“Now!”
I threw the rubies at the shadows. They swarmed around the fallen gems like rats trickling from a sewer. So many …
“Turn left, thief. Walk away. Do it slowly. They are fixated on the gems, for now.”
I pushed off the stall and placed one foot in front of the other, believing I might fall at any moment. But with each step, my breath came easier and my pulsing heart slowed its racing beat. Once I could see and breathe again, she was there, standing in front of the vast inner wall, striking in her stillness. Her hair and clothes were as black as night against the brilliant white wall.
I plucked her dagger from my belt and strode forward. “This was your doing. My client? The kid, Daryn? Those things? It’s all about you. Tell me what in the king’s name is going on, or I’ll kill you where you stand.”
“What king?”
“Huh?”
“What is the name of your king?”
“What in the … what? King Jacobie, you know the one. Shows up once a year and sits on a jeweled throne to watch the paupers wrestle in the dirt.”
A puzzled look crossed her face. “No, I do not know the one.”
Why were we discussing the king? I chuckled. “Nice diversionary tactic. But despite what you keep calling me, I’m not a fool and I’m not buying your horseshit. Tell me what’s happening here, or I’ll stick this lovely dagger in your lovely middle.”
She cocked her head and blinked her dazzling blue-green eyes. “Kill me and you kill yourself, thief.”
I had my hand around her throat before it even occurred to me she had a second dagger and could have launched it at me. I pinned her to the wall and leaned in close. Beneath my grip, her skin felt cool and smooth, and up close, those eyes truly did shimmer like precious gems.
“Tell me what I want to know or die,” I growled.
“We are bound.” She spoke softly, like her words didn’t mean much. To her, perhaps they didn’t.
“What do you mean, bound?”
Her delicate lashes fluttered and her lips parted, revealing pearly white teeth behind those soft, pale pink lips. “You drank of my fluids. You are bound to me. We are one.”
I let those words sink in, truly savoring their insanity, then pushed off her and backed up. “You are really something. I’ve never encountered crazy quite like you, and I once knew a girl who talked to the restless gods. At least she knew she was insane. You, princess, take it to the top.”
“How else could I speak to your mind?”
“Bound to me?” I shook my head and laughed. “That’s not possible.”
She sighed and flicked back her hood, giving me the full weight of her less-than-patient stare. “We cannot be separated. This is why you almost succumbed in the market.”
Then more of what she’d said hit me and my stomach lurched. “I drank of your fluids?”
She growled in frustration. “The cup.”
I drank her fluids. “I was drunk, but I distinctly remember pouring my own water into that cup.”
“Yes, but the cup is not ordinary, and neither am I.”
I blinked, opened my mouth to ask, and then stalled, because what she was suggesting was impossible. “So you’re talking about magic? I hate to burst your little fantasy bubble, but magic doesn’t exist, princess.”
Her glare wasn’t getting any lighter. “You’ve seen it with your own eyes and experienced it inside your mind. You truly are a fool, a stubborn, ignorant fool.”
She almost stamped her foot. Though she believed her words, there had to be another explanation.
Perhaps I’d almost passed out due to heat exhaustion. It was hot, and I had just been running for my life, and there was also the fact I was hungover and likely dehydrated. And the creatures, they were just men. Ugly, twisted, and hideous, yes, but just men. Her words about magic were nonsense.
She shook her head and dipped her chin, and for the briefest moment, I glimpsed the woman behind the attitude. A thin flicker of sorrow hid behind all her impatience.
“What’s done is done.” She sighed. “We cannot undo the past, but we can move forward. Thief—Vance, we must find somewhere safe to rest before nightfall. Whether you believe me, the mages will come again.”
Though she needed the kind of help prescribed by a head doctor, she was right about one thing: we needed to find shelter for the night, somewhere well away from the market district. I needed time to consider my next move and what to do with Her Craziness. “We’ll catch a ride.”
“Ride?” Her voice fluttered. “Ride what?”
