by R S Penney
“We've been over this...”
“Yes, but-”
The door opened to admit Marcus, and the man showed no concern for having interrupted their conversation. He paced across the room with boots that thumped on the wooden floor, tossed a slip of paper onto the small table in the corner and sighed.
A moment later, he turned, looked over his shoulder and watched Tommy with all the suspicion of a wolf who expected his prey to bolt. “What are you two discussing?” he grumbled. “Still trying to decide whether to abandon Desa Nin Leean?”
“We would never do such a thing,” Tommy protested.
“You should.”
Tommy sat upright and felt his jaw drop. It took a moment to regain his composure, but he pushed the anxiety down into the pit of his stomach. “I don't understand. Why do you want us to betray her?”
“Betray her?” Marcus scoffed. “Boy, you would free her from the burden of having to keep you alive. We've traveled far enough. There's little chance that you will encounter anyone from your sleepy little village. Take your horse, set off down the south road and don't look back! I will even provide you with enough money to book passage on a ship if you're so inclined.”
Each word was like a punch to the gut. It was all Tommy could do to avoid tearing up. He hated feeling like a burden. Almighty have mercy, he had felt that way all his life – with his brother, his father, with most of the village – and he was bloody tired of it.
Sebastian turned away from the window with a sly smile, then offered a sad little shrug of his shoulders. “Isn't that what I've been saying?” he asked. “We should go.”
“Listen to your lover, boy,” Marcus grated. “If you know what's best for you, you'll be on your way within the hour.”
Tommy wanted to argue, but what could he say? When you saw it one way, and the rest of the world told you that you were wrong, well...One person's opinion didn't amount to a whole lot when stacked against all that. He was being selfish by remaining here and forcing Desa to look after him.
But he was afraid to go...
He wanted to say as much, but Marcus stomped out of the room without another word and slammed the door so hard it made the frame rattle. That left Tommy alone with a very smug Sebastian.
The other man was sitting on the windowsill with hands clasped together, smiling down at the floor. “We should go,” he said again. “There's nothing for us here.”
“And nothing for us out there.”
“Tommy...”
“It's true.”
With a groan, Sebastian got up and paced over to the table in the corner. He picked up the slip of paper and scanned its contents. “Now, what do you suppose this is?”
“Bendarian's address,” Tommy muttered.
The other man spun around to face him with a raised eyebrow. “Are you telling me that this is what Desa Kincaid has been looking for?” Sebastian inquired. “Well, then she must be halfway to the man's house by now. I wager he'll be dead by sundown.”
“Desa thinks it's a trap,” Tommy explained. “She doesn't trust the woman who gave that to us, and I can't say that I blame her.”
Sebastian grinned as he held the paper up to the light. Then he crumpled it up and tossed it to the floor. “Excellent!” he said. “While she and Marcus are busy deliberating, you and I can slip away.”
“I'm not leaving.”
“You heard what Marcus said. My love, I mean you no offense, but in a fight, you are less than useless. In fact, you're actually a hindrance. The best thing you can do is get away from Desa Kincaid so that she doesn't have to waste energy protecting you.”
Fury propelled Tommy to his feet and made him tower over the other man. The heat in his face was rivaled only by the inferno burning in his chest. “I don't care what Marcus says!” he insisted. “Desa would not have offered to teach me Field Binding if she did not think I could be of use! I refuse to see myself as a burden!”
“You're still set on learning her vile magics,” Sebastian muttered. “I do swear it by all that's holy: meeting Desa Kincaid is the worst thing that ever happened to us.”
“She sav-”
“You tell me again about how she saved us, and I might just have to slap your face. I want nothing to do with a witch, Tommy.”
Sebastian was marching across the room and pulling the door open before Tommy could even think to protest. He paused briefly, offered one last withering glare and then stepped out into the hallway. “It's time that you faced facts, Tommy,” he said. “This is no place for either of us.”
Chapter 13
Miri flowed through the crowds of people with ease, maneuvering past men in dark coats and bowler hats, women in colourful dresses and the odd horse-drawn carriage that pushed its way through the narrow street. Ofalla was a cosmopolitan city with all sorts of different people. Some were light, others dark. Some had the features of men from the far south. No one noticed her; in a crowd like this, she wouldn't stand out.
A small group of people parted, allowing her a glimpse of her prey. Sebastian was shuffling up the street with his coat wrapped tightly around himself, moving with the haste of a man with someplace important to be.
Grinding her teeth, Miri looked up at him. Her mouth twitched. What are you up to, boy? she wondered. Desa and Marcus both focus so intently on this Morley character that they completely ignore you.
Sebastian turned.
Miri let the crowd flow around her like water over a rock in a river. In seconds, a dozen people blocked her view of the boy and his view of her. Did he see her? Only one way to find out.
She started forward again, slipping around two well-dressed men who stood at the foot of stairs that led to a townhouse and then rounded a corner onto yet another narrow street. This one had fewer people.
Sebastian was just a short ways off with his back turned and his shoulders hunched. The way he clutched his coat despite the warm morning sunlight only added to the cloud of unease that radiated from him. Fool boy. Walking around like that was a good way to convince a lawman that you were a thief...or worse.
