Shimmer and Burn Read online

  “Sainted mothers and their virgin daughters,” Tobek murmurs.

  I look up, stomach clenching. For a moment, he was almost Cadence, and I have to forcibly remind myself that he’s not my sister, that this is not the Brim.

  And these bodies are not my fault.

  Bryn collects herself, a hand pressed to her chest. She swallows hard and lifts her chin, red hair gleaming in the muddy sunlight. “Scorchers?” she asks flatly, holding out a slat of wood that must have barred the doors shut from the outside.

  North doesn’t answer. He clutches Tobek’s shoulder and gently moves him back before crouching to see deeper into the cellar. He withdraws, swearing softly as he presses an arm to his mouth to escape the smell beginning to rise. The village was small, but so is the Brim, and I know how many people can fit in tight spaces.

  Still shaky, North presses his palm to the open door. “There’s your spell, Tobek,” he says softly. “It must have protected the house from being burned.” Magic glows white beneath his hand and he shifts, steadying his weight as his fingers tighten into claws. Silver threads begin unraveling through the charred wood, slim at first, thickening into knots and braided twists. North coaxes the spell loose, thread by thread, winding them around his fingers, where they glow like starlight before dimming.

  Sweat beads his face when he finishes, and when he steps back, he’s shaking. Tobek darts forward, eager to offer a shoulder and to take the heavy crossbow, and North leans into him with a mumbled thanks. He fumbles through his pockets and retrieves a large stone, reversing the process, wrapping the rock with magic like a bobbin of thread. By the time he finishes, his hands are bent, more crooked than before, as if the act of transference swells his joints.

  “Why are you moving it again?” I ask.

  “I don’t trust myself to hold unspooled spells,” he says breathlessly. “There’s far too much risk that something snagged in the process and would start to fray inside me.” To Tobek, he asks, “Is there anything else?”

  Tobek hesitates before nodding once, as if in apology.

  North wets his lips, eyebrows furrowed. “We’ll bring them out,” he says at last. A trembling hand gestures to the bared dirt behind us. “Make rows. Mark the ones with magic and I’ll double-back when I’m done and start siphoning.”

  Tobek tears off his jacket and balls it aside, out of the way. “Yes, sir.”

  “We don’t have time for this,” Bryn says.

  “We don’t have the luxury to waste magic,” North counters, cuffing his shirtsleeves. “Your binding spell isn’t nearly enough to get me through the Burn in one piece, Miss Dossel, so unless you want to improve your original offer, I’m not leaving an ounce of it behind.”

  “You agreed to the terms presented,” says Bryn. “New Prevast in seven days.”

  “Then lend a hand and we’ll be done faster.”

  Bryn stares at him, incredulous. “I will not.”

  “There’s still smoke in the air,” North says, pointing. His hair falls forward, framing his forehead. “This was a recent attack. We won’t be the only ones who feel the magic left behind. The hellborne will arrive soon, or fortune hunters. You want to leave? Get your hands dirty.”

  They stare each other down, standing toe to toe in the dirt. Resigned, frustrated—must everything be a competition of power?—I edge past Bryn, hooking the first body under the arms. The chill of death lies dormant beneath the lingering heat trapped in the woman’s clothes, and goose bumps shiver down my back as I pull her body over the lip of the cellar and away from the house.

  North watches me with a guarded expression as I carefully position the woman, folding her arms across her chest, adjusting her dress to cover her legs. My prayers are rusty, half forgotten, but I manage a mumbled blessing before returning to the cellar.

  “Don’t touch the skin,” North says, falling in line beside me. I nod my understanding and we work without speaking while Bryn prowls an impatient line between the dead, arms folded and skirts flaring at her feet. She throws glances to the sky with increasing agitation, and her nerves spread to me. I move faster, leaving bodies with arms akimbo in favor of speed, eager to return to the wagon and the road north.

  Once we’ve emptied the cellar, Tobek marks several of the bodies with a smeared ash X across their foreheads. He then empties their pockets and takes anything of interest, meeting my stare with a bump of his shoulder and a guilty half smile that quickly fades.

