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Quicktongue knelt before the door, his gray tunic a ghostly blur against the blackstone. In the semidarkness, his hands worked with the precision of the Palace physicists Ana had studied with. Something flashed between his fingers; he made a quick downward motion, and the door jarred open.
The muffled pounding sharpened into a roaring sound that reverberated between the stone walls and low ceiling overhead. Quicktongue pushed the door open, and Ana felt her stomach drop.
Beyond the blackstone door, the corridor ended abruptly, as though someone had taken a butter knife and sliced it off neatly. Two large pillars rooted the end of the hallway into the outcrop of cliffs below. The gray-blue sky of Cyrilia stretched for miles over their heads, until it met the expanse of glittering snow-covered landscape. Beneath, ice-white waters foamed and plunged downward. Ana’s legs grew weak as the familiar fear of water churned within her, carved into the bones of her memory from an incident a long, long time ago. The merciless waters of a river—a very different one—had nearly killed her not once but twice many years past.
Quicktongue was already in motion. He unslung the thick length of rope he’d been hauling. With fluid ease, he looped one end of the rope around a pillar. His fingers wove some kind of complicated knot.
Deities. Ana pressed herself against the back wall and willed her knees not to buckle. This was the back exit Quicktongue had spoken of: the open sewer place where they dumped excrement and dead bodies.
And they were going to jump. “I’m not jumping down there with you,” she yelled, edging back into the turn of the corridors, behind the blackstone door.
Quicktongue knelt by the ledge. “Not sure how far you got in your schooling, sweetheart, but here’s some wisdom from the streets. Anyone who tries to jump down there will die. The impact will shatter your bones.”
The waterfall plunged like a roaring beast, fading into a white mist so thick that she couldn’t even see the bottom.
Quicktongue tested his knot. The rope stretched taut. “You coming, Witch?”
Ana was almost convinced he was mad. “You just said anyone who tries to jump down there will die.”
Quicktongue straightened. Outlined against the misty blue Cyrilian sky, above the frothing white waters, he looked almost heroic. “I did. But, darling, we’re not going to jump.” He gestured to the length of rope—most of which lay coiled in a heap between them like a snake. The other end looped around the pillar. “I plan to lower us to the river below. I’ve done the calculations. It’ll work.” He grinned and brought his index finger and thumb close to each other. “It’ll be a tiny, dainty step. Like stepping off a carriage. Except … off a ledge.”
His eyes glinted with mirth, and she wanted to choke him. Deities, she was going to die. Behind her: guards who would imprison her and sell her into indenturement. Before her: a mad con man who was likely going to leap to his death.
“Well?” Quicktongue listed his head. With his trickster’s fingers, he’d already tied the other end of the rope securely around his waist and was waggling the last length of it at her. “We’ve spent a good five minutes getting here. They’ve raised the alarm, so more guards’ll be on us like bees on honey. You’re wasting my time, darling.”
Ana turned her gaze back to the waterfall, watching the frothing white waters pound down at speeds that would shatter bone. And suddenly, she imagined herself caught in those currents as she had been ten years ago, the foam and the waves crushing her chest and twisting her limbs and pressing at her lips and nose.
I can’t.
Somewhere back in that labyrinth, above the pounding of the waterfall, shouts sounded. She pushed her Affinity out, but it had weakened to the point that all she felt were the faintest wisps of blood. The wound on her arm gave a particularly nasty throb. A few more minutes and there would be nothing left of her Affinity to fight with.
There was no turning back now.
She wanted to cry, but she knew from her years with Sadov in the dungeons that crying achieved nothing. In the face of fear, one could choose to run, or to rise.
So Ana swallowed her nausea, bit back her tears, and lifted her chin as she marched past the blackstone door. The floor was uneven and wet, and a smell—as though something, or many things, had rotted here—choked her as she ventured out farther. “I didn’t come here to die, con man,” she snapped as she picked her way over to him. “If you try anything, I’ll kill you before the water does. And trust me, you’d beg me to let you drown instead.”
Quicktongue was balancing on the edge of the white marble floor, holding on to the rope. His lips quirked as he began to strap her tightly against his chest with the last bit of rope on his end. “Fair enough.”