It was going to be a long day.
Chapter Three
Watching her Royal Haughtiness clutch at the rail inside the rickety carriage was, in all honesty, the funniest thing I’d seen since the improvised pig wrestling match at the farmer’s market. Considering she had appeared the picture of lethal grace until now, seeing her turn into a nervous, fumbling wreck warmed my cynical heart.
She sat rigid beside me, while I slumped in the seat and let the jolting sway of the carriage soothe my strung-out nerves. The rattle of wheels and rigging and the clatter of horse hooves against the cobbles was loud enough that I had to shout to be heard.
“Have you ever heard the saying, ‘Fingers cannot be of the same length’?”
She looked at me, wishing me dead with her glare alone.
“It means we cannot expect perfection in everything we do.”
She glared some more.
I smiled back at her. Through the carriage door window over her shoulder, the great Inner Circle spire pierced Brea’s horizon. The city bells rang, calling the approaching night, while the sky bled its death, leaching red through the azure skies. As light faded and shadows grew long, we passed streams of foot traffic, traders returning from market, no doubt with some strange tales of the creatures that had attacked. The guards would be questioning the witnesses and getting mixed tales of murder and mayhem. Perhaps they’d be too busy with the market massacre to think too much on the two bodies I had left behind.
“Where do you come from?” I asked, shifting in the hard seat and adjusting the assassin’s dagger so it didn’t dig in my back. She hadn’t asked me to return the dagger, and I wouldn’t offer.
“Nowhere, thief.” And we were back to thief again.
So she didn’t want to talk. That was fine by me. I might have given her some time and space had she, in any way, appeared affected by the events, but she was as rigid and reserved as when she’d commanded me to drink from the cup in the alley. At least I had survived the encounter. My gentleman client couldn’t say the same.
“Did you retrieve your precious cup, princess?”
“Yes,” she hissed and kept her gaze locked on the carriage bulkhead, as though she could see through it into the driver’s back.
The carriage hit a pothole, jostling us with enough force to almost throw me from my seat. I clung on with one hand and reached out with the other, blocking her fall. She caught my arm with a gasp, looked at me in a way that made sure I knew she believed the potholes were entirely my fault, and settled back onto the seat.
“Are you always this prickly?” I asked.
She glanced at me side-on, and her rock-hard expression softened by a fraction. “I no more want to be here than you do.”
“Then go, please.” I chuckled. “I’ll ask the driver to stop and let you off.”
“I cannot go. I have already told you: we are bound.”
“Yeah, about that …” I twisted in the seat, still clutching the rail. The carriage continued to skip and bounce, and she gripped the door rail tight enough to white her knuckles. “Let’s say I believe you about the cup and I can get past the whole magic does exist thing. How are we bound again?”
“You drank from the cup—my cup.”
“You said that already. What does it mean?”
She lifted her gaze and growled low. “I will explain, but not here. How much farther is the inn?”
“We’ll
reach it before nightfall, although I can’t say we’ll be any safer inside its walls as out. Brea innkeepers are somewhat untrustworthy.”
“So it seems to be the case with all men.”
“You know, another man might take offense at that.”
“But not you?”
I straightened and turned my face away, admiring the proud marble architecture of Brea’s Eastside District as we passed.
My sister trusted me; she died for that trust. “Not me, princess.”
I’d expected my haughty princess to kick up a fuss when I paid for just the one room, but she stayed quiet, looming behind me like a shadow—one capable of killing me in my sleep. I pocketed the remaining rubies. I still had enough to hitch a ride on a trading coach to Wreckers Gate—alone. If it came to that. Wreckers Gate wasn’t the most welcoming place, especially for a jewelless thief, but it was that coastal outpost or east of the Thorns Range, and I had never been outside Brean lands or beyond the Thorns. Travelling east was a gamble. I wasn’t desperate enough to see the back of Brea. Yet.
After inspecting the inn’s modest room, Her Haughtiness left without a word.
