Shimmer and Burn Read online

  “I’m coming back,” I tell him.

  He nods, mouth grim, and retracts his hand. “I’ll be waiting.”

  Turning, he beckons for Bryn and blanches.

  A guard stands gaping at the mouth of one of the tunnels with a torch in one hand and a small box under his arm. “Your highness?” he asks, voice hitching in bewildered question.

  The answering silence shrinks the room until we all seem to breathe the same gasp of shallow, humid air. “This isn’t part of any assigned patrol,” Alistair says at length, with an authority that belies his age. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  The guard takes an uneasy step back. “I was sent for the rat,” he says, darting a glance to the pile of ashes and dying embers, all that remains of the imploded golem. “Mercer wants the spell stone back, but . . .” A line carves between his brows. “What are you doing here?”

  Who attacks, who reacts? Bryn reaches the guard first, but Alistair is close behind and a struggle ensues, arms and legs and rising voices that swell to the rafters and unsettle the bats.

  And then, a single gasp. The sound of a knife driven half an inch low enough, pinning a man’s heart to his spine.

  The guard crumples. Blood begins to pool beneath him, catching along worn tracks in the floor that spread toward the drain. His eyes are still open, glossy and dull, all fight vanished. He could be under the king’s spell, the same as Cadence.

  But he’s not. He’s dead, the same as Thaelan.

  Is it really that easy? That fast?

  “Bryndalin,” Alistair says, choked.

  “He saw us,” Bryn says tightly. The knife hangs from her hand. “I had to.”

  “No—”

  “He saw us! He saw you!” Her voice rises and she shoves him back, leaving a bloody handprint on Alistair’s waistcoat before the knife sings between them, dangerously close to Alistair’s face. “I’ve come too far to turn back now! This is our only chance and I will not waste it for—for him.” Lowering her voice, she straightens. “It had to be done.”

  Alistair tangles his hands through his hair, his features caught in the same play of revulsion that skates down my back. “Mercer sent him,” he says, pointing to the body—to the boy, barely older than any of us. “He’s going to notice when he doesn’t come back!”

  “Just dump the body,” says Bryn. She tosses her hair back, lifting her chin. “That’s your job, isn’t it?”

  “How apropos,” Alistair growls. “You disappear, a guard ends up dead, and the mad scientist in the dungeons is the one with blood on his clothes!”

  Bryn rolls her eyes and crouches, her dark cloak pillowing behind her as she wipes her blade clean on the guard’s tunic. “You’ll be the last one my father would blame.”

  “You don’t know that, you don’t—”

  “I know my father,” she says, standing, taking a step toward him. “And he knows you. The executioner who cried the first time he killed a man.” Her voice lowers and she cradles his face in one bloody hand. “My father knows you’re too weak to kill without orders.”

  He stares at her. There is no remorse on her face, no regret for the boy that she killed, and this can’t be real, an executioner made of mercy and a princess with a heart as black as sin. What if after all this time, it wasn’t the beast in the dungeon I needed to fear, but the beauty who lived in the castle above him?

  Blood puddles around my shoes and I move to escape the implicit guilt it carries. My heel wavers over the rusted lip of the open grate behind me, and my breath catches. I don’t know the tunnels at my back, but the water that roars below me moves with purpose. The farming terraces, I think. If the current carries me out to the irrigation channels that line the shallows, I could be at the workhouse before they’re even out of the dungeon. If I double back, if I run, I could grab my sister and take our chances. If Avinea is still out there, maybe there are magicians too, a transferent who could cut the thread that ties her back to Brindaigel. A king concerned with conserving resources wouldn’t chase after the loss of one little girl that no one will miss.

  Alistair takes a step forward, eyes wide, expression plaintive. Blood outlines his jaw. “Faris,” he says.

  “Don’t run,” Bryn says, the knife still in her hand.

  Twisting, I drop through the grate, landing in water cold as snowmelt that rises to my thighs. My legs tangle in my damp skirt and the current pitches me forward, onto my hands and knees. Gagging back mouthfuls of briny water, I struggle to find my feet but I’m being dragged, scraped across the bottom of the channel. There’s no light down here and it’s disorienting as I grapple for purchase against the slick walls.

