Shimmer and Burn Read online

  Wetting my lips, I try to stretch my hands, testing the give of the rope around my wrists tethering me to a ring on the dusty floor. Only a few feet, and they come painfully, chafing my skin raw.

  Beside me, Bryn sits with her chin up and her back straight, legs curled under her as if she’s at a palace picnic. She’s bound too, but other than a little mud in her hair and the ragged hem of her dress, she looks untouched, thanks to the spell. My body aches in comparison, a medley of pains that are hers and mine and ours combined. Scowling, I tentatively touch my throat and wince at the tender bruising.

  “What’s the point of running,” she says without looking at me, “if you don’t follow?”

  I lower my hands and stare at her, incredulous. “You’d be dead already if I wasn’t carrying your weaknesses!”

  Her dark eyes cut toward me before they return to the crowded marketplace. “Strategy is never a weakness.”

  “And is this strategy?” I ask, lifting my wrists to demonstrate the rope.

  She doesn’t answer.

  A young man dressed in black browses at a table adjacent to the cage, skimming over the odd baubles and trinkets, overlooking a seeping basket of infected body parts. Picking up my mother’s book, he thumbs through the pages, watching Fanagin from the corner of his eye.

  I touch my pocket on reflex. Empty, of course; skin isn’t the only thing worth money. “That’s mine,” I say hotly.

  The man lifts his eyebrows, glancing back at the cover before his eyes return to me with mild interest. Unlike the others who crowd the cage, there’s no poison in his face, but he wears a dark coat with the collar flipped against his throat, and leather gloves to hide most of his skin. A weeks’ worth of facial hair darkens his jaw and his hair is shaggy, in need of a trim. He carries a crossbow slung over one shoulder, a quiver of bolts on his back.

  “Virgin skin, pure as the sainted virtues themselves,” Fanagin calls, striking the leather against the bars of the cage. “Begging to be bled or bed at your leisure. Not an inch of infection!”

  The man considers me for another moment before his gaze shifts to Fanagin. “I’ll give you thirty-five for both,” he says, his voice low. Tucking my mother’s book under one arm, he retrieves a dark leather book from the pocket of his coat, opening it to where a grease pencil rests in the gutter of the spine. He cradles the pencil in hand, thumb tagging his place.

  “Thirty-five each,” Fanagin counters.

  “Forty for both,” the man says with a frown. “You’re not going to get much higher around here.”

  “Fifty,” a woman offers from the other side of the cage, leering at the man in black. His frown deepens.

  A second man saunters through the crowd, just as young as the first; bony and gaunt, with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. Loose strands fall forward against his sun-reddened cheeks, half hiding amber-tinted eyes. Curling a hand through the bars above his head, he leans into the cage with a grin, his other hand resting on his jutting hip. “North,” he says with a sly glance of acknowledgment to the man in black. “Figured I’d find you sniffing around some virgins.”

  “Kellig.” The man in black, North, stares down at his book, jaw tight.

  Kellig wets his lips and glances toward Bryn and I. “What are we buying today?”

  “Body bags,” says North impassively, eyes briefly meeting mine.

  Fanagin turns to Kellig with an eager smile. “Body bags,” he repeats. “Perfect, unopened envelopes waiting for the right man to come along and spoil them rotten.”

  “You never buy body bags,” Kellig says, ignoring Fanagin. He tries to read over North’s shoulder.

  “But you do,” North says with an edge of acrimony as he slams his book shut and slides it back in his pocket. “Especially if Baedan’s paying.”

  “She’s paying if the price is right and the pieces are all accounted for.” Kellig makes a face at the basket of seeping, amputated limbs for sale on the table. “But I admit, it is tempting to make a personal purchase this time. A redhead on one side, a blonde on the other. You don’t get faces like that this far south.” Straightening, Kellig calls out. “Hey, Fanny. How much for the redhead alone?”

  “Fifty,” says Fanagin.

  “Where is Baedan?” asks North, glancing over his shoulder.

  “She gets jealous when I look at other women.” Snorting, Kellig releases his hold on the cage and folds his arms across his chest. “She makes a scene, people die, wars are started. Where’s your boy at? He can smell out magic thin as a thread. What’s he smelling here?”

