Chapter 36
Baxley discovered the work in his usual manner. Silently, without calling attention to it, and presenting it as a done deal during breakfast, with the relaxed confidence of someone who had been doing this so long that the process went unnoticed.
“I picked us up a courier job,” he said, setting down his cup. “A merchant in the upper city needs documents delivered to a contact in Virellan. Discretion required. Pays well.”
Larana looked up. “How well?”
“Well enough that we can leave Crystallese with full packs and still earn some coin.” He looked over at me. “It’s a four-way split.”
I thought about it. “Virellan is where?”
“Border town, in Florlunia. You’re barely out of it, and the border with Crystallese is there. It’s the only place in Florlunia where snow falls.”
“And then the snow just stops?” I asked curiously.
He considered it and gave a soft huff. “Yeah, pretty much.”
“Huh.”
“So courier job?” He looked at Larana. “Yeah?”
She nodded. Baxley looked at me. I nodded because I was just following Larana. Baxley looked at Nicco.
Nicco said nothing. He was looking at the table with the expression of a man who had decided something and wasn't sharing it.
“Nicco,” Baxley said. “You in?”
Wait, was there a chance he wouldn’t be? Was that an option?
“Fine.” Nicco picked up his cup. “Keep it clean.”
Baxley and Larana exchanged a look I didn’t understand and decided it was best not to ask.
The merchant was in the upper city, which meant we had to move through Glassfyr properly for the first time since we arrived.
Not the stunned drift of the first evening.
This was purposeful movement, navigating the streets with intention, and I was better at it now.
Two days in the city had taught me its shape, the way the streets ran, the logic of a place built into a mountain.
That didn’t mean that I didn’t still look at everything.
I couldn't help looking at everything.
We moved in pairs. Baxley and Larana headed to the merchant, while Nicco and I went to a meeting point afterward.
This was Nicco's arrangement, delivered in the same flat, no-nonsense tone he used for all arrangements.
I didn't ask why he wanted us paired. I'd stopped asking why about most things.
The answers either came in their own time or didn't come at all.
We walked through the upper city in the easy quiet of two people who had run out of things they were ready to say.
I was watching the street — the people, the stalls, the way the ice-light caught the towers above us — when I felt it.
Not heard it. Felt it.
The hum in my chest changed.
Not dramatically. It wasn’t the same surge when I was at Iskaeld. Not that same pressure that boiled within me the weeks before, where I thought I had to let it out. It was just a shift in quality. The way the sound of the wind changes when something moves between you and its source.
I slowed, my eyes searching for the reason, my ears sharp, listening for the reason.
“What?” Nicco asked immediately.
“I don't know.” I looked around, taking in everything and nothing. The street was ordinary, filled with merchants, shoppers, and children running for reasons children run. There was nothing visibly wrong. “Something feels—”
I slowed to a stop.
The building was three storefronts ahead on the left. Stone, like everything in Glassfyr, reached four stories high and spread wide. It had a stillness the other buildings lacked. A symbol above a large ornate wooden door, carved into the stone lintel, not painted, the kind of thing meant to last.
I didn't know the symbol, but I knew what it meant.
I'd never seen a Verei Kahn institution before.
I’d known they existed and was aware there was one in Glassfyr. The hum in my chest sharpened. Something inside that building was aware of the world outside it — something trained to be aware.
Or maybe it was the building itself.
My hand went to my sternum.
“Don't react.” Nicco's voice was very quiet, very even. His hand curled around my elbow. “Come on.”
I lowered my hand. “Nicco—”
“Keep walking.”
“I am walking.”
“No. You stopped. Let’s move faster.”
We were past the building before I'd fully processed being in front of it, Nicco's hand at my elbow, not gripping, just present, steering slightly. The hum in my chest peaked and began to ease, the way a sound eased when you moved away from its source.
I breathed.
We were walking away when the door opened behind us.
Again, I felt it before I heard it. The shift in air quality, not wind or weather.
Something else. The hum in my chest spiked, sharp and sudden, and my magic surged upward before I could stop it, pressing against the inside of my sternum with the urgent insistence of something that had found what it recognized and wanted to answer.
I pressed my hand flat against my chest. Hard.
Nicco stopped walking.
