The Kinder Poison

by Natalie Mae

  But if I don’t take this boat, who knows how long it will be before I have another chance to escape. If I have another chance.

  He could die, whispers the other part of my brain. And Melia, too. Is your freedom worth that?

  “Girl!” yells the woman. “I’m leaving—”

  “Help them!” I say, gripping the canoe. “Please, we have to help them. Do you have protection spells? A sword?”

  “Do I look like a mercenary? If you’re not getting in, get out of the way!”

  She slaps my hands with the canoe’s emergency oars. I let go in surprise, and the woman shoves out into the river, shaking her head and muttering about fools.

  And there goes my boat.

  But I have no time to lament my continuing streak of bad decisions. I whirl to see Jet now surrounded by four men, the fifth writhing and cradling his bleeding arms outside the circle. I don’t know where they took Melia, and panic seizes me that I might help one only to be too late for the other. That I have no effectual plan doesn’t faze me, as usual. I run for their circle, hoping to be able to distract them long enough to give Jet an advantage—

  A hand grips my arm and jerks me around. I slam into a core of hard muscle and the smug smile of the Stormshrike. The strange casing around his ears looks almost fluid in the sunlight.

  “Well, hello there, beautiful,” he says. “Thought any longer about that drink?”

  “Obviously that’s exactly what I was rushing over here to do,” I say, aghast. I should probably have said something that would better serve my safety, but really? “Where did you learn about social cues?”

  He chuckles. “It’s hard to learn from the dead.”

  I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean, and revulsion crawls my skin as his hand slides down my hip, splayed and searching.

  “Stop,” I say, jerking away. His grip tightens painfully on my arm.

  “Don’t get excited, I’m just making sure you don’t stab me, like your friend.” His hand closes around the leather pouch. “Ah, what’s this?”

  He rips the bag from my belt, and when he catches sight of what’s inside, his eyes widen. He releases me to sift through the treasure, greed lighting his face.

  Jet shouts, but the man catches me before I can turn.

  “This is a lot of gold,” he says, jingling the bag. “Does your prince know you have this?”

  An idea strikes me in a flash of nerves. “If you spare us, I’ll give you the rest of it.”

  “There’s more?” A horrible grin works across his face, and he lifts a ruby beetle from the stash. “I knew I liked you. A smart girl thinks her way out of things.”

  More than you know, I think as he drags me to where two of the men have finally pinned Jet to the ground. The prince struggles and breathes hard, his eye purpled and a cut across his cheek. His arm bleeds where a hunter holds him, and I wince when his captor’s fingers tighten around it.

  Jet’s eyes close when we stop. “You,” he pants, “were supposed to run.”

  “See, if you’d just let us talk earlier,” the man says, “we could have avoided all this. We’re reasonable businessmen. Someone hires us to kidnap you; you hire us to look the other way. Luckily your girl knows how it works.”

  “You will burn for this,” Jet seethes. “The Wraithguard won’t care if you were ‘doing a job.’”

  The man scoffs. “Even the Mestrah’s personal guards will have trouble finding us now. You might want to speak to us with a little respect, aera. You never know when you’ll suddenly find yourself on the bottom.” He shoves me into one of his comrades, who grabs my arms. Jet jerks and tries to stand, but his captor squeezes his injured arm until he gasps, and he stills.

  The Stormshrike saunters over to Jet and squats, jangling the pouch of riches. “This is a good starting point. How much more do you have?”

  Jet looks at me, and back at the pouch. When we pay them, his entire savings for a new life will be gone.

  “Enough to never need another job,” Jet says, resting his chin on the sand. “And then some.”

  “Where?”

  “Behind—behind the first plateau. We have horses, too.”

  “Well, boys,” the Stormshrike says, standing, “we should rob princes more often. No hard feelings, aera.” He stands and motions to the alley where Melia disappeared, and turns back to the men holding Jet. “Let him up. No tricks, or I keep the girls, too.”

