Chapter 8
I WASworking the wharf, had been working the wharf for the past week, ever since killing the man in the alley. I was leaning on a support, the sounds of the docks a muted rush of wind in the background. Beneath me, I could feel the support quiver as waves slapped up against it below. The world was a wash of blurred gray, except for a narrow window of focus, where sunlight glared on a mostly-white cloth spread out over the back end of a cart. Stacked on the cloth were piles of vegetables and fruit.
In the sunlight, the colors of the fruit stood out vibrant and harsh. Everything looked perfect, the flesh smooth, unblemished. There were no scabs, no bruises, no softened spots of decay.
Since coming to the wharf, I hadn’t seen anyone selling fruit. I’d seen nothing but fish—fish heads, fish bones, fish guts—and crabs, which smelled like fish but tasted sweet.
I glanced up from the apples, from the apple that had rolled slightly to one side, near the edge of the cart, and watched the man who knelt in the back of the cart behind his wares. He was arguing with a woman over the price of some carrots, but his eyes flicked toward everyone that came within two paces of his cart.
I frowned . . . and my stomach growled. I looked at the apple again, thought for a moment I could actually taste it.
The sunlight brightened, the narrow field of focus widening. More people slid out of the gray, and everything took on a sharper edge.
I pushed deeper, until the world in focus had sharpened so far it felt brittle.
Then I relaxed . . . and waited.
The crowds of dockworkers and fishermen, of fish- wives and seamen, ebbed and flowed around the cart. The fruit seller eventually threw up his heavyset arms in disgust with the woman, tossing the carrots back onto the cart. The woman spat on the wharf, flung a rude gesture at him with one hand, and huffed off.
More customers came, and still the fruit seller eyed everyone who approached.
And then a woman towing three young children bled out of the gray.
I straightened, and with single-minded intent pushed at the river, forced it forward . . . and saw what would happen, saw how I could get the apple . . . how I could get more than just the apple.
I licked my lips as my eyes darted to the fruit seller, to the sour-faced man he was currently haggling with, to the woman who had just seen the cart, to the three children. The oldest boy reached out for no apparent reason and shoved the middle girl to the ground. Without turning, the mother cuffed him on the back of the head and said, “Leave your sister alone.” Her voice sounded tired and bitter. The youngest boy hung back, out of the reach of both mother and older brother.
The mother swerved toward the cart and the three followed.
I pushed away from the support and began moving forward.
The fruit seller glanced from the man to the mother, then down toward the three trailing children, and frowned.
“How much for the turnips?” the mother asked. The daughter squeezed in front of her, her chin coming up to the lip of the cart. She reached for a turnip, but couldn’t quite make it.
The fruit seller opened his mouth to answer. At the same time, the older boy reached around his mother and hit his sister. Her arm, straining for the turnips, jerked and sent the entire pile tumbling.
I heard the fruit seller shout, heard the mother spit out a curse, heard the daughter scream and begin to wail. The fruit seller lurched to save the turnips, the daughter spun, eyes flaring with anger. Everyone was turning toward the boy, toward the rolling turnips, toward the noise.
I was two steps away from the apple—from an armful of apples—with no one watching, when a hand closed about my upper arm.
I jerked and spun, dagger out before I thought. I would have killed him, thinking This is who I am, but just before the dagger drove forward, toward the midsection just beneath the armpit, I smelled oranges. Not from the fruit seller’s cart. He had no oranges. I smelled oranges in the gray world of the river.
I pulled my thrust. The dagger sliced through the man’s shirt, beneath his arm and across his chest.
The man gasped and lurched back, releasing my arm. He stared at me in shock, the hand he had used to grip me held out to stop me from a second attack. The other hand clutched his chest over the rent in his shirt.
I glared at him, saw that he was gray, harmless, and turned to leave.
“Don’t!” he choked, stepping forward. “Just wait!”
I hesitated. Because even after I’d almost killed him, he’d stepped forward to halt me, not away. And because of the smell of oranges.
Behind me, I heard the mother bark at her oldest son, heard them drawing away. My chance for an apple was gone.
“What do you want?” I asked, shifting my focus completely toward the man. I suddenly realized I recognized him, recognized the finely-made breeches, the white shirt with ruffles at the throat.
It was the man who had accompanied the red-coated merchant I’d seen on the dock.
“I—or rather, someone else—wishes to speak to you.” He straightened, his outstretched hand dropping, then winced. When he drew his other hand away from his chest, I could see a few rounded stains of blood against the white of his shirt.
I crushed a pang of guilt. “What for?”
The man hesitated, then said stiffly, “I don’t know. You’d have to ask him yourself.”
I frowned.
