She reached the crowd gathered in a wide square. She cut into a house that faced it. Up she wound, floor after floor until she hit the top. Here, Vivia found the perfect view. Here, she could linger in a shadow and watch the Nines below.
For Stix was right. These were the Nines. She knew that man in the center—she’d hired that man in the center. Garren Leeri, from Judgment Square. He’d slacked so much on the job, though, that she’d traded him off as soon as she could.
He looked awful. Skin and bones now. Black scars everywhere.
“Back off,” he squawked. “Give my sister space!”
The people backed off, giving Vivia a clear view of the girl just awakening. “Garren,” she mumbled, a surprised sound.
Then suddenly, she was a cyclone. She wriggled, she pummeled, she spun. Trying to rise, trying to fight her ropes. Until Garren eased a cleaver from a sheath at his waist.
Cam stilled, but she did not stay quiet. “You used me.” Her words bounced off the limestone, loud enough for everyone in the square to hear. “I trusted you, and you used me.”
“I only collected what I was owed, Cam, since you left us without paying your dues.” He wiggled the blade at her. “Can I cut you loose? Will you behave?”
Her lips pursed sideways. She nodded.
Garren sliced through the ropes, a surprisingly tender gesture. As soon as the final fiber snapped, Cam scrabbled away. “What are you?”
“I could ask you the same.” He laughed, and two other Nines laughed with him. “Boy, girl—have you made up your mind yet, Cam?”
She was having none of that. Her lips snarled up. “I saw you die, Garren.”
“Hye. And you saw your prince die too. But death—it isn’t a boundary for me anymore. It needn’t be for you either, Cam. Now give me your left hand. We have to finish what we started before you ran off.”
“No.” Cam tried to bolt. The bearded man grabbed her, thrust her back. “No!” she shrieked. “NO!”
Vivia stood. She was outnumbered, and she only had this blade to protect her since no water was near. It didn’t matter, though. This girl was threatened; Vivia would help.
At the same instant that Vivia pivoted to race back for the stairs, she caught sight of another figure. Cloaked in darkness, he waited atop the building opposite her. A wind eddied around him. His clothes flapped. Shadows twined.
Then he leaped into the square, and light washed over his face.
It was Merik.
It was Vivia’s brother.
* * *
Merik had found the enemy: fifteen people, with their eyes on Garren and Cam at the center of the square. The Nines, Merik now knew, and finding them had been so easy. He’d been a fish on the line, and the shadows had pulled him ever forward.
Through winding passages, past long stretches of floods, down unlit holes and dangling ladders, until at last, he was here. To Cam, bloodied and kneeling before the assassin from the Jana. Before her brother, Garren.
It made sense now—why Cam had been hiding in that alley, who had attacked her by Pin’s Keep, and why she’d continued to insist Vivia might not be behind the attack.
He would ask her about that later, get answers. Decide if he could forgive.
For now, though, Cam was in danger.
In a single bound, Merik dropped into the square. His winds coiled in for close combat. One man, turned. Merik snapped at his chest, felling him in a single swoop.
Two more men charged, cutlasses out.
Merik simply laughed at that—as if blades mattered to his winds. To his rage.
He flipped up both hands, funneling his power into a ball. With a flick of his wrists, every dust mote nearby flew at the men’s faces. At their eyes.
They screamed.
Merik spun deftly back around, winds spraying outward like an extension of his body. Most men were running now, including the one who’d dragged Cam into the square. But Merik didn’t let him go. In three long steps, he had caught up to the man and kicked him in the back of the knee. He hit the ground, a plume of dust rising that was quickly caught in Merik’s winds.
Merik flipped the man onto his back. Unintelligible words babbled from his throat. He wasn’t much older than Merik, simply bearded. Hungry too, if his hollow cheeks meant anything.
Merik straightened, lifting the man’s cutlass with both hands. Ready—hungry—for the retribution that lived within this steel. He would sever the neck, the arteries, the spine—
“STOP, ADMIRAL!”
