Anhaga

by Lisa Henry

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  About the Author

  By Lisa Henry

  Visit Dreamspinner Press

  Copyright

  Anhaga

  By Lisa Henry

  Aramin Decourcey—Min to his few friends—might be the best thief in Amberwich, and he might have a secret that helps him survive the cutthroat world of aristocratic families and their powerful magic users, but he does have one weakness: his affection for his adopted nephew, Harry.

  When the formidable Sabadine family curses Harry, Min must accept a suicide mission to save his life: retrieve Kazimir Stone, a low-level Sabadine hedgewitch who refuses to come home after completing his apprenticeship… and who is in Anhaga, a seaside village under the control of the terrifying Hidden Lord of the fae. If that wasn’t enough, Kaz is far from the simple hedgewitch he seems.

  With the Sabadines on one side and the fae on the other, Min doesn’t have time to deal with a crisis of conscience—or the growing attraction between him and Kaz. He needs to get Kaz back to Amberwich and get Harry’s curse lifted before it kills him. Saving Harry means handing Kaz over to his ruthless family. Saving Kaz means letting Harry die. Min might pride himself on his cleverness, but he can’t see his way out of this one.

  The Hidden Lord might see that he never gets the choice.

  To Kate, who read my terrible fantasy novel when I was thirteen. I hope this one is better.

  Chapter 1

  THE DAWN limped in like some boot-scraping bastard, slow and lame, and dragging the sunlight behind it like a crippled limb. Min groaned and rolled over to put his back to the window.

  “You’re lying on my hair,” someone told him.

  Min peeled his eyes open. “Ah,” he said.

  He had a vague recollection of this woman. Vague enough that he remembered sharing a smile and more than one drink with her last night. And sadly vague enough that he doubted he had acquitted himself well. The woman’s arched eyebrows told him as much.

  He shifted slightly and let the woman tug her red tresses back to herself.

  “Aiode,” she told him, holding out a pale, freckled hand. She kept her other arm clasped across her chest, keeping the blanket from slipping down and revealing what Min was sure was a lovely bosom. “Aiode Nettle. Since I’m sure you don’t remember.”

  The surname surprised him a little. Min wasn’t in the habit of bedding the Gifted, even though with the name Aiode had chosen she probably ranked no higher than a hedgewitch. Clearly he’d made an exception because Aiode, even with her tangled bed-hair and lines on her face from the pillow, was beautiful.

  “Aramin Decourcey,” he said, shaking her hand.

  “That’s quite a mouthful,” she said.

  “I’m more than a mouthful, sweeting.”

  “So you promised last night,” Aiode told him. She raised her eyebrows again. “Sadly, you did not measure up.”

  Min was too hungover to be truly offended. He rolled back over and squinted at the shaft of light stabbing through the sagging shutters and then, figuring the day was already ruined, sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. His soles met the gritty floor.

  The garret room was cheap, its only recommendation. That, and the view over the back alley behind the Footbridge Tavern. Min did most of his work out of the tavern. His work wasn’t exactly reputable, and Min liked to know if it tried to follow him home like a tick-ridden stray. The view of the alley afforded him at least a little forewarning.

  Min blinked around the room.

  Pants. Pants pants pants.

  He wasn’t much of a gentleman, not in any sense of the word, but pants were probably in order. He spotted his breeches in a rumpled heap over by the damned window and levered himself off the bed to go and fetch them. He picked them up, shook them out, and stepped into them. When he turned back to face Aiode, she had the look of a woman who had very much enjoyed the view but wasn’t going to puff up his pride by mentioning it.

  Please. Min knew his ass was a thing of beauty.

  He smirked at Aiode, then bent down to pick up his shirt. He tugged it over his head. “Well, I’d invite you to stay and break your fast with me, but….” He gestured around the room. “As you can see, I have neither a kitchen nor food.”

  “Even if you had both, I’m sure I would decline,” Aiode said, casting a critical gaze at the grimy floor, the spider’s web hanging in a corner of the water-stained ceiling, and the collection of empty bottles that littered the floor. “I’m expected back at the shrine in any case.”

  The closest shrine Min knew of was the Shrine of the Sacred Spring. Aiode was definitely a hedgewitch, then. Of all the Gifted, hedgewitches were the least objectionable. Their powers were generally benign and grounded in nature. They helped to ensure good harvests and rains, and although most were based in the city, they regularly traveled the countryside to offer their service to the kingdom’s farmers. Hedgewitches were generally looked down upon by the rest of the Gifted, which Min felt was a point in their favor. The single point in their favor.

  “Well then,” Min said.

  “Well,” Aiode echoed, narrowing her eyes slightly.

  Min feigned interest in a book Harry had left lying around. Harry and his damn books. The boy was too curious for his own good. Besides, books were expensive. Although Harry had undoubtedly stolen the one Min picked up and leafed through. Min had taught him well.

  Behind him, Min heard the rustle of fabric. He was tempted to turn around and at least give himself a good look at what he’d missed out on last night, but Aiode gave the impression of a woman well versed in testicle kicking, and Min didn’t want to provoke her. Also, she was Gifted. True, a hedgewitch probably couldn’t do much but try to curse him with a few warts here and there, but there was no point in risking it. Not the warts, of course, but exposure.

