Give him hell and be careful.
Walk the razor’s edge.
That summed up the role of Patrei.
Winter has come. The walls are frozen.
The floors are frozen. The beds are frozen.
There is no wood, no more oil, so we burn ledgers and books instead.
When those are gone, I will have to go back outside to where the scavengers wait.
—Greyson Ballenger, 14
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
KAZI
“Dear gods, Kazi. We’ve got to call a healer. Fikatande dragnos!”
It wasn’t just surprise I heard in Wren’s voice. It was fear.
“No. I’ll be fine.” Wren and Synové helped me over to the tub so I wouldn’t get more blood on the floor. “Just help me rewrap it.”
“Not until it’s clean,” Synové argued. She remembered something about that in our training. The truth was, none of us had ever had a major injury, and that was because what we did, we did well—only others came away injured. The problem was, none of us were sure how to clean it and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. The pain was already making it hard for me to focus. It took all my control to keep my hands from shaking, which made no sense because they weren’t injured. I curled my fingers into my palms to keep them still.
Wren took a closer look and let loose with another long string of curses against the black toothy beasts.
I had barely made it back to my room when Wren and Synové had arrived for tonight’s dinner party. Mason had delivered them to my door early to await the evening with me, but he hadn’t seen me. I called from the bath chamber for them to come in.
A shudder of air escaped my throat as I lifted my foot into the tub. I should have worn my boots, but the slippers were quieter.
It mostly got my ankle, but the bites went to the bone. The puncture wounds burned like hot pokers were stabbing my flesh, and there was a one-inch jagged tear on the inside of my calf. That’s where most of the blood was coming from.
“What if it punctured an artery?” Synové wailed. “You could bleed to death!”
“Keep your voice down,” I warned. “If it had punctured anything vital, I’d be dead already. It was a long way back here from the tunnel.” My greatest worry was if I had left a trail of blood behind—evidence of where I’d been.
It had seemed like the perfect timing to do a little poking around. Jase and the others weren’t back, and the night dogs hadn’t been released yet. I searched Darkcottage first. It had been a simple enough task, because it was so clearly empty—the larder bare, the oven cold, and there were no signs of personal belongings in any of the rooms.
Riverbend had been fairly easy to navigate too. With so much activity in the gardens, preparing for tonight’s dinner party, the domicile of the Ballenger employees was mostly empty. That left Greycastle. I was nearly spotted as I crept down a hallway, peeking into rooms, but I heard the floor creak just before Uncle Cazwin came around a corner. I slipped into an alcove and he passed without a suspicion. The captain didn’t turn up in any of the rooms there either.
I made Greyson Tunnel my next target. I had slipped effortlessly through it. There weren’t many workers in it like the first time I had passed, perhaps because they’d been called to the gardens to help with those preparations, and it seemed every passing wagon and dark shadow was conspiring with me to cover my steps. In minutes, I made it to the intersecting tunnel marked with the faded Ballenger crest. I discovered there were three more tunnels that branched off from it that got progressively smaller. I chose the farthest one and walked to the end, using the same logic of searching for valuables in a chest—the best things were always hidden in the bottom.
Except for the eerie echo of dripping water, I hadn’t heard a sound. And then I rounded a corner. I had peeked first to make sure no one was there. The small dark tunnel only extended another twenty feet and appeared empty, a wide metal door blocking the end. A dim line of light shone at the bottom. I walked forward to investigate and test the lock. I hadn’t seen the black dogs chained in dark alcoves on either side of the door.
But they saw me.
They were silent devils, knowing exactly what they were doing, waiting for me to step into range, and then they lunged. I kicked them off fast but not before the damage was done. I was lucky they only got my leg. As soon as I was out of their reach, I ripped off my shirt and wrapped my ankle, carefully wiping the drips of blood from the floor as they snarled and lunged at the end of their chains. If someone had been alerted by the noise, they’d be there in seconds. In those first few frantic moments, I felt no pain, but I knew it was bad. I knew I was in trouble. My fingertips tingled wildly like needles were shooting from them. All I could think in that shocked moment was, I had to get back before someone discovered me.
Synové poured water over my ankle in an effort to clean it. A groan trembled between my clenched teeth. “I’m sorry, Kaz,” she cried as she dabbed it. “Damn, there’s another gash back here that you didn’t see.”
I didn’t need to see that one too. There were more than a dozen puncture marks dotted around my ankle like a macabre lace stocking.
“Wrap it,” I said between gritted teeth. “Just wrap it. That’s enough cleaning.”
They both tried to convince me again that a healer was necessary. “And how will I explain how I got these? Tell Jase I was just taking a quick sneak around?” I drew a deep breath and told Wren to go down to the kitchen.