Varian cleared his throat, seeming to make some sort of internal decision. “Some great mob of out-of-town highborns descended on the Red Boar last night, and Pol’s stuck at the stables, so he sent me here to help you. I am at your command.” He added this last with a theatrical bow made ridiculous since he was still kneeling on the floor in Michael’s very tiny room.
On the list of things Michael didn’t want, Varian’s help was somewhere near the top, but Pol must have believed the musician could be trusted if he’d sent him. Michael bit his lip, his eyes dropping to study his scarred hands. His unbroken one, white-knuckled, was clenching the blankets.
“Pol made me promise to do just as you say,” Varian said, his voice very low and hesitant. “Only as you say. And I promised. I promise you the same thing. I don’t want to be one of them, to you, Michael. I don’t want you to be afraid of me.”
“I was never afraid of you.”
“Even so.”
Michael nodded, eyes still downcast. “I hate this.” The tears he’d been trying to deny began running down his face.
“I know,” Varian whispered. “And I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t know. Sorry I wasn’t a better friend.”
Michael had never thought of Varian as a friend, but he was there and he was trying his best and wasn’t that what friendship was? Taking a huge breath, Michael sniffed back his tears once more and looked up to meet the musician’s tentative smile.
“Help me up?”
# # #
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The healer’s initial judgment that it would take at least a moon for Michael to recover enough to go back to work had turned out to be too optimistic by half. Though in the past, Michael had healed quickly from his various injuries, this time his healing seemed to have slowed—or these new injuries were simply that much worse.
More than a moon passed before Michael was able to bear any weight on his injured leg, and even then he could scarcely walk. Even using a crutch Pol had procured for him, it took days of practice before he could take more than a very few steps without collapsing from the pain. Pol, Varian, and sometimes even Risa and Daren visited his tiny room and worked with him, but his progress was very slow and very discouraging.
After a moon had passed, Pol had taken him back to see the healer, certain there must be some solution they simply hadn’t yet tried. Instead, the healer told them the wound was very bad and that Michael, if he was lucky, would always walk with a limp. If he was unlucky... It didn’t bear thinking about.
Even so, Michael hadn’t imagined that it might never stop hurting. Even his arm had eventually healed—though there was now an odd, slight kink in its line, a relic of just how bad the break had been and how difficult to set cleanly—but his leg refused to improve past a certain point, and while he waited for it to heal, his hard-earned, harder-saved money trickled away, just as he’d told Varian it would. Once he’d recovered enough to return to the Red Boar, more than two moons had passed. There was so little money left, it made him sick to think about it.
The path he traveled from his tiny room at Senna MaGlen’s to the Red Boar seemed filled with familiar faces, and he felt as if they were all staring at him. They want to see if I look terrible. If I’ve changed. If I’m still beautiful.
He was. The healer had seemed almost upset by how well he’d recovered. His wounds had healed to smooth, white scars that almost disappeared against the only slightly darker-pale of his skin.
There was nothing too shocking; certainly nothing disgusting. If it hadn’t been for his leg wound—healed well on the surface but still hurting him with every step he took—Michael would almost have been able to forget what had happened to him. How close I came to escaping Fensgate... How close I came to dying.
I want a smoke. Right. Now. He’d given them up after the Midnight Star—it had just seemed silly to inhale smoke on purpose after seeing the damage it could do on a large scale. He’d wanted to take up the habit again after he’d been injured—he was sure the herbals would have helped him feel at least more relaxed—but he couldn’t afford the extra expense when it was so uncertain when he’d be able to work again.
It would help to have something to blunt this moment.
No one seemed sure of how to react when he entered the Red Boar. So many of his regulars were present, watching the door as if for the return of a long-lost beloved, that when he finally stepped into the room and looked out across the sea of faces, it was all he could do to keep from bursting into tears. So much wanting from them overwhelmed him, away as he’d been for so long from the toxic feel of unwelcome desire.
Pick one and get started, he ordered himself, and he scanned the crowd for someone who wouldn’t ask too much. His attention was caught by a new face, however. A man sat at a crowded gambling table, ignoring the hovering girls. He sat casually, sprawled in his chair, one elbow resting on the table with his hand upraised, toying with a coin.
Is it a clink? Double? It looked to be a respectable denomination. And it was a start. The man stared at Michael, his expression inquiring. The man was making him an offer, and the expectancy of all his regulars angered him.
Just waiting like carrion birds for me to come back and make them feel better...don’t even care about me as long as I’m still beautiful.
He threw back his hair, left loose on purpose to show off how much it had grown, and crossed the room to the man’s table, schooling his face to produce a slow, seductive smile. He reached out and closed one hand over the coin and decided in that split tic to do something he’d never before instigated in public.
With his free hand, he caught the man’s face and leaned in to kiss him. The kiss silenced the room and lasted several heartbeats, leaving the man flushed and breathless when Michael ended it.
The man’s mind passed the test. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to fear. The man reached for him again, but Michael stepped back, shaking his head.
