Chapter 6
SIX
I snapped the reins hard, pulling our poor mule into a sharp right turn down a side street.
My plan was to flip the bastard off the cart, but old Claude had a bad hind leg and wasn’t moving anywhere anytime quick.
The best he could do was a passionate little trot before taking his usual pace up a notch.
“Easy there! Watch it,” a constable spat from the sidewalk, forced to dodge my animal. I muttered an apology and shifted us back on course, trapped no matter which way I went.
“Quite the beast you’ve got,” the outsider spoke again. His voice was as cold as winter, shoving a frozen rod down my spine. I could barely breathe, much less stick up for Claude’s honor.
He leaned over my shoulder, teasing the shell of my ear with a soft whisper. “Pull us over, Nina.”
“I’d rather not be alone with you,” I managed to reply.
Something sharp pricked my lower back, digging through the layers of my clothes. “Do you really want to try your luck with me?”
I glanced sideways, looking for help—a friendly face or a concerned copper—but no one seemed to notice the strange man hitching a ride. They must have assumed we knew each other. The street patrol was similarly disinterested. Their glazed stares passed over us without a second glance.
“I know you still have them. They call to me, you know? I’ve been waiting all night for you to leave that little surgery you shack up in.”
Ice found its way into my heart. He’d tracked me home. Perhaps the dice only burned when he used them, and in that case… I had put us all in terrible danger. Even worse, that meant he’d been watching all morning.
My face must have changed, because he laughed. The sound was snide, suggestive, and somehow like a stitch that sealed us together—tied by a secret I’d rather take to the grave. “Who’s in the box, Nina?”
Well… damn.
“Please.” I resorted to begging. “My mother is sick, and I’m the only one left to care for her. Take the relics back. I don’t want them—”
“This isn’t about the dice anymore, love.
” He pressed closer, keeping his words between us with the knife still digging into my lower back.
“I thought everyone in Valveron was too afraid to use magic without permission from the Magister. Tell me, what was that little parlor trick at the tavern? You have an Archetype?”
I huffed a breath, getting annoyed. Dragging a dead body across town was difficult enough without a lunatic asking tough questions. “What else would give me the ability to take your breath away?”
He scoffed, brushing a stray curl from my eye with his free hand. “Besides the obvious? I was wondering that very thing myself.”
I’d gone nearly twenty-six years without anyone discovering that secret. He had no right to pry it out of me, to hover this close to my skin and my secrets. No right to make my pulse stumble the way it did now. “Do you want your dice or not?”
“Yes.”
“Then take them and leave me alone. You have enough on me to keep me quiet.”
“I’m not trying to keep you quiet. You don’t seem like one who enjoys attention anyway. No, Nina. I think you’re hiding something.”
“I don’t know anything—”
His voice roughened as it lowered, threats coarse as gravel.
“Save the dumb act for your little boyfriend. You wouldn’t have run to Opal’s if you didn’t understand the value of my dice.
” He reached forward with his opposite hand and tugged the reins to the right to turn us down another alley.
“You wouldn’t have lied to me in the surgery. ”
I fought his lead, confusing the poor mule. “Yes, I lied to you. I found them before you arrived and made the decision to sell them to my friend, but only with the intention of you finding them in the end. That’s why I told you where to go!”
“But you know what they are.”
“I know they’re relics. What of it? I trade lots of artifacts from the Academy.”
“Trade or steal? Who are you working for?”
I leaned forward, trying to put space between my back and the knife, but he wrapped an arm around my waist, shoving me against his chest while I tried to squirm free. “I’m not working for anyone!”
“Hell,” he growled. “Would you stop? I’m trying to help you!”
“At knifepoint?”
His breath was sharp in my ear. “For some reason, I thought it would make you more compliant.”
I truly had no idea what he was talking about, but he seemed to believe otherwise.
I had to get rid of him for good if I wanted to be free of his stalking.
Most of all, I needed to make whatever I did to lose him look like an accident.
We were a few moments from reaching the turn, coming up to the bridge over the Grand Canal.
If I took the street after the bridge, we’d end up in a shadowed alley I’d probably never walk out of.
Beyond was the Fissure Square, where Matthieu lived just beyond the loop marking the center of the Old City.
But there was another way. One he might not be considering.
