“Who are you?” she asked him.
The question took him off guard. He considered a dozen lies, and discarded them. “You know most of it already. I really am named Michel Bravis, and I really was a Blackhat Gold Rose. But I truly work for a man called the Red Hand, and I infiltrated the Blackhats on his behalf. I was still maintaining my cover when he asked me to get you out of the city safely. My cover was blown by one of my fellow Blackhats, so I came to the Dynize.”
“You’re going to betray them. Us.” She laughed bitterly. “I suppose you’re not betraying us if you never really were one of us. Yaret adopted you into his Household. Do you know what that even means? He took a foreign spy under his wing.”
Michel swallowed. That trust was long gone. “I’m not betraying anyone. I won’t steal anything. I won’t kill people. I’m not even looking for information. I’m here for you.”
“Betrayal doesn’t just involve murder, Michel,” Ichtracia said. “This whole thing with you dismantling the Blackhats—it was a front?”
“It was.” He hesitated before continuing. “It actually felt pretty good. I’ve had to work with those assholes for years while they torture and subjugate my people.”
Ichtracia, through her anger, actually cracked a smile. “I knew you were interesting.”
Michel watched her hands, waiting for them to dip back into her pockets for her gloves. If she went for them, he might have no choice but to tackle her and try the chloroform. He really didn’t want to do that.
“All of that, just to get to me,” she scoffed quietly. “I’m not leaving, Michel. I spoke with a voice in my head. I told her some information, sure. But I never told her I wanted to join some Palo freedom fighter off in the jungle.”
Michel’s heart began to fall. This was it. A complete failure to finish his mission and—surprisingly hurtful—the end of his relationship with Ichtracia. He would probably be dead in a couple of minutes.
“What will you do?” she asked.
“If you refuse to come?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll look for the next opportunity to leave. I’m not going to force you to come with me.”
She snorted. “As if you could.” In a moment of bravado, Michel tossed her the bottle of chloroform. She caught it, looked at the label, and stared daggers at him. “You were going to use this on me?”
“I considered it. I’m supposed to do a job. But I like you a little more than that. So if you don’t want to come, I’ll just tell my boss that I couldn’t find you. If you let me walk out of here, that is.”
Ichtracia passed the chloroform back and forth between her hands, then held it to the light to look at the liquid inside. “I’ve heard this is unpleasant.”
“It’s not enjoyable.” Michel wondered if he should make a run for it. “Look, how about this: I stay here three more days. I help Yaret find that prick je Tura and put an end to the Blackhats in Landfall for good. If at the end of those three days you change your mind, I have a way for us to disappear. If not … then I’ll go alone.”
“I won’t change my mind. These are my people, Michel. I have a duty to fulfill.”
“Consider it.” Careful to make no sudden moves, Michel headed toward the door. He was out in the street before he allowed himself to breathe again. Three days. Three ways this could go: Either he’d get out alone, he’d get out with Ichtracia, or she’d hand him over to be tortured to death.
What a way to live.
CHAPTER 57
We’ve run out of land,” Jackal reported.
Styke sat in his saddle, frowning at a grassy hill on the horizon. They were a couple days south of New Starlight and had reached the far southwest corner of the Hammer, where rolling hills of fallow fields stretched for thousands of acres in every direction, barren but for the occasional farming hamlet carving out a living in the poor soil. The farming hamlets had been abandoned since the Dynize arrival, and they hadn’t seen another soul for two days.
Styke glanced at Ibana, who cocked an eyebrow at him and turned her horse around and rode back down the line, checking in with officers and making sure that the whole company was still together.
A few rows back and to one side, Ka-poel and Celine kept their horses close and spoke in Ka-poel’s sign language, eyes on each other’s hands. Styke joined them. “We’ve run out of land,” he told Ka-poel.
The bone-eye dropped her hands and stared back at him before looking toward that same grassy hill on the horizon. Beyond it were the high cliffs of the Hammer and a steep drop down to the beach, and then the narrow ocean that separated Fatrasta from Dynize.
“Are we close?” Styke asked. “I want to find this thing and be done with it as quickly as possible. It’s only a matter of time before a Dynize army picks up our trail. I …” He trailed off, noticing that Ka-poel’s eyes did not leave the horizon. Without a sign, she flipped her reins and headed toward the coast.
Styke rolled his tongue along his teeth, feeling the myriad of old aches and pains that seemed to accompany every day at this age. “Where’s she going?” he asked Celine.
“I don’t know.” Even Celine seemed confused, and Styke sensed that there was something wrong in the stiff way that Ka-poel rode.
He leaned toward Jackal. “Keep a close eye on her, and a hand on your carbine.”
“You expect me to shoot her?” Jackal seemed surprised by this.
“I don’t know what to expect. These godstones are unpredictable.” He took a deep breath, trying to fill his nostrils with sorcery, but the only whiff he got was the scent of Ka-poel’s coppery power. He waited, uncertain, for several minutes before finally heading after her. Jackal and Celine followed.
They reached the cliff tops, only to find that Ka-poel had abandoned her horse and taken a steep path down to the beach. Styke watched her pick her way through the rocks.
“Do we wait for her to come back up?” Jackal asked.
“Maybe the thing is on the beach,” Styke grunted, swinging out of the saddle.
They descended to the beach and joined Ka-poel on the shoreline, who was standing with her shoes discarded and her feet in the surf. The water lapped at Styke’s boots, and he watched the side of her face with a growing concern. Her expression was stonelike, devoid of her usual bemusement or defiance. Her eyes seemed distant, as if she were deep in some kind of dream. He breathed in again, trying to read her sorcery, but nothing about the coppery smell had changed.
Jackal clung to the base of the cliff, watching Ka-poel as one might watch a rabid dog. Styke wondered if Jackal knew something he didn’t.
Celine kicked her shoes off and walked into the surf, too, gently taking Ka-poel’s hand. Ka-poel responded to the touch mechanically, her thumb gently stroking the back of Celine’s wrist, and Styke suddenly felt like an invader in a private moment. He clenched his jaw, letting his irritation overwhelm his discomfort, and stepped up beside the two of them. “What are you looking at, girl?” he asked Ka-poel.
Ka-poel’s brow furrowed, and she lifted one hand and touched her thumb to her chest. Styke recognized her symbol for “I” and the hesitation that followed it.
“What is it?” he urged.
Ka-poel’s hands moved. Celine tilted her head to the side, watching as Ka-poel repeated the short phrase several times in a row. Celine’s face grew concerned, and she glanced quickly at Styke and then back at Ka-poel.
“What is she saying?” Styke asked, his mouth suddenly dry.
“It’s … it’s not here,” Celine translated.
Styke felt a knot form in the pit of his stomach, irritation turning to disbelief, to anger in the flash of an instant. “What do you mean it’s not here?”
Ka-poel spread her hands. I don’t know.