Nothing would catch their scent over the greasy, meaty reek of tallow.
Raef had snuck them into the Guild District and used the shadowknife to open the gate to the courtyard where the chandlers’ cauldrons simmered, rendering fat for candles.
He’d barely slept, stirring at any sound. They’d been careful to rise and leave before sunrise, before the apprentices caught them.
Now he led Kinos back toward Boat Town, afraid of what they’d find.
There would be fresh ghosts tonight.
A black scar ran the length of the bay. Many of the wrecks still smoldered. Raef couldn’t see Eleni’s boat through the smoke.
He wanted to believe that she’d made it, but the sight of the dazed, wandering people stilled his heart.
He’d done this. He’d stolen Kinos and brought him to the part of the city most likely to burn when the knights pursued them.
“This isn’t your fault,” Kinos said, settling a hand on Raef’s shoulder. “They did this, not you.”
Raef reached up to squeeze Kinos’s hand.
“How did you know what I was thinking?” he asked.
“It was all over your face,” Kinos said. “Let’s go check on Eleni.”
They followed the scar.
Some of the citizens tried to salvage possessions from the burned ships they’d been forced to scuttle the last time the knights had upended their lives. Now many of them would have nothing, and nowhere to live.
There were more than a few bodies, all burned and bloodless.
Raef exhaled, squeezed between the two keels, and froze. His heart stopped. He barely noticed Kinos squeezing past him, nudging him aside.
The scar of the hound’s fire marked the streets, but the garish ship remained untouched.
Raef climbed the planks, hopeful, but didn’t risk calling out for Eleni. It might not be safe.
He stepped into the wheelhouse and wished for the first time that he had no shadowsight, that he was as blind in the dark as anyone else.
Eleni sat slumped in her chair, her old crossbow on her lap, its bolt driven into her neck. The shades had come, drank her blood, and left her dry as a husk.
“Raef?” Kinos called from behind him. “What is it?”
Raef stumbled back into the light.
“Why?” he asked, voice rough and choking.
Kinos did not answer. He went to look, squinting at the interior.
“They killed her.”
He clenched his fists hard enough to feel his nails almost draw blood. Maybe he should. Maybe he should cut himself and see if she could talk to him.
“She was just an old woman,” he said. “Why kill her?”
“Raef . . .” Kinos tugged at his sleeve, forcing him to look away. “You don’t know it was them.”
“Who else?” he asked, jerking free. He waved a hand at the smoldering slum.
So she’d told fortunes, so she hadn’t really been blind. They hadn’t had to kill her.
Eleni had claimed to have magic, sure, but palm and card reading weren’t from the demons. She’d faked all of it, not that the knights would see a difference.
Black and red and blue mixed in Raef’s blood with such force that he swayed on his feet as the tremor came over him.
“There’s no fire,” Kinos said quietly. “The knights would have burned her.”
“Who then?” Raef asked, but even as he said it, he knew. Realization doused his rage. “No. No.”
“What?”
“We have to go,” Raef said. “Right now.”
“Why? What is it?”
“There’s no fire. You’re right. The knights didn’t do this.”
But Hyperion had other servants. They could not call the flames because it required a purity they did not possess.
“An Inquisitor,” Raef whispered.
Knights were dogmatic, but naive. They could be deceived, avoided, but an Inquisitor was like Raef—sneaky. They were Hyperion’s spies, and more than a match for him.
“How do you know?” Kinos said.
“You said the Hierarch was there,” Raef said. “Whoever you are to them, to her, you’re that important.”
“Where do we go?” Kinos asked, eyes wide with fear. “To Maurin’s?”
“No.” Raef shook his head. “I can’t bring that down on her. I won’t.”
“Where then?” Kinos asked.
“The only place we can,” Raef said, leading Kinos back toward the top of the city.
They hadn’t gone far before Kinos reached out and took Raef’s hand.
“It’s not that dark,” Raef said. “You can see.”
“I just wanted to.”
Kinos dipped his face to look at Raef through his hair. His smile faltered with an unasked question.
Raef looked at their entwined fingers and squeezed. Kinos smiled again.
The bit of dream from the night before, the lesson with Father Hanel, echoed in Raef’s memory as they walked.
They rose through the city, back through the market. Raef kept his senses tuned for anyone following them or taking note of their passing.
“Keep your hood up,” he said, tugging his own forward with his free hand.
“What did you mean?” Kinos asked, mirroring the gesture. “About the only place we can go?”
“We need shelter,” Raef said. “I need time to think, to figure out what to do.”
“Where is that?” Kinos asked. “Back to the chandlers?”
