She did, and there were sure to be others, the noble children who’d grown up under Our Queen’s rule before their parents seceded, the ones who felt stifled and erased and cast aside by Erlend’s strict rules and ideas. The ones whose selves weren’t being honored. The ones like Elise.
“Teach me too,” I whispered. “Let’s tear them down.”
Chapter Twelve
We sat like that for a long while, my heart slowing and the fluttering panic in my veins settling with each of Elise’s low laughs and breaths against my ear as we talked about Erlend and Igna and the century-long list of Erlend being an ass. The rangers too were Our Queen’s oldest problem. They’d been killing people for as long as she’d been queen. They were why the Left Hand existed.
Caden de Bain was the founder and only survivor of the originals.
And Elise told me he was taking his rangers due west.
“It’s a clear setup to blame the war on Igna and absolve Weylin of guilt,” she said. “It will make him look like the measured hero.”
“I know you’re not leaving.” Elise would keep the Erlends who’d no place in Weylin’s war safe and sneak as much information as she could to Igna. I respected that. But I still worried. “Just please stay safe.”
“I will.” She held me close. “Don’t lose yourself. Don’t give in to the power being Opal gives. Stay Sal. The rangers don’t stay themselves. They think they’re better than all the people they kill. They don’t regret it.”
We were standing now, face to face, arms curled around each other. The slow rise and fall of Elise’s chest echoed in mine. A warm trail of contact and contentment ran from forehead to nose to shoulders to stomach to knees. I pulled her closer.
“Don’t worry about me.” I kissed her again, lips lingering against hers. “I know what I want. They don’t want anything except the thrill of killing.”
Losing Nacea—
No, having Nacea ripped from me, had forced me to be many things, many people. Being Opal, getting revenge, might’ve been personal, but at least my vengeance left the world a better place.
Wasn’t I paying back my debt, then? Getting Caden de Bain out of the way was sure to improve the whole continent. I was damn sure it’d improve my life.
“You’re not immortal,” she said.
I pulled one of her hands from my waist and kissed her palm, tasted sweat and lemon and the sting of whatever solvent she used to rid the ink from her fingers. All the little words we’d traded were long gone, and we weren’t the same. Wouldn’t ever be again.
“No.” I kissed her wrist, her elbow, her hand again. “But neither’s anyone else.”
I was Opal, but I still stuttered at the brush of her mouth over mine as she untangled our arms and pushed me away.
“I’ll be following those rangers,” I said quickly. “If you do need help, get word to me. I’ll be closest.”
“I will.”
But we both knew she wouldn’t.
She kissed me once again—quick, soft, chapped lips scratching mine—and opened the door. “All clear.”
I fled the way I had come, out the window and back into the hall full of hiding places to stay out of sight. The river was cold as I’d left it, and this time I had to wade against the current and back beyond the wall. The chill sunk into my bones even with the sun burning through the back of my neck. I trudged to the edge of Hinter and sat down to dry. Rath showed up near dusk.
He was dusty and tired eyed, and he laughed when he looked me over. “Why are you so happy?”
“What?” I shook out my boots and pants. Seeing Elise had made the knowledge she was safe feel real and settled the panic her abduction had left. And now I knew where Caden de Bain was heading. “I can’t be happy?”
“You? Not usually.” He sat down next to me and huffed. “You know where the rangers are, don’t you?”
I nodded.
For once, I’d a collection of memories bright and lovely and burning within me, and while I knew Elise wasn’t mine, I still didn’t want to share her—or my time with her. My childhood had been nothing but sharing. Clothes and beds and food and punishment. This time, I wanted something for myself.
“West. Got descriptions too.”
Elise had said they were young but looked much older, a bit like me. Deader behind the eyes.
Caden de Bain broke boys and made them monsters, not men.
“Blond, tall, wearing normal green uniforms with not normal paring knives strapped to their sides instead of daggers, and dragging a boy about town?” Rath asked.