He had black hair, shorn short, wild and untamed, but not dirty or matted. His face was rounded, the skin a little pale. His eyes were green, shadowed with fear, still a little too wide from shock. They kept darting toward the dagger. But there was nothing else beneath the fear: no hatred, no contempt, no danger. And no pity.
I slid the dagger back beneath my shirt. “Where?”
He heaved a sigh of relief, tension draining from his shoulders. “Not far. My name is William.” He held out a hand, as if expecting something, like a beggar on the Dredge.
I stared at it in confusion and said, “Varis.”
After a moment, he withdrew the hand, coughed slightly into it. “Ah, yes. Varis. If you’d follow me?”
He began to move away, off the docks, along the wharf toward the real Amenkor.
I waited a moment, thinking I should slip away.
But in the end I followed him. Because of the smell of oranges.
We moved through the back streets of the wharf, William ten paces ahead of me. I followed warily, my eyes darting toward every blur of red. I felt unsettled, and moved slowly. William turned back once, his eyes catching mine, and he smiled encouragingly. The scent of oranges drifted over the sharper smells of sea and salt, like a breath of wind.
I halted uncertainly, struggling with a new sensation, something deep in my gut that trembled.
William’s smile faded and he moved back toward me. “It’s not much farther,” he said.
He reached out as if to take my arm again, but I drew back, my eyes hardening.
“Go on,” I said, and nodded down the street.
He continued, but not before giving me a confused frown.
He halted a few streets farther on at a door beneath a sign with a ship carved into the wood, its sails torn and ragged, the central mast broken. When he opened the door and gestured me inside, laughter and the sounds of a dozen voices rolled out into the street.
I stepped back, glanced toward William. I knew it was a tavern, had heard the raucous noises through opened doors before, knew the smells. But always from the street, from the Dredge. I’d never actually been inside one.
William’s brow furrowed as he waited. He didn’t understand my hesitation.
Before he could say anything, before the frown began to touch his eyes with real concern, I straightened and stepped past him into the inner room.
The sudden influx of sensation was overwhelming, the sound and motion and scents too intense. A dozen conversations, twenty voices or more, rushed out of the background noise, roaring forward like a gale, somehow trapped inside the little room, confined. A thousand scents struck like a blow—fire, ale, sweat, tallow, rot, cooked meat, bread, heat—all mixed and compacted, enough to gag. And through the sound, through the smells, in the dulled transition from sunlight to candlelight, people were moving: clapping each other on the back, stumbling up from tables, wandering toward the fire, reaching for food, coughing, carrying mugs of ale, drinking, eating, choking.
It was too much. The river began to close in, the water closing up and over my head, smothering me. My breath caught in my chest with a sharp pain and held there. My shoulders tensed. My hand closed in a death grip on my dagger. The room rushed in to crush me.
Then, with effort, I forced the darkening gray of the world to focus. I felt the river push back, resist, struggle—
Then the noise bled into the background. The scents slid away. And the giddy rush of motion pulled back, stabilized.
I gasped as the river gave way and began to balance, coughed as if water were caught in my throat, in my lungs—like when I’d surfaced from the water of Cobbler ’s Fountain at age six.
William stepped up behind me and I felt the light fade as the door closed. His hand moved as if to touch me, his eyes concerned, but he stopped himself at something he saw in my face.
“Over here,” he said, and led me through the mass of people toward a table in the corner, where the man in the red coat sat. I felt confined by the low roof, the people, but when I saw the red-coated man, all of that sensation fled.
The scent of oranges grew so strong it dampened out everything in the room, so sharp my eyes began to water.
I slid from the river, and the noise of the tavern rushed back, the scents. But in the real world they were not as overwhelming. In the real world, they were no worse than the crowds on the Dredge.
William moved behind the table, to where the red-coated man sat. He leaned down to murmur something in the red-coated man’s ear, but the red-coated man’s eyes never left mine. He watched me intently from behind the wires on his face. When William finished, he only nodded, and William stepped back to stand behind his shoulder, arms behind his back.
The red-coated man motioned to the only other chair at the table. “Would you like to sit?” he asked. His voice was soft and hard at the same time, careful and wary.
I glanced toward the chair, felt the motion of the room at my back, the steady stream of people, and shook my head.
He nodded, as if he’d expected that response. Then, in a deeper voice, one much more dangerous than before, he asked, “And do you know who I am?”
I shook my head again.
He watched me for the space of two breaths . . . and then his gaze shifted out into the crowd behind me. “Moll, could you bring a plate of the pork and some ale. And bread with butter, of course. Enough for three.”
I turned and watched a woman nod in our direction and hustle off toward a door.
When I turned back, the red-coated man was watching me again, this time with a frown.
“We saw you kill that boy the other night.”
