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“That pirate they executed. Brought here from Sheness. You didn’t have anything to do with him, did you?”
I hesitated, unsure how to answer her question, and my throat tightened. I fought the sensation, afraid that if I let my emotions filter into my voice, it would make her more inquisitive. She didn’t know who Pyrite was—who he had been—and I wasn’t sure I could make myself say the words.
“You can’t tell Luka I’m here,” I implored, choosing to address Fi’s original assertion. “It’s very important that you don’t tell anyone.”
She took my hands, her jaw set. “Don’t fret, Anya. I won’t say a word to Luka. But when he was here, he swore to me he wasn’t out to harm you. If things change, you can go to him. I know it.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
I held back a sigh, shifting my gaze to the window. In the aftermath of the horrific outcome of my relationship with Shea, I would always err on the side of caution when dealing with humans, and Fi would always err on the side of trust. Albeit trust well-placed, as far as I could tell. The temptation to put faith in Luka Ivanova was a pulsing force, a tide reaching ever closer to land. He almost single-handedly funded the Fae-mily Home and had proven himself sympathetic to Fae causes and human faults. He’d begged Shea to hand over her father so that he wouldn’t be forced to punish her in Thatcher More’s stead. Indeed, he’d shown outright disdain for the law that made Thatcher’s wife and three daughters collateral when he’d fled arrest, thus subjecting any of them to serve his sentence. Luka appeared to be a friend, and it would have been easy, a relief even, to give my fate over to him. But still I took care, for my ability to trust had diminished right along with my Fae nature, the actions of the hunters and Shea’s betrayal eating away at my core.
Fi’s voice pulled me from my deliberations. “You need to eat, and I’ve got a room where you can stay out of sight. It’s not but a closet, but it’ll keep you from the cold.”
“Sounds wonderful. Thank you.”
“One thing more. A message arrived for you like you said it might.”
My heart leaped—Gwyneth. Before we’d parted company in Sheness, I’d told her she could contact me at the Fae-mily Home. News from her might lift some of the gloom I was feeling.
“Where is it?”
Fi waved a dismissive hand. “It’s not going anywhere. Dinner first. You look starved.”
Though I wanted the letter, I hadn’t had a full stomach in days, and the promise of food proved irresistible. I followed her to a room at the rear of the shelter, near a door that led into an alley. She lit a lamp on a small table to reveal a space that met her description with no embellishment—it was cramped, with a cot between the night table and the wall, a washbasin and mirror in the corner, and a narrow window that was set too high to open or offer a view. But it met my most important criterion: it was secluded. I would be comfortable and, in all likelihood, safer here than anywhere else.
“I’ll fetch you a plentiful meal,” Fi offered, cheeks tinged bright pink as she darted about to wipe away dust from the little-used space and give the linens a healthy shake.
“No need for that.” I laid a hand on her forearm to bring her fussing to an end. “The room is perfect. Thank you so much.”
She hustled away, her blush deepening to red, and I deposited my pack on the floor near the bed. By the time I had washed my hands, she had returned with a heavily laden platter—chicken, warm bread with cheese, cooked vegetables, and a mug of spiced cider. The aroma washed over me, and despite the manners that had been drilled into me over the years, I fell upon the food like a starving animal. I sat on the edge of the bed, shoveling forkfuls into my mouth, almost swallowing the first bites whole. Fi left again while I ate, returning with an armful of clothing and a medicinal compress.
“I don’t want you cold on the street.” Her voice contained a trace of a scold as she set leggings, socks, a tunic, and a sash on the bed next to me. “You’ve worn through your old ones.”
I nodded, unwilling to stop chewing.
“And this,” she added, giving the compress a shake before setting it atop the pile, “is for your eye. It’ll bring down the swelling.”
“Thank you.” I spit out a bit of bread along with the words then mumbled an embarrassed “Sorry.”
“No need to apologize. But you might want to slow down—there’s plenty more where that came from.”
