Evander and Alys both whirled at the voice behind them. It was a woman, probably in her thirties, wearing trousers, a faded green shirt, and a leather vest. She was carrying a rifle against her right shoulder. In her other hand she held a lumpy burlap sack.
“We came to see the Blacksmith,” Evander said.
The woman didn’t react. She was still staring at them, her suspicion unyielding. She was tall and broad-shouldered, with golden skin and a mess of brown hair that was pulled into a loose bun. She reminded Evander of Eldrin Wood itself, all dappled shades of earth and umber, at once restive and still.
“I remember you,” she said to Evander. She passed between them and into the workshop, dropping her bag on the ground and setting the gun on the table in the center. “You must be the Sera siblings, then.”
She turned to look at them, arms crossed. Amid the delicate finery of the room, she seemed even more stolid. Evander exchanged a glance with Alys, and then they joined her inside.
“I don’t remember you,” Evander said, which felt rude, but she didn’t appear to notice.
“I helped with your bonding,” she said. “But we didn’t meet beforehand, so I’m not surprised you don’t remember.”
Evander wasn’t surprised either. There was very little he remembered about that night. Mostly it was one long stretch of bright, racking pain. Absently, he rubbed his chest, where one of the leather straps had cut in. Afterward he’d been bruised everywhere the straps had touched.
Alys stepped forward and extended her hand.
“I’m Alys.”
The woman eyed her hand strangely for a second, as if it were an unfamiliar sight. Then she shook it.
“Mira,” she said.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Alys said, her tone so consciously polite that Evander wanted to laugh. “We need to speak with the Blacksmith, if he has some time.”
“He’s gone,” Mira said. She waved a hand as if the answer were clouding the air, then she grabbed Evander’s left wrist and tugged him closer. “Let’s see it then.”
She studied the scar on his forearm with the diligence of an artist examining a painting.
“Good, clean line. No excess scarring,” she murmured to herself. She squinted at him. “Since the procedure, have you experienced any dizziness? Fainting spells?”
“No,” he said, fidgeting in her grip.
“What about trouble swallowing?”
“No.”
“Any difficulty getting aroused?”
Heat washed over his face, and he yanked his arm free.
“No!”
Alys was snickering quietly, and he shot her a glare. Mira nodded to herself, unfazed.
“He was a master at his work,” she said. She left her sack and gun where they lay and headed for the interior door.
“What do you mean was?” Alys asked.
Mira paused with her hand on the door latch. She didn’t look back at them.
“My father’s dead.” Her voice was a little higher than it had been, a little tighter. “It’s been three months now.”
TWENTY-FIVE
NEWT
Newt found Cassa five streets over, in the shade of an abandoned factory. It was charred black and gutted, probably a casualty of the devastating fire that had sparked the rebellion so many years ago. Cassa leaned against the wall, massaging her temples. He’d never seen her this pale. Her usually faint freckles contrasted starkly against her bloodless cheeks. The bruise under her eye was a violent purple.
“You could have been a great thief in another life,” she said, but her tone was weak.
“Are you okay?” Newt asked.
He knew it was a pointless question. Out of anyone, he was the last person whom Cassa would tell the truth.
“Fine,” she said, straightening.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t faster.” He hesitated. “Did he get any of your memories?”
She shook her head, but he caught the flash of uncertainty in her features. Disquiet crept over him.
“Cassa, if he did—if he saw anything about Solan or our plan—”
“He didn’t,” she snapped. “I know what’s in my own head. He didn’t take anything.”
Newt wanted to point out that he didn’t have to take the memories to catch glimpses of them, but Cassa’s expression was dangerous, like she was daring him to disagree with her. He didn’t think it was a fight he could win. He wasn’t sure there would ever be one, with Cassa.
He fished the stolen bottle of mirasma out of his pocket and weighed it in his palm. The bottle was as slender and long as his hand, though half-empty. Inside was a blue-green liquid, viscous and shimmering like fish scales in the sunlight. He wondered idly what it would feel like to be bloodbonded to something so beautiful—or to anything, for that matter. Evander had told him once it didn’t feel like anything in particular. The metal was just an extension of him, as natural and forgettable as his fingers and toes. At the time, Newt had thought that only Evander Sera could sum up the mysterious, incredible power of a bloodbond as feeling like nothing in particular.
“I think you might have broken Gaz’s nose,” he said. “If we’re lucky.”
He lifted his eyes and watched as Cassa blinked and smiled. All evidence of her earlier distress drained away until she was herself again, bright-eyed and effervescent.
“I’m nothing if not lucky,” she said. Then she faltered, and something more serious slipped into the smile’s place. “You were great back there. I—I couldn’t have done it without you.”
Coming from Cassa Valera, the admission was the highest of compliments, which he never would have expected from her. He’d never believed for a second that she would have accepted him into the group if Evander hadn’t spoken for him. Cassa was quick to forgive almost anything, but she never forgave anyone who betrayed the rebellion. He couldn’t blame her for that. Bringing down the council meant everything to her, even now that the real rebels were all gone. Too many people had died to just forgive and forget. Her parents had died fighting.
