by Cara Witter
Perchaya faltered, and her hand slipped a bit on his arm. “The carving that was on my breakfast tray.” She opened her free hand and held up a small white rose, carved meticulously out of whalebone. It was the length of his first finger and perfectly detailed. “I guess it wasn’t from you. I just assumed it was, because I told you that story about the roses.” Her smile fell as she looked at it. “I did wonder at it, though. Roses aren’t really your style.”
Her obvious disappointment tugged at him. If they’d met under other circumstances, perhaps he would have been sending her tokens, trying to romance her. It wasn’t that he was incapable with women. He’d just never allowed himself to have anything resembling a meaningful relationship, and with Perchaya, it couldn’t be anything but.
Then again, he hadn’t managed to notice his feelings for her until she’d staged a gods-damned rebellion, so perhaps under other circumstances, it wouldn’t have happened at all.
He shook his head. “Sorry. It wasn’t me.” And as he realized who it must be, he dearly wished it had been.
Hugh.
Kenton cleared his throat. “You must have made an impression on some hapless knight. You’ll have to watch where you’re throwing that smile around here. This is Mortiche, after all.”
She turned it around in her hand. “Do you really think it’s some kind of romantic gesture?”
“Well, I didn’t get any carvings on my tray this morning, so I’m guessing it isn’t a token of hospitality.”
Perchaya nodded. “Sayvil didn’t get one either, and the servant who brought the tray was very specific about which one was mine.”
Kenton hesitated, wondering if he should point out the obvious, if only to warn her away from Hugh. But he feared whatever he said would come out sounding petty, and besides, just because he’d observed Hugh looking at her didn’t mean he had to do the man’s courting for him.
He regretted that decision when they reached the lunch parlor and found Duke Hugh himself sitting in front of the hearth, a croissant in hand and a book open across his knee.
When he looked up and saw Kenton and Perchaya enter, he first smiled, then looked Kenton over warily, as if sizing him up. Kenton doubly regretted not taking one of the nicer uniforms. But then, Perchaya, wonderful as she was, had adopted the persona of a lady-in-waiting, so he couldn’t imagine why he’d have to be competing with a duke over her in the first place.
Not that he was competing.
Gods, what was wrong with him?
He was still deeply involved in thought when Hugh abruptly stood, leaving his book on his chair and dusting the croissant crumbs from his fingers. He crossed the room, smiling at Perchaya as if they were old friends. She lifted her hand from Kenton’s arm and smiled at him in return. Kenton wasn’t sure what they’d said to each other during that excruciating tour of the castle, but he was certain he should have talked to her about not trusting the intention of Mortichean knights. He’d known enough of them in his time to know that Jaeme was downright honorable compared to the rest of them, and more helpful as well.
“My lady, you look radiant,” Hugh said, inclining his head.
It was all Kenton could do not to echo the words in a mocking tone. He wouldn’t want Perchaya to think he was mocking her.
Perchaya blushed. “You are too kind, my lord.”
“Only honest. I was wondering, perhaps, if you had received my gift this morning?”
Perchaya’s smile brightened, and she lifted the rose again so he could see, as if he wasn’t already acquainted with it. “I should have known it was you. Thank you, my lord. It’s beautiful.”
Technically, the term was your lordship, because Perchaya wasn’t a citizen or vassal of Hugh’s. Her mistake was common, but it bothered Kenton all the same. He didn’t want the duke thinking he had anything resembling ownership over her.
“Its beauty pales beside your own,” he murmured. “Might I invite you to join me?” He gestured toward his chair, and Kenton noticed there was another pulled up beside it with a single rose draped across the velvet seat—a real one this time.
Kenton was about to insist that he stay for Perchaya’s protection, even if the duke made him stand. But instead of answering Hugh, Perchaya looked at Kenton for his reaction, her face tentative but bright.
She was enjoying the attention. And despite his misgivings about Hugh, he couldn’t bring himself to take this little piece of happiness from her.
