Shimmer and Burn

by Mary Taranta

  “Solch.”

  “Your majesty,” says Solch, all joking aside. His hand strays toward his hip, beneath the edge of his unbuttoned waistcoat. “This isn’t a negotiation.”

  “You understand the position you’re taking,” says North, edging closer to me. His fingertips hang in the air, searching for contact, and I curl my little finger around his with a sudden rush of blood, a sudden twitch of power in my veins. “There’s no ever again between us after this.”

  “You take magic like hers to New Prevast and there’s no ever again for me anyway,” says Solch. “The days of the transferent are numbered, North. I’ll take what I can and hide while I can before the gods come calling my name.” He smiles, bittersweet. “You’ll make a damn fine king, my boy, but we both know there’s no market for a man like me after a man like you finds Merlock. Final offer.”

  “No,” says North.

  I catch the flash of glass a second too late. I twist out of the way as North curves his body to protect me.

  Solch wasn’t aiming for me.

  The needle sinks into the slope of North’s neck and Solch depresses the plunger halfway before North knocks him aside. Dirty liquid sloshes in the glass tubing as North wrenches the needle out of his neck and hurls it to the floor. It shatters, glass and something thicker that glistens in the light.

  I attack without strategy, barreling Solch through the doorway behind him. We stumble and land, arms and legs entwined on the floor. Despite a lingering weakness, I know how to fight, and I strike him across the face, knocking his glasses askew before slamming his head against the floor.

  Solch swears, making a halfhearted grab for my hair, but I block his arm, twisting it back until I hear something crack near his shoulder. His sharp cry of agony sends chills down my back, cutting through the fog of primal instinct. It gives me pause, and in that instant of hesitation, I’m dragged off and hauled to my feet, pulled against a hard lanky body that smells of animal and beer. A cold blade touches my throat.

  “Fanagin was right,” a voice laughs, oily and familiar. “Soft in all the right places. Let’s see if he was right about bleeding fire too.”

  Kellig.

  “Don’t touch her,” North says, already slurring his words. A thin dribble of fluid rolls down his throat into the collar of his shirt, shiny with a watery thread of blood.

  “It’s not that much of a pleasure,” Kellig says with a sickening laugh, casting a derisive glance to the faded poison beneath my skin. “You already spoiled the meat. But Baedan won’t want leftovers, your majesty. She’ll want you.”

  North bends over, hands on his knees as he looks to Solch, wounded. “You sold me?”

  “I sell everything here,” Solch says darkly. Blood drips from his nose. “You’re hardly the most exotic item in my catalog.”

  I test Kellig’s hold to find it loose, arrogant—he doesn’t believe I’ll fight back. I don’t know if I can. Blood seeps through the bandage on my chest and my heartbeat is weak, erratic, but I haven’t come this far to let someone like Kellig defeat me.

  Dropping into a crouch, I slip out from under his arm and twist, kicking his knee. It knocks us both back and I crash into the worktable with enough force to make the ceiling dance. Needles and metal instruments scatter as he grabs my ankle and drags me back. Grinning, he levers his body over mine and presses a sweaty hand to my chest.

  “Good girl. Keep that heart rate up,” he says. “The magic comes easier when your blood runs hot.”

  “No,” Solch says. “She’s mine, he’s yours—that was the deal.”

  “Terms and conditions subject to change without notice,” Kellig says, leering down at me. He’s as graceless as Solch as he fists threads of magic and snaps them loose, too greedy to be delicate. My skin tightens with goose bumps; tears flood my eyes.

  With a grunt, Solch knocks Kellig in the side of the head with a bone awl, knocking him off me, onto the carpet. He then drives the awl through Kellig’s shoulder, pinning him in place. Kellig screams as blood immediately pools across the floor.

  “You stole from the wrong man,” Solch says with a terrifying grin. He grabs a scalpel from the mess on the floor and leans against Kellig, grabbing him by the hair and yanking his head back. “I should carve you up and sell you piecemeal. But I’ll settle for a few teeth.”

  The scalpel scrapes into Kellig’s mouth and I roll away with a shock of nausea. Swallowing back the taste of blood, I scramble to my knees and then, with a lurch of vertigo, to my feet. North is slumped against the wall, head hanging low, swollen fingers digging at his neck.

