Shimmer and Burn Page 2

  “Lunge, parry, block, and thrust!” She grunts as her arm cuts the motions with a hiss, nightgown stretched wide as her legs shift into place.

  “You’ve been practicing!” Thaelan grins. “Good girl! I hereby promote you to first mate.”

  “Captain,” she corrects, straightening. “First mates are for pirates and I’m going to be a solider. Just like you.”

  She used to beg me to buy her pirate stories from a peddler who remembered life before the war, when the oceans surrounding our island continent were filled with merchants and mercenaries. But pirates lost their appeal the same time I did, which is just as well. The peddler and his stories disappeared months ago.

  “And then,” Cadence continues, all seriousness, “I’m going to marry you.”

  Thaelan arches his eyebrows and meets my eyes over the top of her head.

  “Get dressed,” I say, turning her toward our bureau. That’s another conversation for another day.

  “Are we moving again?” Cadence tears off her nightgown after confirming Thaelan can’t see her from behind the bedsheet I hold between us—to ensure that I’m not peeking, either. But I do peek as she struggles into her dress, mourning the bones that show through her skin when she bends forward. Like its limes, the Brim grows its children stilted; too much dirt and not enough sunlight.

  “Something like that,” I say, buttoning the back of her dress as she holds her tangled curls up and out of the way. I’ve barely finished before she twists out of reach, grabbing Thaelan’s hand instead of my own. She’s too big but he still swings her on his back, leading the charge downstairs, into the night.

  Thaelan boldly marches through the street whereas I resist the urge to stick to the shadows as we head into the sleepier merchant neighborhood of the Ridge, to a narrow alley hidden from any shadow crows by the close-knit corners of the buildings that frame its length. Setting Cadence down, Thaelan casts a glance over his shoulder before he pries open a drainage grate. After waiting a beat to ensure no one heard, he turns to me, hand outstretched and an expectant smile on his face.

  All at once, I realize what we’re doing. Cadence stands above a sewer drain in the middle of the night while I clutch our entire life in a tattered bag. The giddy haze of Thaelan’s kisses fades, replaced with the reality of the guards I can hear patrolling the streets.

  Thaelan’s smile evaporates. He starts to shake his head even before I speak. Standing, he frames my face in his hands. “Don’t you dare change your mind,” he says. “Not now, not after you said yes.”

  “But we have nothing—”

  “I have everything I need.”

  “You need more than me,” I whisper, plaintive.

  He stares at me, expression dimming into that familiar resignation. Jaw clenched, Thaelan releases me and steps back, rubbing his mouth with one hand.

  “Tomorrow,” I try, forcing my voice bright. “We’ll go tomorrow. You’ll have time to pack, to plan—”

  “I’ll go with you,” Cadence says. She steps forward. “I’ll go right now.”

  Thaelan exhales softly and reaches for her, hugging her as tight as he can. “I know,” he says.

  Candlelight twinkles in the distance and my stomach tightens with sudden longing. The women I work with often joke about what life is like in the streets above us, but we never talk about ourselves. There’s no point. Life in the Brim holds no mystery. We’ll either die slowly like my father, or all at once, like the boy from the raid the night before.

  I can’t see the stars from here but it doesn’t matter: I don’t want to make wishes to the gods or their sainted virtues anymore. I want to be strong enough to survive all on my own, and staying in the Brim will kill me. It will kill Cadence.

  Decided, I step around Thaelan, lowering myself into the sewer grate, landing with a soft splash in an inch of brackish water. Craning my head, I meet Thaelan’s startled gaze.

  “Are you coming?” I ask.

  His grin is contagious; I can’t help but smile back as he lowers Cadence into my arms and splashes down beside us, stretching to drag the grate back into place. Cadence clings to his side and he dutifully carries her as we hurry uphill, toward the castle and its dungeons. As we reach the mouth of the tunnel, a clock chimes in the streets overhead.

  Thaelan stops and I slam into his back.