“Stay in the castle,” he said. “And if you need assistance, send for Jaeme.”
Hugh gave him a confused glance, as if he wasn’t sure why Kenton would be concerned for the safety of Daniella’s lady-in-waiting. Kenton knew better than to trust Hugh’s interest in her, but there was a limit to what the duke could do in the public parlor of Jaeme’s own castle, with any number of servants within shouting distance.
“Of course,” Perchaya said.
Kenton turned and left them together to enjoy their meal. He stalked out of the castle, determined to find his own food in town. If he couldn’t get Jaeme to look for the stone, he needed to do some reconnaissance. He doubted anyone in town would know where to find Kotali, but he had another order of business that he was overdue to pursue.
Kenton needed to find himself a blood mage.
Twenty-nine
The sun was setting by the time Kenton found his way to the precarious structure of half-burnt wood and charred stone that only vaguely resembled the tavern it had once been. Though most of the city was packed with people—festivalgoers, merchants keeping longer hours for the tournament, sightseeing nobility and their retinues—this narrow lane on Grisham’s east side was rather quiet. And far darker than the wealthier and more prominent thoroughfares of the city, which were brightly lit in the evenings with light globes, most of which were temporary, Kenton suspected. Grisham was a wealthy duchy, but very few rulers in the Five Lands could afford to keep a whole city constantly lit with Vorgalian charms.
One couldn’t merely inquire at the tavern about where to find a blood mage, and they certainly didn’t hang out a sign. Kenton didn’t have many contacts in this part of Mortiche, so it had taken the entire day for him to find someone willing to point him in the right direction.
He wondered briefly what Perchaya would think to see him spending the day going from lowlife to lowlife, lying and bargaining and buying drugs, all to gain the information he needed. She knew about his underworld contacts in Sevairn, but to see him making said contacts—and using them—would likely be another thing entirely.
Night was probably better for this, anyway. Kenton didn’t guess that many people purposefully made their way to this building in the bright light of day.
The door was boarded up, and dark curtains hung in front of the windows, which had jagged glass pieces jutting from the charred frames. A thin gray cat sat on one of the windowsills, eyes glowing with the last bit of reflected sunlight.
Kenton glanced around the street, seeing other abandoned, dilapidated, charred buildings that had been caught in the same fire, but none of the others matched the description he’d been given by the snap dealer after buying a small tin of powder.
Kenton made his way to the side of the building, where the scent of urine grew thicker. A man lay slumped against the wall, wearing nothing but threadbare breeches, his bone-thin arms hanging limply down, his chin resting on his slight chest. Kenton might have taken him for a dead man if he hadn’t stirred, turning his face just enough to blink eyes that seemed too large in his cadaverous face.
“You got any?” the man slurred in Mortichean, spit dripping from one side of his lips. “Just a pinch, that’s all I need.”
Kenton shook his head. “Not today, friend.” He might have had to buy snap to gain favor, but he wasn’t fool enough to carry it unless he was being paid for his trouble. He eyed the wall to the right of the man and found another
window, blocked out by the same dark curtains, but with all the glass removed from the frame.
Perfect.
The man made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob, both wheezing. “Liar.”
Kenton ignored him and pushed the curtain aside just enough to peer through. The main room was dark, but a flickering of orange light against one of the walls indicated that a candle or torch was lit in the next room over. A cough sounded from close by, hacking and wet, and a high-pitched giggle followed from another corner of the room.
The window was low enough to make climbing through easy. He swung his legs over and down to the ground, where he only barely avoided landing on a man lying just below the window.
The man started to curse at him in rough Mortichean, but broke down coughing, so much so that Kenton stepped aside to keep from having his boots vomited on. Though from the sour stench of bile permeating the room, there was little chance he wouldn’t be getting some vomit on them, regardless.
