by Lisa Henry
“Oh shit.”
Dark blood spread out underneath Kallick’s head. His blank eyes stared up at Min.
Min pressed a hand against the man’s chest to push himself away. He felt no heartbeat under his palm. The hedgewitch was dead. Min had killed him.
Shit shit shit.
Kallick blinked slowly. “Who are you?” he asked again tonelessly.
Min’s blood ran cold.
YEARS AGO now.
The man in the street.
Min had watched in horror, unable to tear his gaze away as the man in the mage’s thrall shuffled and jerked. The mage had directed every muscle, every sinew with a lazy flick of his fingers, smiling thinly. And the man had danced and danced and danced, mouth open in a silent scream, and Min couldn’t look away.
THE HOUSE was lit with the strange green light still, like something eldritch, liminal, out of a dream or a slow-creeping nightmare.
Min hurried up the stairs, his boots breaking lines of rowan ash as he moved, sending tiny clouds into the air. His skin prickled as he passed indecipherable sigils painted on the walls. He threw open the door of the first room he came to and found it in darkness. The second too. The third, though… in the third room—it appeared to be both a workroom and a bedroom, with the window that opened onto the square—a boy fumbled with a knife, eyes wide.
The stairs creaked as Kallick climbed them slowly.
“Well now,” Min said. “You must be Kazimir.”
“Wh-what—” The boy edged around the table, putting it between them. His shoulders rose and fell as he breathed heavily, quickly, like a frightened little rabbit. It made Min want to laugh.
Oh, but this boy. This contradictory, impossible boy. Min liked the look of this boy. He was pale, whip-thin, and the very air around him seemed to thrum with energy as though the boy’s body was too paltry a vessel to contain it and it overflowed. He had unruly dark hair and dark eyes too—as stark as mud thrown up from the wheels of a cart onto a whitewashed wall. The boy was not conventionally handsome, but when had Min ever enjoyed the conventional? His snub nose and wide mouth might not catch the eye of some artist chasing beauty worthy of worship, although his cheekbones, Min allowed, would be the envy of any sculptor. The boy reminded him of nothing more than a half-grown pup, all awkward long limbs, and Min couldn’t decide if he would grow into devastating beauty or into ugliness. Min found both equally appealing.
Of course, he’d always had problems differentiating between the people he’d like to punch and the people he’d like to fuck. They were so often the same people.
“How did you get in here?” the boy asked, one shaking hand holding the knife and the other twisting the fabric of his nightshirt into a knot.
“Through the front door,” Min told him, quirking his mouth in a sharp smile. “How else?”
The boy’s eyebrows shot up. “But… but the….”
The boy looked down at his hands for a moment, as though doubting them. He was charmingly discombobulated.
Min softened his smile into a sympathetic pout. “The wards? The runes? The little lines of rowan ash? Truly prentice-level stuff. I’m disappointed, actually.”
The boy took a step back. “The… the barrier!”
“The barrier?” Min asked. “Shiny blue burst of light that keeps the fae from your door? I walked right through that. Sorry.”
He watched with interest as the realization dawned.
The boy gasped. “You’re a void!”
“And you,” Min said as Kallick lurched into the room behind him, “are a fucking necromancer.”
The boy took another step back, coming up hard against a shelf. Something rattled and clinked. A pestle rolled in its mortar, stone scraping against stone.
A necromancer.
It seemed incredible. Impossible. And yet here they were.
Min opened his satchel and pulled out one of the shackles. “Drop the knife.”
The boy clenched it tighter reflexively.
Min moved quickly forward.
Subduing the boy was easy enough. He might have had the power to animate the dead, but he couldn’t fight to save his life. Min ended up kneeling on his back, with one of the boy’s arms twisted and held easily. The knife lay discarded well out of reach of the boy’s free arm, although his long fingers strained toward it. The boy squirmed and bucked as Min closed the first of the shackles around his wrist.
“No!” the boy exclaimed. “Kallick!”
Min turned his head to watch.
