Otis’s face darkened, and in a flash of movement, he slammed Keris against the wall hard enough to rattle his teeth. “Don’t ever say that. No matter how much you irritate me, you’re still my brother, and I do not want you dead.”
They stared each other down for several long moments, Otis’s fingers digging into his shoulder hard enough to leave bruises, but then his younger brother turned away. “The Valcottans have a woman in command now. Zarrah Anaphora. She’s barely more than a girl.”
Lara is barely more than a girl, and she brought down the impenetrable Bridge Kingdom, Keris considered saying, but instead muttered, “So I hear.”
“You could beat her and take the southern half of Nerastis. I know you could, if you put your mind to it. Do it, and your life will be safe.”
Except losing wasn’t what made Keris’s blood run cold; it was that he knew he could win. He’d stood in on war council meetings and felt his head fill with strategies for victory, his mind all too capable of distancing itself from the realities of war, if he allowed it. And if he did it once, he had no confidence that he wouldn’t do it again and again until his hands were as drenched in blood as his father’s. “No. You go. Tell them I’m with a woman. Or too drunk. Pick your excuse.”
“Are you drunk?” Otis demanded.
“No. Although that’s easily remedied.”
His brother’s jaw clenched and unclenched, but then he exhaled. “Fine. But in exchange, you have to agree to train with me again. At the very least, don’t make yourself an easy target for an assassin.”
“The perception that I am an easy target has kept me alive for most of my life, Otis. I’m not inclined to jeopardize it. I will take this, though.” Reaching across the space between them, Keris plucked loose the dagger shoved in his brother’s belt, examining it. The edge was dark with the poison his brother favored. One that was slow to work but always fatal without the antidote. “You know how I love knives.”
Otis cast his eyes at the painted ceiling. “Do you have any idea how dreadful that sounds?”
“Says the man who poisons his knives.”
“Only when I fight Valcottans. The bastards deserve no less.”
Keris knew better than to comment, for when it came to Valcotta, Otis’s hate was practically religious in its fervor. As it was for so many Maridrinians, and the Valcottans were no different.
Otis headed toward the door. “Good night, brother. Enjoy your wine and the sleep that follows.”
Keris waited until the sound of his brother’s boots echoed down the stairs, then he bolted the door. Retrieving a black shirt and hooded leather coat, he found his discarded boots and pulled them on before tucking a variety of knives into various hiding places.
Stepping to the edge of the broken floor, scaffolding running up the tower beneath him, Keris breathed in the scent of the air, a mix of sea salt and the filth of the city, his eyes taking in the glow of a thousand lights. Nerastis came alive at night.
And so did he.
Stepping out onto the scaffolding, Keris jumped.
6
ZARRAH
Her head down, Zarrah wove her way through the rubble-strewn streets of Nerastis. Near a third of the buildings were collapsed, and the rest were near enough to it that venturing into any of the establishments meant risking being buried alive.
Not that it stopped anyone.
Groups of her soldiers staggered drunkenly around the rubble, laughing as they ventured into the tap houses and brothels and opium dens, those who worked within them watching on with eyes filled with equal parts cunning and despair. Rats skittered forth from dark alleys, disturbed by the moans of pleasure from those too cheap to pay for a room or the despondent weeping of those who’d succumbed to vice or circumstance. Both would net bodies for her patrols to dump into the river to feed the alligators come morning.
Orphans ran wild, picking pockets and begging on corners before returning to the hovels they called homes, their beds little more than flea-infested rags. One raced toward Zarrah, a boy not more than eight, but the focus in his gaze spoke to his intent. Not interested in arresting children tonight, Zarrah tossed him a copper before he had the chance to slip a hand into her pockets, but the boy only glared at the metal and then spit at her feet.
Gritting her teeth, she carried on. Because this was Nerastis: lawless and dangerous and miserable, and though both Valcotta and Maridrina fought endlessly to possess it, neither did anything to improve it. Perhaps that would change once Valcotta held the whole of the city, but her gut told her that her aunt’s eyes would only travel farther north into Maridrina and that Nerastis would continue to languish.
The closer she got to the Anriot, the more mixed the company became, Maridrinians venturing to this side of the river despite the risks, much as her people did to the northern side of the water. Soldiers who fought each other during the day sat around rough tables, cards in hand, whores from both nations perched on their knees. The games often turned into brawls, which resulted in more corpses to feed to the Anriot’s alligators, and Zarrah gave the gatherings a wide berth, making her way down to where the street fell apart into rubble, the swampy ground consuming the cobbles.
Countless bridges had been built over the wide river, but all were destroyed, leaving behind only the remains. Rotting pieces of timber, slimy rocks, and twisted steel sat just beneath the surface of the water, providing the daring multiple ways across if they were willing to risk the snapping teeth lurking in the depths.
Zarrah followed the narrow path, which was flanked by twisted trees on both sides, her boots sinking into the spongy ground, the scent of rot rising to assault her nose. Ahead, a guttering torch was stuck deep into the earth, marking where one was to cross, its twin flickering on the Maridrinian side.
Dropping into a crouch, she scanned the opposite bank for signs of Maridrinian patrols, then the river for signs of motion, but there was only the ripple of water over the collapsed bridge, the air full of droning insects that bit at her skin.
This is madness.
Zarrah shoved away the thought. Madness was allowing the princeling to live, when every day he did so, more of her people died as a result.
Tightening her grip on her staff, Zarrah used it for balance as she slowly picked her way across the river, both her bravery and her balance precarious on the slick stones. The cold water seemed to know whenever her boot slid in the murk or her toe caught on a piece of lumber, grasping at her legs and trying to send her toppling so as to feed its inhabitants. But each time, she managed to keep her balance, making it past the deepest point in the middle. She was almost there.
Splash.
Zarrah’s heart leapt at the faint sound, which was followed by three more in quick succession.
She’d been spotted.