Shimmer and Burn

by Mary Taranta

  They’ve reached an agreement.

  When I sit up, the world rushes at me in a blur and with it, fury. I am not a commodity to be shuffled from one hand to the next. This is how they play their games, with words as their weapons. Not me. I take action, I take aim. I hit until I hurt or until I fall down bleeding.

  My palms are not on the floor yet, and there’s more than one magician in this kingdom. I’ll find someone willing to help me, even if I have to find Baedan and offer my own life as payment.

  Determined, I rise to my feet, staggering for the horses. North begins to cast a ward around the wagon, directing Bryn to follow his lead so she can amplify the meager spell. Afterward, he disappears inside but Bryn lingers, alone. She doesn’t even look at me. Instead she studies the spell on her wrist with a slight frown, a touch of concern, softly rubbing the smoky signal buried beneath her skin.

  I hate her.

  It beats in the soles of my feet, echoes in the tips of my fingers; I feel the hate in the way my body burns from the inside out. And that hate fuels my strength as I swing myself onto the horse Tobek prepared and settle uneasy in the saddle.

  North emerges from the wagon, eyes downcast as he takes the stairs two at a time, grabbing his coat off the ground. He stops when he sees me, eyes widening. “Wait,” he says.

  The horse jolts forward beneath the pressure of my heels. It begins to canter and then to run, galloping out of the trading post, back to the road.

  Away from the Prince of Avinea and his new ally, the future queen of Brindaigel.

  A net of light appears ahead of me, blocking the way. The horse rears back and I lose my tremulous hold on its saddle, tumbling off, hitting the ground hard enough to hear my shoulder crack.

  Gentle hands pull me to safety. North’s face swims in and out of view and I begin to protest, reaching up to strike him only to falter, panicked, when my arms are too heavy to lift. I’m turning into stone and I can’t even stop it.

  “Where were you going?” he asks.

  “Don’t touch me!”

  “Miss Locke—”

  “We could have destroyed Brindaigel!” Grunting, I try to roll onto my side but I only manage to twist myself between his arms, locked into place. Frustration explodes through me and I summon all of my strength, slamming my hands against his chest. “Get off me!”

  “Miss Locke, please. Stop”—he pushes my fist aside again, his expression hardening, turning fierce—“stop for a moment and breathe! This anger, this paranoia, that’s what the poison feeds on, and the more you give in to those feelings, the deeper the poison will sink through your body until it’s inextricable! You have to be calm or you’re going to die!”

  My hands clutch at his shirt. He’s all bones beneath his clothes, hard angles and slopes that offer no traction as my fingers fall back. I can’t catch my breath and my panic cinches my throat even tighter until I’m gasping, head back and neck exposed.

  “Slowly,” North says, his hand light against my shoulder. “You’re all right. Just breathe.” And then, quietly, “Please trust me.”

  No.

  I swallow my hiccups. I don’t know how to articulate what this feeling inside me is, part bitter, part betrayal, all heartbreak. “You bought me like I was meat in the marketplace,” I say.

  He looks at me, stricken. “Faris,” he whispers.

  I close my eyes again, but this pain cuts even deeper than blood, down into my bones. He was right to withhold my name: It sounds too much like magic on his lips.

  And magic hurts.

  “I can’t risk being wrong,” he says, almost pleading. “Without being able to trace any magic in you—” He breaks off, looking away. “I would have told who I was,” he says quietly. “But you have to understand that Prince Corbin has been a target from the moment his lineage was revealed, and I needed North. I needed freedom to move, to hunt Merlock without being hunted myself.” Sighing, he drops his head. “War demands a first casualty. Better it was North than someone like you. Someone who can still fight.”

  “You bartered with her like she had power. You gave her power!”

  “I have never infected anyone before,” he says. “I allowed my anger to dictate my actions and it would be selfish to make you suffer my consequences.”

  “It’s selfish to sacrifice the whole to save the few,” I say savagely.

  He sits back, wounded, and I exploit the advantage, rolling out from under his arms, onto my side. The wagon lumbers into motion, Tobek grim-faced at the reins. I watch it pull ahead of us, a washed-out, faded scrap of wood and charred paint. Nothing more than a relic, an illusion.