When I finally set down my fork, Fi reached into a pocket hidden among the folds of her layered skirt and produced a rolled and wax-sealed letter. Too excited to be polite, I sprang to my feet and snatched it from her hand. Though my brain told me it was crazy, I couldn’t quell the wild surge of hope I felt that the paper would reverse the events of the past couple of days. Perhaps, against all odds, Zabriel had survived the fall and made it safely back to Sheness, and this was the letter that would explain everything. Hands shaking, I broke the Dementya family seal, but what I read when I unfurled the note was a simple statement of shared grief.
Anya, I’m so sorry. There was nothing you or I could have done. He was dead the moment he was betrayed, though I still can’t grasp what happened. And I still can’t believe he’s gone.
Write me. Please. Come and stay with me and my father in Sheness if you like. You’re always welcome here.
I’m thinking of you.
G.
At the bottom, hastily scrawled as though she had considered not including it, was an added message:
If you retain any care for Shea, she’s in danger now that he’s gone. His friends are unforgiving.
I crumpled the letter in my hand, angry at Gwyneth for even mentioning Shea. Whatever happened to my former friend was out of my hands. More than that, it was of her making.
“Is the news bad?” Fi asked.
“No, just not what I wanted to hear. Tell me—when did this arrive?”
“Only this afternoon. By snowbird to the Dementya station, then by servant here.”
I nodded. Although snowbirds were notoriously difficult to train, they were swift fliers and therefore favored as messengers by the wealthy, a class that included the Dementya family. And if the news had been spread this quickly to the coast, it had probably been flown across the sea to all the reaches of the human world, sparking celebrations at many port cities. Gwyneth’s father, Leo Dementya, was the owner of a fleet of ships that had been raided on more than one occasion, placing him among the revelatory group. What would she do if he asked her to join in a toast to the death of such a notorious pirate and criminal? At least I didn’t have to pretend happiness. Gagging at that thought, I rushed to the washbasin, struggling to keep my food down.
“Are you sick?” Judging from the concern wrinkling Fi’s brow, I looked as pale and clammy as I felt. “Should I send for a doctor?”
“No, no, I’m fine. But I should have listened to you—I think I ate too fast.”
She pursed her lips, not quite believing me, and I spoke up, wanting to head off additional questions.
“Listen, Fi, if any more letters come—”
“I’ll hold them for you—your eyes only.”
I forced a smile and returned to the cot, taking a sip from my mug of cider.
“I’ll be going, then,” Fi said, removing another item from her hidden pocket. This time when she extended her hand, it held a key. “For the door into the alley. No one ever comes or goes by it. Just use it to please yourself.”
“Thank you, again, for all your kindness.”
She picked up the food tray. “You deserve better, but it’s my best.”
Before I could respond, she exited the room, closing the door softly behind her. With a moan, I forced myself to my feet and crossed the short expanse of floor to push the lock into place. Settling down once more on the bed, I squeezed my eyes shut and applied the compress to the right side of my face.
I wanted so badly to exhale the tension from my body. But it was no use, not when guilt and sorrow over Zabriel’s death threatened to consume me and ever-present fear clogged my veins, at times almost immobilizing me. Queen Ubiqua—assuming she was still alive—would come to Tairmor with her entourage despite that there was no longer a living Prince to retrieve. Of course, she might not know of Zabriel’s execution, but whether or not she did, the political ramifications of a royal Faerie heir dead at the hands of the humans were potentially colossal. Nothing short of parlay between the leaders of our races could suffocate the impending outcry.
Unbidden, the drawing I had discovered in Illumina’s sketchbook rose once more to the forefront of my mind, the sketch depicting a young woman collapsed in the snow, bleeding out magic at the base of a tree. If my deepest, most secret suspicions were true—that Illumina had been there that night, had been the woman who stroked my hair and shushed me where I lay in agony on the cold ground—then how could I be confident she had conveyed the message she was sent to deliver? Or was this what she had wanted? Me, barred forever from the Faerie Realm, and Zabriel equally unable to return to threaten her ascension to the throne? In the end, it didn’t matter, for the Queen had more than one source of information. The three months upon which Davic and I had agreed were up, and he would bring all the forces of Nature to bear to find me, with my father’s assistance. And the Fae Ambassadors to the Warckum Territory would have sent word of the execution of a member of our race. No, the Queen and her entourage would arrive, the only unknown being when.
