Chapter 37 Toran
Toran
Toran was used to Nes keeping things from him.
He was used to her little lies. Used to the way they snagged on his ear before slipping inside his head. Used to the way she left out details as if they were boulders to skirt around in the fast-paced current of her words. What he was not used to was how quickly she could disappear on him.
One second, she was tucked with him under the table and the next she was beyond it, darting through the crowd like the wind itself. He had no chance of catching her. By the time he crawled out, guards had slipped back into place, covering her path.
But just as quickly, a new path emerged. Guards stepped out of the way as Quint walked toward Toran.
All around, shouts continued to rise from the tables as coins vanished and men felt cheated. Frowning, Quint said, “Seems I made it just in time.”
Toran ran a hand over the back of his neck. “Have you seen Nes?”
Quint shook his head. “No, sorry. Everything going according to plan?”
“Not exactly,” he said and stared pointedly at two men about to come to blows.
“Maybe this’ll help.” Quint yanked the satchel on his shoulder around and unbuttoned the front. Pulling back the flap, he tilted the insides in Toran’s direction.
Bright white thread blinked back at him. At least, that’s what it looked like. Thin enough to slip a needle and long enough to stitch a cloak—it was as luminescent as the moon on a clear night.
Toran had no doubt as to what he was looking at. Real, genuine siren’s hair. “Where did you find it?”
“A trader arrived yesterday from the Kono Islands, this in his haul,” Quint said. “Luckily the man seemed to have no idea the value of what he had. I traded him my cloak and nothing more.”
“That was a nice cloak,” Toran mused. He reached a hand toward the smooth hair, but Quint pulled the bag back.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Quint said, and Toran caught the flush of color on his friend’s cheeks. “Some are…sensitive to it. You’ll want to wear gloves when handling it.” Quint looked pensively at the radiant threads. “You really think this’ll work?”
“It has to. Without it, we won’t stand a chance against the Witch.” He glanced at the bag swinging from Quint’s hip. “Spread out. The coins are disappearing, so she must be close. And keep an eye out for Nes, too.”
Quint nodded, his fist tight around the handle of his satchel, before he turned and began moving through the crowd. Toran watched him, his fingers scratching an itch on the back of his neck.
A hard hand came down on his shoulder, and Toran jumped. He whirled on his attacker.
“Whoa!” A guard withdrew his hand, holding both up in surrender. He whistled. “Relax, Toran. It’s a party, join us!”
Toran stared at the guard. The man smiled at him, his mouth so wide Toran could see all the way down his throat.
The guard grabbed a mug of ale off the bar.
He raised it high over his head, sloshing liquid over the rim.
But he didn’t seem to notice the loss or how his feet fumbled with every direction they moved.
The guard oozed the kind of confidence that could only come from too much alcohol.
And Toran realized he was watching himself.
He had been this guard not too long ago.
Drunk with abandon and oblivious to those around him.
The guard didn’t care that he was spilling ale, and he certainly didn’t care that he was spilling it all over Toran’s sleeve.
How foolish he had been to believe his life was better that way.
To think not caring about anything made it all easier somehow.
“To Toran Roada!” the guard called, his raised mug becoming an excuse for a toast. “To the Crown!”
Toran was surprised to hear a few other guards echo the drunk man’s shout. Even if nothing about this night went right, he might at least still regain the support of some of his fellow guards. And that would be a start.
He rubbed at the back of his neck again, but this time, the touch sent a flare of sharp pain down his spine. Wincing, he pulled his hand away. He glanced down at his hand as if he would find the reason for his pain in his fingertips, but there was nothing there.
He twisted to see in the mirror behind the bar. But as he did, the collar of his uniform brushed the back of his neck, sending another flash of burning pain through him. Curling his fingers, he gently placed a cupped hand over the spot on the back of his neck, protecting it against further harm.
Ice would help. Perhaps the kitchen had some.
He pushed through to the kitchen to find the room abandoned. Trays of food lay discarded, some still cooking over small fires, but not a soul in sight.
One hand still cupping the back of his neck, his other drifted to the hilt of his sword as he made his way through the kitchen. The back door to the dumpstreet was open barely a finger’s width. Hand firm on Cavallis, he nudged open the back door and stepped into the night.
