“Don’t celebrate too much.” Adella glanced at me, the whole of her hair pulled into a single wobbling puff atop her head, and touched her three fingers to her lips to send a prayer to the Triad. “I told them I didn’t want it. Think they were going to pick you regardless, but it’s not like you’d any competition.”
Great.
We traveled for four whole days, only stopping to sleep in shifts. Adella and I talked of childhoods and friends, Theo and Myra and Rath mostly. Four, Theo, had been with the carnival for near his whole life. Myra had been the oldest, twenty-two and on top of the world, the lead act and everything. And sick.
Myra da Barre, Three to me and the face that haunted my nightmares, had been dying long before heading to auditions, something to do with blood and bone growing too much. Without magic, no physician could track how long she had or ease the random bouts of excruciating pain. But she was still the best fighter out of the three of them—Two, Three, and Four.
And they’d expected her to be Opal.
“I’d never gone more than a few days without seeing them,” Adella whispered one night. “And now I can’t even remember what shape the scar on Theo’s arm was. How Myra looked in the morning. What our last words were. It was too hectic. I didn’t think I’d need to remember.”
Adella and Theo had figured they’d die, or the three of them would work together to make sure Myra got to the end of the audition. Then, Adella and Theo would get disqualified or quit.
Myra had wanted something new. They’d all wanted that newness together.
“I’m all that’s left.”
I’d not said anything to that. Wasn’t the same, but she’d a right to her grief and, Lady, if it wasn’t full of pain.
We didn’t talk about the auditions after that.
Days later, long after we’d crossed the border, we stumbled onto the outskirts of Mossvale. It was a small, scattered town, and there wasn’t a hint of Rath in sight. Adella snapped her teeth together.
“You sure he’s here?” she asked. “Doesn’t look like anyone new has been here in a while.”
Footsteps crept up behind us, crinkling leaves in the underbrush. We both turned.
Rath, dirt-streaked but alive, froze in place. “Sal.”
He was such a terrible thief.
“Rath.” I itched to grab him, hug him, hold on to some part of our childhood and tell him I’d make this right, but I only nodded to Adella. “This is Adella. The only other surviving auditioner.”
I’d a hard time imagining the disqualified two were still alive. Not with the way they lived.
He narrowed his eyes. “I found the rangers taking the kids.”
“Good.” An awkward, stilted tension hung in the air. “Let’s get them.”
Adella glanced between us. Rath huffed.
“Come on.” He turned and led us around Mossvale and farther north. “They’ve got two other kids now. I’ve been watching them for a while.”
And that was that. I swallowed down my disappointment and followed.
It was getting dark when Rath stopped walking and held a hand to his mouth. Adella and I crept after him, and in the clearing beyond sat four rangers and two kids. Two of the rangers were sleeping and two were talking around their small fire, tossing the kids food every now and then. The kids were shackled and gagged, metal bars connecting the cuffs instead of chains so that no matter how they moved, the kids couldn’t use their hands or bring them together.
“There’s a lady that’s been visiting too,” Rath whispered. “Short, dark, braided hair, button nose. I don’t know her. She’s nice to the kids though. Small miracle, considering.”
“We’re on Igna land, technically.” I glanced up. “Little more north and we won’t be, but Lady de Arian rules all of Aren, and she’s siding with Our Queen.”
Rath nodded. “Good. She can help relocate these kids and find Cam.”
The kids were hooked together by a single chain looped in a circle through each of their arm bars. I secured my mask.
“The sleeping ones’ll be easy.” I’d a length of metal wire in my pack courtesy of Isidora’s alchemy research, and they’d settled down against separate tree trunks on either side of camp. I could tie them up to buy us time. “We can each take one, and I’ll get the one patrolling too.”
Rath tapped his teeth together, gaze going blank as he stared at the little camp. “They’ll just get other kids.”
“They might.” I nudged him. “What you thinking?”
“They don’t get these kids, they’ll just take others. Same outcome, different kids. How’s that fair?”