Ana inhaled sharply as the rope cut into her back and waist. Quicktongue gave her a crooked grin. “I know I smell, love, but you’ll thank me later when you’re still alive.”
The wind whipped against her face as she shuffled to the edge, where the ground ended and the nothingness began. Her hair tore loose from its austere knot, dark chestnut strands fluttering against an open blue sky.
Quicktongue gave the rope another tug. “Hold tight,” he shouted, and despite herself, Ana wrapped both arms around his filthy tunic, keeping her face as far from his chest as possible without straining her neck.
He swung them off the ledge.
Whatever revulsion she’d felt toward Quicktongue dissolved, and she found herself clinging tightly to him as though her life depended on it.
It did.
They dangled right beneath the ledge of Ghost Falls, spiraling gently. The waterfall roared in her ears, so close that she could reach out and touch it. The length of rope connecting them to the pillar tumbled beneath them in a long loop, disappearing into the white mist.
Slowly, Quicktongue began to lower them. His muscles were taut, veins popping from his neck as he placed one hand below the other.
Ana dared a look down. The sight had her gripping Quicktongue more tightly, swallowing her panic. She might have sent a thousand prayers to her Deities, but none would have mattered. In this instant, there was only her and the con man.
Ana looked up. The mist was so thick that she could barely make out the ledge of the prison anymore. That was a good thing. “How much longer?” she screamed, barely hearing her own voice over the waterfall.
“Almost!” He was shouting, but his words were hardly audible. “We need to get to the end of this rope, or the fall will kill us.”
Ana squinted up. Something—a movement in the mist—had her instinctively grasping for her Affinity. There it was: the faintest wisp, an echo of her powers, still struggling beneath the Deys’voshk.
She frowned as she sensed something through her bonds, so faint that it almost slipped past her.
A gust of wind slammed into them and Ana closed her eyes, trying to block out the dizzying swinging sensation. When she opened them again, the wind had cleared some of the mist. At the top, over the ledge of Ghost Falls, was the outline of an archer, his bow and arrow angled toward them.
“Look out!” she cried, and the first arrow whizzed over their heads.
The second struck Quicktongue.
He grunted in pain as it grazed his shoulder, slicing open his sleeve and drawing blood. Ana bit back a scream as Quicktongue’s grip slipped against the slick rope. They lurched, spinning wildly, a hand’s breadth from being battered to death by the waterfall. Above, the archer nocked another arrow.
Below, she saw the end of the length of rope, looping up to connect to Quicktongue’s waist. The end of the rope. They had to get to the end of the rope, or they would die.
Ana reached into herself, digging until she was nothing but blood and bone. And she found it, the last remnants of her Affinity, as faint as a dying candle, still fighting against the Deys’voshk.
Ana stretched out her hand and latched on to the blood of the archer. And pushed.
The archer tensed and swayed for a second, as though a sudden gust of wind had hit him. Ana let her hand fall. Warmth trickled down her lip and she tasted her own blood.
That was it. The Deys’voshk had won; she had no more to give.
But it had been enough to distract the archer and get them to the end of the rope.
Quicktongue let go and reached to his hip. His dagger glinted dull silver. He leaned toward Ana, his eyes narrowed, his expression sharpened to dead, lethal calm. “Don’t struggle, don’t move. Just hold on to me. Feetfirst, toes pointed.”
She had barely processed his words, barely let a taste of fear reach the tip of her tongue.
Quicktongue raised his arm. “First step to becoming a ruffian,” he said, “is learning to fall.”
His blade flashed. He brought his arm down with ruthless force.
And then they were falling.
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The river claimed them as soon as they hit it, pulling them under with vengeance in its white-furled fluxes and battering them like leaves in a gale. Ramson let the tides take him. He knew the waters, knew when to let himself go and when to push against it. The river did not yield. It was all about learning to swim with the current.
These waters were different from the wide-open seas of Ramson’s childhood. In Bregon, the waters were cobalt blue, the caps flecked with sunlight. He had swum for hours, diving beneath the surface and looking up at the faraway sky in a muted blue world of his own.