I shrugged off my jacket and loosened my shirt, still in dire need of a bath, and ventured downstairs to the front of house. I found her tucked away at a table in a corner. She’d opted to keep her cloak wrapped around her, hiding her unusual attire, and sat in the darkest corner, chasing the shadows.
After ordering two ales, I set one down on the table in front of her and sat opposite. She watched the small, rowdy crowd without so much as looking up at me, so I unashamedly watched her. What little firelight reached us cast a shifting glow across her face. She couldn’t be very old, no older than my twenty-two years, but she carried herself with a confidence usually found in seasoned warriors. Perhaps she heralded from the east, where warriors were trained in light blades and subterfuge tactics, but her accent was wrong for Eastern Ellenglaze. Where and why would a highborn woman learn to kill with such efficiency?
I took a drink of my ale and studied her face in profile. A small frown tugged the corners of her lips down, hinting at the ghost of sadness. She’d hidden it in the alley, when she poisoned me, but she didn’t hide it now or when she looked at the cup. When she wasn’t sneering, or barking commands, or glowering, there was a natural beauty in how her soft lips contrasted with her high, sharp cheekbones; a touch of color kissed her smooth cheeks, and those eyes … She had used kohl to darken her eyes in a smooth, accentuating line, in the style some eastern women were fond of. The look was subtle and most Brean women did not wear it. She wasn’t from Brea, that much was clear.
“Are you finished staring?”
“Maybe you should smile once in a while.”
“What is there to smile about?” She arched a brow. “Mm, thief?”
I shrugged. “We’re alive.”
She didn’t look pleased. “This place, these people …” She shifted in her seat to face me. “It is not what I expected.”
“Like many ugly things, Brea looks pretty from a distance,” I said.
That delicate hint of sadness returned, and this time it reached her eyes before she blinked and banished it. What could she possibly be sad about? Certainly not the man she’d killed.
“Forgive me for asking, but why is someone of your stature stalking Brean docks and alleys for unfortunate thieves to bully into your bizarre fantasy?”
“I didn’t seek you out. You found me.”
“That’s not how I remember it, although I was exceedingly drunk at the time.”
“I was bound to the cup, same as I am now bound to you. You touched the cup and roused me.”
“I roused you by touching the cup?” If my incredulous tone hadn’t given away my disbelief, then my frown would have. What she described wasn’t possible. Besides, I’d worn gloves the entire time I’d handled it, as the client had stipulated. “The first time I held the cup was when you asked me to drink from it.”
“Then you were unaware of the touch, because the only way I could have been woken is by touch. A touch by someone worthy. Although, perhaps in that you are correct. I can’t imagine how you are worthy enough.”
I smiled into my drink. “Social etiquette isn’t your strong point, is it?”
“I am not yet whole. I need your strength and your life to help fully revive me.”
“Revive you? Are you telling me you were somehow”—I gestured with my hands, encompassing a circle, or trying to—“inside the cup?”
“I, my essence, my being—call it what you will—was hidden inside the cup, yes.”
I’d have laughed like I had in the alley, but her face was stone cold serious. Perhaps my fingers truly had sailed through her arm when I tried grabbing her in the alley? No, because that would make her tale real. And if her tale was real, then so was magic. And if magic was real, then everything I knew, everything I’d been told since I was old enough to listen, was a lie. And if everything was a lie, then I’d watched my parents burn for that lie while my sister had screamed at me to do something. Anything. Magic wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. If it was, then that would make me a killer.
I braced my arm on the tabletop and bowed my head, fighting against the tattered memories. I caught a hint of wood smoke from the fireplace and the memories surged again. Burning human flesh. Despite the years, I remembered precisely how their skin had blistered and sizzled. I pinched the bridge of my nose, breathed in the stale-ale smell of the inn, and took a generous drink to chase away the past.
“Thief?”
