Finally, I reached the surface, fingers scrabbling through dirt onto cool, dewy grass, and then onto the toes of a pair of battered black boots I’d seen before. I jerked my head up and there he was: the reaper in black.
My mouth was full of dirt, of obscenities, both of which I spit out with relish while he waited, watched, smiled.
It was then I understood I’d never even taken a breath.
“My name is Warin,” he said, unbidden. “Cross. You may call me Warin. Can you say it?”
“Ware… in.” Speaking felt strange. Deep and shattered and unstable.
“What’s your name?” he asked. “I didn’t get a chance to ask before.”
“Schuyler.” I choked it out without thinking. But I didn’t tell him my surname, because I didn’t want him, whoever he was, to find my family.
“How do you feel?” He looked me over, circled around me, poked and prodded me as if I were a goddamn pudding. I threw his hand off my shoulder; it knocked him across the grass, onto his back.
“What did you do to me?” I shot to my knees and then my feet with a speed that was almost dizzying.
“I made you the most valuable thing I own,” he replied. “You’ll do everything I say, everything I want. You’ll not like it, or maybe you will, but you will do it anyway.”
I raised my fist, a blur, and tried to swing. But it stopped fast, midair, hovering there as if it were an object out of my control.
I was an object out of my control.
Warin tsked. “We’ll have none of that.” He raised his hand, mine lowered. Then he crooked a finger. “Come. We’ve got work to do.”
That’s how I became a thief, and a damn fine one, too. A simple brush against your arm on a crowded street tells me all I need to know about you: how much you’ve got, where it’s stashed, when you’ll be home, where you’ve left the spare key, or what window stays open no matter how hard you’ve tried to latch it.
But after a century, it’s all gotten so dull. What’s the fun in simply taking something? It’s the chase, the fight I like. But the fight is, as I’ve come to know for myself, its own weakness: The harder you have to work for something, the more you want it, even if it wasn’t something you particularly wanted in the first place. And denial, well; denial makes you more than want it: Denial makes you need it. Turns out, that’s not just a human condition.
Which brings me back to her.
She’s not my type, not really. A tiny slip of a girl, auburn-haired, freckled, at once too cunning and too innocent for me, far too smart, too troubled and too beloved. When I met her eyes across the fire at the last Winter’s Night party nine months ago, she knew at once what I was. And I knew at once I disgusted her, I frightened her, but I also intrigued her, and I’ve never known a headier cocktail.
I edged my way over to her. “What’s your name?”
She didn’t even look at me. “Go to hell.”
“Nice,” I replied. “Is that a family name, or—”
She turned. Looked at me with so much hate that I liked her already.
“You can call me Schuyler,” I said.
“I certainly will not.”
“Lover, then.”
She scoffed, then said, “I’m not available.”
“Just as well,” I said. “You’re not my type anyway.”
“Then it should be a fond farewell.”
“You interest me.”
“You disgust me.”
I grinned then, I couldn’t help it. She was biting her lip, trying not to smile, too, but it was useless. The gleam in her eyes gave it away. But then something else caught her attention: a dark-haired boy stumbling out of the woods, more than half-cocked with drink, a pretty dark-haired girl attached to his arm. She looked happy; he looked sick. The red-haired girl’s hidden amusement turned to disgust and, without a word, she turned around and walked away.
I felt the bitter taste of jealousy, something I hadn’t felt in a long time.
“Pleasure was all mine,” I shouted after her. “Perhaps I could call on you sometime?”
Without turning around, she lifted her hand and flashed me an obscene gesture before rushing to the boy’s side, lifting his now drooping head, prying him away from the girl’s relentless grasp.
I decided then I would see this girl again, pry a smile out of her again. I would make her tell me her name and a lot more besides. I would make her like me, no matter how unlikely, and no matter what it took.
Chapter 3
Fifer
Schuyler’s coat hangs in the cottage for three weeks.
