14. Archer #2
“Forgiven,” Raven nods.
“Forgiven,” Yevna agrees.
“Good,” I mutter. “Now, the bookbinder and I have to move.”
There’s a tense pause before Saige speaks. “You said there was Azkari magic in the compound?” She doesn’t even glance my way.
That irritates me. She’s the first person to have seen me outside Morzanmyre in centuries and now she won’t look at me? “There was. Traces, nothing more.”
Those silvery eyes latch onto mine. “Whose magic was it?”
Though I try to hide it, I tense. It may not have been remnants of Malevron’s mirror magic drifting through the human fortress, but it was power I recognized, power I’m not yet ready to face.
My wounds pull with each breath, a constant reminder that something is wrong.
The flesh refuses to knit properly, the bleeding sluggish but persistent.
A bead of sweat rolls down my temple, and I swipe at it irritably.
I will not show weakness. Not here. Not in front of them.
“Come on, General,” Saige persists. “Azkari magic can have its own signature of sorts, you said so yourself. Black flames for instance… inherently yours.”
Both Yevna and Raven flinch at the mention of my power. There would be very few who didn’t recognize it across all of Lorevael. Thankfully, their reaction is a much-needed reminder of who I am and why I’m here.
I ignore her questioning. “We’ve wasted too much time as it is. We need to move.”
“We need a healer first.” She motions to the other women, who are drifting off to sleep after their ordeal. No doubt they’ll need several days’ rest, but I certainly won’t be waiting that long.
“Our bargain didn’t account for tending to your friends’ wounds.”
“Nor did it specify a timeline for upholding my end,” the little witch throws back.
And damn her, she’s right. Not that she knows it, but we had both been desperate when we’d sealed that agreement—the memory comes rushing back.
The lilac and parchment scent of her encompassing my senses, the soft feel of her curves pressed up against me, the little gasp on her lips as I claimed her.
The blood that isn’t dripping from my back rushes south, and I turn away.
I don’t need the sharp eyes of the old crone on me at this moment.
“Find a healer then,” I grind out. “And make it fast.”
“You’re coming with me, General.”
I shoot her an incredulous glare. “Surely you don’t expect me to carry your damn bags?”
“Surely you don’t want me out on the dangerous streets when I’m the only bookbinder you’ve got?”
The audacity of her. Saige doesn’t hesitate; she’s halfway down the stairs with Grim on her heels without another word.
“For fuck’s sake,” I mutter, trudging after her, ignoring Raven’s snort behind me. I catch up in a matter of strides, and we’re back out into the night. “This better be urgent. Life or death. Im-fucking-perative.”
“It is,” she says somberly, weaving through the evening crowd. “Did you find out where the book is?”
“Yes. It’s in the House of Reveries, in a sanctuary called the Temple of Truth. It’s a great vault that in the past has housed a great many Azkari treasures and magical artifacts.”
“Then why retrieve it at all? Surely, it’s safest there?”
“Nothing remains hidden forever, Grayson. Malevron knows where it is. We need to beat him to it.”
Her gaze lingers on me for a second, as though she’s trying to unpack the words. But then she halts at a nondescript wooden door that opens straight onto the street. “We’re here.”
It doesn’t look like an infirmary, but I follow her inside where she leads me up a narrow, creaking set of stairs. “Grayson…” I warn her, my irritation flaring as we reach the landing that opens up onto a wider corridor with multiple doors. “You said this was urgent.”
“It is.”
“A matter of life and death. Imperative.”
“It’s imperative that you bathe. Or I’ll die from the stench.”
A young woman pokes her head out from one of the doors and blanches at the sight of me, but Saige approaches her and murmurs something, passing her a coin. The woman squeezes Saige’s hand, nodding, before she scans me from head to toe, and points to the door at the end of the hall.
“You realize you brought me to a brothel, yes?” I remark as we make our way towards it.
“A brothel and bathhouse,” she corrects me. “They’re bringing up hot water for you now. The owner is a friend of Yevna’s, she’s going to get me the supplies I need for the others while you wash.”
“And what are you going to do? Scrub my back for me?”
She bats her eyelashes at me absurdly as she opens the door and motions me inside. “Only if you ask nicely, General.”
I bite back a short-tempered retort as three women enter, carrying pails of steaming water, emptying them into a large wooden tub. I stand there rigidly as they go about their tasks, while Saige looks amused from the doorway.
“Are you just going to stand there?” I bark at her.
