Ramson put a hand on her shoulder, turning her to face him. “Ana, I can see you’re trying to strategize, but this isn’t going to work.”
He regretted the words as soon as he said them. Ana met his gaze, and he noted the jut to her chin, the spark of challenge in her eyes. “Why not?”
A flash of alder trees, a cold shoulder, a shadowed face.
Tell her the truth, pressed a voice. Tell her whose son you are.
But the thought of her knowing who he was—who he really was, down to the core of his childhood and those whispers of packsaddle son and bastard—sent a wild bout of panic through him.
At his hesitation, she narrowed her eyes. “Ramson,” she said, “you have to promise me you won’t hide anything from me anymore. We’re in this together.”
He balked. He knew, from experience, that expectations of honor from him would only lead to disappointment. “I don’t make promises, Ana,” he replied. “That way I don’t have to break them.”
She fixed him with an imperious glare. “Fine.”
“Look, you do whatever you want with whoever you want,” Ramson found himself saying. “I’m going to track down Alaric Kerlan and find out what he’s doing trafficking Affinites to Bregon.”
“I’ve always done whatever I want,” she replied. The wind swept her hair back, and her expression shifted, her smile turning dagger-sharp. Ramson began to draw back, but her hand darted out, fingers coiling around the fabric of his shirt, rooting him in place. “But while I have you here on this ship, you’re going to help me with whatever I need.” She tilted her head. “Did you think I forgot where you were from, Ramson ‘Quicktongue’? Or should I say…Bregonian Navy defector?”
Ramson’s thoughts scattered like leaves in the wind.
“You’re going to tell me everything you know about Bregon,” Ana said. “When we get there, you go after Alaric Kerlan, and I’ll make for the Blue Fort.” She released him and held out her hand. “Well? Do we have a Trade, con man?”
It was a good solution, Ramson had to admit as he considered. He would help her get as close to the Blue Fort as he could, and then he would split off to take care of his business with Kerlan. This way, he would never have to return to the place he had run from all those years ago, and she would never learn the truth of who he was.
He nodded. “All right. Trade up.”
Her palm was warm in his as they shook, and he realized that this would be the first deal he made with her in good conscience, one that he would hold true to his word. No false promises, no broken expectations. And when he finished what he was after in Bregon, he would be free to live his life far, far away. He would turn his back, once and for all, on this strange chapter of a story he’d never meant to play in, and a princess he’d never meant to fall for.
By the time Ana and Ramson returned to the main section of the deck, lamps were lit and a meal of tinned food had been laid out across the bar counter. The captain of the ship, Ana learned, was a sailor from the Crown of Kusutri: a girl several years older than Ramson, quick of smiles and even quicker of wit. Her eyes widened slightly when Ramson introduced Ana.
“So you’re the one they claim will save that empire,” Daya said, unchaining a small knife from her belt. She stuck it into a can of tinned sardines and gave a woeful sigh. “The Red Tigress. I’ll have to apologize for the food on this ship—I wasn’t told we were having more guests.” She shot a nasty look at Ramson, who was digging into a chunk of hard bread slathered over with beet puree.
Ana was about to accept the sardine sandwich when she sensed two bodies approaching.
Linn sat down at the counter; following closely behind was the yaeger. He stopped when Ana stood.
Linn gave Ana a panicked look. “Ana,” she said softly.
Ana gestured at the bar top before them. “You can have a seat.”
The yaeger hesitated, then stepped into the warm circle of lamplight.
He looked exactly as she remembered: tall and dark-haired and chiseled. Now, however, his skin bore a crisscross of new scars and blooming bruises; his left cheek had turned an ugly red from a burn. Dressed in a plain gray tunic and breeches and without the adornment of his bright white cloak, he was still as lethal as he had been back in Kyrov.
She couldn’t look at him without memories and a familiar anger stirring inside her. He was a part of the reason May had been captured, forced into an indentured contract, then killed. Ana had had to bury her friend deep in the earth, shutting the bright turquoise eyes of a girl who had seen yet so little of the world and was owed so much. And now May was still gone, and he was still here, standing right before her.
Ana stepped forward. Facing him, addressing him, went against every instinct in her body.
It was the yaeger, though, who spoke first. “I understand if you want to kill me.” His voice was a quiet bass, barely audible over the splash of waves and the creak of the ship’s hull. “But I have my reasons for everything.”
“I’d kill you if it could bring May back,” Ana retorted without missing a beat. Her voice was rough, harsher than she’d intended, if only to cover the ache of tears at the back of her throat. “You’re only alive because of the mercy my friend showed you.” She sensed Linn flinch. “You’ll have to earn it, with me.”
The yaeger’s face was smooth, unreadable. “After Morganya’s coup, I stayed with the Imperial Patrols because I thought they would protect Affinites,” he said. “But the Empress—Morganya—she’s slaughtering those who choose to leave her side. Even Affinites who simply wish to live in peace. You saw her troops back there.
“I was trapped as a soldier, with no way out. I wanted to reach the rebellion, and you were the only way for me to do that.”
His words struck Ana as true, ringing echoes of something else he had told her, moons ago.