  “Hey,” I say. “I was the one who made the deal!”

  “Just business, adel. Maybe you should have spent more time defending your team and less trying to make off with a cut of the pay. He’s the one with the gold, not you.”

  With a jolt, I realize he thinks I’m Jet’s First . . . and that I intended to abandon the prince for a pouch of jewelry. Which means they don’t know I’m the sacrifice . . . and they don’t know about Marcus.

  Maybe he should have spent more time learning about his target.

  “Melia,” Jet gasps as he’s jerked to his feet.

  “I’m fine,” Melia calls, struggling against the grim-faced woman who drags her forward. Her hands are bound and her cheek bruised, but I’m relieved she looks otherwise unharmed. She catches sight of me, and her eyes widen. “Zahru.”

  “Lead on, prince,” the Stormshrike jeers, pushing Jet ahead. Injured and with his hands bound behind him, Jet stumbles, but another man jerks him upright. Their blatant disrespect and lack of magic have me wondering where they’re from. The Stormshrike clearly lied about his identity, since I have yet to see him conjure so much as a breeze. Magicless bounty hunters who would agree to kidnap one of the Mestrah’s deadly sons . . . I mean, it worked, but it shouldn’t have. Something is off.

  The man holding me binds my hands, too, as if that will make any difference in what I’m capable of. Still, part of me is oddly thrilled at being taken seriously.

  “Don’t try anything,” he growls as we follow the procession through the market. The locals shrink away or turn their backs as we pass. Like me at the banquet, I doubt many of them would recognize Jet, but I suppose that’s for the best. This is a humiliating display for the son of a god, and a debilitating one if the people knew what they were watching.

  Gods, I hope Marcus is ready.

  We march past the sparse stalls and their wares; past a mother with two small children who hurries down an alley to escape us. Past the Whisperer boy who clutches the manure rake. I count the men around us: eight including the Stormshrike. I have no idea if Marcus would consider that many or few, but I hope it’s the latter.

  “We’re around the back,” Jet says, heading for the side of the plateau.

  “Keep the girls behind,” the Stormshrike calls. “And in front of you in case the prince tries to get crafty.”

  The man guiding me sighs as if this is a monumental request but does as he’s told. Melia grunts as the woman shoves her forward. We pass a thick section of thorny brush and sage, and my heart lurches as we round the corner and the horses come into view. The town of Elab is almost entirely eclipsed by the hill now. In moments, anyone there who might start to feel like a hero will no longer be able to see us.

  “‘The Steel of Orkena’ my eye,” the Stormshrike grumbles. “We could have come back here and taken it while you were gone. What kind of fool leaves his riches unguarded?”

  Jet only looks at him—and smiles.

  The grin vanishes from the Stormshrike’s face.

  A twang sounds from above us, and the Stormshrike’s eyes bulge as he grips the arrow now lodged in his neck. Another twang as an arrow hits the woman holding Melia in the side. Just as the bounty hunters shout and panic, a third finds its way into my captor’s arm.

  “Archers!” yells one of the men. Their employer must not have paid that well, because they run into each other in their haste to get away, more arrows sinking
into the sand and narrowly missing heads. Melia pulls me in to her as the last of them tramples through, an arrow nicking his calf as he runs. He howls and doubles his pace, a cloud of sand drifting in his wake.

  Then it’s only the three of us and the Stormshrike, who will not be going anywhere ever again.

  “Oh,” I say, gagging. I turn away from his body and right into Melia, whose green eyes darken like a storm.

  “And just what did you think you were doing?” she snaps. “You are supposed to be halfway home! You have no weapons, no sense of self-preservation . . . You could have been killed!”

  Heat flushes my neck. “I—”

  “Marcus would have handled it! That is his job. We already risked our lives taking you into one town. If we take you into another and you don’t stay where we put you, so help me I will throw you into the river myself!”