Grim growls in response.
When the women finish with their buckets, they leave me alone with Saige and the mutt.
“We’ll guard the door and your modesty,” Saige says with a note of amusement. “It doesn’t shut properly, hence why it’s not in use.”
I start stripping away my outer layers, already stiff with dried blood. “I haven’t had privacy in two hundred years, bookbinder. Makes no fucking difference to me.”
Something flickers across Saige’s face, and I almost shout at her that I don’t want her damn pity, that I don’t deserve it, but I manage to bite my tongue.
The fabric of my shirt sticks to my wounds as I try to pull it off and I inhale a ragged breath against the sharp pain.
When I look up, I can see a sliver of Saige’s back through the broken door, Grim sitting at her feet.
Despite Saige’s teasing, I recognize what this is…
a kindness. It’s written in her earnest eyes; in the way she’s placed a new bar of soap atop a fresh towel on the small wooden bench…
I shuck off the rest of my clothes and approach the tub. Hot water. Actual soap. A fucking towel. Even if it is in a brothel. It’s the most luxury I’ve experienced in centuries. I sink into the bath with a moan. I exhale, feeling the tension drain from my torso, despite the insistent pulse of pain.
Not for the first time I think about the bookbinder’s small hand in mine back at Gravereach.
The first touch in centuries which didn’t seek to inflict pain.
I had wondered, often, what that first touch would be like.
I convinced myself in the depths of despair that I’d hate it, I’d shrink away, that I’d be happy if no one ever touched me again.
But that’s not what happened. No, her hand in mine awoke things in me, it made me…
feel. And I don’t like to feel. Not anymore.
When we reach the top of the stairs, Grim bounds past Saige straight to Yevna where he settles at her feet and stares at me with those big baleful eyes, as if to say, why the fuck are you still here?
Beats me, mutt. Beats me.
“I thought Azkari were meant to heal quickly,” is the old bat’s way of greeting me.
“We do.”
“Then why are you bleeding through a fresh shirt?” Saige asks, stepping closer and peering my apparently ruined new shirt.
The concern in her voice catches me off guard.
It would be so much easier if she just feared me, hated me, wanted to use me.
But this—this genuine worry for my wellbeing—I don’t know what to do with it.
“You mean besides from the torturous company?” I say.
She rolls her eyes. “You need to do something about your injuries.”
“And you need to do something about your friends,” I reply darkly. “Their presence leaves much to be desired.”
“I’m afraid there’s nothing to be done about us, Black Flame,” Yevna says, stroking the wolfhound’s massive head and exchanging a knowing look with Raven, who is unpacking the medical supplies Saige brought. “Wherever Saige is going with you, we’re coming too.”
“Over my dead body, crone.”
“That would be ideal.” Yevna crouches on the floor, running her hands over the wooden boards, shaking her head and muttering to Grim. “Shall we let him bleed out, or would you prefer to smother him in his sleep?”
Smother him in his sleep, the enormous mutt answers with his eyes.
“I made a deal with the general,” Saige says firmly. “And I intend to honor it. We’re going to retrieve and restore a book he needs in the Azkari lands.”
“We’re—”
“You’re not coming with us, Yev,” Saige interjects gently. “You and Raven are both injured. You need to stay here, recover. When you do, you’ve got lives back in the city.”
“You think we’d leave you alone with—”
“I’m standing right here,” I mutter. “And you’ll only slow us down.”
“No one asked you,” Yevna snaps, interrupted by Grim, who gives a soft bark and digs at the floor with one of his massive paws.
“Ah I knew it was somewhere here,” Yevna says fondly, ignoring the rest of us as she fits a pen knife to the gap between the floorboards and jimmies it beneath. There’s a popping sound and a board comes loose, revealing a stash of glass vessels beneath with Botanist’s Folly etched on the label.
Gin—a mortal liquor, I don’t put much stock in from what I remember. Though, I’ll wager it’s better than the moonshine Rook ferments in the dungeons of Gravereach. In two hundred years I drank it once and my head felt as though someone had taken a cleaver to it for a week.
The argument forgotten for now, Saige tips her head to the rafters and groans. “You know I can’t drink that straight.”
“Who said anything about you drinking it?” Yevna retorts, before she swipes a bottle from Raven.
“Or you. If you lose any more of your wits, we’re all dead.
Me on the other hand. I need to be as numb as possible…
” She curses under her breath and uncorks the gin with her teeth. “Making a deal with the Azkari. You—”