CHAPTER 2 #2
Kair Toren had several licensed inns but to stay in one of those, I wouldn’t just need money, I would need identification papers or the crest of a prominent family.
Licensed inns were required to keep records of their guests and they screened their patrons.
I wouldn’t even get through the door in my corpse cloak and bare feet.
There were unlicensed, illegal inns. I knew of a couple, but I would have to find them in the dark, and walking into those and flashing my ill-gotten gains would get my throat slit again.
The people who ran those places had no problem killing their patrons for a few coins and dumping them into the nearest river. Been there, done that, no thanks.
My toes started their transformation into icicles again. The adrenaline rush was wearing off. A gnawing ache spread through my body. I was sore everywhere.
I had to find shelter, clean up, and get a change of clothes. Food. I needed food. My stomach actually hurt, as if the hunger had become an open wound.
There was one place where I could get all those things. They wouldn’t care about my cloak, they wouldn’t ask any questions, and they wouldn’t murder me as long as I paid my way. It would be expensive as hell, but I had no choice. Yes, that could work.
I looked up, trying to get my bearings. I was on Ogden Bridge, and the Mage Tower was in front of me and to my left, which meant north was to my left as well.
Kair Toren was a huge city, and I’d have to get almost all the way to the Bull Gate.
At least an hour of fast walking, maybe longer.
The rain had finally stopped, which meant the human predators would soon emerge. I had to hurry.
I turned, crossed the bridge, and started down the cobblestone street, hugging myself against the cold.
The city crawled by, the dark alleys and side streets yawning at me as I passed. I kept moving, listening for every noise, alert to every flicker on the edge of my vision.
My feet ached. My shoulder burned where the stelka had clawed me. My stomach hurt, begging for food. The wet cloak refused to dry. I was freezing. A sob broke free, and I bit down on it. Survive first, cry later. I just had to make it to my destination and not get jumped along the way.
There had to be shorter routes, but I only knew how to get there from the Bull Gate, because one of the characters took that path in the books.
It felt like I had been walking forever. I couldn’t even think anymore. I just focused on putting one foot in front of the other.
The street narrowed, its houses three or four stories high and built without any spaces between them.
Lanterns lit the way, attached to the buildings every thirty yards.
I was almost to the outer wall. The roads here were meant to channel the flood of invaders into a narrow kill space if the gates were breached.
The city paid to have them well lit in case the city watch had to chase a criminal trying to enter or exit.
The street ended, as if cut off with a knife, and the Bull Gate rose ahead, the empty space in front of it lit by torches and braziers, their light playing on the massive bronze doors shut tight. High above, the city guards prowled the wall.
I stopped. I needed to take the third street from the gate on my left. There should have been a house with a blue door on the corner . . .
The huge city gates opened with a loud clang.
It was after sunset. Only someone in a very high position could force the guards to let them in.
Three riders entered the city, followed by a cart.
All three rode Andikan warhorses, big, quick-footed, and mean, with grullo coats that looked like gray smoke.
The leading rider’s horse had a bald face—a white marking that covered the entire front of his head.
It looked like he had killed another horse and wore its skull as a helmet.
Everard. The Sleepless Duke, riding Villain, his war stallion. Crap.
They called him the Sleepless Duke because he ruled over a vast stretch of territory on the northern border and that territory was continuously raided by the aggressive nations from the northwest and the Crimson Empire from the east. The Selva Dukedom was always at war.
Ramond vi Everard had no time to sleep. He had picked up a sword at the age of three and never put it down, just like his father and mother before him.
He was a violent isolationist, who responded to threats with overwhelming force and shocking brutality.
And he was not supposed to be here. Something monumental must’ve happened because Everard wasn’t allowed in the city without a royal invitation.
Sauven Savaric, the current king of Rellas, feared him so much, it was almost a phobia.
This wasn’t in the book either. Why? This seemed like a pretty major development.
If he was sneaking into the city, he wouldn’t want witnesses. Of all the people to run into . . .
There was no place to hide. I flattened myself against the nearest house and looked down.
The riders bore down the street, their dark cloaks swallowing the light as if they had cut out pieces of midnight sky and wrapped them around their bodies.
Don’t notice me. Don’t see me.
Villain reached me. The size of this horse was truly shocking. I raised my head a fraction of an inch. The stallion glared at me with a bright blue eye, and I caught a glimpse of the rider, broad shoulders stretching his cloak, his hood hiding everything except for his clean-shaven square jaw.
I held my breath.
The stallion stopped.
Crap. Crap, crap, crap.
I was right by a lantern. He could see me in excruciating detail, everything from my bare feet to the hood of my wet cloak. I didn’t even want to imagine what I smelled like.
“Hold out your hand.”
That voice raised every hair on the back of my neck. He sounded like he ordered people to their death in battle.
