Eliana jumped to hear Simon’s low voice from the shadows. She hadn’t noticed him there, slouched in a stained, high-backed chair, long legs propped up on an overturned crate. He gazed at her over the rim of his glass, blue eyes gleaming in the firelight.
Irritated with herself for having missed him, Eliana snapped, “Are you ever not drinking?”
With a tiny grin, he mumbled into his glass, “Helps me sleep. Keeps me sharp. Keeps the voices at bay.”
“Which is it, then?”
“All. Or none.” He leaned his head back against the chair, closed his eyes, and let out a long, animal groan of satisfaction. “What about you, Eliana? What voices do you hear in the deep dark of night?”
The sound of her name on his lips lingered in the crackling hot air by the fire. Eliana tore her gaze away from his bared throat; long silver lines of scar tissue shifted as he swallowed.
Then, from the nearest door, a soft voice broke the silence: “Patrik?”
Patrik turned, a smile spreading across his face. “Linnet! Shouldn’t you be in bed, little one?”
A small child, maybe eight or nine years old, crept forward from the shadows, a ratty doll clutched in her hands. Bandaged cuts and purple bruises marred her pale skin.
“I don’t like sleeping,” said Linnet. She climbed into Patrik’s lap and stared gravely at Hob’s notebook. “I think I’m ready now.”
Hob looked up at her. “You don’t have to, Linnet, if you don’t want to.”
The girl’s fingers were white around her doll, her thin lips cracked. “I want to. I promise.”
Eliana’s throat clenched at the girl’s haunted expression. “What are you going to do to her?” she asked sharply.
Linnet peered at Eliana through the shadows. “Who’re you?”
“Just a monster who likes to wear masks,” Simon mumbled into his glass.
Linnet’s eyes widened in alarm.
“Linnet’s going to tell us her story for Hob’s collection.” Patrik fixed first Simon, then Eliana, with a cutting glare. “And no one’s going to interrupt her, are they?”
Hob opened his notebook to a fresh page. “You’re nine years old, aren’t you, love?”
Linnet kept glancing over at Eliana with something like awe on her face. Her gaze dropped to the knives at Eliana’s belt. “Yes.”
Hob began writing. “Can you tell me your family name?”
Linnet rested her chin on her doll’s head and said nothing.
“What about where you lived?” Patrik asked softly.
Linnet squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head a little.
“That’s all right.” Hob smiled. “You don’t have to tell me that.”
“I don’t remember,” Linnet whispered.
“I can’t remember what I ate for breakfast this morning,” Patrik said. “An apple, maybe? A hat? A belt buckle? No, that can’t be right…”
Linnet smiled shyly. She stroked her doll’s snarled hair ten times before she began to speak.
“The bad men found us in the morning,” she said at last.
Hob’s pen scratched across the page.
“Mama said to be quiet,” Linnet continued, “so I was, like playing fox-and-rabbit, but then Will sneezed right when the bad men were walking outside our door.”
“Can you tell me who Will is?” Patrik asked.
Linnet’s mouth screwed up into a mean little bow. For a long moment, she didn’t speak.
Then, “My brother,” she said.
The words hit Eliana like a punch to the jaw. Suddenly Linnet wasn’t Linnet; she was Remy, frail and tiny, telling a story he should never have had to tell.
The skin on Eliana’s wrist began to itch, right where the old refugee woman had touched her.
Don’t look at them.
Don’t look.
She shot out of her chair, ready to storm for the door. She didn’t have to listen to this. She wouldn’t listen to this.
But Simon grabbed her arm, held her fast. He said nothing; the icy look on his face was enough to stop her in her tracks.
She glared at him, fuming. She could start a fight, kick herself free, put a stop to story time and give this poor girl a show.
Instead she settled back onto the hearth beside Simon. He wanted her to listen, for whatever malicious reason he’d concocted? Fine. She would listen. And, later, she’d make him regret it.
“The door was already smashed,” Linnet was saying, “because we had a party with Mama. She said, Let’s have a mess party.”
“A mess party?” Patrik whistled low. “That sounds fun. What is that?”
“That’s when you make your house dirty instead of clean,” Linnet explained.
“That sounds like the best kind of party I could possibly imagine.”
Linnet bit her lip. “We set fire to the garden and let our animals go loose, and then Mama… She smashed the windows with an ax. It made her cry, doing it, because Papa loved those windows.”
Hob glanced up, his face soft. “Why did he love them?”
Linnet shook her head slowly—back and forth, back and forth. “Because,” she whispered after a moment, “I painted them.”
Eliana looked away, toward the dying fire. The air in this place was stale, sour. Too many people with unwashed bodies and rotting hurts. She breathed in and tasted death on her tongue. An ill knot was expanding in her belly, forcing its way up through her chest.
Her mother’s words returned to her: If you don’t learn to tuck away that sick feeling, it will consume you.
She closed her eyes, clenched her fists. The fire was too near, too hot. Her skin crawled from it; the heat siphoned all the air from her lungs.
She should never have left her bed.
“Why are you making me stay for this?” she asked, her voice tight and low.
“Because I can,” Simon replied and then downed the rest of his drink.
“We tore up our beds and our pillows.” Linnet was whispering faster now. “We made red dye from berries and painted the walls. Mama said…Mama said…”
Patrik glanced at Hob. “Maybe we should stop for now—”
“No!” Linnet flung away her doll. It hit the wall and dropped to the floor. “Mama said it had to look real.” She gasped a little, like her own words were choking her. With nothing now to hold on to, she clutched the table’s edge, stared fiercely at it. “Mama said it had to look like people died there. We were hiding, and the bad men came, and Will sneezed, because he sneezes when he gets excited, and I was crying. I couldn’t help it. Mama said…hush. She held her hands…over my mouth—”
The girl was having trouble breathing. She looked around, wild-eyed, and then, before Eliana had time to prepare herself, Linnet scrambled off Patrik’s lap and ran to her.
She slammed into Eliana’s front, threw her arms around her neck, and buried her face in Eliana’s braid. She clung there, her little bird’s body trembling like it was ready to crack. Her breath came in frantic gasps against Eliana’s ear.
“Mama said…” Linnet whispered, over and over. “Mama said hush. Mama said please be quiet…”
Eliana couldn’t move, could hardly breathe with this weight she didn’t ask for hanging from her neck. She wanted to shove the girl off her, then rip Hob’s notebook from his hands and throw it into the fire.
It will consume you.
Breathing thinly through her nose, she tamped down the rising panic winging hard up her throat.
She didn’t think of Remy, probably tossing with nightmares down the hall. He’d never slept away from home, not once in his life.
Didn’t think of her dead father, her vanished mother, the soft way they’d looked at each other before war ripped them apart.
Didn’t think of Harkan and his warm bed, the scent of him like coming home.
A girl couldn’t think of these things, couldn’t think about teary-eyed children and their tragic stories—not if she was also a killer.
I am the Dread of Orline.
“Then what happened?” Eliana asked. Her voice came out thick, not the hollow, flat thing she’d tried for, and she hated herself for it. She needed to get out of this room before it ate her alive.
I will not be consumed.
“They marched inside,” Linnet whispered. “I saw wings on their chests. That’s the Empire’s sign.” She turned her face into Eliana’s neck. “Did you know that?”
“Yes.” Eliana’s collar grew wet beneath Linnet’s chin. The heat of the fire licked up her back. What was the old prayer? For Saint Marzana, the firebrand. Remy would know. “I did know that.”