Blonde hair gleamed bright in the midday sun. My heart lifted with a force that near knocked me off my feet. Cara, alive...and a few horses behind, I spotted Jerik’s sinewy shoulders and gray-streaked braids. I shut my eyes, sending a round of fervent thanks to the gods.
The slumped curve of Cara’s back spoke of weariness, and her flashing smile was noticeably absent. A twinge of shame darkened my relief. Somebody had died, to fuel Ruslan’s spells. I’d find out who, and make an offering to Noshet’s spirit guardians, in their name—but that could wait. I ducked my head, preparing to fade back through the crowd.
Then froze, as a solution to my difficulties sprang full-blown into my head. All at once, I knew how to mark the mage’s departure, safely shadow their carriage, and take care of any opposition while I grabbed Kiran.
It wasn’t Jylla I needed. It was Cara. Cara, with her climbing skills, her deadly accuracy with a hunting bow, and her firsthand knowledge of Ruslan’s visit to the convoy that could draw Pello like a sandfly to a honeytrap.
Cara, who’d probably gut me as soon as look at me, after the way I’d left. To gain her help would take a miracle of Khalmet. Besides, I’d already put her in danger once—last thing I wanted was to drag her back into this mess. I tried to shove the idea straight out of my head.
It wouldn’t go.
You’d be the one to bear all the risk,
Jylla’s voice whispered in my head.
She’d be fine. You want to win this fool’s game of a rescue? Or are you gonna weasel out because you’re too fucking gutless to face Cara again?
Gods all damn it. I’d go, then, and talk to her. Assuming she let me get a word in before she threw me out on my ass. I had nothing to lose but my pride. Cara was honest and trustworthy as they came. No matter how furious she was, she’d not run her mouth about me to anyone else. I just had to figure out how to make her listen.
***
Evening found me lying flat in the shadows on the roof of the Silver Strike’s stables. It hadn’t been hard to find where Cara was staying in Kost. She always took a room at either the Brown Bear or the Silver Strike, saying they were the only inns in Kost that served a decent dark beer. Like many from Ninavel, I much preferred wine or spirits, but Cara’s family had emigrated from somewhere up north where beer was practically a religion.
The stable roof offered a perfect vantage point across the inn’s muddy inner courtyard to the windows of the guest rooms in the main building. Cara’s room was the twelfth one along, on the top floor. The room was dark; knowing Cara, she’d stay until late in the inn’s common room, drinking and talking, and return with a bed partner. She claimed a tumble in bed was the best way to mark a convoy job’s end, good or bad. A good journey called for a celebration, she said, while a bad one called for a distraction. No doubt she’d be looking for one hell of a distraction this time.
She was too wary of theft to allow a city lover to spend the night. I meant to wait for her to have her fun, and talk to her once her lover of the evening had left. That way maybe she’d be too tired to kick me out straight off, and in as good a mood as I could hope for.
I had no fear she’d close the shutters to block my view of her room door. Cara had always said loud and long how much she hated to shut out the sky. Best of all, the windows didn’t have any wards and neither did the roof. Most riverside inns left magical protection up to their customers rather than pay for the maintenance of exterior wards.
The only tricky part was staying awake. The stable roof felt like a feather bed compared to that Shaikar-cursed drain hole. I had to fall back on all the tricks I’d learned in my Tainted days to stave off the weariness that dragged at my eyelids. A Tainter learns fast and early how to keep alert on a long night’s work, or face not only the anger of your minder, but the practical jokes of your denmates.
Just when I thought I’d have to resort to stabbing my palm with my belt knife, Cara’s door opened, shedding a warm glow over the room. Cara and a man with the dark skin and brightly colored clothing of a Sulanian trader tumbled in, their hands already busy with each other’s shirt laces. Cara pulled away long enough to light a single candle and shut the door. Then she was kissing him again, deep and hungry, her shirt slipping down to expose the smooth muscles of her back and shoulders.
I averted my eyes, hissing in annoyance at the heat rising in my own flesh. Damn it, I didn’t need any distractions. Gods knew I’d had my share of idle fantasies about Cara over the years, but that’s all they’d been. Jylla’d taken plenty of other lovers during my summers in the mountains, and I’d enjoyed casual bedplay of my own, but Cara had made it plain from the first day I’d met her that she didn’t take outriders as bed partners.
