25. Leah #3
Leah shrugs. “Except you could be full of shit and spinning me any old story, so I’ll take the risk and you’ll take what you’re offered.”
Ingold’s eyes glitter with irritation, but he nods. “Very well.”
“Nicely done,” I murmur into her ear. I hardly need a reminder that Leah is not a woman to be meddled with, yet I enjoy these moments all the same.
Rather than get any closer to the man, she tosses him the gold pieces. He snatches them out of the air, holding them up to the light.
“Well?” Leah demands.
“There’s been more activity around the Aradis trade rift lately,” he says. “The ephilium have been shifty, putting extra guards on duty, claiming they’re doing ‘inspections.’ Word is they’re smuggling something through they don’t want the Assembly to know about.”
“Interesting. We can’t get demons within two blocks of the trade rift usually, not without the ephilium kicking up a stink.”
Leah ignores me, staying focused on the trader she clearly doesn’t trust. “You better not be fucking with me, Ingold.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it, Rose Radley,” he says with a smile before slinking away.
“Ugh, he makes my skin crawl,” she says. “I didn’t even know he knew my name.”
“Your fake name,” I point out.
“Yes, which reminds me, how did you know—”
She interrupts herself mid-thought to greet Hodges as he returns.
“Any luck?”
He shakes his head. “Either everyone wants to protect their customers too much to rat them out for gold or the people working with the wingers don’t hang out at the Three Bridges. I did get something though. It was the medicine woman—Martha? I haven’t seen her for a while, and she asked after you.”
“So?”
“So she said that someone came around asking about you—well, looking for a scavenger of your description, anyway.”
“Who?” Leah asks.
Hodges shrugs. “She didn’t recognize him.
Just said he seemed like a normal guy and he was interested in the medicine you buy.
She thought you’d recommended her to him at first, before he started asking questions about the kind of things you scavenged.
Does he have something to do with where you got this gold? ”
“No,” Leah says quickly. “Do you know when this was?”
“Over a month back. Maybe six weeks? She wasn’t sure.”
“What does he mean? Why would someone be asking after you?”
“I don’t know what he’s talking about. Why would anyone be looking for me? Maybe the sorcerers you didn’t kill found out I used to scavenge and are trying to track me down.”
“Here,” Hodges says, making to hand back the gold. “Martha wouldn’t take it.”
“You keep it,” she says without hesitation.
“That’s not exactly yours to give,” I point out wryly.
“Shush. Hodges did a job for you; the least you can do is compensate him.”
The young man’s eyebrows have disappeared beneath his hairline. “I can’t—”
“Yes you can,” she says sternly. “Anyway, it’ll only weigh me down. I’ve got places to be.”
He blows a breath upward, ruffling his bangs. “Okay. But you owe me some explanations one day.” He reaches out and puts a hand to her shoulder. “It was good to see you, Polaris.”
“You too,” she says, patting his hand. “Say hello to your mom for me. I’m hoping I’ll be around again soon. I can’t promise I’ll be scavenging, but…yeah, this isn’t goodbye.”
He pulls a face, like he doesn’t appreciate the vagueness of this promise. “Whatever you’re up to, just be smart, okay?”
I can sense the smile that spreads across her face.
“Smarter than you, anyway,” she throws back with the air of someone supplying the punchline to a long-held private joke.
He laughs, but it’s a halfhearted noise, and as Leah walks away, she throws a glance over her shoulder back at the young man.
I feel a heaviness in her chest at the same time I see the doubt written on his face.
“Well, I guess maybe we should check out the rift then,” she says, but my mind is still stuck on the information her friend gave her.
“What medicine was he talking about?” I ask. “Why would someone be interested in that?”
“It was just some medicine for my allergies. I’m allergic to everything,” she says.
Is she? Because she’s been living with me for months now, and I’ve never seen evidence of such a thing.
Except with the demon blood. It breaks her out in a rash.
“As for the rest, I told you I don’t know. It could’ve been Hathwell for I all I know, trying to track me down.”
“Hathwell?”
“My husband,” she hisses, like the word itself annoys her. “He disappeared the night I was kidnapped, but he could be anywhere now.”
There are too many lingering questions, and too many I don’t knows from Leah—about why someone might be looking for her at the market or how she knows her husband disappeared the night she was kidnapped.
I think that was a slip on her part, because she’s already told me she went to sleep on her wedding night and woke up in that chamber—so where has that information come from?
It makes me uneasy. I want answers to what the ephilium are doing to the lake, but even more than that, I wish for some sign that I could believe Leah when she claims to be as in the dark as I am about the strange circumstances mounting up around her.