  “We should burn the bodies,” I say, as North follows behind Tobek, deftly unraveling the magic he finds. It’s a quick process, the spells barely more than remnants. “The hellborne will turn them into scrap if we don’t.”

  “Why not?” Bryn throws her hands in the darkening air. “Or better yet, why don’t we just bury them? That won’t take too long.”

  “No.” North misses her sarcasm. “Some of them could be infected. It would poison the ground.”

  Bryn gives him a withering look.

  “There are matches in the wagon,” Tobek offers meekly. His pockets bulge.

  “I’ll get them,” I say, already turning.

  “Above the stove!” North calls after me.

  I break into a run, fleeing the sickly sweet guilt of knowing that burning these bodies does not absolve me from leaving Loomis to be torn apart like an animal.

  Hauling myself into the wagon, I brace my hands to either side of the stairwell and force myself to stop, to breathe. I close my eyes and count to ten, but when I open them, my heart crashes.

  A black crow feather sits on the table in a hard slant of smoky sunlight, its barbs glowing red and gold with smoldering embers.

  Perrote.

  I twist with a shock of adrenaline, expecting to see him and his entire council riding up the road, ready to attack and take me prisoner. But there’s nothing, not even a bird overhead.

  Numbly, I step further into the wagon and stare down at the feather. It spins in the draft I create, leaving a spill of ashes across the table. It’s too deliberately placed to be anything but a warning.

  He knows where we are.

  “What’s that?”

  I jump, swearing loudly as Tobek pokes his head in the doorway behind me. He frowns at my nerves, craning to look.

  I open my mouth but falter. If Bryn knew her father was closing in, she might sacrifice the mission.

  She might sacrifice me.

  No. I’m too close for a change of heart, too close for cowardice. Three more days is all I need. Somehow we’ll convince Prince Corbin that Brindaigel exists, that there’s magic enough to save his kingdom. She’ll get her alliance and I’ll get my freedom, and as much as the idea makes my skin crawl, helping Bryn win is the only chance I have of winning too. I need her to save Cadence and I need North to get us to New Prevast. Neither one of them can know how close Perrote is.

  “It’s nothing,” I say, crushing the feather beneath my palm, guilt aching in my veins.

  Tobek lifts his eyebrows. “North said to bring some oil.”

  I nod, too quickly, before I rummage for the matches on the shelf above the stove. Soot cakes my hand and I resist the temptation of wiping it on my skirt.

  “In the box,” Tobek says, giving me another frown.

  I force a shaky smile and find the small silver tinderbox worn smooth from use. I don’t look at the table, grabbing a canister of lamp oil in my other hand before I rejoin Tobek.

  Bryn stands by the cellar, a stack of books at her feet. North emerges from the house moments later with even more books in hand, along with the map from above the desk, rolled and tucked in the crook of his arm.

  More unspoken conversations.

  I can’t meet his eyes. He should be warned that Perrote is almost here, but is a binding spell worth being hunted by a king when he has his own king to catch? Or would he simply cut his losses and leave us behind? Can I risk taking that chance?

  Tobek douses the bodies with oil before I strike a match and drop it. North murmurs a
prayer before all of us but Bryn gather a stack of books and move to a safer distance at the edge of the road. Within seconds, the smoke turns black and acrid; the air thickens with the smell of soured milk.

  A bird cries in the distance, spinning overhead, and although it is not a shadow crow, it raises the hairs on my arms all the same. Bryn sees me flinch and lopes her arm through mine.

  “Does it remind you of home?” she asks softly, as flames spread to the farmhouse and chew up its walls, hungry for the dry, unprotected wood.

  I frown, bemused. “What do you mean?”

  “The night my father burned your house down,” she says, tipping her head against my shoulder, snuggling closer into my arm. “Did it burn the same way?”

  I stare ahead, soot-stained fingers clenched in a fist, and don’t answer.

  Fifteen

  THAT NIGHT, I TEACH TOBEK how to throw a punch, desperate to keep my mind preoccupied and away from the growing paranoia that Perrote is simply playing with me, waiting for the right moment to strike. When we stopped to make camp, I was the one to protest, arguing both the campfire and our position in open field—under open skies—to no avail.

