3. Kira
Chapter 3
Kira
DID HE SAY WHY?
“ E xcuse me?” I manage to stammer.
Benja clears his throat. He looks like this is about as awkward for him as it is for me, which is saying quite a bit.
“Fyrris wants to see you,” Benja says, for the second time.
“Fyrris?” I blink. “Like, the Exemplar Fyrris?”
Benja nods.
“Did— Did he say why?” I manage to squeak.
“He never does,” Benja replies.
Gods above. I haven’t done anything to deserve punishment, have I? At least, I haven’t gotten caught doing anything that deserves punishment. The Archives flash through my mind, but I always leave things exactly as I found them, down to every messy stack of parchment covering every desk.
No, I haven’t left a trail, and I’ve never been caught. As far as the Exemplars know, the only thing I’m guilty of is failing to live up to their expectations.
My mind drags up the memory of the Exemplars visiting the orphanage on my twenty-second birthday. When I aged out of Silver City’s Home for Unfortunate Children, I had a depressingly narrow array of unpleasant options before me. I chose “no” to all of them and stayed on at the orphanage, helping Dame Serena wash clothes, wipe bottoms, and keep the storeroom stocked.
Until two white-robed Exemplars showed up, invited me to join them in the cramped drawing room, and told me something straight out of every fairy tale I’d ever recited to the unfortunate children of the orphanage.
I am not a nobody. I am special.
The man I now know as Fyrris explained the situation. The Towers do not allow their Exemplars to have romantic relationships, but sometimes, as anyone in an orphanage knows, mistakes happen.
I was the result of one of those mistakes. My parents were once white-robed Exemplars, the greatest citizens of the Towers of Silver City, those few, gifted humans who are able to manipulate magic as well as the elves and dragons.
And I, Fyrris suggested, have that ability as well. If I was willing to work, to really apply myself to the training the Towers provides, I could discover untold potential. He made no promises about wearing one of those white robes myself; my mind filled that part in all the same.
I jumped at the offer, leaving the orphanage that had been my home for my entire life in a matter of hours. I spent the night of my twenty-second birthday in a hard, narrow bunk in the Guards’ dormitory, where I would temporarily live until my magical spark manifested.
Where I’d lived for three years now, turning that story over again and again in my mind, wondering if I misheard something Fyrris said. Because my magical spark doesn’t seem to exist. And the contraceptive tea everyone in the Towers drinks once a month doesn’t seem to fail.
Those discrepancies drove me to embrace my role with the Guards. Now, as long as I smile and bite my tongue, I can move through the Towers like a ghost. I’ve picked every lock in this damn place and searched every room for some hint of the people who must have been my parents.
And then I found the Archives.
Before discovering the lonely rooms filled with parchment and dust, I’d only read invoices and lists of supplies. Poring over the stacks of records in the Archives makes my head ache, but I’ve kept at it. I’ve searched half the room by now. Given time, I’ll find something about my parents. Who they are, or who they were. Why they had a child in the Towers. What happened to them?—
Oh. Oh, no. Another possibility surfaces. I feel like I’ve just been dropped into freezing water.
Maybe Fyrris doesn’t want to punish me. Maybe he wants to dismiss me.
I shiver as I meet Benja’s eyes. I can’t be dismissed. All this time, all these failed tests of my failed magical potential, I just assumed the Towers would keep me on as a Guard. That’s where most of the Guards come from, although they aren’t too keen to talk about it. Almost everyone in this dormitory started as an Entrant, failed, and learned how to swing a sword instead.
“Benja,” I squeak.
Benja shakes his head, as if he’s answering a question I haven’t asked. “You don’t want to keep him waiting,” he says.
Numbly, I come to my feet and stumble after Benja. We leave the Guards’ wing, cross the training courtyard with its wooden dummies, and then walk through the main courtyard, which is filled with people going about their morning business. I imagine every head follows my slow, sad progression, even though I know better. No one in the Towers cares about Kira Silver. Not now, and not ever. It’s useful, after all, being a ghost.
