Bridge of Legends- The Complete Series

by Sarah K. L. Wilson

He smiled – a dark, wicked smile full of secrets and lies. And yet, his scent was open and honest – minty fresh. “Our world may have ended, Marielle, but with it, civility has not also died. Come with me and let us talk about it over tea while my friend attends to your friend.”

  Marielle swallowed, glancing at Tamerlan’s door. Should she have trusted him to the Cure Mistress? What if this friend of Lord Mythos’ let him die or even killed him on purpose?

  Etienne leaned in, pushing her hands aside easily. “If I wanted him dead, I would have just kicked him into the canal.”

  Marielle’s breath caught in her throat, but he grabbed her hand and pulled her after him.

  “First,” he said, “tea.”

  There was a small stove to the side of the big room and Etienne took a kettle from on top of the stove, pouring it into a waiting pot and placing it with cups on a tray before leading her through a door, up a twisting metal-lace staircase, and onto the roof. Marielle shivered at the view of the dark landscape beyond. The orange-tinged smoke of Jingen rose into the night sky like a banner proclaiming her sin.

  “For a merchant, Allegra lives well, don’t you think?” he said.

  “I think I would like answers.”

  “So would I. Let’s trade them, shall we? I will start with your most pressing question.” He lit a fish-oil lamp, placing it on a small table beside where he’d set the tea and then he sat on a small bench, gesturing for Marielle to take a seat on the bench with him. She hesitated, waiting long moments before finally giving in. He poured their tea elegantly, like it was all he needed to do that day – like it was all he cared about. It smelled of jasmine just as he smelled of rising hope – bronze and morning dew and she could have sworn a tiny tinge of rose.

  “Why you?” He looked at her through thick lashes, like he was trying to be seductive. If he was, it wasn’t working. Marielle felt like a wren cornered by a cat. “Things change. Sometimes rapidly. Yes, we had a sacrifice, but the price for a bride is greater than the price for a sacrifice, and I owed the Lord of Yan a favor.”

  “Are you saying you were going to kill me and marry Amaryllis?” Marielle asked.

  He chuckled. “No. Someone else is going to marry her. Someone to whom I owe a favor. I was only required to spare her life. But with that came the necessity of finding an alternate sacrifice – or watching my city destroyed by the dragon within.”

  Marielle shivered. “That was all supposed to be a legend.”

  “Who says that legends can’t be true?”

  “It was just a dusty old ceremony.”

  “Built on a violent truth, I’m afraid.” He sounded sympathetic. Dark shadows hung over his narrow face, steeping him in mystery.

  “You sound like you don’t blame me.”

  “Oh, I don’t,” he said, sipping his tea delicately. “All things strive. All things try to live. This is the nature of reality. I expected that from you. Why do you think the chair had straps? I just didn’t bet on him.”

  He looked at the floor beneath him toward where the Cure Mistress was working on Tamerlan.

  “Why are you here?” Marielle asked.

  “Oh no, Marielle, for every question I answer, you must answer one for me. Did you know that man would save you when you volunteered to be sacrificed?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know who he is?”

  “My turn, remember?” she said, sipping her own tea.

  He waved a hand dismissively. “I am staying with Allegra because it is ... convenient ... for me not to be in the palace or with the Landholds. Allegra and I are old friends.”

  He was an old friend of a merchant and healer? He didn’t think that was strange? Marielle longed to ask more, but she needed to be careful. She only had so many questions.

  “Do you know who he is?” Etienne pressed again.

  “Yes,” Marielle said.

  “And are you going to tell me?” he sounded impatient.

  “I don’t know if you can use it to hurt him.”

  “If I planned to hurt him, I already would have. I am a man of action – a man with fewer resources and less power, but still with the ability to kill a man on the brink of death.” He smirked as if he was enjoying the irony. “In fact, if I had simply left you along the canal, nature would have taken its course and likely he would have died in the night. No one else was going to help you, Marielle. No one else dares to bring in refugees. The city is too clogged. The resources too stretched – and it is only two days since we arrived. Two days!”

