Jana would talk while she gazed upon them. Over and over, she’d recite one verse from “Eridysi’s Lament,” that song drunken sailors or the broken-hearted liked to sing. Yet only in death, could they understand life. And only in life, will they change the world. Then Jana would recite it again. And again, until anyone who was near her was driven just as mad as she.
For three breaths Vivia eyed those flowers, though her mind was lost in the past. In the way her mother would stare and croon. Infrequently at first, then once a week. Then once a day …
Then she was gone forever.
Vivia might be like her mother in some ways, but she was not that. She was stronger than Jana. She could fight this darkness inside her.
At that thought, Viva sprang off the bench and charged for the archway. There was nothing of value in this garden other than the trapdoor. Only madness and shadows lived here. Only memories and lament.
TWELVE
The Skulks.
It was the filthiest, most crowded part of the capital. Of all Nubrevna, even.
“Home,” Cam said, as she led Merik through. It was the first thing she’d said since leaving Kullen’s tenement, and she uttered it with such weight—as if it took all her strength to simply peel that word from her tongue—that Merik couldn’t summon a decent response. Even in the dying Nihar lands to the south, there’d been space. There’d been food.
It didn’t help that thunder rolled overhead or raindrops slung down every few minutes, weak but threatening all the same. Worse, the quake had left its mark. Collapsed gutters, crumpled tents, and white-rimmed terror in people’s eyes. It could have been worse, though—Merik had heard stories of tremors that toppled entire buildings.
Cam moved smoothly through it all, her long legs adept at hopping puddles and looping around the inebriated, while Merik followed as best he could. Two lines from the old nursery rhyme kept trilling in the back of his mind as they walked. Fool brother Filip led blind brother Daret, deep into the black cave.
What Merik couldn’t figure out, though, was if he was fool brother Filip or blind brother Daret.
Then he forgot all about it, for Cam was abruptly sidling left. In seconds, she’d disappeared down a shadowy alley, leaving Merik to scramble after. The stormy evening light vanished; his vision daubed with shadows.
“Here,” Cam hissed, and she yanked him into a narrow strip of space between two buildings. There they stood, Merik gaping at Cam, and Cam with her scarred left hand clamped to her mouth, as if to muffle her breaths.
When, after a few moments, no one new appeared in the alley, her posture sagged. Her hand fell. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “Thought someone saw us.” Then she peeked her head around the edge of their hideout. Her posture drooped all the more.
It was, Merik thought, nothing like her easy twisting and hiding from earlier that day. And when he asked, “Who followed?” and she answered, “Soldiers,” he wasn’t entirely sure he believed her.
He didn’t press the point. “Can we continue? The city needs us.” To stop Vivia, he wanted to say. To win more food, to win more trade. He held his silence, though, for Cam didn’t need to be scolded. Her face was already flushed with shame.
“Course, sir. Sorry, sir.” She resumed her trek to Pin’s Keep, though there was no missing how often she tugged at her hood or flinched whenever someone cut through their path.
Soon enough, though, Merik and Cam rounded a cluster of wooden lean-tos and the famous Pin’s Keep loomed before them. An ancient tower, it was older than Old Town. Older than the city’s walls, and perhaps even older than the Water-Bridges of Stefin-Eckart. Merik knew by the stone from which it was hewn. A granite turned orange beneath the hearth-fire glow of sunset.
When Nubrevna had first been settled by men from the north, they’d carried black granite from their homeland, ready to beat this new land to their will. But over time, Nubrevna had become its own nation. Its own people, and they had in turn used the endless limestone that the local land had to offer.
Wooden planks and tumbled tents slouched against the tower’s base, and the hacking sounds of sickness, the screech of crying babes carried over the clamor of the evening. Everything in the Skulks was louder than Merik remembered. Smellier too, and much more crowded. A line of people, some limping and limbless, some coughing and feeble, some barely out of swaddling, were strung out from the low archway that led into the tower.
Merik cursed. “Can we push in front of everyone, boy?”