  He swears, mumbling an apology for his language as he turns to face me. “Head count,” he says, and my stomach falls. In the adrenaline of committing treason, I had forgotten our first enemy: the barracks curfew. Long before Thaelan mapped the tunnels beneath the castle, he mapped all the alleys back to the barracks, timing each route in order to maximize every last second of our stolen time together.

  We forgot to watch the clock.

  Swallowing hard, Thaelan surveys the tunnel left and right, debating. “We’ll just keep going,” he says at last, lowering Cadence to her feet. She resists, clutching his arm. “They’ll search the taverns and brothels before they think to look down here. We have a head start.”

  “But they will come looking for you. No. Make head count,” I say, almost relieved. “Grab whatever you can and come back. Weapons. Money. Food. You’ve snuck out a million times before.”

  Thaelan nods as he pulls me closer, his arm hooked around my neck. “Keep going,” he whispers in my ear. “I won’t be far behind. I’ll find you, Faris.” Then, even quieter, “I love you.”

  I hug him back, tight as I can, before he pulls away. Handing me the crumpled page of coded directions, he pries Cadence loose and backs away, flashing us another smile, the kind that makes his dimple emerge, before he turns away.

  Cadence takes a step after him. “Wait! I want to go with you!”

  I hold her back, struggling to read the lines on the vellum in the murky light. “You have to stay with me.”

  “A captain never abandons her general,” Cadence growls, breaking loose, splashing out of reach. War blazes across her face as she glares at me: He loves me but didn’t even say good-bye to her.

  “Cadence,” I warn.

  She starts running.

  Swearing, I follow, Thaelan’s directions balled in one hand. “Slow down! You’ll get lost!” We both will.

  She doesn’t listen, calling after Thaelan, her voice too loud, too obvious; someone will hear us. Fear rolls down my back, icy as the water at my feet. “Cadence, please.”

  She disappears ahead of me. My frantic footsteps drown out the sound of hers and I stop, straining for some indication of which way she went. More drainage grates curve ahead, but the branching tunnels around me are all dark, leading across the city and beneath the castle. I glance to the paper in my fist, useless now, without my sister.

  Mother of a sainted virgin.

  Biting the inside of my cheek, I force myself to take a deep breath, to calm down, to listen. Water splashes ahead of me, but it’s steady, pouring in from somewhere else. To my right, an irregular tempo. Footsteps.

  Relieved, I turn the corner, bracing my hand to the wall as I peer into a shroud of darkness. “Cadence?”

  A match strikes and I flinch away, holding a hand against the light. A face sharpens into view. A young man, with bright blue eyes and dark hair that falls forward, skimming the sharp angle of his cheek.

  Alistair Pembrough. The king’s executioner.

  Fear freezes me in place. Since inheriting the position last winter, Alistair has rarely made an appearance beyond the castle walls, but his reputation permeates every inch of the city. This is the boy who grew up in these tunnels, furtive as a shadow, the boy born to kill. When his eyes lock with mine above the flickering light, something flashes across his face. Recognition.

  How can he possibly know who I am?

  His match burns out as Cadence finally answers my call. Her voice is muffled but shrill, not far ahead. A lower baritone joins her, low and pleading. Thaelan. He came back for her, which means he’s not going to make head count.

  We have to run.

 
Cadence isn’t the only one to benefit from Thaelan’s training, but temporarily robbed of my night vision, my attack on Alistair is blind, instinctive.

  Accurate. I hit something soft and Alistair grunts in surprise. Emboldened, I strike again, higher than before, connecting to something better. Bone.

  His hands skate past my arm and tighten around the strap of my bag. “Wait—”

  Abandoning the bag, I run headlong into darkness, ignoring Alistair’s shouts behind me. The ground slopes up and light appears ahead, soft and diffusive. The dungeon. Thaelan, Cadence, Avinea—

  Guards.

  I skid to a stop before they notice me. Pressing myself flat to the wall, I backtrack until I reach a tunnel that splits to the left at the level of my knees, pulling myself up and out of sight. Moments later, Alistair sloshes past me, a hand pressed to his nose, my bag around his shoulder.

  “There’re too many tunnels,” one of the guards calls by way of greeting.

  “Send the rats,” another suggests.