  He flinches when I touch him, but then his eyes focus, shifting beyond me to Kellig. Shoving himself off the wall, he pulls Solch back and Solch edges out of the way, hands raised in peace, still holding the scalpel and now, a tooth. Blood runs down his palms. “By all means,” he says. “Take whatever you want.”

  North ignores him. Dropping to one knee, he bends over Kellig, his voice lowered to a gravel whisper. Already his skin is the color of charcoal as poison fills his fingertips, waiting to be transferred. “You have thirty seconds.”

  Kellig pales even more, one hand wrapped around the hilt of the awl. Blood bubbles out of his mouth. “Baedan’s going after the daughter of the king,” he rasps at last. “I’m only supposed to delay you; she doesn’t know who you are. I—I won’t tell her if you don’t.” He tries to smile, revealing a hole where his left incisor used to be before he begins choking on blood. Turning his head, he spits on the floor.

  North shifts to regain his faltering balance. “You expect me to believe you’re a loyalist now when you’ve done nothing but bring her bodies to burn and spells to cast that she would never be able to do on her own?”

  “Come on, North.” Kellig blinks rapidly. His breath rattles out of him in thinning gasps; the threadbare carpet is soaked. “If she finds Merlock, we’ll all be pissing poison and eating our own skin.” Desperation inches his voice higher. “A bastard on the throne is better than a bitch.”

  North stares at him, fingers curling into a fist. “Does she have a lead?”

  At last, a more genuine smile, a hint of the man from the marketplace, eager to barter. “I can’t tell you if you kill me.”

  “North.” I touch his arm; his eyes jolt toward me and struggle to refocus. “Tobek can’t fight Baedan on his own, and if she gets to Bryn . . .” I trail off pointedly. Bryn could persuade an agreement with anyone, and we need Bryn to believe she’s on our side as long as possible.

  North nods, rubbing the heels of his hands against his eyes. Kellig drops his head back, relived, but then North grabs him by the throat. “You stole from the wrong man,” he says, echoing Solch.

  Kellig’s feet kick out in protest as North takes back the magic Kellig tore out of me. But North doesn’t stop, even after the last line of silver dims out of Kellig’s skin, and poison begins to spread, rolling down his throat. The skin starts to burn, tiny cracks widening into seeping wounds. The blood at his shoulder darkens and slows to an ooze of thick sludge.

  Kellig grabs North’s wrist, trying to leach the infection back into him, but it’s not enough. His eyes flood black; poison drips from his nose. A moment later, he goes still. Dead? Or is he bartering with the gods now, choosing his vices over his soul?

  “North.” When I touch his hand again, a shot of pain sparks up my arm with warning. Sweat beads his forehead, rolling down the side of his cheek.

  Guilt immediately overtakes anger as he looks to Kellig and back to me. “I—I’m so sorry,” he says, stricken. “I didn’t—”

  “We have to go,” I say softly. Even through the cotton of his shirt, I feel his skin burning.

  “You have blood on your face,” he whispers, and it’s heartbreaking, the sorrow in his voice, the shadows in his eyes. He reaches for me only to recoil when he remembers his hands.

  “It’s probably mine, damn it,” Solch growls from the armchair. His glasses hang from one hand; the other hand pinch
es the bridge of his nose.

  Hate needles through me. For a moment, I’m tempted to cut Solch’s throat with the scalpel balanced on the arm of the chair next to Kellig’s incisor. Is that me or the infection in my blood?

  Instead, I grab North’s coat off the bed and Kellig’s knife from the floor, leveling it in Solch’s face. The truth is, he’s harmless beyond this city, without North’s name to barter, and hurting him would be an act of self-indulgent cruelty. I don’t understand North’s friendship with this man, but I do understand that poisoned or not, I will never be like Bryn.

  But he doesn’t have to know that. “If I ever see you again,” I warn.

  “You won’t.” He snorts, waving a hand in dismissal. “You don’t even have to pay for the room. Consider it a parting gift.” His pale eyes settle on me and I hold his gaze.

  He looks away first.