I nodded.
“They were here. I watched them for a while.” He pulled out a small looking glass and rubbed his face. “Boy’s not Cam, but he sure as the Triad’s not theirs. They’d bandaged his head up. None of them looked special, just mean.”
About right.
Couldn’t tell Rath about the ears though. Not yet.
“Let’s go.” I grabbed my pack and laced up my boots. “I’m tired of them existing.”
We headed west. Homesteads and farmlands nearer the border were already abandoned and quartering soldiers. We stayed for a bit at those, peeking through Rath’s spyglass to see if the rangers were there, but it was only soldiers. We moved on, deeper into the wilds and closer to the border between Igna and Erlend, and in the dark of an abandoned farm, I caught the flicker of metal in moonlight. I froze.
Rath stopped, looking round. I tilted my head toward where I’d seen the glint.
It was a ranger with a spyglass pointed southeast, and their attention was focused on a small, distant circle. We watched him for ages, waiting for him to move, but he never did. Not until another ranger exited the barn to replace him, flashing us a shot of the four other people inside, one much smaller than the others. Only one lookout.
They’d rigged the place with traps, surely, else they’d have at least one other person watching the edges.
Least their watches were long.
I touched Rath’s arm, held a hand over my mouth, and laid my hand flat against the earth. He nodded.
This ranger was mine.
Time to get to work.
Chapter Thirteen
The ranger was older than me but not by much. He didn’t stand like soldiers did when keeping watch, back straight and hands on their spear. His mottled green and brown clothes were dust streaked and sweat stained, and the weapons he carried were more like a poacher’s kit than a soldier’s fare. I pulled out Rath’s spyglass, covering the reflective metal, and looked where he stared. A camp of young boys crowded around a low fire, and the ranger watched them. I crept up behind him.
He noticed. His knife tore for my throat, and I ducked. My fist slammed into his stomach. He doubled over. Gagged.
I grabbed his hair, bent him over, and stabbed my knife into the back of his neck. He stilled.
Rath didn’t come to check on me, but I felt his eyes on my back as I walked toward the barn, following the same path the last ranger had taken and stopping to show the tripwires to Rath. He’d have to follow my path exactly.
Caden de Bain. Three rangers. One boy.
Too many to fight at once.
I stopped a little ways out from the door. It had shut behind that last ranger without them bothering to push it and would probably do the same again. Across the path I’d taken, I strung an extra bowstring at ankle height. I waved Rath over and gestured at the ground. He’d have seen what I was doing. It was an old trick we used to get into locked places.
He’d trip one of their wires when I gave the signal, one of them would come running out, and they’d trip over my wire. Wasn’t fancy, but it worked.
I scaled the boarded-up backside of the barn and peeked between the old, splintered boards. In the light of their low fire, they looked ghostly, the moss greens and dead-leaf browns of their uniforms blending together into blurs among the shadows. None of them had coats or medals or sigils, but each carried a bow or crossbow and a hunting knife with a gut hook. Two ha
d bird beak paring knives on their belts. Just like Five had carried.
Just like Five had used to strip the skin from Three’s body during auditions.
Two of the three rangers were the same weathered tan of long treks, and the other was the smeared pink of sunburned white skin. Their shaved, blond hair was nothing more than a prickle of pale yellow.
The one who’d finished watching was asleep before the fire. He snored with every breath and had stretched out on the old floorboards. The other two were playing a game of five-finger fillet. They’d each spread out a hand against the floor and were jabbing worn knives into the spaces between each finger, never taking their eyes off each other. One was bleeding, the cut on his hand shallow but long. The boy was staring at the blood.
They’d made him play too, but his moves were slower and shakier. He’d a bandage around his head. Blood seeped through one side where his ear would be.
Lady, what were they doing with children’s ears?
The boy nicked his fingered and whimpered. Caden de Bain ripped the knife from his hand and stabbed it into the shuddering space between his fingers.