It wasn’t, but it was as it was.
“What if you—” Rath drew a finger across his throat, face the hardest I’d ever seen it. He couldn’t even say it.
“You sure?” He was right, of course, but this was Rath. He rescued stray dogs and refused to kill spiders unless they bit him. He’d feared me, and I’d sooner walk into the Blue Silk Sea than hurt him. Erlend would crush and devour nation after nation until the world was ruined at its feet. It wouldn’t leave us alone and alive until we bowed to it. Why should we let it live, spreading its damage across the world? “I can tie them up or something.”
He took my face in his hands. “They’re kidnapping kids, Sal, and Triad knows what they’re doing with them. I got a feeling it’s worse than what Grell did to us.”
Rath was too kind, too clever, and should never have been stuck with me as a found sibling.
“All right.” I patted his hand—he smelled of rain and mold and day-old tea—and nodded. “You get the kids. Adella and I’ll get the guards. I’ll whistle when I’m ready for you to go.”
He snatched my hand and pulled me close. “I am furious at you, but stop staring at me like I stabbed you. We’ll always be family.”
Adella pinched her nose and turned away, a shiver running down her back.
“I’m sorry.” I squeezed his hand. “I am, and I’m ready to help you now.”
Family for life.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I slunk into the woods, hiding my smile behind my mask. The two awake and gambling weren’t paying attention to their partners. I crept my way into the bushes behind the sleeper closest to the kids. He snored and shifted. I pulled out a knife.
Killing folks quiet was harder than picking their pocket. You had to get it right the first time, and there was no running away to try again here. I’d one chance.
I covered his mouth with one hand, slid my knife through the side of his neck—one smooth motion like Amethyst had taught me—with the other, and waited. He gasped and bit, but blood pumped through the gap between blade and skin. He wasn’t awake when he died, and it came quick. I pulled my blade out after to keep from making a mess. In the night, against the dark greens of his clothes, the blood looked more shadow than stain. I covered his throat with his collar.
The second one died the same—one gasp, one hand to his sword, and a slouching death rattle bubbling through the holes of his neck. There were no funeral rites.
The Lady could have my life and soul if she thought they were worthy of them, but nothing struck me down.
I looked up. Across the way, Adella was poised to shoot and waiting for my signal. I let out the low birdcall I’d been whistling at Rath since I was ten. A branch cracked behind me.
Shit.
I spun. A spear clipped the bottom of my face, clacking against my mask.
“No fussing, Lady Opal.” The guard pushed the spear into my throat until I couldn’t speak for fear of slitting it. “Lady de Arian’s been waiting for you, and we’ve got others collecting your associates. Move and they die.”
The female spy wasn’t a servant. It was Lena.
They dragged the three of us to a barn. The guard at my back tied my hands—no locks—and pulled every bit of help from my body. I’d no weapons, no lock picks, and no jewelry left. Just clothes.
This was what I got for not scouting out Rath’s
plan.
My guard knocked on the door. “Lady de Arian? We have Opal, the boy, and another girl.”
Lena had betrayed Elise, she’d betrayed me, she’d betrayed Igna. We’d had her in every meeting, every talk, and she was working for Weylin the whole damned time?
“Good.” The door muffled her voice, but it was soft and calm, more like “Bring them in.”
The guard opened the door, let my guard go first, and then pulled me into the room, forcing me to my knees soon as I passed the threshold. I didn’t bow my head.
I was too angry to move. She’d been talking aid and help and saving people’s lives, and here she was. She wasn’t interested in saving everyone, just saving her own lands and self.
I should’ve known.
“Lady Opal,” she said—I was but I didn’t like the way she said it, like she’d say it no matter what—and smiled. “What a pleasure it is to see you.”
“Honorable Opal.” See how she liked being countered. “I’ve had worse welcomes.”
She only just held back her sneer. “A pity you insist.”
“I insist,” I said. “And I don’t care about your opinions on it.”
