Chapter 6
SIX
The boy followed Merik, skittering and scurrying from shadow to shadow. Merik was careful to never move so fast the boy couldn’t keep up. It was hard to stay slow, though. The wind had burrowed deep into his bones. Hunger was so pressing, he felt his stomach eating into his esophagus.
What Merik did not feel were signs of the Puppeteer. She was as inescapable as the tides. Her power seeped into every stone, every branch, every inch of plague-ridden soil. But there was nothing here now beyond wind and cold and these bodies that should be dead.
Bodies like his own. And like the boy still following him.
It was that thought more than any that propelled Merik onward until, at last, he and Aurora reached an intersection he knew too well.
This was the way to the Puppeteer’s tower, and if he lifted a numb hand to block the wind, he could see it right there: part crumbling relic, part testament to a history long forgotten.
Ancient things made new again. He’d thought that of the tower, where Esme had trapped him, tortured him, terrified him.
But she also had had a stove in there. Blankets too. And maybe, by some miracle, there would be food.
Years later, Merik would look back at this moment as one when the fissures in the ice had finally led him exactly where he needed to be—for there really were no coincidences.
But in that moment, all he’d really known was that an unexpected peace settled over him.
And it radiated stronger, stronger as he stumbled ever closer to the tower.
When he finally reached the gaping, open door, he paused long enough to look back. The boy was still there, although he’d stopped now. Which was fine; Merik knew eventually the boy would follow. Aurora certainly did, shoving past Merik to be the first into the tower.
She nosed at an old pile of kindling beside stone steps, startling several mice. She snapped them into her jaws; Merik winced at the sound. But then decided he’d rather she eat mice than people.
With a fresh surge of strength, Merik hurried upstairs to the top floor. The floor where Esme had made her home.
There was no one there now. There was only her desk, her books, her many slouching candles that hadn’t seen flames since her passing. And of course, there was the corner where Merik had existed, bound by the Puppeteer’s collar and her capricious, yet calculating whim.
The rags that had been his only warmth were still there. The collar that had blocked his magic was not. For several moments, a tightness gripped Merik’s chest. As if his ribs had become a fist, as if they squeezed inward, trying to stop his lungs and heart from working.
Aurora whined. The moment passed. And Merik inhaled, laying a hand on the storm hound’s warm head. “We should start a fire,” he murmured, though he suspected she might understand his desires even without words. “And then we should look for food, and try to make a bed for that boy outside.”
Aurora snuffed. Merik scratched. Ancient things made new again.
Hours later, Merik had found wood and coaxed a fire to life in the stove. He’d found salted meat that had frozen inside a barrel and a loaf of icy bread that the mice had never reached. So, after melting snow, he made a sad attempt at stew.
Then Merik hugged a rough blanket around his shoulders and with Aurora behind him, he climbed the final steps to the top of the tower. The boy had not yet braved the doorway, but he was still out there. Merik heard him shuffling every hour or so.
He would come eventually.
Or at least, Merik hoped he would. Night had fallen; the cold would soon be deadly.
The wind beat stronger atop the tower, and the winter sky was crystalline in a way it never looked on the Jadansi, as if the cold sharpened each star and darkened all the spaces between.
There was a full moon tonight, which meant months might have passed since Merik had fled a dying Puppeteer and been swallowed by the ice …
or it might have only been two weeks. Two weeks seemed unlikely though, given the dramatic change in temperature and snow.
And given the dramatic change in what waited beyond the walls of Poznin.
When Merik had been here as a prisoner, there’d been nothing to the east but swollen river and marshes for miles. Wet forests of beech trees, and plains rolling toward Cartorra. That was unchanged; the very earth there was still a sponge.
But the north and west held a landscape unlike anything he could have imagined.
The plains that stretched endlessly to the north, all the way to the Sleeping Lands, were now a clotted patchwork of fires and tents and figures moving through the night.
Black smoke drifted across the otherwise unmarred night sky.
One plume in particular swept across the Sleeping Giant, diffusing its three bright stars into hazy smears of shadow-light.
Merik surveyed the various encampments. Although dark, the stars and the fires were bright enough—and near enough—to reveal red banners that marked Red Sail tents. Yellow banners that marked Baedyeds. And then loose, shapeless tents that seemed beholden to no one.
“Purists?” he wondered aloud. They had loved the southernmost stretches of Nihar, where poison and fire had drained the land of magic. And they had loved to tell Merik he was cursed for the magic he bore.
Merik strained to see some central spoke to the encampments.
Some clear organization that would suggest where, in all those campfires and tents, he might find the Raider King—and this must be the forces of the Raider King.
It was the only thing that made sense. But Merik could find no coherence, no structure.
The only consistent detail Merik did notice was that all the tents stopped at a very sharp, very specific distance from the northern wall of Poznin. It suggested the raiders and Purists were forbidden from setting camp any closer than that …
Or perhaps were too afraid to.
Aurora wagged her tail twice. A heavy thump on icy stones that prompted Merik to absently pat her head.
He’d look more closely at this view tomorrow—see if this Raider King was out there …
and then decide what his next moves should be.
Perhaps he should do as the two girls had suggested and simply approach the man directly.
Why are these Cleaved still here? Can we do anything to help them?
It was a foolish thought that disappeared almost as quickly as it formed. Of course Merik would not approach the Raider King. He had already come too close to death; he had no desire to tempt Noden’s Hagfishes again.
Merik also would not stay in this place stricken by plague and shadows.
These Cleaved weren’t alive—there was nothing he could do for them.
The boy, though, he could help. He would get the child out of here, and together, they would aim south.
Because Nubrevna was home, and Nubrevna was where Merik needed to be.