  The teacup slipped from his hand, clattering to the floor and with a curse, he dove for it.

  Marielle’s eyebrows rose. She’d never seen him so discomfited before.

  “Before – in the base of the tower – you said you had access to power to defend the city.”

  The look he shot her was murder wrapped in silk. “Yes.”

  “So, can’t you use that magic now? Can’t you use that magic to restore Jingen?”

  His laugh was bitter. “You stole that from me, Marielle. You stole my power with the breath of your lungs and the beat of your heart.”

  He was on his knees in front of her, picking up pieces of pottery and it felt strange to be looking down at such a powerful young man while he kneeled before her. His movements were quick and precise, like he had coiled springs inside and he was afraid to let them leap free. He looked up at her, his black eyes burning.

  “You stole my city and you stole my life. You stole everything. Without the dragon chained beneath Jingen, I don’t have enough magic left to light a candle. The dragon took everything from us. And now you are going to help me make it right.” His velvet eyes burned in the night. “Forget all your other questions, because this question is the only one we need to concern ourselves with – how can we stop the dragon from returning and destroying the rest of the Dragonblood Plains?”

  Marielle shivered. She’d been so concerned with surviving and with getting help for Tamerlan that she hadn’t stopped to realize that killing the dragon was now her responsibility. After all, if she was responsible for setting him free, wasn’t Etienne right that she was also responsible to bind him again?

  She gazed into Etienne Velendark’s eyes, looking for any sign of deception. They were wide, reflecting the bright light of the moon through the window and the flickers of the bright rising smoke in the distance and they looked so vulnerable from where he watched her on one knee. Certainty swirled around him in silver and mint, making everything it touched more powerful, stronger, brighter. And in the certainty, there bubbled up bursts of bronze hope like morning dew.

  She swallowed, her mouth suddenly feeling dry. It felt strangely like making a vow or pledging her oath to a king – though it was him on one knee and not her – when she eventually spoke.

  “I will help you destroy the dragon.”

  Etienne rose in one fluid motion, putting the pieces of pottery in a careful pile on the table.

  “Then it is agreed. We’ll speak more tomorrow. I think you can visit your friend now.” He nodded toward the stairs leading back down to Tamerlan’s room.

  “His name is Tamerlan,” Marielle said.

  Etienne smiled as if she had given him a gift.

  5: A Matter of Debt

  Marielle

  Marielle woke with a start. She’d fallen asleep in the chair beside Tamerlan’s bed. He was still now, his scent stronger than yesterday and his face angelic in the early morning light. Last night, he’d been writhing and moaning in pain, crying out so loudly that she’d chosen to sit with him instead of sleeping, holding his hand and stroking his brow.

  No wonder he had looked so tormented. His dreams were probably haunted by his crimes. And yet, if Jhinn was to be believed, then that sweet smell of innocence – the smell of soft baby’s breath and summer grass – pouring off him was true. If Jhinn was to be believed, then it was spirits who had committed those awful crimes and not the man before her.

  She’d tried all night to
reconcile the two things – that he was an innocent boy with a generous heart who had only wanted to save a sister and ended up saving Marielle instead – and that he was a monster who had slaughtered hundreds of people to get what he wanted. She couldn’t bring the two together – and yet she couldn’t think of him as only one or the other. When she thought of him as a monster, she could see only his innocent eyes pleading for her help in saving his sister. When she thought of him as innocent, she saw only the tear-stained faces of the bereft in the Temple District.

  Allegra had come and gone quietly in the night. Giving Marielle fresh water to bathe Tamerlan’s head or pouring new doses of her concoction down his throat. She changed his dressing every hour, her work quiet and methodical.

  “Do you do this often? It must take time away from your mercantile,” Marielle had said.

