.
I watched as Degan came walking back through the rain. He was alone-no cloaked and hooded Kin on his trail; no guide back out of the Barren. Degan shook his head as he stepped through the door, his hat scattering drops of water in the process.
“The bastard set us up,” I said.
“Maybe,” said Degan, not sounding convinced. “He might have heard the yells and decided to rabbit. Or…”
I waited. Degan remained silent and continued to stare out into the rainy night. “Or?” I said.
“Or the other White Sash got him.”
I started at that. “The other White Sash?”
“Probably,” said Degan. “They usually travel in groups of three. Or six, or nine-always a number divisible by three. It’s their way of paying tribute to the three endless incarnations of the emperor.”
“So why didn’t the third one come and help the other two?” I said.
Degan shook his head. “I don’t know-and that’s what concerns me.”
I peered back out into the night but saw nothing. “Let’s get out of here,” I said. Degan helped me to my feet. If possible, I was suddenly feeling more nervous.
The rain was worse than before, the drops having become the large, heavy sort that immediately soaked through whatever they hit. They were colder now, too; that, or I was colder. Either way, it wasn’t pleasant to be out. Enough water had come down to churn up the alleys, making every step a slippery, slogging challenge. The only positive thing was that most of the stench had been washed out of the air for the moment.
The storm made the streets a distorted maze to my night vision. The shadows and shapes I usually knew so well took turns melting around the edges and springing back into focus as I limped along at Degan’s side. I found myself watching my feet more and more often, hoping to banish the headache the rainy night was causing. That didn’t stop the ache, but it kept it from getting worse.
We stopped often, both to rest my leg, and to let Larrios get his bearings.
“Here,” I said to Larrios at one point. We were leaning up against a building, barely out of the rain beneath a narrow overhang. Degan was off scouting out the next few blocks.
I had a seed in my palm. Larrios peered at it as best he could.
“Ahrami?” he asked after a moment.
“It’ll help you stay sharp,” I said.
“No, thanks.”
I returned the seed to the pouch around my neck. I had been taking them at regular intervals since the fight with the Sashes, and now it was close to empty. So much for this supply lasting a week.
“What do the White Sashes want with the book?” I said.
I caught the shadow of a shrug. “Same as you, I suppose.”
“I doubt that.” Somehow I didn’t see the Sashes using the book as leverage against Ironius and his Gray Prince. As far as they were concerned, the more dead Kin, the better. No, they had been sent after the book for a different reason-I expected they wanted the book for whatever was in it, not for what it could do for them.
“You’ve seen the book,” I said. “What’s in it th
at’s so damn important?”
“How should I know?” said Larrios. “I can barely read. Besides, it’s not in any language I’ve ever seen.” He reached up to wipe the rain from his eyes and winced when his hand brushed across the torn and swollen skin. “I should’ve taken Kells’s money.”
“How much did he offer you?”
Larrios showed me a broken grin. “Why? You thinking of selling it to him?”
“Wouldn’t that be something?” I said, chuckling at the thought. Then I heard a sharp whistle. I looked up to see Degan halfway down the block, waving us forward.
Larrios guided us as best he could, but, with his damaged eyes and the rain, it was slow going. We had to backtrack twice, but eventually we arrived in front of the burned-out husk of a building. Only the back and the right side walls were still standing-the other two walls, as well as the roof, had collapsed long ago. The floor was gone, too, leaving a sodden pit that had once been a basement.
We were in the heart of the Barren.
“You hid a book in there?” I said, pointing at the morass before us.
“What?” said Larrios. “It’s not like anyone’s going to look for it there.”
“It’s a book,” I said incredulously. “The weather, the rats… Do you know what they could do to something like that?”
“I was in a hurry,” said Larrios as he walked up to the edge of the basement and looked down. “I didn’t have time to be picky.”
I limped up beside Larrios and squinted into the pit. It was tempting to push him in, just on principle, but I restrained myself.
The water looked to be knee deep. Tangles of blackened beams and broken stone formed islands in the dirty pond. There were weeds everywhere. A small sapling grew out of the rubble off to our right. I had a momentary sensation of dizziness and quickly moved back from the edge, nearly falling over Degan in the process.
Degan gave me a quizzical look as he helped steady me.
“I’m fine,” I said. His look said he didn’t believe me. Well, hell, neither did I, for that matter. I felt like shit and could barely make out the real garbage around me from the things my mind and night vision were starting to invent.
I took another seed for good measure, even though my heart was already racing.
“Where’s the book?” I asked.
Larrios was at the edge of the pit, staring. “At the back.”
Of course. We moved left, toward a section of the basement wall that had collapsed and formed a steep ramp down. Degan was practically carrying me by now. He set me down on a pile of bricks a little ways from the edge of the pit, and I gasped as he did so. Even though my head felt as thin as a piece of fine silk, I was still sharply aware of the throbbing in my leg. I closed my eyes and rested my face in my hands. Neither the seeds nor Eppyris’s drugs were working.
I thought back to the fight with the Sashes. I could still see the blade, could still feel it twisting and pulling at the flesh of my thigh. Still see it…
No. Think of something else. Something…
Athel is strapped to the barrel, head hanging to one side. He’s grinning his grin at me, knowing and mocking and ironic. His eyes are sharp and focused, questioning. What are you going to do now, Drothe? the look says. Will you die for the book, too? He laughs. Are you already dying for it?
Am I…?
“Drothe!”
I jerked upright. “What?” I said, looking around for the source of the voice. I had somehow slipped back into a reclining position on the pile.
Degan was standing over me in the rain. He looked worried.
“What?” said Degan.
“Didn’t you call me?” I said. “I heard my name.”
Degan shook his head. “No one said anything.”