It was a statement, and when he reached beneath the table I tensed, a cold sensation rushing up from my stomach. But not the warning Fire. This was simple panic. My hand went for my dagger—
But then the red-coated man drew forth a section of black cloth, finely made—too fine for what I’d seen on the common people of the wharf. It was stained with mud, with blood.
It was the cloak Cristoph had dropped, the one he’d left behind.
The red-coated man pushed the cloak back down beneath the table.
“I sent William back for the body. He tossed it into the harbor, but he brought the cloak and the book to me. If the body is found, the boy’s family will think he was roughing it in the wharf region for fun, that he got involved in something he shouldn’t have—dice, too much drink, the wrong crowd—and that he was killed for his money.”
“What about the other one, the one who ran away?” I asked.
Borund grimaced. “I don’t think he’ll cause a problem. He’d have to admit he was on the wharf in the first place, attempting . . . whatever he was attempting. I find that unlikely.”
I shifted uneasily. “Who were they?”
“Does it matter?” When I didn’t answer, he shook his head. “Merchants’ sons. They shouldn’t have been messing around on the wharf. They certainly shouldn’t have been down here preying on the likes of you. Don’t you agree?”
William snorted. The red-coated man frowned but didn’t turn around.
“In any case,” the red-coated man continued, “William has convinced me that you could be . . . useful.”
I glanced toward William, but his face was blank, his eyes focused inward.
“How?”
The red-coated man drew breath, but suddenly Moll appeared with a tray heavy with shredded pork smothered in some kind of sauce. The meat steamed, the scent of heat and smoke and juice powerful, drawing a rumble from my stomach. She set the tray down with a grunt as a second, younger woman arrived with a huge pitcher of ale and three wooden cups—except they were larger than any cups I’d ever seen; deeper and with large handles. Yet another woman arrived with a flat board with bread already sliced and a bowl with butter in it. A small knife, as long as my finger and strangely flattened, was half-buried in the butter.
My stomach clenched.
“Will that be all, Merchant Borund?”
“For now, yes, Moll.”
The three women nodded and wove back into the crowd behind me, but not before considering me with curious frowns. Moll nodded to me as she passed, with a tentative smile.
After they left, Borund sighed and relaxed back into his chair. Motioning toward the food, he said, “Please, have something to eat. You as well, William.”
I hesitated, too shocked to move. There was more meat on the tray than I’d eat in a week, and the bread. . . .
William shifted forward, used the small knife to spread the butter over a slice of bread, then used something else with three small prongs to stab a chunk of the meat. He placed the meat on the bread and then stepped back to eat.
I watched a moment, still stunned, then stepped forward. I resisted the urge to grab the entire loaf of bread and run. Instead, I picked up a single slice and when no one reacted, stepped back. I half expected Borund or William to shout, or reach out and grab my arm as the hawker had done when he’d caught me trying to steal from his stall.
Instead, Borund leaned forward and said, “Here. Try some butter on that.”
I held out the slice of bread I’d taken. Borund took it and slathered it liberally, then handed it back.
The bread was warm, and the butter had already begun to soak into the slice. It smelled sweet, tasted sweeter, soft and warm and smooth against my tongue. The flavor flooded my mouth, and a trail of it trickled down my chin like drool.
It was the best thing I’d ever tasted, sent tremors through my arms.
I stuffed the rest of the bread in my mouth, wiped the trail of butter away with the back of my hand while still chewing the last of it.
Borund leaned forward with a smile. “Now have some with the meat.”
He waited until I’d gotten another slice, with plenty of butter, more than Borund had used, and some meat, then sat back while William poured three cups of ale.
“Amenkor is dangerous, Varis,” he began, then hesitated. “May I call you Varis?”
I nodded around my third helping of butter, bread, and meat.
“Not just here on the wharf. It’s dangerous in the upper city as well. Perhaps more so. Especially since the White Fire.” He paused, grimaced to himself, then focused again on me. “I did not think it was that serious—not as serious as William claimed—until . . . until we saw you being attacked in that alley by those boys. I was willing to dismiss how bad things had become in Amenkor until then. But now. . . .” He shook his head, shifted uncomfortably in his seat, his gaze moving toward the crowd behind me.
I stopped for a moment, suddenly uneasy. Inside, I felt a tendril of the Fire flicker upward, there and then gone. But the motions of the room behind me began to filter into my awareness, no longer part of the background.
Borund’s gaze moved from person to person.
“Now,” he said, “I no longer feel safe. Even here, where I’ve come since my father first brought me to the wharf.” He smiled, the gesture bittersweet and brief, and returned his attention to me. “And that’s where you come in, Varis. I need someone to guard over me, protect me.”