The words lanced through Merik’s skull. He stilled, blade reared back. Winds crashing around him. The bearded man trembled, eyes screwed shut.
Merik turned and found Cam twenty paces away—a cleaver to her throat. Garren clutched her from behind.
Instantly, Merik’s body went cold. Instantly, his winds stilled.
“Let her go,” he tried to say, but his voice was a raw, intangible thing. Heat lightning when a full storm was required.
Garren understood. He smiled, his broken face stretching oddly. “Stay where you are, or the girl dies.”
Merik dropped the cutlass and lifted his hands defensively. He needed to move with the stream, to move with the breeze. If Garren got spooked, Merik didn’t doubt he would kill his own sister.
He’d certainly gotten close with the explosion on the Jana.
“Let her go,” Merik ordered, his voice louder. “It’s me you want dead.”
“True.” Garren’s smile widened. “But you have proved to be a hard man to kill.”
“I could say the same about you.”
The man laughed at that, a piercing sound that set Merik’s skin to crawling. “I know who you are, Prince Merik Nihar. But I wonder, do you know who she is?” The blade flicked. Blood blossomed.
Merik’s heart lurched, but he stayed where he was. His fury was fast fading beneath the blood that dripped down Cam’s neck. Move with the stream, the breeze.
“You were supposed to join the Nines, Cam.” Garren’s tone was silky as he examined her. “Take over after me and rebuild this city with the only vizer who cares about us. Instead, you ran off like a coward. And then, like a coward, you let me onto the prince’s ship—”
“It’s not like that!” Cam blurted.
“It’s exactly like that.” And with those final words, Garren snatched up her left hand and sliced off her pinkie.
Blood streaked out, a single dark line. She screamed. The finger hit the ground.
Merik was already there, ready to fling her aside before Garren could do more harm.
Garren laughed, stumbling back, before turning tail. He ran.
Good. Merik welcomed the chase. He took flight. Easy, easy—no rage now. Only cold, calculated death.
He landed two streets over, right before Garren, who had just rounded the corner. His face scarcely registered surprise before Merik’s hands were around his neck. He lifted. Garren’s feet dangled. Then he walked the man back, back until Garren hit a wall.
Fans of glowing mushroom flaked off. Still, the man laughed. “You cannot kill me,” he choked, clutching at Merik’s fingers. “I’m … like you, Prince.”
“No.” Merik sucked in air, and winds coursed to him.
“I am, I am!” Garren grinned. “We’re puppets now, you and I! We can come back from anything!”
“Are you sure about that?” came a new voice. One Merik knew, one he’d spent so many years hating. Yet now, as he allowed his head to turn, as he allowed his eyes to absorb someone other than Garren or Cam, he felt nothing but vicious relief.
For Vivia sprinted this way. Her eyes blazed, her face aflame with a familiar Nihar strength. Silver flashed. She lunged in close. Then, in a single move, Vivia decapitated Garren.
His head tipped, his head fell, and a half breath later, his body followed in a puff of ancient limestone dust.
“Come back from that,” Vivia snarled, before lifting her gaze to Merik. Before a new expression settled over her features. One he’d never
seen before. One that almost matched … regret.
“Merry,” she said at last, a breathy, almost chuckling sound, “you look awful.”
THIRTY
Safi had given up trying to still her tapping fingers, her jittering heels. Caden had given up telling her to stop.
After what had seemed like hours in the carriage, everyone was wound up. Even the Fareaster woman had taken to picking at the dirt beneath her fingernails, a furious movement that grew more animated, more impatient with each minute that passed.
Yet there was no accelerating the carriage. Once free of the crammed market, travelers to the arena filled every mud road through the marshes, every rickety bridge across the oxbows. Most people were hideously drunk—just as Admiral Kahina had described—and though Caden rarely peered beyond the curtain, there was no missing the sounds of revelry outside. Of petty brawls igniting, of slave wagers passing hands.