  On second thought, I pocket the scalpel after all, grabbing North’s sleeve before he can step out onto the balcony. “Wrong door,” I say, squeezing his arm with a sudden affection.

  We’re like two drunks defying gravity as we stumble downstairs. Giddy and slow, clumsy and heavy, I miscount the last step and we fall, landing in each other’s arms with matching looks of panic. He’s losing color fast, but at the very least, he can get on the horse.

  Dewy morning humidity turns the cobblestones slick as we ride out of the city, relying on North’s failing sense of direction. He clings to my waist, whispering words and nonsense against my back. Promises, prayers, magic spells, or curses, I don’t know. I don’t care. Only one thing matters.

  “Don’t let go of me,” I say.

  He presses his head against my back and holds on all the tighter.

  Twenty-Three

  NORTH BEGS ME TO STOP just beyond the mountain pass, when the land opens into a sea of hard swells and pitted divots, all grown over green with moss and lacy wildflowers. Lava fields. Water slips in and out of view, running in narrow streams full of stones and silver fish. The road itself has worn a flattened path forward, but the ground on either side is misshapen, uneven, a potential labyrinth of dangerous footing.

  Though the sun rises on the southern half of Avinea, storm clouds knot the sky this side of the mountains, and an eerie mist turns the world into something surreal. To our left, the Burn simmers, a ribbon of ash and gold that stretches as far as I can see.

  “There,” North directs with a grunt, and I steer the horse to a ring of stones too perfectly arranged to be accidental. A forgotten temple, maybe, or a traveler’s shrine. Faded wreaths of flowers blanket the ground; scraps of clothing snap in the wind, held in place by totems of various saints. All meager offerings from pilgrims preparing to wind through the mountains, or grateful tokens of thanks to have arrived on the other side still alive.

  North dismounts, long legs tangling in the saddle. Once on the ground, he bends into me, breathing hard, irregular, holding his infected hand stiffly away from his body—away from mine. Wrapping an arm around his waist, I brace my legs, struggling to bear his weight against my own, desperate to be useful. Are you North’s apprentice?

  A week ago, all I wanted was my sister. But my insatiable heart has tasted an impossibility and now I want this, I want him, I want more, so badly it hurts every bone of my body.

  But North doesn’t exist anymore.

  The Burn is a graveyard beyond the shrine, a battlefield. The remnants of a village lie just beyond its edge, a collection of stone structures and hollow trees worn smooth as glass by years of fire and wind. Nothing could possibly live beyond the gold line on the ground, but the Burn somehow breathes, dunes of scorched earth that drift and eddy and throw plumes of ash into the air. There’s an untamed, tragic beauty to the way the world dies.

  “My mother knew it was coming,” North says softly. “She saw Merlock begin to unravel during the war.” A sad, fleeting smile crosses his face. “Dalliances in the court were allowed, but after the Fire Wars, bastards were put to death at birth to prevent diluted blood from ever claiming the throne. So she never told him she was pregnant. She ran from Prevast and took a life that would hide a fatherless son, but she never let me forget who I was. A warning against what happens when ambition turns to greed. When compassion turns to complacency.”

  Straightening, North steps out of my hold. “Don’t—don’t follow me,” he says.

  I watch him go reluctantly, tensed as if to catch him should he fall. But he walks steady, certain, wavering in place before he drops to his knees and faces his father’s legacy.

  “Avinea,” I hear him say, but I don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse or maybe a promise of what’s still to come.

  Bending forward, North flattens both palms to the earth, as though he intends to pray. Then pain ripples through his body and he screams as he excises the poison inside him directly into the ground. I twist away from the heat of it, squinting through my tears to watch the infection sliding out of his skin. The moss beneath his hands turns yellow to brown to brittle to dust as a gold red ribbon curves outward, producing a toxic cloud of yellow smoke.

  A new pocket of the Burn.

  North tries to stand and almost collapses. Rushing forward, I lead him back to the stones. He leans against them with a breath of relief, sliding down until his legs are spread ahead of him, his hands loose at his sides. Swollen, red, but clean.

  Beautiful.