  She tosses her hands up and stomps past Jet to the horses. I stand there a moment, stunned, shame rushing through me like a burn. I thought I’d helped. I didn’t think about them having to risk their lives again, I only—

  “It’s all right,” Jet says, rubbing a hand through his dusty hair. “That’s how she gets when someone she cares about scares her.” He smiles. “Usually I’m on the receiving end, though.”

  Melia harrumphs and sifts roughly through the mare’s saddlebag. Jet looks at the body and back to me.

  “You came back,” he says.

  “Yes,” I say, edging toward the horses. I want to put as much space as possible between me and the dead man.

  “You were literally on a boat home, and you came back to help us.”

  I swallow. “I know. It was foolish of me. I didn’t even think . . . Well, that’s not true, I thought a lot, but I didn’t think about what I was going to do, just—”

  “Zahru.” His hands steady my arms. I look up at his bruised face, feeling embarrassed that he’s the one in much worse condition, yet he’s the one comforting me.

  “Thank you,” he says.

  I blink back the heat climbing my neck. “I’d never forgive myself if they’d hurt you,” I whisper.

  Maybe I should have left it at “I wasn’t thinking.” But it feels like we’ve been through a lifetime in these two days, and now I know that Jet would do the same for me. That he’s still doing the same for me. And as much as I’m trying to ignore it, as much as I’m telling myself I only feel this way because anyone would be appreciative of someone so dedicated to saving their life, I can’t help but notice the way his hands soften on my arms and the safety I feel in this moment, like the world could explode and we’d still find our way out of it. I can’t help but wish things could be different, and he wasn’t a prince, so every moment didn’t feel like I was losing something irreplaceable.

  “Well. I did kind of deserve it,” Jet says, lips twitching. “But I need you to promise you won’t do it again.”

  I grunt. “As long as you promise to stop getting into life-threatening situations.”

  He smirks. “I’ll do my best.”

  We stand there a moment, his hands on my arms and me leaning toward him, not moving away. What am I doing? This hasn’t changed anything. Soon we’ll head for the next town and I’ll get on a different boat, and whatever this is will be as impossible as it was before.

  Jet must see the sadness in my face, because he squeezes my shoulders. “We’ll try again,” he says. “Osjerg is only a day or so south. It’s a bigger city, and much better regulated. We have another chance.”

  Maybe I should tell him that wasn’t what I was thinking. But I still do need to get home, and what difference would it make anyway?

  “And that,” booms Marcus from above, “is how you clear a party!”

  Jet drops his hands. Marcus saunters down the hill toward us, crossbow over his shoulder, that same joyous, brilliant grin on his face.

  “I feel insulted on your behalf that there were only eight,” Marcus says. “We need to work on your reputation. I was ready for twenty, at least.”

  Melia rolls her eyes and approaches Jet with a flask of healing water and a cloth. “Eight were enough. If Zahru hadn’t bribed them, I’m not sure where we’d be.”

  “Hey,” I say. “You just yelled at me for—”

  “You are still on my list for putting yourself in danger,” Melia snaps, but a small smile pulls her mouth. “But you did help us. And for that, I am grateful.”

  “They bested you?” Marcus frowns, and kneels by the body. “Were they some of Sakira’s fanatics?”

  “No,” Jet says, holding his arm so Melia can tend the cut. “They’re Nadessan, maybe. Or Pe. I think Wyrim hired them to hold me as leverage against my father.” He looks over his shoulder. “Look at his ears.”

  I’m definitely not comfortable enough with death to watch Marcus inspect the body. I slink farther behind Melia, peering around her just enough to see Marcus lift one of the strange metal casings.

  “No,” Marcus breathes.

  “I think they’ve done it,” Jet says, his voice tight. “I couldn’t use my magic against them at all.”

  Marcus grits his teeth and stands. He presses the cup-like edges of the metal, and it crushes easily between his fingers.

  “It’s still fragile,” he says. “But the Mestrah must know about this. We need the Metalsmiths working on how to counter this at once.”