  North doesn’t answer him, looking to Fanagin instead. “I’ll give you seventy-five for both,” he says.

  “Gentlemen, please!” Fanagin wrenches me up and pulls me tight against him. A calloused hand stretches over my stomach and clenches the fabric of my dress, hiking the muddy hem toward my knees. “She’s rough at the edges but still soft like a woman where it matters. Forty for her, minimum.”

  “She’s already broken,” Kellig says, derisive. Blood and mud flock every inch of my dress; my hair hangs in matted tangles. I can only imagine the bruises that cloud my face. “It looks like you already chewed her up and spat her back out.”

  “Ah,” Fanagin says with a grin. “But you know it’s what’s inside that tastes best.”

  Growling, I elbow Fanagin in the stomach. It’s not a good hit but it surprises him enough to release me, and I use the advantage, grabbing the front of his shirt and slamming my head against his mouth. Bright stars crowd my vision as Fanagin staggers back against the cage, flabbergasted. Shifting my weight, I balance myself, prepared to kick, but he catches my ankle and twists me onto my stomach. Raising his leather band, he strikes me across the shoulders, the back of my neck. I hiss in pain, cowering on the ground at Bryn’s knees.

  “For gods’ sake,” she says, “keep your head down!”

  She’s no better than scrap out here in Avinea, and yet, somehow, she’s still somehow more than the stink of urine and sweat and rancid flesh around us. Regal and beautiful and untouched by the frustration, the anger that seethes through me. Is she that balanced, to have such control over her own emotions?

  Not me. I learned to fight for what I wanted, that it would take more than desire and wishes on stars. My palms are not on the floor and I am far from defeated. After a lifetime of having my choices made for me, I relish this brief moment of power over my own actions. Control, I think.

  Faces gape at me through the bars, torn between amusement and awe, but it’s North whom I challenge with my scowl. His expression isn’t hungry like the others, merely curious. Almost concerned. He doesn’t belong here any more than we do.

  Pressing me down with one knee, Fanagin drops his leather strap and pulls a knife from his belt—Bryn’s knife. “I’m not opposed to selling in pieces,” he calls to the crowd.

  “I’ll take her hair,” a woman says, her hand stretched through the bars, fingers grasping toward me.

  “Twenty tretkas,” Fanagin says.

  “Fifteen,” the woman argues with an offended frown. “It’s not that pretty.”

  “Twenty,” a second calls, her own hair brittle, matted against her scabby head in a nest of wisps and blackened stubble.

  “Sold,” Fanagin says, pointing to the second woman, who claps with delight. Slamming my face into the dirt, Fanagin winds my hair around his wrist, tight and tighter before I feel the blade swing, so close to my neck that the tip draws a narrow line across it.

  The crowd roars their approval. Fanagin releases me and I turn in time to see him brandishing my hair like a trophy, spinning it in circles above his head. Anger turns to hate, bitter black and poisonous. Thaelan loved my hair so I loved it, and to see this filthy man trading it for twenty copper tretkas feels like an indignity.

  It’s worth at least a silver kronet.

  Pushing myself back to my knees, I run my tongue over my teeth before I realize Fanagin left the leather strap on the ground ahead of me. Lunging
forward, I pull it into my lap, glancing to see if anyone noticed.

  North noticed, and he arches an eyebrow. Interested.

  “He’s going to start pulling your teeth out if you don’t stop squirming,” Bryn says.

  “And he’ll sell you to the highest bidder if you don’t start acting like you’re not worth the trouble,” I say. “Nobody wants a girl who might bite.”

  Standing, I edge closer to the center of the cage, to give my rope tether some slack. When Fanagin turns, I strike the smile off his face, hard as I can.

  It feels better than it should.

  As he recoils, I slide my arms over his head and pull back, choking him with the rope. The knife hits the ground, just out of reach of my foot.

  “Bryn,” I say with a thrill of adrenaline. “Bryn, get the knife.”

  She glances over but doesn’t move, eyes locked on something in the distance.

  Fanagin twists, yanking the slack of the rope and knocking me off my feet. My skirts hike up as I scramble to reclaim the blade.

