Irreor clenched his forearms to stop from reaching across the rickety, cracked table and hugging her. She'd never let him this close. He'd wanted it, imagined it. For so long, he'd craved it.
He forced his voice calm as he said, "I need to feed your demon."
A long moment passed. An eternity.
Finally, she nodded.
That line of water dribbled in, crooked and dirty, and he told her about the maidens of Vestel, of their love, of their bitterness, of their manipulations, of how they brought the village to its knees.
Chapter Thirty-Four
"Are you sure we should bring Gell here?" Bran asked. "It seems a rather large risk."
"He's a risk," Irreor admitted, "but so is everyone. And he's only a risk if we leave. Pernik and his men have been off standard rotation too long."
Kipra, Bran and Irreor sat on the makeshift bench constructed from the warehouse's timbers. Shards of wood speared their leggings, and they shifted in an attempt to relieve the pressure. Rain drizzled against the high windows, filling the room with a bleak, gloomy grayness. In front of them, a rough table held plans and maps of the city, and beside the table, a cauldron of cold broth awaited hungry mouths.
Irreor's men had swept the eastern, southern, and western districts, but found nothing—no Gell, no Crest, and no Rellik. Hours spent and hours wasted. Farren's people remained tightlipped, obviously afraid of what Crest would do if they talked.
It wasn't without reason.
Last night, as Irreor talked to Kipra, a councilman's corpse had been found on the steps of the Council House, his robes bundled beside his naked body, his fingers broken, his mouth agape in an unending scream.
Irreor sighed, casting his gaze over the warehouse. Five men lay upon their cots, eyes cast skyward, fingers meshed above their chests. They'd spent the entire day looking for clues, digging through Farren's slums, talking to tavern keepers and whores and merchants.
They'd returned empty-handed.
Bran reached beneath himself to yank a shard of wood free. "But Gell could just as easily return to Crest and tell him—"
"Trust me, Bran. For once in your life, just trust me."
"I do."
Kipra snorted.
After last night, he'd not found much opportunity to talk to her. She hadn't replied to his story then, nor since then. She kept her face stony and unreadable, but somewhere deep in her eyes it seemed as if she'd softened. At least a little.
Perhaps.
Still, she rarely missed an opportunity to scoff at him.
The far door creaked open and Pernik, followed by Gell and two other men, stepped inside. Irreor's breath caught as they shuffled forward. The gateman's uniform dripped from shoulder to waist, and his greasy brown hair hung below his ears. A week's worth of beard sprouted from his chin, splotchy in the dimness.
Pernik moved from cot to cot, nudging his men awake, and they formed a half circle at the gateman's back. This was what they'd waited for. Gell would tell them where Crest hid, how Nekaron Rellik commanded the trade, why councilmen were found naked and murdered.
Two men placed themselves behind the visitor, hands to hilts.
"Gell," Irreor said. "It's good to see you again."
The gateman attempted a clumsy bow. "Your lordship, I ah, I ain't expected to see you here. I'd have come sooner if I would've known it were you."
"Call him Ark," Pernik said.
Irreor winced at the name. It rolled off the tongue wrong from anyone but Kipra. "We can't announce ourselves to just anyone, can we? That'd be dangerous for us, and them."
"Ah no, I'd guess not. I'm a simple man, true enough, but I'm not an idiot. I ain't leaving here unless you let me, am I?"
"No." Irreor shoved back his chair and rose to his feet. "I requested you because I think I can trust you. So, if you don't change that, well, then neither will I."
Gell dipped his head. "The city's got some mighty hard times here, as yourself must be aware, but I don't understand what I can—"
"Come." Irreor motioned the gateman to the maps, pointing to the southern district. "We know Lerik Benn, the High Seat, owns a house here, but he hasn't been seen for at least a week. Where else would he be?"
Gell stroked his stubbly chin. "He's pulled in real close to Crest, probably so he don't get a knife in his belly. Can't say I blame him."
"So what?" Kipra said.
