There Will Come a Darkness

by Katy Rose Pool

  Shock froze him like ice. He hadn’t heard that name spoken aloud in over five years. “Where did you hear that name?”

  The Pale Hand held out the envelope again. This time, when Anton reached for it, she relinquished it.

  The seal had already been broken, predictably. Anton tore into the letter inside, his eyes catching on the first line.

  Illya Aliyev. Last known transaction: chartered passenger ship. Destination: Pallas Athos.

  There were a dozen full paragraphs below that Anton’s eyes scanned over quickly. A full dossier on the man who was searching for him, researched, written up, and delivered. The man the Nameless Woman had warned him about at Thalassa Gardens. The man who haunted Anton’s dreams.

  He should be grateful that the Nameless Woman had gone through the trouble of getting that information to him. Grateful that she’d come to him in the first place, instead of giving Anton up and collecting her fee. But he didn’t have it in him to feel grateful, not when he felt like he was choking on cold dread.

  He’ll only take his case elsewhere.

  This meant he already had. He was here, in Pallas Athos. He probably knew exactly where Anton was. He could even be on his way now.

  “If you’re as powerful a scryer as she says,” the Pale Hand said, “why do you need a bounty hunter’s help to find him?”

  “I don’t,” Anton replied, stuffing the letter back inside its envelope and crossing the room in three brisk strides. “And I’m not a powerful anything.”

  Kneeling at the wooden wine crates that passed for dresser drawers, he started digging for clothes. He knew he should have left Pallas Athos the moment the Nameless Woman had told him Illya was looking for him. He would leave now. Go somewhere far. Maybe across the Pelagos, to the eastern port of Tel Amot. To the deserts that stretched endlessly beyond it.

  “What are you doing?” the Pale Hand asked as Anton haphazardly threw bundles of clothes into his pack.

  “Leaving.”

  “It’s the middle of the night.”

  “Then I need to hurry, don’t I?” Anton replied. “Ships launch at dawn.”

  “You’re in that big a hurry to find this person?”

  The sound of footfalls echoed up from the cobbled street below Anton’s window. The Pale Hand shrank into the shadows as Anton went to the window, keeping himself hidden behind the curtain.

  More footfalls.

  “Expecting someone?” the Pale Hand asked. Anton could see the panic in her eyes.

  He drew the curtain back a half inch to peer outside. Half a dozen men stood at the mouth of the alley that ran outside his building, illuminated by the moon.

  “Who is it?” the Pale Hand asked sharply.

  Anton pressed his back flat against the wall, breathing hard. “Hired swords, I think.”

  They had to be Illya’s. Mrs. Tappan had mentioned that she’d been offered a tempting amount of money to find him. If Illya had access to that kind of money—and Anton had no doubt he’d snaked his way into it somehow—then he’d have enough to hire men to do his dirty work.

  The Pale Hand cursed beneath her breath. “Why wouldn’t the Conclave just send the Sentry after me?”

  “I don’t think they’re here for you,” Anton said slowly.

  “Then—You? Why?”

  He swallowed. “That man,” he said. “From the letter. Illya.”

  “The one you’re looking for?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not looking for him. He’s looking for me.”

  And it seemed he’d already found him.

  The Pale Hand’s eyes locked with Anton’s, and he could see the calculation in them, the same way he was sure she could see the desperation in his.

  “Come with me,” she said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “I know a place. It’s safe. No one will be able to find you.”

  Anton hesitated.

  “You have a better offer or something?”

  He didn’t. It wasn’t like he had an abundance of close friends who would take it in stride if he showed up unannounced in the middle of the night. And if these hired swords had tracked him here, they could track him to Thalassa. They could even be staking it out now.

  “Come on, kid. This offer expires the second those swords set foot in here.”

  “Are you working with him?” Anton asked.

  “Working with—? You mean this Illya guy who’s after you? No,” she replied. “I told you, I came to find you because Mrs. Tappan said you could help me.”

  She didn’t sound like she was lying, but accomplished liars rarely did.