  “I could have taken you to Brindaigel,” I say, staring after it. “I could have given you everything you wanted without losing anything.”

  “You have to trust me,” North says. “With Miss Dossel’s alliance, with her amplification ability, I could find Merlock in—in weeks. Maybe days. It’s an advantage Baedan doesn’t have. We’ll get your sister back, Faris. I promise.”

  Doesn’t he know better by now?

  I shove myself to my knees and then, my feet. North offers me a hand but I shy away from him. “Don’t touch me,” I say.

  “Faris.”

  “Greed costs,” I say. “And she’s going to make you pay.” She’ll make both of us pay.

  He straightens, defiant. “You underestimate me.”

  “You underestimate her,” I reply.

  • • •

  In the end, logic prevails and I agree to ride to Revnik. I can’t rely on anyone but myself to save Cadence, and I can’t save her if I’m dead.

  Up close, Revnik is a city of soft-colored stone, of domes and turrets and massive arches. Umber tiles accent everything, from pillars to windows to doors. Oil lights glow in hazy splashes in the darkness, made fuzzy, out of focus by the moisture of the lake that cradles the city with wide arms and narrow fingers.

  An enormous wall protects the inner city from invaders, but centuries have spread Revnik beyond its original border, crammed with churches, watchtowers, and hundreds of narrow stone houses and wood-framed shops.

  Almost all of it’s empty.

  For every open window are three boarded or broken. For every bridge standing, another two lie in ruins. Life gathers around the sparse light in clusters: men and women with somber faces and curious eyes that track us as we pass. Rangy dogs nudge through the alleys; a red-tailed fox trots beside us for half a block, a dead rat carried in its mouth.

  I see everything but register little, no better than a golem of skin and bone with a deep, dull ache in my chest. Not from the infection, but from the silence that festers between North and I, the conversation we carry on without any words. North’s defense in the way his legs tense against mine, the way he strangles the reins in his fists; my accusations in the way I sit bent forward though it hurts my back, to avoid the temptation of his warmth and the beat of his heart and the reminder that he’s human.

  So am I, but not for much longer. Already the skin of my forearm is peeling back to the raw tissue underneath. Dark cracks web the skin of my hand, oozing bright pearls of blood that look violet in the misty lamplight.

  We steer past darkened churches and narrow streets, through alleys choked with garbage and streets wide enough for ten across where we’re the only ones in view. Shadows shift along the roofline—hooded men holding crossbows, with swords strapped to their hips.

  “Lord Inichi keeps the city watched,” North explains, when he sees me looking. “His men are as close to a militia as Revnik has had in almost fifteen years.”

  Scorn colors my voice. “So why aren’t they in New Prevast? Guarding you?”

  “When you’ve spent fifteen years making your own rules, it’s hard to follow someone else’s,” North says drily. “His men are better suited to guarding Revnik and the pass.”

  We finally stop at a high stone wall half hidden behind a barricade of ivy. I catch a glimpse of a beautiful manor house through the iron gate. B
uilt from stone and arches and ornate windows, it sits back from the street, fronted by an overgrown garden. Iron grillwork frames the windows on the first floor and above a double-sided doorway painted a bright and blinding red.

  North slides off the horse, lashing it to a ring embedded in the wall. There are none of Inichi’s men in sight, but I feel watched all the same.

  After helping me down, North shoulders my weight. “Can you walk?”

  Barely. He guides me up the stone path, past statues and broken fountains buried in tangles of ivy and brush. When we reach the wide porch, passing through a frame of columns to reach the doorway, he wets his lips and hesitates before lifting the brass knocker and slamming it down Almost unconsciously, his hand strays toward mine, his little finger brushing against me before I pull away, hugging myself with a shiver of pain.

  “Who is this man?” I ask.