And while she was here, grieving her son, I would have to face her with nothing to offer but apologies. I wouldn’t try for excuses. She’d wanted me to succeed her, but I’d abandoned Chrior without her blessing, lost my wings, failed to safeguard the Royal Anlace—a timeless relic from the Old Fae that had never even been held by a non-ruler before me—and watched Zabriel die.
I took a long drink of the cider, hoping its warmth would help me to sleep. But just when I felt my consciousness drift, I sat bolt upright in bed—there was one thing I might be able to reverse. I slapped my cheeks in an effort to come fully alert, then tried to recall the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the Anlace.
Shea and I had been arrested at the West Gate of the city. We’d been searched for weapons, and I’d snapped at one of the men to be careful with the blade. During our escape, when we’d stolen back our packs and supplies, the Anlace hadn’t been there. So what had become of it?
I rubbed my temples, trying to conjure an image of the guard in my mind, and the answer came to me. He’d tucked the Anlace into a pouch at his hip, perhaps realizing the knife was valuable. And that meant I had to find him, and fast, before Ubiqua arrived in the capital.
With some semblance of a plan, I doused the lamp and fell asleep with the image of the Anlace, a brilliant ruby glinting from within its golden grip, floating before me, just out of reach.
Chapter Five (#ulink_5dfa11d6-ca93-555d-8251-78b7462ba51d)
THE TRAIL OF THE ANLACE
I gathered my belongings and returned to the streets before the sun had risen, using the exit into the alley to avoid encounters with any of the residents of the Fae-mily Home. The day was wet and gray, and felt somehow colder than if it had been snowing. Rain had a penchant for slithering under clothes and against skin that snow couldn’t rival, and I had been feeling the damp more acutely since the loss of my magic. Water had reverted to treating me like everyone else.
As the sun blinked its dreary way into the sky, shop owners threw drifters out of alleys; coughs and sneers rose in a dissonant chorus; and foul-smelling citizens leaned against lampposts and building-fronts puffing on cigarettes—poor person’s smokes that had none of the richness of traditional tobacco and thus reeked far worse. I hurried along in an effort to avoid unwanted gazes, the cigarette smoke fading as the din of the river mounted.
An enormous marble bridge situated in the center of the city spanned the river to connect the two sides of Tairmor, and I slowed to behold it. It served a practical purpose for transportation, but its origins delved far deeper into human history: it was a memorial to the soldiers who had died during the Faerie-Human War generations ago. In order to put an end to the interracial conflict, my people had created a boundary—known as the Bloody Road—to prevent nonmagical beings from entering our Realm. The use of our elemental connections to earth, fire, water, and air to suit that purpose had been so powerful that it had devastated the enemy’s forces, destroying bodies beyond recognition, and sometimes reclamation, and scattering limbs across a wide swath of the Balsam Forest. The Bloody Road was the barrier that kept me from reaching home.
By this time the rain had stopped, and I stepped foot onto the monument. I ran my hands along one of its railings, fingering the etchings that reminded me of the love carvings surrounding the entrance to the Great Redwood in Chrior. The bridge was inscribed with the names of every soldier who’d been lost in that final battle. How often did it inspire the humans to think of and honor those who had died? Or was it just a stark reminder of our actions? Indeed, the hatred that had lingered between the races had been the impetus for Queen Ubiqua’s marriage to William Ivanova, the Governor’s elder son. But not even the magic of the wedding mage had been powerful enough to see him safely across the Road. He had died trying to cross it, desirous of living with his wife, who was pregnant, in the Realm of the Fae.
Despite this tragedy, Wolfram Ivanova had remained staunchly pro-Fae in the ensuing years, believing if not knowing that a grandchild might have been born to him. But though the Governor’s policies and laws were pro-Fae, not all the people in the Warckum Territory agreed with him, just as not all the Faerie people supported Queen Ubiqua’s goal of peace with the humans. For me, this was no abstract concept, for Illumina had followed in her father’s footsteps and was among the dissenters. My back muscles convulsed with phantom pain at the thought of my younger cousin, and I hurried across the bridge, periodically glancing over my shoulders, my anxiety resurfacing.
