She lifted her hands to the spray, and when she turned her head, she laughed. I couldn’t hear the sound over the roaring water, but I didn’t need to. Joy lit up her face and made her beauty suddenly breathtaking.
I tore my gaze away and closed my eyes. What was I doing here with this impossible woman, chasing after an impossible jewel, believing in impossible magic? This wasn’t me. People hired me to steal whatever their rotten hearts desired. I bunked with whores and stole from strangers. I walked the rooftops at night, spied on private meetings, and traded in trinkets. Magic was real for her, but it wasn’t for the likes of me or the people of Brea. If the Inner Circle knew of Shaianna … No, this crazy, beautiful killer was not part of my world. The old man in the plaza had been right. Shaianna was not meant for the likes of me.
When I dared look where she bathed, she had vanished, and I pretended the pain of losing sight of her was from the fall, or the guilt, or the many other wretched memories and thoughts chasing one another through my head, and not from the fact that the sight of her had had a very real effect on needs that were more than physical.
The air had warmed and the sun had crept farther into the gorge by the time she approached me from behind.
“Who is Jayne?” she asked.
I looked over my shoulder. She had wrapped herself in her layers of dark leather and pulled her cloak around her once more. The laughing woman I had watched bathing was a memory, and I knew from her tone that the cold, hard sorceress was back. I wondered if the laughing woman was real, or if she was someone my wishful imagination had concocted.
“Jayne…?” I lifted a knee and draped an arm over it. The river burbled by. “Why?”
“You spoke her name while I healed you.” She approached the water’s edge, not caring whether the water lapped at her boots.
“How exactly did you heal me?” I asked. Only the rush of the waterfall filled the next few moments, and I smiled. She hadn’t given me a straight answer yet, so why should that change now? “Let’s try an answer for an answer. How does that sound?”
“Very well.”
I scooped up a flat, wet stone and rubbed my thumb across its surface. “Jayne was my sister. We were orphaned when I was fifteen and she was ten.”
That was the quick and clean version. The truth was much dirtier, and not something I’d spoken about in many years. I swallowed, buying time to clear the unexpected scratch in my throat.
Shaianna had listened, though I wouldn’t know it from the way she stared at the river.
“Your turn,” I told her.
“Some of my power is returning. Not a significant amount, but enough to heal you and subdue that wild thing. Without my touch, you would have died, and I along with you.”
Considering how dangerous she was, I had to wonder if the world was better off without us both. “So you don’t just kill?”
“Do you just steal? Is that all you are?”
“That’s two questions, princess.” I smiled and tossed the pebble across the water. It skipped once, twice, and then disappeared below the surface.
“What happened to your sister?” she asked.
“She died.” I picked up a second pebble and tossed it hard enough to almost clear the river, but the water stole it greedily enough. “She took a knife from the workhouse kitchens and buried the blade in her chest. There was nothing I could do. They keep siblings apart in the workhouse, but I knew … I ran through the halls and found her barely alive. A few seconds later, long enough for her to say her final words, she died in my arms.”
I looked up and held her stare. She died wishing me dead. Those were words I couldn’t say, because Shaianna would next ask, “Why,” and that I couldn’t speak of.
“What happened to your queen?” I asked, eager to steer the attention away from me before my expression cracked and revealed the pain of those memories.
“I failed her.” A note of sadness softened her voice and crept through her brave facade. “She too died.”
She stared across the river, her eyes bright and that teardrop gem suddenly significant. Maybe she wasn’t just the coldhearted assassin I believed her to be. Maybe, somewhere deep inside, she was warm and real, just like the laughing woman I’d seen, but I doubted I’d see the real her again. And perhaps that was for the best.
“We should return to Brea and resupply.” I got to my feet. “I’ll have to steal something to hock for rubies. The highwaymen took everything—”
“No.”
“No?”
“No going back.”
“Arach is a few days’ ride on horseback. On foot, it could take a week. We don’t have any food or any means of carrying water. You’ve already seen what awaits us out here—”
She strode down the riverbank and called back, “Come, thief. I’ve wasted enough time saving your wretched life.”
