35. Reznyk
Chapter 35
Reznyk
VISITORS
“ I ’m not having this argument with you again,” I tell the cat.
Xavier narrows his eyes at me. He looks like he’s willing to fight me to the death if I try to move so much as a single hair on his person. I sigh, then lean back on the bed.
“Pillows are for humans,” I declare. Again.
Xavier settles his head on the only pillow we have left, and then he begins to purr. Aggressively.
“Fine!” I snap, throwing my hands up. “You’re right, I shouldn’t have burned all the bedding.”
I stand up, groaning as my body creaks in protest. Thin morning light leaks in through the window. Somehow, it only makes the room feel colder.
“You know, you could at least act happy to see me,” I tell Xavier.
Xavier closes his eyes, his victory assured. The tip of his tail curls around his body and flicks like a metronome. I sink down in the chair, then toss a fresh log onto the low embers of the fire. My feet throb, and my back aches in at least a dozen new and interesting places.
This entire month has been a slog through the nine hells.
I went to Cairncliff. I didn’t have many shills, but that’s never been a problem for me, especially not in a quaint little tourist town like Cairncliff where rich visitors practically beg to have their purses lifted. I was sorely tempted to drown myself in ale in one of Cairncliff’s many dockside pubs, but in the end, I was too afraid to let down my guard.
So I slept in the Spirit Wood and picked pockets until I had enough shills to buy what seemed like a truly absurd amount of food. Then I had to wait for a spot on one of the few carriages that cross the mountains and bribe the driver to drop me as close to the Daggers as I could get. The old man driving the carriage laughed as he took my shills.
“Let me tell you, son,” he said. “She ain’t worth it.”
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“You think you’re the first?” He shook his head. “Hells, I see it all the time. Some lady broke your heart, so you’re off to live in the wild. That’s about the measure of it, ain’t it?”
I gave him a polite smile that could mean whatever he wanted it to mean. He laughed again.
“You’re a damn fool,” he said. “But then again, I figure I was too at your age.”
I dragged the first of my four crates out of his carriage and kept on smiling.
“Listen, kid,” he said, lowering his voice. “I do this route once every two weeks till the snow flies. You get tired of eating squirrels and talking to frogs, you just wait for me here. I’ll be by.”
Something pinched in my chest, the nerve that twists whenever I’m offered something I clearly do not deserve. A cloud of insects bloomed around my face as I dragged the crates off the road. It took me almost three days to climb down from the mountains and reach this road; it would take me twice as long, I guessed, to walk back with however many supplies I could carry.
My heart sank as I contemplated my shitty decisions. The man clucked behind me, and the carriage creaked and groaned as the horses began to pull in their traces. The four remaining people in the carriage, two gruff older men and a young couple, all stared at me like I’d stripped naked on the side of the road and started dancing.
“Don’t worry,” the man driving the carriage said as he started to pull away. “Even broken hearts heal, kid.”
“I very much doubt that,” I muttered under my breath.
That was the last time I talked to another human.
It took me three trips to carry all the food back to the keep. By the time I hauled the last bags of flour, hard cheese, and dried beans over the ridge yesterday afternoon, I was seriously doubting whether keeping myself alive over the winter was a noble enough task to warrant this much effort.
And then my wards shattered.
I dropped the pack filled with dried beans and stared at the sky. It happened fast, one quick bolt of rage and panic cracking the wards, leaving me breathless. At first, I thought something inside my body had snapped in half. But I was still standing; my blood was still mostly on the inside.
“Fuck,” I huffed.
I yanked the pack back onto my bruised shoulders, limped into the cabin, and collapsed into bed, leaving Xavier very annoyed by my insolence.
I was too exhausted to do anything but let the broken wards wait until morning. And now, instead of spending all day in bed with my head on the one musty pillow I have yet to burn, I have to see what fresh horror is coming for me.