Kallick collapsed slowly like an empty sack as the boy’s Gift was bound by iron. His mouth opened and closed once, and then fell open again. His skin seemed to slough off him like a snake’s, now that the will to hold it in place had been severed. There was no blood now, no gore. Just a dry, brittle husk that crumbled into nothing. A dandelion seed head torn apart by a puff of air. Kallick’s outstretched hand fell away like sand. His green kirtle folded in on itself and floated to the floor in a cloud of dust. For a moment there was no more movement, and then, with a rattle, Kallick’s yellow skull rolled out from under the hem of the kirtle.
Ew.
“Exactly how long has he been dead?” Min asked, unable to keep the surprise from his voice.
“I was ten,” Kazimir said, his voice ragged and his eyes shining with tears.
Incredible.
Impossible.
By all rights the boy should have been at least unconscious on the floor with the effort it took to animate Kallick. To have him walk around the town and buy his bread and milk. To have him speak and respond to questions. Min had never even heard of such a thing, and the tales of necromancers’ magic were full of exaggeration and horror. He had once heard the story of a man from a powerful House who had been murdered long ago, and the king at the time had ordered his necromancer to find the identity of the killer. It had taken weeks for the necromancer to prepare. Weeks, and the blood sacrifice of a score of beasts. The effort to compel the dead man to speak the name of his murderer had almost killed the necromancer. Which in Min’s opinion was a fitting end to a man with a Gift so grotesque.
“And you didn’t even give him the honor of a burial,” Min commented, twisting the boy’s other arm back to shackle that wrist as well. “Don’t tell me you’re upset. Friends don’t reanimate friends’ corpses.”
Kazimir turned his face away, only flinching slightly when Min fastened the collar around his pale throat. He didn’t attach the chains. Without his Gift, the boy was no physical threat.
“There,” Min said, climbing off him at last. “That should keep you out of trouble.”
“Why do you even bother?” the boy muttered. “I can’t do anything to you.”
To be born without a Gift wasn’t uncommon. Most people couldn’t do any magic. But only a very few were immune to it. And Min kept the fact he was a void very much to himself. He preferred his clients to think he was clever enough to work his way around the trickiest magic, not walk straight through it like it wasn’t even there. The bastards would probably try and argue his fee down to a pittance if they knew the truth. And, given the scarcity of voids, Min knew it would attract a lot of attention he didn’t need if it became common knowledge. Possibly even attention from the Iron Tower.
“And I wasn’t born yesterday,” Min told the boy, standing again. “You can’t curse me or put me in your thrall, but, oh look! A storm! A flood! A rampaging herd of wild boars! Let’s not pretend you’re not clever enough to find a way to kill me indirectly.”
Kazimir’s mouth pressed into a thin, stubborn line.
“Come on, then,” Min told him. “Up!”
Kazimir climbed slowly to his feet. He raised his hand to his throat, and iron clanked softly against iron. “This hurts.”
“You get used to it, trust me.”
“It’s heavy.”
“Don’t worry about that, sweeting,” Min said, relishing the flash of anger in the boy’s eyes at the endearment. “It’s the horse that
has to carry you.”
“Carry me where?”
“Back into the loving bosom of your family,” Min said. “Where else?”
“No! I can….” Kazimir looked around desperately. “I can pay you!”
Min followed his gaze. “In what? Dust and bones?”
“In… in magic!”
Min huffed out a laugh. “Nice try, but the iron stays on.” Even if he trusted the boy’s word—which he didn’t—there was no way for a curse like Harry’s to be removed except by the sorcerer who’d placed it on him. It wasn’t a question of power. It was a question of blood. The sorcerer had used his own blood to bind the curse, and only his blood would remove it. “Now get dressed.”
Kazimir jutted out his chin. “No!”
“Then wear your nightshirt all the way to Amberwich. I really don’t care either way. This leverage you think you have here? It doesn’t exist.”
Kazimir’s lower lip trembled, and he turned away quickly. He pulled open the drawer of a dresser and began to drag clothes out. He sniffled.
