He hated that fact more than anything else, but there it was: he could not face that monster alone. He could not fight that dark magic, could not stop that wrongness alone. Yet his city, his people … They needed Merik to do something.
So what was left, then, beyond staying the current course? Only with an entire contingent of trained witches and soldiers could Merik possibly hope to face that shadow man. To gain an army such as that, he would need to gain the throne—or at least to keep Vivia off of it.
It was sunrise by the time Merik and Cam made it into Old Town. The first beams of pink morning light glittered on puddles left from the night’s storm. Water splashed up from Cam’s steps, and Merik realized, his earlier shame doubling, that Cam was barefoot. She had been for weeks, and not once had she complained.
He’d noticed, of course, but there’d been so many other things to worry over. Not an excuse. Frowning, he fidgeted with his hood before ducking into the tenement. The halls were more crowded now, people off the streets seeking shelter for the night, and as he knew she would, always, always, Cam scampered just behind.
Upon reaching Kullen’s low door, Merik kicked all thoughts aside and focused on tapping out the lock-spell. His knuckles hurt more than he cared to consider, and his fingers were pruned from all that time in the canal.
“Oh, sir!” Cam scooted in close. “You’re bleeding again.”
“Hye.” Merik sighed. So tired. Stix’s ice had shredded his right forearm, and who knew what injuries the escape from shadow man had opened up? He felt nothing, though. It was all old blood.
“I have an Earthwitch healer salve, sir. I got it at Pin’s Keep.”
Merik swiveled wearily toward the girl, with words of gratitude rising to his lips.
Cam misread him. Her mismatched hands shot up. “I didn’t steal it, sir! My friends at Pin’s Keep gave it to me!”
“Oh … I … thank you,” he said at last, and he meant it. Though he hated that her first reaction was defensive—had he truly scolded her so much over the last two weeks that this was her first reaction?
After shoving into Kullen’s apartment and hissing for the lanterns to ignite, Merik shuffled to the sagging table. The bread from yesterday had soaked up the water, and though by no means soft, now it was at least edible.
He bit off a chunk before removing the wet map from his belt and smoothing it across the table. Then he forced himself to say, “I’m sorry if I worried you, Cam. As you can see, I’m fine.”
“You’re alive,” she accepted grudgingly, “but I wouldn’t say you’re fine. Water?” Her shadow stretched over the map, and a clay cup appeared before Merik.
“Thank you.” He took it, only to glimpse Cam’s wrist, puffy with fresh bruises. A cut stretched down her inner forearm. “What happened?”
“S’nothing, sir.” She sidled away, and before Merik could follow, her shadow returned. This time, with a ceramic jar. “The salve, sir. For your face … and everywhere else too.”
“You first.” He pushed to his feet.
She thrust out her jaw. “I said it’s nothing, sir. Just got cornered by the wrong sort near Pin’s Keep. You, meanwhile, were only Noden knows where getting your face pummeled by only Noden knows who, so that you could then leap into a canal and almost drown. I reckon if anyone’s owed a story here, it’s me.”
Merik hesitated, his fists tightening. Knuckles cracking. “Who cornered you?”
“You first,” she countered.
Merik made the mistake of meeting Cam’s eyes, where there was no missing the sharp stubbornness that burned within—one he knew well from a different friend. A different lifetime.
Merik sighed and plunked himself into his chair. “Sit,” he ordered. Cam sat. Merik downed the water she’d brought in two gulps and finally said, “What happened, Cam, was that I got caught because I’m a blighted fool. But Stix … that is to say, First Mate Sotar let me go once she realized I was the Fury.”
Cam shivered and hugged her arms to her chest. The bruises were hidden in that position. “But you’re not really the Fury, sir. If anything, you’re a ghost who should be dead a hundred times over.”
“The Hagfishes can have me,” Merik murmured, staring into the empty cup, “if they’ll release Kullen or Safiya or … any number of souls better than me.”
“You might feel that way,” Cam murmured, “but no one else does.”
Merik knocked at the table, at the map—anything to change the subject. “I found this on my sister’s desk at Pin’s Keep.”
