I wait until the sounds of our captors’ footsteps fade, then begin a count to a hundred to be sure of their absence. The only sound is that of Saira calling to Alia, her voice low but constant. I don’t look, can’t bear to study the girl’s tiny, collapsed form.
My count completed, I pull the torque wrench from my pocket and assess it critically. It’s slightly bent, of varying thickness, with a bulge toward one end, but it might be serviceable. The vital thing is to get out and to maintain my strength for the escape. Alia will need all the help she can get just to keep up with us, and there’s no telling what we might meet if we do manage to leave the room. I can’t afford to weaken myself with another spell.
It takes five tries before I manage to pick the lock. I swing the door open and feel the attention of Tarek and Saira snap to me — as well as that of the other captive. I had forgotten the silent shadow of a creature in the cage beyond Tarek’s.
“Can you get us out? Ghost?” Tarek asks, his voice wavering between anxiety and hope.
“I’m not the Ghost,” I say gruffly. I walk over to Alia’s cage, trying not to look inside to where she lies. Instead, I focus my attention on the lock. It’s the same as mine, and the door swings open after only three attempts. Inside, I crouch beside the child, touching her shoulder hesitantly.
“Let me out,” Saira orders from her cage.
“Shut up.”
“Is she okay? Is she—”
“Alive,” I confirm. Alia’s breath flutters in her chest, and her cheek is cool to my touch. She’s lost too much blood, but she’s hanging on. Cursing Kol, I leave the cage and go to Tarek. Saira can wait. At this point, if I don’t get to her, I don’t think I’ll care.
“Is there really a Ghost?” Tarek asks as I work the lock. “Or is it just a cloak you pass around?”
“There’s a Ghost,” I say shortly.
“Wouldn’t he come for you?”
“Not if he’s smart,” I mutter.
“What?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “We’re leaving now, not waiting for a rescue attempt. Can you carry Alia? With that arm of yours?”
“Yes,” he says, his voice turning rough. The moment the door swings open, he pushes past me. He pulls Alia onto his lap, whispering her name as if it has the power to call her back to him. If her dark skin was pale before, now it is sallow as the yellow moon, her eyes ringed with dark circles, her neck bruised.
I take a deep, shaky breath and move on to Saira’s cage. At least she has enough sense to ignore me, standing by the bars and watching her brother instead. I’m getting better at working with the hairpins and lumpy wrench, but my eyes keep sliding away to the other prisoner, the one who was here before us. A man, I think. He’s sitting up, watching us, dark greasy hair obscuring his face but probably not his vision. I have no idea how old he is, where he’s from, if he’s even human. But he is a captive, just like us.
I swing open Saira’s door, stepping back to let her out. She doesn’t even glance at me as she hurries to her sister’s side. I turn away and find myself caught by the dark-eyed gaze of the other captive.
“Let me out,” he says. His accent is thick, unfamiliar, but his words are still intelligible.
I approach his cage cautiously. “Why are you here?”
“I made an enemy.” He crosses the cell, barely able to stay upright, collapsing to his knees as he reaches me. But when he grabs hold of the door, he shakes it, the iron bars rattling in their frame. “Let me out.”
I cast an apprehensive glance at the stairs. When I look back at him, I focus on his hands wrapped around the bars: thin and bloodless, the nails ending in razor sharp points. I back away, horrified. “You’re a fang.”
“I’m not like him,” he promises, his words coming quickly. “I won’t harm you — or them. I swear it. Just let me out.”
I swallow hard.
“Please,” he says, reaching out a taloned hand between the bars. “My clan has an agreement with the High Council,” he promises. “Not like that other one. I won’t harm you.”
I hesitate. I’d like to trust him, but all I know about this fang is that he’s hungry. I’ve already seen one horrifying reason to avoid a hungry fang. I shake my head. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” he says, rattling the door again. “No! Let me out.”
“What’s going on?” Tarek asks. He cradles Alia in his arms, Saira at his side.
The fang has stilled, watching us. I nod toward the him. “He wants out.”
“And?” Saira asks.
“Fang.”
She blanches. Tarek curses and pushes past me, making for the door. “We’ve got to get out of here. Leave it.”
The fang calls after us.
I hesitate. “Maybe I should just….” Let him out? Let him make his own way, separate from us?
Tarek wheels around. “You’re supposed to get us to safety, aren’t you? That’s what you were supposed to do in the beginning, before she,” he tilts his head toward Saira, “betrayed us. So: Get us out. Get Alia out.”