Min glanced out the window. The darkness was softening slowly into the gray light of predawn. “Come on, kid. Hurry it up.”
Kazimir stepped into his breeches first, pulling them up under his nightshirt in a display of modesty Min found almost charming. Of course, Min had been born and raised in a brothel, and modesty had never been one of the values instilled in him at a young age. Kazimir even kept his back turned to Min while he pulled on an undershirt. When he turned around again, his face was set. He hesitated for a moment before picking up a green kirtle and tugging it over his head. His fingers trembled with the laces. The kirtle was cut short in the style of a prentice, more like a shirt than a robe.
Min raised his eyebrows. “Shouldn’t you be wearing something in black?”
Kazimir ignored the barbed question and knelt down to pull his boots on.
“That everything?” Min asked.
Kazimir picked up a somewhat threadbare cloak from the end of the bed and jerked his head in a nod.
“Let’s go, then,” Min said and gestured toward the door. “You first.”
He stepped over Kallick Sparrow’s dusty remains and followed the boy down the stairs.
MIN KEPT a hand on Kazimir’s shoulder as they stepped outside into the square, half expecting the boy to be stupid enough to try to run. There was no mist today. It was still dark enough that there were no people around, but the dawn was beginning to paint swathes of pink and orange in the sky. The last of the stars were fading into nothing. Min was pleased to see Harry was waiting outside the Three Fishes, his hood pulled up and the reins of the horses looped in his hand.
“Please don’t,” Kazimir said, his voice faltering.
Min tightened his grip on his shoulder. “Come on.”
He wondered if the boy had ever used the word please in his life before tonight. Min had certainly never known the Gifted to be generous with it. And not forgetting Kazimir was a Sabadine as well, which just added a whole other layer of assholery to that entitled equation.
Harry led the horses toward them. His face was pinched with nervous relief. “Min! You did it!”
“Did you ever doubt me, kid?”
“Every second of every day,” Harry said with a grin that belied that.
“Harry, this is Kazimir Sabadine. Kazimir, Harry Decourcey. My nephew. He doesn’t look like much, but he’s scrappy and can fight like a cornered tomcat.”
Harry’s grin widened.
“Stone,” Kazimir said.
“What?”
“My name is Kazimir Stone.”
The boy had traded in his family name for a hedgewitch name.
“My apologies,” Min lied. “Harry, this is Kazimir Stone.”
He might as well enjoy the name while he still had it.
Min mounted his horse with what he felt was more precision than the first time he’d tried it, and then reached a hand down for Kazimir.
“You only have two horses,” the boy said blankly.
“So much for your plans to ride off alone,” Min told him.
Kazimir grimaced and took Min’s hand. With the aid of a leg up from Harry, he seated himself in front of Min, hunching forward in what Min assumed was a useless attempt to keep some space between them.
“Keep wriggling like that, sweeting, and you might not like what happens,” Min told him.
Kazimir froze.
Harry snorted and swung himself into the saddle with more grace than Min had managed.
“Ready?” Min asked, sliding an arm around Kazimir’s waist.
Harry nodded. “Let’s get the hell out of this shithole.”
Min smirked and ignored the way Kazimir’s body shuddered with silent sobs as they left Anhaga behind. Above them, gulls circled the lightening sky, crying mournfully to one another as the dawn slowly bloomed.
Chapter 6
THE DAY grew steadily brighter as the light chased down dawn’s extravagant tapestry and bleached the colors out of it. Min’s back grew warm. He felt sun-dozed and indolent, like a cat stretched out on a sunny stair lording over his dominion. And why not? He’d captured a necromancer, a task that even a sorcerer would struggle to complete without being killed in the process. The Gifted. So damned smug about their magic and their power, so damned arrogant, and they were as weak as kittens where Min was concerned. Kazimir Stone could certainly vouch for that.
Against the pale nape of Kazimir’s bowed neck, his scruffy dark hair curled around the iron collar. Min resisted the urge to brush it away.
