I allow some of myself to filter through Brama, adding my rage to his. As the arrow is released, our combined power pours forth. The arrow flies, turns black as it nears us. The arrow’s point digs into Brama’s leather vest, bites his scar-riddled skin, but goes no further as the shaft of the arrow sprays outward from the point of impact in a brilliant fan of smoke and glowing red embers.
The assassin’s eyes go wide. He pauses for a moment, his indecision clear, and then he drops his bow, sprints toward the temple wall behind him, leaps against it, and clings to a lattice of dried vines. Then he clambers over the top. Brama tries to follow, sprinting to the wall, but the wound along his knee flares; the puncture wound in his chest burns as he pulls himself up along the vines. By the time he drops to the city street on the other side, the assassin is gone. It is in this moment, while Brama is staring along the empty street, that I wonder if Brama saw what I saw. I pray to Goezhen he hasn’t, for as the assassin leapt over the wall, a trace of light trailed in his wake, there and gone in a moment, a thing I’d not thought to see, but now that I have it’s making me reconsider all the events that had led us to this point.
Across the street, on the sill of an open window, sits a massive copper kettle. Brama walks toward it, pulling the necklace over his head as he goes. Gripping the leather cord tightly in one hand, he stares into the ruddy reflection of his face that grows the nearer he comes to it. The reflection transforms, becomes the distorted face of an ehrekh.
“How did you do it?” Brama asks.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You know precisely what I mean. How did you ignite the arrow without my leave?”
“You willed it.”
“That’s a bloody lie.” His hand is gripped so tightly my prison, the sapphire, shakes. “You worked through me of your own free will.”
I pause, knowing that the wrong words here could make Brama do something rash. I’m consoled by the realization that he didn’t notice the light trailing the assassin, or perhaps he did and thought it some vestige of the power I unleashed. “You cannot expect the two of us to remain close for as long as we have without some effect. What I did, I did to protect you.”
“What you did, you did to protect you.” He lifts the necklace, stares at its cloudy facets. “You cannot do it again. I forbid it.”
“You are the master who holds the chains,” I say to him, an ancient proverb, one that was once used bitterly by the powerless but in recent centuries has come to mean simple deference. He can sense the way I’m chafing at my imprisonment, but I continue. “He may have heard Jax. He may be on the way to the tavern now.”
Brama stares uncertainly into the kettle, but when an elderly woman shuffles toward the window from inside, he slips the necklace back around his head and sprints headlong for the Haddah and the bridges that span it, his worry for Jax growing with each long stride he takes.
#
Brama reaches the Drunken Mule at a run. He takes the stairs at the back of the old, misshapen tavern to the balcony that leads to four rooms situated above the common room. Brama doesn’t know which one is Jax’s, but the door to the second room is open. He paces toward it, body tensed, and finds Jax standing just inside. She’s holding something in her hand. As Brama comes closer, he sees she’s holding a severed finger in a blood-stained kerchief.
“Kymbril,” Brama says.
Jax nods. Her hands are shaking.
Brama takes it from her and sees a small wooden chit, half hidden by Nehir’s severed digit. There’s a symbol on it—Kymbril’s own—a coiled viper. “It’s a message.”
“I know what it is!” Her eyes are saucers. She’s shaking so badly her lips are trembling. “I’m going to go there. I’m going to save him.”
“You don’t understand.” He holds up the chit, then wraps the finger in the kerchief and sets it on a simple ironwork table near the door. “This is a marker for those who buy large amounts of black lotus or whitefire or what have you. They get it after bringing the money to men like Maru, at which point they take it to another location to pick up their purchase. Kymbril wants you, but he also wants Nehir’s stash.”
She looks ready to argue, but then her resolve hardens and she holds out her hand. “Give me the bracelet.”
She means the one she gave him at the temple, the one bright with diamonds and rubies. “You can’t buy him off, Jax. Not anymore. He wants both of you dead.”
She flicks her fingers. “Give it to me! It’s mine!”
“It won’t work.”