  He stoops and grabs the other cup before retrieving the bag of gold the man stole from me. I spin away when his hand closes around the arrow, but a sound like squishing fruit fills the air, and even without seeing it I know I’ll never be able to scrub that noise from my memory.

  “Sorry, Zahru,” Marcus says, collecting the other arrows from where they’ve stuck in bushes and the sand. “I don’t like to kill unless I have to.”

  “It’s all right,” I say, my stomach roiling.

  “First dead body?” Melia asks, wiping the last of the blood from Jet’s face.

  “And hopefully last.”

  “Yes. I always hope that.” Her voice is sad. She rolls her cleaning cloth in her fist and evaluates me. “Are you hurt?”

  “No.”

  “All right.” She sighs. “Let’s go, before they find brains or reinforcements. I suppose we are headed for Osjerg now?”

  Jet nods. “But we’ll need to take the long way around. I think the men following us this morning were scouts, and that’s why they kept their distance. They alerted the bounty hunters to our position.”

  “Rie’s blood,” Marcus curses. “I knew we’d lost them too easily.”

  “And your sister is definitely out of it?” Melia asks.

  “Of course she is.”

  Melia narrows her eyes. “Jet.”

  “What?”

  “Check.”

  He sighs and pulls the listening scroll from his belt. His eyes slip down whatever’s written inside, and he nods. “She decided to mark her name at the first checkpoint after all. She’s hosting parties and parading through the streets buying people drinks and new clothes, and by the way, she hopes I’m having a terrible and boring time.”

  Marcus grunts. “Are you going to tell her what happened?”

  Jet rolls the scroll. “Maybe later, when Zahru is safely away. For now, I’m much more concerned about what Kasta’s doing.”

  “He hasn’t reached the first checkpoint?” Melia asks, surprised.

  “No. Sakira may be angry with me, but she would have mentioned it.”

  All of us go quiet. Sakira would have arrived at the first checkpoint yesterday if she didn’t take any additional detours. That’s more than enough time for Kasta to have caught up.

  “Well, I’m ready to go,” Marcus says. “Zahru?”

  “Yup,” I say, climbing quickly onto Melia’s mare.

  “No one panic,” Jet says, though he and Melia stride
toward the gray. “He’s not any stronger than we are. We just need to be careful.”

  “Yes, but he has a Shifter,” I say.

  “That’s not helpful, Zahru.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry,” Marcus says, nudging my leg as he untethers his war horse. “Good ol’ Adoni won’t let us down.”

  He pats the crossbow, and I can’t help but smile at the thought of Marcus’s actual grandmother facing off with a Shifter—and chasing her away with her pitchfork. We turn the horses back to the desert, and another pang runs through me both for the thought of how close I was to returning to Fara, and for how easily I’ve fallen into this new routine. As though I am just another part of the team, too.

  It’s not going to be just Jet I’ll miss.

  XVII

  WHEN the adrenaline from Elab has worn off, and the horses move sluggishly into their tenth kilometer, the relentless heat of the sun starts to feel like a comfortable blanket. Marcus stays steel-eyed and upright, but I nod off a few times, and Jet almost slides off the gray before any of us react and Melia pulls him up. None of us has slept a full night in two days. After Marcus scours the landscape and determines it’s clear, we decide we have to stop for a few hours.

  “You can tell it’s bad,” Jet says, “because Melia hasn’t said anything about me ruling all day.”

  Melia smiles and lightly punches his shoulder. But she’s too tired to argue with even that.

  We stop in a cluster of bushes beneath a short jutting of rocks, where Marcus can watch the world from higher up but our horses and tent can stay camouflaged. Melia insists Marcus sleep, and he insists he can stay awake for a week. She doesn’t press the point. We crawl into the tent like wet cats, and I’m asleep the moment I lie down.

  * * *

  I’m woken by someone jerking upright beside me.

  “Gods, how late is it?” Jet says. He’s no more than a dark outline on a barely lighter canvas. It’s pitch-black, and crickets sing in response.