Death and the Merchant (River's End Book 1)

by C. H. Williams

Her fingers skimmed the top of the soapy water, testing the temperature before undressing.

  Hot, like fire.

  The bubbles crunched uncomfortably beneath her hand as she dipped it below the surface, the water pressing in painfully tight, threatening to pull her down. She grimaced, withdrawing, wiping the suds on the nearby towel.

  What is wrong with me?

  “On second thought, I’m good,” she muttered. It was too bad. Delicious tendrils of steam were curling from the tub, beckoning her cold body in.

  She would settle for the warm rays of sun falling on her shoulders across the divan beneath the window, even if she had to evict the pile of Fletcher’s clothes that had nested there in the weeks she’d left it vacant.

  Fletcher’s eyes were hunks of jade and honey as they found hers, his brows furrowed. “Everything okay?”

  No.

  No, clearly everything was not okay.

  She’d watched Teddy shaking and sweating, sickened with his own magic. Their parents—not even really her parents—were dead, something she’d hardly given a second thought to, because they were never hers, and she never belonged to them, except nineteen years couldn’t just be erased with charcoal and flame, no matter what she wanted, and it was the fire that became the page-ripper, now, making her skin endlessly burn.

  And that wasn’t even the half of it. Fletcher might know that Sam played the courier-spy, but even now, she had her secrets, secrets there was no choice to keep.

  Even if it didn’t put his life on the line, even if the Factionists—whoever they even were—wouldn’t have extinguished her and anyone perceived to be her ally, she wasn’t ready for that conversation.

  Hey. So. You know how you’re, like, a prince, but it’s fine, because you’re the third child, and you can’t inherit unless basically everyone dies?

  Yeah. Well.

  I outrank you.

  An heiress to a city beyond imagining and her Dradan prince.

  As if there wasn’t enough to deal with.

  There were more pressing matters, though, for the time being, than the sugar-spun tales of a merchant page-ripper—tales she couldn’t even be sure were true, anymore, tales she feared were more true than she dared to dream.

  “Everything’s fine,” she lied softly, turning for the bathing room door.

  They would end Clark.

  They would find the evidence, some key thing that would link him inextricably to the production ring, and they would end him.

  Everything else was icing.

  “I know I’m going to regret this,” Fletcher said warily, following, “but if you’re not feeling well, you are under no obligation—”

  She whirled on him, glaring with incredulity. “And miss seeing Caelaymis? I think not.”

  TEDDY

  “There is much mythology concerning the danger of inherited rings. Some corrupt. Some grant absolute power. Some warrant invisibility. And some…some boast love, stronger than even the gods themselves believed.”

  ~Greysha Boewliç

  Teddy’s hand was shaking in Sam’s, cinnamon eyes staring up at him, a soft smile like sunshine warming the room.

  Yes, tell him yes, you idiot!

  “When,” was all he managed, swallowing hard.

  “I rather thought the breakfast would follow the proposal, but if you’re opposed to the order—”

  A smile was tugging on his lips as he scoffed, holding on as Sam pulled himself to standing.

  “Oh, you meant the wedding,” Sam snickered, brushing a kiss across his cheek. “Well, spring would be lovely—it’s a bit fast, pulling it all together, but I don’t much fancy waiting.”

  If he was being honest with himself, he didn’t fancy waiting, either.

  If.

  Two days ago, he’d been spasming in the bedroom, soaked in sweat and shattered by the Thread. And with a simple question, Isa had unveiled the problem that’d driven it to feral frenzy.

  What do you need.

  A question he’d asked himself again and again and again until he could start to grasp at a sort of vague kind of answer.

  One moment, it’d just be sleep. All he’d want to do is close his eyes and rest.

  One moment, it was food—food he kept forgetting to eat, in the days of recovery that followed.

  But mostly, it was Sam.

  He just wanted Sam.

  Loving arms to hold him while he grieved for parents he didn’t realize he loved so deeply. A honey voice to soothe, to sing, to laugh.

  Sam.

  “What about now?” He was worrying his cuticles, his soft voice hanging tentative in the air.