Her face screws up in anger, and she begins pummeling him with her balled-up fists, striking him inexpertly around the shoulders and chest. Brama doesn’t try to stop her. He takes it all, her swings thudding into his chest, slapping against his face. Eventually she stops and simply holds herself. “I can’t let him go.”
“You don’t have to,” Brama says as he steps in and takes her into his arms. Surprisingly, she allows it, even softening as he continues to hold her. Brama speaks softly and strokes her hair, “Here’s what we’re going to do.”
#
In the heart of the Knot lies Kymbril’s manor, where he runs his operations. It stands drunkenly with its neighbors at the end of a cul-de-sac. Lying low as he is on the roof of the building next to Kymbril’s, Brama can see the full length of the street. He’s watching for Kymbril’s spotters, those who look for danger and call it out before it lands on his very doorstep. There are two boys sitting at the mouth of an alley halfway down the street. Seeing them crouched, preoccupied with a game of sticks, Brama picks up the fragrant calfskin sack by his side and moves smooth and low to the nearby roof of Kymbril’s building. With the buildings butting up against one another, it’s as simple as dropping a few feet down over the lip of the building. Once there, he sets the sack down, removes his necklace, and ties a length of string to the leather cord. Moving to the very front of Kymbril’s building, he feeds the string out, lowering the necklace until the sapphire is suspended in the corner of the topmost window below.
After securing the string to a nail, he lies flat and closes his eyes. Like the coming of dawn shedding light over a dangerous landscape, a vision of the room brightens in Brama’s mind. The drapes Brama spotted earlier while surveilling the building mask the sapphire’s presence, but the cloth’s material is thin enough that he can see the room within. Kymbril is there, leaning deeply into a couch along the far wall, staring through the window where the sapphire now hangs. Brama’s heart skips, but he realizes Kymbril’s eyes are closed. He’s asleep, his breath coming long and slow. He looks as though he fell onto the couch the night before and has yet to wake up.
On the roof, Brama opens his eyes and blinks. He stares at the blue sky, breathing deeply and yawning like a jackal to help clear the dizziness from his mind and body. The effects of the gem are disorienting, but he’s handling it well enough. Before Brama left for Kymbril’s manor, I offered more of my power to him—much more, in fact—but he’s still wary of me, enough that this facile spell is the one small concession to Jax’s desperate need he allowed.
He closes his eyes again and studies the room, memorizing it. With Kymbril so vulnerable, he considers slipping in through the window and driving a knife into his chest, but it would be too risky. He doesn’t know where Nehir is being kept, and he promised Jax he would do everything he could to see her brother safe, so he resolves to continue as planned.
I muse at how quickly mortals can fall for another soul; I suppose we’re not so different in this respect.
Soon, Jax appears at the far end of the street. She walks with a tightness, hands bunched at her sides. Even far away it’s easy to see how frightened she looks. A good amount of it is real, to be sure, but she’s playing her part well. They want Kymbril to see her as a scared little doe, ready to bolt at a sharp sound or sudden movement. A boy struts out to meet her, dust kicking up behind him into the hot air. He holds his hand out and says something, not quite loud enough for Brama
to hear, but Jax shakes her head, demanding she be allowed to see her brother.
The boy shouts at her, “You were to have brought it here,” angry that she doesn’t have Nehir’s stash.
“Bring her,” calls a voice from the base of Kymbril’s manor.
Maru. Part of Brama regrets not drawing his knife across Maru’s throat in the tenement, but if it wasn’t Maru it would be someone else. It’s a simple truth in the Shallows: finding oneself with a shortage of those willing to do dark work for a bit of coin only means you haven’t looked hard enough.
As the boy leads Jax into Kymbril’s manor, Brama waits, hoping he hasn’t miscalculated. It wouldn’t be the worst thing if Kymbril meets her below, but he’s counting on Jax being brought to Kymbril’s private offices, where it will be easier to make their escape.