Miri started up the street with a swagger in her step and a grin on her face, nodding to several people that she passed. They all replied with friendly smiles.
On her left, she saw a fruit cart by the roadside where a copper-skinned man in his middle years proclaimed that he had the best apples anyone had ever tasted. Well...You couldn't just let a claim like that go unanswered.
When she passed the cart, she set a few pennies on the edge and palmed an apple before the man could even offer his nod of approval. “Don't you want your change?” he called after her. She ignored him.
Tossing the apple up, Miri threw her head back and caught it with her teeth. Her incisors ripped off a piece of skin, and when the apple fell, it landed in her waiting palm. Practice was a good way to maintain her coordination.
Sebastian was about thirty paces ahead of her, still huddled up and still moving at a brisk pace. The sad little boy didn't even bother to look back. Which could only mean one of two things. Either he really was as useless as he appeared...
Or he was a master at feigning such ineptitude.
She followed.
Their journey took them around two more corners and down a sloping hill toward the riverbank. Then Sebastian went over one of the smaller bridges that stretched across the Vinrella. Naturally, she followed him.
Miri shuffled along with both hands in her coat pockets, shaking her head as she studied the cobblestones. “Maybe he's had enough. Perhaps he's finally decided to leave us all behind,” she muttered. “It would certainly make things easier.”
On the other side of the river, they went up another sloping hill where men in rough clothing went rushing down toward the docs. Sailors, unless she missed her guess. Well, they certainly spooked Sebastian. He jumped and then looked around.
Miri ducked out of sight behind a set of stairs that led up to the front door of a gray townhouse. Peeking through the metal bar
s that supported the banister, she saw Sebastian take off down a side street.
Shutting her eyes tight, Miri felt a bead of sweat on her forehead. A sigh escaped her. “Of course...” she whispered. “It was too much to hope the boy was headed toward the edge of town.”
She followed him.
A few more twists brought them to an unassuming street with houses that looked uniformly similar to all the others she had seen thus far. By the eyes of Vengeance, this town was a dreary place. What she wouldn't give to see something with just a little flair. A yellow house with green shutters! Was that too much to ask?
Sebastian chose one unit in the middle of the street, climbed the steps to the porch and pounded on the door. A moment later, it was answered by a serving maid with dark, olive skin and ringlets of brown hair that framed her face.
Miri was too far off to hear what was said, but Sebastian was admitted without very much protest.
This couldn't be good.
The front hall of Radharal Bendarian's townhouse was dimly lit, but the little round window on the door provided enough illumination for Sebastian to see a staircase leading up to the second level and dark red carpets in the narrow hallway that stretched on to the back of the building.
A man appeared at the head of the stairs, and Sebastian jumped back with enough force to make the door rattle when he hit it. This fellow looked like something out of a fairytale. One glance, and it was clear that it must have been Bendarian.
The man was tall and slender, handsome in a well-made blue coat. His face could have been chiseled by a sculptor, and hair so blonde it was almost white fell to the small of his back. “I must congratulate you,” he said, descending the first few steps. “Very few people could have talked their way into my home. But then very few people have heard the name Desa Nin Leean.”
Closing his eyes, Sebastian let his head drop. “She has been a traveling companion of mine for some time now,” he said, taking a hesitant step forward. “And I would be rid of her if I could.”
“Truer words were never spoken.”
Sebastian looked up at the man with wide eyes and felt a twitch in the corner of his mouth. “You seem to be the one person she fears,” he began. “You and that monstrosity of a servant of yours.”
A smile lit up Bendarian's face, and he shook his head as he descended to the foot of the stairs. “And what would you know of the men in my employ?” The chill in the man's voice made Sebastian uneasy.
“Only what my lover tells me,” he insisted. “Desa Kincaid...That is, Desa Nin Leean, fought your man this morning.”
“That she did.”
“And lost.”
“Lost? She still lives, doesn't she?” There was bitterness in that question. “I would hardly call it a loss...What are you doing here, boy?”
It was all Sebastian could do to keep his voice from shaking, but he steeled himself, stepped forward and held the other man's gaze. “I wish to propose a trade,” he said. “I tell you where to find Desa Kincaid-”
“The Golden Horseshoe.”
Sebastian flinched.
That brought another smile to Bendarian's face, this one colder and crueler than the last. “How do you think my people found Desa Nin Leean this morning?” he asked. “Mr. Jarvis, at the bank, ran to gather the City Watch while Desa was busy in his vault. It pays to have allies in the right places.”
“I...Well...” Forcing his eyes shut, Sebastian swallowed and then took in a ragged breath. “I suppose you don't need me then.”
“Nonsense,” Bendarian replied. “Only a fool passes up an opportunity to make a potential enemy into an ally. But much will depend on your price.”
“I just want to leave,” Sebastian whispered. “I'll tell you anything that you want to know about Desa Kincaid, and in exchange, my lover and I depart. No questions asked.”
Bendarian gestured to the staircase and then proceeded up to the second floor as if Sebastian following were a foregone conclusion. Of course, it was. Sebastian had come this far; there was no point in turning back now.