“Again,” Caden de Bain said. He tilted his head up, and the shadows hollowed it out. He was hard and jagged, like shoreline stones eaten away by the tide, and his white skin, stretched too tight across muscles built for show, was the muddied brown of winter slush. The downward hook of his nose was more likely gotten from a spear butt than a birthright. He leaned forward. “No stopping. No crying.”
He was the opposite of Emerald. The two of them might’ve been the longest surviving of their groups, but he was cruel where she’d be sarcastic, vicious where she’d be cutting, and stoic where she’d be unamused. Caden de Bain had cut away his emotions like he’d stripped away skin, and Emerald wore her battered, armored heart in a secret pocket of her sleeve. She wasn’t cold.
When she looked at me, I didn’t feel lesser.
But when Caden de Bain looked at that boy, I was scared. He wanted to see the boy bleed. Wanted to see him hurt. Wanted to break him.
Emerald was Emerald out of love.
Caden de Bain was a ranger out of love for hurting people.
I pulled on my Opal mask, the deep dark one of midnight which served as mask and helm, and pulled the bow from my back. I didn’t need to kill with this shot, only wound. I signaled Rath.
He plucked the tripwire. One of the rangers took off running, knife in one hand and sword in the other. Rath ducked into the tall grass, and the ranger sprinted over the wire, foot catching. He tripped, tumbled, and rolled over his shoulder at the last minute. He bounced to his feet.
Rath tackled him.
Lady, let him finally land a punch.
I shot an arrow at the sleeping ranger. It struck his shoulder, burrowing deep. Caden de Bain leapt to his feet, and the other ranger shoved the boy aside—I’d figured they’d use him as a shield. The two of them stood back to back. Waiting.
Content to let their fellows die.
I fired another shot and dropped to the ground. A solid smack of metal on wood meant I’d hit nothing. Rath tumbled round the dirt with his ranger, and I kicked open the door to deal with mine.
Caden de Bain looked me over. The ranger didn’t stop to look. He came at me like a boxer, a proper one. He’d been trained to fight.
He slashed. I ducked, clamping my teeth together to keep from biting my tongue. Other hand empty, he jabbed, and I took the blow in my forearm. I lunged, knives barely missing his chest, and he leaned back. His balance shifted to his left leg, and he struck out, right foot slamming into my chest. I stumbled back. My knees buckled.
In Kursk, in the fights I did while working for Grell, it was easy to know who’d been around the rings a few times. It was in the balance, the efficiency, how smoothly they shifted from one strike to the next like they had seen every movement and practiced every stance until it was so deep in their bones their kids would remember it. They knew fighting. They knew winning.
And in the late-night fights, once the legal ones were done and I took to the ring so the folks with too much coin and a taste for blood could bet on dirtier fights with bigger payouts, the kids who’d more desperation in their fists than most folks had in their whole body fought and fought and fought until only a few were left standing. The unconscious won nothing.
Grell didn’t like me unconscious.
He wouldn’t have liked this ranger who couldn’t shake the proper training from his bones.
Three moves and he’d be dead.
I let him lunge, let him get in close, and slammed my fist into his stomach. He gagged and faltered, and I grabbed his collar. The blade at my side sliced through shirt and skin, but I tightened my grip and yanked him left while my foot swept his legs right. He went down, taking a good measure of my blood with him. I buried my knife into his neck.
“You’re the new one.” Caden de Bain shifted his grip on his sword and widened his stance. “I’ve not had the pleasure of scarring you yet.”
“It won’t be a pleasure.” Gasping against the sharp sting across my ribs, I stood and readied my knives. He’d the reach, but I’d the speed. “Hard to enjoy something when you’re dead.”
He clucked his tongue three times. “You look like you’ve got a score to settle.”
This would be easy.
Just like his rangers.
“And you’ve got debts to pay.”