A flash of blinding pain hit him, his neck searing.
His eyes were open, but he struggled to see beyond the burning.
Just as the pain subsided, his vision returning, something large hit him from behind, and he went down.
Knees buckling, his hands hit dirt, and then his chin found ground as whoever had hit him yanked his arms behind his back.
Brittle nails dug into the skin around his wrists.
A kneecap pressed into the small of his back. Toran struggled against his attacker to no avail. A single finger slid along the underside of his chin, the point of the nail instructing him to look up. He did so with menace.
The waitress in the violet uniform stood before him, a lantern held between them, her other hand clenched in a tight fist.
She had a round face with dark eyes nestled cozily above prominent cheekbones. Her nose sloped starkly, ending in wide nostrils set above even wider lips. Lips that scowled down at him.
“You’re not the one I want,” she spat before dropping his chin and stepping back.
He stopped his chin just shy of the ground.
Straining his neck, he turned his head to look at the girl.
Wild black curls stretched from her forehead to her ears and all the way down past her shoulders.
On anyone else, her face might have gotten lost in so much hair.
But not this girl. No, if anything, her ferocious hair seemed to amplify her every expression.
“You’re her,” he said.
She stared down at him, lips stretching from cheek to cheek. “Oh? Who am I?”
Damari’s question felt like a trap, in the same way Nes’s words often did. “The one I’ve been hunting,” he said.
Damari laughed, the sound starting hearty then fading as if hitting a hollow bottom.
“A guard has been hunting me? While I’ve been hunting all the King’s Guard.
How ironic.” She shook her head. “Sixty-three people. That’s how many your guards killed.
Do you know how many guards I’ve killed?
Twenty-four. I’m not even halfway there.
If I had more magic, I could mark you all and let the dead come for you in the night.
But I have my limits. So I work with what I have, ticking you off when I get the chance.
I will finish. Sixty-three of you will die as they died, ending with the one who started it all. ”
She nodded fervently, and he got the sense this was something she’d recited to herself many times. “The only way to right a wrongful death is to make a righteous kill.”
“But you haven’t killed me.”
She stopped nodding. “All in good time. I’ve marked you so you can’t escape.”
Toran tried twisting an arm free, but whoever held him down was strong. “What does it mean?”
“The symbol on your neck? Loosely translated, it means ‘to bind.’ There’s a slight amount of magic bound to the symbol.”
“And the others? On the trees?”
She shrugged. “ ‘To pull.’ ”
Both of those made sense. They already knew Damari had stolen magic from the trees and was then using it against the guards.
“How did you learn these symbols? Where do they originate? Are you the one who left the message on the rock wall under the castle?”
Damari knelt down beside him, tilting her head so far she was nearly upside down when she met his gaze evenly.
“So many questions.” She clicked her tongue.
“But to answer one, no. I am not the monster you think I am. The symbol on your neck is the only one that matters right now. It’s like a beacon to me.
I will find you no matter how far you run.
And with magic keeping Yonvere under my control, you have no hope of escaping death. ”
She stood upright again, a slight smile crossing her face. As if she was enjoying this. Perhaps she was. Telling him the truth only gave him more questions.
He had no reason to believe she was lying. Not when she’d been forthcoming about the meanings of the other symbols. And if she wasn’t lying, then who— “Yonvere?”
“That was his name—”
Damari raised the lantern, and Toran felt the weight holding him lift.
He climbed to his feet. Cavallis slid from its sheath with a hiss.
It was the only sound aside from his heartbeat as he turned to face his attacker.
A dead man stood before him, rigid, with too-sharp angles in all the wrong places and the same symbol as the one on Toran’s neck carved into his bare chest.
The corpse’s eyes were jagged and cut, irises gone as if they’d been nothing more than spools of thread to unravel. The worst were the centers. There was no life in the black, no depth in the holes. The pupils were gone, and in their place was an emptiness ending only in puckered, dry flesh.
“—before your captain killed him.”
“He’s not my captain,” Toran spat.
Damari grinned, and it reminded him of a cat. The kind with fangs so long they curl under chins.
“So you do know him,” she said. A flick of her wrist, and a dead hand wrapped around his arm.