No matter how much distance he put between himself and his father, Newt knew he was guilty by blood. But in that moment, he felt that that unspoken tension between them had thinned. She wasn’t looking at him like she was waiting for him to disappoint her or like she wished he was someone else. She was looking at him like she trusted him.
“Thank you,” he said. He’d never meant anything more.
The first afternoon bell was sounding when they finally made their way back to the front gates. The crowds weren’t as thick as they were before noon, but there were plenty of people milling around and enough traffic on the bridge that they would be able to pass through undetected. When Newt wanted to stay below notice, he slipped through the crowds like an eel through reeds, quick and silent. Cassa was different. She didn’t know how to be invisible, so she wielded her visibility like a shield. She moved with deliberate casualness, as if she was out for a stroll with no destination in mind, and she had an uncanny intuition for when and where the guards were looking. She used the passing wagons, horses, and her fellow pedestrians to avoid their lines of sight without seeming the least bit suspicious. Occasionally, she would even exchange friendly hellos.
They stayed close enough to see each other but kept enough distance that if one of them was spotted, they wouldn’t both be caught. They made it past the city wall without any trouble, and on the Merchants’ Bridge they came together again. Newt’s chest loosened with relief. In less than an hour they’d be back with the others and far away from the citadel guard.
He started to say something about the best path through the valley, when Cassa suddenly froze. Someone over her shoulder had caught her attention. Newt looked back, confused. He couldn’t see anything but the merchants driving their wagons of goods, the street vendors with their colorful booths set up along the edges of the bridge, and the press of people coming and going. Then there was a brief gap, and he could see straight back to the guardhouse, where
Gaz Ritter was talking to two guards, his hand gesturing wildly in their direction.
“Keep moving,” Cassa said, grabbing his arm. Their stop was disrupting the flow of people, drawing notice.
They walked quickly, heads down. Newt’s heart was pounding in his ears. They had to get off the bridge. If they could make it to the forest or even the valley, then they had a chance. He knew that terrain better than his own name. He knew where they could hide.
“Dammit,” Cassa whispered, then louder, “Dammit.”
“You said he didn’t see anything.” Newt didn’t mean to sound accusatory, but Cassa shot him a fierce glare.
“He didn’t,” she said. “He couldn’t have.”
But even she didn’t sound convinced. Newt concentrated on navigating through the crowd. They didn’t have much farther to go. They just had to get off the bridge. There was an odd scraping sound behind them, metal on stone. Newt wanted to look, but he didn’t dare. He started walking faster, almost a jog.
Cassa stopped again, so abruptly that Newt made it several steps farther before he realized. He whirled around. Cassa’s eyes were wide, her lips parted with an unspoken warning. It was an expression he’d never seen on her before. Fear.
She took a step toward him, then another, but she was moving slowly, with visible effort. Her arm was bent behind her back. People had backed away from them instinctively, leaving a wide berth around Newt and Cassa. Their apprehensive stares felt almost tangible.
Cassa had turned her back to him and was struggling with something. Newt still couldn’t see what was happening, until Cassa was dragged several feet down the bridge. She yelped with pain as she lost her footing and grated her knees. Her arm was over her head, and an iron shackle was clamped to her wrist. The chain extended straight back, as if an invisible person was holding the other end. Newt ran to Cassa, his eyes following the line of the chain as he ran. It was pointing straight to Captain Marsh, who was a stone amid the turbid confusion of the crowd. He met Newt’s gaze evenly, his detached stare raising the hairs on Newt’s neck, just as it had the night he’d arrested them in the citadel. Harsh sunlight glinted on the brass buttons of his uniform, the knife at his side, the looped chain hanging from his belt. He hadn’t touched his weapons. Newt’s head spun as he clutched uselessly at the shackle around Cassa’s wrist. Bloodbond. Iron.
“Newt, run,” she gasped out, climbing to her feet.
Newt ignored her and dug his fingers into the thin gap between her skin and the iron, as if he could pry the cuff open with willpower alone. Distantly, he registered the other end of the shackle clamping onto his right wrist. Cassa was pulling on the chain with all her strength, heedless of her own panic, but they may as well have been chained to a wall for all the progress she made. The captain was walking toward them now, unhurried. The citizens had all parted before him as if he were a king moving among his subjects.
Cassa grabbed Newt’s collar and jerked his face toward her. Newt blinked at her sudden nearness.
“If you don’t run right now, I’ll break your nose too,” she told him.
The chain jerked them both backward a few more feet. Newt barely remained standing. The captain was close now, trailed by other guards. There was only one way out of this, and it was only open to him.
“Now!” Cassa shouted into his ear.
Something clicked in his mind, and his thoughts fell away. He became pure instinct. He popped his thumb out of joint, slid his hand free from the cuff, and started to run. One or two people threw out their arms in a clumsy attempt to stop him. He dodged them easily. If you’re fast enough, nothing can hurt you. His father’s voice in his head. The knife coming down without warning, a flash of steel in a lamplit room, slashing mercilessly across flesh. For a long time Newt wasn’t fast enough. He had the scars on his hand to remind him.
But the lesson had been learned. He was faster now.
More shouts behind him. The heavy thump of boots. And Cassa’s voice above the din, unyielding, unafraid.