“There’s more where that came from,” he rasped. “But only if there’s more where this came from.” He held up the coin and lifted an eyebrow. The man rose, his eyes glittering with desire, and offered Michael several more coins the same as the first. With a nod, Michael accepted the man’s offer, informing himself that it was a very good start to the night.
After that, his routine returned to an apparent normalcy. Nothing could ever be normal again—he knew that if no one else did—but the pretence of it had been restored.
He lived in pain every day now. He lived in fear, too, knowing from all he’d seen in the duke’s twisted mind that he could expect to be summoned again. He could expect to be summoned often.
Why did he have to hurt me so badly? I could have escaped to Mirthia if only he hadn’t stabbed me and broken my arm.
And he wondered, What will happen when I refuse to answer his summons? He would refuse, but he didn’t expect that to do him any good. What punishment would the man mete out to him in payment for the refusal? His mind supplied a suggestion—he’ll kill you—and he didn’t even feel shocked by his reaction to it. Good. I hope he does.
Dying would be better than living like this: living a whore’s life in a miserable city where no one could be bothered to take care of someone who hadn’t been born to them. It was a terrible world; a terrible place. He hated it and everyone in it more than he could bear to think about.
Michael felt a strange confusion as he considered his hopeless situation. He didn’t want to die, but living like this...he didn’t want to do that, either.
When at last he received the expected summons, Michael felt as if he’d been holding his breath and could finally release it. The letter was delivered to the Red Boar’s door, but the person who brought it was not allowed in.
Still, the carriage awaiting outside to carry Michael away was grand enough that Daren had ordered Michael fetched from where he’d been flirting with one of his less odious regulars while the man played five-card.
The letter jolted Michael back to his n
ew, harsh reality, and he stared at the heavy paper inscribed with his name as if it were a thing unknown to him. He didn’t want to take it from the door-guard’s hand, but he couldn’t refuse it.
He felt oddly numb. I can’t refuse it. Some kind of spell...
Now that he had the feared summons in his hand, his brain couldn’t even form the idea of refusing it. He felt the painful prickling of gathering power along the lines of the tattoo on his wrist and at last understood what it meant and what it was for. Terac had no intention of allowing him to decline or escape. It was as strong a shackle as the metal ones he’d been chained with that horrible night.
Magic. No good could come of something that could force him to the will of a man like Terac Nalas. Maybe his own magic really was as evil as he’d been told. And this is my punishment.
There was nothing to be done but obey. He pulled on his coat and left the inn to find the same grand, unmarked carriage awaiting him, a footman holding the door open.
I don’t have enough money to make it through another two moons! he thought as he was handed up into the carriage.
The Duke of Reyahl already sat inside, waiting for him. Michael dropped onto the opposite seat like a puppet whose strings had been cut. As the footman closed the door, Michael pressed himself back into the corner, trying to get as far away from Terac as it was possible to be in such a confined space. The man didn’t say anything. His face was hidden in shadow, giving no clue to his thoughts.
Not until the carriage pulled away and had turned back toward Fensgate Bridge did the duke speak. “I did not mean to be so hurtful.” He leaned forward, revealing an almost kindly, worried expression.
Michael flinched at the sound of his voice, wishing he could control himself. Wishing he could run away. But that’s become impossible in more ways than one.
“What are you going to do to me?” He didn’t dare to look the man in the eyes. He wanted to be able to believe whatever lie Terac was about to tell him—at least for a little while.
“I just want to talk. And it’s true, you know. I did not mean for things to get...so out of hand. The power was so much more than I expected.” He gave a little laugh. “I think I was quite drunk. You suffered because of my carelessness, and I do apologize. I think I almost killed you.”
“I wish you had.”
“Hush, darling!” he snapped, and Michael stiffened as if in fear of a blow. Terac hesitated, and his voice softened when he spoke again. “Just hush. Don’t even whisper such a thing. I can’t lose you now. In fact, I must make certain I won’t.
“So this is what I’ve come to say. If you disappear or die, and I have any reason at all to believe it was by your own choice, I will kill your friend Pol. I will make sure he knows that I’m the one who hurt you, I will kill him slowly, and I will not end it until he begs me for death.”
Tears welled up and ran down Michael’s face. If only Pol had let him die the first time, none of this would have happened. But it was far too late for if-onlies, and there was no escape from this nightmare anymore.
Michael closed his eyes tightly and whispered, “Fine. All right. Just don’t hurt him. Please.”
“As long as we understand one another.”
Michael felt the man’s hand close around his too-recently healed arm, and he was pulled across the tiny distance and made to straddle the man’s lap. His injured leg sent screams of agony to his brain where he managed to stop them from going any further, but the tears wouldn’t stop. The nightmares in the man’s mind were of a more familiar variety, all focused on what Terac wanted to do to him—a negligible mercy but a mercy nonetheless.
Terac’s hands were strong and knew what they were doing. They stroked Michael’s body as if they had never committed any violent acts, undressing him with a deftness that implied much practice. The man’s mouth burned a line of kisses from his ear down to his throat, and the flicker of tongue against skin felt like a lash.