  Min had a gift of his own as it happened, and he preferred to keep it secret.

  “I shall see myself out,” Aiode announced.

  Min set Harry’s book on the rickety table and turned around again. Aiode was wearing a plain green kirtle over a white smock. How disappointingly modest.

  “I’ll walk with you to the street,” Min offered. “Some of my neighbors, alas, are not at all gentlemanly.”

  Aiode raised her eyebrows. “Do you think me incapable of protecting myself?”

  Min flashed her a smile. “Not at all. In fact, I was relying on you to protect me.”

  Aiode laughed, the sound genuine and boisterous, and, for the first time since he’d fumbled into wakefulness, Min realized why he’d invited her back to his bed the night before. He’d always fallen hardest for women who didn’t put up with any bullshit. And Aiode’s bullshit detector, Min guessed, was as finely tuned as his own.

  Clearly he needed to never see her again.

  MIN PARTED with Aiode in the street behind his lodging house and headed down the alley to the tavern. The Footbridge Tavern attracted a particular type of clientele: slummers. Spoiled sons of wealthy families who descended on the place after dark, eager to brush shoulders—and other body parts—with the unwashed, the uncouth, and the otherwise undesirable. And why not? The beer and the prostitutes were cheap, and hardly an h
our went by without a fight breaking out somewhere. The slummers came for blood as much as anything else, too young and stupid to care it might be theirs.

  In the day, the place was usually quiet. This morning, apart from the boy spreading fresh straw over the worst of last night’s spills—beer, blood, piss, or a combination of all three—and a few of the regulars who possibly lived in the taproom, the Footbridge was almost empty.

  Min sat at his usual table in the corner and watched a fat spider twirl and spin on a length of shimmering silk.

  Freya, the wife of the owner, or at least one of Swann’s wives—Min had never been brave enough to ask—approached him. She had her sleeves rolled up to show off her beefy forearms. Not a word of a lie, Min had once seen Freya arm wrestle a blacksmith into submission.

  “Porridge or porridge?” she grunted.

  “Porridge it is,” Min said agreeably and set a coin down on the table. “Have you seen Harry?”

  Harry was a skinny sixteen-year-old kid with gray eyes and a shock of untamable blond hair as soft and wild as dandelion fluff. He was sharp and clever, prone to going missing for long hours at a time, and could usually be found headfirst under the skirts of whichever young woman had caught his fancy that week. He had all the gentlemanly manner of a sewer rat, and it was a source of eternal mystery to Min how he somehow managed to stay on the right side of every girl he loved and left. The charms of youth, perhaps. Harry certainly didn’t have any other charms he could lay claim to. Or, mostly likely, the young women he pursued were so used to being bought and sold in dreary transactions that they treated Harry’s ardor as something of a happy diversion. They were flattered, bedded, and parted as friends.

  “Not today,” Freya said.

  “Have you checked under all the beds?”

  Freya grunted. It was as close to a laugh as Min had ever wrangled from her. She swept the coin off the table into her cupped hand and headed for the kitchen.

  Min watched the spider for a little longer and wondered if the day would bring him anything more interesting than porridge.

  As it happened, Min had only just finished his breakfast when a young man entered the tavern. The man looked around apprehensively before apparently deciding that Min looked like the least threatening option and approaching his corner table. He was thin and pale, with soft curls that spilled down to his shoulders. His clothes were plain but clean and well-made. He had a pinched look to his narrow features that gave him an air of a slightly dissatisfied weasel and would probably be the cause of at least one black eye by the time he left the tavern. It was that kind of place.

  He looked hesitantly at Min and lowered his voice so much that when he spoke, Min could hardly hear him. “Are you Aramin Decourcey?”

  Min used his foot to shove the other stool out from under the table. “That’s me.”

  The young man sat, pulling the edges of his cloak around him as though it would offer him some sort of protection. “Ludin gave me your name. He says that….” And here the young man trailed off.

  “He told you I’m the best thief in the eastern quarter?” Min asked. “That I’m a filthy son of a whore with lower morals than a sewer rat, but I’ve never yet double-crossed a customer?”

  “Y-yes. Something like that.” The young man flushed. Of course the poor fellow had no idea how to parse that as a compliment, but it was high praise indeed from Ludin.

  “Well then,” Min said. “How can I be of service to you?”

  The young man stuttered and stammered for a moment, and Min tried desperately not to roll his eyes. He had rent to pay, and money, like always, seemed to trickle through his hands as easily as sand. He couldn’t afford, literally, to alienate a paying customer.

  Whatever the bright little popinjay was going to say, however, was lost in the sudden commotion when, in a flurry of skinny limbs, a boy burst through the tavern door. It was Auric, or Aulus, or whatever the little grub’s name was. He had gap teeth, smelled like he’d never seen a bath in his short, miserable life, and for some reason thought that he was on first-name terms with Min.

  “Min!” the boy exclaimed, gasping for breath. “Min! Come quick! The Sabadines are going to kill Harry!”

