Chapter 4
Four
Ivy
Istare at my reflection in the cracked mirror for a few moments, taking in the results of my efforts at disguise.
The dye Garom included in the supplies his people brought us has darkened my reddish-blond hair to a chestnut shade that makes my skin look even more sickly than usual and my blue eyes stand out starkly.
But not as unnervingly brilliant as the sea-green irises of the daimon in our midst.
Rheave comes up beside me and peers over my shoulder into the glass. I’m still not sure how much of the initial attitude I saw from the false guard is part of his personality or something imposed on him by the scourge sorcerers. There’s a much more open vibe to his comments now.
“Humans can change their appearance so easily,” he remarks studying my reflection, his tone awed.
Casimir lets out a soft laugh from the other end of the room where we’re making our final preparations for our escape. “I suppose daimon don’t have much of an appearance to change in the first place.”
Rheave tilts his head to the side, watching his own reflection next to mine. “We don’t normally need one. But it’s interesting having that too.”
He touches the face I’ve always thought was far too beautiful to belong to a soldier. “I wonder how I would look with pale hair.”
I nudge him gently with my elbow. “We don’t have time to find that out now. You can experiment with makeovers when we’re out of this mess.”
My jacket shifts around my scrawny form. Casimir carefully pinned it so it looks like almost a perfect fit, but I can still tell it’s too big for me.
Rheave is the only one of us who came by the clothes he’s currently wearing honestly. We simply left him in his typical guard uniform.
Garom has supplied the rest of us with a set of Crown’s Watch uniforms he came by through means he wasn’t willing to share.
I glance down at the smallest of the uniforms—the one I donned. I checked over every detail in comparison to Rheave’s sapphire blue jacket and trousers, and Stavros examined them too, and as far as we can tell, they’re perfectly authentic.
Perfectly designed to convince the guards at the gate that we’re colleagues of theirs leaving the city on the king’s authority. As Garom pointed out to me when he went over the plan, soldiers are the only people allowed to come and go during a lockdown.
I’m not loving the idea of marching out right under the noses of the people who most want to execute me, but I can’t think of a better gambit.
Julita sounds as if she’s suppressed a snicker. I mean no offense, but I don’t think military garb suits you.
I snort in agreement and turn away from the mirror.
Casimir is just putting the finishing touches on Alek’s face. The scholar has his back to me, but I can see plenty of tension in the rigid set of his shoulders.
He hasn’t gone without his leather mask covering most of his face in public for years. It was hard for him just to let me and Casimir see his scarred skin before.
But we know the king will have put out descriptions of us, and it’d be hard to explain him away as a different man with a dark brown mask.
So he’s tucked it away in one of the saddle bags and agreed to let Casimir cover the mottled area over his forehead, cheeks, and one side of his jaw as well as the courtesan’s skills with makeup allow.
“There,” Casimir says, stepping back. “It isn’t flawless up close, but from the distance everyone outside our group will be seeing you, especially with the daylight fading, no one will notice anything unusual.”
Alek turns hesitantly. When his bright brown eyes meet mine, a stutter runs through my pulse.
Julita gasps. Cas really can work a kind of magic with that palette.
Casimir has managed to paint over the ridges and streaks of reds, grays, and browns to match the smooth bronze skin that’s Alek’s natural coloring. Well, not quite as smooth as the unmarked side of his jaw, but awfully close.
I’m looking at the scholar as he would have appeared if he’d never let jealousy lead him down a vicious path that ended with a burning potion splashed in his face.
He’s absolutely stunning.
But he’s also not exactly the man I’ve fallen in love with. I’m torn between catching my breath at how striking he is and wishing I could wipe away all the makeup to see the real Alek underneath.
He’s stunning with his scars too, just in a different way.
“It looks great,” I tell him with a reassuring smile.
Alek’s stance relaxes slightly at my words. “I suppose I need to see it as a different kind of mask.”
“Exactly.” Casimir brushes his hands together with a satisfied grin. “We’re all going into hiding in plain sight.”
Stavros lets out a grunt from where he’s just finished darkening his hair with a black powder that’s completely obscured the blood-red hue. Disguising him has been our biggest concern, seeing as the exalted former general is rather well-known among everyone with military inclinations.