The light was coming from the kitchen in back, and he was able to make out the forms of seven different people lying about the hovel’s common room, all in various stages of snap highs. He guessed from the sounds of labored breathing and coughing and the occasional laugh or sob that there were actually a few more than that, hidden behind the bar or the overturned table by the empty hearth.
Not the kind of place one would expect to find blood mages, but the dealer he’d eventually tracked down—a man who dealt in more than just street drugs, so the rumors had gone—had been confident about it, almost cocky. Like he was daring Kenton to try his luck.
Kenton had promised Daniella back on the ship from Tirostaar that he’d try to find an answer to what her father had done to her. And though a promise to Daniella hadn’t ever been something he thought he’d care to fulfill, the fact that she wanted to know the answer, no matter how disturbing, impressed him.
And Kenton needed to know as much as she did, because he was the one who would ultimately need to protect the others from her, if it came to that.
He made his way across the room, carefully stepping over a puddle of something he didn’t want to investigate further and avoiding the outstretched arm of a woman who tried to grab his ankle as he passed. She muttered something at him and laughed softly, laying her head back on the wooden floor.
Kenton had seen places like this, of course—places for those consumed with their addictions, places in the dark cracks of society where they would disappear and often never return. Drug dens like this were the worst of the lot, but he’d seen people disappear into gambling halls or brothels, drowning their pain or self-loathing until surfacing was no longer an option.
As horrible as places like this were, Kenton didn’t blame the people who found themselves here. He might have, himself, after he’d found out the truth about what happened to his family, that he’d sworn fealty to the man who’d murdered them. The guilt and pain were certainly enough to make him wish he could cease to exist, even if it meant doing so in a layer of his own filth and vomit.
But he’d had something stronger than guilt, stronger than pain. He’d had hatred. And revenge, for his people, his family, and for himself—and now for the fact that he couldn’t have a normal life, a normal relationship with the woman he loved.
He pushed that last thought away. He was about to meet with blood mages at the back of a drug den. He’d given up normal a long time ago.
Though the heaviness of his pack reminded him that he was still fool enough to try to match the duke of Bronleigh with competing gifts.
Kenton made his way around the corner into the kitchen area, the light brighter the closer he got. Thick candles glowed in a broken-down hearth and in a metal basin that had once likely been used for scrubbing dishes. But it wasn’t the candles that caught his attention. It was the number of small wooden cages stacked up in one corner, each one containing an animal of some kind—several rats, some brown field rabbits, a wiry black cat. One cage had a number of brightly colored lumps at the bottom that he realized were dead birds. Kenton studied them, puzzled. The drug dealer had said the women who worked here had strange habits, but he’d assumed those referred to things endemic to the magic. From everything he’d understood, blood magic had no effect on animals. Were these being used as food? Or pets?
He took another step forward before he noticed the old woman crouched behind a barrel of feed, peering into one of the cages, her back turned to Kenton. He resisted the urge to grab for one of his daggers.
“Don’t move,” the woman said, without turning around. “My pike snake is loose, and he scares easily.”
Kenton’s gaze flicked to the upper corners of the room. Pike snakes were poisonous tree dwellers, so he imagined it would be somewhere up high. He didn’t see any of the telltale vivid yellow stripes. “I didn’t realize blood mages had need of keeping poisonous snakes about for security,” he said.
The woman fastened the lock on one of the cages. “We don’t. He escaped.” She stood and turned to him. Now standing, Kenton was surprised at how tall she was—a few inches taller than him, even. She had a plain, expressionless face, with heavy-lidded dark eyes and limp blond hair that hung loose to her shoulders. She wore a wool skirt and belted green tunic that wouldn’t have been out of place on a woman just browsing the market.
It was a good reminder that evil didn’t always fit the tidy, easily identifiable molds he wished it would. If it did, Diamis would never have convinced a whole country to follow him so enthusiastically.
“Fortunately, I’m not here for pike snakes. I need a service involving blood magic.”