Benja leads me through a gracefully arching doorway and into another courtyard, the realm of the apprentices, a place that makes my throat feel tight in a way I like to pretend is a reaction to the magic everyone says is in the air, but is probably just garden-variety anxiety.
Whatever it is, magic or anxiety, it’s especially strong this morning. I’m breathing in quick little gasps when Benja pushes open the door to the dining area. I expect to see the place filled with robes again, yellow, green, blue, and gray, just like it was when Fyrris declared they’d found the Godkiller.
It’s not. I suck in a breath and try not to let my heart explode out of my chest.
Fyrris sits at the head of a table that’s been pulled into the middle of the room, his white robes gleaming. Tholious is seated to his right, looking grave and handsome in a stony, kingly way, as usual. And behind the two of them, four men dressed in black stand with their arms crossed over their chests, swords at their sides.
“Kira Silver,” Fyrris says, with a smile that really does not fit his face. “You may enter.”
I freeze in the doorway. The men standing around the table aren’t Guards; I know all the Guards of the Towers. And these aren’t thugs or dockside brawlers, even though two of them look big enough to flip the table over with one hand.
No, these four men, with their bland, impassive expressions and simple black tunics, are something else. Something everyone in Silver City knows to stay the hells away from.
Hired mercenaries from the Guild. Sweet, holy stars. Every alarm bell inside my skull starts tolling, even as some distant part of me is flattered.
Fyrris must know what I’ve been doing. He’s discovered I’ve been reading through the Archives, searching for any reference to the Exemplars who were my parents. And Fyrris hired four mercenaries to dismiss me? What in the Towers is he expecting me to do?
“Please be seated,” Fyrris says. There’s an edge to his voice that makes a shiver crawl over my skin.
I stumble forward and sink into a chair on the other side of the table. It’s a big table; Fyrris and Tholious seem very far away. The door slams behind me. A quick glance backward confirms that Benja left the room.
I’m alone. Alone with an Exemplar, a Disciple, and four mercenaries.
“Very good,” Fyrris announces. “You’ll leave this afternoon.”
I blink. Tholious nods at Fyrris. He’s wearing the sort of expression I imagine generals and kings make when they’re considering very important plans, and I’m not at all sure how my impending dismissal from the Towers figures into this. I have the strange sensation that I’ve slipped into another reality.
“Remember, you’re hunting direwolves,” Fyrris mumbles, as a sort of afterthought before glancing in my direction. “Kira?” he snaps.
“Yes?” I stammer, still stunned to hear my name come out of his lips.Before today, Fyrris hadn’t spoken to me since he came to the orphanage three years ago.
“Wear your hair down,” Fyrris says.
With that, he comes to his feet. Tholious mimics him, nodding and bowing as Fyrris makes his way around the table. Fyrris is halfway to the door when I realize I should probably do the same, that an Exemplar of the Towers really should be greeted on your feet, but of course, Fyrris ignores me and my scrambling attempts to stand and bow as he walks past.
And then it’s just me, four mercenaries, and Tholious.
Tholious turns to me with a sort of frown, like he’s about to deliver bad news. My hands freeze halfway to my braid, and my heart sinks.
Is Tholious going to dismiss me? But then, why would Fyrris tell me to wear my hair down? Who in the nine hells cares about hairstyles when you’re kicking someone out of the Towers?
“So,” Tholious says, looking like he’s trying desperately to smile. “It looks like we’ll be traveling together.”
The room is so silent I can hear my own heart thunk around inside my chest.
“What?” I finally say.
One of the mercenaries makes a strangled sound that’s almost a laugh. Tholious runs his elegant fingers through his beautiful golden hair. Now that he’s closer, I can see he looks like he hasn’t slept well in at least a week.
“Hunting the Godkiller,” Tholious continues, with the same amount of emotion people use when they say they’re getting a cup of tea from the kitchen. His eyes flicker to the row of mercenaries, then fall back to my face. “And, well, I guess you heard the rest,” he finishes.