I stopped chewing. Through a mouthful of bread and gravy, I sputtered, “What?”
Borund leaned forward. “I want you to accompany me to the wharf, to the city or palace, wherever I go, and make certain no one harms me. I know you can handle a weapon. I’ve seen it. I know you can defend yourself. That boy you killed . . . he was trained, Varis. He knew how to use a knife. And yet you bested him without any effort at all.”
I swallowed painfully, the lump of bread too large and tasteless. “He was stupid.”
“Perhaps. But in the end you walked away, not him. I’m willing to bet you can best almost anyone. Especially anyone that may be hired to kill me.”
“Who would want you dead?”
William snorted again and took a long pull on his ale. William had drunk plenty of ale. I hadn’t touched mine. Neither had Borund.
“Other merchants. Perhaps others from the upper city with power. People here on the wharf who have become . . . desperate.” Now Borund reached for his ale. “There are plenty who might try.” He drank, watching me carefully over the top of the cup, then set the cup aside. “See this jacket? The red signifies my merchant house, the color chosen typically as an indicator of the product I traded in when my house was first certified as a member of the guild. Mine is red because at the time I dealt mainly in imported wines.
“But my house has grown since then,” he said. “I deal in many commodities now—spices, grain, cloth. The gold embroidery on the sleeves of the jacket and around the neck indicate all of the wares that my house has dealt in before.” He pointed to his cuff. “These three lines cinched tight in the middle mean that I’ve traded in flax, that perhaps I have a source if someone is interested. This elongated circle indicates I’ve dealt in silks from the eastern city of Korvallo, across the mountains. The more embroidery, the more powerful the house. The jacket and the embroidery are a necessary part of the work of the guild, are in fact essential if my house is to remain influential in the guild and in the palace. But it has a drawback. It announces to the world exactly how powerful I am. And it attracts . . . undue attention.”
“It makes you a target,” I said.
Borund did not respond, turned his attention toward the ring of spilled ale the cup had left on the table instead, began spreading the ale around with one finger in small circular motions.
“You would no longer live on the wharf, of course, in your little pile of traps. If you came to work for me.”
My eyes narrowed, a pulse of anger uncoiling deep within.
He glanced up briefly, then continued playing with the ring of ale. “Yes. I had you watched. I had to make certain you were trustworthy. That you weren’t sent by one of the other merchants, as a spy perhaps.” He sighed. “If you are interested, you would have to live in my house in the inner city. Sleep there, eat there. My schedule is not fixed, so I’d need you close, in case I had to leave quickly. I would provide everything you needed, within reason.” The small circular motions stopped and he lifted his finger from the ale, lifted his eyes to me. “It would be a much better life than stealing what you can from the wharf.”
I hesitated. The anger that he had followed me, had watched me—that he had done so without me noticing—felt raw and hot inside me. I should have seen them, should have noticed whoever had been sent to stalk me.
And that’s exactly how I felt. As if I’d been stalked.
Suddenly, the bread and meat and butter felt heavy and sour in my stomach. I felt sick, the air inside the tavern too close, stifling. The noise and motion of the people began to push forward again, overpowering, like when I’d first stepped into the room.
Feeling feverish, I stepped away from the table. “I don’t know.” I took another step, the urge to run creeping up slowly from inside, tingling through my arms, even though there was no warning from the Fire inside me, no hint of danger.
Borund stood as well, sharply, frowning, one hand slightly outstretched as if to catch me before I fled. He seemed about to protest, but then he stopped, let his hand fall back to the table.
“Perhaps this was a mistake,” he said.
And then the pressure of the room became too great, the noise and scents too harsh.
I turned, hesitated. . . . But in the end I slid through the crowd to the door and out into the new-fallen night.
Once outside the stifling tavern in the night air, I moved swiftly toward my niche, past people I barely saw before swerving around them. My mind was blank, empty. There was nothing to feel except the heavy weight of food in my stomach, nothing to taste but a strange fear tinged with a sickening excitement, all flavored like butter, smooth and slick inside my mouth. . . .
I stumbled over a trailing length of rope attached to a crab trap, caught myself against a wall. My heart thundered in my chest, so hard it hurt just beneath my breastbone. I coughed roughly, then straightened.
Drawing in another deep breath, I leaned my head back against the stone of the wall behind me.
I could still smell oranges.
I drew in a few more deep breaths, coughed half- heartedly, and sank down into a crouch, weight on my heels. On the street before me, a few people moved. Some slowed, watched me warily. No one came close.
I closed my eyes. Against the darkness, I thought about William grabbing my arm, felt the instant surge of fear, of desperation, of dread that this was another rapist like the first man I’d killed . . . or another Bloodmark.