Lena de Arian had outfitted the barn like a study—a large, warm rug of deep-brown fur spread out over the center of the boards, a kneeling desk held her papers and ink pot, and she sat behind it like she held nighttime meetings in barns every day. She even had a servant at her side pouring tea.
Maud.
A final, little twist of the knife. I’d have rather been stabbed in the back for real. Least then I’d have a knife.
“Nice to see you again, Maud.” I ground my teeth together. Prisoner or participant?
Lena laughed and covered her mouth with one hand. No rings. No jewelry at all. The only bit of sparkle was the gold and emerald sigil pinned over her heart.
“I can only imagine.” She brushed a strand of stray hair from her face, patting it back down onto the back-combed bun at her crown, and picked up a small book from her desk. “Now, your friend has been circling around my rangers for a while. Thank you, of course, for taking care of those two others. They were,” she said and paused, sipping her tea and weighing her options. “Disappointing. They were not worth their severance pay, you understand.”
I didn’t. She spoke of folks in terms of pay—worth—and must’ve thought of them as little more than lines in an accounting book. It was so easy to kill people when they were only numbers. I would know.
I shuddered, and the terrible missing pieces fell into place.
“You’re Riparian.” I twisted my hands in the shackles, disgust prickling up my arms. I’d touched her. Talked to her. Let her comfort me and comforted her in return. I’d felt sorry for her, coming from a country where folks discounted her for simply being her.
And she’d had a hand in my family’s murder. In Nacea’s slaughter.
She smiled wider. “Yes. Gaspar del Weylin gifted me that name when he named me the inheritor of my father’s estates and welcomed me into his court—the first Erlend woman to inherit. As though I would give up all of my hard work for a nation determined to handout success for free the moment people call foul.”
I lurched forward, too angry to think, and my guard jerked me back. Their hand closed around the back of my neck, and their fingers curled into my throat. A sharp, choking pain kept me quiet.
She was angry Erlend had made her run an obstacle course to succeed and couldn’t even see that some folks didn’t even have the option of the course.
“That’s nonsense.” Adella huffed and yanked away from her guard. “Not everyone’s got the same chances as you.”
Even with her outfitted barn, Riparian’s pale skin was red in the cold night air, but it did nothing to hide the furious flush that rose in her round cheeks. Maud, the same as ever except for her green and gold uniform and bowed head, backed away.
“Oh yes, such sage words from a failed member of the Carnival of Cheats,” Riparian said, taking a slow breath. “Save her for testing. Perhaps she’ll finally be useful.”
A guard yanked a bag over Adella’s head. She flailed and panicked, and they pulled the drawstring tight around her neck. She stopped, and Dimas entered through the back door of the barn. He was dressed like Maud, but the silver cuff that used to adorn his ear was gone. His hand was wrapped in bandages.
Rath and I tried to move to Adella, but my guard gripped my neck tighter, cutting off all my air, and Rath’s slammed him into the dirt.
“Put her in the third trunk,” Dimas muttered. “I’ll test her after this.”
Rising to her feet in one smooth motion, Lena glided—there was no other word for how she moved, so graceful and silent in the quiet night—to us. She was wearing Erlend colors now, pale brown wool so bleached it was almost white, and her face was paler, patted with white cosmetic powder and glowing in the light. She looked as unassuming as ever.
Calculated meekness. Strong enough to be an asset to Our Queen and weak enough to never be suspected of betraying her.
Did Our Queen even know now what Riparian had done?
“Now, who are you?” She peered at Rath. “I know you’re looking for one of the children, but they’re quite occupied. They’re much more useful this way.”
He spat in her face.
Riparian didn’t even blink. Maud rushed forward, pulled a handkerchief from her pocket, and wiped the glob of spit from Riparian’s cheek. She didn’t move while Maud worked, only stared down at Rath. Her gaze moved from his eyes to his hands to his ear.
“Useless,” Riparian said, “but at least I won’t need to record your name.”