On the second floor, he found another narrow hallway with deep burgundy carpets and doors in one wall. One led into what appeared to be a sitting room with two chairs in the light of a window that looked out on the street below.
Bendarian went to a small table, uncapped a decanter and poured dark red wine into two glasses. He turned and strode toward Sebastian with a glass in each palm, the stems between his middle two fingers. That cold smile had returned.
Sebastian took a glass without hesitation, brought it to his lips and sipped the wine. “Quite good,” he mumbled. “Better than anything my father had, anyway.”
“So,” Bendarian began. “You only want to leave. To be free of Desa Nin Leean and her foolhardy vendetta. A rather modest goal, if I do say so myself.”
“It's what I want,” Sebastian insisted.
Lifting his glass with exquisite poise, Bendarian smiled again and then took a drink. “Are you sure that's all you want?” he asked. “A man in my position could be a valuable friend to you.”
The blood drained from Sebastian's face as he recalled the things he had seen on the journey to this wretched city. “I saw what you did,” he whispered. “Those gray creatures. I...I want no part of that.”
“How little you understand,” Bendarian said, turning to the window. Warm sunlight on his face almost made him appear beautiful. Angelic. Not at all like the man who could summon such horrors as Sebastian had seen. “My goal is nothing less than the perfection of humanity.”
“You turned those people into feral beasts.”
“And what I learned from doing so allowed me to gift my associate Mr. Morley with power such as you could never imagine. You can have that power too, my boy.”
“I want no such power.”
Sebastian felt a strange flutter in his belly, a sensation similar to what he had once experienced when dropping from a very high branch of an oak at the edge of his father's property. But what startled him was the way that Bendarian let go of his glass... and it did not fall. “Power,” the man said, “should not be casually cast aside.”
Hugging himself, Sebastian rubbed his arms and stepped back. “I don't want to be a Field Binder,” he said. “My soul is already stained without indulging in witchcraft.”
“Field Binding,” Bendarian scoffed. “You have spent too much time with Desa Nin Leean. She has trained you to think small.”
“What else is there?”
A lump of ice settled into Sebastian's stomach as Bendarian stepped forward with a mocking grin. “Come with me, boy,” he said. “See for yourself.”
Climbing the final few steps up to the second floor of the Golden Horseshoe, Miri sighed when she found Tommy standing in the middle of a hallway with wood paneling on the walls and paraffin lanterns to supplement the light that came in through windows at either end of the corridor.
The young man was standing there like a statue that was just begging for pigeons to perch on its shoulders. His unwavering gaze was fixed on the wall, and she could tell that he was ruminating on the same worries that had plagued him from the moment they had set out from Glad Meadows.
Now, she had to make that worse.
Miri strode through the corridor at a brisk pace, shaking her head in frustration. “I think we should talk, Lommy,” she said. “Things have just gotten worse.”
He turned to her, looked up and then set his jaw. Good. The lad had some fire in his belly. “It's Tommy,” he insisted. “We've been over this time and again, and I've grown so tired of your little pet name for-”
“Sebastian has betrayed us.”
Tommy blinked and then stepped back. Any semblance of confidence vanished as he slumped against the wall. “What happened?” No protests. No vehement declarations that his lover would never do such a thing. Perhaps he was starting to believe her.
Miri stepped forward with her fists clenched, unable to lift her gaze from the dusty hardwood floor. “
He went to a house in the city's north-west quarter,” she replied. “And since he doesn't know anyone outside of our group-”
“He went to see Bendarian,” Tommy grumbled.
“You don't seem surprised.”
The lad made the kind of face one might see on a five-year-old who had been forced to swallow cod liver oil and then shook his head. “He's been talking about leaving for days now,” Tommy said. “And he hates Desa.”
Leaning against the wall across from him, Miri let out a breath. “Yes...You're right about that,” she said softly. “Pack your things; we must leave at once. I'll tell the others.”
“Maybe you should just leave me behind.”
“Nonsense.”
Tommy looked up, and his face hardened. The anger in his stare actually made her a little uneasy. “Your brother didn't think so,” he snapped. “How did he put it? 'Take your horse and go, boy. You're nothing but a liability.”
“Marcus is wrong about a great many things.”
“Not about this.”
“Now, you listen to me, Lommy...Lommy...What is your last name, anyway?”
“Smith.”
“No, that's no good.” Miri wrinkled her nose in distaste at such a commonplace surname. “Anyway, we'll work on making you more interesting later. The point is that of all the backward-thinking men on this benighted little continent, you were not threatened by a woman like Desa Nin Leean. In fact, you were willing to learn from her. If you ask me, that counts for something.”
“Thank you...”
“Pack your things,” Miri said. “I'll go find the others.”
Chapter 14
Desa floated in a world of tiny swirling particles, each one infinitely smaller than a spec of dust and yet distinct to her mind. It was breathtaking. In this state, she could see a world that remained hidden from her waking eyes. She could sense almost everything within a few blocks of the Moonlight Traveler, the hotel Marcus had chosen after they had been forced to flee the Golden Horseshoe.