“Let me explain it,” one of the mercenaries says, interrupting Tholious. “You and Matius go…prepare the supplies.”
There’s that strangled laughing sound again, quickly silenced when the mercenary who spoke scowls at the man who laughed. The shortest of the four Guild members, a man with hair so bright it’s almost copper, joins Tholious at the door. The two of them exchange a glance. Tholious’s cheeks flush. They leave together as the man who spoke walks slowly around the table to stand in front of me.
He’s tall, this black-clad mercenary, and handsome in all the wrong ways. He’s got dark hair, dark eyes, and high cheekbones, the kind of face that would be considered beautiful if he were an elf or a noblewoman. It’s not a look I find particularly attractive; I’ve always been drawn to men who look like marble statues of gods, like Tholious. But this mercenary wears it well.
“I’m Zayne,” he announces. He turns to the other two men and waves his hand. “Barrance, Girwin, go collect our shit.”
The remaining two mercenaries, who must be Barrance and Girwin, walk through the door. It slams shut as they leave. Zayne grins, then turns back to me.
“Ah, it’s cute how they try to hide it,” he says.
“Who?” I stammer. “Hide what?”
Zayne tilts his head at me. “Tholious,” he says. “Darling of the Towers. Your new hunting partner. He thinks what they’ve got going on is a secret.”
“Excuse me?”
The ground feels like it’s tilting beneath me. That sense of having slipped into some sort of dream world grows stronger. Zayne’s grin widens, becoming something predatory.
“Don’t get too excited, sweetheart,” he says. “Tholious only has eyes for one.”
I frown. I’ve been in the Towers for three years, and I haven’t heard so much as a breath of a rumor about Tholious’s nighttime escapades. The Guards gossip about damn near everyone else, but not him. The only person in this room he even seemed to notice was that mercenary with the red hair?—
“Oh!” I say, with a gasp.
Zayne laughs, a soft sort of sound.
“Like I said,” Zayne drawls. “Don’t get your hopes up. We’re going to be traveling together, tracking this Godkiller, so I want to be straight with you. Tholious is a fine-looking specimen, it’s true, but that man’s only interest is what’s between Matius’s legs.”
I sit back down before my legs can collapse beneath me. “We’re what?”
“Tracking the Godkiller,” Zayne repeats, with a hint of amusement. “That’s our mission.”
“I’m not being dismissed?”
Zayne raises a delicate eyebrow. “Not that I know of,” he says. “Why? You got a guilty conscience?”
I narrow my eyes at Zayne and bite back some of the things I’d like to tell him. Fuck off being first on the list.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I mumble instead.
The mercenary shrugs in a way that makes me think he expects very few things in his life to make sense.
“Fyrris requested you specifically,” he says.
I glare at him. That’s too absurd to be a lie, but it can’t possibly be the truth. I’ve spent three years trying to be invisible. I’m not the best, or the worst, at anything. I keep my mouth shut, even when I have to bite my own lips to do so.
There is no reason why Fyrris would choose me for anything. I’ve gone out of my way to be sure of that.
Zayne grins at me. “Don’t get your hopes up with me either, sweetheart,” he says. “It’s going to be a long trip, and you’re cute enough, but I never mix business and pleasure.”
I blink. I’m cute? Cute enough?
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I snap as I shove myself out of the chair. “I’d be more interested in scraping up the shit that’s left on the floor of the Tattered Rose after a feast day.”
I slam my mouth shut. I’ve tried so hard to shut up and play nice inside the Towers, hoping against hope that I can discover the truth hiding behind the wide smiles Fyrris and the other Exemplar gave me when they came for me at the orphanage. But it only took a few minutes for this mercenary to get under my skin. Damn it.
Zayne’s grin widens. “I think we’re going to get along just fine,” he says.
Fuck you , I think as I force myself to smile politely.