  “The way I see it, you have two choices: Stay here and see what these swords want with you. Or come with me.”

  “And do what?”

  “Why don’t we discuss that once there aren’t half a dozen armed men breathing down our necks.”

  Anton considered his options. Trusting the Pale Hand was a gamble. But Anton’s bets almost always paid off. “Fine. Let’s go.”

  They stole into the corridor.

  “There’s another way out,” Anton said. He led her down to the basement of the building, a cramped space filled with scuttling rats and cobwebs. They crept through the cellar and out the back door into an alley.

  The Pale Hand edged along the side of the building. Anton followed. Shoulder to shoulder, they crouched with their backs against the wall, waiting for the last of the men to filter inside the building.

  Anton slowed his breath and counted. The Pale Hand let out a soft curse.

  “What is it?” Anton asked.

  “They left some guards outside. Two men,” she answered. “All right. Time to run.”

  Anton’s heart kicked up. “They’ll see us.”

  The Pale Hand crouched down, looking for something on the ground. “Perfect.”

  She held up a rock the size of her fist. Balancing it in one hand, she drew her arm back and threw the rock down the opposite end of the alley. It was too dark to see where it landed, but the resulting sound was loud enough to startle the guards into action.

  The Pale Hand didn’t waste any time. The moment their backs turned, she grabbed Anton’s arm and set off at a run.

  “Over there!” a voice called from behind them.

  Anton wanted to see if the guard had spotted them, but the Pale Hand tugged him harder.

  The sound of quickened footsteps gave him the answer. The guards were chasing after them.

  At the end of the road, the Pale Hand took a hard left, and Anton followed her as she darted through the narrow streets.

  “In here!” she cried. Anton skidded around the sharp turn and nearly ran into her.

  She’d pried open the front window of a shop with a sign over the door emblazoned with a gear. The footsteps grew louder behind them. The choice was no choice at all. With the Pale Hand’s help, he pulled himself up onto the window ledge. He felt around in the dark and found that there was a table below that seemed to be covered in various wires, gears, and glassware. He winced at the clatter and clash as they pulled themselves through the window.

  Safely inside, they shuttered the window and then pressed their backs to the wall, out of sight. They sat there in the dark, breathing hard, waiting for the sound of running footsteps to pass by.

  “Careful!” the Pale Hand warned as Anton stretched his legs out, jostling the table.

  She caught a falling glass orb and froze. The guard’s hurried footsteps thundered past the shop and faded into the distance.

  Anton let out a breath.

  Beside him, he heard the sound of soft tapping, and then a dim light filled the shop. It flickered and then grew brighter, and when he turned around he saw that the orb in the Pale Hand’s palm was a small lamp glowing with incandescent light.

  “What now?” he asked.

  She looked at him, face half shadowed by the globe light. “Now,” she said, “you come with me.”

  7

  BERU

  In the secr
et alcove below the Crypt of Pesistratos, Beru passed the night like she had so many others—with a cup of warm mint tea and the fervent hope that her sister would return alive.

  Ephyra had gone into the black night alone many times before this, to face murderers and slavers and the most depraved men in the Six Prophetic Cities. Yet Beru felt more nervous now than she had on any of those nights. It was silly—she knew that. There was nothing to be frightened of when you were the most dangerous thing that stalked the streets.

  But tonight, Beru had a different fear. Because tonight, the Pale Hand had not gone out looking for a victim. She had gone looking for help. If she succeeded, then this would be the last time Beru would have to wait and worry.

  A year after the Pale Hand had begun killing, Beru had chosen the wrong victim. Usually, Ephyra took care of selecting their victims, but this time Beru had. The man she’d picked had a track record for visiting slyhouses and leaving his conquests literally in pieces. No one had seemed to care, because the slyhouses he frequented were in the poorest section of Tarsepolis. But Beru had cared. So had Ephyra.

  So Ephyra had gone out, like she had so many nights before, and the Pale Hand had killed him.