But William wasn’t one of those men. I could see it in his eyes, in his confused expression, in his mussed, clean hair. I could see it in the way he’d held out his hand to stop me from attacking a second time. And it was in his smile.
I shifted uneasily, feeling again that trembling sensation deep inside, somehow warm and tense at the same time, and strangely guilty.
I turned away from the sensation, thought about Borund instead, about how he’d offered the food, about his eyes. He’d been wary, reluctant at first, the wrinkles near his eyes tight. But then he’d relaxed, smiled, put the butter on that first slice of bread. Not the slow smile of Garrell Cart before he’d taken the girl on the Dredge, before he’d killed her. No. Borund’s smile had been amused as he watched me take that first uncertain bite, as he watched me slather the butter onto the second slice myself.
But he’d also had me followed, watched, stalked. Like I imagined that ex-guardsman I’d killed had stalked me, or like Garrell Cart had watched the girl with the green cloth. Predatory.
Wariness twisted my stomach, made worse by William’s confused eyes, by Borund’s smile.
And by the oranges.
Erick had given me oranges. I’d trusted him. I trusted him still, even though I felt that I’d betrayed him in some way by killing Bloodmark. Even though that last image of him, at the edge of Cobbler’s Fountain, before we’d found Mari, had been gray mixed with red. I didn’t know what the red mixed with gray meant exactly, but I still trusted him.
I squeezed my eyes tighter, felt tears near the edges, felt them burn.
I suddenly wanted Erick back, wanted him there, at the edge of Cobbler’s Fountain, waiting. I wanted to see his hard expression, his dark eyes, his scars. Even if it meant that the moment he saw me, the moment he laid eyes on me, he denounced me. Even if all he did was cast me out.
But I couldn’t get Erick back. Not now. I’d made my choice.
I opened my eyes, wiped at them forcefully, then glared at a man who’d paused on the far side of the street.
He turned quickly and moved on.
I glanced around, dipped beneath the river briefly but saw no red, then stood and began moving toward my niche.
Sunlight glared off the rolling waves of the harbor in flashes, forcing me to squint and raise a hand to shade my eyes. At the end of the dock, a ship with three masts creaked against its lines as workers—Zorelli and Amenkor natives alike—hauled boxes and barrels down the ramp to the dock itself. It was the usual chaos that normally kept me enthralled with a strange tingling excitement deep down inside my stomach, but today I wasn’t interested. Today, only William and Borund held my attention.
Both stood at the end of the plank that led to the deck of the ship, Borund dressed again in the red coat. William stood back and to one side, in a white shirt with ruffles down the front and brown breeches tucked into boots. Both were frowning in thought as the captain of the ship talked. I could only catch a few phrases of the conversation at this distance, and none of those phrases made sense. But I couldn’t get any closer without revealing myself. I wasn’t well hidden as it was.
Borund’s frown turned grim and he shifted so that he was looking out toward the sea, toward where the two promontories of land to the west of the city jutted out and curved toward each other, forming a narrow inlet into the bay.
The captain of the ship finished his report and even through the chaos of the unloading around them, I could sense the silence between the three men growing. The shipmaster’s fingers nervously kneaded the edge of the hat tucked under one arm as he watched Borund’s face.
Finally Borund sighed and turned away from the sea. Forcing a smile, he gripped the shipmaster’s arm at the elbow, squeezed once as he said a few words, and then the two nodded to each other, the captain donning his hat as Borund and William turned away.
I pulled back behind the stack of crates and waited, breathing in the salt air and looking up at the blue of the sky, the bustle of the wharf a few paces away.
When William and Borund passed by, I waited until they’d moved twenty paces farther on, then slipped into the flow of the wharf traffic behind them, close enough to hear what they said, but far enough back they wouldn’t notice me. I’d been following them for the last week, whenever I managed to catch them on the wharf.
“. . . getting worse,” Borund was saying. The grim expression I’d seen on the docks had returned. “Mathew says that all the ports are as bad off as we are. He’s barely finding enough to trade and still keep his ship. If it doesn’t pick up soon, he’ll have to ground her or sell her.”
“Perhaps you could buy it from him,” William said. “Keep him on as captain.”
Borund grunted. “Not if we can’t get more trade going through the city. We’ve had to start cutting into the reserves as it is. There’s just nothing out there. Too dry to the north, too wet to the south. And I don’t know what the hell happened to the spice and silk routes through Kandish. The entire nation seems to have vanished. Avrell announced to the guild that nothing’s come through the mountains in the last three months—no emissaries from Kandish, no caravans. He hasn’t even heard from his own diplomats, and you know how widespread his network is.”