Brama takes up the bulky sack, which smells strongly of fermented lotus, and crawls to the trap door leading down into the building. He sets the sack down, closes his eyes, and waits breathlessly as the sounds of the city play around him. The clatter of hooves in the distance, the rattle of wheels. The sound of children playing, a man coughing so heavily and wetly Brama wonders if he already stands on the threshold of the farther fields. Maru’s voice calls up the stairs, and Kymbril wakes. The big man shakes his head, uses the heel of his hands to clear the sleep from his eyes, then opens the door to the room. Jax, guided by Maru, takes the last run of stairs to the topmost level and steps inside the room, where Maru pulls her to a stop.
Kymbril makes a show of looking her up and down. “Takes a lot of nerve, coming here empty-handed.”
“You’ll get the lotus,” Jax replies nervously, “but only after I see my brother.”
“You think you can come here, to my house, and start making demands?”
“You want our stash and you want us gone,” Jax says evenly. “All I’m asking is to make sure he’s unharmed.”
Kymbril laughs at that. “Other than his finger, you mean.”
Jax stares back defiantly. “I will see my brother. Only then will you see your reek.”
“I don’t need your reek, girl.”
“We have a lot of it, Kymbril.”
The statement sits between them like a jewel for the taking. Kymbril considers a moment, then nods to Maru, who leaves and heads downstairs. He returns a short while later with Nehir, a black bag over his head, in tow. Maru removes the bag to reveal a face that is bruised and bloodied. He cradles his right hand, tightly wrapped in a bloody bandage, to his chest. The resignation in Nehir’s face is plain to see, as if he’s known for months that it would come to this, and now that it has there’s precious little to do but accept it.
Jax reaches up and brushes his hair, tenderly, slowly. She’s positioned herself as Brama instructed so that neither Maru nor Kymbril can see the words written on her wrist. To his credit, Nehir’s expression hardly changes. He becomes more calm, a tell in and of itself, but the gods of his homeland are watching over him, for neither Kymbril nor Maru seem to notice.
“Enough.” Kymbril steps between the two of them and turns to face Jax. “Where’s the ruddy stash?”
She puts her fingers to her lips and whistles. On cue, Brama stands and stomps on the trap door on the roof. Through the crystal eye he sees Kymbril and Maru staring up toward the ladder against the wall and the trap door it leads to.
“What’s this?” Kymbril growls.
“Your stash,” Jax says.
Kymbril raises a thumb at Maru, and Maru climbs the ladder to the trapdoor and pushes it open. On the roof, Brama opens his eyes, replacing the sapphire’s perspective with his own, and makes his way down the ladder. He tosses the heavy sack at Kymbril’s feet. Kymbril stares at it, then at him. Then he smiles wide, looking like a little boy who’s just been served his favorite meal from his memma. Kneeling, Kymbril opens the sack and takes a good whiff of the pile of fermented black lotus petals. “I’ll give it to you, Brama,” Kymbril says. “You almost had me convinced you were innocent in all this.” He stands and steps closer to Brama, pulls his shirt out and looks down his bare chest. “Where’s that necklace of yours?”
Brama’s only reply is to unclasp two of Jax’s bracelets, the simpler ones, from around his wrist. He flips them in the air to Kymbril, who catches them with ease and stares, a quizzical look on his rough-and-tumble face. “What’s this?”
“Enough, along with the reek, to let them leave the city unharmed. They’ll be no further trouble to you, Kymbril. That I promise. If they come back, I’ll take the knife to them myself.”
“Ah, but we know what your promises mean.”
“What Nehir did was more than foolish,” Brama continues. “You’ve made that clear. But he was only trying to raise money to head home and avenge the deaths of his parents. A fool’s dream. We can all see that now. Can’t we, Nehir?”
Nehir stares at everyone in turn. Wearily, he nods to Kymbril.
Brama goes on, “They’ve both given up, Kymbril. They’re leaving the city, far enough away that Sharakhai and their troubles in Malasan will be but a memory.”
Kymbril shrugs. “You know how this city works, boy. Always mongrel dogs nipping at your heels. My soldiers see I let these two go, what will they think? Or worse, my enemies?”
Brama considers this. “What if you and I could come to some sort of arrangement? What if I remained in your employ and helped heal those most addicted to the reek?” Kymbril and Maru exchange a look. It’s clear that Nehir confessed what Brama had done for him, but surely the two men had scoffed at the notion. Brama speaks quickly before either man can protest. “What I did with Nehir I can do again. I’ll do so whenever you ask.”
