Chapter 6 #3
“But you were made to.” He looked up at me.
His face was revulsion. “I did that. I let that happen. I wasn’t threatening your sister, but I might as well have been.
And you…you didn’t know that you were safe.
" His voice cracked. "I let my own hubris assume I knew what I was doing, that we both knew what we were doing, what we had decided.” He flinched away. “God, no wonder you were so still. I just thought…I thought you were only disappointed with me. I thought I could get better.” I couldn’t tell if the sound he made was a sob or a laugh, only that it hurt.
I was shaking my head. “You can’t take the blame for this.” I touched his hand. "You were lied to. I…helped him lie to you.”
“You lied to an enemy,” he whispered. “You lied to someone who would harm your sister. And I swore I’d keep you safe and then I immediately hurt you.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
He let out a hiss, as if he was in pain. He looked like he struggled to speak. “So you were hurting.”
“It’s supposed to hurt.”
“You shouldn't be coddling me, Rowena.” His face was so pale. “I knew when you were trying to insist you could walk. I knew something was wrong. I thought maybe it was warrior’s pride, the kind of poisonous self-reliance we see sometimes in the southern clans. I thought maybe you’d been taught not to speak about pain, or to ask for help.
When you moved so quickly, after our wedding, I thought you were just surer than me.
It made sense, to have the woman lead. But then you were so alert.
” He swallowed. “I never thought about what that would look like. What it would look like to have no one on your side.” He pressed his head back against the tree.
“I failed you. And I don’t know how to apologize for something like this. I thought I would just…never do it.”
"It's not your fault—"
"How is this not my fault? Why won't you let yourself be angry with me? Rowena," his voice broke again. "You are allowed to be angry. This is your body. This is your life.”
“Is that what you want?” I whispered.
“Why do you keep asking me what I want?” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Are you still waiting for me to hurt you?”
I made myself wait before answering, test my mind.
If I didn't have to, I didn't want to lie.
“Not all the time. Not anymore. But that…
isn't your fault." He made a sound of disgust, and I pressed on. "You didn’t make my people barbarians. You didn’t…make me a human.” I lowered myself to sit in the leaves.
“And you tried to say no. I talked you into claiming me.” I clenched a handful of soil.
“You can be angry at me later, when you’re ready. "
He didn't open his eyes. "And when will you be ready?"
I wanted to touch him, to comfort him somehow, but he would shrink back from me now. Now, he knew who I was.
"When I'm ready to be angry, it will be at the people who hurt us both." My throat ached. "I didn't know," I said quietly. "About the colored water."
"I know," he said. When he leveraged himself up off the tree, he held out a hand. I took it. He pulled me to my feet beside him. "We'll have time to discuss later. About what you want to do."
Confusion buzzed at my temples. "What do you mean?" He started walking, and I struggled to stay alongside.
"I'm not holding you to a vow made under duress. You can decide…what this means for you, when we're safe." His jaw clenched.
My chest ached. Right. I had to take care of him. "Your mother is already going to be angry with you, isn't she?" I said.
That muscle twitched in his jaw. He shrugged.
"Wouldn't it be easier for you to leave me at Rowton?"
He lurched to a stop. "What?"
"Rowton. The city. I know my way around. It's where I was…before."
He seemed to catch his breath. "If that's…what you want."
A whippoorwill sang.
"Tyralk," I said.
"Right. Of course." He lurched back into motion again, and I followed.
We reached the town as the sun sank.
“Not the main gate. You don’t want to deal with the guard.”
Khal hesitated. “I can identify myself.”
“We don’t have time to deal with it if they take us for criminals or try to get money. It better serves Tyralk if we take the window-gate.”
He followed me on the trek wide around the city to the place where the Old Wall still stood, near where the sewer mouth emptied into the fen. I called the call I’d learned so many years before, and when the rope ladder fell from the high gash window, he followed me up.
Beatta looked much the same, and much different, her body still broad and strong, but now there was silver in her hair, lines by her eyes. Khal’s eyes widened as I pulled out the purse, paid the money for passage.
“Your call sign is old,” she remarked.
“I’ve been away for a long time.” I paid an extra coin. “I will catch up with you soon, Beatta. But our errand is urgent. I’ll come back with him tonight.”
She weighed the coin in her hand. “Best cover your friend’s face better, then.” She went into a box, pulled out a shirt and a thin cloak. Only minor bloodstains on each.
“See, I remembered that you were smart.” I paid her for them. Khal did not look natural in this get-up, but we only had to move to the slum by the Low Tower, and the dark was already upon us.
Khal kept scanning the street, the buildings, stopping at crossroads on the narrow paths, craning his neck at the twisting shapes leaning out above us.
I caught his arm. “You’re going to draw attention if you keep staring,” I murmured.
The streets were only dotted with people, nothing like the crush of earlier in the day or the mash that would be near the gambling halls, but there was space for someone to be sharp enough, someone to notice.
“Looking out of place here is like bleeding in the forest. You draw predators fast.”
He took the hand that I offered, and followed after me. There were so many shadows in the dying light; it was impossible to know if we were already followed.
Things got louder as we approached the warrens, the leaning buildings gnawed through with so many tunnels and doors a fleeing suspect would be near impossible to catch.
My mind traced the doors, the windowsills, the rooftops.
Something was off, something shifted. It took too many seconds to realize I was taller.
“There,” I said. “Tipping House. The Mongoose should be there.”
Walking in the door was like stepping into a memory.
It was so dark, and smelled of rushes and damp, of the greasy rag lamp at the front counter.
There were piles of things, broken chairs, sealed crates, bent plows.