I arched a brow at her back. Never mind saving my life. I might end hers if I spent much longer in her company.
I waited until I felt the pull of the bond and then begrudgingly trudged after her.
I found traveling with Shaianna as easy as walking a tightrope, and I’d tried that once too. Just when I thought I’d figured her out enough to relax, she’d snap and lash one of her scathing glances across me, as though I’d deliberately stung her with my words. Once I realized whatever I said riled her one way or another, I started firing verbal jabs her way, just to get a rise out of her. It wasn’t as though she could leave me behind, and her heavy silences had begun gnawing at my patience. Add to that the image seared into my thoughts of her beneath the waterfall, and I needed a distraction to keep from saying or doing something I’d regret. Stay focused. Find the Dragon’s Eye. Break the bond. Sell the Eye.
After we’d hiked up the moorland slopes of Merrivale—and there was nothing merry about the steep rocky climb—Shaianna finally stopped to admire the land. A canvas of purple gorse spread between large, scattered stones. Very little above knee height grew this high up, exposed to the elements.
“This is crazy, you realize?” I panted, hands on my knees, ready to pitch over. “If we’re not set upon by wolves before we reach the Draynes, the inhabitants of the valley will likely skin us alive and serve us up to their restless gods.”
She chose not to hear me and stood in the wind, her face lifted to the breeze. Her cloak rippled and her lips were set in a firm, determined line. “There are no gods here, thief.”
“We need to rest. Find shelter. Water. Something to eat.” She didn’t seem to require any of those things and didn’t even appear tired. Being a thief, I was built for stealth, not stamina. Endless hiking over rocky terrain and unforgiving bogs was not part of my skill set. I’d happily mingle in a crowd and relieve a lady of her heavy purse or a gentleman of his lord’s ring, but out here, standing alone on what felt like the top of the world, cold and caked up to the knees in dirt, Brea’s taverns didn’t seem all that bad.
“There, you see there…?” Straightening, I pointed toward a sheltered grove of trees. “Shelter for the night.”
“Shh …”
“Why?” Across the entire expanse of moorland in every direction, I couldn’t see another soul or any sign of habitation. The emptiness yawned for miles, over rolling hills, toward where the Thorns cut into the horizon like the teeth of a saw. “Lest we disturb the foxes and mice?”
She tilted her head and looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “There is much to be heard should you care to listen.”
“All I hear is my stomach growling.”
“I hear whispers.”
Whispers. Of course she did. “We won’t reach the Draynes before dark, and I’m not travelling through there at night. We’re setting up camp in that copse, and I’m not discussing this. If you want to continue, you’ll have to carry my ass across the moor.”
I stomped ahead and scrambled over ancient boulders as daylight faded. Her Princessness trailed behind at a leisurely pace. A few glances back revealed her picking flower
s. Could she be any more of a contradiction? By the time we reached the grove, fog had rolled in and the temperature had dropped enough to set my teeth chattering.
“You’re cold.”
I ignored her and settled my rump on a lichen-covered rock. She headed deeper into the trees, only to reemerge a few moments later with a sharp fragment of black rock in one hand. She kicked a few rocks aside, digging out a shallow depression, and tore up several clumps of grass. By now I’d figured out that she was starting a fire and wondered how an assassin-sorceress-princess who’d grown up among the highborn knew how to make a fire with only rocks and grass.
“What kind of rock is that?” I asked, hoping the question sounded idle.
“Flint.” She crouched, stabbed the shard of flint into the mound of grass, and plucked her dagger free. “And steel.”
“When struck, sparks will fly.”
She lifted her gaze. “From your tone, are you comparing these materials to us?”
“Certainly not,” I denied with false conviction. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
She narrowed her eyes. I scratched my cheek and averted my gaze, wrestling to keep my smile hidden. She wasn’t particularly astute when it came to reading my expressions. Or maybe she could and just didn’t care, because she went back to focusing on her fire.