The landscape changed too. Firm earth shifted to uneven mud and shaky bridges. The ripe stink of a city softened into the sulfuric stink of a swamp. All the while the temperature within the carriage moved from bearable sunburned heat to unbearable choking humidity.
The only person who seemed unperturbed by it all was Zander, who even tried to make conversation. “I’ve heard the Fareastern continent is even larger than the Witchlands. Which nation are you from?”
This earned him a withering glare from the slaver and an apologetic shrug from Caden.
When at last the carriage driver hammered on the roof and shouted, “Almost there!,” no one was sorry to see the ride end.
The carriage lurched and jolted into an awkward descent. The outside din shrank to a stone-cuffed rumble, and any light that had slithered through the curtain’s edge now vanished entirely. They had moved underground.
“The slavers’ entrance,” explained the Fareaster, sneering at the knife still held at her throat. “It is beneath the arena. Many armed men will be waiting there.” She offered this less as a warning and more as a threat.
It prompted Caden to sit taller. “Zander,” he barked, “I want you to exit first. Deal with any soldiers waiting—”
“Please,” Vaness interrupted, authority dripping off her alongside the sweat. “Allow me.” She didn’t wait for a reply. The carriage was already clattering to a stop, and she was already reaching for the exit.
No one stopped her. By the time Safi was out of the carriage, all twelve arena guards had been shackled to the ground and gagged with iron.
The only people Vaness did not attack were the driver and the Fareaster, the former having dived for the glistening stones beneath the carriage and the latter still sitting on her bench, hissing profanities after them.
While the Hell-Bards gathered blades off the subdued guards, Safi examined the cavernous arena entrance with its pitted ceilings and spluttering torches. Water seeped up between the mismatched flagstones. As if the arena were very slowly sinking.
It probably was.
Two archways caught Safi’s attention. One seethed with shadows; the other seethed with sound. Every few breaths, roars and cheers rushed through. A living onslaught that set the stones to humming.
Whatever fight happened aboveground, it was a good one. And it meant the quiet tunnel was the one that led to the slave pens.
“Heretic,” Caden murmured, appearing beside her. He offered her a crude short sword. Heavy but serviceable. “Any guess where the crew might be?”
“There.” Safi pointed at the darker doorway.
A half-grin of approval from Caden, and after snagging a torch from its sconce beside the archway, he set off at a brisk jog into the bowels of the arena. Safi followed the commander, trying to reconcile her grip with the awkward blade, while Vaness hurried behind. The empress was weaponless, of course, though two new shackles rippled around her wrists like baby snakes. Lev and Zander trailed last, and though they glanced back to check for more guards, no one came.
Gods below, it felt good for Safi to move. Good to stretch her legs without Hell-Bards to goad her or Baedyeds to chase. Good to hold a sword again, even if it was meant for someone with hands twice the size of hers. None of that mattered.
Nor did it matter that every few steps, Safi’s boots splashed through puddles while water hit her head, icy and hard. She was moving.
Soon enough, all sounds from above had muted, replaced by murmuring, echoing conversations and the eternal slosh of a fortress half submerged. Here the entire floor was ankle-deep in thick, sulfuric water.
When the tunnels finally branched with a honeycomb of options, six guards appeared. Before surprise could register on their faces, Vaness had them locked against the damp walls. Narrow belts about their waists, iron gags across their mouths.
“Cartorrans?” Caden asked the nearest one, who dangled crookedly from a belt about three inches too high. His eyes shot to the central-most branch of passages—a look of such honest panic that it set Safi’s magic to warming.
“This way,” she called, already resuming the jog.
Lev cut in front. “Best let me lead. Just in case we encounter any witches.”
Fair point.
Fire flared ahead, and conversations paused at the approaching splashes. Then they were there: a low dungeon exactly like something from a nightmarish fairy tale. On and on it spanned, lit by primitive torches. Stone cells with faces of all shades, ages, and sizes pressed against the crude bars. Many wore collars similar to the one the Hell-Bards had forced on Vaness.
“Cartorrans?” Caden shouted, thrusting his own torch high.