  He reaches it first, elbowing me hard in the back of the neck. “Who wants her face!?” he roars.

  “A hundred for both,” says North, “but as is, no blood spilled.”

  Fanagin hesitates, greed at war with his wounded ego. A harsh welt crosses his face and poison puddles through the furrows, spreading over the bridge of his nose. “A hundred,” he agrees at last, spitting in my face before releasing me. Panting, I scramble out of reach, frantically rubbing my face dry against my shoulder. “A bargain for such a good breed. She bleeds fire, boys.”

  “She bleeds,” Kellig agrees, but his expression narrows, turns calculating, his attention on North instead of on me. He’s not here to buy body bags; he’s here for North. All of this is superfluous baiting. “One twenty,” he says. “At the very least, they’ll both carve pretty divots in my sheets.”

  And bloody divots in your skull, I think.

  “Two hundred,” says North.

  Fanagin straightens with a grin. “That’s more like it, my boys!”

  Bryn blanches and rises to her feet, earning catcalls of approval and wild shouts from some of the men and women pressing closer. Her fingers sink through my arm in warning. “Loomis,” she says with a nod toward the crowd. “Part bloodhound and full idiot.”

  I tense. A dark figure cuts through the marketplace, face shrouded by a cloak and hidden behind the beaked mask of a councilman. How did he find us?

  Fanagin recounts bids as Loomis slinks to the opposite end of the cage, his eyes a bright, vivid blue against the band of dark skin visible above his mask. They flick past Bryn to rest on me, sizing me up, assessing my threat, trying to place my identity before he rattles the door to the cage.

  Fanagin slaps the bars. “You haven’t won the bid yet,” he says. “We’re at two twenty. Who goes higher?”

  “Two twenty-five,” says Kellig.

  “Two thirty,” says a woman beside him. She cradles a basket to her hip, its contents hidden beneath a ratty blanket. Liquid seeps from the bottom.

  “Open this door,” Loomis says, his voice coarse and metallic behind the sharp beak of his mask. “In the name of the king and on threat of your death. Any further harm to her highness is an invitation of war.”

  All heads turn toward him as silence falls, eerie and absolute. The sounds of the marketplace around us seem to dim in comparison, as though we’ve all been plunged underwater.

  Fanagin’s grin fades, uncertain. “The king?”

  “North, you glorious son of a whore,” Kellig breathes, eyes alight. He laughs, bright and barking, rattling the cage. “Body bags my ass! Three hundred for the redhead!”

  North draws back, uneasy. His eyes meet mine and my lips part in protest, but no words come out; all I manage is a tight, furtive shake of my head—no. Don’t stop bidding, please don’t go. She might be the daughter of a king but North didn’t come for royalty. He came to buy magic.

  So I’ll sell him magic.

  I pinch Bryn as hard as I can. She protests and bats me away, but I rake up the sleeve of my coat, demonstrating the ruby welt that appears on my forearm, not hers.

  North straightens, eyebrows lifting. Yes. He understands. “Five hundred for both,” he says. “Silver paid now, my final offer.”

  Nobody knows where to look: to Loomis in his cloak and mask, to her highness with her impossible grace, or to the man who apparently carries five hundred pieces of silver in his pocket.

  Kellig drops his arms, eyes narrowed as they slide from North to me and back again. “What, did she piss magic while I wasn’t looking?” he asks.

  “Sold,” Fanagin sputters at last, torn between disbelief and a gloating grin.

  North nods grimly, reaching into his pocket as Fanagin holds out a greedy hand, turning away from Loomis. Dismissing him.

  Commandment of the fighting ring: Never, ever turn your back on an opponent.

  Loomis is efficient, perfunctory: a three-beat murderer. Sword unsheathed, weighted step forward, blade through the back. Fanagin crumples at North’s feet, and with deft and certain hands, Loomis reaches through the bars and retrieves the key from where it hangs off Fanagin’s belt.

  Nobody moves. Not until Loomis unlocks the cage and the sound of falling tumblers shouts an open invitation. A stall keeper from across the aisle darts forward and strips Fanagin of his coat, balling it under his arm before returning to his table, furtive as a rat. A woman takes his boots. It isn’t long before his body becomes carrion.