With my hand out of his view, I reached for my pocket, and I grabbed the Forge die. The pad of my thumb roamed each face until I felt the element I searched for.
Fire.
The only warning was a quiet hiss and a cutting chill as I quickly drew the heat in the air, concentrating a small flame inside the outsider’s clothes. A chill settled over the street, raising the hair on my neck. By the time the outsider realized what had been done, it was too late.
“Fuck!”
The knife at my back disappeared in an instant as he tried to put out the fire I’d started in the pocket that hid his cigarillos. I could smell them on his breath as he threatened me.
He stood in the cart, tearing open his jacket to see smoke already curling from the blaze in his pants. The outsider patted the embers, but I countered his efforts, adding heat to the flames, stealing the little warmth that remained in the air to burn a hole in his pocket.
When his efforts were of little use, the outsider looked at me, eyes burning with a flame I could neither tame nor control.
“You!”
“Help, he’s on fire!” I shouted, playing dumb as he drew attention from the constables on the bridge.
“Put it out!” he snapped at me, sharp teeth flashing as he frantically patted down the spreading flames. They caught the edge of his coat, the sleeve, and I almost allowed a heartbeat of guilt for what I’d done before I remembered he’d threatened me first.
The police gathered, three of them who had been watching the bridge’s entrance. They snatched the outsider from my cart, paying me little mind.
“Get off me!” he shouted, shoving them away. He managed to kick a wheel on the cart before they detained him once more.
“The hell is wrong with you?” one copper snapped as the outsider thrashed in his arms. He snarled as they pinned his arms back. The fire must have been burning his skin by now, but his lips stretched over the gnash of his teeth.
He smirked at me.
A vicious smile that made my blood run cold and flushed my cheeks all at once. He winked before the police heaved him over the edge of the bridge into the canal. When a satisfying splash broke the quiet of the mesmerized crowd, I took the opportunity to snap the reins and urge Claude into motion.
The way ahead was clear now that traffic had moved on, though I’d collected a few stares from the sidewalk.
I’d nearly made it to the end of the bridge but couldn’t shake the feeling I hadn’t quite left trouble behind.
That smile… it had known something. He was either truly a lunatic who got off on a woman setting him on fire—or there was another reason he was so pleased.
“Forget it,” I sighed. I’d deal with him later. There were more pressing issues in the back of my cart.
My cart…
The wheel must have snagged on a divot in the cobblestone road, sending me lurching forward with a jolt. Claude whined, straining to get us out. I tried to assess the wheel from where I sat, but the coppers from the bridge were approaching, hands on their guns.
I breathed a mouthful of curses and urged Claude onward. “Come on, boy. Just a little further!”
He continued to strain against the resistance, so I leapt from the driver’s seat, ready to help push the wagon out of whatever we’d gotten stuck in—and found a more complicated problem. No pothole. No mud. Just the shattered frame of an axle from the boot heel of an outsider.
“That bastard!” I hissed too loudly.
He’d knocked the wheel off the axle. Claude took another step, putting more strain on the wheel. Panic filled my chest. “Claude, no! Stop!”
But it was too late. Another step and the wheel popped off, the frame snapped, and the entire cart tipped toward the unsupported side.
Everything—everything—teetered off the edge.
I could only watch in absolute mortification as the spice trays slid to the side one by one, crashing to the cobblestones and spilling their contents all over the road.
The abrupt drop in weight, combined with the noise, spooked Claude, making him pull again, sending the coffer sliding right off the wagon.
The corner hit the pavers, and I winced at the harsh crack as it echoed over the city. The rest was a blur—or a blackout—I couldn’t remember what happened from the time the casket hit, the top opened, and the body rolled right out, positioning face up in front of my boots.
A trapped breath trembled from my lips. This wasn’t an unknown beggar like our usual clientele. I understood in an instant why Bernard had been so desperate to get rid of him. Because at my feet was the dead body of the missing Governor of Valveron.
Ignace Therell.
Bile burned my throat, replacing the scream trapped in my chest. I couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t will my feet to move away from the deceased man in front of me.
I was stuck in place, pinned by the weight of the city’s attention as whispers blended with gasps and shrieks, shouts calling over the whistle of the constables, horses whining as drivers pulled their carriages to a stop.