She pulled a knife from beneath her coat. I fell forward, legs kicking back, and my guard let me go. I crawled to Rath. The knife slipped between his ribs, and he let out a soft gasp. A boot slammed into my spine. My face hit the dirt.
A gurgling cough hit my ears. Blood splattered across the floor before me and dripped into my hair. Rath fell to his knees.
He collapsed, mouth moving and eyes focused on me. I crawled to him. Tried to reach him. My guard pulled me back.
This wasn’t real.
This was another nightmare.
“Cam,” Rath said, blood dripping from his lips. His eyes lost their focus, staring unseeing into mine.
The world broke. Riparian’s mouth moved. I heard nothing. The guards holding me down yanked me up, but it didn’t hurt. Nothing could hurt ever again.
Why would it?
Rath was dead.
A guard kicked me over. A knife pricked my throat.
“No, no.” Riparian’s words barely made it through to me.
Nothing sounded right. Nothing felt right. The dirt was too coarse. The air too thick. This wasn’t real.
“No.” Riparian tilted her head to the side and held out a hand to Maud. “I want Maud to do it.” She leaned in close to me, gaze searching, and smiled. “Your queen Marianna didn’t send you at all, did she?”
I laughed, dirt coating my lips. “I wasn’t here for Igna.”
“Maud, how would you like to do this?”
“Yes, Maud.” I cackled, mind too full to even look at her. “How would you like to kill me?”
“I really am not good with blood, my lady.” Maud’s soft voice was almost comforting. Familiar. And all familiar things were lost to me in the end. “Would drowning be all right?”
I laughed and laughed and couldn’t stop laughing even when they dragged me to a bridge and Maud filled my pockets with stones while muttering to Riparian, “She can’t swim. Southerners, you know?”
Lady, is this what I deserved?
Maybe I should’ve died. Rocks clacked into my pockets. My ribs ached with the weight of them, one after another dragging me down. I slouched, tried to act heavier than I was, and they shoved me against a railing—a bridge, we had to be on a bridge. Water rippled beneath us, gurgling. Choking.
Like Rath.
They removed my shackles but not the knife
at my throat, and Maud tied a rope around my wrists in a tight, complicated little knot.
Behind me, one of the guards said, “Grab his feet.”
The bridge rattled. Weight struck the boards. Rath.
“One.”
Air blew past me, thick with blood and sweat.
“Two.”
I gagged.
“Three.”
Rath hit the water with a spine-shattering crack.
The same river. At least we’d have that.
Maud stepped in front of me. Her lips were drawn tight and half-circles of dark, deep purple marred the skin beneath her eyes. She touched my bound hands.
“Get it over with.” I let my head loll forward and stared at her calloused fingers checking the knot.
A quick release knot.
“Please,” Maud said finally, no trace of a hitch or hesitation in her voice, “consider this my official resignation.”
And pushed me off the bridge.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I hit the water feetfirst. My lungs stopped working. The cold devoured me, going bone deep before I could move. My vision blurred and blackened, and I twisted till my arms were free of my coat and the rocks weighing me down. Stabbing, burning pins and needles pricked at every bit of me, and I kicked forward. The knots binding my hands together fell away easy. I slammed into a rock.
Stay under. Stay under. I had to stay under. They had to think me dead. But Rath was in here, weighed down and sinking, and he’d no business staying here. I reached out a hand, brushed cloth.
The rocks in my dress pockets weighed me down, dragging me deeper and deeper toward the riverbed, ramming me into fallen logs and jagged rocks.
My chest burned. This had to be long enough. I was drifting, dragging through rotten branches and fish bones, my nails scraping over rocks. I rolled and tore at the handful of dress tangled in my arm. The rocks tumbled through the hole.
And the only thought rising up within me was that Maud knew damn well I could swim.
I burst to the surface. The cold air burned, stinging through my nose and mouth. I coughed and paddled toward the shore, crumbling at the base of a rocky ledge.
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