With a groan, I shove myself out of the chair and limp to the door. Frost sparkles from the grass, and my breath hovers before me like mist rising from the swamps. The forest below is mottled with gold around the skeletal black fingers of naked trees. It would almost be beautiful, if I wasn’t so worried about what it means. What do I know of winter, really?
I try to shake that thought out of my head as I drag myself up the stairs of the old keep. My footsteps echo off the cold stone. The key catches in the lock on the top floor; I have to rattle it before it gives way. Magic flickers over my skin as I cross the threshold and greet the empty eyes of the mirrors holding my wards.
Shattered glass spills across the floor at the base of the southern wall.
Of course. I close my eyes, then bring my hand to pinch the bridge of my nose. Sure, it could be nothing. These traps go off for anything magical, save the old god. Maybe some elves passed through. Hells, maybe some dragons came to Cairncliff on vacation.
But it’s not nothing, is it?
I feel it in the way the shards of glass shiver as I sweep them up. Whatever set this off, it was subtle. An Exemplar, or one of the Towers’s silver chains, that would have blown the glass all the way across the room.
No, this was softer. It was closer. And something about it feels damned familiar, like seeing a face across a crowded market that I should be able to recognize. I twist magic in my palms as I leave the keep and walk beneath skies rapidly filling with low, heavy rain clouds. Blades, arrows, bolts; I can make them all. And they might as well be flowers for all the good they’ve done me over the past two years.
Not that it matters. Whatever is coming will be here soon enough.
Xavier lifts his head off the pillow as I slam the door behind me. His tail flicks with annoyance as I throw more wood on the fire, then stretch my cold fingers toward the hungry flames.
“Well,” I tell Xavier. “Looks like we’re going to have visitors.”
The knock comes just after dusk.
It’s been raining for hours, so it’s hard to tell when the light first started fading from the churning, gray skies. Magic has been skipping and flickering under my skin all day. It’s a strange, hesitant sort of pull, nothing at all like the confidence of the wolves or the annoyance of a cat penned inside all day by lousy weather.
There’s something almost familiar about this subtle dance of magic, although I can’t figure out why. It feels like a half-remembered dream. Still, even with the steady tug of magic that’s been dancing across my remade wards all day, I didn’t expect anyone to climb up the ridge in the rain. Or to knock politely.
I set down my mug of tea, push back from the chair, and pull my magic tight around my fists. If it’s an assassin, I’ll shove enough sleep magic into them to knock them out for a week. It’s not likely that an assassin from the Towers would be foolish enough to knock, but hells, if I could predict what the Towers were going to do, I’d never have fallen into Kira’s beautiful trap.
“Hello?” a voice calls, muffled by the rain.
It’s a man’s voice. He sounds hesitant, like he’s not sure what he expects to find behind this door. I guess that makes two of us. I clench my jaw, draw my cloak around my shoulders, and rattle the doorknob. There’s a sort of stomping sound on the other side, like whoever is there just took a step back. Good.
I pull the door open, then lean against the doorframe and narrow my eyes at the two men standing just outside my cabin. They’re soaking wet, and they look exhausted. The tall blond stares at me like he’s waiting for me to draw a weapon.
Oh. Oh, shit.
I can’t begin to understand what he’s doing here, but the man from the Towers who told me he would give me Kira in exchange for the amulet is here, on my doorstep, looking like he’s just been kicked in the ribs and he’s about to beg for more.
“Tholius?” I say.
He nods but doesn’t turn away, like he’s still preparing for a fight. But I don’t see any weapons, and there’s no magic thickening the air between us. There’s very little magic coming off of him at all; if he’s carrying one of the Towers’s silver chains, he’s already used it. And the distant echo of magic that would hold would be just enough to snap my ward.
The man behind Tholious clears his throat. I realize I recognize this one too. He was one of the mercenaries who came up here with Kira. Matius, maybe? Anger rises hot and thick inside my chest at the thought of Kira, although I’m not sure if I’m mad at the men who brought her to my doorstep or mad at myself for being such a dipshit and falling for her.
“What,” I finally manage to stammer, “the fuck?”