He turned, but not toward me, toward the street behind us. His eyes moved with that practiced, unhurried efficiency, cataloging. Then he looked at me.
“Walk,” he said, his voice low and commanding. “Now. Left at the next corner.”
I did as I was told. He walked beside me, close enough that his arm brushed mine. I focused on the street ahead, the pressure of my palm against my sternum, and the very specific work of keeping my magic from answering whatever had just come out of that building.
We turned left. Then right. Then through a covered passage between two buildings, which led to a small courtyard I hadn't known was there.
Nicco stopped. Looked at the passage entrance behind us. Looked at the courtyard. Looked at me.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I breathed. The hum had settled, not gone, still there, but lower, the other note fading as the distance grew. “Yes.”
“Good.” His jaw was set in the way it was when he was managing something he found unacceptable, which was usually my reaction to something he said. “Don't go near that building again.”
My eyes widened at his tone. “I wasn't going near it on purpose! You’re the one who walked me past it!”
“I know.” He looked again at the passage entrance. Nothing was coming through. “Someone came out.” He shook his head slightly. “I wasn’t expecting that. It’s rare for the door to open.”
“I felt them,” I whispered as I looked back toward the entrance.
He looked at me then. “You felt them?”
“Yes.” I held his gaze. “Doesn’t everyone?”
“No.” He looked grim. “They're trained to sense power.”
I pressed my fingers against my sternum. Had they sensed me?
“I didn’t know—”
“That.” He said it quietly. His eyes dropped to my hand. “That thing you do.”
I went still.
“You've been doing it since I met you,” he said. “Every time something happens, or you’re scared, or you don't want your reaction to be seen, your hand goes there.” He looked at my face. “I've been counting.”
“Counting? How many times?” I asked, before I could decide whether I wanted to know.
“Enough.” A pause. “Enough that anyone watching you for more than a few days would know exactly where to look.”
The courtyard was silent. Overhead, the ice-light from the Glassfyr towers bathed everything in an unusual glow. Somewhere in the city, a Verei Kahn walked, unaware of how close she had come to something the institution eagerly sought.
“I didn't know I was doing it so openly,” I said.
“I know you didn't.” He looked at me steadily. “But stop.”
“If I don’t know I’m doing it, it won’t be easy to stop,” I bit back.
“I know. Stop it anyway.”
I looked at my hand, still resting against my chest. I lowered it deliberately and put it at my side. “It's not that simple.”
“Nothing is.” He turned away, scanning the courtyard exits. “But you need to stop, and you need to do it before someone else like me notices.”
Was there anyone else like him? Not the time for that thought at all.
I looked at the passage's entrance. At the city beyond it, enormous and indifferent. “They’re obviously not like you. They didn't follow us.”
“No.” He glanced at me sideways. “This time.”
We found Baxley and Larana at the meeting point without further incident. The courier job was set up, the payment secured, and the merchant satisfied that he was putting his documents in safe hands.
I sat through the meal that followed and contributed minimally to the conversation, in a way that didn't prompt questions. I felt it the whole time, the quality of being watched that had nothing to do with the people at the table.
Not from inside the inn. From outside. From the city itself. From whatever had come out of that building, moved through those streets, and might or might not have registered the spike of magic on a corner three blocks from the institution.
I thought about saying something.
I thought about all the reasons I wouldn't.
Nicco had never asked directly. I'd never answered directly. That was an arrangement we'd both reached without discussing it, probably the only kind either of us trusted. But he knew. I was almost certain he knew.
I looked up and caught him watching me. I held his gaze until he looked away.
“I need to sleep,” he said suddenly. He scratched his beard. “I also need to shave,” he added ruefully. “Baxley, you got your razor?”
He confirmed he did, and we watched them both leave.
“That was weird,” Larana muttered as she watched them disappear. She turned to me. “Was that weird?”
“I… I don’t know.”
She frowned. “It was weird.” She sighed, then looked at me. “You look… off. What is it?” She glanced back at the stairs. “Did something happen with you two?”
I shook my head. “You mean—”
She sighed loudly. “You two and your constant bickering, you need to just be friends.”
“Friends?”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine, acquaintances! But seriously, you need to stop this” —she waved her hand in the air— “thing you do.”
“I didn’t know we did a thing.”