In Cyrilia, the rivers were white and frothing and cold. Ramson struggled to keep his eyes open as the current flung him to and fro. The pressure in his chest grew. Water surged at his nose and mouth.
The Affinite girl was still bound to his chest by the rope. He could feel her thrashing against him, kicking and struggling as the current pummeled her.
Ramson severed the cord. The odds of survival were greater without someone weighing you down. He had been thinking only of himself when he did it, but as he watched the current drag the witch away, he supposed it might have been true for her, too.
Stay still, he wanted to tell her. The more you struggle, the faster you drown.
But his own lungs were aching, and that familiar sensation of weakness was creeping into his limbs. He needed to breathe, or risk becoming a part of the current forever.
Ramson kicked out. No sooner had he righted himself than the current pushed him over again. Panic bubbled in his chest. His head felt light. Water pressed at his nose and his lips, yet part of him remembered that he could not open his mouth.
His limbs were becoming heavier. His vision was a whirl of white. It was cold.
Swim, came a voice. He knew instantly whose voice it was—that calm, thin voice that had defined his childhood and haunted him every day thereafter. Here, in the roaring chaos, it sounded so close. Swim, or we both die.
Ramson thrust his legs behind him, arching his back. He felt the current give a little. Somewhere above him, somewhere near, there was light.
Swim.
The light grew brighter. He broke through the surface, coughing and gulping in lungful after lungful of fresh, wintry Cyrilian air, feeling the power return to his limbs.
He hauled himself onto the bank, digging his nails into the half-frozen dirt and dragging his feet across snow-covered grass. He was shivering uncontrollably, moving in starts and stops, his arms and legs jerking in awkward movements as he tried to stimulate his blood flow.
The river had borne them quite a distance; Ghost Falls was a faraway speck, barely larger than the size of his palm. His stomach flipped as he took in the height of the cliffs, the waterfall that was no more than a misty stretch ending in the river. No matter his calculations and the meticulous planning he’d done in the darkness of his cell; it had taken a miracle and a hand from the gods for them to have survived.
Not that Ramson believed in the gods anyway.
He turned his back to the prison. A snow-tipped forest stretched before him, illuminated in a haze of dusty gold beneath the late-afternoon sun. And in the distance, ice-capped mountains rose and fell as far as the eye could see.
But Ramson felt only the cold in his bones and saw only the shadows that stretched long and dark beneath the pine trees. This was Cyrilia, the Empire of the North, where autumn nights were colder than any winter day in the other kingdoms. And if he didn’t find shelter before the sun set, he would die.
A cough behind him made him spin around, dagger in hand. He felt a faint twinge of surprise as he caught sight of the Affinite struggling up the bank like a dying animal. She was on her hands and knees, her head drooping, her dark locks plastered to her face and dripping water. She would not stand again. Not without his help.
Ramson turned away.
The snow muffled his footsteps as he ventured into the forest, and soon the sounds of the girl spluttering and the river rushing faded into silence. The trees grew thick enough to block out the sun, and the cold pressed into him with every step he took.
He ran through the terrain around Ghost Falls in his mind, but a growing sensation of doubt began to stall his progress. He’d been brought here in cuffs and a blindfold, the wagon traveling for days before he’d been hauled out and thrown into his cell. As far as Ramson knew, the area around the prison was barren—a wasteland of ice-covered tundra and the Syvern Taiga, the forest that covered half of the Cyrilian Empire.
Somehow his thoughts were drawn back to the witch. It was a shame that their escape had weakened her so much. Whereas she might have been a useful ally with her powerful Affinity, she would only be a hindrance going forward. He doubted she’d even be able to stand, let alone make it out of the woods. But then again, he thought grimly, where would she go?
Something clicked in his mind, and he came to a sharp stop. Of course. How could he have been so stupid? He turned back and half staggered, half ran to where he had left the witch.
The girl had come to Ghost Falls just to see him. Which meant she had to have a way out. A means of transportation.
He found her crouching several feet from the river, her head bent, her arms wrapped around herself and moving stiffly as she tried to rub heat back into her body. She looked up at him with half-lidded eyes as he approached. In just minutes, the bottom of her wet locks had frozen to ice.