I drop my eyes to Alia. She’s still unconscious; her eyelids twitch once or twice. I nod and start for the stairs. The fang calls after me, but I close my ears to his pleas. I can’t be sure he won’t attack us. I need to get the Degaths — and myself — out safely. I can’t play hero to everyone who needs it.
The door at the top of the stairs is locked. Tarek and Saira flatten themselves against the wall to allow me to pass. Behind us, the fang shouts and rattles his door. We don’t speak. It takes me more tries than I’d like to work the lock. My tools are hardly well made, but eventually they get the job done.
I crack the door open and peer down a dimly lit hall. The place appears deserted, the window at the end the only source of light. We scuttle out, our footsteps and breathing loud in our ears. Once we’ve closed the door on Blackflame’s little dungeon, the fang’s noise can barely be heard.
We slip into an empty room, shutting the door behind us. From the window we can see gardens segmented by high hedges spreading out before us, which tells me only that Blackflame has brought his own gardening techniques with him. I don’t recall the last time I saw hedges like these. Nor can I see any clear path leading to a back gate.
“Does anyone know a way out other than the front door?” I ask. It would be a lot easier if we didn’t have to go bumbling through the whole mansion looking for an exit.
“Yes,” Saira says. She keeps her eyes on the view, as if she can’t bear the sight of Tarek’s glare. “There’s a side door to the gardens, and a path to the carriage house from there.”
“Good.” I point outside at a window a few rooms down, situated conveniently beside a large hedge that will shield us from view. “That’s how we’ll get to the gardens. From there, it’s on you.” I hope I can trust her not to get us all killed. It’s a flimsy faith, but walking out the front door of the compound would be a death march.
“A window?” Saira shakes her head. “We can’t. Not with Alia….”
“We’ll figure it out. We have to move fast. Blackflame may already know we’re gone.”
“How?” Tarek asks sharply.
I’m almost ready to shout in exasperation. “He has magic. And he’s not stupid. He could have wards set, he could have — I don’t know what. I’m not a mage. Now let’s move.”
“Right,” Tarek says, turning for the door. “Move.” And that’s our great escape plan: climb out a window and run. At least it’s simple. The Ghost would approve.
I count windows, and then follow after the Degaths. The hall remains fortuitously deserted. The fall of sunlight through the window suggests early morning. The household is likely focused on breakfast — the servants getting their charges ready for the day, the cooking staff preparing the meal, and the residents getting ready to eat it. That, and as we tiptoe down the hall, there’s also the possibility that the servants prefer to avoid this hallway, knowing what takes place below.
I crack open the door to the room I hope the window belongs to, then push it open with relief. It’s a cluttered storage room, full of things and empty of people. The others hustle in behind me. The window is one over from the hedge, but I don’t want to take another chance on the hallway. I ease open the shutters, then lean out to take stock of the near-palatial house around us. We’re at one of its sides; windows rising in rows above us. It can’t be helped. If someone looks out and spots us, we’ll just have to pray they don’t manage to catch up with us.
“Here,” I say, turning to Tarek. “Give me Alia, and I’ll pass her down to you.”
“I can carry her,” Saira insists, reaching for her sister.
“Would you just listen to her?” Tarek snaps. “She’s doing a lot more to save your life than you deserve.”
Saira flinches. She looks wretched, her hair in disarray, her face pinched with worry, her eyes dark with guilt and self-contempt. Good. After all, it’s her fault her parents are dead, her sister has been drained to within an inch of her life, and we’re running for our lives. I hope she feels even worse than she looks.
I suppose I should be kinder. She never meant for any of that to happen — except to the Ghost. Maybe, if I get out of this alive, I’ll be able to be more generous. Right now, I can’t manage it.
“Get down,” I tell her. “It will be easier to hand her over if you’re both there to take her from me.”
Tarek passes Alia to me as Saira lowers herself from the window. Alia’s eyes have opened, but her gaze is glassy, unfocused. She’s breathing hard, even though she’s barely exerted herself. “She needs a mage-healer,” I tell Tarek. “She’s lost too much blood.”
He nods.
“Listen, if we get separated, there’s someone who can help you. There’s a tea house called The Golden Cup.” I quickly describe how to find it and what to tell the proprietor. I have no doubt Kenta will come running if he gets the message, but hopefully it won’t come to that. Hopefully, we’ll all get out of this together.
