14. Reznyk
Chapter 14
Reznyk
YOU HAVE SOMETHING WE WANT
A s I expected, I didn’t get much sleep.
After climbing down the broken wall from the second story of the keep and crossing the grass to my cabin, I pulled the shades so the group from the Towers wouldn’t see firelight coming from the cabin’s windows, even though I didn’t honestly expect anyone from that group to investigate my tiny wood cabin. They have every reason to believe I live in the keep, after all. Isn’t that drafty old ruin exactly where a Godkiller would live? Besides, I told them not to climb the stairs.
I laugh, although it sounds cold and hollow on my lips. But it’s the truth; they won’t like what they’ll find if they poke around. That ruined keep is filled with broken furniture and cold stone. Even if they manage to break the lock on the highest floor, they’ll only find a room filled with mirrors, and I’m not sure the blond who called me Master Thorne has enough magical training to recognize my wards, even if he finds them.
Honestly, it’s a little insulting. They didn’t even send an Exemplar to come collect me. I think I recognize that blond from the Towers, although we were discouraged from socializing with the Entrants and Novices, especially after Syrus seduced one of them. Still, there’s something about his bland good looks that seems familiar, and the buzz of magic centered on him.
And Kira looked like she was considering bolting off the cliff.
Great. Nice to have that effect on women.
I sigh, force myself up from the table, and peek through my curtains. The eastern horizon holds a blush of pink beneath a racing scrum of clouds. It’s going to be another unsettled day, and the mountainside will still be slick with mud. It will not be a good day for traveling.
Which shouldn’t bother me. These people need to leave the Dagger Mountains. Now. So what if they break their necks on the way? The important thing is that they scurry out of here before they can get close to the wolf pack, or close to what the wolf pack is hiding.
I pull my cloak from the wall, shake it gently, and tug it over my shoulders. Then I ease the door open, slip outside of my cabin, and walk around the back of the keep. Wind tugs at my cloak, heavy with the promise of yet more rain. I spare a glance at my garden, which looks utterly defeated in the predawn light, before climbing the collapsed wall into the second floor of the keep.
I wait until I smell woodsmoke curling through the long chimney that connects all four floors of the tower. I walk down the stairs slowly, catching scraps of conversation as they float up with the smoke and the scent of frying bacon, trying to pretend I’m not just listening for her voice.
The door into the first floor, the one I slammed shut last night, is no longer closed. It’s open a crack, just enough to let me know someone’s been through.
It’s a message. My hand hesitates over the doorknob as I stare at the bright slit of firelight falling across the cold stone stairs. This opened door says we’re not afraid of you as clearly as if they’d scrawled the words across the walls with paint.
I wonder who did it and how far they went. The man who said they’ve come to request an audience is the most likely suspect, but somehow my shills are on the other man, the one who suggested they come inside. The one Kira leaned over to talk to in the meadow.
Something unpleasant twists inside my chest. I try to swallow it.
Or maybe it was her. A vision of Kira pushing open that door and tiptoeing up the stairs catches in the back of my throat, cutting off my breath. Maybe she came looking for me last night.
I shift quietly on the stairs, trying to swallow that thought too. Even if Kira did come looking for me, it was probably with a blade in her hand.
And somehow, that’s still a very sexy mental picture.
Godsdamn it. I push the door open with a slam that sounds like an explosion and then walk through. Everyone stops to stare at me. It’s almost funny, the way they freeze with their mugs or forks in midair, the way even the fire seems to die down when I enter a room.
Yes, almost funny. Isn’t this what I always wanted? This kind of power, this type of control? I wanted to be so strong no one would dare to attack me, didn’t I?
Well, here I am. I force myself to smile at the five men and one woman cowering before me. They look terrified.
I feel like shit.
“Good morning,” I declare.
I don’t mean it to sound threatening, but somehow it still does. Kira looks at the floor, then steps back, like she’s thinking about slinking through the arched opening and vanishing into the woods.
That does it. They have to get out of here, all of them. I don’t belong with people anymore. I clear my throat; the man in the back with the copper hair flinches.
“You requested an audience?” I say to the blond who buzzes with magic.