Another glimpse of dark hands tracing tanned skin brought unwanted memories of Jylla cascading in. She’d been as energetic and cunning in bed as she’d been in everything else. Gods, the wild nights we’d spent together...I sank my teeth into my lip and fought the urge to bang my head against the roof in frustration. At least now I was wide awake.
Finally, Cara and her lover moved off to the bed, out of my line of sight. I dug my fingers into wood shingles and reined in my runaway imagination. After what seemed an eternity, Cara reappeared, thankfully dressed in her undertunic. She lit another candle, and the Sulanian strode into view, still lacing his shirt. One last kiss, and he was out the door. About gods-damned time.
I cat-footed my way over the roof and climbed the side wall of the main building’s second story. I paused above Cara’s room. If I knew Cara, there’d be no need to break in. She’d said plenty of times how she couldn’t sleep in a room with no fresh air. Sure enough, a rattling echoed from below, followed by the creak of wood. I gripped the roof’s edge and flipped off in a twisting arc that sent me straight through the open window.
Cara went for a knife before I even hit the floor. As I landed in a wary crouch, she advanced around the bed in nothing but her undertunic, fire in her eyes and a good seven inches of steel shining in one hand.
Shit. So much for the good mood. Time to talk fast.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
(Dev)
“C
ara, ease up! I just want to talk.” I dodged to put a spindly wooden chair between us, ready to snatch it up to block her knife hand.
“So you drop through my window in the dead of night like some kind of Varkevian deathdealer?” Cara slowed her advance, but the knife stayed raised and ready. “You thieving, lying little bastard! Whatever you’ve got to say, I don’t want to hear it. Get the fuck out.”
Yeah, this was going well. “You’ve every right to be angry. But please...” I showed my empty hands, and bowed my head. “
Please
, Cara. I’m begging you, hear me out. Then if you want, I’ll go, and never come back.”
“You think you can abandon your duty, charm-sting me, steal vital supplies, and then waltz in here wanting a chat? Fuck you, Dev. Give me one reason I shouldn’t kick your ass straight out that window.”
No mention of the worst of my sins, and she hadn’t realized she’d been felled by a mage’s touch, not a charm. Shit. I’d never thought Ruslan would bother to conceal what he sought. Her ignorance would make this twice as hard. I gathered my courage and plunged ahead.
“Because I came here to tell you the truth I couldn’t at the convoy.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why now, and not then?”
“I wanted to, then. You’ve no idea how badly. But the knowledge might’ve meant your death, and I couldn’t risk that.”
Cara’s knuckles whitened on the knife hilt. “Mother of maidens, do you mean to say those two blood mages who showed up were looking for
you?
” Fury sparked in her blue eyes. “We cursed Pello’s name over them, assumed they were after whatever contraband he carried. Most cursed you too, said you must’ve been involved somehow. I didn’t believe it. Now you tell me I was wrong?”
Two blood mages. I swallowed. Damn it, Kiran had told me they cast the biggest spells in pairs. I should’ve known Ruslan would bring a friend. I eyed the window, longingly. Far easier to dive back out than admit the truth of what I’d done. I ducked my head, and admitted, “They weren’t after Pello. But listen, I—”
“Gods all damn it, Dev!
Blood mages!
They took Steffol and Joreal. Touched them on the shoulder, and they followed along meek as kittens. We never saw them again, but Jerik found the spot where the mages must’ve cast a spell. The rocks were black with blood for a hundred yards, he said. What did you do, to bring that on us?”
I shut my eyes. Steffol I knew; he’d handled wagons for Goranant House for years. Joreal I didn’t. The stab of guilt wasn’t any less.
“I fucked up. Badly.” I sucked down a ragged breath, and then I laid it all out for her, all the way from the moment I’d taken the job.
Cara’s expression alternated between stunned and furious as I spoke. “Khalmet’s bloodsoaked bony hand,” she said, when at last I finished. “You brought a gods-damned blood mage along as your apprentice? All to sneak him past the Alathians so you could sell him out to a second mage who means to start a war? That’s not a fuck-up, it’s a catastrophe. How many good men are dead now, because you wanted some extra coin?”
“I told you, I didn’t know—!” I choked back the rest of my denial. If I let Cara push me into an argument, I’d never keep a cool head. And in the end, she wasn’t far wrong. If I’d refused the job, Steffol, Joreal, Harken, and all those killed in Ruslan’s avalanche would yet live.
