Chapter Three Blood in the Water
CHAPTER THREE
BLOOD IN THE WATER
It wasn’t often Reya left a trail of her own blood behind.
The slice above her right vambrace—courtesy of one of the Silver Guardsmen she’d taken on—was still pulsing red despite the pressure she was putting on it, and it hurt like hell. But in the grand scheme of things, it was the least of her problems.
Her muddy boots scuffed the wet cobblestones as she wove through the South End, the start of a migraine pulsing behind her eyes.
Edris was a maze without logic. Its bridges, narrow streets, and narrower alleys were all curves and random dead ends, the buildings so close they were practically on top of one another.
Reya liked to imagine the original architect as a painter who had watercolored the whole of the city with a bottle of wine in hand, dropping structures and roads wherever they best caught the light.
Rhiterrans called Edris the Silver City, the glistening star of the north. With its rooftops of shingled steel, the city was blinding in the sunlight. But Reya loved it best on nights like this, when the stars and moons turned the metal rooftops into a glittering second sky.
Reya navigated the city by its trimmings: hand-painted blade signs, a colorful door, a familiar shop window, a gaggle of vines or wisteria climbing an archway, a slab of wood hung with notices and wanted posters—upon which she was often featured.
In fact, there she was. Reya inspected the crudely drawn sketch of a hooded, clearly male figure, whose only visible features were arched brows and menacing eyes.
WANTED: CRIMSON DAGGER, FOR THEFT, MURDER, AND TREASON.
10,000 GOLDS. And there, directly above her own poster, was Stellene.
Whatever witness the sketch artist likely interviewed for the composite had given vivid details.
WANTED: SANCTA, FOR DESTRUCTION OF IMPERIAL PROPERTY, SEDITION, AND DEADLY ASSAULT. DO NOT APPROACH. 20,000 GOLDS.
Reya’s eyes caught on the amount, aghast. Half the price of a Sage? Those bastards. Reya was practically a bargain. With a huff, she snatched the Crimson Dagger poster off its tack to add to her collection. After tonight, they could add “aiding and abetting magic-born” to her list of charges.
She scanned the street for prying eyes, wondering if Lennox had chosen this spot with her in mind.
They weren’t far from the stables where she boarded Ash.
The dapple gray stallion was all she’d taken with her when she’d left home, apart from the sword.
As Reya lifted an unmarked sewer grate, she wished she were unlatching his stable door.
How easy it had seemed back then, to take Ash and run. She knew it would be futile now.
Lennox was practically daring her to try.
Reya slid down the ladder, landing with a small splash on the narrow edge of the water main.
Her boss regularly took meetings in the sewers, where the rushing water drowned out conversations he didn’t want anyone overhearing.
Word of where and when to report had arrived via one of the Bluehoods, who had intercepted Reya on her way back to her flat before disappearing into the shadows.
There hadn’t been time to go inside to bind her wound.
Rats skittered out of her way as she navigated the complicated network of tunnels, rushing water growing louder and louder, a symphony playing in time with the blood pulsing in her ears. Reya steeled her spine as the shaft at last opened onto a large basin.
Lennox Raulin stood ankle-deep in muck at its center, the Bluehoods scattered around him like sentinels. Water poured in falls from open pipes at his back.
At first glance, Lennox didn’t look like the kind of man who had killed his way through the underworld; well into his forties, he had the bearing of a rough-hewn sort of nobility.
His leather armor was simple in contrast to Reya’s, but finely made.
Speckled gray-blond hair fell to his shoulders around a modestly handsome face that was fixed in an expression of lethal calm.
It was the scars, carefully concealed by facial hair and the cut of his clothes, that threatened to give him away.
Standing before her was the greatest master thief in Rhiterra, who had once stolen and later returned the Crown Jewels just to prove he could.
Reya’s boots sloshed through the brown water, cutting through the hush as she went to stand before the man who had made her.
Gavin and Zaim stood on either side of Lennox, their faces rigid.
Reya tried to catch Gavin’s eye, but he refused to meet her gaze.
Though his detached expression shouldn’t have surprised her, there was an unwelcome tightness in her chest. It was like touching ice; the longer she looked, the more numb she felt.
With a lift of Lennox’s chin, they both fell into line with the rest of the crew, blocking the tunnel openings around her. She would find no allies here.