“The Cisterns.” Cam’s tone was matter-of-fact, and if she noticed Merik’s discomfort, there was no sign of it. Instead, she leaned over to tap the X. “What’s this, though?”
“I was hoping you might know. Didn’t you say you once used the Cisterns to travel the city?”
“Hye.” Her face scrunched up, lips puckering to one side. “I dunno that place precisely, but I know vaguely where it is. This here”—she pointed to a wide tunnel that ran half the length of the map—“runs below White Street. We call it Shite Street ’cos it’s where all the city’s sewage collects.”
“And these times?” Merik circled his finger around the list.
Instantly flags of scarlet raced up Cam’s cheeks, splotching across the paler marks. “I know my numbers, sir, but I can’t read them.”
“Ah.” Merik was struck by an embarrassed blush of his own. Of course most of his crew couldn’t read. He’d forgotten it was a luxury he’d earned by simply being born into the right family.
“Well, there are six times listed,” he said, “starting at half past the tenth chime and moving up in increments of half an hour.”
“Oh hye, sir.” A relieved smile. “That must be when the floods rush through. The tunnels bring water down from the river, see? Most of it goes into the city for plumbing and all that, but some goes down to Shite Street. It rushes through, picks up the sewage, and then flushes it back out again.
“It’s cleaned in a big reservoir below the Southern Wharf, and then dumped back into the river south of the city. The floods run often on Shite Street, as you might guess, which is another reason people avoid it. But maybe,” she said, drawling out the word, “there’s a meeting going on. It happens all the time in other tunnels. The gangs are always gatherin’ or fightin’ or tradin’ in any passages that the Royal Forces never enter.”
“So my sister must be meeting someone at half past twelve.” Merik smiled, if tiredly. “Well done, boy.”
A visible gulp slid down Cam’s long throat. She hastily ripped off another chunk of bread. “Breakfast?”
“Hmmm.” Merik accepted a piece, before saying, “Now it’s your turn, Cam. Tell me what happened.
“S’just one of the Skulks gangs.” She chomped on the bread. Crumbs stuck to her lips, and through a full mouth she added, “I didn’t know they’d expanded their territory, and I walked where I shouldn’t’ve been walking. So, I went back to Pin’s Keep, and they patched me up. Gave me that salve to use.”
Merik tried to nod calmly—tried to hide the sudden fire now chasing through his veins. “What gang was it, Cam?”
“One you wouldn’t know.” More bread, more chewing, more stubborn resistance.
So Merik stopped pressing. For now. “They know you well at Pin’s Keep?”
“Sure.” She bounced a shoulder. “I used to visit before I enlisted, sir. When the streets or the Cisterns got too dangerous to sleep in … Well, Pin’s Keep is where I always ended up.”
At those words, the Cisterns got too dangerous to sleep in, the heat in Merik’s blood pumped hotter. “You … slept in the Cisterns?”
Cam shrugged helplessly. “Hye, sir. It’s shelter, ain’t it? And you can live down there once you know the flood cycles.”
“How many people live there?”
Hesitantly, as if realizing Merik wasn’t going to bring up the gang again, Cam relaxed. Her posture regained its usual slouch while she tore into more bread. “Thousands, m
aybe?”
“Everyone knows this, don’t they? I’m the one fool who doesn’t.” Merik folded his arms over his chest, leaning back. The wood creaked a protest. “Noden’s breath,” he said to the ceiling. “I know nothing about this city.”
“You didn’t grow up here, sir. I did.”
So did Vivia. She’d grown up with the sailors and the soldiers. With the High Council and King Serafin. It gave her an advantage. One of many.
As a boy, Merik had thought he was the lucky one—living wild on the Nihar estate with Kullen at his side. Hunting and fishing and traipsing through forests half dead. While that had earned him loyalty and love in the south, here in Lovats, Merik was no one.
He could change that, though. He would make his amends. Be what the people needed him to be.
With a renewed sense of strength, Merik leaned over the map. “Can you get me to Shite Street, boy?”
“For this meeting, sir? Absolutely. But only so long as I can stay with you—because you know,” she lifted her voice before Merik could argue, “that if I’d been allowed to join you at Pin’s Keep, I could’ve whistled a warning before that first mate ever got upstairs.”