In this empire, if I am not the hunter, then I become the hunted.
“Let me help you,” the yaeger continued, his eyes now fixed intently on Linn. “I can give you information on Morganya’s plans.” He shifted his gaze back to Ana. “I can train you to wield your Affinity better. I can fight with you. All I ask is that you give me a chance.”
She knew it was the more strategic move to give him a chance and take whatever information she could from him, but all her instincts screamed against it. She couldn’t even look at him without seeing the glare of the sun reflecting off his cloak in the Vyntr’makt that day. Without remembering May, standing in the middle of the square, holding up her small hand. You will not hurt her.
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that he was here, alive and well, when May was not. She didn’t want to give him a chance, when he hadn’t given one to May.
There was the scrape of a chair, and Ramson stood. His eyes flicked to hers and he gave her a nod, almost imperceptible. She could almost hear his voice in her head, whispering for her to calm down, to think logically.
Ramson prowled forward to face the yaeger. They were almost the same height, but Ramson’s gait, the small smile on his face, the insouciant tilt to his head, revealed who was in control. “We’ll give you a chance,” Ramson said, folding his arms in front of his chest. “You can start by telling us everything you know.”
They spoke long into the night, Kaïs recounting everything Morganya had done since she’d taken the throne. Most of it was information Ana already knew; some revelations twisted her stomach.
“She murdered children.” The yaeger’s voice had grown quiet. “She extorts the weak and the helpless. She separates families, holding them hostage in order to get what she wants.” The cool front Kaïs had put up fell away, leaving behind something so raw, so desperate.
“And what about the Affinites the Imperial Inquisition is kidnapping?” Ramson leaned against the bar, drink in hand. Behind him, Daya held a bottle of amber-colored liquor, listening intently. “Hea
rd anything about that?”
Confusion crossed Kaïs’s features. “Do you mean the Affinites she has conscripted into her army?”
“And the man with the two Affinities,” Ana cut in, her irritation growing. “What do you know about that?”
He shook his head. “I only saw what Linn saw. I don’t know anything else about it. I felt it, though—that he had two Affinities, warring inside him.”
Frustration pinched at Ana. The yaeger seemed to know nothing more than what they already knew.
Ramson caught her eye. He tilted his head, and Ana followed, gesturing at Linn to do the same. They left Kaïs with Daya, who was rearranging the supplies beneath the counter.
“Nothing new that we didn’t know,” Ramson said when they were out of earshot. He ran a hand through his hair.
“Do you think he’s hiding something?” Ana asked.
To her surprise, it was Linn who spoke. “I think he is telling the truth,” she said quietly. “When we saw that blackstone wagon, he looked…scared.” She swallowed. “Whatever they did to that Affinite, I think he is as afraid of it as we are.”
“We tell him nothing more,” Ramson said. “Especially not about how that Affinite you saw could relate to Morganya’s artifact.”
They slept that night in the cabins belowdecks, curled up on cold pallets dusty from disuse and tucked under moth-eaten blankets. Ana dreamt of fire, of shapes and shadows in smoke.
* * *
—
She awoke to patches of sunlight warming her face. The air was warm when she emerged on the deck, the sea stretching turquoise and flecked with caps of white everywhere she looked. Voices drifted to her on the wind, from the bar.
She found Ramson and Daya hunched over a yellowing map at the counter, plates of bliny and cheese and various other tins of food set out. A bit farther away, Linn was balanced impeccably on the bowsprit, her face tilted to the sun, her hair billowing in the breeze. A few white-tipped blueswallows were circling the air around her, and she was sending little puffs of wind into their midst. The blueswallows would spin up like tiny feathered balls before diving down again, their chirps mixing with Linn’s quiet laughter. Ana watched for a few moments, her lips curving in a smile. Moments like these were moments when she remembered what a better world might look like, what kind of an after she fought for.
“One fortnight to Bregon,” Ramson announced when she joined them. “That means you have one fortnight to learn everything you can from me.”
Ana took a piece of bliny. It was cold, but delicious. “And two weeks to come up with a plan. Is that caviar?”
“Good thing we had some left over from when this was still a pub,” Daya said cheerfully. “Figured everyone could use a treat to celebrate our first day here.”
Ramson leaned into Ana. “I just paid her,” he muttered.
“And for good reason, you lying son of a pig,” Daya snapped, her sunny disposition vanishing instantly. “You never mentioned guests in our original deal, not to mention—” She began to gesture at Ana, but her eyes flicked up and the playfulness vanished from her gaze.
When footsteps sounded behind them and a shadow fell over them, Ana saw why.
Kaïs had appeared. He stood between the steps to the cabins in the hold and the bar. Without his two swords, he suddenly looked much younger than the imposing Patrol figure that had been seared into her mind since they’d met. The sun warmed his face, lending a shine to his oil-black hair, and there was more of a spring to his step.
He surveyed them awkwardly for several moments. Then he stepped forward and cleared his throat. “Let me help you,” he said, and his gaze landed on Ana. “Let me train your Affinity with you.”
Ana was about to snap back a retort—I don’t need your help—when she felt a hand touch her wrist. Ramson leaned over the bar top and gave her a meaningful look.
