Chapter 16 Toran
Toran
For as long as Toran could remember, Kamias Square had been the busiest place in the city.
The market sat at the intersection of four main roads and three city sectors, with several bridges crossing the converging canals.
Even without carts and carriages, traffic was tight and movement slow, but the people traveling between the Tap, the Gash, and the Bark never seemed to mind the congestion.
They embraced it. The patrons of Kamias Square were content to take their time and browse, eager to spend their coin on necessity or luxury.
Toran let the crowd shuffle him along from stall to stall. He took in the wares without truly seeing them—brightly patterned scarves and glints of polished cookware and tightly woven handbaskets.
His stomach rumbled at the sight of doughnuts slathered with various jams. After staying up late searching the guard registry, he’d accidentally slept in and had missed breakfast. Fishing out a gadot, he tossed it to the vendor and picked a doughnut with blueberry topping from the tray.
The first bite was heavenly. Still warm and sweet, but with that special tang only blueberries from Kimden offered.
He broke off a piece of the pastry. Slim fingers snatched it out of his hand before he could offer it.
“Oh, Captain.” Nes sighed contentedly, as if she could already taste the pastry. “How did you know I love doughnuts?”
Several days had passed since she’d brought him to the brawlhouse. Several days spent pondering Damari’s next move, wondering where he might find someone capable of deciphering the symbols they still knew nothing about, and rolling the coins Nes had given him between his fingers.
Damari had yet to kill again, but there had been several more Witch drownings. All innocent women killed for nothing. Of course, he and Nes seemed to be the only ones who had a problem with it.
Toran’s nights were consumed by a blur of numbers and names. The guard registry was twice as long as the prison records and nowhere near as interesting. It was excruciating work.
But the Goddess must have taken pity on him, because around midnight, he’d found a number matching one of the coins. And then, two names down, the number matching the second coin. The murdered guards had graduated in the same class.
It wasn’t coincidence. Both guards had graduated ten years ago, then joined the same legion. A legion whose captain had just returned from a mission up north.
Captain Fell.
Across the square, a voice boomed, magnified by a megaphone.
“That’s right!” a man shouted. He looked wealthy, dressed from head to toe in flashy silks with pearls sewn up and down the rims of his ears. “I’m offering ten thousand gadots to whoever can find me the Witch! Tell your friends! There’ll be an ad in tomorrow’s paper!”
For magic’s end.
He glanced over at Nes, but she paid the man no mind, too engrossed in the doughnut. She took a bite. A great big glob of blueberry jam slid onto her chin before her tongue darted past her lips and snatched it up.
Over the past few days, he hadn’t seen Nes once. He hadn’t sought her out, nor she him. Though he’d been loath to admit it, it bothered him in a way he didn’t understand.
“Who doesn’t love doughnuts?” he asked.
“Absolutely no one,” she said. “Suri and I love the bakery in the Gash. We once spent four hours there trying every doughnut they had. Their powdered maple is by far the best, though Suri likes the strawberry ganache.”
He stared at the grin crinkling her cheeks—so different from the wicked one he’d seen in the brawlhouse. “Suri’s your friend?”
Her grin vanished. She paused her chewing, shrugged, and said, “Yeah, I guess,” before devouring her half of the doughnut. She said nothing more on doughnuts or Suri.
Again, he let the crowd push him to the next stall. In her dark blue cloak, Nes trailed him like a lost child.
“Did Fell see you?”
Between mouthfuls, she said, “Of course not. No one ever looks up.”
He looked up. Kamias Square was full of flapping tents and whipping flags, but beyond those, the steady roofs of the Gash, Tap, and Bark loomed. With her navy cloak, how easily Nes must have blended in with the blue roofing tile.
“Explain to me again why we can’t just grab and interrogate him,” Nes asked as she sucked the jam from her fingers. “There were plenty of opportunities while I tailed him over the last four days.”
Toran took another bite of his doughnut half. “Because he’s stubborn and arrogant. Not to mention trained to resist common interrogation tactics.”
Nes plucked the remaining bite of doughnut from his hand, shoving it in her mouth before he could object. “So use uncommon ones,” she said. Only, around all the doughnut, it sounded more like, “Zo lose uhamen unz.”
“What do you think we’re doing here?” Smirking, he turned to her and lightly tapped the left corner of his lips. She had a spot of blueberry jam tucked in the right seam of her mouth.
She grinned and wiped at the wrong corner.
