Chapter 17 Nes
Nes
Nes crossed from the Gash to the Ditch.
She barely noticed as everything around her changed. The air clogged, the streets faded to dirt, and the smell of decay wrapped around her head like a scarf.
“Nes!”
She kept walking. Something like dread was beginning to creep up on her. She didn’t like it. She walked faster.
“Nes! Stop!”
She stopped in the middle of an intersection and glanced down the street. Toran, his breath heavy, stopped beside her. She looked up at him, at the way his hair flopped over his forehead, at the way the cold bit a blush into his cheeks.
“He’s lying about getting attacked,” she said.
Toran nodded. “Fell always lies.”
It didn’t make sense for Fell to start lying now. Damari had already proven herself to be a danger to every guard in the city. They needed to know what had happened up north that compelled Fell to lie in their meeting. She wondered if it was possible Fell wasn’t the Witchkiller he claimed to be.
“Do you think he lied about killing the previous Witch?”
If Toran was taken aback by her question, he didn’t show it. His hand combed through his hair. “No. He didn’t lie about that.”
Nes tapped the flask hidden beneath her shirt. “How do you know he didn’t lie?” Tap tap tap. “He didn’t kill the last Witch in Orlonea, right?”
She felt Toran’s frown like a hand on her back.
“Right. The last Witch was from Kehr. Fell killed her there, in a village near the mountains. They had a hidden saltwater lake. Why does any of this matter?”
It didn’t. Not yet. Right now, there was nothing to prove.
Her heart sped along, faster than the fluttering wings of a hummingbird, as her excitement built. “Were there any witnesses? To the Witch drowning?”
People shuffled by them, some grumbling about getting out of the way. She didn’t care if they were impeding the flow of traffic. She cared only for the color leaching from Toran’s face.
“Yes,” he said, and she noticed how his hand drifted to the hilt of the sword at his hip, how he clutched the handle like he might draw it right there. “Me.”
Her excitement died, his words the blade slicing through her.
Emotions she couldn’t put to words, heavy like boulders, tumbled through her at his revelation.
Toran had been the one to watch as Fell drowned the previous Witch.
The Witch had been killed eighteen years ago, so Toran couldn’t have been older than three.
Three years old and he’d watched a man murder someone.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Toran blinked, his face opening, and looked down at her. “What for?” He shook his head. “She was the Witch. She had to die.”
Nes said nothing. Overhead, a seagull cawed at them. Another cawed an answer back.
“We should talk to this Genna person,” she said at last. “See what she knows.”
“I don’t think Fell was lying about leaving her behind.”
“Maybe not, but she could still know something. Even if he left her behind, she was the first person to see Fell when he returned to Rakne Bay and the only person who accompanied him back to Gadore.” Her mind drifted to days spent on the road with her father—to the conversations they’d had just to fill the silence.
“It was a long trip back,” she continued. “She might know more than you think.”
Toran dropped the hilt of his sword, both hands patting down his every pocket.
At last, he pulled the piece of paper with the symbol on it from a pocket in his jacket.
“We need to speak to her, anyway,” he said, eyes locked on the symbol.
“After your plan with Phineas failed, I did some digging. Genna’s father is a Brother at the monastery and an expert on languages. Genna might recognize this symbol.”
If they could learn the meaning of the symbol, they would be that much closer to understanding Damari—to understanding the magic surrounding her. And that was something Nes yearned for.
Toran’s lips thinned. “I’ll find Genna, and we’ll meet up with you later.”
She nodded as she stared down the street, past the people scurrying about and the seagulls swooping for pickings and the rats skittering between feet. She turned to leave, but Toran’s hand at her elbow stopped her.
Above those pure eyes, his eyebrows crinkled. “We’ll question her together, okay?”
She pulled his hand from her arm but squeezed it once before dropping it. “Okay.”
He hesitated like he wanted to say more, do more, his eyes drifting to her limp hand. But in the end, he only nodded. He left, leaving her wanting.
There was still one thing she needed to do alone.
Because while Toran had her following Fell, Phineas still had someone following her. It was insulting, really, to think she wouldn’t retaliate. More so when she figured out who was following her and realized she couldn’t retaliate.
Suri’s foot was like a hammer as it came down on a misshapen spider.
She stood on the threshold of the Siren’s Hair, her face wrath incarnate.
Nes glanced between Suri and the dust-covered man her friend had just thrown from the gambling den.
The man writhed with an odd sort of energy, as if there wasn’t one person but several thousand trapped in his skin.
With a slight tilt of her head, Nes sniffed the air. Strawberry syrup wafted her way, its scent delicious and intoxicating. She scowled at the man.