Tarek listens carefully, ignoring Saira’s whispered questions from below. I don’t suppose she’ll ever learn to be quiet. Then he lowers himself from the window. I lean out, Alia light in my embrace, and hand her down to their waiting arms.
“Come on,” Tarek whispers.
I hesitate. “Just a moment,” I whisper, and move back to the door. I’m not sure what exactly I’m thinking, other than that I hate to leave the fang still caged. But when I reach the door I hear the faint tread of boots in the hallway: soldiers.
I bolt back to the window, sliding out onto the sill and dropping to the ground with a soft thud.
“Hurry,” I whisper, reaching up to close the shutters. Tarek and Saira require no further urging, setting a brisk pace through the gardens. Saira takes over the lead as she gets her bearings.
About halfway through, I jerk to a stop, holding up my hand. Tarek nearly plows into me from behind me. He has the sense, at least, not to speak, his eyes darting to my face. I can hear the soft crunch of boots on gravel. Many boots.
“They’re behind us,” I whisper. “And they must know which way we’re going, or they’d be shouting and running.”
The Degaths stare at me.
“Run,” I say. “Fast.”
We tear through the garden, Tarek puffing under his burden. Past an ornamental fountain, across a grassy square, and — shouts erupt behind us. A dozen soldiers pour into the open space, almost near enough to catch us.
I spring forward, pushing Tarek ahead of me. We swerve around the corner of a hedge. Ahead of us, the path forks: one turns and leads into another section of the garden, its visibility blocked by shrubbery, the other passes under a stone arch.
“Go.” I shove Tarek toward the far path, knowing Saira will stick with him. Then I whirl and make for the arch, pounding through it without a backward glance. Split up, there’s a higher likelihood that at least one of us will escape, especially if the soldiers part behind us. They’ll be easier to outwit that way.
But I miscalculate. Given the choice between three miserable fugitives and catching the Ghost, the soldiers take off after me. All of them. Together.
Panting curses, I careen around the corner of another hedge and find myself facing a picturesque pond, lotus flowers floating serenely before me. On the far side, conversing with Blackflame beneath an ornate blue and white gazebo, stands the one person who could bring me to a standstill. I stare, bewildered, hearing only the thundering of my blood in my ears.
It can’t be. It can’t be. But it is. Swathed in a silk kimono of varying shades of blue, she looks like an artist’s rendering, a person who truly belongs among lotus flowers and gazebos. Except that she cannot possibly be here.
Gravel crunches behind me. I should not have stopped — I take one step forward, my eyes still glued to the figure in blue, and then a body crashes into me, slamming me to the ground. What follows is a brief and hopeless tussle, me against ten soldiers, all of them armed. It ends about where it began, with my face pressed into the dirt and a great deal of weight on top of me. Even though I’m frantic to get away from them, I can’t quite focus on anything other than the need to get to the woman in the kimono. I need to see her face clearly. I need to know.
I twist around, searching for the soldier in charge. “Who’s that?” I ask. “In the gazebo, the woman?”
“Shut up,” he says as I’m pulled to my feet.
“That’s not the Ghost,” one of the soldiers says. “That’s the bloody impostor.”
A confusion of voices follows. I squeeze my eyes shut, then quickly open them again and try to find the woman. She’s turned away and is descending the steps from the gazebo.
“The girl?” one soldier asks. Another says, “The Ghost isn’t so clumsy,” and another, “The Ghost isn’t so short.”
My eyes follow the woman. Turn around. Turn around.
The soldiers fall silent. Blackflame strides toward us with fury written across his face.
“What about the others?” he asks, hardly sparing me a glance.
“We’re still searching,” one of the soldiers responds.
“Who is that woman?” I demand, straining at the soldiers’ grip, trying to see past Blackflame.
He must not hear me properly, or maybe he can’t imagine that at this precise moment I couldn’t care less about him. Or me. “That was very foolish, girl. Did you really think you could escape me?”
I launch myself to the side without a thought for the mage in front of me. I only make it a step or so, given the number of soldiers hanging off of me, but it’s just enough to see the woman’s back as she departs, her shining black hair cascading over cobalt and turquoise silk. And I know, I know it’s her. But I still need to hear it.
“Her,” I gasp, wishing I could point. “Who is that woman?”
He shifts uncertainly, glancing over his shoulder and then back at me, momentarily forgetting his ire. “Do you know her?”
“Who is she?”
Blackflame smiles, a lazy turn of his lips that brings me back to myself: restrained by soldiers and at his mercy. “That is my current pet. Hotaru Brokensword. A pretty thing, isn’t she? Though a bit obtuse. It’s always helpful when they are so exceptionally blind and stupid.” He chuckles, watching me.