I blinked the rain out of my eyes. “Oh,” I said. “Fine.”
“Drothe,” said Degan, “maybe you-”
“Where’s Larrios?” I said, suddenly noticing we were alone.
“He’s getting the book,” said Degan patiently. “You told him to go retrieve it.”
“I did?”
Degan nodded, his hat producing a small waterfall when his head dipped. “He wanted me to go instead, since he can barely see, but you said we couldn’t waste the time it would take me to search for it.”
That certainly sounded like something I would say. And it was a smart decision. I decided to take Degan’s word that I had actually said it.
“How long’s he been gone?” I said.
“Not long.” Degan knelt down next to me. “Drothe, I think we should get you out of the rain and check your leg.”
“When we have the book,” I said.
“There’s a building across the street that still has its roof,” said Degan. “We could watch for Larrios from the doorway or a window.”
I mustered my concentration and stared Degan in the eye. “I leave when I have the book,” I said, “not before. Everyone wants that damn thing so bad. Well, I’m going to get it. It’ll give me an edge in this whole mess. For the first time since this started, I’ll have the edge. Me. Do you understand?”
Degan returned my gaze for a long moment. I could feel myself beginning to waver-being out of the rain did sound good, so good-but the sound of feet scrabbling on the muddy rocks of the ramp saved me.
“Hey, give me a hand!” yelled Larrios from beyond the edge of the pit.
Degan smiled and gave me a light slap on the shoulder. “Lucky.”
“Stubborn,” I replied.
As Degan stood and went to help Larrios, I let myself ease back on my rough seat. Bits of broken bricks and stone poked into my back, but it felt wonderful to lie back nonetheless. I shifted slightly so I could see the edge of the pit.
I was watching Degan, down on one knee and leaning forward, his arm reaching toward Larrios, when I heard a splash come from somewhere behind me. It sounded too big to be a rat or a dog, and I twisted my neck to peer into the night.
He was coming fast, sword out, cloak flying behind him. For a moment, I thought it was our dark guide, come to betray us in person, until I saw the broad swath of white around his waist.
“Degan!” I said even as I sat up and tried to push myself into a more or less standing position. “White Sash!”
It came out a little bit louder than a mumble.
Somehow, I managed to lever myself upright. I still had my rapier in my hand, but there wasn’t much I was going to do with it. Nevertheless, I raised the blade’s tip as best I could and staggered my way between the Sash and Degan’s back.
The Sash saw me and didn’t even slow down. I saw a smile form on his face, and suddenly realized this Sash was a woman.
“Degan!” I said again, “Sash!” This time it came out louder.
I heard a yell behind me and the sound of feet scrambling for purchase in the mud.
The Sash was practically on top of me. Her smile was wide and genuine and cruel, and it made her beautiful in the beaded amber of my night vision. I found myself wanting to say something to the woman who was about to kill me: to tell her how lovely she was, how graceful, how much she reminded me of my sister, but reality was working faster than my mind by that point. I was still figuring out the words when she raised her sword and swatted me aside with its guard.
The blow spun me as I fell. I caught a glimpse of Degan drawing his own blade even as his back foot slid out from under him and he began to fall down the ramp. Larrios was behind, yelling something I could no longer hear, a dripping leather sack clutched to his chest. And the Sash-she was in midleap, her sword held high, her teeth flashing in the night.
Then I was facing the ground, watching it come up toward me. I thought I heard myself say, “Ana,” but it might have been my mind playing with me again. I hit the mud, and the world became a dark and quiet place.
Chapter Eighteen
I was running through the forest. Trees flashed by on either side, and I leapt over roots and rotting logs with ease. Through the leaves overhead,
the sky shone the brilliant blue I remembered from my youth, and I suddenly knew where I was-home, in the Balsturan Forest.
But I was me-Drothe the Nose, older, jaded, with a rapier slapping at my side. The youth I should have been was absent, leaving me in his place. I didn’t know why, but I felt that this was a good thing-that I could do something the teen could not.
Then I heard the screams and the sound of steel on steel, and I remembered. This was the day it all ended. This was the day my life became a twisted, broken thing. This was the day they killed my stepfather, Sebastian, and the day any hope I had ever had of family died.
I pushed myself harder, tried to move faster, but my left leg was suddenly filled with pain. I looked down to see blood running from it, leaving a trail of red in the forest behind me. I howled and kept going.
I limped and stumbled, ran and ducked as best I could. The cottage was too far and I was too slow. The boy I had been could run faster, but he’d be helpless once he got there. It had to be me-I could stop this. I had to stop this!
I burst from the trees, half running, half falling, and stumbled over my mother’s grave, long overgrown with grass. My rapier fell from my hand. I pushed myself up.
I expected to see Sebastian, my stepfather, just finishing off one assassin as a second took careful aim with a crossbow and shot him down. I expected to see Christiana, thirteen years old, lying unconscious in the doorway, blood running from her head. I expected to see the agony that had seared itself into my mind all those years ago.
Instead, I saw a marble-paved courtyard, its walls covered with flowering vines. A fountain, carved from rose-colored stone and resembling a collection of those same flowers, stood in the center of the place. Water gurgled gently from each stone rose, spilling across the petals and collecting in the sunken pool at the fountain’s base. Sunlight spilled in from windows cut in one of the walls, turning the puddles on the paving stones to molten fire.
The place smelled green and fresh and alive; I didn’t trust it.
Toward the garden’s back corner stood a woman dressed in loose golden pants and a fitted brown jerkin. She was looking out the window, her back to me. Her hair was an unremarkable shade of brown, tied back in a short tail with a piece of white ribbon. Tiny silver bells hung from the end of the ribbon.
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