The response was instant. Almost every person in sight thrust arms through the bars. “I’m Cartorran!” “No, I’m Cartorran!” “Cartorra!”
They were all very clearly not Cartorran, and though Safi hated the idea of leaving all these men and women enslaved to fight—to die—as sport for wagering pirates, she also wasn’t naïve enough to think they could all be helped.
Escape. That was what mattered.
“Here, sir!” called Lev from farther down the line, and sure enough, by the time Safi caught up, Caden was speaking to a man in a Cartorran green uniform. It sounded like he was asking something about the prince, where is the prince?, but it was almost impossible to distinguish words with the slaves bellowing, splashing water, furious at being ignored.
Escape, escape. Her own escape. That was all that mattered.
Yet when Safi glanced at the Empress of Marstok, she saw something quite different glittering in Vaness’s eyes.
“Majesty.” Caden beckoned the Empress to the bars. “This is our crew. Free them, please, so we can find our ship and get out of this cursed land.”
The empress did not move, and the slaves roared on. Water sprayed against her, against Safi. They were soaked, gowns hanging heavy. No longer mustard or forest green but simply saturated darkness.
“Your Majesty,” Safi tried, approaching.
The empress speared her with a glare. “I do not trust them. They will take us both to Henrick.”
“They won’t,” Safi argued. “They spoke the truth at the inn.”
“Because there was a fire to spur them.” Her eyes gleamed like the crocodiles’ outside. “I want another reassurance, Hell-Bard. Remove your chain, and let Safi read you again. If you refuse, then I free no one.”
Caden’s shoulders wilted, almost invisible were it not for the way his torch wavered.
“I’ll do it, sir.” Zander’s hands reached for the noose at his own neck.
“No.” The word lashed out simultaneously from Caden and Vaness.
“I’ll do it,” Caden finished, at the same moment that Vaness declared, “I want the commander’s word.”
Zander winced, but took the torch when Caden offered it. Then he and Lev stepped aside, with sadness in their eyes.
Sad, sad eyes. Safi didn’t need her witchery to know that truth.
Caden slopped forward, stopping mere paces from Vaness and Safi. Then he leaned his blade against hi
s leg and with an awkward fumble—as if he’d never done it before, as if he hadn’t just done it an hour ago—he unfastened the noose.
Vaness moved. Up snapped her arms. Out snapped the shackles. They whipped around Caden’s neck, while the blade at his leg coiled like a mangrove root. It towed him down. No one could move. No one could stop it. In half a breath, the Hell-Bard commander was bound to the ground.
Water rippled around him, and the slaves roared their approval.
Zander and Lev darted forward, but a palm from Vaness halted them both. “Stay where you are, or he dies.” She glided to Caden, as if in a ballroom, and stared down. “We sail to Azmir, Commander.”
“And … if I … refuse?” he huffed, a pained sound and with his face clenched. Clenched. Until Safi didn’t think his eyes—or lips—could compress any more tightly.
“I will leave you like this. It will kill you eventually, will it not? I have heard tales of a Hell-Bard’s doom. Like cleaving, but slow—and with your mind working the entire time. You have awareness, yet no control.”
“Please,” Lev begged. “Please don’t do this to him.”
Caden moaned. His fists balled at his sides, and though iron kept his wrists locked down, he hammered. And hammered.
This was only the beginning, though, for as Vaness knelt beside the Hell-Bard, waves shimmering outward, black began to crawl across Caden’s face.
At first Safi thought she hallucinated it, what with all the shadows around them. Then when Caden’s lips split with another groan, and black furled out from between his teeth, she knew it was all too real.
It was like the smoke from Admiral Kahina’s pipe. Except … this was magic. This was wrong. It set Safi’s skin, her witchery to shuddering. Her gut rebelled too, for this was torture. Plain and simple. Whatever that noose did, without it, the Hell-Bard was in agony.
“Stop.” Zander’s voice drummed out, echoing down the cells, cells that had gone utterly silent. Every slave, every sailor, every man, every woman ogled the Hell-Bard commander.