"I just meant... well, no one wants to stay alone these days. Lerik Benn ain't liking what Crest is doing, but there ain’t much he can do to stop it. So he stays close enough to make Crest think he's loyal."
"Where would Lerik have fled to?" Irreor asked.
"Either he's found himself a stronghold at Jozles Sengin's, or—"
"Who?" Pernik snapped.
"Lerik's daughter married Sengin's eldest son," Gell explained. "After the wedding, the High Seat announced Sengin as the city's lead doctor. Six months ago? A year? No one thought she deserved it, but no one had the strength to say otherwise."
"She was the healer who tended Eenan," Pernik whispered, and his tone grew stronger as he continued. "Her promotion was simply a payoff for letting him die. I didn't know. I would've said something, if I did. Demon-damn! I should've kept a closer eye on these things, but we lost the heart for it after he died."
Kipra glared at the gateman as if he'd killed Eenan Ark himself.
And yet, Irreor couldn't hate this man. Gell hadn't done anything to cause his father's death. Yes, the memory scarred him, but it paled compared to what Abennak promised. This was war, and men fell in battle—sometimes to a blade, sometimes to poison, sometimes to treachery.
It wasn't what his father would've wanted, but men rarely received such things.
"Kipra, leave it," Irreor ordered, then turned to the gateman. "Where's Sengin's house?"
"It's here." Gell pointed to the section of Farren that housed the wealthiest merchants and nobles, an area Irreor's men hadn't sufficiently scouted, as those types of people rarely desired to entertain grimy soldiers.
"Is it guarded?" Pernik asked.
"Aye. Crest has ordered guards at all his folks' places. At least ten in each home. I suspect—"
"It's to keep an eye on his underlings." Irreor placed a blob of blue wax on the map. "Well, let's see if we can give him one or two fewer houses to watch."
"What are you planning?" Bran asked.
"What I promised the first day: death." Irreor frowned at the gateman. "You could just as easily be lying, but you're not. Why?"
"Crest and Lerik tried to make the city right. I ain't going to lie and say I don't think they've done their best, but they failed. We're worse off now than we ever were, and they don't seem to care much for the folk they've used. Something's got to change."
Heads bobbed in acknowledgement, especially amongst Pernik's men who had witnessed the decline of Farren. Irreor ignored them. He concentrated on Crest's gateman, the man who seemingly spoke with such honesty, but jerked quick, nervous glances at the maps and notes, the warehouse walls, the men who surrounded him.
As if memorizing.
Irreor hung his head low. He'd been wrong about the gateman, and what he'd have to do next weighed against his chest like a sack of rocks. "Where does Crest stay, and where does the merchant Nekaron Rellik live?"
"I understand you wanting to find Crest, but why Rellik? Damn merchants can barely pull in a wagon or two."
"He controls the money," Irreor said, uncaring that his answer didn't explain anything. "Tell me where."
"Crest moves between these three houses." Gell pointed them out—two on the northern side, one on the western. He met Irreor's gaze. "I ah, I don't know anything about the merchant, just that he controls imports and exports."
And lies frolicked with lies.
One of Pernik's men shook his head. "Rellik's staying at a house in the west. I found it just two hours ago, and I'll show you where it's at. Wasn't anyone around when I went out that way."
Gel
l gulped. Did he not realize Irreor knew he was Rellik's nephew? If so, he wouldn't have tried to conceal his uncle. But it was too late for that. Trust had been shattered.
"Kill him," Irreor whispered.
Gell stumbled back. "I told you what you wanted to know!"
Pernik's men twisted Gell's arms behind his back. Another man, lips pressed together in a grim scowl, tugged his dagger from its sheath. They must've understood what was at stake. They'd do what was needed.
"Irreor!" Bran leapt to his feet. "We don't need to do this. He's told us what we need to know. I mean—"
Kipra pulled the blacksmith down, and gently said, "Ark's right, Bran. I'm sorry, but Gell mixed just enough truth with his lies. We can't let him go, and we can't afford to keep him here for weeks."
"I agree," Pernik said. "There's nothing else to do."
The blacksmith shook his head, but remained silent.