  “We don’t travel at night,” North had said, with utter finality, and guilt—greed—had kept me from telling him the truth.

  Three more days, I tell myself, as my eyes track the skies. Tobek exploits my distraction and lands a blow across my shoulder. Grunting with triumph, he backs up and grins, raising his hands to his chin.

  “Don’t do that,” I say, dragging my attention back to him.

  “Why not?”

  With one short strike, I hit his hand and he hits himself square in the jaw. “That’s why not.”

  North pretends to ignore us, praying with his palms flattened against the earth and his neck exposed to the sky. But his eyes cut toward me from under the fringe of his hair, and I toss my own hair back, out of my face, fully aware of his attention.

  “Try again,” I say.

  “Where’d you learn to fight like this, anyway?” Tobek asks, ducking my next swing.

  I fall back and reposition myself with a halfhearted shrug. “Previous life,” I say. Bats somersault overhead and I freeze, exhaling softly once they’ve passed.

  “Sounds like a tragedy.”

  “Give me a kronet and I’ll make it a comedy.”

  “I’m an apprentice,” says Tobek. “I don’t get paid.” An eyebrow arches, mirroring the curve of his mouth. “Play you cards for the story?”

  “I’m not playing cards with a boy who admits to cheating.”

  Tobek dives for my stomach and I barely sidestep a punch to the gut. “That was a previous life,” he quips, breathless. His thick hair sticks to his forehead and he rakes it back with dusty fingers. “And anyway, the skill is in cheating.”

  Snorting, I adjust my coat. “I’ll bet.”

  He lunges again and I easily knock him to his knees. Tobek bows his head, annoyed, touching his forehead to the earth in an eerie mimicry of North.

  “Good god,” says Bryn, “again?”

  Tobek’s head snaps up with interest as she emerges from the wagon with a blanket clutched around her shoulders. She looks pale, drowsy; she slept all afternoon, which gave me a chance to search through North’s books for any information on Avinea’s allies and enemies during the war, but the books were as useless as his maps.

  Beyond our own borders, Brindaigel doesn’t seem to exist.

  She pulls the blanket tighter, eying North with open disdain. “I don’t think anyone’s listening.”

  “I don’t think it matters,” I say.

  “Then what’s the point?”

  Tobek pushes to his feet, brushing grass off his trousers before flexing his hands, itchy for a chance to show off. He begins bouncing on his heels, fists at his chin again. “The point is to thank the gods for another day we didn’t die,” he says with a tentative half smile: He’s serious if she is, but he’s joking if she’s not.

  North kisses the backs of both his flattened hands before sitting back on his heels. “It’s an act of gratitude, Miss Dossel.”

  She scoffs. “For what? You’re killing yourself to save the world while Corbin waits for his crown to be handed to him. Do you think he’ll thank the gods before he rips out his father’s heart? Will he thank you?”

  Tobek stops bouncing, aghast at her sacrilege.

  “Pride breeds arrogance,” North warns.

  “And a thrifty man becomes parsimonious. Pay your apprentice,” she says.

  North rocks back onto his feet and stands, dusting off his trousers. “Tobek, do you want a wage?”

  Tobek hesitates, torn between the open desire to do whatever Bryn commands, and a deeper loyalty to his master. “I—I don’t . . .”

  “Stand up for yourself,” says Bryn. “He takes advantage of you. You pitch tents and drive wagons and make dinner. That’s not an apprentice, that’s a servant. You’re no better than Faris, and that,” she says, eyes cutting toward me, “is a tragedy.”

  “This afternoon—” Tobek starts.

  “And yet you trust your servant with your life,” North says.

  Bryn smiles. “She was compensated for that trust because I appreciate the value of her skills. As I appreciate anybody for the skills they have that I do not.” She steps down from the wagon and joins us by the fire, eyes on Tobek. “Which is why I want you to show me how to shoot a crossbow.”

  “Oh,” Tobek says, relieved. Flattered. “I can do that.”