I moved it from the chair in the front room to the wardrobe in the bedroom—away from John’s prying eyes—but Schuyler could have easily found it. Even if he’s trying to avoid me—which I know well and good he is—he could have slipped in and slipped out in less than a minute without having to see me. And if he did want to see me, it would be easy enough, even with this necklace I never take off. All he’d have to do is listen for someone thinking about me, listen to their thoughts, and eventually, he’d sort out where I was.
Unless this is some sort of trick.
Unless he’s trying to get me to worry. Unless he’s trying to lead me down the very path of thought I’m on now, where I begin to think his absence is less a plan and more an accident. That something terrible has befallen him so that I’ll finally take off the necklace and he can paw around my thoughts and know what I really think about him and everything else? Thank you, but no.
“Fifer. Have you heard a word I’ve just said?”
Lark. I’d completely forgotten she was there. We’re trudging along the hedgerow and sheep-lined lane on our way to Rochester Hall for a tea party, yet another in a long series of humiliations that is part and parcel of the education that Nicholas has recently forced me to endure. He says it’s time I acquire the mores of a lady—his words, certainly not mine—and to know, among other things, the running of a household, the art of social niceties, and the skill of courtly manners. It’s complete rubbish and the only thing I’ve really learned is how to properly apologize in the event I stab someone in the eye with the wrong fork.
“Sorry,” I mutter. “I was just thinking about—”
She places a sympathetic hand on my arm. “I know. You must be so terribly worried.”
“Worried?” I snap. “What do I have to be worried about?”
Lark frowns. “Your exam, of course. Isn’t it coming up?”
My exam. To hell and back.
“Yes, you’re right.” I stop walking. “I am worried about my exam.” I place a hand to my stomach and grimace. I’ve asked John countless times for symptoms of a more sophisticated malady so I can beg off this weekly torture, but he refused. He also gently suggested it would behoove me to be more ladylike, the traitor.
“You’re sick!” Lark releases my arm to clap a hand to her mouth. “You poor dear!”
“I’m not sick,” I protest. If I give in too easily, Lark will know I’m lying. “I would never succumb to anything as common as sickness—”
“You’re distressed,” Lark interrupts. “You’re so anxious you’re making yourself ill with it. Is there anything I can do? Can I walk you home?”
“No, you go on ahead. I’ll be all right.” Another grimace. “I just need to lie down.”
“What shall I tell the other girls?”
My reply comes out before I can think the better of it. “Tell them to thank me for having the foresight to go home instead of vomiting on their dresses.”
Lark takes a quick step back. “I’ll tell them you send your apologies and your regards.”
She goes then. I feel a twinge of guilt, but it’s gone by the time she passes around the bend. Lark, and the rest of the girls at Rochester, they’re kind to my face because I study with Nicholas, because I’m better at magic than all of them combined, and because John is my closest friend, but they’ll gossip behind my back for the same reason. This is why I don’t like being friends with
girls. They’re catty and mean-spirited, they don’t say what they mean and they don’t mean what they say, their words at once shrouded and barbed, and they’re never sincere unless they’re sincerely unkind. It’s why I prefer the company of men—well, just John really, and Nicholas—straightforward as arrows, intentions clear as glass, and there’s no mincing words with any of them.
Discounting, of course, that blue-eyed devil in black who minces nothing but words, the one I cannot stop thinking about despite that.
Less than twenty minutes later, I’m back at the cottage. Schuyler’s black coat still lies slung across the chair, mocking me. I’m half tempted to throw it out the door, into the bushes. Maybe I will, after I take from it what I need.
I cross to the cabinet against the wall. Throw open the door, rummage through the shelves, pulling out stacks of folded, aged parchment and riffling through them until I find what I need: a map of the Kingdom of Anglia and its surroundings. I take it to the table in the corner and lay it out. The country of Anglia to the east. Cambria to the west. Airann to the north. This map shows the tip of Gaul, too, just to Lutetia. It’s possible Schuyler could have ventured across the channel and gotten that far in three weeks, but something tells me he hasn’t.