“Then you would have been the one facing her Waterwitchery.”
“A Waterwitch?” Cam’s eyes bulged. “A full Waterwitch—not just a Tidewitch…” She trailed off as a yawn took hold. With her jaw stretched long and eyes squinting shut, she looked just like a sleepy puppy.
Merik’s anger returned in an instant. He motioned stiffly to the bed. “Sleep, Cam.” The command came out gruffer than he intended. “We’ll brave Shite Street once the sun’s a bit higher.”
Cam’s lips parted. She clearly wanted to obey—to sleep—but her blighted loyalty wouldn’t let her abandon him so easily. “What about you, sir?” she asked, right on cue.
“I’ll sleep too. Eventually.”
Now came a cautious smile, and Merik tried not to smile back. Cam had that effect, though. A world of darkness, but she could still make a room glow.
In moments, the girl had curled onto the bed and was fast asleep. Merik waited until her chest swelled and sank with slumber before rising, quietly as he could, and tiptoeing for the door. He had two tasks to accomplish before he was allowed to sleep.
First, Merik had a pair of boots to find, though he had no idea where he might do so at this hour.
And second—the task that really mattered, the one that sent Merik hopping two steps at a time down the tenement stairs—he had a gang to find. One that lurked near Pin’s Keep. One that thought preying on the weak was an acceptable way to live.
Why do you hold a razor in one hand?
“So men remember,” Merik murmured as he stepped into the wet morning, “that I am as sharp as any edge.”
And why do you hold broken glass in the other?
“So men remember that I am always watching.” With that final utterance, Merik yanked his hood low and set off for the Skulks.
SEVENTEEN
The Pirate Republic of Saldonica was unlike anything Safi had ever seen. Oh, she’d heard stories of the vast city built into ancient ruins, with its factions constantly at war, their territories shifting and morphing. And she’d heard tell of the famed slave arena, where warriors and witches battled for coin—and where the rivalry between Baedyeds and Red Sails was deemed moot in favor of violence and wagers.
Safi had also heard how a person of any color or background or nation could not only exist in Saldonica but also could be bought or sold or traded. Then there were the legends of crocodiles lurking in the brackish waterways. Of sea foxes bigger than boats in the bay that would tow down men and ships alike.
Yet Safi had always thought those tales nothing more than bedtime stories for an unruly six-year-old who didn’t want to go to sleep yet, Habim, and couldn’t he just tell her one more story about the pirates?
Except it was real. All of it.
Well, maybe not the sea foxes. Safi knew—firsthand—that those creatures existed, but she had yet to see the Saldonican Bay, so she couldn’t confirm if they resided there.
An hour of travel through the steamy foliage had spit the Hell-Bards, Safi, and Vaness onto a second road. Churned up and grooved down the center from hooves and wagons, it was at present packed with hooves and wagons ready to churn it up all the more. Everyone trundled northeast, and only three people gave Safi or Vaness a second look. Actual help or any real interest, though, the people seemed unwilling to spare.
Safi couldn’t blame them. She wanted to blame them, but the truth was that she understood why others might keep their eyes on their own business. Zander alone, with his massive size, would have been enough to send a person running. Lev and Caden only added to the image of People Best Left Alone.
Besides, not everyone was selfless like Merik Nihar. Not everyone was a crazy Windwitch who would fly into fights, heedless of his own safety—or his own buttons.
Before long, the trees opened up to reveal a bridge. Here, the riverbank was scarcely higher than the lazy brown waters running beside it, and one good rain would submerge the wide bridge.
Crocodiles seemed to realize this, for the beasts lumbered and lounged on either side of the warped planks. Gods below, it was a lot of teeth. Caden didn’t need to prod Safi to walk a bit faster.
At last, as the ninth chimes clinked on the breeze, the Hell-Bards led Safi and Vaness to a wide gate in an ancient, crooked wall. Dangling overtop was a massive standard, and this close, there was no missing the serpent looped around the Marstoki crescent moon.