  “Whatever you have to do,” Alistair snaps in return.

  Shadow rats. The alley-dwelling cousins of the king’s shadow crows. If they find us, the guards will descend. If they bite us, we’ll be marked by magic and the king’s provost will sniff us out no matter where we hide.

  Either way, I can’t stay here.

  I double back the way I came, but when I reach the sloping tunnel punctuated with sewer grates, I pause, mind shuffling through Thaelan’s maps. Where would he go? Where do I go? His directions got lost somewhere in the dark between here and Alistair Pembrough, and wandering into these tunnels without some guidance would be suicide.

  Downhill, I think; find an exit. Thaelan has Cadence and he’ll know what to do. He’ll know where to find me, unless—

  Unless it was easier for them to keep going. What if they’re already on their way to Avinea?

  What if they escape and I don’t?

  I stop, seized with an envy so sharp it cuts the breath out of me. Turning, I put a hand to the wall, debating the risk of calling for Thaelan and alerting the guards.

  But then I hear them coming. The shadow rats.

  I run, gaining speed as I slope downhill, stopping beneath the first grate I find, but I’m shorter than Thaelan, and my fingertips barely graze the metal. Not good enough.

  I keep moving, dodging debris and floating garbage until there, ahead, a slurry of rubble where the tunnel wall has partially collapsed, forming an unsteady stair-step. From there, I’m able to shoulder a grate open and hoist myself up, not even bothering to look for witnesses before I’m scrambling to my knees on the rough cobblestones above. An instant later, shadow rats flood the tunnel below me, their smoldering bodies hissing steam as they charge through the water, herded by a guard with a torch in one hand, a sword in the other.

  Shaking, I find my feet and collect my bearings. Alive. Unharmed.

  Alone.

  Thaelan has Cadence, I tell myself. He’ll keep her safe. They’ll make it to Avinea and one day, I’ll find them again. No matter how long it takes.

  It doesn’t take long.

  Within days, Thaelan hangs from the castle walls, cut open and left as carrion for the birds and a warning for the rest of us. Over the next few weeks, guards bolt down every drainage gate in the kingdom and fit iron bars over every open culvert.

  We live in a kingdom carved out of stone, protected from the plague through the mercy of our king. But we are also hostages here.

  And nobody leaves Brindaigel.

  Two

  THE WORKHOUSE SITS BACK FROM the dusty road, brooding and unnaturally silent. The iron side gate hangs crooked, shrieking on its rusted hinges as I squeeze it open and slip inside. Grass doesn’t grow here, in constant shadow of the mountains, and the ground is rocky, cracked, littered with trash and broken clothespins.

  I slink around to the back, avoiding the windows along the first floor. Only one light burns in the growing twilight, near the back: Mistress Ebbidens’s office, where she perches stiffly in a velvet armchair, clutching a glass of brandy as she nods in conversation with a man whose back is to me. He fills his own seat with skin to spare hanging over either side, a contrast to Mistress Ebbidens’s bony, birdlike figure.

  A labyrinth of clotheslines fills the backyard, sagging beneath the weight of damp linens and yellowing shirts. Pale, weary faces dart in between the sheets; the only sound is the clicking of wooden pins being shoved into place and the snapping of linens as they’re folded over the lines to dry.

  Nobody notices me and yet I step lightly all the same, careful as I wind through the maze, searching faces until I find the one I want. My sister stands in the cave of the three-sided laundry shed, dwarfed by a vat of soapy water that rises to her waist, her features dulled by a veil of steam curling through the chilly twilight. Like the others, she’s dressed in a starched gray dress with matching apron, both freckled with bleach. Her blond curls are matted to her head and my fingers flex against my legs, desperate to comb through her hair, to pull it out of her face and braid it down her back. I even have a ribbon for it hidden away—bright green, the color of spring grass.

  Her favorite.

  Wetting my lips, casting a glance toward the house, I kneel beside my sister. “Cadence,” I say.

  She plunges both arms into the hot water, fishing for her next garment. Burns shine on the back of her hands; her knuckles have split and healed and split so many times they’ve formed permanent scabs. Where her skin isn’t red, it’s leached unnaturally white from exposure to the chemicals they dump in the water, the perfumes they use to hide the smell of lye.

