Fanagin laughs. “I bet you fell from the sky,” he says, advancing on me. “A gift from Rook, wrapped up all nice and neat, just for me.”
“Don’t touch me,” I warn. The knife, I think, hand straying to the bag around my shoulder. Did Bryn keep it?
“But that’s the fun part.” His smile widens, turns monstrous.
Bryn screams and I gasp as the air is pressed from my lungs. She must have fallen, a suspicion confirmed by the dull ache in my hip that arrives a moment later, shooting pains down my leg.
Fanagin lunges and I take another wild swing, cringing when I hit his throat and a blister erupts, spraying oily blood across my face. Panicked, I scrub it away with the sleeve of my coat, but my weakness costs a chance at defense. Fanagin hits me back before I can block him, a sharp blow across my temple. It knocks me to my knees in a flurry of stars, but before he can strike me again, I lock my hands and slam them down on his knee before scrambling out of the way.
Not fast enough. Fanagin catches me by the back of my coat and pins me face first into the mud. It fills my mouth and nose and I begin choking before he rolls me over, forking a hand around my throat, cutting off all but a trickle of air. Rough, dirty fingers force my lips apart and he scrubs mud against my gums as he assesses my teeth. “Those are worth something, at least,” he says, before pulling back the collar of my coat, inspecting my neck, pressing the sore spot where Alistair injected me. “What is this? You ever bleed fire before? Is the meat already spoiled?”
Tears blur my eyes as I begin gasping for air. My lungs ache against my ribs and white spots begin to crowd my vision.
“Keep your collar up and no one will know,” he says. “You look clean enough for me and that’s clean enough for most.” Arching an eyebrow, Fanagin clucks his tongue and shakes his head with mock sympathy before he applies more pressure to my throat. “Didn’t Rook warn you there are wolves in this world?”
With one last shuddering heartbeat, darkness swallows me.
Nine
BRIGHT LIGHTS AND FUZZY FIGURES blur the edges of my vision. Shapes jostle into focus but are lost again as noises clamor around me, a ceaseless, directionless din of shouting and laughter and the clatter of coins exchanging hands. Slowly, I blink the world into focus. Iron bars, beyond which rises a forest of wooden columns and canvas awnings. Crowded tables bow beneath the weight of the wares for sale, everything from clothing to books to flesh. The people who browse bear marks of magic and poison and the scars of both. Everyone’s armed.
I struggle to sit up, wincing. The man from the bog, Fanagin, paces the inside of the cage, beating tempo in his palm with a short length of doubled leather. He’s pulled off his outer coat to a fresher one underneath, the sleeves punched up to his forearms. Faded scars of old spells twist up his wrists like pale threads against the dark poison in his veins. He calls for bids and best offers, cajoling the passersby.
Wetting my lips, I try to stretch my hands, testing the give of the rope around my wrists tethering me to a ring on the dusty floor. Only a few feet, and they come painfully, chafing my skin raw.
Beside me, Bryn sits with her chin up and her back straight, legs curled under her as if she’s at a palace picnic. She’s bound too, but other than a little mud in her hair and the ragged hem of her dress, she looks untouched, thanks to the spell. My body aches in comparison, a medley of pains that are hers and mine and ours combined. Scowling, I tentatively touch my throat and wince at the tender bruising.
“What’s the point of running,” she says without looking at me, “if you don’t follow?”
I lower my hands and stare at her, incredulous. “You’d be dead already if I wasn’t carrying your weaknesses!”
Her dark eyes cut toward me before they return to the crowded marketplace. “Strategy is never a weakness.”
“And is this strategy?” I ask, lifting my wrists to demonstrate the rope.
She doesn’t answer.
A young man dressed in black browses at a table adjacent to the cage, skimming over the odd baubles and trinkets, overlooking a seeping basket of infected body parts. Picking up my mother’s book, he thumbs through the pages, watching Fanagin from the corner of his eye.
I touch my pocket on reflex. Empty, of course; skin isn’t the only thing worth money. “That’s mine,” I say hotly.
The man lifts his eyebrows, glancing back at the cover before his eyes return to me with mild interest. Unlike the others who crowd the cage, there’s no poison in his face, but he wears a dark coat with the collar flipped against his throat, and leather gloves to hide most of his skin. A weeks’ worth of facial hair darkens his jaw and his hair is shaggy, in need of a trim. He carries a crossbow slung over one shoulder, a quiver of bolts on his back.
“Virgin skin, pure as the sainted virtues themselves,” Fanagin calls, striking the leather against the bars of the cage. “Begging to be bled or bed at your leisure. Not an inch of infection!”
The man considers me for another moment before his gaze shifts to Fanagin. “I’ll give you thirty-five for both,” he says, his voice low. Tucking my mother’s book under one arm, he retrieves a dark leather book from the pocket of his coat, opening it to where a grease pencil rests in the gutter of the spine. He cradles the pencil in hand, thumb tagging his place.
“Thirty-five each,” Fanagin counters.
“Forty for both,” the man says with a frown. “You’re not going to get much higher around here.”
“Fifty,” a woman offers from the other side of the cage, leering at the man in black. His frown deepens.
A second man saunters through the crowd, just as young as the first; bony and gaunt, with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. Loose strands fall forward against his sun-reddened cheeks, half hiding amber-tinted eyes. Curling a hand through the bars above his head, he leans into the cage with a grin, his other hand resting on his jutting hip. “North,” he says with a sly glance of acknowledgment to the man in black. “Figured I’d find you sniffing around some virgins.”
“Kellig.” The man in black, North, stares down at his book, jaw tight.
Kellig wets his lips and glances toward Bryn and I. “What are we buying today?”
“Body bags,” says North impassively, eyes briefly meeting mine.
Fanagin turns to Kellig with an eager smile. “Body bags,” he repeats. “Perfect, unopened envelopes waiting for the right man to come along and spoil them rotten.”
“You never buy body bags,” Kellig says, ignoring Fanagin. He tries to read over North’s shoulder.