CHAPTER 37
Raise your arms, my lady,” Clover said. It sounded like an order, and the “my lady” was clearly tacked on.
I obeyed.
The gown I wore flowed over me in delicate folds.
It was breathtakingly beautiful, with a luxuriously full skirt, long sleeves, and delicate embroidery.
It floated as I walked, fit me well, and was perfect in every way except one: It was a ghastly greenish yellow.
It was probably some sort of fancy shade of chartreuse, but the color was less French liqueur and more diarrhea slime.
A shop assistant held up a large mirror so I could see myself. Yep, I was the prettiest digestive-upset princess ever.
Clover pursed her lips. “Ereglin family?”
The shop owner, a woman in her early forties in an impeccably fitting blue gown, nodded. “A wedding fell apart. I was told to burn it, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”
Clover pondered the dress. If she concentrated any harder, the gown would catch on fire.
Making the kind of dress I needed for the joedurar in fourteen days was impossible. Our only option was to purchase one and alter it. We’d spent the whole day taking the carriage from one dressmaking shop to the next, with both Will and Lute watching over us and Kaiden on scouting duty.
The unfortunately colored gown wasn’t just our best option. It was our only option. Attending the dance in one of my regular gowns was out of the question. I might as well show up in a bean sack.
“Do you think it will take the dye?” Clover asked.
The owner frowned. “It should. Although I cannot guarantee it. We had to soak it for three days in a vat of goseweed to get this shade. The dye is very saturated.”
“I was thinking cantolin powder,” Clover said.
“Hot or cold?”
“Hot, then cold-set with vinegar and a dash of burgundy dust.”
“To counteract the undertone from the yellow?”
“Yes. I need rust, not orange.”
The two women peered at me.
“The embroidery is gold thread,” the shop owner said. “It should hold.”
I cleared my throat. “Tresses?”
They looked at me.
“Can I put my arms down?”
Clover turned red. “Of course, my lady.”
Oh good. Actually, I could’ve held out longer. My arms weren’t that tired. All of that daily stabbing I’d been doing was paying off.
“I will let it go for half a grest,” the shop owner said.
Clover gasped. “Fifty nomas? For a dress that should be burned?”
“This is Olvian silk!”
“In a hideous color! For all we know, the dye will eat holes in it. And since they told you to burn it, you were already paid for it.”
“Forty-five. The embroidery alone took a month.”
“Fifteen. The embroidery is gold which doesn’t even fit our family colors.”
“Thirty-five.”
“Twenty.”
“Meet me at thirty or leave,” the shop owner ground out.
Clover raised her chin. “Thirty it is.”
“We’ll take it,” I told the dress shop owner. “Thank you for your help. It will not be forgotten.”
The owner smiled at me. “Yes, my lady.”
Ten minutes later, we exited the shop with the dress securely wrapped in a fat roll of canvas. Clover had counted out the coins and taken it with a sour face.
Outside, Will and Lute flanked us. We’d walked for about half a block when Clover broke into a brilliant smile.
“It’s a two-grest dress and we got it for thirty nomas. Let’s go fast before someone arrests me for this robbery.”
She hugged the bundle to her.
“That was amazing, and I’m the luckiest ‘lady’ in Kair Toren,” I told her.
Clover gave me a brilliant smile. I didn’t have the heart to ask her what we’d do if the dress failed to take the dye.
A small dirty child darted toward us. Will caught her by the shoulder before she could reach me.
The little girl grinned at me. One of her teeth on the top was missing. “Buy a bracelet, my lady? Only two dens!”
She held out a bracelet of shells and sea glass. The excitement dashed down my spine. Darotha had found Isadau.
I held up three fingers. Lute pulled three dens out of his pocket and put them into the little girl’s grimy palm.
“Two for her, one for you.”
She handed the bracelet over to him, and Will released her.
“Do you have news about my special order?” I asked.
She nodded. “Come to the knight statue tonight when the bells strike ten. Bring a carriage. It is far.”
She giggled and dashed off into the crowd.
The carriage from Broad Street was the Kair Toren equivalent of the Texas white pickup truck.
Perfectly nondescript and anonymous, but solid.
It was also spacious enough for four people to ride comfortably, but Gort was a bit oversized.
Shana sat on my right, Darotha sat across from me, and next to her Gort had barely enough room to stretch his legs.
Darotha rode in nonchalant silence, pretending that Shana wasn’t there.
