Hushed

by Kelley York

  But his gaze stayed on the wig, and something inside her squirmed. She had very few things of sentimental value, but those she cherished the most she kept on her person so they’d never be lost. She had a pair of knives from her mother—guess the necromancer had a wig from his father.

  She bit back a growl. So much for being a cold-hearted assassin. She dragged him down the hill, grabbed the wig, and shoved it at him. “Keep it hidden.”

  He crammed it into the front of his jacket and opened his mouth, but she glared at him and he closed it. If they had to keep the wig, they could at least be quiet about it.

  She continued her search for the sewer grate until her fingers struck the coarse bumps and pocks of old metal. Just where she remembered it. She found the hinges, braced her feet on either side of the grate, and, with it groaning in protest, heaved it open.

  She didn’t feel dead at all.

  Which meant the necromancer had to be a player assigned to keep an eye on her.

  His jaw dropped, and his eyes grew wide, as if he’d never seen someone force open a rusty sewer grate before.

  A very good player. As much as she disliked the idea, she’d have to dispose of him before they got too far.

  Straddling the hole, she placed her hands on either side of it, stretched her legs down, and felt with her feet for the ladder carved in the wall. Her toe caught something, and she shifted to get a better foothold. She put on her I’m-a-helpless-woman expression and looked at him. “Please. This is our only escape.”

  The necromancer swallowed and ran his hands down the front of his jacket. “In there?”

  More yells from the direction of the house. Closer. Her father’s men were likely scaling the garden wall at that very moment.

  “It’s this or them. Please.” She ducked into the sewer, remembering to breathe from the sides of her mouth so the stench wouldn’t overwhelm her. At the bottom, she bridged a thin stream of muck.

  She peered down the sewer, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim light glowing from the witch-stone panels set into the obsidian walls. The cold, pungent air seeped through her clothes and into her skin. She should have dressed more warmly. No, she wouldn’t be in the sewers long. All she needed was to stop by the cavern, pick up her supplies, and slip away in the night.

  She could stow away on a ship bound for the White Strait and the Misty Isles, where neither the Gentilica nor the Assassins’ Guild could reach her—or, rather, where their reach was diminished. There wasn’t a place in the Union the Gentilica didn’t control, but there was no way she was going to end up like John Tanner, who had snitched to the Quayestri about her father’s protection racket in the city’s fifth ring. His eyeless and tongueless body had been found in a manure pile. At least the Guild was professional enough to forego torture and just kill the target.

  The necromancer scrambled down the ladder, missed the last rung, and landed in the stream of refuse, splashing it up the back of her legs. He coughed, his breath catching in his throat as if he was about to throw up. “What did I just step in?”

  Did he really have to ask? She glanced up to see if he had at least pulled the grate shut behind him. A perfect circle of starlight, without the crisscross rungs of the grate, glowed above her.

  “You could have closed the grate.”

  “Oh.” His real hair, shorn to half an inch in length, stood in clumps at every angle. Not much of an improvement from the wig. He was the perfect image of a scarecrow, all arms and legs and not a thought in his head. Oh, he was good.

  She grabbed the rail to climb back up the access pipe. The bark and whine of the family dogs drew close.

  Damn.

  It didn’t matter if she closed it or not. The dogs would follow her scent right to it. She had to move now and put as much distance between her and the access pipe as possible. “We have to go.”

  She stepped into the sewage. A violent shiver wracked her body.

  Gasping, she reached for the slimy wall. Above, the yells and barks of her pursuers grew louder, coming closer, ready to discover her still standing in the circle of starlight.

  A weight landed on her shoulder and she forced her head to move the necessary fraction to see the necromancer’s long, delicate fingers.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  She shrugged off his hand and pushed away from the wall. “I’m fine.”

  A line formed between his brows.

  Another shiver raced through her, and she grabbed the front of his jacket to keep her balance. She couldn’t make her mind work long enough to figure out what was happening. Everything grew distant, her vision dimmed, but the noises outside the sewer grew clearer, as if she were shaking herself out of her body.

  More barks, even closer. The necromancer jumped. She sensed more shivers wash over her, but couldn’t feel them. She had shaken too far out of herself.

  He scooped her into his arms, stepped into the shadows, and pressed his forehead to hers, somehow drawing her back into her body with the touch of his flesh against hers. She became aware of the pressure of his arms against her back and legs.

  “Tell me what to do,” he said.

  “What?” Her lips felt heavy, swollen.

  “If you don’t tell me where to go, we’re caught.”

  “Follow this to the end, then take the next three lefts.”

  He glanced up, and she began to drift away again. Scrunching up his face, he stepped into the center of the sewer pipe. If she didn’t feel so strange, she’d have laughed. What was a little sewage compared to your life?

  She shivered and drifted toward... toward what? A nothingness, a black and empty abyss void of light and warmth. There was no sewer, no necromancer, no body, and no Goddess. Where was the eternal love? The embrace of forgiveness from the Mother of All?

  A sliver of light far, far away caught her attention, but when she turned to it, it was gone. The Goddess didn’t want her.