It had been a very long time since Michael could in all honesty claim to have been raped, but there was nothing else to call what Terac was doing to him. He had not agreed to this, and no matter what he said or did, Terac would not stop.
By the time Terac had finished with him for the night, the pain from his leg had nearly reduced him to begging. His body ached all over, and he’d acquired a collection of love bites to rival the most careless floozy in all of Fensgate.
He stumbled upon reaching the ground, though the footman had tried to help by handing him down. Between what Terac had done this time and the wound he had inflicted the last time, standing seemed to be close to impossible. Standing unaided?
How will I make it home? I just want to go home!
“Here,” the duke’s voice called, and Michael nearly whimpered at the sound. He wondered what fresh torture the man had forgotten to perform.
The footman retrieved whatever the duke wanted to pass on, and he handed it to Michael with a look of studied blankness on his face. Michael took the proffered item automatically, then wished he’d let the thing fall.
In his hand he now held a small, blue bottle.
“It’s sevillium,” Terac’s voice called, soft but audible in the eerie silence of the very early morning. “For the pain.” Then the man added, just as the carriage began to pull away, “You’ll be hearing from me soon.”
# # #
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Breach crossing had been like nothing Jarlyth could have even imagined. He had no words to describe it, either, except, perhaps, bright or sharp or brutal. Unimaginable that most of those on his ship had made the crossing several times.
After several days of waiting at anchor, well clear of the Breach on its opposite side, they were met by a much smaller ship. Jarlyth was handed from the first ship to this second one like so much baggage, and the larger ship sailed away, back to Reinra.
The captain of this new ship was a woman named Sonya. “Just Captain Sonya,” she replied when he’d asked her full name. Her face had weathered to timelessness, and Jarlyth would never have dared to guess at her true age. The first thing she said to him when he stepped on board her ship was, “You are in pursuit of someone lost.” He knew then that she had some power, what might be called “the Sight” by country folk but which was one of the rarer and more useful wizardly skills.
“I am,” he agreed. “I have been seeking him for a long time.”
The woman nodded, her eyes narrowing with a shrewdness born of long experience. “Good thing your crossing ship found us for you. Not many ships aside from the Etesian make a circuit of the lands on this side of the Breach. We go to all four major ports—Mirthia, Felencia, Camarat, and Tabritt. When they aren’t all at war with each other, business is good. We’ve just come from Mirthia, our home port, so Felencia is next.”
It didn’t matter to Jarlyth, so long as he searched everywhere or as many places as needed to be searched in order to find Nylan. He had hoped to sense the boy once the Breach had been cleared, but he still felt only the sureness that Nylan lived. Wherever he was, it was still too far away.
She led him through the ship, showing him where all the important bits were, and they ended in her dining cabin where they were joined by her officers.
The meal was pleasant and the discussion friendly. The captain appointed one of her officers to help Jarlyth learn the dialect variations for Camarat. Jarlyth accepted this even though he had no need of such lessons. Along with several other very useful charms, including one to keep anyone from noticing the sword he always carried across his back, Queen Tristella had given him a language charm which interpreted any dialect differences he encountered and charmed his own speech into the correct words as well.
Even so, the language was not so different from the common dialect spoken throughout the former One Kingdom. The shared written language had kept it from drifting too far from its mother tongue, but the pronunciation had altered, sometimes to incomprehensibility, and many new words had been added, naming things
and ideas that had not existed when the Breach had first been formed.
For the first leg of the voyage, Jarlyth kept to himself. The Breach crossing had taken much more out of him than he’d realized, and he wanted to be cautious. These were not only Reinra folk, after all, and some were clearly not comfortable with magic. Though they’d accepted him as a passenger and treated him with the polite condescension sailors generally felt for landlings, many were still from this side of the Breach. Magic was a strange thing to them, and he didn’t want to risk losing their help.
Ten days after he’d boarded, they reached Felencia, a sprawling, poor-seeming country ruled over by a duke and an elected council. This country had suffered much from what Jarlyth learned was a series of ongoing little wars, and had only begun to recover from the last scuffle between them and their near neighbor Tabritt.
Tabritt, it turned out, was now at war with Camarat. Mirthia seemed to stay out of most of the problems, and he heard grumblings about this from several people as he worked his way through the various agencies who would have had dealings with lost children.
He’d known from the first that Felencia was a waste of time. Nylan was not there, and he itched to go on to the next port. The ship had business to complete first, however, so he went through the motions and found out what he could about the other lands he’d be visiting.
By the time they upped anchor at last, Jarlyth found the crew had become comfortable enough to start asking the most personal questions. His bearing had reverted to Templar the longer he’d searched for Nylan, and his actions and expressions, he knew, could be severe and off-putting. He rarely tried to temper this—he found the care with which he was treated to be useful—but sharing a small ship and meals for so long wore away at his own caution as well as the crew’s wariness.
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