All something a location spell will tell me.
It’s one of a dozen things the council will test me on next week, in the test I need to pass in order to study higher levels of magic and go on to declare a specialty. Some witches and wizards, if they’re seers or healers like John, their specialties are decided for them once their abilities begin to emerge, usually early in childhood. But that’s rare, and they’re the exception. The rest of us, including me, have to learn everything. Which means I can do everything, including this spell, and do it damn well. I just don’t know how I didn’t think of using it to find Schuyler earlier. Find him, so I can discover what’s really going on. He’s probably laid up in some bathhouse somewhere, knee-deep in harlots and ale, and once I know that I can wash my hands of him and whatever it is I’m doing with him.
Back to the cabinet, I continue pulling out what I need. Four candles. Four pouches of incense, representing the earthly elements: camphor, lotus, tamarisk, sandalwood. Fumble through a set of goblets until I find a silver one, dash outside to the water pump and fill it three-quarters to the top. Finally, salt. It is of the earth and he is of the earth; it will ground the spell and it should lead me right to him.
I place the candles on each cardinal point: north, south, east, west. Light them and then the incense, placing it at the counter cardinal points. Set the goblet of water in the center. Take a handful of salt and scatter it across the map, making sure it covers every country, every body of water, every county in the whole of the region.
Lastly, I need something of Schuyler’s. Easy: I’ve got his coat. I pull it from the bedroom, tuck my fingers into one pocket, then the other. They’re both empty. Odd. I figured I’d find a sovereign or two but then I roll my eyes. Figures he’d be skint. I’m about to simply pull one of the buttons off the cuff and use that when I feel something in the lining, a hard little knot that feels like more than just threads.
It takes a moment but I find it: a pocket hiding in the seam, buttoned fast. Inside is a small black drawstring pouch, tied tight. I tug open the strings, crouch down, upend it onto the floor. Something small and silver and speckled with green drops out. It’s a pin in the shape of an ivy leaf, filigreed in silver and embedded with small green stones, emeralds, by the look of it. Stolen, also by the look of it. Probably taken from some unwitting woman to give to another unwitting woman, alongside smiles and lies.
I shove the pin back into the bag, snap the strings tight. Shove it back in his pocket. All at once, I don’t want to know where he is. I don’t care. But then the smoke from the incense fills the room, a thick cloud so dense I could choke on it. I could take that goblet of water and douse it, forget the whole thing. But who am I to waste a good spell?
I yank off a button, drop it in the goblet. Dab my fingers inside the water, swirl them fifteen times clockwise and nine times counterclockwise to indicate the day and month Schuyler went missing, then flick the water onto the salt along the map, taking care not to douse the parchment and blur the ink. Finally, I murmur the words to ignite the magic: inveniam et illum.
Locate him.
The smoke from the incense wavers, then at once disappears, receding into the parchment. The salt begins to shimmer, glowing pink along the map like a string of fairy lights, showing me all the places he’s been since he left. I lean over the table and watch them closely, a smile playing along my lips. Nothing is as satisfying as watching a spell I’ve created begin to work.
My smile gives way to a frown as the pale pink trails east, then south, growing steadily darker as it grows closer to where he is now. Then it stops. Bloodred, right in the middle of Upminster.
But not just Upminster.
Fleet Prison in Upminster.
Shit.
Chapter 4
Schuyler
“I told you, it was just a misunderstanding.” I’m leaning against the wall beside the bars of this stinking prison, where they tossed me last night after everything went terribly wrong.
Behind me, the man I share my cell with retches onto the hay-scattered floor. Without turning around I can tell, just by the sound and the smell of it, he’s coughed up blood, alongside nonsensical words. “The element… water.”
“A misunderstanding?” The guard doesn’t look at me when he says it, just down at his ledger, filled with columns of names. Prisoners, I assume. I also assume that list now includes me. “A misunderstanding that you were found trying to sell a man the very same horse you stole from him? Then trying to buy another one with the very same coin you also stole from him?”
