“You’re a woman of enduring hope, Siora.” Gharek closed the flask and set it aside. “We’ll need their help if we want to return to Domora in any decent time. We’ve lost at least a day and a night of the time Zaredis gave us. Time moves differently in the Maesor. We’ll lose more if we can’t get a horse.” Panic bubbled inside him at the thought. They had nothing beyond his own confirmation of the Windcry’s location and how to get to it through a series of hidden doors and corridors in the palace only he and Herself knew. At least for now. Whoever Zaredis sent to steal the artifact celebrated for its ability to shatter fortress walls, they’d find it easy enough with the cat’s-paw’s directions, but at the moment theWindcry was going nowhere unless they found a way to break the wards protecting it.
A vision of Estred filled his mind. Dainty features with his wide cheekbones and her mother’s long lashes and blue eyes. She’d started life in the grimmest way, born deformed, abandoned, then sold and used as an oddity to titillate and coax money out of curious crowds. Yet she’d taken none of her mother’s despair or her father’s ruthlessness as her own. She saw joy in everything, even a mob intent on killing her—because that close brush with death had brought Siora into their house.
Estred had been inconsolable when she’d discovered Siora had left suddenly and without a word. The child who smiled even during the grayest hours hadn’t smiled for weeks. That more than anything had lit the fire of resolve, even greater than his personal vengeance, in Gharek. He still simmered with resentment, but that fire burned less hot as he came to know the shade speaker and parse out her motivations. She puzzled him mightily, but he no longer hated her. In fact, he’d...
He backed away from the path of his musings. He was involved in this tangle of problems with her for Estred’s sake. They worked together for the common goal of getting his daughter back from Zaredis safe and sound. That was all. Nothing more. He simply had to stay alive long enough to accomplish the task—an unexpected challenge so far. Zaredis would still execute him and Estred would become an orphan yet again, but he was a man, not a god. He could only tackle one disaster at a time and do his best to prevail.
The weight of his money purse still rested solid against hischest where he’d tucked it securely in his tunic. “I can’t believe I still have thebelshasZaredis gave us.”
Siora sighed. “They’re free traders, lor— Gharek, not thieves.”
He scoffed. “Free traders are known to sidle off with things that don’t belong to them, and they make no distinction in whom they steal from, living or dead. Those grave goods we’ve all seen at markets? Take a guess as to who’s the biggest provider of such wares.” She recoiled at his words. He was overly suspicious and she wasn’t suspicious enough. “Don’t tell me that as a beggar you never stole? Or as a shade speaker you didn’t lie to a customer about their dead relative?” Her crimson blush told him what he wanted to know. “As I thought.” He shrugged. “They’ve been kinder to me than I deserve and far more generous than I would have been were our places reversed. I don’t judge them for their actions; my own are blacker by far. I just don’t pretend they’re virtuous.”
“You have your own brand of honesty, I think,” she said. “Though it bludgeons like a club.”
“I’ve never boasted of possessing charm or even subtlety.” He tapped his finger against his lip, thinking. “We’ll probably have to sleep in the fields and on the streets, and go hungry for a day or two, but we need a horse more than we need lodgings, and free traders always have horses to sell and trade.” If they didn’t try to skive him too hard, he’d have just enoughbelshasto purchase a mare or gelding still on the right side of a knacker’s cart.
“Let me ask them,” Siora said, giving him a strange look, as if he’d grown a third eye when he suggested negotiating for a horse. “I’m not sure they’d sell your own head back to you.”
She wasn’t wrong, and he nodded his agreement. They slipped back once more into a comfortable silence, and Gharek tried toremember when another adult’s company was this soothing. A thought occurred to him. “Was that your father’s ghost who appeared to us in the Maesor and lured those things without faces away from us?”
Siora nodded, worry lines marring her forehead. “Yes. I hope the ghost-eater didn’t sense him.”
“Can you summon him to make certain?”
She shook her head. “Remember? Ghosts don’t come at a shade speaker’s command or even request. They reach out to us first. If my father’s spirit thrives, I’ll know sooner or later.” She tried to disguise the doubt in her voice, but he heard it just the same.