  “I’m a competent woman. I can do more than one thing at a time,” had been her sharp response. And she was certainly competent. But Marielle thought it went beyond that. Allegra smelled of royal blue and gardenia authority – a woman who dictated the lives of others, who pulled the strings of greater events. And she was a friend of Lord Mythos’ and the person he was staying with as he fought to regain power – because whatever he said about fighting dragons, Marielle was certain that was only part of what he wanted. And if he was staying here, then Allegra must be a part of his ambitions.

  Oddly, she had not been rumpled or yawning when she entered the room through the night – as if she hadn’t slept at all in between checking on Tamerlan.

  There had been no talk of payment, and that suggested that Lord Mythos was footing the bill for Tamerlan’s care. And it also suggested that Allegra was doing this as part of some longer game she was playing with the former Lord of Jingen.

  Which meant that now Marielle was in debt to Lord Mythos. And he’d already indicated how he wanted to be repaid – she needed to slay a dragon.

  With a yawn, she pulled herself up from her stiff seat and released Tamerlan’s hand. It was hard to do now that his scent was growing stronger again. It filled her mind so that she wanted to touch him – even when it just meant bathing his head or holding his hand. She had to fight that. Giving into it even for a moment could lead to infatuation – or worse, obsession. And Marielle Valenspear was an officer of the law. She was not a silly girl who could afford to become obsessed with a criminal.

  She needed to get cleaned up, she thought, as she finally broke contact with Tamerlan. And she needed to plan. How was she going to do that when everything about her life was so uncertain? She’d lost her career, her friends, her possessions and her purpose in one fell swoop. She did not know if she wanted the injured man on the bed to live or to die. The thought of either filled her with dread. Worse, she was an arrow with no bow, a law bringer with no law, a scent with no source. She was not the kind of person who charted her own course, she was the kind who always served someone or something, and right now she had no one to serve.

  No one should feel so lost.

  She pulled her badge out of her boot, looking over it with shaking hands. It was worth nothing now.

  The door creaked open and Allegra strode into the room, shoving a bundle of clothes at Marielle.

  “Get cleaned up. You’re a mess. There is water on the stand and the clothes are from Etienne. This man needs rest and you watching over him like a hen with one chick isn’t helping.”

  Marielle looked through the stack of clothing. Lord Mythos had been thorough. The stack held everything from filmy underthings to heavy leather bracers. It wasn’t her City Watch uniform, but the styling was similar. The scarf smelled of the mollusks used to dye it – suggesting it was probably red or purple. The straps and tailoring were very similar – so similar that they were very nearly regulation. Strange that he would have this available.

  Allegra raised an eyebrow.

  “Do you think he’ll survive?” she asked, looking reluctantly at Tamerlan.

  “Do you want him to?” the other woman asked. “Sometimes you look at him like a sleeping lover. At others, like the man you wish to sink in the sea.”

  “I want him to live,” Marielle said, her face hot with a blush. Lovers? The thought! But even on her own tongue, she didn’t know if it was a lie or the truth.

  “He will. But he needs rest. Dress. Go and find Etienne. He says he has work for you. I will watch over this one.”

  “Tamerlan,” Marielle said, and the way his name rolled off her tongue made Allegra smirk. But she didn’t want to leave Tamerlan. Even if she couldn’t decide what she felt about him.

  “Go. Or I will double your bill.”

  “My bill?” So there would be a fee.

  “You didn’t think this was all free, did you?” Allegra said. Her eyes narrowed speculatively. “We’ll discuss your payment later. I prefer to be paid in service – something only you can give.”

  She left Allegra reluctantly as the woman prepared to dress Tamerlan’s wound again, returning to the room she’d been assigned.

  Allegra’s words were unnerving. What sort of service would she ask of Marielle? What of Tamerlan? Their skills were dangerous in the wrong hands.

  And what was she taking from Lord Mythos to house him here? He claimed his magic was gone with the dragon. Was that really true?