“Come and get me, you spineless shits!”
Newt flew through the crowd. The closer he got to the end of the bridge, the more normal everything seemed. No one had realized yet what was happening farther up. Their curious faces blurred in his vision as he ducked and darted. He could still hear pursuers behind him. Even if he made it off the bridge, he might not be able to lose them now. He was nearing a thick cluster of people. A merchant was trying in vain to drive his wagon through the mass of unconcerned citizens. Some men were arguing loudly with a vendor, and people were gathering around to watch the action. Newt slowed a little and slipped into the thickest part of the crowd. Quick and silent. It was all he knew how to be.
When he reached the side of the wagon, he dropped to his stomach and rolled under it, narrowly missing the wheels as it lurched forward, the way finally open. He reached up and found handholds before it passed over him. He was dragged a short distance before managing to wedge his feet into place. His muscles burned with the effort, but he knew he could sustain it. The guards would realize they’d lost him any second now. They’d probably shut down the bridge, search every wagon, question every passerby. But by then his unwitting savior would be well on his way.
There was a jolting thump as the wagon wheels rolled off the bridge and onto the packed-dirt highway. Newt barely kept his grip. He realized he was holding his breath and forced himself to breathe in and out. He’d have to wait at least a mile before it was safe to drop down and make his way into the cover of the woods. Then he’d have to circle all the way back to the valley to meet Evander and Alys at the cave. After that—he didn’t know. Cassa was always the one who figured a way out of these situations, and now she was gone.
TWENTY-SIX
EVANDER
Mira had left the door open. Evander took a slow breath and followed her, with Alys close behind. The cottage was a wide, undivided space. Against one wall was a potbellied stove and a polished wood countertop stacked neatly with dishes and cookware. A round table with two chairs sat in the middle of the room. In its center was a glass vase holding a bunch of wilting wildflowers. There was a fireplace in another wall, with a rough-hewn oak mantel stacked with worn books. Two armchairs were facing it, both with faded floral patterns and sinking cushions.
Against a third wall was a bed, neatly made with a simple quilt, which Evander registered as strange. If this is where she slept, then what was in the other section of the house? The door leading to it was closed.
Mira was standing at the kitchen counter, scrubbing her hands in the porcelain water basin. She didn’t react when they came inside and Alys shut the door.
“Your father is the Blacksmith?” Alys asked.
It seemed like a pointless question, but Evander knew she was just hoping that there had been some confusion. That the hinge of their entire plan wasn’t dead and buried. Besides, he’d never heard of the Blacksmith having a daughter. It had never found its way into Eldra’s rumor mill—neither, for that matter, had his death.
Mira dried her hands on a towel and didn’t respond.
“We never heard about his passing,” Evander said tentatively. “I don’t think anyone in the city knows.”
“Because it’s no one else’s business, is it,” she snapped. She threw down the towel and sank into one of the chairs by the fireplace. “The council knows, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
There was a note of disdain in her voice that was difficult to miss. Evander took that as a good sign.
“My father taught me his trade well,” Mira went on, glaring into the hearth even though it held nothing but ash. “All the council wants is a Blacksmith, and they have one still.”
It occurred to Evander for perhaps the first time that the Blacksmith had had a name. He’d been a person with ambitions and regrets like the rest of them. A man who sat by his fireside at the end of a long day. A man who blew glass into fairy trinkets, maybe for his young daughter.
In Eldra, th
e Blacksmith was more idea than person. A vague entity, separate from the world, whose only purpose was to use his strange art to give people preternatural power. He was the first of his kind in the city as far as anyone knew, gifted with a skill that even the alchemists couldn’t dissect or define. The story was that he had come to Teruvia from a foreign land that had been desolated by war, its people scattered to the corners of the earth with blood magic as their only birthright.
Evander didn’t know how true any of that was. Alys insisted that just because the alchemists couldn’t explain the process didn’t mean it was magic. She insisted the same thing about the elder seers and her own skill at divination. Evander wasn’t sure that the world they lived in could be explained so logically, but he’d also never known Alys to be wrong.
Without letting himself think too hard about it, Evander crossed the room and laid a hand on Mira’s arm.
“I’m sorry about your father,” he said. “He helped save my family from starving. He was a good man.”
Mira glanced down at his hand, then back toward the hearth. Several strands of hair had escaped to rest on her cheeks and neck. Her expression was impossible to read.
“Your mother saved my life a long time ago, when the physician was sure I was going to die. My father owed your family a debt. That’s not the same thing as kindness.”
“Maybe,” Evander said, removing his hand, “but it would have been easy for him to refuse.”
“He probably should have,” she said with a snort. “You were a fool to come here in the first place. You could have easily died on that table. I’m surprised you didn’t.”
“Me too.”
Mira was quiet for a little while longer, then pushed the hair from her face and stood up.
“So you thieved enough silver to save your family, and now you’re back here—for what? The same treatment with gold? Your family needs a bigger house?”
She looked pointedly at Alys, who crossed her arms defensively.
“That’s not why we’re here,” she said. “And Evander doesn’t steal anymore.”
Beneath the Citadel Page 18