Cam tossed him a knowing side-eye from the depths of her hood. “Find the entrance down below, sir. This way!” Just like that, the girl marched past the entire queue, then back behind the tower, and finally through a rusty gate. Here, the fat tower slanted against the matching granite of the city wall.
Two steps through the gate, and the jagged cobbles of the alley dropped sharply, as if there had once been stairs.
“Wait over there.” Cam pointed to a stretch of shadow, where the descending sun no longer reached. “I’ll get the door open, and then you can slip inside when no one’s lookin’.”
Merik hesitated. He didn’t want Cam inside—he’d only wanted her help getting this far, and then he’d intended to take the lead—yet the girl was already traipsing toward the door and lifting her hand to knock.
So even though a voice like Safi’s slithered down Merik’s neck, I have a feeling I’ll never see you again, he did as Cam had ordered and huddled into the farthest corner.
As he stowed deeper into the shadows, the sunset’s blaze hit the tower at just the correct angle to illuminate letters etched above the back doorway. First came a P, followed by a gap where rain, time, and bird crap had smoothed away letters. Then came IN’S KEEP.
Which answered a question Merik had held since boyhood: why the shelter was called Pin’s Keep. Below the name, in smaller letters, he could just make out DARKNESS IS NOT ALWAYS FOE, FIND THE ENTRANCE DOWN BELOW.
So that was what Cam had been echoing.
She rapped once at the low door, and in seconds it swooped wide. Heat and steam billowed out. “Who’s there? We have a line at the front you, know … Cam!” the woman on the other side shrieked. Then she yanked the girl inside, so fast Cam’s loose coat flapped behind her like moth wings. “Varrmin! You’ll never believe who the Hagfishes’ve dragged in!”
“No I won’t,” came the muffled reply.
“Camilla Leeri!”
The door began to close. Merik almost tripped over his own feet diving for it. He slid through right before it clicked shut. And only once he was inside, standing in a poorly lit, madly crowded kitchen, did it occur to him that the woman had said Camilla.
So not Cam—a name that Merik had never heard before—but rather Camilla. A solid Nubrevnan woman’s name, if he’d ever heard one.
Well, that answered another question he’d been pondering.
After checking on his hood, Merik set off through the kitchen of Pin’s Keep. A few workers glared his way, but otherwise no one paid him any heed.
He passed four people with Judgment Square tattoos below their eyes, and his chest warmed. His breath gusted. The assassin Garren had been sold here; this was the heart of Merik’s sister’s plans—he could feel it.
When at last Merik escaped the kitchen, a narrow entryway spanned before him. Low-beamed ceilings of dark wood brought to mind the belly of a ship, but instead of waves crashing outside, the waves crashed within.
Pin’s Keep lived, it breathed, with crowds streaming into three different doorways. One group moved to a bright room mere paces away. A sickroom—there was no missing the workers in healer robes. Another group moved left, into a darker, quieter space, and the final current drove straight ahead toward the hum of laughter and voices.
Nothing distinct could be heard above these rough seas—no conversations, no individuals, no thoughts. The chaos of Pin’s Keep filled every space inside Merik’s skull.
His muscles relaxed. Some of the ever-present rage in his gut unwou
nd—replaced by something softer. Something older. Something … sad.
Twice a week Queen Jana had come here, and twice a week Merik and Vivia had dutifully followed. Until, of course, the day that Merik’s father had learned Merik’s magic wasn’t as strong as Vivia’s. Until, of course, the day that Serafin had sent Merik to live with his outcast aunt in the south.
Merik’s eyes shuttered. He wasn’t here for himself. He was here for the wronged, for the wicked.
“Sir?” Cam’s gentle grip settled onto his arm. At once recognizable and welcome. An anchor in the storm.
“I’m fine.” Merik fidgeted with his sleeves. “I’m looking for an office or a private space, where records might be kept. Any ideas?”
“Hye.” She tried for a grin, but it was tight. Furtive even.
Merik could guess why. Camilla. She must be worried that he’d overheard, so he made sure to say, with all the gruffness he could muster, “Which way, boy? No time to waste.”