He rolled his eyes. “Here,” he said, and leaned down. With the pad of his thumb, he gently grazed her lips, sweeping up the jam. Her eyes tracked him as he brought his thumb up to his mouth and sucked down the last of the tangy jam.
Color blossomed in her cheeks and, for the briefest of seconds, his thumb caught behind his teeth. He yanked his thumb from his mouth, feeling heat rise to his own face, and turned away.
Turned and came face-to-face with Fell.
“Roada,” the other captain sneered, his dark eyes flitting from Toran to the stall beside him. “What are you doing here?”
It was only then Toran realized they’d stopped in front of a Lush wine vendor. He squashed the shame threatening to deepen the color in his cheeks and said, “That’s none of your business, Fell.”
Fell’s stare was hard as steel. “As I recently told you, Toran”—the use of his first name was a jab all its own—“everything you do is my business.”
From his shoulder, Nes piped up. “That sounds like an odd business. Do you get paid for it? ’Cause if not, that just makes you a stalker.”
Toran choked on his own breath.
Fell’s jaw clenched, his eyes flaring at the sight of Nes. “Perhaps I’m right to be a bit concerned if Roada is hanging around common criminals. Surely by now you’ve realized his reputation is suffering. He needs someone to boost him up, not drag him down.”
Nes bit her bottom lip and grinned. “Oh, you’d be surprised what sort of boost I can give him.”
Fell wrinkled his nose, turning his gaze back to Toran. “And here I thought you couldn’t sink lower than that island girl. When you’re done rolling with the filth and ready to get serious about your mission, seek me out.”
Anger burst in Toran’s ears at Fell’s derogatory mention of Loriana. But he refused to let it slip. He kept his tone low, his voice hesitant. “Actually, Fell, I need your help.”
“Finally decided you’re out of your depth?”
Beside him, Nes snorted. He wasn’t sure if she was laughing at him or Fell.
Toran dipped his chin. “You’re right. She’s the Witch, and you’re the expert.
” Any other time he would have instantly regretted such words.
To stroke the older man’s ego was to tie yourself to a chair—you weren’t escaping his grandstanding anytime soon.
But a bit of Fell’s grandstanding was exactly what they needed right now.
Fell grinned, wide and triumphant. “Tell me what you know.”
Toran glanced around the crowded square. “Not here.”
“I know a place,” Nes said, and before Fell could protest, she strode off.
He and Fell followed her as she cut down a side street in the Gash and led them to a bright red door. A bell overhead rang out their entry, the sound cheery, but no one in the small café looked up to see who’d joined them.
There was a table with four chairs sequestered in the back corner, and Nes gestured for them to sit there while she went to the counter for drinks.
Toran reached into his pocket for a few coins to give her, only to find it empty.
He patted both pants pockets, finding nothing but himself beneath the fabric.
Over her shoulder, Nes threw him that wicked smile and held up three gadots between her fingers. His gadots. When had she—
“So talk,” Fell said as he propped his boots up on the empty chair.
“We know what she wants,” Toran said.
Fell scoffed. “That’s nothing. She’s the Witch. Everyone knows what she wants. It’s the same thing she always wants. To destroy us, to take control of the land, for magic to be law.”
“Not this Witch. We think she wants something else.”
Fell raised a brow. “Oh? Then do tell, what does she want?”
“You.”
Nes slammed a cup of coffee down in front of Fell so hard liquid sloshed over the rim. It ran across the surface of the table, an arrow aimed at Fell. Curses dirtied their table as he scrambled back and grabbed a napkin to wipe up the spill before it could reach his pristine uniform.
Toran couldn’t help but notice the contrast with which Nes moved as she carefully handed him his own cup before settling into the seat beside him. He watched her for a second as Fell mopped up the coffee. Over the rim of her cup, she winked at him. He swallowed back his grin before Fell could see.
“We think she wants revenge,” Toran said.
Fell looked up at him. “You think she wants revenge on me? It’s a bit of a stretch, but I suppose it’s possible. I did kill her predecessor.”
“Not for that,” Nes bit out. “For something more recent.”
Fell frowned but did not look Nes’s way. “Like what?”
Toran pulled his hand from under the table to lay it flat on top. “Tell me what happened on your mission up north.” He took his hand back, revealing one of the guard’s coins. It sat on the table between them like a cup of poison.
Fell’s gaze shifted between him and the tabletop. “What do I want with a coin?”
“It belonged to one of your legion members,” he said. “Gael Sussek, who died on your recent mission.”
Fell reached for the coin but stopped himself, withdrawing his hand. “Where did you get this?”
“She left it,” Nes said.