  The next morning, a letter had appeared tucked beneath the door of the abandoned wine cellar the sisters had been staying in.

  The man you killed last night had a bounty on his head. That bounty was mine. Next time, ask.

  It wasn’t signed, but there was a simple wax seal at the bottom, stamped in gold. A compass rose. When Ephyra and Beru had looked into it, they found that it was the symbol of Mrs. Tappan’s Scrying Agency—a bounty-hunting outfit that, it turned out, was rather infamous in some circles.

  Beru had been terrified at first. The message sounded like a threat, and it was clear that this Mrs. Tappan had managed to find them despite the fact that no one had seen the Pale Hand’s face nor knew her name. Beru wanted to leave the city immediately, but Ephyra had stalled.

  “‘Next time, ask’?” she’d said. “For a threat, it’s not exactly inspired.”

  The next day, they’d found out the letter hadn’t been a threat. It was an offer. Another letter had appeared the next day, with a name and a crime: slave trading in Endarrion. A little digging had garnered the fact that the criminal in question also had a bounty on his head.

  Three weeks later, they’d gotten another name.

  It seemed the mysterious Mrs. Tappan was content to pass along some of her targets to the Pale Hand, no questions asked. They all seemed to be the worst kind of criminals—the murderers, slavers, and rapists.

  Ephyra and Beru couldn’t figure out why the bounty hunter was helping them. In most cases, the criminal’s death meant that the bounty couldn’t be collected. Yet the names still came, and no one, to Beru’s relief, came after them.

  And then, six weeks ago, another letter had appeared, tucked beneath the door of their haunt in Tarsepolis.

  I know why you’re doing this. And I know of a cure. A powerful artefact known as Eleazar’s Chalice.

  I cannot find it for you, but there’s someone who can. A scryer with the Grace of Sight, more powerful than any I’ve seen. More powerful than even mine. Go to Pallas Athos and await my next missive.

  All Beru had known of Pallas Athos was stories of what it had once been—the City of Faith, the center of the Six Prophetic Cities. When they’d arrived here, she had been shocked by what they’d found. The Low City, full of gamblers and thieves, and the High City, where priests preyed on children and left the city to rot. The City of Faith had turned out to be the perfect place for the Pale Hand.

  They’d set themselves up in the half-destroyed, abandoned mausoleum of a minor priest and waited to hear from Mrs. Tappan again.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  Then finally, today, they’d received their answer. A messenger had appeared inside the shrine, bearing an envelope marked with the seal of a compass rose.

  This is it, Beru had thought. The letter that would determine their fate. The scryer that Mrs. Tappan had told them about, the person they’d come all the way to Pallas Athos for, had finally answered.

  The answer was no.

  “Maybe there is no scryer,” Beru had said.

  “Why would Mrs. Tappan lie to us?” Ephyra had asked.

  “Why would she help us in the first place? She’s a bounty hunter.”

  “The scryer is real,” Ephyra had insisted. “They’re here. And I’m going to find them.”

  “How?”

  Ephyra had looked up at the retreating back of Mrs. Tappan’s messenger, a determined glint in her eye. “Easy. The messenger is going to lead me to Mrs. Tappan, and Mrs. Tappan is going to lead me to her mysterious scryer.”

  “Ephyra…”

  Ephyra’s expression was soft as she reached out to tuck a coil of hair behind her sister’s ear. “This is important, Beru. Life or death.”

  Beru looked into Ephyra’s eyes and saw the earnest hope that lived there.

  “We’ve come this far,” Ephyra said.

  “I know,” Beru said. That was what scared her. They’d come this far—they’d thieved and killed for this long in the name of survival. They’d come this far—fourteen lives the Pale Hand had claimed. They’d come this far. How much farther would they have to go?

  It was this question that plagued her now, five hours later, as she sat at the tiny table in their makeshift kitchen, shells, sea glass, and pottery shards strewn around her. This was what Beru always did when she couldn’t sleep—she made jewelry and little trinkets out of whatever scraps she could find. It was something she and Ephyra had done as children, too, selling necklaces and bracelets to the traders who passed through their village. Now, this makeshift jewelry was their only source of money that didn’t involve stealing.