Her smile widened into something real. “Through the main room.” She grabbed hold of Merik’s cloak and towed him along as roughly as one of the mule-pulled boats in the canal.
With each step toward the tower’s main space, the sensation of music grew louder. First a beat in his soles. Then a vibration spreading into his gut, his chest. Until at last he was through the door, and the song and the voices tumbled over him.
Merik and Cam were in a great hall, poorly lit yet boiling over with the stink of bodies spiced with the scent of rosemary. Of sheep’s broth.
Merik’s mouth watered. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten a hot meal. It had to have been on the Jana—that much was certain. His stomach grumbled and spun.
Cam pointed to a spiral staircase in the farthest corner. “Used to be a closet at the top of those stairs, sir, but now it’s an office.”
Perfect. “Get some food,” Merik ordered. “I’ll return soon.”
“I’m comin’ with you.” She tried to follow Merik as he twisted away, but he pinned her beneath his hardest, coldest stare.
“No, boy, you absolutely are not coming with me. I work alone.”
“And then you get caught every time—”
“Stay. Here.” Merik dipped into the crowds before she could follow. Once to the stairs, he peeled himself from the crowds and hopped up two steps. He paused here, to check on Cam. But the girl was fine, having slipped into the line for stew. Though she did keep glancing Merik’s way, fretting with her hood.
With a long, shallow inhale, Merik curled his fingers. Drew in his power—just as Kullen had taught him to do more than ten years ago, two boys playing on a beach and trying to understand their magics.
Then he exhaled, sending a hot tendril curling up the stairs, into whatever room waited overhead.
His winds met no one. The room was empty.
So after a final glance to check on Cam, Merik hugged his cloak close and ascended.
* * *
An office and a bedroom. That was what Merik found above the dining hall of Pin’s Keep. The attic between room and roof had been repurposed into a cramped living space.
When, though, was the question. After Jana’s death, the running of Pin’s Keep had fallen to Serafin, who had in turn passed it off to servants. The first Merik had heard of Vivia taking over had been when he’d moved back to Lovats three years ago. Yet this space was so unmistakably hers.
A couch sagged beneath an open window. The back, despite its moth-eaten corners, was covered in a neatly folded quilt embroidered with the Nihar family’s sea fox standard. A matching curtain dangled from one corner of the window, suggesting that the poorly installed shutters did little to block the drafts.
Merik couldn’t tear his eyes away from the curtains. They conjured the memory of another window, another space, just like this one but tucked in a forgotten wing of the palace.
Vivia had found it. Decorated it. And for a time, she’d allowed Merik to enjoy it with her. My fox’s den, she’d called it, and he’d played with toy soldiers while she’d read book after book … after book.
Then their mother had died, and after setting the mourning wreaths aflame, tossing them off the water-bridges, and marching somberly back to the palace, Vivia had promptly locked herself in her fox’s den.
Merik had never been allowed in again.
A moth flapped in on the storm’s wet breeze, catching Merik’s eye. Hooking him back into the present. It fluttered to the brightest corner in the room, where planks served double duty as wall support and shelving.
Merik crept over. He was careful to keep his pace slow, his gaze steady as he examined each spine. Move with the wind, Master Huntsman Yoris had taught Merik. Move with the stream. Too fast, Prince, and your prey will sense you long before you reach ’em.
Yoris had managed the Nihar men at arms, and Merik—and Kullen too—had spent countless hours tracking the lean soldier. Mimicking everything he did.
Merik mimicked him now, moving slowly. Carefully. Resisting an urge for speed. Until finally, he found a useful title on the highest shelf. Judgment Square Sales, Year 19, it read, and a smile built at the edge of Merik’s lips. His smile grew when he found Garren’s name inside.
Acquired Y19D173 from Judgment Square. Traded to Serrit Linday for farm labor, in exchange for food.
“Traded,” Merik mouthed. “To Serrit Linday.” He blinked. Read the name a second time. But no—it definitely still said Serrit Linday.