“Which am I?” she asked, striking the two together. Sparks did indeed fly, but none caught.
“Well, clearly, I’m steel. I’d have to be to put up with you. Anything less would have buckled by now.”
“Which would make me flint.” A smile touched her lips. “You realize, thief, that flint is harder than steel? The sparks are burning fragments of steel.” She struck the two together, and this time the grass smoldered and caught. “The metal is the first to give against the rock. This will always be the way of things. Steel is made by man. Rock is a part of the land, a part of the earth, and infinitely more powerful than anything man has constructed.”
“I knew that.” I hadn’t.
She nursed the flames, cupping her hands around them to blow into the base and tease the fire higher. I moved from my rock and collected what dry wood I could find. By nightfall, our campfire hidden within the copse was generous enough to fend off the moorland chill and any hungry wolves. As for wargs, hopefully we had left them with their handlers down in the valley.
“Here, eat.” She gestured to a small pile of leaves, petals, and berries while plucking a similar assortment from her own collection. She hadn’t been idly picking flowers at all. “I do not know what your kind calls these.” She lifted a sweet red berry. “I know them as su-taloons.”
I sat on a blanket of moss between rocks and soaked up the warmth of the fire. “Wild strawberries.”
She’d amassed quite the collection, although one addition did make me smile.
I poked at the purple flower. “This is a Butterfly orchid. In large doses, it can induce dreams. Whores serve it to their special clients.” Considering how I couldn’t seem to clear my head of Shaianna’s alluring bathing session, the last thing I needed was an aphrodisiac. “I’ll pass.”
“It’s edible. You’re hungry. Eat.”
“I’m hungry for a lot of things. And you should lay off the orchid leaves too. Stick to dandelions. They’re safer.” I examined a few more of the berries and various other leaves she had foraged. If she hadn’t already saved my life, I may have suspected her of trying to poison me. “How do you know about foraging? Is there anything you don’t know?”
“Those are two questions, thief.” Her delicate smile reached her eyes and brightened them enough for me to notice in the shifting campfire light.
I had many questions, and more sprouted with every passing hour. I wanted to ask about the language she spoke, the land she came from, her people, her queen. I needed to know where else gems touched her body, why they decorated her skin, and what purpose they served. I’d never met anyone like her—I doubted anyone in Brea had—and I hungered to know more. But this was a job, and if I wanted my reward, I couldn’t afford to get tangled in the mystery of her.
“I know very little about your city or your people,” she murmured, picking the stalks from the small berries. “Tell me about them.”
And yet she spoke the language flawlessly. I was the least likely Brean ambassador. I regularly screwed over the city and its people, and I did it with a smile. “They’re people. Good, bad, rich, poor. What else is there to say?”
“From your tone, I assume there is much more to say. Tell me of the Inner Circle.”
My smile wavered, but I held it in place and picked at my berries. “I wouldn’t know about that.”
“Then tell me what you have heard.”
“The Inner Circle is a city within a city. They have strict beliefs, laws, rules. It’s ordered. Some call it a haven, of sorts. Very little information gets through the wall. Nobody inside gets out and nobody outside gets in without permission of the High Guard. But wherever you go in Brea, you see the spire and the tightly packed rows of white houses climbing the steep central hill. It’s clean. Bright.” I paused, popped a berry into my mouth and bit down. The taste was bitter and sharp, nothing like the sweetness I had expected. “The Inner Circle is beautiful.”
“You make it sound perfect, but there is irony in your tone.”
Oh, it wasn’t irony. My heart fluttered a little faster. She heard fear in my voice, and my attempts to contain it. “I’m a thief. I grew up in a workhouse. What could someone like me possibly know of the Inner Circle?”
“Indeed. What could you know? Your sister then, tell me about her.”
Fear twisted in my gut, turning into guilt and my fake smile curled downward. “No.”
Shaianna’s expression didn’t register surprise when I faced her. She had the look of the Inner Circle guards: a penetrating glare burning with accusations.