  She gasped.

  Her fingers and toes were numb as if they had fallen asleep, and she couldn’t see the circle of light from the access pipe. In fact, she didn’t know where she was. The necromancer, his face streaked with muck, leaned over her.

  “I’d give you a minute but I don’t think we have the time.” He wiped a filth-covered hand across his forehead, leaving another streak.

  She sat up and blood rushed to her hands and feet, setting them on fire with pins-and-needles. “We have to get away from my father’s house.”

  He pursed his lips as if he wanted to say something, but thought silence the better option.

  “What?”

  “We are away from your father’s house.”

  She glanced past his shoulder. Behind him the wall sloped, creating a small arch above their heads, and to her right lay a three-foot drop into the ancient sewer pipe. They were in a workman’s alcove, a place for the city’s maintenance staff to take a break or a meal, if they could stomach anything while surrounded by sewage.

  “How?”

  “Your fifteen minutes were up.”

  “My...?” They had just been in the sewer on her father’s property. Where were they now?

  The stinging in her hands and feet subsided. She must have passed out. The memory of the shivers sent an involuntary one down her spine.

  “My fifteen minutes were up?”

  “Yes, now—”

  “So, I was dead?” It was true. A chill seeped into her gut. Whoever wrote that note had lied. She didn’t have a week. She had nothing. Except this strange young man who had woken her a second time. “Why?”

  The necromancer looked confused and ridiculous, with his short, wild hair and mud-streaked face.

  “Why did you bring me back?” she asked again.

  “Look. Your family is still after us and I’m sure I didn’t get that far. ” He scrambled to the edge of the alcove.

  “You could have left me for dead.” Which meant escape was no longer an option. She had nothing to live for, since she wasn’t ali
ve.

  “You only have another fifteen minutes. We need to get to a place where I can get the components for the Jam de’U.”

  She grabbed his arm. “Why?”

  “I don’t know how to get out of here.” He looked exhausted and worried and she couldn’t sense any insincerity in him.

  Which didn’t mean she trusted him. It could mean he was an amazing actor. If she didn’t need him to keep her alive—well, perhaps not alive exactly, but animated long enough for revenge—she’d leave him.

  He stared back at her with innocent, puppy dog eyes.

  They were not going to work. “First, we need to find an access grate and see where we are in regards to the city.”

  “There’s a grate ten feet that way.” He pointed down the pipe. “But I can’t lift it and carry you at the same time.”

  “Oh.” Did thoughtfulness counterbalance his possible attempt to manipulate her? She didn’t think so.

  He jumped down and reached out to help her. She ignored his hands, landed beside him, and slung her rucksack over her shoulder.

  “Maybe you could suggest a hiding place,” he said, sloshing through the muck. “Someplace we can hide for a day. I think I’ll need the whole day.”

  “What for?”

  “The Jam de’U. If you factor in finding the components, plus preparation for the spell, and—”

  “I get the point.”

  Reaching the access pipe, she grabbed the ladder. Above glowed the soft yellow light of a lantern, which meant they were still in the second ring of the city or the palace ring, since they were the only rings that could afford street lanterns. At least he’d said something right. He hadn’t gone far.

  She climbed to the grate, quieted her breathing, and listened for possible dangers. Wherever they were, it was quiet, with only the odd chirp of a cricket and the hiss of a few dead leaves dancing along the cobblestones. It might be too late in the evening for anyone to be up in the Nobles’ ring. She could only hope.

  Bracing her legs on one side of the pipe and her back on the other, she reached up to grab the grate.

  “What do you see?” he asked, startling her.

  She clung to the grate to keep her balance, contemplating one of many possible nasty retorts. It was so difficult to remember it could all be an act. If she was smart, she’d get rid of him after he’d done his spell. She couldn’t risk that her death wasn’t real.

  “What’s out there?”

  She had to keep manipulating him if she wanted to discover if he was after something. “Nothing,” she said in her sweetest voice.

  The grate complained like the last one and she cringed. Please let no one have heard that. Thankfully, the street remained silent, so she poked her head out of the pipe and glanced around.

  Sure enough, they were still in the second ring. The street lanterns looked like the ones at the bottom of her family’s driveway. Across from her rose a high brick wall with a massive coat-of-arms of crossed swords above an open goddess-eye built into the brick. Her mouth went dry and she concentrated on keeping her mind blank.

  The idiot had taken her right to the front gate of the Collegiate of the Quayestri, home of the highest law in the principalities. All it took was for her to let her thoughts wander and for some inexperienced Inquisitor apprentice to lose control of his abilities and accidentally read her memories. Everything she’d done would be projected into the air with that Goddess-awful seeing-smoke, and every officer of the law would know what she was guilty of.

  And with the way her evening had gone so far, it would be one of her first assassination assignments projected. Every Tracker in residence would be after her and if caught, she’d lose her head—and that was a death no necromancer could bring her back from.

  It would be a perfect end to a perfect night: to have both of the principality’s most powerful forces chasing her. And no one but a two-bit necromancing player on her side.