Irreor retook his seat and rocked back in his chair, both proud and horrified at her logic—the same as his. He'd expected it of Pernik, a veteran who understood the viciousness of war, but her calmness, her serene, gentle tone, and the smooth acknowledgement to have a man killed—they unnerved him.
Out in the city, a child shrieked again.
The doomed gateman struggled, spit and bit at his captors. "You bastard, I told you everything. Everything! I wouldn't have gone to Crest. I wouldn't have!"
"See that it's done," Irreor told the old officer. "Then spread our men across the city and watch those houses. Do it right, Pernik. Find everything you can, especially where Kylen Crest stays"
The officer motioned to his men, and they forced Gell across the dusty floor. The gateman shrieked, but his scream was simply added to a city full of others. It wouldn't be noticed.
A dagger rose. It fell.
Silence.
Pernik quickly organized the men, and Irreor waited until they stomped from the warehouse, the gateman's limp body held between them, before dropping his forehead to the table. Somewhere deep within, his chest ached, but he forced the tightness away.
He'd seen men die. Another hardly mattered.
"You didn't have to do that," Bran said. "Don't get me wrong, I know why you did it, but there's something inside of us that should make us better. If we fall any deeper, then—"
"He did what was needed," Kipra said. "None of us liked it, but we should move on. Shuffle forward. Look to the horizon and hope for the best. Let's plan the next step—it's all that matters."
Irreor pushed his forehead harder into the wood. He'd broken through to her. Perhaps she'd finally trust him. His lips hovered a mere inch from the tabletop, and he murmured into the piled papers.
"Indeed. It's all that matters."
His breath echoed like faraway thunder, and the voice's thread whisked along his shoulder and neck—a faint, distant sensation—yet it remained silent. Had it finally abandoned him? It had always hinted at what to do, and now silence danced within his skull, leaving him with no direction.
He snapped up to face Kipra. "What would you suggest?"
"You have it right. We start making corpses. It's the only way to draw Crest out and destroy his base of support. We sneak into their homes, one by one, and kill them. There's no other way."
Bran rolled his eyes.
"And the first one?" Irreor asked, and again he remembered his father's words. 'Sometimes, a man must first trust another. He must be willing to watch his own knife slice his flesh. No one claimed this was easy.'
She lifted an eyebrow.
"I respect your skills more than anyone else, especially after yesterday," he admitted. "And I don't want to involve the others more than I must. If you're willing, I—"
"What's your point, Ark?"
He squared his shoulders. "I'll need to kill men, and you'll come with me."
A proud gleam sprang into her eyes—controlled, anticipating, feral.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Darkness had fallen long ago.
Kipra leaned against an alley wall, ignoring the stone's wetness. At the far end, Nekaron Rellik's torchlit house, one of the few homes with a second level, towered above its neighbors. Light rain drizzled from the sky, pooling on slate roofs, glittering as it plummeted from sharp slants.
She'd waited in this mist for three hours, and her leather armor clung to her skin.
A single balcony jutted from Rellik's home, held aloft by two thick, grimy pillars, and two damp guards were huddled beneath it. They wore hooded cloaks over their armor, pulled tight against the rain.
Kylen Crest's Minister of Trade had entered the house two hours earlier, not long after the sun dipped beneath the horizon. With him dead, prices might stabilize, taxes might lessen, and the damage to Crest would be incalculable. Kipra and Irreor would erode Crest's aura of invincibility, force him to emerge from the shadows.
Then they'd strike.
Beside her, Ark whispered, "Give his guards a while longer to settle in. Bored men make mistakes."
Kipra grunted but didn't answer. From the reflection of the torchlight, she could see his eyes following her—judging, considering. The bastard. He wore the armor of Kinslek's Keepers, a heavy leather tunic with a blackened starburst at its center.
As though he deserved it. As though he'd somehow earned it.
She attempted to focus on the house, but the story he'd told her in the barracks rattled in her head—the women of Vestel, who brought their village to the brink of destruction. Those women had manipulated. They'd shoveled misery atop an entire village because of hatred and bitterness.