  “Pardon?”

  “What if we did it now. Got married right here, in this kitchen,” he breathed, letting the words flow. What do you need. “Before breakfast.”

  Sam let out a long breath, laughing quietly as he drew Teddy in. “Oh-ho, El would quite literally murder you. Me, too.”

  “I told you not to give her that knife. This one’s on you, my dear.” Teddy closed his eyes, let himself get lost in the smell of starched linen he’d long come to associate with his companion. “They’d never even have to know.”

  “We could make it up to them,” Sam offered.

  “That’s exactly it. Do this now, just for us,” Teddy whispered. “We could still have a party in the spring.”

  “Make it a whole thing, with the flowers, and the dancing…”

  “And they’d be happy, and we’d be happy—”

  “We’ve got ribbon, twine, and candles,” Sam muttered, eyes drifting up to the ceiling as he mentally checked off the items, “rings, though…that might be a bit of a problem, in that we don’t have them, and if we did, they wouldn’t go un…unnoticed…”

  Teddy drew back, finding Sam’s vacant eyes. “What,” he frowned. “I know that look, Sam, what—”

  Something sparked across his face, and he withdrew, snapping his fingers as he turned on his heel. “I’ve got it. Teddy, I’ve got it,” he called, retreating down the hall, disappearing into the sewing room. “Put on your best tunic, love. We’re getting married.”

  The heavens had stilled, sky frozen in eternal morning, and the sheets were impossibly cocooned around them both, not-warm-enough wrappings of thin linen, but the blankets had been kicked unceremoniously off the foot of the bed, too far to warrant the expedition to retrieve them.

  Propped up on an elbow, legs inextricably tangled together, Teddy’s smile was indelible.

  Indelible like us.

  His fingers traced the soft skin of Sam’s jawline up, up, up, to run through his silken hair, and he leaned in for another lingering kiss. The encroaching chill, the betrayal of a fire neglected for a more enduring source of warmth, had nothing on their flushed skin, burning where it touched, chilled where embrace had failed.

  “Husband,” Sam murmured, eyes deep. His dark lashes caught the sun, tiny sprays of light, his breath laced with sugar and bread.

  Perfection.

  A glint of yellow caught the sun, and Teddy’s fingers trailed the thin chain down to the ring on Sam’s collarbone, a thin circle of woven gold, braided together to form a wedding band, before finding its pair hanging about his own neck.

  Unconventional.

  Discrete.

  “You’d never mentioned your mother had married,” he said softly.

  Sam sighed, a half-smile dancing on his lips. “She didn’t. Not until after I was born, anyway.” His voice was warm, like caramel, sinking into the space between them with gentle ease. “I think she would have approved,” he said softly, letting his hand rest atop Teddy’s where it sat on his chest. “Him too, I suppose. I don’t…I don’t remember him. But she always said he had a wry sense of humor. I think they’d have liked the idea of such a thing.”

  It was a beautiful thing, too.

  Standing over the kitchen sink, his hand clasped around Sam’s, his voice clear as he’d wound the pale ribbon around their fists, whispering the words. />
  I am yours, and you are mine,

  And with this ribbon, now to bind,

  Hearts and hands and hearth and home,

  For ne’ermore I have to roam.

  He’d imagined himself teary-eyed, with quaking words, the day he wed.

  But they’d bound the candles in twine, and let them burn, and it had been calm that filled him, the sort of serenity that took a person when they did something rash and thoughtless and hasty and completely, utterly right.

  Giving Teddy’s fingers a gentle squeeze, there was reluctance on his lips as Sam moved, unraveling the sheet that held them pressed together.

  “No,” Teddy groaned with mock displeasure, hand trailing lazily after Sam’s as he rose from the bed, “stay…” His begging dissolved into quiet laughter, though, as Sam paused, watching him with amusement. That is rather the point in all this, Sam’s look seemed to say. The staying of it all.

  A promise, to be sure.

  But it was more than that.

  It was an unspoken question for reassurance.

  Don’t leave me. Don’t leave my mangled heart.