At long last, I trekked through a quaint residential area and into an adjacent business district, where a bell in a steeple atop a church spire announced the time to the residents of this part of the city. Up ahead rose the massive stone dam that diverted the course of the Kappa near the West Gate. I could already feel the dampness of the river spray against my skin.
Activity in the city had picked up considerably, both along the road by which I drew near to the West Gate and over the bridge from the south that had been the location of Shea’s and my arrest. Carriages and convoys rattled under the thirty-foot-high passageway, its doors swung wide to provide for two lanes of traffic and then some. Numerous Constabularies were on duty, trying to keep order, but despite their efforts, angry shouts rose with frequency from those eager for admittance but lacking in patience.
Dodging traffic and horse droppings, I scurried to the base of the wall that surrounded the city. The gate’s architecture made a shadowed alcove where the curve of the guard tower met the stone-lay, and I dropped my pack in its protective cover before inching around for a better view of the guards. I was looking for a robust fellow slightly shorter than me with a round face and a swagger to his walk.
The scarlet-clad Constabularies worked in pairs, and I found myself staring at the backs of those closest to me. One member of a duo would check papers and enter information in a logbook, while the other scanned wares and equipment for irregularities. Those folks who passed inspection were pushed into the city like tagged cattle; those under suspicion were taken by other guards for further questioning. I examined the men in front of me, but all were too tall to match the image I had stored in my memory. One in particular was almost twice my height, and as thick as a bull—not someone I’d want to cross.
Needing to get a look at the Constabularies on the other side of the road, I weighed my options. I could fight through the mass of people, horses, carriages, and wagons, or try to gain some height and a viewpoint. I studied the tower next to me from top to bottom. There were battened windows just above my head and crevices in the mortar large enough for my fingertips. I ran a hand over the stone surface to check that it was coarse enough to provide some grip, then swung my cloak off my shoulders and deposited it with my pack.
If there was one side effect of growing up with the ability to fly it was that I had no fear of heights. I fitted the toe of my left boot between two stones, found a handhold above my head, and launched myself upward. Body pressed close to the tower, I lodged my opposite foot on the window ledge and redirected my momentum toward the sconce bolted into the stone over it. After grabbing on to it for support, I pulled myself up to balance on the top of the window frame above the heads of the swarm.
The Constabularies across the thoroughfare stood out from the drably dressed travelers like the dragon’s blood sedum flowers used by nesting snowbirds did against the white landscape of winter. I screwed up my face to make out the guards’ features, but with each one I studied, my disappointment grew. Then I spotted a straggler near the opposite tower. He looked the part by his height, stature, and strut; but it was when his eyes widened and he pointed at me that I was sure of his identity. It was the same expression he’d worn when he’d realized Shea was wanted by the law.
He yelled something incomprehensible, though it was likely the name of one of the guards on my side of the gate. At least the bull-like one whipped around with a massive scowl, his forehead so creased it formed a cross pattern. He started toward me, and in the shock of the moment, I released my handhold, lost my footing, and tipped backward.
I had always loved the sensation of falling, of slipping through insubstantial air toward the solid arms of the earth, but I hadn’t much experience with full-force landing. My arms pinwheeled in an attempt to replace my missing wings, but I hit the cobblestone shoulders first, head snapping to follow, the rest of my body close behind. I coughed and wheezed, certain my lungs had collapsed. Then the pain hit me, and I sucked in air. My head pounded, my back smarted from tailbone to neck, and a burning sensation resonated to my elbows. Worst of all, panic was shooting through me, riling every pore in my body. Run, I commanded my muscles. Get up and run. I moaned and rolled laboriously onto my side, my legs curling into my chest. Either my brain wasn’t sending the right signals or my body was ignoring them. I covered my head with my arms as though that would protect me, and struggled to withhold tears. At least I had not fallen where hooves and wheels would squash me.
“All right?” a man with a deep voice asked, his shadow encasing me where I lay on the ground.