She hadn’t reacted to Will or Lute, gave Gort an appraising once-over, and snorted at the driver that came with the Shears’ carriage.
But Shana had gotten a wary look. Something about her set Darotha’s teeth on edge.
She watched her out of the corner of her eye, and Shana, in her chainmail and armed with a mace, did the same.
The carriage rocked slightly. In the past hour, we had crossed two bridges, steadily making our way north, to the maze of crooked narrow streets that made up the Tangle, a warren of the city’s slums. That was why both Will and Lute rode next to the driver, a burly, broad-shouldered man who looked like he wrestled bears on his days off.
“How much farther?” Gort asked.
Darotha edged the curtain on the window aside and glanced out. “Four streets.”
And once we got there, it was up to me to make things work. I had no idea if I could. I had never done magic before.
In theory, anyone with enough power and the ability to read Sareso should have been able to manage it, but Kair Toren had a habit of shoving my theories to the ground and stomping on their faces.
I had the power covered. Both the contract’s resistance and the drezmur’s reaction to me confirmed that thanks to whatever had brought me here, I had plenty of it.
That made sense: Bringing dead me back to life had to require a wallop of magic.
The problem was with Sareso. It was a weird language, and the entire sound of a vowel could be changed depending on tiny marks next to the word.
Mispronouncing things could turn me into atomic dust.
I was so full of nervous tension my skin felt too tight. It was taking all of my will to not fidget.
If I failed, I had no idea how we would get Isadau into the carriage.
And leaving her there wasn’t an option. I trusted Darotha about as far as I could throw her.
If we left here without Isadau, she would disappear, and I would have to pay Darotha more money to “find” her again.
She could string me along for weeks. I had to get this right the first time.
If Damaes had some kind of warning system set up and decided to respond in person . . . Well, there was no point in worrying about that because if he showed up, we would all instantly die. Even I might not come back from being hit with that much magic.
The carriage turned right. Darotha checked the window.
“Stop here.”
Gort knocked on the wall behind him.
The carriage came to a stop. Gort got out. Shana nodded to Darotha. She got up and climbed into the street.
Shana leaned toward me. “Last chance to turn around and go home.”
“We must do this.”
“If I say run, you run. No heroics.”
“I promise.”
I wore my clothes from the time we had confronted the Butcher by the Knight Vanquisher statue.
I had also brought my dagger with me, but I had no illusions.
My best bet to keep my escorts safe was to run away from danger as fast as I could, so they could run away with me. I hadn’t even bothered with the cloak.
Shana got out, and I followed her.
We formed a diamond on the street, Gort in the lead, Will and Lute on my sides, and Shana behind us. The Magnars had their weapons out. The driver stayed with the carriage.
The brothers eyed the night streets like they expected a pack of wolves to charge us. Even Darotha’s face turned grim. She hunched her shoulders, glancing at the dark three-story buildings boxing the street in. If I hadn’t been nervous before, this would have done it.
The carriage driver eyed us. I had a flashback to coming out of the Guard station with my carriage nowhere to be seen. Fighting our way back out of the Tangle would be very difficult. And it would be just like Avaria to leave me stranded.
“Quickly,” Darotha said.
“I need a private moment.” I faced the driver.
Shana and Gort herded Darotha down the street, while Will and Lute flanked me. When the others were half a block away, I turned to the driver.
“I don’t know what Avaria told you, but I’m telling you that Solentine is my cousin. If I come back here and the carriage is gone, I will make it out of the Tangle alive and then I will tell Solentine that you left me here. Do we have an understanding?”
The driver gave me a dark look. “We do.”
“Good.”
I turned and chased Darotha.
The street opened into an oblong plaza. An ancient building rose on our left, a dark five-story ruin peppered with alcoves.
Elaborate carvings, smudged by time and the elements, decorated its facade: grotesque monsters twisting, people with contorted faces, strange symbols .
. . In the center, colossal stone gates stood slightly cracked, the six-foot gap between them lightless like a bottomless pit.
It felt incredibly dark, ancient, and malignant. A place meant to be timeless that hadn’t endured. It had fallen to ruin, but the power inhabiting it was still there.
Dread settled over me. The tiny hairs on the back of my neck rose.
Evil.
I couldn’t explain how I knew. I felt it all the way in my bones.
“What is this?” I asked, keeping my voice low.
“A temple,” Darotha said.
“To whom?”
“Nobody knows. Many dead are buried here. Walled in.”
This wasn’t in the books either. I was flying blind.