The mage tilted her head, looking a bit like a curious bird. “You aren’t from Mortiche.”
“I didn’t realize my birthplace had any relevance here.”
“It doesn’t,” said another female voice, a younger, chipper one, and Kenton stepped back as the door to the cellar opened and another woman walked out, carrying a blue-tinted glass jar in each hand. Unlike the other blood mage, this woman was on the short side and strikingly beautiful, with wide blue eyes and dark curled hair. “It’s just rare that we have visitors from . . . oh, don’t tell me, I’ll guess. Sevairn, I’m thinking. Northern, maybe. Telvanir? All the handsome ones come from Telvanir.” Dimples puckered her cheeks as she smiled at him.
Kenton blinked, and she laughed, a charming, light sound that would have fit right in with any of the noble girls at Castle Grisham.
No, evil didn’t fit into neat little molds at all. If it had, it would have been easier to see it coming.
“He’s here for blood magic, Dez,” the other woman said.
Dez made an excited squealing noise and set the jars down on a small table beside her. “Wonderful! Always happy to help those interested in the soul arts. We don’t get many of your type, you know, and that leaves me talking to Preeta here, and the animals, and well, I don’t want to get too attached to them for obvious reasons—”
“I suppose we can help you,” Preeta said, as if she were only humoring Dez. “But first we’ll need a sample of your blood, to read your intentions.” While Kenton had been distracted, she’d somehow gotten behind him, making it so he couldn’t watch both of them at once. On her finger, the steel claw of a bloodletter glinted in the candlelight.
Kenton tried to project calm, even as he calculated the distance she’d have to move to reach him, and the distance between him and the shorter one. They didn’t look like fighters, but neither had Lukos before he’d transformed himself into a hulking monstrosity. And Kenton wouldn’t survive caught between two of those.
“Give my blood. To blood mages,” Kenton said slowly, looking back and forth between the two. “Does anyone actually agree to that? Anyone not needing their next snap fix, that is.”
Preeta blinked, her expression completely emotionless. “You could give a few drops freely, or we could drain your soul completely an
d strip your skin for tarping against the rain. The roof leaks.”
“You could try it, but your skin might not make it out intact.” Kenton reached for the daggers in his belt.
Dez giggled and waved a dismissive hand at her fellow mage. “Oh, put the scrape away, Preeta darling. Honestly. She just likes to scare people. Big bad blood mages and all that. We don’t really have any need for skin.”
“That’s reassuring,” Kenton said. He was beginning to regret this particular means of research, but it wasn’t as if he was going to find any instruction manuals on blood magic resting openly on the Grisham library shelves.
Preeta shrugged and turned to one of the cages, opening it and pulling out an extremely fat rat that she cradled in her hands as she carried it over to the metal basin. Kenton found himself both relieved that he was no longer standing between them and unsettled by the gentle way Preeta’s long thin fingers stroked the rat’s fur.
“So, what can we assist you with?” Dez asked brightly, the very picture of an eager shop assistant. “Light spying? Full control? Keep in mind if we have to obtain the blood ourselves, it’ll cost quite a bit more.” She winked, the dimples in her cheeks deepening as her smile grew.
Kenton tried not to think of how easily a determined blood mage could obtain blood from pretty much anyone they wanted, despite the citizenry’s long-ingrained habits of burning bloodied rags and bodies.
Especially a beautiful young girl like her, whom no one would suspect.
“What I need requires a very talented blood mage,” he said.
“Ooh, sounds exciting!” Dez said, clapping her hands together. “And mysterious. Are you listening, Preeta?”
“I’m listening,” Preeta said tonelessly, working at something over the basin. “With hearing enhanced by the blood of a dozen souls who died of the red madness.”
Dez rolled her eyes. “Go on,” she said to Kenton.
It took Kenton a moment to regain his focus. Nothing about this situation was as he’d expected, and he didn’t like the unexpected.