  And then he burst into tears.

  THE SABADINES were an old family. A rich family. A family that wielded a lot of political influence in Amberwich. Edward Sabadine, the entire world knew, sat at the elbow of the king. And he was not the sort of man, Min suspected, who saw the funny side of finding a common guttersnipe hiding under his granddaughter’s blankets. In fact, he looked apoplectic when Min arrived at the Sabadine house and was shown into the hall.

  “Aramin Decourcey, at your service,” Min said and inclined his head at Sabadine.

  He was an old man, but not a frail one. He had sharp features, a narrow beak of a nose and a thin mouth. He was balding, but not vain enough to try to disguise the fact by wearing a hat. Min knew better than to underestimate a man of his status just because his advanced age meant his knees creaked when he walked. This man was dangerous.

  Edward’s gaze flicked over Min quickly, as fast as the tongue of a serpent. Then, obviously judging Min to be no threat whatsoever, he waved his servants away with a liver-spotted hand.

  Min watched them go out of the corner of his eye. It seemed as though they took all of the day’s warmth with them. Only one remained in the room, staring firmly at the floor.

  Min gazed at the wall for a moment.

  The Sabadines, like all the great families, made their money on the land and spent it in the city. Somewhere far beyond the protection of the city walls, men and women labored in the field so that Edward Sabadine could keep his coffers full. Min doubted the man had stepped foot on his own lands in years. Despite the fact that the hall was decorated with friezes of pastoral scenes, Sabadine was as much a farmer as Min was a gentleman. At least Min didn’t pretend to be better than he was.

  Min ran a hand over his well-worn jacket.

  Well, how could he?

  He might have been a king in the eastern quarter, but here, in the shadow of the Iron Tower, he was a beggar.

  “I know your reputation,” Sabadine said after a while, his voice gruff.

  Min jolted a little in surprise. Best thief in the eastern quarter? Certainly. Uncannily lucky and devilishly handsome? Of course. But that a man of Edward Sabadine’s station had heard of him? The chill that ran down his spine was not a pleasant one. The problem with being the big fish in the little pond was that sooner or later some sharp-eyed hawk would spot him.

  “And I know yours, sir,” Min replied.

  That won a humorless smirk from the old man. “Let’s talk about the—” His mouth curved down again. “The boy.”

  “My nephew,” Min said, although Harry wasn’t. It had always just seemed a convenient label to use. Min would never claim Harry as anything closer, because Min was way too young to have fathered a sixteen-year-old boy, thank you very much. Also, nephew seemed to imply the perfect distance between them. Familial, but distant enough that Min could deny all accountability when it came to Harry’s many faults.

  “Your nephew has dishonored my granddaughter’s name,” Sabadine growled.

  And probably given her the ride of her life, Min thought.

  “I assure you, sir, that no dishonor was meant.” Min kept his tone respectful, since Edward Sabadine would be well within his rights to demand blood. Harry’s and Min’s both, probably.

  Sabadine snorted and folded his hands behind his back. “He has offered to marry her.”

  Min tried not to wince. Of course he had. Because he was an idiot and had probably read enough of his silly books to actually think that a guttersnipe could win a lady with nothing to offer her but his heart. Because he was sixteen and had no fucking common sense at all. Because he was Harry.

  “Talys may be the mere daughter of my youngest son,” Sabadine said, “but she is still a Sabadine. I could marry her to any younger son of a House or wealthy merch
ant in the city, and he would be honored to take her. Your brat has nothing to recommend him.”

  Min inclined his head.

  “Except,” Sabadine continued, “that I know your reputation.”

  Wariness and relief warred in Min’s gut. “Sir?”

  “I have a job for you, Decourcey,” Sabadine said, eyes narrowing. “You will accept it.”

  Min bridled a little but inclined his head again. “And my payment?”

  “If you do your job,” Sabadine said with a grin like a death’s head, “then the boy lives.”

  Min opened his mouth to speak, and at that moment a scream rang out from somewhere nearby in the house. It was high-pitched and filled with pain, and Min’s stomach twisted.

  Harry!

  Sabadine huffed. “Calm yourself. He’s not dead yet.”

  Min fought the urge to grab the old viper by the throat and choke the life out of him.

  “Come with me,” Sabadine said. “There are matters we must discuss.”

  He swept out of the room, the skinny little servant scuttling in front of him to open the door. Min followed him, his heart in his throat.

  HARRY.

  Fucking Harry.

  Min should have left the little troublemaker where he’d found him five years ago, but even now he didn’t fool himself that it had ever been an option.

  “Want to get out of here, kid?” Min had asked him.

  And Harry had wiped his eyes, squared his shoulders, and followed Min through the window and into a new life. Not a comfortable life. Not a safe life. But better by far than the miserable one he would have lived if Min had ignored him. And Min had never seen him cry since.

  So perhaps Harry was more trouble than he was worth, and perhaps there were times when Min could gleefully strangle him, but there was always a part of Min that would forever see Harry as he’d appeared that first night: eleven years old, small for his age, with tears running down his pale face. None of Harry’s teenage brashness would ever erase that image.