My heart pounded out my fear, loudly enough to be heard over the cacophony around me. Though I wanted to pretend he wasn’t there, I forced myself to turn my head and look at him. The bull-guard was kneeling near me, a mixture of worry and exasperation on his face. When he saw that I was conscious, he rolled his eyes and held out a hand. I stared at him, not quite believing he would help me.
“Come on,” he ordered. When I didn’t move, he grasped the collar of my tunic and stood, hauling me up with him. He brushed off my clothing, then held a hand up a few feet from my face. “How many fingers?”
I concentrated, narrowing my eyes to bring the blurred image into focus, then squeaked out a response.
“Three?”
He laughed, the sound rolling up from his chest as though from a deep well.
“It may not feel like it, but you’ll be fine. Just find a place to sit for a while. And if you want to cause trouble, go to the South Gate.”
He turned me about and gave me a slight shove. Still a little wobbly, I retrieved my pack and cloak and scampered away at the best pace I could manage, thanking Nature that the guard hadn’t been inclined to arrest me. He had, in fact, been rather kind.
Shaking uncontrollably, I trudged a few blocks to a bench in a less crowded area and sat down, unexpectedly inundated with thoughts of my father. I wanted him to be the one to pick me up. I wanted him to wrap his arms around me and comfort me. It felt like I’d been alone forever; more than that, I hadn’t felt safe or protected or connected since the hunters had attacked me.
“Still ain’t sure of your smarts.”
I sprang to my feet and whirled around, fighting my resulting dizziness to gaze into an enormous pair of brown eyes in a hollow, dirty face.
“What are you doing here?” I snapped to the young boy I’d met in the alley. “Have you been following me?”
“Not followin’, just noticin’.” He smirked and rested his forearms on the back of the bench I’d just vacated. “Saw when you showed up ’ere. This is my turf, ya know.”
“Your turf?”
“Where I makes me livin’.” He opened his coat and patted an inside pocket, setting it to jingling.
I rolled my eyes. “You’re a thief, are you?”
“Wouldn’t say that. I’m more of an entrepreneur.” He pronounced the word carefully, proud to be showing off his vocabulary. “I just lightens the load for a few stuffed shirts. No ’arm in that—they got plenty to spare.”
I was struck by an urge to scold him. “At your age, you should be in school.”
“Plenty of schoolin’ to be had on the streets.”
“Just how old are you, anyway?”
He puffed out his chest. “I’m twelve.”
“No, you’re not.” My thoughts went to Shea’s youngest sister, Marissa. “I’d guess nine at the most.”
“Papers say twelve. And that makes me twelve.”
I laughed. This boy was spunky. “Did you steal those, too?”
“Got ’em nice and legal.”
“If by legal you mean from a forger.”
“Paid the man, di’nt I?” A touch of belligerence had entered his voice; then he took off his hat and scratched his head. “If I was to bet, I’d say you got forged ones, too.”
I gaped at him, too surprised to respond. His manner reminded me of Tom Matlock, for I’d never been able to fool him, either. I decided it was best to change the subject.
“Well, Frat, as you can see, I’m perfectly fine. So go ahead and continue with your work. I wouldn’t want to prevent you from earning a living.”
“Nah, you’re not fine. You’re too stupid to be fine. What d’ya think you’re doin’, drawin’ the ’tention of the Scarlets? Thought sure I’d ’ave to save you again with my slingshot.”
I gritted my teeth, temper flaring, for he was now scolding me.
“Look here. I’m not stupid, nor do I need rescuing. I have good reasons for being here, not that they’re any of your concern. So just get on your way.”
“Suit yourself. But take this and find a place to ease yourself a bit.” He grabbed one of my hands and closed my fist around something cold and hard. “I’ve been ’avin’ a good day—not sure you can say the same.”
I stared at the coins he’d pressed into my palm, but before I could say anything, he slapped his hat back on his curly mop of hair and slipped away. I stared after him, shaking my head slightly and marveling at how self-reliant he seemed to be. Then I tucked the money into the pouch at my hip, glad for the gift if not for his opinions.