He glanced toward William. “Something is happening, here along the Frigean coast and on the other side of the mountains. We have to find another source for our staples. Mathew says that he grabbed the last of the wheat in Merrell, and nearly all of the barley—as much as he could load into the ship without foundering. He paid a hefty price, but I think it was a wise choice.”
“Should I send it on to Richar in Kent? Raise the asking price to compensate?”
Borund hesitated, then halted, his gaze once again turning toward the harbor. The flow of people on the wharf parted around him, like water around a dock support.
Twenty paces back, I slid into place beside a cart loaded with dead fish, their mouths open, eyes filmed with white. The hawker glared at me a moment, then turned back to the passersby, shouting with a star tlingly loud voice, “Fresh fish! Just from the ocean! Fresh fish!”
At the center of the flow of people, Borund turned from the sea, his gaze traveling over the city of Amenkor itself, taking in the far side of the bay, where the buildings at the edge of the bluff rose to the mismatched angles of the roofs behind. It created a strange pattern above the slate of the water, and as I followed his gaze I suddenly realized with a sickening twist in my gut that there, among those roofs, across the bay on the other side of the River, lay the Dredge. And that on one of those roofs, almost six years ago, I’d watched the Fire emerge from the west and cut across the harbor, consuming everything.
And then I’d killed a man.
“No,” Borund said, and I tore my gaze away from the buildings and from memory to see that Borund was now staring at the people moving about him, watching them as they haggled and cursed and rushed along the wharf. His voice had sharpened somehow, and his gaze flickered from face to face. But he didn’t turn toward me. “No. Don’t send the grain on. Tell Richar we have none to spare. And tell Mathew to purchase whatever he can find, no matter the cost.”
Borund caught William’s eyes and something passed between them, William’s back straightening.
“Very well,” he said.
Borund sighed and glanced up at the sun, the skin around his eyes wrinkling as he squinted. “I feel the need to check the warehouses suddenly. Take inventory. See exactly what and how much we have in stock, ready for use.”
William stepped forward and they began walking away. I stayed behind. I’d followed them to the warehouses once before. There were no people around, no places to hide. And both William and Borund had disappeared into a single building for four hours while I waited in the rain.
I glanced down as they vanished into the crowd and caught sight of a small fish at the edge of the cart, its one eye slightly sunken into its head. Its scales had dried in the sun.
I cast a quick look toward the hawker.
Five minutes later, I was deep in the back streets, headed toward my niche, the dry fish held loosely in one hand.
Two days later, I settled into the edge of an alley across the street from the inn where William had first taken me to see Borund. It was early yet, the sky still blue, with thin bands of clouds, but within the hour it would be dark. I stared at the door to the inn, listened to the noise from inside spill out when someone entered, and tasted butter. Tasted it so badly I had to swallow.
I couldn’t see far inside the inn, but Borund and William never showed up this early when they came. After a moment, I sat back on my haunches, leaned against the alley wall, and waited, closing my eyes.
William instantly rose to mind. His black hair, tugged by the wind coming in off the sea. His green eyes.
The liquid guilty sensation returned in the pit of my stomach, but this time I didn’t force it away. It was strangely exciting. Different.
I found myself smiling for no reason.
And then the scent of oranges intruded.
I opened my eyes and sat forward. Twilight had settled onto the street, the sky gray now, the clouds tinged with the last of the sunset. Even as I inched forward, catching sight of Borund and William moving toward the door to the inn, the deep sunlight faded and died.
Borund halted at the door to the inn to talk to someone—another merchant by the man’s dark green jacket, the amount of gold embroidery on his sleeves roughly equivalent to Borund’s. But this merchant was accompanied by two other men. The merchants clasped arms, hands gripping forearms, and nodded to each other. William kept back a pace as they talked, but his attention was on the conversation. I watched him as he scanned the street around them, keeping a careful eye on the two men with the other merchant.
Perhaps I’d refused Borund’s offer too quickly, I suddenly thought. I’d followed them for days, watched carefully to see if I was being followed still, tracked. But there’d been nothing. Neither Borund nor William had done anything aside from checking the docks, checking their warehouses, meeting with other merchants and with shipmasters on the pier.
I almost stood and moved across the street, moved to catch William’s attention, but Borund ended the conversation with the merchant. He turned and motioned William inside, rough laughter breaking out from inside the inn as William opened the door. Borund nodded once toward the merchant with the green coat, who smiled and nodded back, and then the door closed and the laughter cut off.
I was just about to settle in and wait for Borund and William to leave, when the green-coated merchant turned.
The smile had vanished. In the last of the fading light, I saw the merchant’s eyes narrow, his face harden with hatred.
A shudder slid through me and without thought I dipped beneath the river. In the rushing noise of the street, the merchant was mostly gray, but with faint traces of red at the edges.