“Some things can’t be changed,” he says, tapping his left wrist against his side—the left wrist that’s currently just a stump.
He’s removed his distinctive combat prosthetic, the loop of metal that’s bent around into a hook-like shape, but his more realistic wooden hand is back in his quarters at the college. Even Garom couldn’t come up with a believable replacement for that in the short time we have.
Casimir hums. “Keeping the stump hidden in your pocket should do the trick just fine. Plenty of soldiers ride around with just one hand on the reins.”
The courtesan pauses to study the work he did on the former general’s face.
We couldn’t adjust anything about Stavros’s massive frame, which is stretching the largest of our borrowed uniforms, so we’ve tried to change as much as we can otherwise.
Along with the darkened hair, Casimir has painted Stavros’s light brown skin a creamy peach tone similar to his own, mottled by a broad scar across one temple and cheek as if from a vicious sword slash.
I’m not sure I’d recognize him at a glance if I hadn’t watched Casimir do his work. We have to hope it’ll be enough.
Rheave gives my face another once-over. “I’d still know you, even with the different hair color.”
“You’ve seen me several times,” I say. “You know what to expect. The king won’t have been able to get out much more of a description than my hair and height.”
Thankfully the latter detail is less obvious when I’m mounted on a horse.
I motion toward the doorway to the room where we’ve left our steeds. “I don’t think it’s going to get any better than this. Let’s pack up and get out of here.”
As we squeeze the last few items into the saddle bags, Alek turns to Rheave. “Are you sure you want to come with us? The king probably hasn’t realized you helped us. You could go back to playing guard at the college.”
He speaks evenly enough, but I can tell from the hesitation in his stance that he’s not convinced bringing the daimon-man along is a great idea.
I brace myself to defend the decision I made, but Rheave speaks up first. “The people who made this body—the scourge sorcerers, as you call them—they’d find me there. They’d break me.” He pauses and smiles at me. “And if I can protect myself while protecting Ivy as well, that’s even better.”
When he looks at me like that, talks like that, a flutter passes through my pulse even knowing what he really is.
Stavros props himself against the doorframe, his eyes narrowing. “You were very set on coming to Ivy for help in the first place. Why her?”
The daimon-man pats the neck of his mare with a vaguely bemused expression that turns more solemn when he returns his gaze to me. “The scourge sorcerers assigned me to watch her. Because they wanted to make sure it was safe for her to join their group.”
A finger of ice runs down my spine. The possibility that he was spying for them had occurred to me, but it’s different hearing him confirm it. “So that’s why you seemed to be around so often. What did you tell them?”
“There wasn’t very much to tell. They wanted to know if you seemed friendly with any of the other guards, and I said no. They wanted to know if I saw you doing anything unusual, but they didn’t seem worried about the stargazing.”
He stops for a moment in thought. “And the man who gave most of the orders at the college—Torstem, the one you got rid of—he brought me when they put you on trial. He asked me to sense if a divine force blessed you.”
Gods above, the scourge sorcerers were testing me even more than I realized. As I tighten the girth on Toast’s saddle, I swallow thickly. “What did you say about that?”
The daimon-man offers me a softer smile that only makes me feel more jumbled up inside.
“I felt the connection when you shot the arrows. Someone was watching over you. That’s how—that’s how I knew I could trust you.
None of the rest of them ever called down any kind of influence from the ones you call godlen. ”
Stavros guffaws. “Did you mention that part to them?”
“They didn’t ask. About that or what other supernatural forces might be working through Ivy.”
Alek’s head jerks around. “You knew she was riven?”
Rheave lifts his shoulders in a casual shrug. “I thought so. I only felt it a little, that one time.”
It’s a good thing I kept my magic so tightly under wraps, then. If there were more clay-captured daimon around during any of the other rituals, they might have tipped off the scourge sorcerers.
I have no idea whether the murderous psychopaths would have been excited to exploit my power or seen me as just as much of a threat as the king does.
I heft myself into the saddle, which puts my back to the daimon-man. “Is that why you came to me? Because you figured I was powerful enough to stand up to them?”