As he stepped into the gardens, he felt the familiar low, swelling hum that always enveloped him in crowds. He braced himself for the onslaught of each distinct esha emanating off each person seated in the courtyard, from the merchants, priests, and foreign dignitaries sipping alchemical wine, to the servers who whirled about them with trays of glazed lamb and the dancers who teased them in jewel-bright silks. Beneath their cacophonous chatter and the gentle melody of the lyre players was this: the pulse of the world that Anton alone could hear.
Well, not Anton alone. There were others like him who had the Grace of Sight, though few who were quite as attuned to the vibrations of the world’s sacred energy. Anton had grown used to tuning it out, ignoring the ebb and flow of esha, but tonight, as he made his way through the gardens, he let it all in. He was searching for one in particular.
He felt it almost immediately—the high, clear bell ringing through him. It belonged, he knew, to the woman who sat at the table in the far corner of the courtyard, watching his approach with narrow eyes.
No one else would think this woman out of place at Thalassa, dressed as she was in an elegant gown of deep purple, a string of emeralds hanging off her long neck. But to Anton, she stuck out like an ace of crowns in a hand of canbarra. She looked exactly the same as she had the last time he had seen her—the same ink-black hair done up in an intricate coif, the same dark, round face that gave no hint at her age. The same esha, which felt like the clang of silver bells.
“Dining out alone?” he asked as he reached her table.
“Actually,” the woman answered, “my dinner companion has just arrived.”
She’d called herself Mrs. Tappan when they’d first met, but Anton knew by now how easily names slipped off her. He didn’t know what her real name was, and she’d never offered it to him. Nor did he know what, precisely, she wanted with him. In his more sentimental moments, he could convince himself she genuinely wanted to help him. More often, he thought it just amused her to play games.
That was fine by him. Anton liked games.
“What do you want?”
She folded her hands neatly on top of the marble table. “I’ve heard the lamb here is exquisite.”
“You know what I meant.”
“I stopped by your charming little place last night,” she commented, as though she hadn’t heard him. “I’m sorry to have missed you. Working late, I suppose.”
Anton was neither surprised the Nameless Woman had tried to drop in on him at home, nor that she knew where he lived.
“Though, I do wonder why, with this respectable employment, you haven’t upgraded to something a bit less … cozy.”
“This job is new,” Anton lied. “I’ve barely made enough yet to pay off my last month of rent.”
From the narrowing of her eyes, he knew she saw the lie for what it was, but he would not give her the satisfaction of saying the truth out loud. He could afford nicer rooms, but he’d kept his tiny flat in the Low City because it would be easy to leave behind if he had to. The past six months were the longest he’d remained in one place since he was a child, but that didn’t mean Pallas Athos was his home.
“What do you want?” he asked again.
She sighed, as if his lack of decorum was a personal disappointment to her. “Fetch me a glass of wine, and we’ll talk. Something from Endarrion if you have it. Nothing local—the wine here is swill.”
Anton turned on his heel, hastening across the courtyard to the wine cellar. At the top of the stairs, he paused, considering whether or not he could just keep walking, out the door of the taverna, into the maze of streets, where he could lose her, and himself.
It wouldn’t matter. She’d only track him down again.
The first time she’d done it had been over a year ago in a slyhouse in a canal town just south of Tarsepolis. Anton had spent six straight nights downstairs at the card table, filling his pockets with the coins of rich men who’d come to drink and gamble before they slipped off to enjoy the attentions of the boys and girls in the rooms above.
But on the seventh night that Anton had sat down at the card table, he’d found himself face-to-face with an elegant woman he’d never seen before.
Even then, her esha had felt different, distinct from the chorus of others that buzzed within the smoke-filled cardroom. It had reminded him of silver, bright but elusive. She’d poured him a drink and dealt out a hand of canbarra like she’d been waiting for him. Anton had wanted to get up and leave right then, but a quick glance to his side revealed two guards hovering at his elbow.
“Tell me,” the woman had said. “How much money have you made at my card table these past few nights?”
He’d blinked at her. “I’m not cheating.”
“I never said you were. I asked how much you’d made.”
“Why?” Anton had asked. “Do you want to make me a better offer?”
One eyebrow arched, a thick swoop of amusement. “Tell me your name.”
“I’m no one.”
She had only smiled at him, and Anton had felt stripped bare beneath her gaze. “Anton,” he’d said at last.
“And how old are you, Anton?”
His family had never really kept track of his age. Fifteen, perhaps? He knew it had been about four years since he’d run away from his father and grandmother’s home. “Old enough.”
The answer had amused her more. “Old enough? Whatever for?”
“I don’t think you came here to reprimand and question me.”
“Why, then? To punish you?”
“No.” Anton’s voice had been steady. “To use me.”
He remembered how the liquid in her glass had gleamed like burnished brass as she took a slow sip. “And what are you best used for, Anton?”
“This is a slyhouse, isn’t it?”
“Are you offering your services?” she’d asked. “Seducing rich, drunk men, playing at being their pet?”
“What,” he’d said, flashing a smile. “You don’t think I’d be any good at it?”