  Someone lands with a splash behind me, their voice lost to the roar of the water. Rough hands grab the back of my coat and together, we’re dragged underwater before the ground gives way.

  Bright starbursts of pain flash across my eyelids as I ricochet between narrow walls, landing in a pool of water with enough force I’m flattened on the bottom. Panicked, I begin to thrash, searching for purchase, desperate for air. I can’t swim, I can’t see, I can’t breathe—

  Bryn yanks me to the surface, bearing my weight against her hip as she paddles us away from the crushing waterfall. “Breathe,” she demands. “And stop flailing, you’ll drown us both!”

  The water’s not as deep as I expected, but she doesn’t release me until we’ve reached the edge of the river, framed by soft black sand. Releasing me with a grunt, Bryn lays on her back with her eyes closed and damp hair flattened across her cheek.

  She saved my life.

  She had no choice, I tell myself: Without me, she has nothing of any value to offer the prince. Even so, it’s a debt I don’t like hanging over me.

  Cadence.

  Rolling onto my stomach, I stagger to my feet, spinning a half circle to collect my bearings. The roar of the water screams at my back and I take a hesitant step toward a ribbon of light spilling through the rock ahead of me. But I falter when a staircase catches my attention, sweeping back into the mountain on the opposite side of the river. Broken chunks of rock lie scattered across the risers, but the floor leading away from the stairs is smooth, polished to a shine. Carved columns support overhead arches, almost every one of them broken, or tipped at drunken angles. The rib cage of a forgotten rowboat lies on its side, the iron bands rusted the color of blood.

  I know this place.

  “Don’t you dare run again,” Bryn growls, still sprawled on her back.

  It hits me, like the ice of the water: a staircase carved from stone, leading to a hallway of marble and columns.

  There was water, Thaelan had whispered against my throat. And sand, and sky.

  Numbly, I turn back to the crevice, to the thread of dawn that bleeds through. My heart slams against my rib cage as my skin tightens in a rash of goose bumps.

  I could see the stars.

  It’s not the farming terraces beyond that crevice. It’s Avinea.

  Thaelan made it this far. He was here, this close, so close, and then he turned back. For me.

  Ignoring Bryn’s warnings, I take a step, another, hope warring with sorrow, desperate for this one last glimpse of Thaelan. But the cold water has leached into my bones and turned me cumbersome. I trip in the thick sand, over the white stones that litter the shore. Landing hard on my hip, I bite back my profanity and push myself to my knees. My fingers catch against a half-buried rock and I glance down with a scowl of impatience.

  Not a rock. Bones. Bodies.

  This isn’t an escape route, it’s a graveyard.

  This is where the kingdom dumps its dead.

  Eight

  IT’S BASIC ECONOMICS, SUPPLY AND demand. We don’t have crypts enough for all of us, certainly not those of us who die as thieves and criminals. The bodies have to go somewhere, but I never even considered this: savage water and the dark, fifty feet from freedom.

  Thaelan is down here somewhere. Discarded. Picked clean by the current and worn smooth with sand. M
y mother too.

  I wilt with the thought as I close my eyes, count to ten. Of course Thaelan never mentioned this part because he always looked up instead of down. Instead of bones, he saw stars.

  Bryn approaches, kicking sand, twisting her damp hair over one shoulder. Her cloak snags on a bone and she tears it free with a grunt.

  “What’s the matter?” she asks, irritable.

  I don’t look at her, staring instead toward the light. My body is a tangle of bruises, inside and out.

  “They’re dead,” she says, “and we need to reach Nevik before nightfall. Don’t linger.” Peeling the bag from around her shoulder, she thrusts it at me to carry.

  I make no move to take it, staring at the water lapping the edges of the riverbank. “You murdered that man,” I say.

  “You would have done the same.”

  “No. I would never—”

  “You would never what?” she asks. “You would never make a difficult choice at a pivotal moment? If he stood between you and your sister, what would you do?” Straightening, she wipes her mouth and arches an eyebrow. “Oh, I remember. You would turn around and run. Like a coward. Like your mother.” Snorting, she says, “If you’re not willing to kill for what you want, you don’t want it nearly enough. Now get up.”