Like Erick had been the last time I’d seen him.
I pulled back sharply, stared wide-eyed at the merchant across the street. For the first time since I’d killed Bloodmark and fled to the docks, I wondered what it meant. There’d been no need to wonder; I never expected to see Erick again, and I’d met no one else with the strange mix of red and gray.
But now . . .
I shifted forward, watched the merchant intently. He had a thin face, but soft somehow, not gaunt. His eyes were dark, but in the light I couldn’t tell what color they were. His hair was dark as well.
For a moment, he searched the street, his eyes halting as he caught sight of a thin man leaning against a wall close to where I crouched. He pressed his lips together as if considering, then nodded once toward the thin man before turning away.
With a sharp gesture, the green-coated merchant called the other two men to his side. They left, moving swiftly.
I turned my attention toward the thin man leaning against the wall.
For a long moment, he did nothing but stare down at the cobbles of the street. Then he smiled and pushed himself away from the wall, moving sedately toward the inn. As he moved, he pulled a slim knife from his belt and tucked it up one sleeve of his shirt.
A shiver sliced through my gut, but before I could react, the man had opened the door to the inn, some type of music now mingling with the sound of voices spilling out. Then the door shut and the man was inside.
With Borund. And William.
I hesitated at the door to the inn, barely conscious of the fact that I’d crossed the street at a dead run, or that I’d slid beneath the river, deep. I shuddered at the memory of the last time I’d entered the inn, of how the people and voices and scents had overwhelmed me. But the memory lasted barely a breath before I pulled open the door.
It was as bad as the last time. Music, laughter, voices, belches, clattering pottery, creaking benches, all of it crashed into me, surged forward like a rolling wave on the bay, slapping into one of the dock’s supports. And with it came the instant disorientation of the crowd, movement without purpose, without order, and the strong blanketing stench of sweat and smoke and ale.
But this time I forced everything into the background with a mental shove and focused, sifting through the noise and chaos.
The entire room . . . solidified. The blur of motion became bodies, servers weaving through the patrons with trays aloft, patrons clapping each other on the back or tossing back drinks. A man with garish clothing belted out a song while playing a strange instrument, and two women dressed like prostitutes but who weren’t wove through the edges of the crowd, trailing filmy cloth, dancing. All noise bled into the background wind, making the foreground eerily silent. And the stench was damped, as if it had been shoved close to the floor—still there, lingering, but not strong.
A man staggered toward me and I stepped out of the way a second before he would have jostled into me. A look of annoyance crossed his face for a brief second, but he bumped into the next man through the door and stole that man’s purse before leaving. My movement placed me in the midst of the crowd.
I spat a curse. I could no longer see, the people too close, blocking my view.
But I caught the scent of oranges.
Focusing on that, I sifted through the crowd, barely touching anyone. But the deeper I moved into the room, the greater the cold sense of urgency in my gut grew. I remembered the man’s knife as he slipped through the door of the inn, could see his slow smile as he pushed away from the wall.
I gave up trying to go unnoticed and began shoving my way forward. The cold sensation flickered, then curled into a wisp of the Fire.
I staggered out of the press of bodies into an open area of tables. Gasping, I grabbed the back of a chair and scanned desperately for the thin man, for Borund and William.
I found Borund almost instantly, sitting at a back table. Moll, the woman who had served him before, was just setting down a platter of roasted meat and vegetables. I couldn’t see William. Or the thin man.
I dove deeper into the river, going as deeply as possible, thinking of Garrell and the girl with the green ribbon. I hadn’t been able to help the girl. I’d been too late. But I could help Borund.
I searched the crowd for splashes of red, realizing suddenly that I hadn’t used the river outside when I’d seen the thin man. I’d been too shocked. Now I had no marker, no scent for him.
I latched onto a blur of red, almost lurched forward, hand already on my dagger, but realized it wasn’t the thin man. Someone else, someone watching me closely, but too far away to worry about now. Another blur of red, and another, neither the thin man.
The Fire curled higher, grew, began to move up into my chest, toward my throat. The taste of oranges flooded my mouth.
There were no other splashes of red in the inn. The thin man wasn’t here.
Unless . . .
I paused, realized that all of the men who appeared red were watching me, were focused on me.
The thin man wasn’t interested in me. He was interested in Borund.
I hesitated a moment, then closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath, frowning as I concentrated. I could feel the Fire growing in my chest, tingling in my shoulders, but I ignored it, focused on the separate sensation of the river instead, on its flow as it pushed around me. I reached out and touched it, pushed it, tried to alter its focus, turning it away from me . . . and toward Borund.