  North doesn’t answer as the door opens with a yawn. A young servant in faded red livery bows us into a long hallway of chipped marble and peeling wallpaper. A flickering chandelier hangs overhead, half crystal and half cobweb. A dark staircase sweeps up to the second floor and doorways are open down both sides of the foyer, leading into darkened rooms full of furniture and muddied shadows—arms and legs and lethargic bodies sprawled with little dignity. The smell of opium and something darker thickens the air and stains the edges of the wallpaper the same brown as stagnant water.

  I turn to North, accusing, but before I can demand an explanation as to why he brought me to an opium den, an older man thunders down the stairs, stopping halfway. Dressed in an unbuttoned waistcoat and untucked shirttails, he looks wild, interrupted. An owlish look of surprise dissolves into a wicked grin. “Ever North at my door,” he says before he laughs and slaps the banister. “Son of a bitch! How are you?”

  “Solch,” says North with a grim smile, threading his arm through mine.

  Solch cocks his head and lifts his shaggy eyebrows above his glasses. “And company?”

  “Miss Locke,” North says, before I can.

  “M’lady,” Solch says with a smirk and an exaggerated bow. “Come in, come in!” He beckons us to follow as he turns back upstairs.

  He leads us into the right wing of the house, separated from the rest by a dank velvet curtain. Beyond, the air dims with smoke and rattling coughs muted behind doors with numbers chalked across the painted wood. Cheap silk screens hide the peeling wallpaper, shoved in between ratty cushions and discarded pipes. There’s vomit on the floor.

  Solch unlocks a door at the end of the hall and shoulders it open. A girl looks up from a bed of pillows, counting stacks of coins with stained fingers. She isn’t wearing a blouse and her breasts are cracked, blistered; her bare stomach riddled with smears of infected magic and patches of scaling gray skin. She sees North and stands with a crack of bones and a look of tired expectation.

  “My client, not yours,” Solch says, slapping her hand away.

  The girl looks at me in dubious question: Am I the client? She can’t be much older than me—maybe even younger, and my stomach tightens with anger, with disgust. This is what Cadence will become if Bryn wins. This is what Tobek used to be, what he might become again if Baedan does. For the first time, I truly understand what North is fighting for.

  Solch leads us into another room, larger than the first, a nobleman’s bedroom gone to seed like everything else in this house, in this city. There’s a wide, rumpled bed against one wall with swaths of dark fabric circling the top. A worktable is pressed against the other wall, littered with strange and wicked medical equipment. Blades of all sizes are intermixed with bottles of all colors, scraps of bones, and a forgotten dinner. Clean needles overlay used ones, cradled by dirty wads of bandages.

  And teeth. Dozens of teeth in all colors.

  “Are we buying or selling today?” Solch asks.

  I look at North, who looks ahead, mouth thin and expression grim. “Buying,” he says.

  Solch sinks into a tatty velvet armchair by a pair of doors propped open to a small balcony. He bends one leg over the other with an expectant look to me. “The offer?”

  My skin crawls and I fold my arms over my chest, away from his prying gaze.

  “I pay gold,” North says.

  “I prefer skin,” says Solch, still sizing me up, assessing my value. “Skin makes me more money than gold ever has.”

  “Gold and poison,” says North, “or I find another transferent.”

  “At this hour? Who can hold their tongue the way I can?” Solch settles back in his chair, fingers tented. “Silence costs, my friend.”

  “My only offer,” says North. “I keep secrets too. Lacing your drugs with dead magic is illegal within city limits. If there’s an outbreak, you’ll be blamed.”

  Pressing his fingers to his chin, Solch studies North with narrowed eyes. North shifts his weight, coiled tight like Darjin before he springs after fireflies or field mice.

  “My counter,” says Solch, lowering his hands with a smile. He enjoys this, haggling. “Gold, poison, and one of your tricky little spells.”

  “I have no spells on me.”

  “If there’s an outbreak,” says Solch, “will the good Lord Inichi blame me or the man who carried the poison into the city looking to sell? Think carefully before you answer that, your majesty.”

  I look from one to the other, incredulous. North trusts this man with his true identity when that trust is bought and paid for? A man’s word is the worst bargain in the world. North’s lived too long in a monastery if he doesn’t know that simple tenet of survival.

  Yet North actually considers the offer. “An ounce of clean magic,” he finally says.