Even though it’s the name I expect, even though I recognized her the moment I saw her, the name slams through me with the force of an earthquake. It’s a name I know as well as my own, just as I would know the fall of her hair, the way she walks. Just as anyone would know their own mother.
“Oh,” Blackflame says, his voice sweetly malicious. “She’s still alive. Had you heard differently?” He leans closer. “She’s simply chosen to stay with me.”
“Liar.” I bare my teeth at him, wishing I had Kol’s fangs and could rip his throat out.
“What do you care?” he asks. He pauses to study me, really study me. If he hasn’t recognized me yet, I’m certainly not telling him.
“Brokensword has more honor than you,” I say to distract him. “She can’t know what you really are. She can’t know what you’ve done here.”
He laughs. “Ah, but she does. She knows precisely what I do.”
I shake my head. He can’t be right. My mother would never — but I just saw her a handful of minutes ago, healthy and strong, and unrestrained. No one’s forcing her to stay here. If she wanted to find me, she could have. How hard can it be for a mage of her caliber to find her own daughter? But she hadn’t bothered.
Blackflame leans toward me. “She has even become an advisor of sorts to me.”
The fight goes out of me. I sag in the soldiers’ grip, sick with his words, with my mother’s desertion. Blackflame chuckles as he watches me. I pretend to ignore him. The anger that burned through me has gone out, quenched by the realization that my mother chose this life over me. Chose Blackflame.
Still smiling, he gestures to the soldiers. “Put her under guard and find the Degaths. I don’t care what you have to do, I want them back.”
An hour later, I stand with my arms clamped against my side and stare at the cobbles in Blackflame’s courtyard, trying not to consider what Kol has in store for me. I’ve spent what felt like a small eternity under close watch in a cell of a room, unable to coax any information from my guards. Blackflame’s guards were almost immediately relieved by Kol’s: the fang lord’s bid to assure he doesn’t lose his claim on me in the unfolding chaos of the Degaths’ escape.
Kol is, of course, far more dangerous than his escort, but I suppose he must keep up appearances. What human lord would travel alone? The guards are useful, at least, for handling prisoners.
The guards straighten to attention as Kol and Blackflame cross the courtyard toward us. In the gardens, Blackflame was calm, still relatively certain the Degaths wouldn’t evade recapture. Now he vibrates with pent-up fury. I keep my face down so that he doesn’t notice my pleasure. They just have to make it to the tea house I told Tarek about, and they’ll be all right. With the help of a mage-healer, Alia should recover.
They have a much better chance of surviving than I do.
“If I had not already given you away,” Blackflame tells me, “I would look forward to taking you apart, bone by bone, sinew by sinew.”
Is it strange to be grateful that I’ve been traded like a goat, especially when I can hardly expect mercy from Kol? I glance toward my unlikely savior. Kol has added boots and soft leather gloves to his attire of the night before. As further protection from the potentially damaging rays of the sun, he wears a short cloak that brushes his thighs, the hood pulled up to shade his face. But I still catch the faint quirk of his lips revealing his amusement. What does he care if his meal escaped? He still has me. If I had the energy, I would fear him, fear that smile, but as my delight in the Degaths’ escape fades, I feel hollowed out, my heartbeat echoing in my lungs.
My mother is here. And well. My mother, who was supposed to be dead, who came here for help and never returned. I swallow the bile in my throat, barely registering Blackflame’s threats, his ire washing over me like water over a stone. Four years I’ve thought her dead, scrabbling to find my next meal and keep a roof over my head, while she has dressed in silk and wandered sunlit gardens. How could she have forgotten me? How could she be here?
Blackflame turns on his heel, leading the way from the courtyard. Kol falls into step beside him, the guards prodding me along after them. Instead of approaching the gates, or calling for horses, we make our way through the gardens to an unpretentious square in which a quaint stone arch has been built, a hedge grown up around it. The white wooden gate, latched closed with a hook, gives the impression of some prosaic, feminine hand at work. Which is ridiculous. There is nothing prosaic or gendered about a magic portal.
I lick cracked lips, staring at it. I could be wrong, of course. I haven’t seen one up close in years. But why else would we come to a stop before this particular arch? What other purpose could it serve than to allow Kol and his men to arrive and leave unremarked, without a carriage and, now that it occurs to me to look, with no more baggage than a few large packs strapped to the guards’ shoulders?