It feels like a silver chain, the haze of magical energy that surrounds him. No one in the Towers has magic in their body, of course. That privilege is reserved for elves and dragons. Humans rely on magic that’s been pulled from other sources and trapped inside metal.
All humans except me. Oh no, the magic I stole is trapped inside my body. I’m a living myth. Or a nightmare.
I push that thought away as I stare at the man before me. He’s no Exemplar. Still, he must be an accomplished student of the Towers to be trusted with one of their silver chains. I watch his neck bob as he swallows, and then he nods.
“Yes,” he says. “Please.”
“With me,” I reply, gesturing to the open door.
Before I turn, my eye catches on Kira. Her cheeks are flushed, like she’s been running, and her fiery hair is pulled back into a loose bun. I nod at her before I can stop myself. She gives me the tiniest flicker of a smile.
Perhaps not everyone in this room is afraid of me. Something inside my chest leaps. I turn around before my expression can give anything away. With the man from the Towers trailing me, I climb the stairs to the room on the third floor, which I prepared earlier this morning.
It’s the most intact room in the keep, save the one I’ve locked and filled with my wards. The bottom floor was clearly for carriages and livestock, the second floor for storage, and this room must have been where people actually lived.
I’ve cleared away and burned most of the rotten furniture and mouse-filled mattresses, but I spared a rather grand desk and a single chair. It’s all elven, functional and pretentious at the same time, perfect for making an impression.
We come through the staircase and find the third floor exactly as I left it. One massive elven chair sits alone in the center of the room, with the desk pushed up against the far wall. I stroll across the dusty floor and settle in the chair, channeling Syrus’s casual arrogance with every muscle. And then I try not to smile as the blond fuck from the Towers looks around the spartan room for another place to sit. And finds nothing.
Finally, he gives up and turns to me. He looks like he’s trying to be serious, maybe even threatening, but there’s a strange shadow in his eyes and a tic in the muscles of his jaw. He wasn’t in the common room of the hunting lodge during the storm, I’m sure of it, and I suppose I can see why. He’d make a bad card player.
Does that mean he was upstairs, giving the mattress that workout? And if so, who was up there with him?
“So,” I finally say, once the silence between us has grown past awkward and into almost painful territory. “What is it you wanted to discuss?”
The man glances at his feet, then stiffens his spine. There’s something almost apologetic in his expression. It’s a strange way to begin negotiations.
“Master Thorne,” he begins.
I bristle but try not to show it. Master Thorne is what Fyrris called me when he wanted to humiliate me.
“I’ve come to propose a trade,” he says.
I raise an eyebrow.
“I believe you know what the Towers want,” he continues.
I say nothing. A gust of wind blasts the keep, sending puffs of dust scuttering across the floor. The man glances at his hands, as if he’s got his whole speech printed on the inside of his palm, and then back up at me.
“You have something that belongs to the Towers,” he says. “An amulet. We believe you used it to kill the last old god on this continent.”
“I killed the last old god with an ebony crossbow and a silver bolt,” I reply. “Just like the Towers trained me to do.”
The man flinches, like he’s been slapped, but then recovers. “And the amulet?” he asks. “It trapped the magic, right?”
“No,” I reply. “I left the amulet behind.”
For the first time, the man looks defiant. He pulls himself up straighter. “Sir, I can feel the magic in this room,” he says.
“Oh, you can?”
I grin, then raise my hand before my chest. I tug on the magic simmering beneath my skin.
A flame bursts into life between the cage of my fingers. I open my hand and let it float across the space between us, dancing and hissing like a fallen star. The man recoils like it might bite. I let it explode. Sparks rain down across the stone floor. The air smells vaguely like burned metal.
“Tell me,” I say. “Do you see an amulet? Or one of your Towers’s little silver chains?” I wave a hand at the walls. “What about pipes? Do I have those damned pipes that carry magical energy to the Exemplars? Do you think I’m hiding arcanite behind these walls?”
The man shakes his head. Then he sighs, runs his fingers through his hair, and meets my eyes.
“We’re prepared to make a deal,” he says.
“I don’t have the godsdamned amulet,” I lie for the second time.
“We’ll give you the woman,” he says.
My mouth falls open. Wind howls across the broken stone of the old keep like a beast in pain. The blond man glances down at the floor, then at me. He doesn’t look proud of what he’s just said. Somehow, that makes it even worse.