“Nothing can make up for the dead,” I said, tightly. “But maybe I can stop more from dying. And Kiran...I wanted him to pay for killing Harken, no matter that he did it to save the convoy. But oh gods, the way Simon looked at him, like...” I struggled to find words to describe the mixture of lust and hunger and unholy delight I’d seen in the mage’s face, and failed. “Kiran might be a blood mage, but he doesn’t deserve whatever Simon intends.”
Cara ran a finger along the blade of her knife, and gave me a sour look. “Funny how you didn’t have this little attack of conscience until after you’d been paid.”
“Yeah, I should’ve thought earlier. But better late than never, right? Sethan...” My throat closed and I had to force out the words. “Sethan would never forgive me if I walked away now.”
Cara’s glare could have pierced granite. “Don’t pull that shit with me. Now you care what Sethan would’ve wanted? You sure as hell didn’t when you ditched the convoy. Or took the job in the first place, for that matter.”
“I’ve
always
cared what Sethan wanted,” I snapped. “I didn’t take the job out of greed. I needed that money for Sethan’s sake.”
A skeptical scowl darkened Cara’s face. “Dead men don’t need money.”
I braced my back against the wall, as if that might give me strength. I’d known when I’d decided to come that I’d have to tell her everything. I’d kept my vow of silence to Sethan all these years, but surely he’d understand if I broke it now.
“Sethan’s dead, but his daughter’s not.”
“Sethan’s
daughter
?” She looked at me like I’d claimed Sethan could jump over the Kanyalin Spire.
I knew why she was so surprised. Sethan had been born and raised in Piadrol, the stronghold of the Dalradian church, down south near the Sulanian border. Dalradians had lots of crazy ideas, but maybe the craziest was their obsession over the purity of bloodlines. Any half-caste kid was considered an offense against their god, and the Dalradian parent damned, all because their priests were so concerned not to pollute the blood of the so-called sacred ancestors. Sethan wasn’t so crazy as most Dalradians, and gods knew he’d defied his family to come to Ninavel, but that was one law he’d never meant to break.
Cara’s scowl returned, fiercer than ever. “Sethan told me he ran from Piadrol before the priests could betrothe him. If you expect me to believe he lied—”
“No! He wasn’t married, just gullible. Sethan was a nice guy, but sometimes he was too nice. He had that soft spot for hard luck cases...”
“Like you,” Cara said, darkly.
“Yeah. Well, thirteen years ago he met a girl in Acaltar district, and she played him for all she was worth. Batted her eyes at him, acted all sweet and helpless, got him to fall in love with her, and then sabotaged her fertility charms. Once she got herself with child, the claws really came out. She threatened to send word to the priests down in Piadrol if he didn’t pay her a regular share of his earnings.”
“Oh, hell.” Cara lowered the knife, at last. “Sethan rolled right over for her, didn’t he?” She shook her head. “Why didn’t he tell anyone?”
“Same reason he rolled over. He didn’t want any chance of word getting back to Piadrol. He’d be cast out, exiled for life, and no Dalradian would ever even speak his name. He loved his sisters too much, couldn’t bear the thought of never hearing from them again. And later, after Melly was born...she was Tainted, and not lightly. You know how the Dalradians feel about that.” One of the teachings Sethan had disagreed with was the Dalradian conviction that Ninavel was the haunt of devils, and the Taint a demon’s mark. “If the priests found out Sethan’s bastard child was strongly Tainted, they wouldn’t have just cast out Sethan. They’d have sent men to kill both Sethan and Melly.”
Cara passed a hand over her eyes. “Fine, he was paying this girl money. How long?”
“About three years,” I said. “Then the girl got a little too ambitious with some other scheme and chose the wrong mark, or maybe crossed a ganglord. Either way, she ended up dead. So there was Sethan, left with a three-year-old kid he didn’t dare acknowledge. And you know Sethan, he never could save a single kenet. That was the year Orvan died, and Sethan had already given away most of that season’s pay to Orvan’s widow. He didn’t have anything left to pay someone to care for Melly in secret.”
A hint of curiosity had softened the grim set to Cara’s mouth. “What did he do?”
I gave a short laugh. “Something spectacularly stupid. Which is where I come in. Look, that stuff I told you back on my first convoy job, about how my parents died of sun sickness in the desert and Sethan took me in...none of it was true. I never knew my parents. Before I was an outrider, I was a Taint thief.”