“No,” Raef said. “It’s too visible. They’d spot us and tell the Watch. They’re way too rich to tolerate the likes of us.”
The chandlers were the prince’s new favorites, freshly moneyed and anxious to buy his respect. The graycloaks were already after Kinos, and Raef wouldn’t trust the city’s ruler on any point, not after he’d opened the city gates to the knights.
Eleni was gone. Maurin was out.
The only place left was the one he’d avoided until now.
“Home,” Raef said. “I have to take you home.”
“Where is that?” Kinos asked.
“It’s best if I just show you,” Raef said.
He led Kinos upward, over bridges, toward the prince’s palace and Hyperion’s golden dome. In another life it would have been a chance for him to show Kinos the upper city.
Versinae was as awake as she got these days. The clouds were thin. People ate on the go, picking up bread or a meal from bakery windows and eating as they walked. Some cafés had patrons. They sipped tea or coffee, ignoring the shuttered businesses around them and trying to pretend that all was normal.
A cobbler eyed their shoes, hopeful for some work, but Raef waved him off. The barbers were long closed. Long hair and beards had become the fashion since the Grief had risen. Few wanted to risk a nicked ear or scalp. Raef’s own hair curled over his ears.
“Raef . . .” Kinos muttered, nodding to the looming temple, the golden dome.
“It’s all right,” Raef said, stepping sideways to nudge Kinos’s shoulder with his. “Trust me.”
“I do,” Kinos said, giving Raef’s hand a reassuring squeeze.
“We’re going to walk past like it’s no big deal,” Raef said. He sniffed, making certain the tallow still cloaked their scent.
The priests had come into the plaza for noon blessings. Now they lingered to pray over injuries and ill fortunes, most of which their god had caused. It made Raef’s face hurt to return their smiles.
They crossed the plaza. The city gates were near. They could just keep going, but the marsh beyond the walls was as alien to Raef as the other side of the horizon.
He steered Kinos away from the imposing, granite arch and its portcullis of heavy iron.
They were behind the Garden’s wall now, in the little alley of shrines to lesser gods. They lined the city wall, tucked among a row of withered cypress trees. Some were crushed, taken down by the tower’s fall. Most were just abandoned.
The Grief was thin despite the shadow cast by the city and the walls. That was a small blessing. Raef turned to the wall of charred, uneven stone. Three stories tall, it loomed.
He’d avoided it, told himself he’d never come back, but he didn’t see a choice now. The hounds could not scale these walls, and there might be answers to the mysteries, to the shadowknife, to the vision of the woman in the alley, to Kinos.
Raef found a spot.
“No one will see us if we climb here.”
“This is it?” Kinos stepped forward to run his fingers over the stone, feeling for holds and gaps in the mortar. “This is where you grew up?”
“Yeah,” Raef said. “In the tower. In her tower. I was an oblate.”
“Your family gave you away?” Kinos asked.
Raef nodded.
“It was common then. Families donated an extra or unwanted kid, usually to earn favor from the goddess. Phoebe took anyone. That’s why most of the kids were orphans.”
“You have no idea who your parents are?” Kinos asked.
“No.” Raef trailed out his fingers, felt the cold stone. “I don’t think about it that much, to be honest. Her tower was my home. I know what they say, that her priests summoned demons, that she betrayed the other gods, but it wasn’t like that. They weren’t like that. They—we—just collected books and watched the stars. We prayed a lot.”
Kinos stared upward, to the sky beyond.
“Do you think it’s safe?” he asked.
“It’s the only place I can think of,” Raef said. “No one will look for us here.”
It wasn’t like the tremble, what came over him. It was more like those times when the city was too loud, or too quiet. The rum didn’t help those moments. It was like his skin didn’t fit. It tingled and he spun inside it. The only thing that helped was to sit or lie in the dark, to try and force all the noise from his ears and all feeling from his body.
“Do you want me to go first?” Kinos asked.
“Can you climb it?” Raef asked.
“It’s a very rocky island,” Kinos said, eyes lighting with the challenge. “Just watch.”
He moved up the uneven stone with a speed Raef envied, finding divots for his hands and toes, leaving tracks in the char.
Raef had only come back once, when the ground still smoldered, before they’d built the wall. He took a long breath and let it out slowly. It was time to put away his fear. It was time to see.
He scrambled upward, following Kinos’s path and paused at the top to catch his breath, pressing himself flat between two crenels in case anyone looked up.
From here, all of Versinae stretched beneath them, from the dome to the bay. Raef could look down but did not. He put it off as long as he could, descending slowly, pausing here and there to catch his breath.
Raef let go and dropped the final distance. He landed with a thud among the ruins of his past.