"Do you want to talk?" Ark asked, as if he somehow knew her thoughts.
A shiver swept through her, partly because of his question, partly because of the rain, but more.... Was she the same as the women in that village? To manipulate people, to offer a kind word, an alluring touch, a midnight kiss—those acts held a certain wickedness she'd never dreamt of.
Kleni... she dreamt of it. She'd done it.
"No," she muttered.
She'd built her wall so bloody high just to keep out Ark. How did he know so much about her sister? Kleni hadn't just helped Crest, she'd manipulated nearly every man in the city.
But Ark had never seen it.
How could you have known!
With words stronger than corded rope, he'd drawn her demon out, just as he'd predicted, just as he'd hoped. With a scholar's cool logic, he'd forced her to draw a comparison between herself and her sister. That comparison grew. It stabbed so deep and, like a sliver of wood festering beneath the skin, it throbbed.
She clenched her fists, and set her jaw as tight as she could to fight her quivering chin.
He knew.
Was she truly the same as Kleni?
Ark touched her shoulder. The quick, sudden pressure tore away her thoughts. She winced at the contact, but her skin hadn't itched and tingled, and her anger for once didn't lash out.
"Why didn't you kill that man on the night I returned?" he asked.
For a long moment, quiet shadows pressed in. Rain dribbled down her scalp, and the scent of garbage tickled her nostrils. "He didn't deserve it. Men are arrogant cocks, but that doesn't mean all of them deserve to die."
"Why didn't he deserve—"
"Because he had a family." She hesitated at the memory. "He treated them like shit. They all treat them like shit, but he tried to do better. I'd seen him for years in the market. His son adored him. He was different, in a way."
"So he wasn't all bad?"
"Demon-bloody-damn, Ark, I won't let you twist my thoughts—"
"Do those men deserve to die?" He pointed to the guards. "They've got families and children of their own, and I suspect, deep down, they think they're doing the right thing in guarding Rellik."
"They deserve it."
"These things I hear... I can't...." He licked the rain from his lips. "I can't. Are these just excuses for myself, or are they deeper? The brink? Why do those men deserve to die?"
&
nbsp; She brushed her fingertips over his armor, jerked her hand back. Her whole arm tingled. Why had she done that? Because of a hollowness in his voice, an uncertainty, a raggedness? It wasn't terrible. It was different and foreign and warm.
It vanished.
"Ark, we don't have a choice but to—"
"We move." He slid his weapons from their sheaths. "They're growing bored."
Had he broken through?
It hadn't been the story. It had been the way he'd told it—the same tenderness in his voice as now, the same understanding in his eyes, the way he'd almost reached across the table but held himself back.
That self-control had cost him.
However, more than those things, more than the story and the demon and the raw, bleeding emotion, he respected her. This man trusted her with everything, knowing that she'd given nothing in return. She wouldn't—couldn't—give him anything.
She'd craved respect for so long. Haral had given her some, but he was a hesitant fool. His respect hadn't mattered, not in the way she needed it. Bran trusted her, respected her, but the blacksmith was more of a brother.
Ark was arrogance.
He'd risen to the top of the city, to the top of the very island, and he now peered across it with a frigid, decisive gaze. Kings trusted him. He even wore the armor of the Keepers.
She shook her head. I can't let him in, but I can't stop hi—
"Move," Irreor whispered harshly.
She ripped herself from the confusing, foolish thoughts, and leapt after him. They kept to the shadows, just beyond the house's torchlight, and circled to the far side of the balcony. Three Parched Ones slept in the street, but they remained still as she and Ark stepped over them.
The two men guarding Rellik's home drooped against the doorframe, facing one another. They'd been standing in the rain for more than three hours, and they'd drawn their hoods tight to their faces, blocking their view to the sides. They murmured to one another, obviously unaware of what awaited them.
Perfect.
Kipra inched a hand toward her shortsword, prepared to leap forward and slice their throats. These men were Kleni's pawns, Crest's tools. They represented the city's decay, and Kipra would end it.
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