“Kerry! What do you think you’re doing?” Jurga yelled. She was frozen halfway down the cellar steps. We were both in trouble.
“He’s got to get up sooner or later.”
“He’s right,” I said, coming to his defense. “I have to get my strength back.” Words poured out of me then, desperate words I didn’t even know were there. “Kazi is alone, maybe hurt, they’re holding her against her will, my family’s in hiding, the town’s overrun, and when they all need me the most, I’m here helpless. I have to get stronger, I have to go.”
Jurga listened to me, wide-eyed. I felt like a child begging for the impossible, even though I knew it was not something that either Jurga or Kerry could give me.
I blinked, trying to clear my vision. “I have to find her.”
Jurga stared at me, her mouth pursed like she had sucked on a lemon, then she looked long and hard at Kerry. “Come on, help me get him up these steps. A little sunshine will do him good.”
* * *
The first several days, I never strayed far from the storage shed, always ready to retreat back inside if a warning signal of riders came, but none ever did. It was like they had stopped looking for me, which meant they probably thought I was dead.
It wasn’t only Kerry who put me through my paces. The other settlers took turns as well, walking me in circles around the shed and helping me to ease back down on a bench when I needed to rest. Eventually they took me a little farther to view their finished homes that I had never gotten to see. They showed me the raised foundations, the wooden floors that they never had before, the supplies that filled their shelves. They invited me in, they fed me, they added bones to my tether that I now wore the same as them. Meunter ijotande, they would say. Never forgotten. Day by day, I learned more of their language. I was ashamed that I had ever protested the rebuilding of the settlement, and was glad for the extra work we had put into it. Glad for my blood vow and alms. There was so much I didn’t know back then, that I knew now. Things I never would have known if not for Kazi.
“Another set,” Kerry ordered. His eyes gleamed. He loved watching me suffer. But I was getting stronger. He had me lifting buckets of water now—only half full—but the pain in my abdomen had at least become tolerable, or maybe I was just getting used to it. How much longer before I’d be ready to leave? But I knew there would be no second chances. I had to get this right the first time. I had to be strong enough to do what I needed to do. I turned my frustration into work—more sets, more food, more walking.
When we finished my daily regimen, I usually sat on a bench in the sun and read to Kerry. The teacher we sent had brought books, some filled with legends of other worlds far from Tor’s Watch, but the ones he liked best were the ones I told about the Ballenger history and Greyson, who was little more than a child himself when given the task of keeping everyone safe. Kerry’s eyes glowed with admiration and intense curiosity, maybe the way mine had when my father first told them to me. I didn’t embellish. I didn’t need to. The truth was astonishing enough.
“How do you know all these stories?” he asked.
“I’ve written them down—every one. It was part of my schooling. I have a whole library of Ballenger history at my home. Someday I’ll show you.”
Home. If it was still there.
If anything was there.
Who will write our story, Jase?
We will, Kazi, and it will take a thousand volumes. We have a lifetime ahead of us.
Last night more of the fog had rolled back. A glimpse. A fist going into Kazi’s stomach—but there was a glint of light too. What was it? I couldn’t stop worrying about what I hadn’t seen and didn’t know.
“I’m going with you when you go to find her,” Kerry said as if he knew where my mind had wandered. His chin jutted out, cocky and determined. Unafraid. His fingers absently rubbed his scarred arm. I guessed that whatever monsters were out there, they might not be any worse than the ones he had already faced. No wonder he liked hearing stories about Greyson. Like the first Patrei, Kerry didn’t let his young age hold him back from what needed to be done.
“We’ll see,” I answered.
I had an army of two, and one was a seven-year-old child.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
KAZI
Years ago, when I stole the tiger, it was necessary for me to employ a different tactic from my other thefts. I needed help and had to procure the favors of many. Of course, I made sure no one ever knew exactly what purpose their favor served—it was important that they weren’t implicated—but I knew that many guessed. That was how the whispers began. It was Ten. Ten stole the tiger. And then others would scoff at the notion. That scraggly strip of a girl wrestle a tiger? She’d be nothing but a nibble in the beast’s stomach by now. Besides, why would she? And still others would speculate about more malevolent culprits. They say a circle of devil’s dust was found in the storage shed. A demon ate the beast whole.
Bribing the tiger was the first order of business. It turned out that getting the tiger’s trust was the easiest part. By the fourth afternoon, his nose twitched when he saw me coming with a morsel of meat tucked in a ball of dough. But all the other steps—from decoy wagons, to distracting brawls, to heavy sleep elixirs, to black devil’s dust—those steps multiplied one after another. Trade this for that, and that for this, and then someone would decide it wasn’t enough and they needed more. Sometimes I had to trade with people I despised, smiling and jumping through their endless hoops. I got through it by always remembering the end goal, what it was all for—a chained beast with haunting amber eyes.
I ended up hiding the tiger right beneath the butcher’s nose in a storage shed behind his shop that he only went in once a week to sharpen his cleavers and knives. And then I went back and spirited the animal out in the middle of the night once the streets were deserted. A planned distraction drew the butcher’s attention away—along with most of the jehendra—for no more than half a minute. He had moved only steps away from his shop front, but that was all I needed. It was the escape route I spent the most time working on, finding the darkest, most assuredly deserted streets, the places that gave me somewhere to duck if I had to, finally walking one route seven nights in a row to be sure it held no surprises, something that might startle a tiger and make him roar.
Today my eyes had never stopped scanning the streets, the trees, the shadows, but I only felt my spirits sink lower with every step. There weren’t enough bribes or enough favors in the world to evade the soldiers on every street and rooftop. Not to mention I had no favors to offer in the first place and, most important, no one to offer favors to. Except, perhaps, the person who had secretly passed me the medicine in my cell, but even they were too afraid to come forward.
As soon as we returned to the inn, my head was tended, and then I was escorted to the private dining room at the inn for the “celebratory” dinner the king had promised. Apparently he agreed with Banques that the delivery of the news had gone well. I guessed that a rock thrown at my head was of little consequence to them, nor the ringing pain between my ears, but maybe other addresses to the crowd had drawn a barrage of rocks. In comparison, my injury was trivial—or maybe the whole point was to shift anger to someone else—me. In that case, I guessed the day was a roaring success. The word murderer still ate away at me, and the things I had uttered about Jase remained foul in my mouth, but I’d had no choice. I would do it again, and no doubt, Banques had plans for more of these addresses from me until the last of the resistance was stamped out.
The same positive sentiments about the day were repeated by guests. Apparently none of them thought that corpses hanging from trees in the middle of the town plaza were anything to be bothered about. I didn’t recognize any of the attendees at this intimate dinner gathering, and I wondered if they had come from Parsuss—the king’s own loyal followers—or if they were Hell’s Mouth citizens who turned with the tide as easily as Garvin did.
Everyone seated at the long table fawned over the king and Banques, treating them like true saviors. The four women were elegantly dressed, as if we were attending a grand party, their faces painted with powders in a way I had never seen before, and their necks and wrists adorned with glittering jewels. The room was a thief’s paradise—if only rules didn’t have to be obeyed.