Chapter Fourteen
He hoisted me up by my shirt and slammed me into the wall, not even bothering with his sword. I must’ve been less than a traveling pack to him. I jerked from his grasp and fell to the floor, and he stretched his arms out while I crawled away. A howl, not Rath’s, was cut off outside.
Least Rath had landed something.
“It’s not that easy.” Caden de Bain grabbed my foot and yanked me back to him. “Those were my newest trainees, and there’s no fun in training. You owe me for making me suffer through it again.”
He pulled up till my fingers were scrambling for purchase on the ground and he’d the whole of my stomach before him to stab, but he only pressed his blade to my wounded side. I shrieked and twisted. He dropped me.
I hit the ground with a rib-cracking thwack and muttered, “Only thing I owe you is a slow death.”
“You’re too rash for that.” He stood over me, one hand tightening around his sword and the other flexing. “Get up. Raise your hands.”
I laughed and spat out a glob of blood. “You all right with me killing all your rangers?”
“I’ve got hundreds of boys dreaming of being rangers.” He raised his sword. “You can’t kill all of them too.”
I didn’t need to.
“No, I’m just going to kill you.” I lunged.
He dodged. His blade swept across my side, skimming my shirt. I groaned and fell as if he’d hurt me. He grabbed my arm and lifted me up. I let him move in for the kill. Let him think I was done for.
“You’re all talk,” he said. “All full of nothing, fallow through and through.”
He dropped me and raised his blade. I rammed my heels into his unprotected ankles. He toppled, head bouncing off the floor, and I leapt onto his chest. My knees dug into the soft spots where his arms met his sides.
I felt him tense. His sword nicked my thigh.
“Stop moving.” Rath—nose bleeding and lip split, a sword not his own trembling in his hand—stared down at Caden de Bain and pressed his stolen sword to the ranger’s throat. “You’re going to tell me where you got that boy and where you’ve been taking them, or I’m going to peel you apart like an orange.”
Bain moved to stab me, and I slammed my fist into his temple. His hand fell.
“You all right?” Rath tossed the sword aside and wiped his hands clean. He’d a solid cuff of bruises around his wrist.
I kicked Bain’s sword away. “Don’t throw away better weapons.”
“Fine.” He helped me tie up Bain and grabbed the sword, holding it like a hairbrush.
“The ranger outside’s getting bitey.”
Nothing out of ten. I was worse at fencing just for looking at him.
“Bitey?”
Rath held up a damp sleeve. “He didn’t like being hog-tied.”
I dealt with the rangers. Rath handled the boy. He was better with kids, gentler and more patient. I’d never understood childhood like Rath.
How easily the boy laughed as soon as Rath showed him how to make a coin dance across his knuckles. Not a lick of sense.
“Rath,” I said once I’d lined up the three captives. “Don’t look.”
It was the boy I was worried about. Rath had been shaking though.
I was Opal for this—to bear the weight of death so they didn’t have to.
“Now.” I pulled one of the paring knives from a ranger’s belt and ran my thumb down the blade. Red bubbled over the steel. “Which one of you all’s going to talk?”
I started with the hog-tied ranger. Laid my knife against his nose.
He said nothing.
“Why are you stealing children?” I asked.
Nothing.
“Why are you inking runes in their ears?”
Nothing.
I sighed. “They only way you walk out of here alive is if you’re more valuable alive than dead.”
“Kill me.” He spat at my feet, pink dripping down his chin.
I slit his throat. “Deal.”
I turned to the ranger I’d shot, not bothering to clean the knife, and pressed it to his neck. Blood dripped down his chest. That shook him awake. His eyes refocused. The arrow in his shoulder shook.
“You going to talk to me?” Probably not, but Rath had asked me to find Cam and these rangers were our best hope. “Or you want to die too?”
His head lolled to the side. He was the off-white pale of buttermilk, blood leaking through the twin holes of his wound. He stared at his dead partner.
I patted his cheek. “What you doing with the kids?”
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