Not holding out my hand wasn’t an option. If he cut it off, would it regenerate, or would I have to kill myself to regrow it? Would it regrow at all? If I died again, would I come back to life or was it a limited-number-of-times kind of thing . . .
“Your hand.”
Damn it.
A hard clump blocked my throat. I swallowed and raised my right hand.
I don’t want to die again. Please no.
A cold weight fell into my fingers. He’d dropped a handful of coins into my palm.
“Get off the street and buy some shoes.”
What?
Villain started forward. The riders passed me. The cart rolled by into the night. The hoofbeats scattered down the street, receding.
I stared at the money in my hand. A large silver coin, about the size of a silver dollar—a noma—and two copper coins that had to be dens.
My memory informed me in a detached mechanical way that each noma equaled one hundred copper dens, and each den equaled four quarters.
A quarter would buy me a pint of cheap ale, a den would buy me a young chicken, and a noma would buy me a weaned calf. Thank you, numerous rereads.
The fear slowly melted away. The last echoes of it drained out of me into the night.
The Sleepless Duke had given me money. The actual, in the flesh, Ramond vi Everard had handed me coins.
Oh my god.
Okay, that was cool beyond all reason. Entirely too much excitement, very scary, but so freaking cool. I shivered. Wow. Okay, I needed to get where I was going now before anything else happened.
I backtracked, counting the side streets. One. Two.
Here it was, a house with a blue door on the corner of a side street, marked by twin lanterns with a small red flower painted on the glass. Squire Way. Found it.
I ducked into the side street. It wound, twisting left, then right, then left again. I followed it. As long as I didn’t take any turns, it would get me to my destination.
I would need to pay an entrance fee. The question was, how much?
The door charge wasn’t a means of making money, it was proof of one’s ability to pay.
The real fees would be spent inside. For prominent people, the door charge would be nothing.
For me, it would be a serious amount of money, and the prices in Rellas didn’t always make sense by modern standards.
In this world, cows and fish were relatively cheap, and books and soap were hellishly expensive.
Offering too little would be insulting, offering too much would brand me a sucker. I had to find the middle ground.
I didn’t even know how much money I had.
I crossed a street.
Another.
Average daily wages for an unskilled laborer were about two dens. An experienced mercenary made five or six. Would ten dens be enough?
I squeezed Everard’s coins in my hand. He’d given me a whole noma.
It wasn’t much money for him, but for a woman without shoes or underwear, it was a huge amount.
It would have been better to put it into my bag, but then I wouldn’t know which money was his.
I wanted to wait until I could look at it.
Kair Toren had beaten me down, but the coins in my hand were proof that kindness existed.
Someone in this awful city had been nice to me, and good things did happen here. It was hope in my fingers.
That was so random. If you had asked me which of the characters in the novel were the most likely to hand a coin to a beggar, Everard would be near the bottom of that list. In the books he was a rare presence, an ominous power that both fueled Sauven’s mental illness and held it in check from afar.
Whenever he appeared, someone was going to die.
Something rounded the corner behind me. I turned my head just enough to catch it in my peripheral vision. A man, wearing a dark half cloak, heading in the same direction as me.
He crossed the street to my side.
It could’ve been a coincidence, but it probably wasn’t.
I picked up the pace.
He did, too.
Anxiety splashed me in an ice-cold rush.
Ahead, the alley bent to the left. I turned the corner, clenched Everard’s money in my fist, and sprinted, squeezing every drop of speed out of my body. The money bag slapped against my chest as I ran. Houses flew by.
Behind me heavy boots pounded the cobblestones.
The street spat me out into a large plaza.
In the back of it, a big stone building stood, four floors high and lit up like a Christmas tree against the dark backdrop of the city.
There was no time to take it in. I saw rows of windows with ornate bars glowing with a welcoming yellow light, two solid rectangular towers in front connected by a third-floor loggia, and between them arched doors standing wide open, leading inside.
Two men guarded the doors. They carried maces on their hips, and they looked like they would brain you with them if you glanced at them the wrong way.
I ran to the doors.
Behind me the man burst out of the alley.
I braked in front of the guard on my left. He held out his hand. I dropped Everard’s silver noma into his palm.
The guard bowed and indicated the open door with his hand. The entrance waited in front of me, a long narrow hallway lit up by lanterns.
My lungs burned. I sucked in a breath and glanced over my shoulder. The asshole who’d chased me had turned around and was walking away, back toward the alley.
A swarm of glowing golden butterflies flowed out of the entrance, as if the building had exhaled light and beauty into the night. The butterflies bounced on the draft, trailing tiny gold sparks, swirled toward me, and melted into the night air. Like magic.
No, not like. It was magic, not distant like the Mage Tower zapping the lorsses, but right there in front of me. A wonder. It was impossible back home, but here it was real. It existed and it was beautiful.
I caught my breath, swallowed, and walked unsteadily into the Garden of Soft Blossoms.