  They’re not opposed to stealing in pieces.

  North steps out of the way, his eyes meeting mine one last time. Apologetic.

  No.

  I watch, stricken, as he disappears through the crowd, swallowed up by men twice his size and half his relative safety, their bodies poisoned with magic and depravity as they jostle forward, necks craned to see what’s happening and if there’s any left for them.

  Loomis is not the idiot Bryn believes him to be. He seems to recognize the threat he’s invited on himself as he hurries to cut Bryn loose, offering an abbreviated bow before lightly touching her shoulder—a gesture of familiarity. “I’m sorry you had to witness that,” he says.

  “How did you know where to find me?” Bryn asks in amazement, rubbing her wrists.

  “I told you once, there are only four corners of the world. It’s never far as the crow flies.” Only then does he look to me, still tethered to the floor. His eyebrows furrow as he takes in my rumpled coat and mud-stained skirt. “Your name?” he asks with none of the warmth offered Bryn.

  I hesitate, looking to Bryn for confirmation: Is this part of her plan? More strategy?

  But Bryn offers no answers as Loomis cuts my rope, keeping enough for a lead as he drags me forward. “Who you are doesn’t matter,” he says. “Your death is already decided.”

  “Then just leave her for the addicts,” Bryn says, flicking her hand, dismissing me. “A prisoner will only slow down our return and I’m eager for a bath.”

  I stare at her, fear brining my tongue. Is this it, then? One day and I’m dead? Left to rot so there are no witnesses, no stories, no lies to spread?

  That wasn’t even a chance.

  “Your father wants her alive,” Loomis says. “The kingdom must see justice.”

  Bryn shoots me a look, barely there before her eyes lock on Loomis. “I suppose being thrown to the wolves would rob my father of the chance to prove a point.”

  Gods Above. That’s why she didn’t go after the knife—so Loomis would imagine her a prisoner, a hostage.

  My hostage.

  Perrote would never allow his daughter to leave Brindaigel with enough magic to invite a war. But if she was kidnapped, if she was coerced and led into enemy territory against her will . . .

  My stomach plummets. Will this be the reason he uses to start scouring the Brim? Will my face—my supposed treason—be his justification for culling the population?

  Have I just condemned my sister
to die?

  Kellig watches us, his hands curled through the bars of the cage and forehead pressed against the iron. He flashes his teeth at us when we pass. “Long live the king,” he drawls.

  Bryn stares him down. “I would have killed you while you slept,” she says.

  “It would’ve been one hell of a last night on earth,” he replies with a wicked smile.

  “Well,” says Bryn, pulling her cloak tighter around her. “It’s not over yet.”

  Ten

  LOOMIS SHOVES ME THROUGH THE crowd of rotting bodies. some look newly infected, with only the first ribbons of dark magic threading through their veins. Others are clearly hellborne addicts, their skin colored in shades of smoke, decomposing as they stand. Flies cavort with a restless, incessant hum, inseparable from the din of voices that slide over me like crashing waves.

  The decrepit settlement beyond the marketplace is no better. It’s a slurry of sights and sounds and sun-bleached color, offset by muddy shadows. Canvas roofs and colored awnings stretch between crooked walls of scrap and wood. Ruins of stone buildings remain like tombstones of another time, when this village might have been beautiful, but they stand rare as the infecteds’ teeth now, their exposed innards repurposed as holding pens for sickly goats and listless, dull-eyed people.

  The goats roam free; the people are chained. Slaves.

  A woman in dark robes stands on a corner, barking brimstone prophecies of the world coming to its inevitable end. Half her face is mapped by burn scars. Her eyes meet mine. “Repent,” she says, “for our days are numbered.”

  I look away, unsettled.

  Ash from the nearby Burn drifts like lazy snowflakes, turning the sky smoky and dim; the air tastes scorched and blistered. The only grass is brown, flattened, beaten to dust beneath the feet of so many.

  Is this the real Avinea? Not the moon or the stars or the promise of a prince, but pain and blood and human chattel? The Avinea that King Perrote always warned us about, a burning kingdom, ravaged by sin?