Which was not what Merik had expected to find. While he certainly hadn’t anticipated finding a note that declared, Sent to Nihar Cove to kill brother, he had expected something to connect Garren to the attack on the Jana.
Instead, he’d found a completely new link in the chain. Hissing an oath, Merik snapped the book shut. Cam’s words rang his ears. What if it wasn’t your sister who tried to kill you?
But it was her. It had to be, for she was the only culprit that made any sense. Not to mention, the youngest Linday—a noble prick if ever there was one—had been Vivia’s friend in childhood. This might be another link, but the chain still led back to Vivia.
By the time Merik had returned the book to its shelf, the moth had trapped itself in a Firewitched lantern. It was dead in seconds, and the stench of smoke briefly drowned out the sharp lemon.
For half a breath, Merik stared at the flame, burning brighter. At the smoke coiling off it from the moth. Then he forced his gaze to Vivia’s desk. It was a table, really. No drawers to hide important messages in, no lockboxes beneath. All the same, Merik shuffled quickly through the stacks of papers. Checked between, behind, below.
Six stacks he flicked through, but there was nothing of interest. Just endless inventories and accounts in a tiny, slanted scrawl that was so neat it almost looked printed.
His eyes caught on a different stack, on the scribbled calculations and tallies and notes. Legible but so sharply slanted the numbers were almost horizontal.
And all of them crossed through. Scratched through with an angry pencil. The number of incoming people (by day) versus the amount of incoming food (by day, and with the palace’s contribution subtracted), all underscored by the amount of coins being spent to pay for everything.
The numbers didn’t add up. Not even close. The hungry and the homeless far outweighed the food and the funds coming in. Noden’s breath, what a huge number it was. Sixteen new people came each day hoping for beds, and forty-four more people came looking for food.
If that was how many people made it to Pin’s Keep for shelter, for meals, for healing, then how many didn’t? Merik knew his homeland was in tatters—it had been for twenty years, and things had only sunk deeper into the hell-waters recently. But these numbers …
They suggested a Nubrevna far worse than Merik had realized.
With a steeling sigh, he moved onward to the final stack on the desk. A large paper with creases down the center rested on top of it.
A map of the Cisterns, the vast network of tunnels below the c
ity that carried water and sewage throughout. Merik leaned in, excited, for there was a spot on the map with a fat X atop it—as well as six times of day scribbled in the corner, one of which was circled. A meeting location and time, perhaps?
Merik eased the map from the stack and folded it along the already-creased lines. He was just tucking it into his belt when a chill settled over him. Ice and power and a voice saying, “Put it back, please.”
Oh, Noden hang him. Merik knew that voice.
Stacia Sotar had arrived.
Merik swiveled his head ever so slightly, the hood blocking his face. All he needed was to get to the open window. A single jump, and he’d be free.
Or so he thought, until water surged up his leg. It snaked and coiled and constricted, freezing into a shackle of ice—because, of course, how could he forget? Stix was a full-blighted Waterwitch. It left Merik with only one choice: he gave in to the darkness.
He became the Fury.
His winds boomed out. The ice fractured. Merik yanked at his leg, ready to fly.
The ice melted. It steamed upward, scalding and searing into his ruined face.
Merik couldn’t help it. He roared his pain before diving over the desk and dropping to the other side.
Ice shot above in a spray that beat the wall, sliced open Merik’s scalp. His hood had fallen. Yet he was already moving. Crawling on all fours toward the window. He sensed Stix drawing in more magic. Easily, as if this fight had only just begun.
She slammed down her foot, and at once the water in the room turned to fog. Merik couldn’t see a thing.
With a gust of weak winds, he puffed a path to the window. Mist coiled away. Merik pushed upright and ran.
Yet as he feared might happen, Stix appeared in his path. He spun right, his winds punching up to cloud her in her own fog. Before he could twirl past, her hand lashed out and grabbed his wrist.
Ice ripped across his forearm, locking her to him.
Their eyes met, hers dark as Noden’s Hells—and widening. Thinning, just as her lips were parting.