  There’d already been too much leaving, more than plenty for a lifetime, to Teddy’s thinking. There was no sea so rough, no war so brutal, no drought so dry, no pain so real, that they couldn’t see it through together. No, there’d be no leaving.

  Husband.

  Sam was tugging on his undershorts, eyes flitting about the room. The pressed tunic lay crumpled somewhere—the hallway, maybe? Teddy couldn’t remember where his fingers had almost torn the buttons off in a breathless flurry, and it was better this way, anyway, shedding their clothes and their worries, all at once.

  “So, what is it,” Teddy asked softly, drawing Sam’s pillow to his chest, eyes unwavering. Husband. “This thing, you said you have to do, that you can’t face alone.”

  Gods know what I can’t face alone.

  A funeral, for one.

  Sam’s knuckles went white against the wardrobe door. He said nothing. One reluctantly carameled glance, and he sighed, turning for the chest of drawers, extracting a simple box, plastered with the garish paper of the boutiques. “For you,” he breathed, eyes finding Teddy’s, coming to sink down beside him on the feather bed.

  Teddy pushed himself to sitting, pillow on his lap, taking the gilded parcel with a quizzical look. Sam only waved him off, shaking his head in unmistakable self-disdain.

  And lifting off the lid, it became clear why.

  A mask sat atop a cushion of blackvanilla satin, encrusted with sapphires, adorned with exotic feathers of deep turquoise and expansive iridescent purples. The box had been soaked in the smell of rotting citrus, sickeningly sweet and decadent, and he searched for the crisp, clean air he’d been gulping down amid hushed moans not ten minutes ago.

  “I would like you to accompany me,” Sam said quietly, hand trailing Teddy’s shoulder. “As my fiancé, publicly.”

  “It…”

  But the words caught in his throat.

  A lovely piece.

  An abhorrent piece.

  His eyes flicked to Sam.

  A piece to make the Commissioner fall.

  ELSIE

  “There is nothing so exhilarating as finding your feet somewhere they don’t belong.”

  ~Greysha Boewliç

  Her stomach was roiling as her feet found cold, smooth stone, and the whisper of winter air kissed her cheeks beneath the hood.

  The difference between cloaked and coated seemed a handful of letters in her mind.

  She felt sinister, beneath the black swath pinned about her neck. It fell low over her face, concealing her features, shielding her from prying eyes and the biting wind in one stroke.

  A few gray buildings sat in the basin-of-an-encampment, a little bowl of stepped complexes and graveled paths.

  The compound.

  Where Fletcher had spent the last four years training and studying and fighting and earning the insignia now visible on the sleeve of his right arm, two blackened bars running parallel to a stream of curling script—what she assumed to be a single letter, though she could not read it.

  Their pace was quick, only a stray Drada here and there passing them by. Where the rest were, she could not say, though the emptiness gave the compound an ominous feeling, like that of a graveyard.

  With each pair of flashing eyes she felt upon her, she conjured up an image of calm, lest her own heart betray her.

  Finding the kittens in the barn. Gods, she’d loved those kittens. Teddy had come in from the barnyard, cheeks still red from the cold, grinning, and it didn’t matter that she’d still been in pajamas, because he’d picked her up and carried her outside, her toes bare and wiggling in the crisp spring air, and he’d shown her the mewling creatures, in the hay. The first crop of barn cats she’d try to tame.

  The Drada passing by seemed to pay her no mind. She wasn’t the only cloaked figure skirting the grounds, and everyone else seemed to be decidedly in a rush to get somewhere.

  A whisper reached her ears, and she realized someone had called out a greeting to Fletcher, putting a hand in the air. His murmured reply must’ve been loud, to their ears—he could hear her heart, he’d said, three blocks away—but the unfamiliar words washed over her ears almost unnoticed.

  Eating sweets with Teddy and Sam on a chilled spring night. She remembered Sam tossing his cravat aside with shocking irreverence, his waistcoat following before he’d crawled onto the big bed in the boys’ room, leaning back against the wall with far more exasperation than she thought one should have at seventeen. She didn’t remember where the sweets had come from. Only that Sam’s introduction hadn’t gone well, that Teddy had a huge fight with Chloe, his then-companion, and Elsie was simply glad not to be alone.

