Chapter 35
CHAPTER 35
WENDY
I t takes weeks, but Evans’s sources eventually pan out, and we get a lead that the Nomad’s community of ships is situated off the coast of a town called Zereth. Over the next few days, I throw myself into my training sessions with Maddox. Not that swordplay will be of much use against the wraiths I’ll be up against. But something about slicing through the ropes Maddox procured after I ruined the last pig carcass makes me feel as if I’m preparing.
When we finally dock in Zereth, Maddox informs me that Astor and I will be performing this mission alone. My heart falters. Astor has been avoiding me since the night in the crow’s nest. Well, I can’t know that for certain, considering I’ve also been avoiding him. Before I can inquire why Astor isn’t bringing anyone else on the mission, Maddox comes at me with his broadsword, and I’m forced to utilize my breath elsewhere.
The man we stalk from the silky black water of the outskirts of Zereth has no face in the shadows. Just a blurry, bulky torso, silhouetted by the moonlight, and a pair of substantial arms that he uses to row out into the bay and toward the nearby coastal town.
Astor and I huddle in another rowboat, trailing him in the mist. I’d worked myself up earlier today wondering if Astor planned to address what happened—or rather, didn’t happen—in the crow’s nest. As it turns out, stalking someone doesn’t exactly lend itself to conversation. Astor’s been quiet most of the night, a behavior I’ve been more than eager to mimic. As it is, I doubt we’ve been spotted. So far, the man has yet to check over his shoulder. He has no reason to expect anyone is following him. Perhaps that means…
“You’re hoping he won’t be worthy of being killed,” says Astor, rowing steadily behind me. I’m rowing too, but I’d be lying if I said he wasn’t doing most of the work. Water sloshes against the sides of the boat, lapping inside and wetting my shoes.
“Is it so wrong that I don’t want to kill someone?” I say.
“Not wrong. But not exactly productive either, given our plan.”
“You won’t kill him if he’s innocent,” I say. “Will you?”
Astor doesn’t answer. My stomach twists over. I shouldn’t have said anything. Should have kept my idea to myself. I feel as if I’m going to be sick and reach for the side of the rowboat in preparation to lose the contents of my stomach.
When Astor sees me lean for support against the siding, his hand lands on the back of mine. “He’s guilty, Darling.”
When I turn back to look at Astor, I imagine my face has drained entirely of color. “How do you know?”
“Because,” he says, “aren’t we all?”
“I’m not sure that’s comforting,” I say, though I don’t throw up over the side of the boat. My stomach oddly settled, I lower myself back into the damp wooden seat and row.
When we reach the shore, we tie our boat to a dock and creep across the pier, trailing the man from a distance. We follow him until we reach a shabby brothel on the far side of town. It’s called the Caged Swan.
Astor looks at me knowingly, perching his hand right above my shoulder, resting it against the corner of the building as he leans over me to peer around the corner. He’s close enough I can feel the heat of his chest against my back, but not its weight.
“At your command, Darling,” he says.
My throat tightens up, anger and regret and guilt mingling to make a sour mixture. Like pickle juice mixed into coffee. “Just be quick about it,” I say, knowing full well that what Astor will have to do to this man to produce a wraith will be nothing of the sort.
The man is no longer a blurry silhouette by the time Astor drags him limp into the alley where I’m hiding. It took only a few moments for Astor to approach our prey from behind and incapacitate him, landing a carefully aimed blow to his temple. The man’s body had crumpled like a dying spider.
Astor lays him at my feet, and I can’t help but trace his every feature. The soft curve of his nose, the slackness of his jaw. Even in the dim moonlight, I can glimpse stubble. He must have shaved just this morning.
He didn’t know it would be the last time he ever did that.
“Darling? Where’s that mind of yours headed?”
I work my jaw, staring down at the unconscious man. “Why is it difficult this time?”
Astor sighs, then kneels beside the body, looking up at me. He almost looks innocent from this angle. I’d laugh at the idea if I weren’t about to commit murder. “Taking a life—it’s different when you’ve planned it. Carves at a different part of your soul. Deeper down.”
“I thought taking the first life carved out everything I had,” I say numbly. “I’m surprised there’s anything left.”
Astor’s face softens. “You have more left to you than most, I fear.” After a moment, he says, “There’s a barred window around the back of the brothel if you’d like to peek in. What you’ll see inside will make you feel better about this.”
I shake my head. “I don’t want to use someone else’s misery to make me feel better about my own choices. Whatever’s happening in there,” I say, nodding toward the Caged Swan, “they didn’t choose that. I’m choosing this.”
“Darling,” Astor says, as the man begins to stir in front of us, “I won’t think less of you if you close your eyes.”
For a moment, I desire nothing more than to turn away, bury my ears in my hands, and wring my eyes shut. But then I think of the Sister, what she did to Peter when she took away his pain. She stole away his ability for his actions to affect him. By removing the emotional consequences, she transformed him into something wicked.
Something that would hurt the ones he loved to get what he wants.
“Thank you, but no,” I whisper. “I want to remember what my choices cost.”
Astor blinks, and for the first time, I glimpse something like doubt encroach upon his haunted features.
If his expression means anything, he doesn’t tarry to explain it. He just nods, swallows, then turns back to the man.
Dagger in hand, he holds it over the man’s leg. I imagine him sawing away at it, but he hesitates just as his blade rests on the man’s knee.
“Darling,” he says without looking at me, “I’d really rather you not stay to watch this.”
Steeling myself, I wrap my arms around my waist. “I can handle it,” I force myself to say, even though I might pass out the moment this man’s screams are muffled by the gag Astor stuffed into his throat.