  Grinning, Solch jumps to his feet and extends his hand. His fingernails are cracked and stained yellow. “Agreed.”

  North shakes his hand once, brief and perfunctory, not long enough for Solch to send any prying needles of interest into his skin to assess what magic lies beneath, or vice versa.

  Glancing toward the bed with a frown of distaste, North pulls his coat off and lays it across the soiled coverlet before guiding me to sit. Solch drags his armchair closer, perched on the edge as he takes my poisoned arm in hand, turning it this way and that. His glasses slide down his nose, eyebrows furrowed.

  “There’s no entry wound,” he says. He frowns up at North. “This is a simple transferred infection. Like hell you can’t do this yourself. What else is festering in there that you’d bring her to me?”

  “I didn’t sell you answers,” North says, pacing behind him, arms folded across his chest. “Just take what you can and leave me the rest.”

  “Performance trouble?” Solch arches an eyebrow with a wink to me. “I’ve got something that could help with that—”

  “I didn’t ask for a medical assessment,” North cuts in.

  Rolling his eyes, Solch pushes the chair back with his heels and crosses the room, picking through his cluttered work space. He hums beneath his breath, and when he returns to me with a piece of bleached bone, his breath washes over my face, sour and fetid.

  “Good teeth,” he says with a glance at my mouth, wiping the bone against his shirt before he presses it to my arm. “I buy them a silver apiece if you’re interested.”

  Once again, I look at North. Unspoken apology darkens his eyes as he rubs the back of his head, casting a longing look to the door.

  Compared to North’s earlier efforts, Solch’s transference is clumsy, heavy handed. Rather than coax the threads of poison toward his buffer, he grabs them with a fist and tears. Agony shears up my arm and I fold forward in defense, grabbing onto the bed frame as the room spins around me.

  Swearing, Solch presses harder, his glasses dangling from his nose, features strained with the effort. “There’s something . . . blocking. . . . What the hell is in there!?”

  “You feel it too?” North steps forward, expectant. “It’s like she’s empty. You can’t read anything inside her.”

  “It’s not workin
g,” I say, jerking back, but Solch grabs my arm and doesn’t let go.

  “We’ll just try harder,” he says.

  Heat spreads up my neck, across my chest: The poison is spreading, inching toward my heart. The taste of metal floods my mouth, chased by something bitter, something viscous. I cry out and North immediately intervenes, pulling Solch off my arm. “Stop.”

  Solch tears off his glasses as sweat rolls down the side of his face. The bone in his hand is still bleached white, though. Still clean.

  It didn’t work.

  “There’s something wicked hiding in there,” he says. “I can’t reach around it. Who infected her?”

  North doesn’t volunteer his name or the story, and neither do I. Still clutching the bedpost, I tip too far forward, sliding to the matted carpet below. North steadies me with one hand and grabs a bowl containing an inch of oily soup with the other. I vomit, more bile and water than anything substantial. Blood and poison flock the rim of the bowl, red and black and undeniable.

  The infection’s in my blood.

  Tipping my head back against the mattress, I press my arm over my mouth and fight another rise of nausea. Flakes of skin peel loose from the motion and the smell is of dead horse in the farming terraces, left to fertilize the rocky soil.

  “What did you drag in here?” Solch asks.

  North rubs his mouth before dropping his hand. Defeated. “You can’t help her.”

  “Nobody could, not like this, not with that, whatever it is in there. She needs new blood.”

  “Would the blood take?” Not a question, a demand. Steady North is starting to fray, and any hope I had buried in the secret places of my heart starts to dim. They can’t stop it.

  “It never has before,” says Solch.

  I won’t become hellborne, I tell myself, stern and unflinching as I stare at the ceiling and fight back my tears. The ceiling is painted pink, with cracked plaster ivy and rosettes along the molding. Beautiful despite the decay, and yet, I crave the stars of North’s wagon.

  Exhaling, North reaches into his pocket and drops three black stones and a smaller white one onto Solch’s worktable, along with several gold kronets. Bending, he hoists me to my feet and I jostle like a sack of bones. “Thank you,” he says tightly, always the gentleman.