Sword Catcher (Sword Catcher, #1)

So he kissed Merren. And for a brief moment, Merren kissed back, his hands on Kel’s shoulders, fingers curling in. Kel tasted ginger tea, felt the softness of Merren’s mouth against his. His heart pounded forget, forget, but even as it did, Merren wrenched his face away from Kel’s. Shoved him back with surprising strength. “No,” he said. “Absolutely not. You tried to kill yourself.” He sounded as if he couldn’t believe it himself. “You took poison. On purpose.”

“I was not trying to kill myself,” Kel protested. “I was trying to break Jerrod. I had the antidote—”

“And only my word that it worked!” Merren tried to straighten his jacket. “It was an insane thing to do. Insane and suicidal. And I won’t—”

“I had to do it,” Kel said.

“For who?” Merren demanded, a little wild-eyed. “Andreyen didn’t ask you to do that. He wouldn’t. Did you do it for yourself? For House Aurelian?” He lowered his voice. “You love your Prince; I see that. I thought it was half a joke, this Sword Catcher thing, when I heard it. Who’d do that?” He bit his lower lip, hard. “My father killed himself,” he said. “In the Tully. They weren’t going to hang him. They would have let him out in a few years. But he chose to die and left me and my sister to fend for ourselves on the streets.”

“I am sorry for that,” said Kel, torn between sympathy and defensiveness. What he’d done was dangerous, yes, but so was Ji-An shooting arrows at Crawlers, and Merren wasn’t shouting at her. “But I am used to putting myself in danger, Merren. In fact, I’m going to need more of that cantarella antidote from you. It worked excellently well.” Catching sight of Merren’s expression, he added hastily. “It doesn’t mean I’m going to do that again. I don’t want to die—”

Merren flung up his chemical-scarred hands. “You don’t value your life. That’s a fact. So why should I?”

He walked away, boots throwing up puffs of bone-dry dust as he stalked out of the alley. Speechless, Kel watched him go.


Kel returned to Marivent via the West Path—a limestone track which wound up the side of the Hill through lowlying green shrubs: juniper and wild sage, lavender and rosemary. The sharp green scents helped cut through the fog in his brain, the lingering aftereffect of the cantarella.

He had a sneaking suspicion he owed Merren Asper an apology.

The wind had kicked up by the time he reached the Palace. The flags atop the ramparts snapped in the brisk air, and white squalls danced across the surface of the sea. In the distance, Kel could see half-drowned Tyndaris sharply outlined against the sky. Boats bobbed like toy ships in the harbor, their rhythm matching the sweep of waves against the seawall. Far in the distance, rain clouds were gathering at the horizon’s edge.

After greeting the guards, Kel slipped through the West Gate and went looking for Conor. There had been a Dial Chamber meeting this morning, but surely it would be over by now? They needed to talk, though Kel was dreading the conversation.

He was halfway to the Castel Mitat when he passed Delfina and stopped to ask her if she’d seen the Prince. She rolled her eyes in the way only a lifelong servant of the Palace could. “He’s in the Shining Gallery, playing whatsit,” she said. “Indoor archery.”

Indeed, the doors of the Shining Gallery were standing open. From inside, Kel could hear laughter, interspersed with what sounded like breaking glass. He ducked inside to find that Conor, Charlon Roverge, Lupin Montfaucon, and Joss Falconet had set up a makeshift archery range inside the elegant, high-ceilinged room. They had lined up bottles of wine along the high table on the dais and were taking turns shooting at them with arrows, with whoever wasn’t doing the shooting laying bets on the outcome.

Broken glass was strewn everywhere, amid puddles of multicolored wine and spirits. No wonder Delfina was annoyed.

“A hundred crowns says Montfaucon misses his next shot, Charlon,” drawled Conor, and Kel felt a rare feeling—a flash of real anger, directed at Conor. You owe Beck ten thousand crowns, a debt you haven’t yet paid. What are you doing, betting a hundred on something that pointless?

Montfaucon took his shot, and missed. As Conor cheered and Roverge swore, Falconet turned and saw Kel standing in the doorway. “Anjuman!” he cried, and Conor glanced over. “You weren’t at the Dial Chamber meeting.”

“He doesn’t have to be,” Conor said, and Kel realized that Conor was, though hiding it well, very drunk. His smile was slightly off kilter, and his hand, where he leaned upon his longbow, unsteady.

Falconet winked. “Where were you? Caravel?”

Kel shrugged. There was a chorus of whistles, and Montfaucon muttered, “Lucky bastard.” Kel wondered what they’d say if he told them he’d spent the afternoon not in the exercise of sybaritic pleasure but rather poisoning himself in a noodle shop with two criminals.

Of course, he didn’t. Instead, he hopped up to sit on one of the long tables where, as a child from the Orfelinat, he had first laid eyes on the nobility of the Hill, and told them he’d been at the Arena, learning new fight techniques.

This had the desired effect of distracting the group. Roverge, Falconet, and Montfaucon peppered him with questions, several of the answers to which he had to invent on the spot. They were all a little drunk, he realized, though none as much as Conor. The whole room stank of a sickening mixture of sweet liquors and jenever.

“What were we talking about before Anjuman got here? Ah, yes, the lovely Antonetta Alleyne,” said Roverge. “Whether she might consider a bit of bedsport with someone now it seems clear she’ll never trap Conor into marriage.”

The rage that boiled up in Kel’s throat threatened to choke him. “That was her mother’s plan,” he said flatly. “Not hers.”

“True enough,” Falconet said, taking the bow from Roverge, who had just missed a bottle of yellow cedratine by a hairbreadth and didn’t seem pleased about it. “Pity Ana hasn’t a brain in her head. She’d be a good match otherwise.”

“She doesn’t need brains,” said Montfaucon, leaning against the great fireplace. He’d set his bow aside for the moment. “She’s worth millions, and she’s ornamental enough.”

Roverge chuckled, and sketched a voluptuous female form with his hands. “If I married her, I’d keep her flat on her back, pumping out little Roverges, all swaddled in silk.”

Kel forced down the sudden, almost overwhelming urge to punch Roverge in the face. You used to play pirates with her, he wanted to say. She once chased you around with a sword until you burst into tears, after you insulted her mother.