“You’re either a fool or a traitor,” Lennox said. “Tell me which.”
Reya took a deep breath. She’d talked her way out of trouble before. “Neither.”
“Do you have any idea what you cost me?” There was an edge to his tone she had not heard in a long time. Reya had known her actions would carry a price. But judging by the lack of expression on his face, it would be far higher than she’d anticipated.
“I made sure she would not be a liability to you,” Reya said.
“Tell me you are not that naive,” he said, scathing her without ever raising his voice. “Not after all I have taught you.”
Lennox had given her three creeds to live by. One: There is no honor among thieves. Two: A good blade is key to any negotiation. Three: Only the dead keep secrets. Reya had a sneaking suspicion she was on her way to becoming one of the latter.
Her reply was quiet, but not soft. “I don’t steal people.”
He backhanded her. She expected the blow, but it didn’t make her face hurt any less. Her eyes watered with the sting, and she tasted metal. Lennox grabbed her jaw and squeezed hard enough to bruise.
“You do whatever I command because you are mine. You forget, Crimson Dagger, that I made you. There’s not a trick you know that I haven’t taught you.”
Reya had understood this life would change her.
When Lennox had offered her the hood and dagger, he’d promised her a roof over her head, a full belly every night, and coin to buy whatever she wanted in exchange.
After living on the streets and picking pockets just to feed herself, it had seemed like a gift.
Even now, knowing what she knew, she would make the same choice. And no good deed would change that.
“Where. Did. You. Take. Her?” Lennox gritted out, each word sharper than the last.
“She’s gone,” Reya hissed. “I let her go.”
Lennox bared his teeth, and Reya swallowed the whimper that rose in her throat as his nails cut her skin. “Do you have any idea what that female was worth? What the king would have paid to get her back?” His grip tightened. “He believes that Sage wields the God Power.”
Reya went still, a thousand tiny needles prickling her cheeks and chest. The so-called God Power was said to have been granted to a chosen Sage by the All-Goddess Una, the Mother of the All-Gods who were the source of all magic.
Guardians, the legends called them: warriors chosen at birth to protect Una’s creation when it was threatened.
Only when a Guardian died was a new one selected to bear the gift.
Some claimed the God Power was storms given form.
Others described it as the raging might of the oceans.
It didn’t particularly matter, seeing as the God Power had been lost for over an age, if it ever existed at all.
But the mere idea of that kind of power had driven Rhiterran kings to radical lengths to wipe out the Sages.
Reya remembered the charge she’d felt in the air when she’d removed Stellene’s Kellstone collar, and worry danced along her spine. If the king thought that this female possessed the strength of Una, he would stop at nothing until she was found.
“The God Power is a myth,” Reya said.
“All I care is that the king believes it. And now when he raises the bounty on the Sage you set free, I will not be able to collect. And when I cannot collect, those responsible pay in blood.” His eyes were as hard and dangerous as his grip.
“Every thief, assassin, and Blood Watcher in the world is about to descend on my city looking for her. We had one opportunity.”
Reya’s fingers twitched toward the pendant that grew hot against her throat. Anger only made the urge worse, and that terrified her more than the pain that was coming.
“I want to know where she is, and where you hid the Kellstone.”
“Most of it is in a crate in the Heap near where I jumped. I can show you.”
Lennox commanded two of the Bluehoods to go hunt it down, and they scrambled to do his bidding. “No need. We’ll find it.” Russet eyes met hers. “The Sage.”
Reya clenched her fists to keep from doing something infinitely foolish, stomach twisting as her every instinct writhed in protest. He read the word in her eyes: No.
She may as well have screamed it. Reya could feel the Bluehoods holding their breaths in the wake of her silence.
No one said no to Lennox Raulin.
He pulled her face closer to his, and she grunted.
“You think because of my affection for you, you will not face the consequences of your actions?” he said so only she could hear, the question deceptively mild, while his eyes glittered with bottled ire. “Give me a reason not to kill you where you stand.”
Lennox did not make empty threats. If she wanted to live to see the dawn, then she needed to make him a better deal.
“I will earn you back every coin she would have made you,” Reya said through clenched teeth.
Her employer’s smirk wrinkled the small white scar on the left corner of his mouth. “And how exactly do you plan to produce one hundred thousand golds?”