“The only crime here is what he was trying to sell that nag for,” I reply. “It was worth half of what he was asking and we all know it. You should be thanking me, not arresting me.”
Behind me, the man gasps. “Element… is water.”
“Yes, well,” the guard says, still looking at his book. “Tell it to the Inquisitor.”
“The Inquisitor?” I’m not a fearful sort; I’ve not been afraid in 103 years. But something about being summoned before the Inquisitor—the Butcher of Blackwell, as he’s known—that will strike fear in anyone. “I didn’t know the Inquisitor heard cases of common, petty thievery.”
Behind me, the man goes silent. The guard glances over my shoulder at him before paging through the ledger and striking a line through one of the names. Then he replies, “He does when the petty thief is an uncommon revenant.”
“What tipped you off?” I ask. Usually it’s the coat: Revenants are known to prefer clothing that was in fashion during the time they lived, no matter how outdated or, in the case of my now century-old garment, ratty. My coat is the only constant I have, the only thing that’s remained steadfastly mine while everyone and everything else comes and goes. I purposely left it behind in Fifer’s cottage—a sore excuse to return after my excursion into Upminster to acquire funds—though it pained me to do it. They must have figured me out some other way.
The guard snaps his ledger shut, and only then does he look at me. “Blackwell knows who you are. All of you. Soon enough there won’t be anywhere for you to hide.”
“Of course he knows who we are,” I say. “He used us, once.”
Before there were witch hunters to round up the witches and wizards Blackwell so despises, there were revenants to do the job. Not me—I don’t dole out murder unless it’s necessary—but a dozen others. There were lists and there were arrests, but revenants being what they are, there were also deaths, and Blackwell was forced to make other plans. I never reasoned why: He always put his prisoners to the stakes, unless they died in prison like this poor sap in my cell. Revenants just saved him the trouble, and the kindling. But I suppose a man like Blackwell likes to be the one to light the match.
“He learned
his lesson. Now you’re not to be trusted. Clearly.” The guard tucks his ledger under his arm and steps back from the bars.
“What about him?” I turn around and gesture to the man prostrate in the hay. He’s still, expressionless, dead.
The guard smirks. “Consider him your supper.” He spins on his heel then and he’s gone, down the dusty, drafty hall and then the stairs, his boots a solid snap on the stone.
“I don’t eat humans,” I call after him. “Why does everyone think that? Jesus. I’m not—” Then I stop. I’m not a monster. Except that to everyone else, I am.
* * *
It’s not the first time I’ve sat in a cell for thieving. I’ve sat in a cell like this in a jail like this exactly 517 times—eighteen, today. Believe it or not, in 103 years of committing crimes several times a day, those are rather decent odds.
The first time I was caught, as bad luck would have it, was my first day on the job. Warin sent me into the village we were passing through—we were always on the move, for obvious reasons—to palm money for supplies. It was easy enough, or so I thought. He’d schooled me on the basics: watch everyone, speak to no one; find a crowd, move fast, don’t make eye contact, don’t hesitate. I had pulled upward of fifty sovereigns and was feeling quite good about it when I saw her. A young girl, pretty, she was turning out her pockets and sobbing, realizing I’d robbed her. The man beside her, her father, only not very fatherly, reared back and slapped her. Her pain and fear aroused enough guilt that I went to her and gave her money back. She knew what I was right off—she could tell by my eyes, which were then gray and leached. She screamed, her father shouted for help, and the next thing I know I was arrested and thrown into a jail that was less a jail than a stable reeking of horse and hay and piss.
Warin whipped me—he was a right ill-tempered bastard—which wounded nothing but my pride. But then he forbade me to speak to girls, which wounded a bit more than that, and in case I got any ideas, I couldn’t speak to boys, either. I was to speak to no one but him, which I did, for the next twenty years. Until the loneliness grew too abject, the beatings too fierce, the control too absolute that I plotted a way to get rid of them and of him, and then he was dead.
The Chase Page 2