  We keep to the shore as far as we can, a princess and her trailing shadow. Rocks block the entrance to the cavern as high as my head, damming the river, creating a pool of water that spreads across the marble floor on the other side. If this was early spring, the snowmelt would make the crevice impassable. But after a dry summer, there’s room to spare, footholds to find, space to wiggle through.

  After we wade through the water to reach it.

  Bones roll beneath my feet, pulling at my skirt, scraping against my legs. Hair ghosts against my skin, and things bob on the surface, hitting the rocks ahead of us with soft clicks and dull echoes. I keep my eyes ahead, the bag clutched to my chest like a talisman before I reach the first rock and pull myself out of the water. Bryn stays a step ahead of me, ducking through the crevice and into the dawn, indifferent to the line she crosses.

  Yet I hesitate on the edge of the light, shivering not just from cold but from fear. Here in the shadows, I’m safe, albeit a prisoner of Brindaigel. A step beyond and I’m a traitor, finally in Avinea.

  Bryn notices and stops, eyebrow arched. Her skirt clings to her legs, and even bedraggled, she’s beautiful. A girl named for a kingdom and born for a crown, determined to inherit both, no matter the cost. “What did you want?” she asks, glancing around her. “Magic?” Snorting, she says, “It’s the same water, the same sand, the same mountains, the same sky.”

  But hope had burnished the idea of Avinea into something more, something better. Years of daydreams and wanting had dulled logic beneath an unattainable fantasy and now, disappointment creeps in.

  Even I feel exactly the same: Still trapped.

  The cavern opens into a steep valley of arching rocks and jagged walls that hide most of the brightening sky. The water sparkles, a deep jewel blue at the center, dulling to wintery gray where it turns shallow and laps against the black sandy banks. Bryn leads an unescorted promenade along the shoals, her cloak trailing behind her. She walks as if it’s an empty ballroom floor: chin up, back straight. All she needs is a handful of tretkas to toss to the white-crested birds roosting in the cliffs who cluck in disapproval at our arrival.

  An hour passes, then a second. I struggle to keep pace as I absorb Bryn’s blisters and cramping muscles on top of my own. Yet she has no patience for me and I refuse to beg her favor. If she doesn’t stop, I won’t, either.

  Finally, the cliffs that frame the river begin to fragment as the landscape opens. Forgoing the thinning, brackish water, we pull ourselves onto a narrow shelf of granite that cuts through a boggy tributary. A thick, sulfurous odor burns my eyes and makes my head throb, and a ribbon of gold flickers to the east, belching up plumes of acrid smoke that turn the sky gray.

  The Burn.

  Fear shivers through me, despite its distance. A lifetime of warnings race through my head and I stare, both transfixed and repulsed by the way it shimmers and moves.

  Something else is moving, closer to us. People.

  I watch, incredulous, as figures drift through the mud, bending over shallow pools of water as they dig. They’re bundled in rags and carrying wide baskets strapped to their backs, communicating less with words and more with barks and hisses as they brandish what they find. Clothing. A fistful of matted hair the color of honey. An arm trailing ribbons of sinew. Like the pawnbrokers on the roofs of the Brim, trash becomes their newfound treasure and they hoard it all. Small, bony children guard several carts, warding off packs of mangy dogs with sticks. Yet other than the mud on their clothes and the strange way they speak, they look normal, not at all twisted or destroyed by the Burn that edges the horizon.

  Avinea has survived.

  A woman slogs toward us, pressing her weight into the edge of the rocky outcropping we stand upon. “Pretty,” she coos, gesturing us closer. “Here, pretty, pretty, pretty.” Dark veins map her face, full of dead magic and thickened blood.

  The plague.

  I recoil into Bryn, heart slamming in my chest. Is it airborne? Will it spread through the water, through mud? Am I already infected? The phantom itch of an invisible disease crawls over me and I press the sleeve of my coat to my mouth, terrified.

  “Pretty,” the woman whispers, stretching for my foot.

  “Two lost souls strayed from the herd,” a voice says as I sidestep the woman’s reach. I spin to see a man flashing a smile, emerging behind a pile of rocks. He’s older, with a face full of blisters and scabs that ooze poisoned blood. Mud cakes his boots, up to his knees, and he wears layers of clothes, everything ill-fitting. Like the woman, he carries a woven basket on his back. A pale arm dangles over the edge, the skin loose and bloated, falling off the bone.