  I wipe my mouth, annoyed by her intrusion and by his eager willingness to abandon my lesson to offer her one instead—a lesson I doubt she even needs. “Didn’t Pem teach you that too?” I ask darkly, watching North as he heads into the wagon, pausing on the steps to scratch Darjin between the ears. With a storm coming, he and Tobek plan to sleep inside tonight, and the thought of his proximity unsettles me.

  “Who’s Pem?” Tobek retrieves his crossbow and quiver from the other side of the fire. He makes a show of testing the string, counting his bolts. Preening for attention.

  Bryn shrugs, dropping the blanket to her feet. “Nobody,” she says, eyes sliding to me in warning a moment before blood fills my mouth as she bites her own tongue.

  Tobek groans. “Don’t tell me. Previous life, another tragedy?”

  “My life is a fairy tale,” Bryn says sardonically. “And Faris never actually told you her story.”

  “Nothing to tell,” I say, spitting out a mouthful of blood. “There was a girl who knew a boy and had a sister. One of them was killed, one of them was cursed, and one of them . . .” I swallow hard, picturing the ash and ember feather in the wagon this afternoon. Three more days, I tell myself. “One of them is still waiting to be saved.”

  “Then I win,” Tobek says, waving his hand. “You both have been coddled.”

  “And you haven’t?” Bryn gives him a withering look. “North practically tucks you into bed and kisses you goodnight.”

  Tobek flushes, throwing his shoulders back. Good, I think; fight back. Don’t give her power over you. “Know what this is?” he asks, pulling his collar away from his neck, revealing three black dots ringed with red.

  “Meaningless?” Bryn pulls a bolt from his quiver and drags her fingers through the feathers of the shaft.

  “It’s the mark of my first master,” Tobek says, proud. Defiant.

  I lean closer, stomach clenching. “You were a slave.”

  Bryn looks up sharply. “Are you infected?”

  “No! I mean, I was, but”—he wets his lips and glances toward the wagon, tugging his collar back into place—“not anymore.” Setting the crossbow down, he pulls out the worn deck of cards he carries in his vest, nervously tilting them in his hands. “A few years ago, I got caught cheating the wrong man,” he says. “He got me hooked on poison and wouldn’t give me any more unless I kept working. We ran a scam of Crowns.” A wan smile flits across his face. “Was pretty good at it too.”

  I know t
he game. Requiring no skill to play, it’s a game of chance and cheating, and an easy way to trick noblemen out of a handful of tretkas down in the Brim.

  “So what happened?” asks Bryn. She picks up his crossbow and sights down the tiller.

  “One day he was just gone. Not long after, North found me begging opium in Cortheana.” He says it with a shrug, feigning indifference, like the boys who live in the streets who pretend they don’t care that there’s nothing to eat, nowhere to sleep, no one to hold them and say everything’s all right.

  But I recognize the worship in his face because I saw it so much in Cadence, in the way she idolized Thaelan. I kept food in her stomach and clothes on her back, but Thaelan carried a sword and taught her how to hold it. I was the sister. He was the hero.

  “North removed the infection?” I ask.

  Another shrug. “Any transferent could do it if they really wanted, but most won’t. It’s complicated, and takes time. Anytime you touch dead magic like that, with all its loose edges, you risk spilling some of it into your own blood. But North took a chance.” Lowering his head, he toes circles in the dirt. “He saved my life. And my soul. He turned a half-bred monster into something not so bad.” He looks to Bryn for approval, even as the fear of condemnation shadows his dark eyes.

  Bryn doesn’t even look at him. “So how do you shoot this?” she asks.

  “Aim and release,” he says, sighing, running a hand through his hair.

  “Show me,” says Bryn.

  He smiles.

  Excusing myself, I retreat to the safety of the wagon, to where North reads with one knee braced against the table and his chair rocked back on two legs. He chews his lower lip and pretends not to notice me.

  I sink into the chair across from him, unnerved. The Brim was rarely ever silent and I feel especially vulnerable tonight, to be so cut off from the world. If Perrote were to attack, we’d have nowhere to run.

  North cracks the spine of his book, tilting his head to see me over the cover. “Everything all right?”