Use your enemies.
“You have a crude control over your Affinity,” Kaïs continued, and she knew they both thought of the incident at Kyrov’s Vyntr’makt, when she’d seized his blood in fury and almost killed him. “There is much that you can do, with an Affinity like yours. Power is a double-edged sword. In the right hands, it is a shield of valor and honor, used for saving lives and for mercy. In the wrong hands, it is a weapon of destruction, used for suffering and killing.”
Ana thought of Morganya, of how eerily similar their Affinities were. One, an Affinity to flesh and mind; the other, an Affinity to blood. They held power over the very makeup of human bodies.
Kaïs’s eyes bore into hers. “I can teach you to use it for people,” he said. “I can teach you to heal. I can teach you to draw away pain. I can teach you to fight for those you seek to protect.”
It was as though he’d reached into her and drawn out her deepest desires, or heard her most fervent prayers over many long nights. Papa’s convulsing body, May’s blank eyes, Luka’s fading smile—all those deaths she’d blamed on herself, for not being able to save them when she alone had control over their blood. How many times had she wished to heal instead of hurt, to save instead of kill?
Luka’s words stirred in her mind. Your Affinity does not define you. What defines you is how you choose to wield it.
The decision lay there, before her.
“All right,” she said. “Teach me.”
The winters in Southern Cyrilia had always been milder than those up north. Yet this year, snow fell like ashes.
Or perhaps they were ashes, Shamaïra thought as she canted her head to skies swollen with gray clouds.
They had blindfolded her and locked her in the back of a blackstone wagon for days. The soldiers had slipped bowls of cold borscht and hardened bread through the barred window of her moving prison. She’d counted six, seven days, before the wagon had stopped.
The doors were flung open.
The light was blinding at first, the grip of hands hard against her bones as she was escorted out. She was dizzy from the weight of blackstone binding her wrists and ankles, but Shamaïra stood straight and proud.
They were in a Southern Cyrilian town, marked by the colors of the houses and winding streets, messy compared to the straight, wide roads of northern towns. The air tasted of sea.
Yet what had once been a vibrant, thriving city had turned to a smoldering ruin of a town. The wind carried an acrid smell and the bitterness of death. The dachas around them had burned black. As far as the eye could see, smoke snaked toward the sky in jagged coils.
A long procession of Imperial Patrols lined the street before her. They seemed to be waiting. Shamaïra didn’t even bother trying to reach her Affinity, her connection to the Brother and the Sister and the flow of Time. The blackstone manacles chafed unbearably cold against her skin.
And then, an eerie stillness seemed to fall upon the world around them. Far down the line of Whitecloaks, between the swirls of gray dotting the sky, emerged a shadow. She was outlined in a colorless shade of white, her hair as black as liquid night against ruby-red lips. The wind held its breath and the falling snow seemed to part for her as she rode her horse, seeming to cleave through the two lines of her army as though she were parting waves.
The Whitecloak escorting Shamaïra shoved her roughly to her knees. “Pay your respects, old Nandjian fortune-teller,” he barked.
Shamaïra held her head high. Yet as the figure approached, fear stretched its long claws into her heart.
The Glorious Empress of Cyrilia reined her horse and descended with a sweep of her cloak. By Shamaïra’s side, all Whitecloaks had sunk to their knees, their heads bowed low, their hands clasped in fists over their chests.
Morganya’s eyes swept over them—and locked on Shamaïra. She smiled.
Up close, she seemed to be carved in monochrome like a statue, her beauty even more terrible. And her eyes—Shamaïra had never seen such cold
eyes. She thought of the paintings of the cold, deathly still Silent Sea of the North.
Morganya turned and walked into the dacha closest to them. The two Whitecloaks escorting Shamaïra sprang to their feet and hauled her forward. They stepped through a shattered storefront.
The inside looked like a ravaged restaurant. Debris was strewn across wooden floorboards, along with remnants of food. Booths stood silent and empty, tablecloths fluttering in a ghostly wind, faded yellow patterns layered thick with dust.
There was movement from the back of the restaurant. A man emerged. He wore a silvery fur cloak, his black hair parted over a long, pale face. Most disturbing were his hands: long-fingered and limp, like a monstrous, colorless creature. “Kolst Imperatorya,” he murmured, his voice soft and slippery, slithering around Shamaïra like a serpent.
Shamaïra’s fists clenched tighter. The winds that twined around her seemed to whisper danger. Deities give me strength, she thought, steeling herself.
The Empress turned, her gaze hooking into Shamaïra like claws. “Unlock her,” she commanded, her voice cutting like steel.
With a few clicks of keys, the manacles fell away, and it felt as though she were breathing again for the first time. Sound, color, light rushed through her in an endless river of Time, the whispers of the Brother and Sister filling the well of her soul again. She saw ghosts of the past flitting through the dacha: among them, a boy with sleek red hair that caught the burnish of lamplight.
She knew that boy.
Shamaïra’s knees almost buckled. This was Yuri’s home.
“Do you know why you are here, fortune-teller?” The Empress’s voice caressed her like a terrible lullaby, rooting her to the present.
Red Tigress Page 15