They stopped after an hour or two to stretch their legs and ease their aching muscles, in a place where the road dipped and forded a shallow, clear stream. Min swung awkwardly down to the ground—more like sliding off the back of the horse than anything that could be classified as an actual dismount—and then held his cupped hands out for Kazimir to step into.
“I don’t need your help,” Kazimir said.
Min was almost disappointed when he didn’t stumble and break his neck.
“Don’t wander too far,” Min instructed him. “If I have to hunt you down, I’ll be very annoyed.”
Kazimir shot him a baleful look and slunk behind a tree. It didn’t offer enough cover for Min to worry the boy was trying to run. He glanced at Harry as Harry walked toward him, leading his horse.
“Doesn’t look like much, does he?”
“A milksop,” Harry agreed, stretching.
Min smirked. “And a necromancer.”
Harry’s eyes widened. “Are you serious?”
“Deadly serious.”
Harry narrowed his eyes. “That’s a terrible fucking joke.”
“Shut up,” Min said. “It’s true, by the way. He’s a necromancer.”
Harry looked dubiously at Kazimir as he reappeared, adjusting his pants.
“The old hedgewitch?” Min shuddered. “Came apart like a dry husk the second I got the iron on the boy.”
“Fuck,” Harry said mildly, raising his eyebrows. “But he’s safe now, right?”
Kazimir shuffled over toward the stream. He crouched down and dipped his hands into the water. The iron gleamed dully on his wrists. Min remembered the weight of it well.
“He’s safe,” he confirmed.
Harry led the horses over to the stream to drink, and Kazimir watched him warily for a moment before moving to the shade of a wind-twisted tree and staring unhappily into the water. In the daylight he looked pale and pinched, like some barefoot winter’s urchin begging alms. Min didn’t fall for it from the big-eyed brats who hung around the city shrines, and he wasn’t going to fall for it with Kazimir Stone either.
He walked over to the horses, damp earth and pebbles crunching under his boots. He opened Harry’s saddlebag, trusting him to have them as well stocked as any larder. He pulled out a wrapped package and was pleased to discover it was a stack of small barley cakes.
“Help yourself,” Harry said, rolling his eyes.
Min didn’t bother responding. Please. As though it hadn’t been Min’s money that had paid for the barley cakes in the first place. Well, Robert Sabadine’s money, but Min felt that was splitting hairs. He bit into a barley cake and crumbs rained down.
Kazimir looked toward him.
“Hungry?”
Kazimir shook his head and looked away again.
Min finished half his barley cake before Harry claimed the other half. Min took the opportunity to cuff Harry gently around the head. Harry pressed close for a second, closer than usual. Harry was made of narrow gazes and sharp edges, all angles and points cultivated to belie the gentle cast of his features. He didn’t like to show his vulnerability to anyone. Even Min rarely saw it. But Harry had been terrified these past few days. Too terrified to handle things with his usual brash confidence, at least. Min couldn’t blame him for that.
Harry flashed him a quick smile before he busied himself with the horses again.
Min stretched, rolling his shoulders to ease the twinge in his back. He caught Kazimir’s gaze and motioned him over. “Time to go, then, necromancer.”
It took a moment of jostling to get Kazimir seated in front of him again and the horses pointed in the right direction. Harry took the lead, looking more at ease on horseback with every passing mile. Min’s horse, fortunately, was placid enough to fall into line behind Harry’s.
“Your nephew has a curse mark,” Kazimir said once they were underway, his voice low.
“Thanks to your family, yes.”
Kazimir turned his head slightly. The sunlight caught in his lashes and sparkled like raindrops. Like tears. “That’s the reward, then. His life.”
“That’s the reward,” Min agreed.
Kazimir made a small noise that sounded something like defeat, or at least like resignation. He bowed his head and didn’t flinch away when Min circled an arm around his waist.
Good, then.
He understood the stakes.
He understood that it didn’t matter what he offered. There was no way Min would ever choose him over Harry.