Blackflame unhooks the gate, swinging it open. He casually sets his hand on the stone of the arch, his lips shaping a single word. The view through the gate shivers, rippling as if what fills the gate is more water than air. Kol nods to Blackflame and steps forward, the light bending around him and pushing him through to another place. It is as if the sunlight has suddenly failed him.
The guards follow after Kol, and before I can think whether it would do any good to struggle, I’m shoved into the portal. The sunlight falters within the portal, bright strands spidering out to wrap around me in a vortex of darkness streaked with light, intertwined and spun into a whirlwind of impossibility. I am pulled and twisted, invisible hands squeezing my lungs until I think my heart will stop, and then I am propelled by unseen forces out — into the normal world.
I stumble slightly, but the guards around me are equally disoriented, and they allow me to regain my balance on my own. I take a gasping breath and smell the fresh scent of pine. It shocks me in a way that Kol’s stronghold, a towering edifice of ugly gray stone rising above us, does not. There are no pines in Karolene, nor on the nearby mainland. I inhale again, but catch no trace of the sea.
Kol pauses on the path leading out of the muddy courtyard where we arrived. He glances back to me. I look away, fighting the urge to turn all the way around and see what the other end of the portal connects to — a doorway? Or another arch? And can it be activated from this side? But then, even if it can, I don’t know how to work one, and I don’t want to risk the consequences of bungling it. I’ve heard more than enough stories of left-behind limbs or people accidentally falling off cliffs they never meant to step out on.
“Bring her inside,” Kol says. “Have her fed and see that no one touches her.”
Fed? How uncommonly generous. It must not be a kindness at all, I think as the guards take me to the kitchens, just a different approach to brutality. But where is the cruelty in feeding a person? It’s only as I sit on a bench, a bowl of stew warm in my hands and a heel of bread beside me, that I realize the viciousness of it: if I am strong, I will be able to fight longer and harder before succumbing to the death he has planned for me.
But no fear of the future can stop me from tearing into my food. It’s a simple meat and vegetable stew seasoned with herbs I have no names for. Despite the seasoning, it tastes bland as oatmeal cooked in water. Where am I that the people know nothing of spice? Still, all I’ve eaten in the last day is the food I’d snared from Rafiki’s house. While a meal a day is about average for me, after the day and night I’ve had, I’m ravenous.
A servant refills my bowl twice. None of the cooking staff speak to me, or to the two soldiers who remain with me, eating their own meals while they wait. But the workers talk amongst themselves, and their language is not one I’ve heard before. Karolene’s language has become the lexicon of trade for most of the Eleven Kingdoms, what with the vast majority of shipping routes passing through the island’s port. Both Kol and the guards he brought on his visit speak it fluently. But it is not the language of conversation here. Further, I cannot place the looks of the people. They are light-skinned, though not as light as the northmen, their hair ranging from sandy brown to deep chestnut.
I am too tired to grapple with the possibilities. I can worry about it once I’ve gotten home. There are much greater things to worry about than that for now.
By the end of my meal, I’m slow and heavy with contentment. Regardless of what cruelty Kol may intend in granting me this reprieve, I plan to take full advantage of it. As the soldiers set down their bowls, I rise, ready for them to escort me on.
“Where are we going?” I ask, hoping their meal has loosened their tongues.
“A holding cell,” one of them says, his voice gruff.
“And then?”
We leave the kitchen in silence. Finally, he says, “To the tower room, I expect.”
A tower. Not the easiest place to escape. I watch him from the corner of my eye, attempting to assess whether his expression is any grimmer than before. “What’s there?”
He doesn’t answer. It’s the other one, a younger man with an ugly gleam to his eye, who says, “You’ll see soon enough. We’ll be listening for your screams.”
“Oh,” I say, pretending good humor, “I wouldn’t wait around for that if I were you.”
“You’ll scream,” the younger one says. His smile makes my blood run cold. “Won’t she, Ger?”
“Only if she fights it,” the other soldier says.
We’ve reached the holding cells, a stretch of rooms with bars as their fourth wall, lining a hall that’s bookended by a blank wall at one end and a guard room at the other. I’ll be stuck here as long as I’m too weak to take on the contingent of guards assigned to the cells.
“She’s a fighter,” the younger soldier says in response. “Just think of the screams we’ll hear.”
The first soldier doesn’t answer as he unlocks an empty cell, but his hand on my arm as he guides me in is unexpectedly gentle. That unsettles me more than anything he might have said.