When Astor finally looks at me, there’s no plea in his eyes. No begging. Only resignation in his dry throat. “I’m afraid I’m not asking on your behalf.”
I blink, confused, but Astor holds my stare until realization washes over me.
“Oh. You don’t want me to watch you.”
Something flashes in his eyes—guilt’s splinter lingering underneath the flesh’s outermost layer, forgotten for a time until it’s pushed deeper and the pain resurfaces. It’s only there for a moment, gone so quickly I might have missed it if I’d blinked.
But I hadn’t blinked.
A moment later and it’s gone, replaced by a haughty smirk. “Would you protest if a painter asked you not to watch them from over their shoulder?”
I pause, not at all fooled by his arrogance. There was a time when I would have believed that swaggering veneer.
“No. No, I wouldn’t,” I say.
I don’t turn around until I glimpse the relief on Astor’s face. When I turn the corner, I stay close enough to hear the man’s muffled cries.
Astor doesn’t make a sound.
The corpse that is left after Astor’s done is less gory than I expected. Like Astor knew just where to draw the lines to expedite agony without making a mess.
Blood coats the man’s shirt, ripped open at the chest, but there’s none on Astor’s hands. I’m not sure whether he wiped them before he called me to come out from behind the corner or if he really managed to do this sort of damage without spilling a drop of blood on himself.
The only sign that Astor just tortured a man to death is on his brow, where a thin sheen of sweat has collected. I imagine cutting a man open is an arduous business, but I expect there’s more to Astor’s bodily reaction than just that.
Slivers of red ink stain the man’s chest, his neck. Like he’s been marked for quartering.
I did that. Perhaps not with my own hands, my own blade, but it was my idea all the same.
I wonder if this man ever stood over the women chained to the beds in the brothel just around the corner. If the girls cried afterward. If he ever thought to himself, I did that.
I find I don’t really care.
“Well, Darling,” says the captain. “Do we have company?”
I bite my lip, scanning the shadows. We picked an alley heavy with them, backlit by the faerie dust lamps on the street. The shadows sneak from underneath garbage bins like stray cats in the night, some of them warbling with the flicker of the lamp light. But none of the movements resemble anything living.
“Nothing so far,” I say.
Astor raises a brow. “What exactly is the success rate of creating a wraith, Miss Darling?”
I swallow. “How am I supposed to know? I’ve only known I’m a shadow soother for a few months.”
“Excellent,” he says, staring at the brick wall on the other side of the alley.
I can’t help but glance down at his hand. It’s trembling, still clutching onto his dagger, blackened with sticky blood.
My heart stops. “Was that…was that your first time…?”
Astor’s eyes snap up to me. “If you’re asking if that’s the first time I’ve ever tortured another being, I’d think back to the fate of your parents, Darling.”
Anger and grief threaten to flare up within me, but I’m too focused on Astor’s shaking hand to notice. “Psychologically, it was torture. But you’ve never done this before—tortured someone physically.”
“Don’t try to play detective into my past, Darling. You’re much too good at making false assumptions to inform your decisions.”
Hurt coils in my belly. Both at his insult and my own stupidity. Of course he’s tortured before. He’d even stayed behind after I was kidnapped to punish the henchman who almost killed me. “I wasn’t trying to—”
Just then, a shadow curls up in a plume from the corpse’s chest, filling in the air with the shape of the man Astor just killed. He’s not shaking like the man was. He’s just a shadow, just a memory of pain brought to life. If pain is a being, can it feel itself?
“Astor,” I whisper, staring at the shadow.
He traces the line of my vision, narrowing his eyes. As if he thinks if only he focuses hard enough, he’ll be able to glimpse the wraith.
“Hello,” I say, voice shaking. I realize I’ve never intentionally addressed a wraith before.
The shadow turns its blurred head, searching the alley until its attention lands on me.
“You’re a pretty little thing,” it says. “Why, it’s a wonder they allow you to be out here.” He nods toward the brothel. “Perhaps they don’t know about you. Perhaps I should tell them.”
I fight the blood threatening to drain from my face, remembering this shadow can’t lay a hand on me. The worst it can do is frighten me, and only if I allow it.
“Why would you do that?” I ask, gooseflesh forming on my arms as I wrap them around my stomach. I’m rocking back and forth despite myself.
“People pay good money for a pretty girl like you. I could use good money.”
Be what he wants you to be, I tell myself.
I let myself shake, don’t try to hide my trembling hands. “Please,” I say. “I can’t go back there. Please don’t make me go back. I’ll do anything.”
The shadow glides toward me, sizing me up. “Anything?”
Careful who you give your anythings to , I remember Astor telling me one night when I had him trapped in the cave off of Neverland’s shoreline. I wonder if he’s thinking about that now as he listens to only one side of the conversation.
“Anything,” I say, taking care to be breathy. I try not to glance at Astor, who’s examining me with hard eyes.
“You know, I’m in need of a maid,” he says. “A private one.”
A chill wraps up my arms. I know exactly what this man, this memory of a man, intends, but I play na?ve. “I know how to cook. And I can clean while staying quiet, out of the way.”
The wraith nods, a smile breaking over his face. “I can’t bring you back with me. The No—our leader doesn’t like us bringing in our own women. If you want to get past the guards, you’ll have to have come yourself. And with a passcode.”
I nod, pouring desperation into my reaction.
When the shadowed man leans over and whispers it into my ear, I tremble. I can’t decide whether it’s fear of this terrible creature I made, or the unease at how little regret I have over making it.