She’d actually laughed at that, a sound that reminded him of how her esha had felt, as clear as a bell. “I think it’d be rather a waste of your abilities.”
A chill slid down Anton’s spine.
“You have it wrong. I don’t want to use you, Anton. I want to help you.”
“How?” Anton had asked, not believing her for a second. No one helped you without getting something out of you in return. The past four years had taught him that much.
“This slyhouse is just for amusement,” she’d said with a dismissive wave. “My real enterprise is my scrying agency.”
“You’re a bounty hunter.”
She’d clucked her tongue. “I don’t like that name. It makes it sound so terribly mercenary.”
Bounty hunting was mercenary. Scrying agencies made the bulk of their money using the Grace of Sight to track down criminals and reaping the reward money for delivering them to whatever enforcers or city rulers wanted to bring them to justice. But there was also money to be made taking cases from anyone who wanted to find someone badly enough, criminal or not. For a steep price, a bounty hunter could find any person you wanted—people who, like Anton, did not want to be found.
“And are you here to—?” Fear had thumped beneath his ribs at the thought that this woman had been sent to find him. His grandmother was far too poor and miserable to do business with an elegant city woman like her, much less a bounty hunter. But there was someone else it could be.
“No one gave me your name,” she’d said. “Although now I’m curious who you think would. A scorned lover, perhaps? You look like the type who isn’t careful with hearts that aren’t your own.”
Anton’s pulse had settled. “Then why are you telling me this?”
“I told you. I want to help you.” Placing her glass on the table, she’d leaned toward him and said, in a voice like smoke, “I know what you are. It’s time you stop hiding.”
The thought had made him
want to bolt out of the slyhouse and start running.
But he hadn’t. Not that night.
Thalassa’s lyre players were ending their song as he returned to the courtyard armed with a jug of red from a vineyard outside Endarrion. With the applause of the surrounding tables clattering in his ears, Anton poured the wine into a crystalline glass.
“Sit,” the Nameless Woman said, waving a hand at the empty chair across from her. Anton stiffly took a seat as the sounds of scraping forks, indistinct chatter, and the bright first notes of a new song filled the silence between them.
“This certainly is nicer than the dumps I’ve seen you in before,” she said approvingly. “It would seem you’re doing well for yourself. A job, a roof over your head. Friends who have employers instead of madams.”
He shrugged. On paper, at least, Anton was at last a functioning member of society.
She smirked, twirling her wrist so the light caught on the deep red wine in her glass. “Still. One can’t help but feel like you’re wasting your talents.”
Anton blew out a breath, almost a laugh. “This again?”
She was one of only four people in the world who knew that Anton had the Grace of Sight. She was the one, after all, who’d given him his first lesson in scrying, teaching him how to focus on the vibrations of sacred energy around him, how to cast a lodestone into a scrying pool to seek out the frequency of someone’s specific esha. His first and only lesson.
“I have a job for you.”
“Not interested,” he replied immediately.
“You haven’t even heard what it is yet.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “You already know my answer.”
“I do,” she agreed, sipping at her wine. “But this isn’t just any job. You’re the only one who can do it.”
The Grace of Sight was the rarest of the Graces, and even among those who had it, most were limited in what their scrying was capable of finding. But before she’d given Anton his one and only scrying lesson, she’d said she’d seen in him a capacity for great power—maybe even greater than hers. Sometimes, he even thought he could feel that power, too. The way he could sense esha without trying, the way he knew when someone was Graced and when they were not, the way he could differentiate between its frequencies with ease. It was instinctive.
“Except you know I can’t do it,” Anton replied. “You’ve known since that day.”
The day she’d tried to harness his capacity, and Anton had wound up with lungs full of water and the realization that his power was shadowed by something else—the nightmares that brought him right back to the past he thought he’d left behind. The nightmares that were summoned whenever Anton tried to use his Grace. The Nameless Woman had seen what they’d done to him, had dragged him out of the scrying waters and watched him gasp for breath.
It was then that he’d started running again, even knowing that she was Graced, like him, and would find him again. And again. And again. It was, after all, what she did. In the canals of Valletta, in towns up and down the Pelagos coast—and now Pallas Athos. He’d no doubt she would chase him all over the Six Prophetic Cities if she had to. By now, the Nameless Woman’s visits were expected. He hadn’t learned to trust her, exactly, but in the last few years, she’d become one of the only things he could count on. Before her, the only invariable part of his life had been leaving it behind.
Every time she found him, she offered him the same proposition: learn to wield his Grace. Every time, Anton gave the same answer.
Since that day in the scrying pool, he’d done everything he could to build a wall between himself and his Grace. He’d learned how to keep the nightmares at bay. But the moment he tried to use his Grace, they bared their teeth again, like wolves drawn to blood.
The Nameless Woman took another sip of her wine. “One day, Anton, you’ll have to get over your silly little fears.”
“Are you done? Because as fun as catching up has been, I really need to get back to work.” He started to rise, but she reached across the table, her palm flat over his hand, stilling him.
“I’m not done.” Her tone had shifted—gone was the teasing lilt. Her dark eyes burned into his. “You think I came all the way to the City of Faith just to hear a refusal?”