“Even if you could, how would that help me?”
“Because when your wealthiest patrons die, you lose a reliable source of income, but what if the lotus’s call was removed from them before that happened?”
“I’d lose them.”
“Some perhaps, but certainly not all. And if you sensed that they were falling too far, you could force them to pay coin for it. You’d win either way, Kymbril, and fewer would die.”
Brama’s words take me aback. This is either something Brama just thought of or purposely hid from me. Either way, in all our days together, I’ve never felt this from him—a spark amidst the terrible darkness surrounding him—and I wonder what will come of it.
Kymbril, however, merely frowns. “I’ll admit I’m intrigued, boy. Yesterday it might’ve been enough to call things square. Yesterday, I was in a giving mood. But I made another deal this morning. Can’t go back on it now.”
Fresh footsteps can be heard from below. Brama tenses as a dark form ascends the stairs. Jax and Nehir look at each other anxiously. This is something neither he nor Jax nor I had considered.
The man is one they all recognize: the assassin. What has me transfixed, more than his sudden appearance, are the lights that dance around him. They’re dazzling, nearly blinding. And I realize Jax has become as dull as an old copper coin. It’s true, then. Jax’s role has always been to lead me to the assassin.
He steps into the room and looks at Nehir and Jax. Apparently satisfied, he tosses a bag to Kymbril. It clinks as Kymbril snatches it from the air. Kymbril opens the bag and inspects the contents. “May your daughters find husbands and your sons wives,” he says with a wide grin, then shoves Jax toward the door.
“No!” Nehir shouts, and leaps into Jax’s path.
Brama is already on the move. He stomps hard on Maru’s foot, twists and elbows him in the jaw. Maru reels, and Brama sends him flying backward, through the doorway and toward the stair rails. Before Kymbril can react, Brama brings his heel down sharply onto the sack. The muffled sound of a bladder bursting emanates from the sack. A sizzling follows. Then green smoke rises from the bag.
Brama dives toward the corner of the room to avoid Kymbril’s grasp.
“Away, Nehir!” Jax shouts as she too runs for the far corner of the room.
But it’s
too late. The assassin stabs Nehir in the belly with a sharp thrust of his knife. Nehir stumbles, tries to crawl away.
When a high-pitched whistling sound comes from the bag, Brama clamps his eyes shut, and the center of the room transforms into a burst of white light. On and on it goes, the shrieking sound, the bright light so strong it’s all Brama can do to keep it out. The skin along his left side burns hot, and he worries that the concoction he’d bought from the alchemyst with Jax’s third bracelet was too much, that they’d all go up in flames, but he no sooner has this thought than the light and sound and heat all subside. Soon the only sounds are the moaning of men and a sizzling like meat over an open fire. Brama realizes he’s on the floor, fingers grasping for purchase. He turns himself over, sees Jax standing in the corner, eyes dazed and blinking, yawning as she shakes her head.
Kymbril is not far from her, unconscious. The front of his clothes are charred; the legs of his trousers still smoke.
Near the open door, where the sack of black lotus once was, a hole is burned clear through the flooring and the timbers to the room below. Blue-green fire licks around the hole and up the door frame, where the flames transition to something more mundane: an orange the color of turning leaves. Nehir lies in the hall, grasping his gut, pulling at the banister in a vain attempt at regaining his feet. Past him runs Maru, back into the room with his knife drawn.
Brama stands to meet him. He takes one step forward, pretending to charge, but when Maru lowers his shoulder, preparing for it, Brama drops onto his back, lifts his legs, and catches Maru’s gut with both feet. Maru swings his knife wildly at Brama, slicing his arm, but Brama uses Maru’s momentum against him. With an almighty thrust of his legs, he launches Maru into the air and through the window behind him. As Maru grasps for the window frame, his knife tumbles into the corner. A moment later a thud and a groan come as Maru lands on the ground outside.
The Tattered Prince and the Demon Veiled Page 5