He recognized the ploy to distract herself from worrying over her father when she said, “Tell me of your search through the palace. What does the fabled Windcry look like, and why do you think the royal library will have what we want when the Maesor doesn’t?”
Gharek rested his bound hands on his knees, twisting his ropes gently in an attempt to loosen the knots. “The Windcry isn’t much bigger than a child’s toy and even less impressive in appearance. Its majesty comes from the sorcery embedded in it, and if stories of its power hold true, it will win Zaredis the throne if he can get his hands on it. Those who guard it now are soldiers loyal to General Tovan and have no familiarity with the palace’s many hidden accesses. Getting past them to where the Windcry is will be easy. Breaking the wards keeping it safe from thieves is something else entirely.”
“And you think the library has something that tells of how to break them?”
“I’m certain of it.” But like the Windcry’s wards, finding the tome containing a ward-breaking spell could prove daunting. “The royallibrary has thousands of scrolls and parchments, grimoires and maps, most forgotten by scholars and gathering dust. It would take a hundred lifetimes to find a single book if we attempted it ourselves without help, but there’s a master librarian there whose memory is a vast storehouse and who can pull a scroll or book from the most forgotten corner and tell you its contents. He won’t have the knowledge that Koopman did about how I can get my hands on a good grimoire, but he’d know how to choose several that, combined, might serve the same purpose.”
“And he isn’t one of the many trying to kill you?” That brief smile made an appearance once more before fading. Gharek almost asked her to smile again, then shuddered inwardly at the temptation.
“Surprisingly no,” he said in his blandest voice. “Let’s hope it stays that way for a long time.”
Manaran had been one of his mother’s many lovers, a scholar of note and reputation who’d given Gharek his first taste of the wonders inside the royal library. Gharek hadn’t been much older than Estred was now and he possessed the same curiosity and love of books. Unfortunately, like others who shared his mother’s bed and fleeting affections, Manaran hadn’t endeared himself to her for long, and Gharek’s visits to the library became few and far between. He’d still see the squinty-eyed scholar on occasion when he chose to leave the library and his role as master archivist there to engage with the everyday world. Gharek hadn’t spoken to Manaran in three years. He hoped the old man remembered him and would be inclined to help.
Siora piled the tray with his plate and the healing suppliesHalani had sent, promising to return straight away. She didn’t but Malachus did.
The draga bent and untied the ropes binding Gharek’s hands. “Piss if you need to, then come with me. Siora’s waiting by the communal fire and the rest of us want to talk to you.”
Gharek stood and rubbed his wrists together. “You trust me not to run?”
Malachus made a scoffing sound, and Gharek swore he saw a tendril of smoke escape the other man’s nostril. “I don’t trust you at all, but if Siora is speaking true, and I don’t have reason to doubt her, you need us more than we need you. You won’t run.”
Sound reasoning, and neither Gharek nor his bladder were eager to sprint off into the night with only the placement of stars to keep him in the general right direction. He took Malachus up on his offer of time to answer nature’s summons and returned without a fuss.
The two men walked side by side to the camp’s main fire, where a crowd of free traders sat waiting for them. Gharek wasn’t sure if this was an audience or an impromptu tribunal. All eyes landed on him as he stood just outside the circle. Siora, sitting next to Halani, stood and claimed a spot on his other side—a wordless signal to all that she supported him of her own accord.
Malachus made the introductions. “This is the man who kidnapped Asil and held her hostage, and the one who sent Halani to the palace where she was imprisoned and used as bait by the empress to gain my cooperation.” His voice was matter-of-fact in relaying the information, lacking any drama or embellishment. The crowd snarled in unison, like one great beast whose hackles justrose as it prepared to rend Gharek limb from limb. Beside him, Siora made an alarmed squeaking sound.
Malachus continued. “Siora has said they were adversaries and are now allies. She betrayed the cat’s-paw to help me find Asil and bring her home.”
Unlike the unified snarl Gharek received, a smattering of applause and cheers greeted that statement, and a childish voice rose above it all. “Thank you, ghost woman!”