Anton’s hand twitched beneath hers. “So if it’s not for a job, then why did you come?”
“It is for a job,” she said. “You are the job.”
He went still. The thing he’d been afraid of, the thing he’d suspected the first time the Nameless Woman had found him, had come true. “Someone gave you my name?”
A trill of laughter spilled out from the table beside them, but the Nameless Woman’s attention stayed focused on Anton. She nodded. “You know who it is?”
Anton’s heart thudded painfully. “No.”
“You’re lying.”
His palms itched with sweat, but the rest of him was ice-cold. She was right. He knew exactly who had given his name to her. The only other person in the world who would be looking for him.
“Oh,” the Nameless Woman said over the rim of her glass. “Oh my. You’re afraid. You’re terrified.”
Anton clenched his teeth, his breath coming out hot and quick as he gripped the edge of the marble table. “You can’t let him know. You can’t tell him where I am. Please.”
“I can tell him he has bad information,” she said. “He knows we can only do the job if the name is correct. I’ll simply tell him he has the wrong one.”
Anton shook his head. “Don’t,” he gasped. “Don’t do that. He’ll know you’re lying.”
“I’m a far better liar than you are.”
The taste of ice burned his throat. “It doesn’t matter. He’ll know.”
“If I turn down his case, he’ll only take it elsewhere.” She spoke gently now. “He may have done so already. Mrs. Tappan’s Scrying Agency may be the best, but there are others who would hang their own mothers for the kind of money he offered us.”
Anton’s mind stuttered over her words. The man looking for him had apparently amassed a great amount of money—enough to hire a bounty hunter with a reputation for taking on cases no one else could. It should have surprised Anton, but it didn’t. Despite his humble beginnings, this man had always known exactly how to play his cards to get the biggest reward.
“One of them will find you, Anton. If they haven’t already.”
He was inside a nightmare, eleven years old, freezing water tearing into his lungs. Hands holding him below dark water.
He pushed away from the table in one rigid motion.
“Anton.” The Nameless Woman grasped his wrist, her grip unexpectedly tight. “There are people who can help you … take care of this. You don’t need to run again.”
He could barely hear her words over his own thundering pulse. Pulling from her grasp, he darted across the courtyard, weaving through servers and laughing patrons to the staircase that led up to the roof. He climbed, nausea rising in him like a tide. As long as he kept moving, kept going up, it could not catch him.
There was no water.
There was no ice.
Only fear.
Warm night air rushed over him as he reached the roof. Above him, lit by the glow of a hundred distant fires, the Temple of Pallas looked out over the rest of the city. Anton flew to the edge of the roof. The marble balustrade was cold and solid in his grasp as he looked down past Thalassa’s portico and the fountain and olive trees in the center of Elea Square. The long, pale stretch of the Sacred Road led all the way from the Temple of Pallas, through the main city gates and down into the Low City, where the streets grew narrow and dark, full of promise and danger.
Before his tiny flat there, Anton had spent many nights sleeping on roofs and in rafters, like a bird coming to roost. From high up, he could see everything that went on below, and none of it could touch him.
He was still afraid, but fear alone could not kill him.
He’d survived before, after all. The ma
n who was looking for him, the man who had given his name to the Nameless Woman—Anton hadn’t seen him since that day, out on the ice, the water so cold, darkness pressing in. He sometimes felt trapped in that nightmare, in the memory of what that man had tried to do.
But that scared, drowned boy—that wasn’t who he was anymore. He’d left that boy for dead.
4
JUDE
The sun was just beginning to set over Kerameikos Fort as Jude moved through an extended koah sequence at the foot of the valley’s highest waterfall. He stood effortlessly on one leg, his arms spreading and crossing fluidly in time with his breath. This koah sequence had five elements—balance, hearing, sight, speed, and focus. The narrow rock outcropping didn’t offer much room for error, but that was why Jude liked this spot. When his focus was on his balance, his body, and his Grace, his thoughts dissipated like morning mist.
“I thought I might find you up here.” A voice floated over the sound of rushing water, perfectly audible to Jude’s Grace-enhanced hearing.
Jude finished the fifth form of the koah, shifting all his weight forward, his hands forming a triangle in front of him. He stepped into rest, his gaze finding the other Paladin standing below. “You know me too well.”
Penrose’s blue eyes lit up with a smile. “Seems your Year of Reflection didn’t rid you of your old habits.”
She’d said it in jest, but shame twinged in Jude’s chest as he thought of the truth behind her words. He leapt down from his rock, landing neatly beside her at the edge of the pool. “I was just heading back.”
“This is always where you come when you’re nervous,” Penrose said as they set off toward the fort.
Jude tensed. She really did know him too well.
“Don’t worry, Jude,” Penrose said. “Anyone would be. Especially after what’s happened in Nazirah.”
He swallowed. “The threat of the Hierophant is undeniable now. Before I left for my Year of Reflection, the Witnesses were just a fringe group of radicals. Or so I thought.”
“When they were living out in the Seti desert, we had no way of knowing how many had joined the Hierophant,” Penrose agreed.
There Will Come a Darkness Page 4