  Humid wind ruffles his hair; sunlight leaks through the storm clouds and picks out threads of raven blue and hints of gray in the stubble on his chin.

  He’s too young to be this old.

  “I’ll find you some water,” I say.

  North shakes his head, eyes closed. “Too close to the Burn,” he murmurs. “Not safe to drink.”

  I stare at him, biting the inside of my cheek. We’re both already poisoned, I want to say. What difference does it make? Instead, I swallow my complaints; we can’t spare the energy to argue. Exhaustion carves lines across his face and there’s a hard edge of finality to the set of his jaw. A small bruise, more red than yellow, stains his neck where Solch broke skin with his needle.

  He sees me staring and winces, touching the wound. “Bad?”

  “I’ve seen worse,” I say, forcing a smile as I demonstrate my own bruised forearm.

  “You win,” he agrees, closing his eyes again, swallowing hard enough his throat wobbles.

  How do I comfort him? Cadence drank hot water with sugar. Thaelan wanted the stars. What does North want? What would he need?

  An ounce of your strength.

  Anxious, I stand, scanning the horizon. The road curls out of sight, leading northeast; to the south, it cuts back through the mountains. A flash of blue between the green catches my eye, dull against the vibrant hillocks and stones around us, and I stand, straining to see.

  The wagon. My breath catches, part relief and part fear: They should have gotten further than that.

  Baedan.

  Out of habit, I touch the spell around my wrist but there are no new aches, no new wounds, nothing to indicate that Bryn has been harmed in any way.

  “I can see the wagon,” I say, resisting the urge to sweep a stray hair off North’s forehead—the urge to touch him any way I can. “It looks abandoned. Can I trust you alone while I make sure it’s safe?”

  North cracks one bleary eye open and gives me a weak half smile. “Now you’re protecting me.”

  I squeeze his arm. “I won’t be gone long.”

  He doesn’t answer, tipping his head back and closing his eyes.

  I jog toward the wagon, slowing on my approach. It sits in a ditch of water, tipped against a rising swell of stone. The front wheel is crushed; the back wheel hangs an inch off the ground.

  Holding Kellig’s knife in one hand, I edge closer to the open door. Other than the broken wheel and the damage from the shadow crows, there doesn’t appear to be any outward sign of attack or forced entry.

  Maybe it was just an accident, I tell myself, a rock in the
road that Tobek couldn’t avoid—that North’s magic couldn’t prevent. I hold on to that hope as I reach the doorway, squinting through the darkness inside. “Tobek?” I call, soft and cautious. “Bryn?”

  Or maybe it’s Bryn playing tricks again. Maybe Baedan found them and Bryn exploited the opportunity. But what could Baedan offer her that North didn’t already agree to give?

  Something shifts, slow and low to the ground. Tensing, I raise the knife as a ball of orange fur hurtles out of the wagon. Darjin. He mewls with pathetic, weak cries of pleasure, winding between my legs before he stretches on his hind quarters, front paws against my leg. Relieved, I crouch to kiss the flat spot between his ears, made braver by his company.

  I call for Bryn and Tobek again, wait a beat, then step into the stairwell. My heart breaks at what I see: fallen books and broken glass and everything shattered, every inch of North’s home disrupted. Even the stove grate hangs open, spilling ash and charred wood across the tangle of bedsheets from the mattress half torn from the bottom bed.

  The first casualty of war.

  After coaxing a fire in the stove, I lead North and the horse back to the wagon. He struggles up the stairwell and collapses halfway, too exhausted to go any further. “The wards are still in place,” he says breathlessly. “They left on their own accord.”

  I don’t disagree, but he follows my gaze to Darjin, grooming himself in a heap of tea leaves. Tobek would never leave Darjin behind.

  I pull the mattress off the bottom bunk and guide North to lie down before filling a bucket with water from the thin stream running along the bottom of the ditch. By the time I return, North has shrugged out of his coat and is on his back, squinting at the stars painted on the ceiling.

  “I don’t understand what this means,” he says, still slurring as he lifts his hands, mimicking the way I often hold mine.

  I fill the samovar with water to boil before stretching out a soft pain in my lower back. “It was the view from home,” I say. “We could hold the entire sky between our hands.”