“Enough questions. We don’t need to know each other, princess. It’s better that we don’t. Once the bond is broken, we’re going our separate ways if you can keep from killing me, and don’t think I’m not expecting it.”
She blinked those lovely green eyes, but I wasn’t buying their sweet innocence, not when I had seen her cut throats like farmers cut through wheat. “I am merely curious. Is that a crime in your land?”
“No.” I snorted. “But I’ll tell you this. When the bond is broken, get away from Brea and me. Go as far as you can. Take your crazy and go back to whatever exotic land you came from.”
“Why are you afraid?”
Because I was wrong and my sister was right.
The campfire flames danced. Embers drifted skyward and the smoldering wood hissed and spat. Memories hid screams inside the sounds of the fire burning. Terrible screams that had chilled me to my soul while two raging pyres had warmed my face. I couldn’t answer her, to do so would mean admitting too much.
She held my stare, searching for answers in my eyes, but she wouldn’t find them. I had hidden them for years, and I would hide them for many more to come. She lowered her gaze and ate the remainder of her berries. I could only hope she would listen where I had failed to, because if she returned to Brea with her Dragon’s Eye, not even her magic could save her from the fate that waited.
Mist seeped through the trees. The campfire smoldered. Something had woken me, though I couldn’t determine what.
I lifted my head. Shaianna wasn’t in the camp. After our fall into sullen silence, she had gathered her cloak around her and left. She couldn’t go far, so I had settled down to snatch as much sleep as I could. But she hadn’t returned. The night was still thick, and we were a long time from morning.
She was entirely capable of looking after herself, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that she had been gone too long. Moving quietly in the dark, I caught sight of green light filtering through the sparse trees and moved closer. By the time I reached the edge of the woods, the ripple of green light had flooded the mossy ground and flowed down the steep moor-side climb
. And there she was.
She stood at the crest of a rocky outcropping, backlit by a sharp crescent moon. The emerald light I’d followed spiraled around her and wove through itself, swirling and dancing in ribbons. Captured inside it, Shaianna teased it with her hands, lifting the ribbons high, pulling the light with her, pushing it down, and directing it across the moorland. Her body gems glowed through her dark clothes, sparkling like morning dew on grass.
I gripped the tree beside me, digging my fingers into the bark. That felt real enough. The air smelled of wet grass and overturned earth, and its midnight dampness kissed my face. This was real. Not a dream.
Magic is forbidden. Magic is wrong. Magic will corrupt. May the fire cleanse your soul. Those words had been drilled into me from as far back as I could remember. Black and white posters had marred the Inner Circle’s crisp white walls. Magic is forbidden. Magic is poison, they declared. May the fire cleanse your soul. Those words had been said before every meal, and I heard them in whispers before I closed my eyes at night. I had believed it all. Believed it from my earliest memories to this new one. Outside the Inner Circle, magic was a tale. It was fantasy, nothing more.
I crouched low, my hand still resting on the harsh but solid tree bark, and stared up at the woman dancing in the emerald light beneath a pale sliver of the moon. She lifted her hands. The blanket of light rushed in, washed over her, and swirled into the starlit sky. By the Halls of Arach, I had never seen anything like it, like her, before.
I blinked wetness from my eyes as a rush of guilt turned my insides over.
I had been wrong. So very wrong about … “Everything,” I whispered.
My sister had tried to tell me. She had begged me to listen, her little hand tugging on my arm as tears streaked down her face. But I wouldn’t believe her. I couldn’t believe her. Giving them up had been the right thing to do. My mother, my father … Back then, I was a good citizen. I wanted to be a guard one day. I knew the laws. I knew what had to be done. May the fire cleanse your soul. And so, at fifteen, I ran to the council and told them all I had seen. How I had watched my mother cup diamonds in her hands and raise them up. How tears had glittered on her cheeks. How my father’s racking coughs had instantly ceased and he’d laughed for the first time in months.
The Heartstone Thief (Dragon Eye Chronicles Book 1) Page 6