  “Number eight-six-three-nine-one,” I whisper.

  She looks up, blue eyes glassy, darkened by the spell cast across the bridge of her nose and the tops of her cheeks, fading toward her temple. It hides her freckles the way the mud used to after she fought with the Brim boys who challenged her to races and then got angry when they lost.

  “Yes?” she parrots.

  But there’s no fight in her now. There’s nothing at all.

  My smile wavers as I touch her hair, my fingers catching in her tangles. They’ll cut it off before they’ll ever bother to comb it, and sell it to a wig maker. I should have brought the ribbon.

  Reaching into my bag, I pull out a pear. “Last harvest of the season,” I say. “I almost got caught this time.”

  I force my voice light, breezy: I make it a joke. The truth is, I almost lost my position without wages. The truth is, I almost lost my hands. Luckily, the guard who saw me stealing fruit from the wagons at the end of the day also saw the half-kronet in my palm and vice outweighed his virtue.

  Not all the guards are so imbalanced.

  You promised me, Thaelan whispers, but I shove his admonishment aside with a jolt of guilt. What good are promises to the dead?

  There’s no reaction from Cadence. Not a flicker of recognition or pleasure or life in her face. The king’s spell turns all of the children into mindless golems of skin and bone, stuffed with soap and chemicals. They know nothing but work and aching bones and a room upstairs crammed with twenty-eight other children serving the punishment of their parents.

  Or their sisters.

  It’s my fault she’s here. I’m the one who left her behind to be found by an executioner and an army of rats. Every day following Thaelan’s death, I haunted the dungeon gates like a ghost, watching. Waiting. Fingers curled around the cold iron bars, knowing that my sister was somewhere beyond those walls, beyond my reach, terrified that her final thoughts would be spent on the same question my mother left me: Why? Why didn’t I come for her when she called in the sewers?

  Fourteen nights spent in prayer to the gods, to the saints, to any virgin willing to barter with me for her safety; fourteen mornings with my heart in my throat as I approached the castle, never knowing if her body would be the next to hang in warning, or if her age—if her king—would grant her leniency.

  But if I expected mercy f
or a child from Alistair Pembrough, he soon corrected me.

  Cadence wasn’t strung from the walls; she was marched on display with all the other liars and thieves and criminals too young for Alistair to murder. He stood by, arrogant and impervious while King Perrote called for family to step forward and claim their fallen children, to spare their innocence by shouldering their guilt and accepting their punishment.

  Most of them were orphans already, children of the street who knew nobody would speak for them. They didn’t even bother hoping otherwise, their faces set, a fierce and tremulous defiant as they suffered through the aching silence that followed the king’s call. But when Cadence was dragged forward, her eyes skated across the crowd, hopeful, expectant, waiting for me to speak. To save her.

  And I didn’t do it.

  I couldn’t. I’m sixteen now, old enough to die. And if I died, so would she, eventually, either out on the streets or in somebody’s bed. The time Cadence spends in the workhouse is time for me to figure out a way to save us both.

  So I didn’t say a word, even as the silence stretched into finality, even as her face crumpled with resignation, even as my heart broke, loud enough the whole world could hear.

  Even now, I struggle to tame the guilt—the hate—that rises like bile in my throat. It’s wasted here, in my stolen moment with Cadence, better suited for tonight, when I need the ammunition.

  Dropping the pear into the pocket of her apron, I kiss my sister’s knuckles before smearing a liniment salve across her chapped skin. We have matching bruises now, but while hers come from working, mine come from fighting, from hitting until I bleed. “I’ve got a match tonight,” I say, like nothing is wrong and everything’s perfect. “If I win, maybe tomorrow I’ll have enough money to bring you home.”

  Home. The word hitches, foreign on my tongue.

  Cadence stares past me, impassive to my promises. To my lies. The fading sunlight throws shadows across her face, and I push the hair away from her eyes. Wake up, I think helplessly, but she needs magic for that, and the king keeps it all locked in his castle.