“You fucking monster,” I spit.
He says nothing. A gust of rain spatters through an open hole in the wall that might once have held a glass windowpane.
This explains everything. Why Kira looks so much like Lenore. Why the Towers dragged her out here in the company of a man who’s authoritative enough to speak for the Exemplars but not dangerous enough to be an actual threat.
Fyrris is behind this, I’m sure of it. The absolute bastard.
But Kira didn’t tell me she was here to be offered up in some backroom bargain like a side of meat. No, she said she was here to hunt a man who’d stolen something.
Oh, gods above. I feel sick as I ask my next question.
“Does she know?”
Finally, the man has the decency to look ashamed. “I haven’t told her yet,” he admits. “I haven’t told any of them.”
I lose all interest in pretending to be Syrus and pull myself upright in the chair. Rage burns through my body; magic pulses in time with my heartbeat. I could incinerate this man right here, turn him into nothing but a smear of ash against the far wall.
But I was once a part of the Towers too. I know how they work.
I drop my head into my hands. This room is so silent that I hear a distant burst of laughter from the first floor as it echoes up the very long chimney. I shake my head, then stare at the messenger before me.
“You,” I begin, “are an absolute waste of blood and bone for agreeing to do this.”
He doesn’t bother to argue.
“Why her?” I ask. “Did she do something wrong? Is she being punished?”
The man squirms. “No. Not that I’m aware of. Fyrris said you—you’d like her.”
And there it is. Fyrris really did just find someone who looks like Lenore, yank her out of her life, and shove her into the Towers, just in case he ever needed to bribe me.
I drop my head into my hands once again and wait for the rage seething inside my chest to subside enough for me to speak. When I look up, the man is staring at me like he’s expecting to get punched.
“Who do they have of yours?” I ask.
He blinks. “Excuse me?”
“Please,” I snap, waving my hand in the air between us. “The Towers trained me too, you know. I’m sure you didn’t volunteer for this little errand. What are they holding over your head?”
The man’s back stiffens. He crosses his arms over his chest. He’s not going to tell me. Fine, I can work with that.
“I want out,” he blurts.
My eyebrow lifts as I stare at him. He looks angry, defiant almost, but there’s a pink tinge creeping up his cheeks.
“I…have someone,” he continues, in a softer voice. “I want to make a life with him. Outside of the Towers.”
“Shit,” I spit.
Him? It’s the redhead, isn’t it? He wasn’t in the common room either. Now the squealing mattress makes sense.
“Fyrris told you he’d let you go?” I ask. “Just like that?”
The man’s face grows redder. A crease appears on his forehead.
“He did, didn’t he? And you believed him,” I finish.
“It’s a simple trade,” the man growls. “Give the Towers the amulet you stole, and you get the woman.”
“And you get your freedom,” I reply, not bothering to hide the sarcasm dripping from my voice.
“You have to be lonely,” the man says.
“You have to be desperate,” I snap.
We glare at each other across the room. For a heartbeat, it’s like looking in a mirror. All the ambition that must have brought this man to the Towers, that blind desire for power and control. And how quickly that desire turned into desperation to escape.
“No,” I finally say. “Even if I had the amulet, which I do not, I wouldn’t trade a human life for it. You can tell Fyrris to go fuck himself.”
An expression flashes across the man’s face, there and then gone, like the night landscape illuminated by a flash of lightning. And in that flash, he’s a broken man, staring at the ruins of the dreams he built that allowed him to survive the life he’s been forced to live.
Once again, it’s like looking in a godsdamn mirror.
He turns away. His boots echo on the floor, their heavy smash bouncing back to me, amplified by the empty room.
“Wait,” I say.
The man freezes at the top of the stairs. He doesn’t turn around.
“You don’t have to go back to the Towers,” I say. “You can stay here. Let the others carry your robes back to Silver City. They can say you found nothing and died in the attempt.”
The man turns around slowly. When he meets my eyes, it’s with the saddest smile I’ve ever seen.
“See,” he says. “I knew you were lonely.”
With that, the hollow thud of his bootsteps fills the room as he descends the staircase, walking toward the light and laughter of the group that brought him here.