“Yes?” Her unforgiving glare was enough to ground me back in the present. “So, in this fantasy of yours, we are bound,” I said, “so that you may gain strength, as a sorceress of sorts?” I wore my smile easily enough and my voice held very little trace of the self-loathing trying to drag me down into despair. I’d been there before. “If you’re a sorceress of sorts, why can’t you just magic”—I tickled the air with my fingers—“those creatures away?”
She sighed and teased a fingertip around the top of her tankard of ale. “I am very weak. And the mages, they are … they are far stronger than I am.” She flicked her gaze to me and caught my smile before I could hide it. “You don’t believe me. I understand. There is precious little magic here. I feel its absence the same as you must feel the absence of the sun at night. But there is a simple way I can prove our bond. You merely have to walk away and the bond will tighten the farther you go. When you’ve walked too far, you’ll suffer as you did in the market.”
I wasn’t leaving the inn in the middle of the night so I could get robbed on the street and be left for dead in a gutter, probably by her. I smiled. “I’ll pass, thank you.”
“Your lack of belief puts us both in danger.” Firelight warmed half her face. Shadows darkened the other half.
“Princess, you put us both in danger.”
“Do not call me princess.”
“Don’t call me thief.”
“That is what you are.”
“My name is Curtis Vance.” I picked up my drink and leaned back in the chair. “A thief is not all I am.”
“I have yet to see evidence of anything else.”
And she thought I had to prove myself to her because…?
“How do we part ways, then?” I gestured between us. “How do we break this suffocating magical bond that neither of us wants?”
She hesitated and wet her lips. “It cannot be broken. Once two people are bonded, it is a permanent link.”
“Permanent?” My voice pitched high. I coughed, clearing the squeak. “As in forever?”
“Until I am whole again. But there is a way to hasten the process.”
Thank the restless gods for the “but,” because a lifetime with her as my shadow would have driven me as insane as she appeared. Was insanity contagious?
I shifted my chair back and considered refilling my tankard. “And that way is…?”
“We must find the jewel before the mages
do.”
“Ah, the jewel. I wondered when you were going to mention this jewel the mage asked after. Is it valuable, this jewel?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Yes, thief. It is precious to certain individuals. And if you want to be free of me, we had better find it.”
Well, this conversation was getting a whole lot more interesting. “Do you know where it is?”
“Yes.” She gave me a look that made it clear she wasn’t about to tell me exactly where and how to find the jewel. Anyone would think she didn’t find me trustworthy.
“Wonderful. We find the jewel, you perform your magical doo-dah, and we part company.”
And still she refused to smile. “Indeed.”
Maybe if she had a few tankards of ale, she’d loosen up, but I doubted it. She was likely an angry drunk, and after seeing what she was capable of when not angry, that was something I didn’t want to witness. What in the four kingdoms would she be like furious? “Where and what is this jewel? Exactly now. Do not skimp on the details. Details can make or break a job.”
She eased her hood back and leaned forward, briefly glancing at our uninterested drinking companions several tables over. “How long has magic been vanquished from these lands?” she asked, avoiding my question.
“This is a trick question?” She raised her brow, so clearly not. “There has never been magic. It’s fantasy and fairy tales. Children’s stories.”
“How do you know this is true?” Her voice was little more than an intimate whisper.
“Reality is what you see, princess. Do you see any magic in this inn? No, you see weary men and women working all the daylight hours there are to fill their bellies and feed their children. You see thieves and conmen, whores and beggars. An innkeeper who waters down the soup and bulks out bread with chalk. He’ll serve the leftovers to the next paying guest. You see people who are afraid to travel at night for fear of robbers, rapists, or worse. Do you see magic in any of that? Was there magic in the hallway of my home, where a boy had his guts torn out?” I paused and swallowed the bitter taste of anger. “There is no magic in the city of Brea, or in the moor town of Calwyton, or in the Draynes valleys, or anywhere in the entire realm of Ellenglaze. It doesn’t, never has, and never will exist.”
The Heartstone Thief (Dragon Eye Chronicles Book 1) Page 3