  “Where did you come from?” The man’s eyes are greedy when he looks at Bryn.

  “Mine,” the woman whispers below us. “Mine, Fanagin, mine-mine-mine. I saw them first.”

  “Shut up,” the man, Fanagin, says, kicking a rock at her. She flinches, ducking her head out of view.

  “Mine,” she repeats, more sullen than before.

  “Yours if you can catch them,” Fanagin says.

  “Run,” I say.

  Bryn doesn’t even argue. We follow the outcropping as far as it stretches, toward dry land in the distance. But Fanagin’s interest has sparked the interest of others and they begin to circle, drawing closer, and I begin to slow, fighting through Bryn’s exhaustion as well as my own.

  My foot catches in a divot and I trip off the rock, landing knees and elbows deep in the mud below. Bryn throws a look back but continues moving, her red hair flying behind her. Two boys with flaking skin chase after her as I crawl forward, regaining my feet.

  But the seventh heir of Brindaigel is not used to running the streets of the Brim or scaling rooftops to see the stars; she’s already winded, and I struggle to catch my breath, lungs burning with the labored effort. Fanagin drops into the mud beside me and my fear of the plague outweighs my aim. I swing my fist wild, missing him by inches.

  Stumbling back, I ball the sleeves of my coat over my hands and flip the collar up against my throat. Meager protection, but better than nothing.

  Fanagin laughs. “I bet you fell from the sky,” he says, advancing on me. “A gift from Rook, wrapped up all nice and neat, just for me.”

  “Don’t touch me,” I warn. The knife, I think, hand straying to the bag around my shoulder. Did Bryn keep it?

  “But that’s the fun part.” His smile widens, turns monstrous.

  Bryn screams and I gasp as the air is pressed from my lungs. She must have fallen, a suspicion confirmed by the dull ache in my hip that arrives a moment later, shooting pains down my leg.

  Fanagin lunges and I take another wild swing, cringing when I hit his throat and a
blister erupts, spraying oily blood across my face. Panicked, I scrub it away with the sleeve of my coat, but my weakness costs a chance at defense. Fanagin hits me back before I can block him, a sharp blow across my temple. It knocks me to my knees in a flurry of stars, but before he can strike me again, I lock my hands and slam them down on his knee before scrambling out of the way.

  Not fast enough. Fanagin catches me by the back of my coat and pins me face first into the mud. It fills my mouth and nose and I begin choking before he rolls me over, forking a hand around my throat, cutting off all but a trickle of air. Rough, dirty fingers force my lips apart and he scrubs mud against my gums as he assesses my teeth. “Those are worth something, at least,” he says, before pulling back the collar of my coat, inspecting my neck, pressing the sore spot where Alistair injected me. “What is this? You ever bleed fire before? Is the meat already spoiled?”

  Tears blur my eyes as I begin gasping for air. My lungs ache against my ribs and white spots begin to crowd my vision.

  “Keep your collar up and no one will know,” he says. “You look clean enough for me and that’s clean enough for most.” Arching an eyebrow, Fanagin clucks his tongue and shakes his head with mock sympathy before he applies more pressure to my throat. “Didn’t Rook warn you there are wolves in this world?”

  With one last shuddering heartbeat, darkness swallows me.

  Nine

  BRIGHT LIGHTS AND FUZZY FIGURES blur the edges of my vision. Shapes jostle into focus but are lost again as noises clamor around me, a ceaseless, directionless din of shouting and laughter and the clatter of coins exchanging hands. Slowly, I blink the world into focus. Iron bars, beyond which rises a forest of wooden columns and canvas awnings. Crowded tables bow beneath the weight of the wares for sale, everything from clothing to books to flesh. The people who browse bear marks of magic and poison and the scars of both. Everyone’s armed.

  I struggle to sit up, wincing. The man from the bog, Fanagin, paces the inside of the cage, beating tempo in his palm with a short length of doubled leather. He’s pulled off his outer coat to a fresher one underneath, the sleeves punched up to his forearms. Faded scars of old spells twist up his wrists like pale threads against the dark poison in his veins. He calls for bids and best offers, cajoling the passersby.