Traffic bottlenecked, more people moving into the Pirate Republic than shoved out. Until at last, Safi was inside—and found the Baedyed claim of Saldonica was nice. Shockingly so. Safi had imagined a slum of lawlessness and desperation, but instead there were roads and rainwater chutes, Firewitched streetlights and gold-uniformed guards to direct traffic. There were even banners hanging from every lamppost.
Yes, the buildings tumbled more tightly together as they progressed deeper into the lowlands. And yes, there were more people crammed here than most cities, yet nonetheless, the Baedyed-controlled part of Saldonica was undeniably not a slum.
Beyond the built-up streets of the Baedyed territory, a marshy delta spanned. On the left, thick, black jungle hugged the swampy landscape. On the right, the soggy earth gave way to a murky bay. Docks spanned for as far as Safi could see, crammed with ship after ship after ship.
It was as if every boat in Veñaza City had docked in one harbor. Never had Safi seen so many furled sails. Or circling sea gulls.
Cursed birds.
Yet what really drew Safi’s eyes was the arena. There was no mistaking it. As soon as her helm-split gaze cast over the half-stone, half-wooden stadium, she knew what it was. The sheer size gave it away—larger and taller than any other structure in the entire Republic.
At this distance, though, it looked like some enormous ancient fortress that nature had tried to reclaim. Wooden scaffolding had been added, to fill in the missing half, and banners of all colors flapped from eight towers, giving it the look of a dirty bejeweled crown left behind for the crocodiles to enjoy.
Safi soon lost sight of the arena, of the marshes. Of anything at all but the people around her. Everywhere Safi’s eyes landed, she saw people of all shades and histories. Even Nomatsis strutted cool as they pleased down the packed-earth Baedyed streets—as did Southlanders, Fareasters, and ethnicities Safi couldn’t even recognize.
Atop the merchant calls and sailor shouts and all the sounds bombarding her, there were just as many lies—startling after so many days at sea and in the wilderness.
Quickly enough, though, as always happened, the truths and the lies blended into a familiar cascade in the background. One easily ignored, easily forgotten, even as the Hell-Bards led Safi and Vaness into an open market.
Here, billowy awnings traipsed outward for almost as far as the eye could see.
“Anything a man desires can be bought in Saldoni
ca.”
Safi twisted her stiff neck, glancing at Caden through the slits in her helm. He was pale, his face slick in a way that spoke of more than simple sweat from a summer’s day. His wound wasn’t doing well—and that made Safi happy.
He met her eyes with a slight bounce of his eyebrows. “And anything a man loathes can be sold here as well.”
“Is that a threat?”
“I don’t loathe you, Heretic. I simply follow orders—shit.” In a burst of speed, he shoved ahead of Safi, but since he still held her ropes, she was jerked around. Her shoulders almost tore from their sockets.
Pain flashed. A scream split her lips. Then she was dragging her feet, trying to keep up with Caden as he barreled forward.
He was too slow to stop it, though. The empress had fallen, knocked over by a passing cart. Not just any cart either, but one led by three men with the Baedyed standard on their gambesons.
Worse, Vaness’s helmet had fallen, leaving her reddened, sweat-slick face exposed to the world. To the three Baedyeds. She ducked, as if to hide her features, but the way she moved just a beat too slow—and the way she angled her body just far enough for the pirates to see her Witchmark tattoo—rang false against Safi’s senses.
Vaness wanted to be seen; she’d staged the entire accident, and now it was working. One of the Baedyeds was staring at her face, another at her hand, and the third was slipping away as if he had urgent business to attend elsewhere.
Urgent business that would get Safi and Vaness free from the Hell-Bards or urgent business that included killing the Marstoki empress, Safi couldn’t be sure. And there was no time to mull it over either, for Lev was forging a path down a narrow string of stalls, Zander was lifting the unresisting, rehelmeted empress, and Caden was prodding Safi forward into a breakneck pace behind them all.
* * *
The first inn the Hell-Bards approached was full. As was the next one, and the next three after that. It would seem there was an important holiday in two days, and thousands upon thousands had swarmed the city for an arena fight that happened every year. Baile’s Slaughter, they called it, and now the Pirate Republic of Saldonica was crammed full and bursting at the caulked seams.