“That’s my insurance you won’t talk. You go mouthing off where I am and I’ll make damn sure that people know who bought your freedom. Scabbard won’t understand. He won’t understand at all.”
Merit swallowed. He saw just how bad it could go. “All right. I’ll play it your way. If I do find anything, where do I bring it? I don’t think I can just come calling on your palace with a note or something.”
“No, I—” Kihrin chewed on his lip for a moment.
“What about the Culling Fields?” Merit said. “We can both make it there, and I can leave any packages with a bouncer there who owes me a favor.”
Kihrin thought about it, then nodded. “Okay. What’s the name of this bouncer?”
“Tauna. She’s cute.”
Kihrin blinked. “The bouncer’s a woman?”
Merit grinned. “Yeah. I really love that bar. This will take me a couple of days … I’ll leave it for you at the end of the week?”
Kihrin helped Merit out of the alcove. “Deal. Here’s a hundred thrones for new clothes and the like, and Merit…”
Merit smiled. “Yeah?”
“Don’t make me come find you. There isn’t any place in the City where you can hide. I know all the safe houses. Nobody wants me to come gate-crashing with soldiers.”
Merit started to open his mouth to dress down Kihrin for suggesting anything so stupid, but the cold look in the Key’s eyes stopped him. Kihrin didn’t care anymore for Shadowdancer rules or Shadowdancer propriety. He thought he was better than that now, more powerful than that. He’d let this whole royal birth craziness go straight to his head.
Or maybe, a small voice inside Merit whispered, he’d simply cased the situation the same way he once would have cased a house, and figured out which way the dice would fall … the Royal Families play a different game, by different rules.
So instead, Merit pursed his lips and said, “Whatever you say, boss.”
* * *
Kihrin watched Merit run off and hoped he wasn’t making a mistake. He’d never known the man, except that he’d been picked by Faris as one of his bully boys. He had no idea if he was trustworthy or not.
It was a fishing trip, in any case. He didn’t know if his father Surdyeh had left anything worth finding. If he had, logically it would have been taken by Darzin’s people, or Therin’s.
He turned his attention to the last slave. “Do you have a name?”
The man grinned with teeth that needed brushing. “Sure.”
Kihrin waited, then rolled his eyes. “What is it?”
The man paused, flicked the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. “Star.”
“Star?”
The slave shrugged. “Sure, why not?”
Kihrin looked at him. Star was clearly an easterner, taller than any locals save the few oddities such as himself. His coloring was politely described as bizarre. Still, his appearance sparked a memory.
“You’re Joratese, aren’t you? From the plains?”
Star ducked his head in a gesture probably meant to signal agreement.
Star lazily looked at Kihrin, then at his two guards, then back at Kihrin.
He was, Kihrin realized, sizing up his chances to make a break for it. He remembered Morea’s advice on the basic stupidity of trying to turn a Joratese into a slave.
Then Star scowled at the gates of the Octagon and said, “You didn’t want me. You wanted the thief. So now what?”
“I don’t know. What can you do?”
“Well,” Star said slowly, “I can steal a horse for you.”
59: KHARAS GULGOTH
(Kihrin’s story)
You killed Merit? Merit’s part of your collection?
When did that—yeah, right, never mind.
I’ll continue.
* * *
We stood outside. Bruised clouds circled in a spiral over our heads like the sky-dwelling cousin of the Maw. The air stank, humid and sulfurous, lashed with a whisper of acid that scratched the back of my throat with each breath.
No, this was not Ynisthana.
“What in the hell did you just do, Scamp? I’ve never felt anything like that.”
“Me? It wasn’t me.”
“It damn well wasn’t me! I was never any good at gates. Who else could it have been?” Tyentso floated in the air, her feet just above the ground, right next to me. I hadn’t felt her leave my body.
We were outside, but also standing in the remains of a ruined city. Blocks of stone and metal showed their age, slouched under the weight of years and pitted from the scabbing air. A thin silvery grid of light traced the edges of buildings, outlining where the walls should have continued but had since collapsed. It was as if the whole city had been protected by a magical ward—and the ward had survived long after the structures themselves collapsed into decay.
I think the city must have been beautiful once. So many of those shapes suggested wide balconies and delicate plazas, tall pillars, and graceful fountains. Now? It was a skeleton grown corrupt but not yet rotted away enough to collapse entirely.
“Where are we?” Tyentso’s voice was quieter now. I didn’t have the sense she expected me to answer the question. “This is the Korthaen Blight.”
“What? No!”
“Pretty sure, Scamp.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Of all the places you had to choose, good job picking the morgage homeland. At least I’m already dead.”
“I didn’t do it.” I swallowed as I examined the area, half-expecting bands of morgage to be hiding behind every stone. At least I could stay invisible.
Directly ahead of us was a building that wasn’t falling away to nothing. Its stones were whole. No pits or cracks marred the surface of its perfect walls. I couldn’t tell what purpose the building had originally served. It might have been a temple or a palace, a great university or some hall of government.
It probably wasn’t the stables.
Eight beams of light, each a different color, streamed to the topmost point of the building from the different compass points of the sky, the light traveling so far that I couldn’t see the origin of any single beam. That light smashed together, lighting a crystal rod with a faint glow, before the whole was lost to whatever lay inside the building. The view was beautiful, or would have been if it hadn’t filled me with so much dread.
“I’ve been here before,” I whispered.
Tyentso stared at me. “When?”
I shook my head as I walked toward the building. “I don’t remember.”
I wrestled with my fear. Tyentso wasn’t possessing me anymore, so it was all a bonus from here on out. Plus, I wasn’t trapped on the island anymore, so that was even more a plus. Yes, if we were in the middle of the morgage-ruled Blight, that was a problem. Yet I still knew how to turn myself invisible, and they couldn’t do anything to Tyentso. So that wasn’t nearly the challenge that it appeared at first. All a matter of perspective.
Everything was going to be fine.
I walked inside the building and stopped in my tracks.