Ramson knelt by her side, clasping a hand around her neck and feeling for her pulse. She twitched but made no further move to resist.
“How do you feel?” Injecting concern into his tone, he took her cheeks in his hands. They were ice-cold. “Can you speak?”
She opened her chapped lips. They were tinged with blue. “Y-yes.”
“Do you feel dizzy? Drowsy?”
“N-no.” It was clearly a lie, yet as she lifted her chin stubbornly and fixed him with that glare, Ramson couldn’t help but admire her resolve.
“We need to find shelter before sunset.” Ramson darted a glance over the treetops, where the sun hung, obscured by the gray clouds and mist. “Where did you come from? How did you get here?”
“W-walked.”
His heart almost sang at that word. That meant there had to be shelter within walkable distance. He’d made the right choice, coming back for her. “From where? Is there a town nearby?”
A shake of her head. “A d-dacha. I l-live there.”
“How far?”
Her body gave a spasm, and he bundled her closer to him. Their wet clothes might as well have been ice packs, but he knew the body heat would help. Her answer came in a breath that clouded in the air. “Two hours.”
Ramson glanced at the mist-covered sun that hung precariously low over the rim of the trees. For the first time, it looked like hope. He stood, adjusting his icy clothes and testing his muscles. They weren’t cramping yet, which was a good sign. “Can you walk, darling?”
The witch began to rouse herself, climbing to her feet, but almost toppled over at the effort. Ramson caught her by her elbows before she fell. “I’ve got you.” Earn her trust, reach the shelter. He hoisted her onto his back, immediately feeling the icy stiffness of her cloak. “Put your hands around my neck. The more skin contact, the less likely you’ll get hypothermia.”
She obliged, and he shifted her weight higher. Already, his blood was flowing from the strain on his muscles. That was good.
Ramson gritted his teeth. Putting one foot before the other, he began to walk. The muffled hush of the white landscape pressed on them, broken only by the crunch of snow beneath his boots and the occasional snap of a branch as he waded deeper into the forest. The witch gave him directions, her voice uneven as she trembled from cold.
Soon they were in the heart of the woods, surrounded by tall, crowding Syvern pines and frost-larches that cast their shadows over them. A hush had settled in the air. It felt as though the forest was alive and watching, the cold creeping steadily past his clothes, under his skin, into his bones.
The witch had fallen silent, her body still against his. Several times, he had to shake her to keep her conscious.
“Talk to me, darling,” he said at last. “If you fall asleep now, you’ll never wake up.” He felt her perk up a little at that. “What’s your name?”
“Anya,” she said, too quickly for it to be true.
Another lie, but Ramson pretended to nod seriously. “Anya. I’m Ramson, though you already knew that. Where are you from, Anya?”
“Dobrysk.”
He chuckled. “Talkative, aren’t you?” He knew the town of Dobrysk—a small, insignificant dot on the map in southern Cyrilia. Yet—despite her best efforts to mask it—she had the tinge of a northern accent in her speech, along with the faint lilt of the Cyrilian nobility. “What did you do in Dobrysk?”
He sensed her tensing up against him, and for a moment he wished he could take back his question. It had seemed like a good opportunity, in her half-frozen and semiconscious state, to find out more about her. Draw out her secrets and use them as leverage against her later. That she was an Affinite was his first—and only, for the time being—clue. Surely an Affinity as strong as hers would have merited a place among the Imperial Patrols?
The wheels in his mind turned, and he thought of the command in her tone, the judgmental look in her eyes when he’d first spoken to her, the tilt of her sharp chin. There was definitely noble upbringing in her blood—perhaps she had simply kept her Affinity hidden to protect herself. It wasn’t uncommon in Cyrilia, once a child’s Affinity manifested, for the ability to be kept hidden or subdued. That was the protection that power and privilege offered the rich. A safety, Ramson thought, that the poor simply could not afford.
Affinites without the means to bribe officials into silence were made to record it in a section of their identification papers. As legal citizens of the Empire, they were allowed to seek employment—yet the branding on their papers marked them as different, as other, as something to be steered clear of and, oftentimes, feared.