When I opened my eyes again, the texture of the room had changed. Everything was still gray tinged with other colors, but now there were more of them. The three men who had appeared red before were still red, but now they were somehow removed and unclear, faded. Now, there was a new set of red, a darker red than the others.
The men dangerous to Borund.
I unconsciously stepped forward, scanning the new faces.
The Fire began moving along my arms.
At the table, Borund took a swig from his ale, his meat already half eaten. He reached for a chunk of bread.
And then I saw the thin man.
He stood just behind Borund, within five paces. As I watched, the Fire sliding down to tingle in my fingers, the thin man’s knife dropped from its hiding place in his sleeve into the palm of his hand and he began to move forward.
At the same time, someone halted just beside me and in a startled voice asked, “Varis?”
I turned, saw William’s surprised eyes, his brow wrinkled in confusion—
And then he saw the dagger in my hand. I didn’t remember drawing it.
His eyes went wide, and one hand rose as if to grab me . . . or maybe to ward me away as he’d done on the wharf when he first grabbed my arm and I attacked him. But before I could find out what he intended, I bolted toward Borund.
I think William shouted in alarm, but it was too hard to tell, his voice drowning in the background wind. The thin man now stood a pace behind Borund, had brought his thin dagger up toward Borund’s back where he sat. I could see what he intended: a quick thrust up between Borund’s ribs, like the thrust I’d used to kill Tomas, the man who’d attacked Bloodmark. If done right, Borund would barely feel it, might think it was someone bumping into him from behind, but it would kill him nonetheless.
Borund saw me at the last moment, a forkful of shredded meat raised half to his mouth. He jerked back, shock and fear registering in the breath before I crashed into him, his chair, and the thin man.
All I could think of as the three of us tilted, Borund grunting at the impact, was the dead girl’s body—the girl with the green cloth.
Then we hit the floor. The edge of Borund’s chair ground into my hip and with the sudden sharp pain I lost the river. Sounds crashed down—the splinter of wood, gasps, a scream, clattering pottery, and close, the rustling of clothes and bodies. My face was crushed into the thin man’s shirt, into his chest, and the stench of salt and dead fish blotted out even the scent of oranges. I gagged on the cloth—
Then felt the shivering touch of metal as a knife sliced into my side, not deep, but enough to draw blood.
I hissed and jerked back, one hand finding purchase on the floor, catching the thin man’s face as he struggled to pull away from me, from Borund. His arm was trapped beneath Borund’s chair, held in place by Borund’s weight, but his knife arm was still free.
Without thought, barely on my knees and with only my own dagger hand free, I sank my dagger into the thin man’s stomach and pulled up, cutting hard and deep. Blood instantly stained his shirt and he gasped, eyes flying wide open. He flailed for a moment, and then all of the strength left his arms and shoulders and his free arm sank to the floor.
“What the bloody hell!” Borund shouted, still tangled up in the remains of his chair.
I pushed back and sat up on my knees over the thin man’s body. He was still alive, gasping harshly, head and eyes moving back and forth as if he were searching for something. His hand spasmed and he dropped his dagger.
His eyes caught mine, held there for two short gasps, and then he died.
Inside, the Fire pulled back from my arms, from my chest, and settled quietly in my stomach.
Then someone grabbed me from behind, jerked me to my feet. Others grabbed my arms. I let them, only struggling when someone attempted to take my dagger. They backed off under my glare without touching the blade.
William emerged from the crowd into the space around Borund’s table and instantly dropped to Borund’s side, helping him untangle himself from his coat and the chair. Meat sauce stained the front of his coat, blood stained the back.
As he helped Borund up, William’s gaze fell on the bloodied body of the thin man and he jerked back in distaste, cast a startled glance toward me.
The look in his eyes—fear, loathing, disgust—sent ice through my gut, as if someone had dashed frigid water up against my spine.
“What in hell is going on here?” Borund snapped the moment he was standing. He glared at me, until William leaned in close and whispered something in his ear.
Then his gaze fell on the body as well and the glare died in his eyes. He became suddenly very calm, no emotion showing at all, his back stiffening.
A man shoved through the crowd, his eyes angry. “What’s the meaning of this?” he asked, but then he saw the body, saw me and the dagger. “Call the Guard.”
“They’re already here,” someone said roughly, and two guardsmen pushed into the open. “What happened?”
“She killed him,” someone said, and only then did I realize that the inn was silent. No music, no laughter, no voices. Only the rustle of bodies and a few taut whispers.
“Is this true?” one of the guardsmen asked Borund.
I watched Borund. I hadn’t taken my eyes off him since William had helped him up. He stared at me intently, his face unreadable.
“Yes,” he said. But before anyone could move, he added, “But she’s my personal bodyguard, and this man was trying to kill me.”