  The muffled echo of footsteps broke the dawn quiet. Beru froze, listening. The entrance to the alcove in the crypt was entirely hidden—you would only find it if you knew it was there.

  She tracked the sound of the footsteps as they moved through the main sanctum and started down the hidden stairs. It had to be Ephyra. But evidently, she’d brought company.

  A knock came at the door.

  “It’s me,” Ephyra’s voice called.

  “Prove it.”

  Ephyra’s long-suffering sigh sounded through the door. “Once, when you were eight years old, you found a barrel of dates that our mother was going to use to make wine. You ate half the barrel, and for the next three days, every time you went to the bathroom—”

  Beru unlatched the door in a hurry and greeted her sister with a glare.

  “Proof enough?” Ephyra asked.

  “I hate you,” Beru replied as Ephyra stepped nimbly past her into the room.

  Leaving Beru to stare at the stranger in the doorway.

  “So,” the boy said, his eyes sweeping around the alcove, “the Pale Hand lives in a literal crypt. A little obvious, don’t you think?”

  The only possible explanation for his presence that Beru could come up with was that Ephyra had actually found the scryer, like she’d said she would. Which meant that the scryer was an utterly unassuming boy no older than herself. His pale skin and light hair marked him as foreign to Pallas Athos—probably from somewhere to the north, maybe the Novogardian Territories. His eyes were as dark as a grave.

  As Beru regarded this boy, she realized he’d been doing the same to her. His gaze lingered on her arm, which was still on the door’s latch. Beru had wrapped it tightly in cloth so the dark handprint was hidden, but the concealment itself was conspicuous.

  Quickly, she tucked her arm behind her back and stepped aside to allow him in. “Would you like tea?”

  “Do you have wine?” he countered hopefully.

  “Sorry,” Beru replied, retreating to the corner of the kitchen and busying herself with pouring the still-warm mint tea into three chipped clay cups. She stifled a laugh. This all felt absurd. It had been over five years
since Ephyra and Beru had had a guest. Back in their village Medea, a trading stop just outside Tel Amot, hospitality had been a rule as impenetrable as law. Their mother would never have abided by having someone in their home without serving them something.

  The boy took a seat on a cushion at the rickety wooden table, and Beru put a cup of tea down in front of him.

  He didn’t even glance at her now. His eyes were trained on Ephyra, and despite the ease with which he held himself, Beru could detect his wariness. Ephyra was watching him, too, propped against the wall, her arms crossed tight across her chest. Beru took a seat right in the middle of their staring contest.

  “So,” she said, blowing on her tea. “You’re the scryer, then?”

  Only then did the boy slide his gaze to her. “I’m just Anton.”

  “Anton,” Beru said. She glanced at Ephyra. It was dangerous to let him in on even this much, to tell him who they were. Where they lived. But they’d come to Pallas Athos for no other reason than to find him, and it wasn’t like they had another choice. “I’m Beru. Ephyra’s sister.”

  “The Pale Hand has a sister,” he mused.

  “You have siblings, Anton?”

  “Just one,” he answered, his tone much too light.

  Beru narrowed her eyes.

  “All right,” Ephyra said impatiently, “enough small talk. You know why I brought you here.”

  Anton eyed her over the rim of his teacup. “You said you need my help. Why?”

  Beru glanced at Ephyra. If she was willing to trust this boy—trust him enough to tell him this much, at least—then Beru would follow her lead.

  “You know who I am,” Ephyra said. “What I’ve been doing.”

  “I think it’s safe to say everyone knows what you’ve been doing.”

  “Yes,” Ephyra said. “But no one knows why.”

  People spoke in fearful whispers of the bodies that turned up, marked by the Pale Hand. Everyone had their own ideas about what those bodies meant. A punishment for the wicked. A perversion of Grace. None of them knew the truth.

  “I take their lives,” Ephyra said slowly, “to save hers.”