Ostensibly a second hand shop, this place felt more like home than anywhere I’d been in the last eleven years of my life.
It felt like a weight fell off my shoulders, like I could almost forget the impending goodbye. I’d be okay now. I’d be okay, I’d-
“Todderick,” I called out. “A rat has come back to the nest.”
But the face behind the counter wasn’t Todderick.
I frowned at the mess of sandy-brown hair. “Prescott?”
He spread his arms. He was taller than he’d been, more meat on his shoulders. A shade of an attempted beard sculpted his neck and jaw, though it failed at the mustache. “The same. But I don’t know your face, and it is a shame to forget such a face as yours.”
“Well, it’s been some time.” I searched his eyes. Goodness, he’d actually grown. He’d been such a wilting candle of a boy. “You don’t look like so much of a drowned weasel as before.”
His back stiffened, then- “Rewy?” He barked out a laugh. “Gods and monsters, it is you! I thought you were gone and dead.”
“So did I. It’s been a passel of stories, but right now I need a favor.” I gestured Khal forward. “My friend needs a health potion. Please tell me something has fallen off a cart.”
He looked at Khal. “Rue…times are tight on such things. If your friend is still on his feet, I know a healer on 4th street, not cheap but still cheaper…”
“It’s not for him. Our patient is more urgent.” I nodded to Khal, and he brought out his purse, hesitant, set it on the counter. “We can pay.”
Prescott opened the purse, poured out the coin.
Silver spread across the surface. “This is nice,” he said.
“But I’m sorry, I can’t help you. Our last potion was reserved by a noble in the lower quarter.
I can’t offend such a customer.” He pushed the money back towards us. “Perhaps, if you could visit a church—"
“There isn’t time,” I said. “Surely you could think of a way to put off one little noble? This is two month’s wages.”
“Rue, you haven’t been around.” His eyes were flat. “Things are not so simple here anymore.”
“I’ve seen ledgers, Prescott. This is almost the price you’d pay sending to the Tower. You won’t do better than this.”
His eyebrows rose a hair. “Fascinating story,” he said. “So why are you traveling with an orc?”
"That's a story for a time when no one's dying."
He smiled, and it didn't touch his eyes. "Someone's always dying, Rue."
I reached into my waist pouch, and found Thea's comb. "What about this?"
Prescott masked his reaction quickly, but it didn't matter. I'd seen the hunger in his eyes. "I knew our Rue had clever fingers, but I didn't know you were robbing noblewomen."
"It was a gift."
"Sure."
I waited.
"Fine, Rue. I'll get your potion. For the comb and the silver."
"Half the silver."
"All but five pieces. I've still got to find a buyer for, what? A blood comb."
"Seven pieces. That's Northern-made, and it was a gift."
"Sure it was." He thought, then pushed the seven pieces across the table. "One minute." He went in the back room.
"Thank you," Khal said. "I don't…" he stopped. His face was so pale.
"Hey." I put a hand on his arm, and he flinched, but he didn't shy away. "Don't worry. We're gonna save him."
He nodded, a jerky motion.
Prescott came back, a small box in his hands. "You're lucky, you lot are. These don't come through very often. I'll have to tell Mister Noble that a shophand dropped this."
I opened the box. A glass vial rested in straw packing. Khal reached past me for the vial. He unstoppered the vessel and ran it under his nose before pressing the cork back in. "It's real," he said. Relief was heavy in his voice.
"I don't deal in counterfeits. Not that I don't know a few guys." Prescott glanced back at me. "So, Rue." He cocked his head to one side. "You sticking around here? I can alert some of the old guards. I know someone'll have an outfit needs a light-finger."
I hesitated, Khal's presence a heat beside me. "I appreciate that. I've picked up a few more skills since we ran together, Press. I'll…keep in touch."
He nodded.
On the dark street again, the potion carefully stowed, Khal broke the silence. "Will you be happy here? You're…you're safe? With them?"
Now I was the one who didn't know how to meet his eyes. "I've never been safer anywhere else."
We passed under the crooked arch, towards Beatta's twisted stair and the window down. He caught my wrist. I turned, and he let go, as if he'd been burned.
"Sorry," he swallowed. "That's…a bad habit."
I waited.
"I could bring you back. To the city. After you saw Tyralk recover. I could gather…gather payment. For your comb. You’d be safe with us." His eyes were pinned on my face. My stomach twisted. When I looked at him, I wanted to give him everything he wanted, but I had to choose right.
"The others have made it clear that me going back would cause trouble for you." I swallowed, forced a smile. "Besides, Tyralk’s state is mostly because of me. I owe you."
"You owe me nothing." He said it too fast, too vehement, flinched back.
"... for Tyralk," I whispered.
He drew breath. "Right. For Tyralk."
I stepped closer, took his hand. "Let's go, then."
The door opened when I knocked. It was a long climb up the stairway, but every moment, every step, I was thinking that this was the last time I’d walk so near him, that Khal would disappear down the rope, and our lives would be sundered.
And he didn’t owe me anything, but I’d have liked to wait longer, if it wouldn’t have harmed him.
The freedom I’d fought and suffered for was almost mine, and I was preemptively grieving him. I was a sucker.
We reached the top of the stair, and I pushed the trap door open.
Maybe if I hadn’t been so distracted, I’d have listened to the tug in my gut, the awareness that the shadows in the light that leaked around the door's frame were too many. Maybe if I hadn’t been pining like a ninny, I could have kept us safe. But I was seconds too late.
As the door pulled open to a circle of armed men, I did try to call out. “Wait, Khal, go back—" but then I was pulled through. And if you know Khal at all, you know he followed me.