  The bed was made in the little room she’d been allowed, and the things inside untouched. There was water in the pitcher and a silver mirror over the basin. Marielle stripped off her shredded dress – shocked by how filthy it was – and hurriedly bathed, combing her long hair out before braiding it neatly out of the way and then dressing.

  The clothing fit. That alone made her cheeks heat. How did Etienne ... how did Lord Mythos know the exact fit for her? Why had he purchased these clothes? There were even a well-made cloak and a thick wooden baton. No bell, though. And no knife.

  She had her own knife and she slipped the sheath from her leg to her belt, testing her draw to be sure she could quickly pull it from the sheath.

  She fished out the badge and the scrap of paper from her boot – the one from Tamerlan’s book that she’d saved all this time – and stashed them in the pouch on the belt, wiping her dirty boots off with the hem of her ruined dress. She felt good to be clothed. It made her feel less confused, less like crying, less like a refugee. And yet, that was still what she was, wasn’t it? A ship without a sea. A bird without the wind.

  A knock sounded at the door and she hurried to it, pulling it open to see Lord Mythos there with a satisfied look on his face.

  “Happy Dawnwait, Marielle.”

  She’d forgotten that it was Dawnwait – the first day of purification before Dawnspell. It seemed wrong that life should go on, and that festivals should continue after their world had ended.

  And yet they did.

  Today, every house of the city would begin to turn itself upside down, cleaning every last item of the house, gathering up anything extra to give to the poor, eating the last of the food in the house before the fast began. And tomorrow they would fast for three days until the morning of Dawnspell when the new year would start – clean, fresh and with the promise of food and the regular rhythms of life beginning again. Summernight might be the end of the old year, but Dawnspell was the beginning of the new one.

  For the refugees, the purge of Dawnwait meant there might be clothing and other used items given to them. But it would be a hungry next few days. Already exhausted and paupered, there would be no food given or made in all of the city. Marielle’s belly rumbled at the thought.

  “Happy Dawnwait, Etienne.”

  “You received the clothing I sent for you. Good. We need to leave at once.”

  “We?” she asked, a hand on one hip. “What are you paying Allegra for her services?”

  He ignored her question. “You promised to help me kill this dragon, yes? You wanted to redeem yourself from the sin of ruining your people and killing thousands? Well, you will begin as serving as one of my guards. There i
s an announcement in the Government District square today, which I must attend. And we must check for messages on the message tree near the canal where I found you.”

  And Marielle needed to see if Jhinn had left a message for her. And she needed to see if there was some way she could repay Allegra without being in her debt. And she needed to watch for the dragon – perhaps, if she saw him in action again, she would see a way to defeat him.

  She nodded.

  “And Marielle?” Etienne said as he leaned in close. “Remember, as we walk through streets crowded with new beggars, that all of this was caused by you and by your friend. And it is only you who can fix it. You aren’t serving me because I demand it. You are serving me because you owe more than you can ever repay.”

  She shivered as the scent of truth and certainty filled the room with his words.

  Dawnwait

  Day One of Dawnspell

  6: Whorls and Maps

  Marielle

  He had been right that she could never repay her debt. Marielle’s feet felt heavier with every step as they left Allegra’s shop – Spellspinner’s Cures, the sign proclaimed – and entered the streets below. The first day of Dawnwait had begun, as everyone prepared for Dawnspell – the dawning of the new year. Sweepers worked along the streets and men with barrows loaded with scraps pushed through the crowds with calls of “Make Way!” and “Dawnwait Cleaners!”

  Hollow-eyed people shuffled along the streets – that’s how Marielle could pick out the people she was responsible for. They stood idly or wandered with trailing steps, some clutching children or valuables, all with hollow eyes. And with every glance into their hollow eyes, Marielle felt more hollow as if she were trying to give a little of herself to each one of them and failing, failing, failing.

  The stench of licorice despair curled around them, infecting the brighter spirits of the locals and even tinging the royal blue power of the gardenia-scented soldiers who marched through the city like they were planning to assault the local shops.