  Into a side-building, down a long hall, through a stark corridor, and Elsie was nearly breathless as Fletcher pushed open the heavy door.

  A massive Drada lurked behind a desk, arms crossed, jaw clenched. Bulky, he loomed a head above her, his eyes shards of pale forest. His uniform was nearly identical to Fletcher’s, with the exception of the insignia, and the look of worn-down-ness about the fabric. If she touched it, it’d probably be soft from wear.

  Tilting her hood back and shedding the cloak, she glanced to Fletcher.

  “This,” he sighed, gesturing to the man behind the desk, “is my brother. General Augustus Praequintelya. General, this is Elsie Mirabeau.”

  Elsie offered him a hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  Augustus only frowned—it hadn’t seemed possible for his face to frown any more, but there it went, all the same, frowning away—and with the air of someone who’d stepped in dung, he eyed her outstretched hand.

  “You’re supposed to shake it,” she edged, the words tumbling out of her mouth before she could stop them. Who knew. Maybe the Drada did things differently. Isolated in their mountains for six-hundred years, there was no reason to believe they’d know human custom.

  Eyes narrowing, his gaze flicked back to hers. Then, reaching out his hand, he took hers, gripping it tight. “I am well aware of human customs.”

  He was wary.

  She liked that.

  “I don’t think you are,” she shrugged, not breaking his gaze, or the handshake. “Most people say ‘it’s nice to meet you, too,’ right there. Or ‘how’ve you been,’ if you’re feeling casual.”

  “I think I have done my part of extending a cordial welcome. Your presence here is not permitted, and yet, here you stand.” He cocked his head to the side. “Not in a prison cell.”

  “It’s bad form to arrest your brother’s companion. But if I’d known it was protocol, we’d’ve hung on to Isa a little longer.”

  A tiny smile cracked across his face as she released the grip, and his gaze flicked across her shoulder. “I like her. You said you found a human, I thought you’d dredged up some sugary wench. I didn’t know you found a fighter.”

  Elsie glanced back over her shoulder t
o see Fletcher, grinning as he leaned against the wall, arms crossed.

  “I like her, too,” he said softly.

  Clustered around the desk, a handful of Drada studied the rough sketch of Taylor Town, a haphazard drawing of the Carson estate thrown aside for the moment.

  “The problem is the eastern line,” a strawberry blonde woman was saying, her accent thick as she ran a finger down the map. She’d been dipping between the Caelaymnic words and Vernacular for the better part of an hour, Elsie catching strands of meaning along the way. “It isn’t blockaded.”

  Mia Siddeus was bubbly, bright, and completely deadly.

  The former two, Elsie could attest to—the latter, even Augustus seemed to acknowledge with almost reverential awe.

  “There’s going to be runners, Captain. It’s the nature of the beast.” The infamous Rodion Kastarae. A strapping Commander with dusky skin like nutmeg and deep velvet eyes, his loose curls of shining black hair had been pulled back with a strap of cloth as he studied the plan.

  Isa was lingering beside Elsie, watching them all with amusement. “If anyone asked me—”

  “They didn’t,” Augustus and Mia cut in together.

  “Why can’t you just shield the border?” Elsie’s eyes flicked to Fletcher, standing on the other side of the table. “That’s what you did when you took him in the first time, right? Why not do that, only bigger?”

  “It’s too much focus,” he mumbled. His gaze held on the tabletop, unrelenting. He’d said remarkably little, in the time since they’d been here, despite this allegedly being his command.

  “Our magic is tied to us,” Isa explained, picking up where Fletcher had left off. “You can’t just cast something and leave it. There’s a—a bond, between you and the magic, connecting you, like—

  “Like a thread,” Elsie offered.

  “Exactly. If it breaks, the bond is severed, and the magic doesn’t work anymore. So, you could cast a shield that big—but it’d take all your focus to keep it up, and unless you maintained constant awareness of every inch of the shield, which is realistically impossible, there’d be these gaping holes, rendering it useless anyway.”