Suri lifted her boot and, to Nes’s surprise, the spider beneath picked itself up and skittered over to the man. Suri’s features twisted in disgust. Nes was sure her own expression wasn’t far off.
It was then that she saw the rest. Spiders, dozens of them, crawling over the man’s skin, under his clothes, and through his hair. One crept over Nes’s toes, and she took a step back. But not before she got a good look at it.
Not spiders at all.
They had eight legs and moved like spiders, but their bodies were made of eyeballs. A black pupil watched her from where the spider’s abdomen should have been as it made its way back to its host. The eye crawled up the man’s leg, joining the rest covering him.
“I just want to work for your boss,” the man said.
Suri’s face was a mix of color and irritation. “The boss doesn’t need more eyes. And if I ever see you in the Siren’s Hair again, or so much as a single spider eye, I’ll have both your real eyes scooped out of your head and nailed to the door.”
The man sneered at Suri but said nothing more as he walked away.
With his back turned, Nes saw how the eyes crawled up his neck all the way to his hairline, where they disappeared inside his scalp.
She shuddered, grateful she’d chosen not to unearth the magic’s true intention under the mask of the strawberry-syrup scent.
“You’re back!” Suri’s smile was bright and easy, all annoyance gone from her face. She threw an arm around Nes and began leading her toward the door.
She shrugged her friend off. “I’m not staying.”
Suri’s smile faltered but didn’t disappear. “Will you stay for a little bit? I’ve missed you.”
She hated this. Hated how she was suddenly questioning everything Suri had ever done. Hated how she no longer knew if she could trust her. Hated how she wondered if she was really her friend.
She gestured in the direction the man with the spiders had gone. “Phineas put you in charge of recruiting?”
“No.” Suri ran her hands down the front of her brown skirt. “Just taking out the trash.”
“And keeping an eye on people?”
“You know the Siren’s Hair is the first line of defense against the King’s Guard,” Suri whispered. “We have to at least pretend we’re upholding the law.”
“And how are you defending this place when you’re out keeping an eye on me?”
Suri froze. “Nes…”
“You had a choice. And you chose him.”
“It’s not like that. I would never choose him.”
“Didn’t you?” Nes asked, her voice full of ridicule. “Or was it some other green-eyed girl following me all over the city?”
“Nes, I—” Suri hung her head. “I’m sorry. If it helps, I only told him where you’d been, not what you were doing.”
That surprised her. Phineas wasn’t known for letting his employees cut corners. When he assigned a task, he expected it done right and done thoroughly.
“Why?”
Suri smiled again, but this time there was a note of sorrow in the curve of her lips. “Because you’re my friend.”
She watched Suri’s face for any hint of deceit. She wanted to trust her. But she’d been too willing to trust Phineas once before. She wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
Suri seemed to read the resolve in her face, so Nes was surprised when Suri stepped forward and pulled her into a hug. She stiffened in the embrace.
“I know you don’t trust easily, but know that your trust means more to me than his ever will,” Suri whispered, so low Nes barely heard the words. “Front-right pocket.”
“What?” She tried to pull back, but Suri squeezed her harder.
“There’s a letter in my front pocket. Take it.”
Everyone knew Phineas did most of his dealings on paper. His clandestine meetings, the greatest secrets of his business, in writing for anyone to read. But no matter what she did, she’d never managed to get her hands on one. Now Suri was offering her a gift.
She put both arms around Suri, hugging her tight. As they released, Nes slid her hand in Suri’s pocket. She slipped the letter out and into her own before they stepped apart.
“You are my friend,” Suri said. “I hope you can say the same.”
Then she was gone, leaving Nes on the street.
Nes walked several blocks, ensuring she wasn’t followed again.
She stopped to chat with the woman who sold the beautiful scarves she sometimes tied in her hair, then made her way to the Gash, where she darted inside the bakery she and Suri loved, emerging with a powdered maple doughnut.
She walked aimlessly, savoring every bite and licking her fingers clean.
It was only when she reached the sands of Varena Beach that she pulled the letter from her pocket and unfolded it. She recognized Phineas’s handwriting immediately—the elegant script had always made hers look like it belonged to a toddler.
At the top of the page were instructions for Suri.
Deliver to Keifer Harrow, 635 Front Street, Ditch.
Then, at the bottom of the page, another address and a message.
122 South Street, Wharf. Two times 24. I’ll be the one in red.
She read the message three times before tucking the letter back in her pocket. She grinned. If Phineas was taking care to disguise the time and date of his meeting, then whatever secret business he had with Keifer Harrow was well worth her while.
Harrow would not be meeting Phineas at two a.m. twelve days from now. But she would.