Up close, Revnik is a city of soft-colored stone, of domes and turrets and massive arches. Umber tiles accent everything, from pillars to windows to doors. Oil lights glow in hazy splashes in the darkness, made fuzzy, out of focus by the moisture of the lake that cradles the city with wide arms and narrow fingers.
An enormous wall protects the inner city from invaders, but centuries have spread Revnik beyond its original border, crammed with churches, watchtowers, and hundreds of narrow stone houses and wood-framed shops.
Almost all of it’s empty.
For every open window are three boarded or broken. For every bridge standing, another two lie in ruins. Life gathers around the sparse light in clusters: men and women with somber faces and curious eyes that track us as we pass. Rangy dogs nudge through the alleys; a red-tailed fox trots beside us for half a block, a dead rat carried in its mouth.
I see everything but register little, no better than a golem of skin and bone with a deep, dull ache in my chest. Not from the infection, but from the silence that festers between North and I, the conversation we carry on without any words. North’s defense in the way his legs tense against mine, the way he strangles the reins in his fists; my accusations in the way I sit bent forward though it hurts my back, to avoid the temptation of his warmth and the beat of his heart and the reminder that he’s human.
So am I, but not for much longer. Already the skin of my forearm is peeling back to the raw tissue underneath. Dark cracks web the skin of my hand, oozing bright pearls of blood that look violet in the misty lamplight.
We steer past darkened churches and narrow streets, through alleys choked with garbage and streets wide enough for ten across where we’re the only ones in view. Shadows shift along the roofline—hooded men holding crossbows, with swords strapped to their hips.
“Lord Inichi keeps the city watched,” North explains, when he sees me looking. “His men are as close to a militia as Revnik has had in almost fifteen years.”
Scorn colors my voice. “So why aren’t they in New Prevast? Guarding you?”
“When you’ve spent fifteen years making your own rules, it’s hard to follow someone else’s,” North says drily. “His men are better suited to guarding Revnik and the pass.”
We finally stop at a high stone wall half hidden behind a barricade of ivy. I catch a glimpse of a beautiful manor house through the iron gate. Built from stone and arches and ornate windows, it sits back from the street, fronted by an overgrown garden. Iron grillwork frames the windows on the first floor and above a double-sided doorway painted a bright and blinding red.
North slides off the horse, lashing it to a ring embedded in the wall. There are none of Inichi’s men in sight, but I feel watched all the same.
After helping me down, North shoulders my weight. “Can you walk?”
Barely. He guides me up the stone path, past statues and broken fountains buried in tangles of ivy and brush. When we reach the wide porch, passing through a frame of columns to reach the doorway, he wets his lips and hesitates before lifting the brass knocker and slamming it down Almost unconsciously, his hand strays toward mine, his little finger brushing against me before I pull away, hugging myself with a shiver of pain.
“Who is this man?” I ask.
North doesn’t answer as the door opens with a yawn. A young servant in faded red livery bows us into a long hallway of chipped marble and peeling wallpaper. A flickering chandelier hangs overhead, half crystal and half cobweb. A dark staircase sweeps up to the second floor and doorways are open down both sides of the foyer, leading into darkened rooms full of furniture and muddied shadows—arms and legs and lethargic bodies sprawled with little dignity. The smell of opium and something darker thickens the air and stains the edges of the wallpaper the same brown as stagnant water.
I turn to North, accusing, but before I can demand an explanation as to why he brought me to an opium den, an older man thunders down the stairs, stopping halfway. Dressed in an unbuttoned waistcoat and untucked shirttails, he looks wild, interrupted. An owlish look of surprise dissolves into a wicked grin. “Ever North at my door,” he says before he laughs and slaps the banister. “Son of a bitch! How are you?”
“Solch,” says North with a grim smile, threading his arm through mine.
Solch cocks his head and lifts his shaggy eyebrows above his glasses. “And company?”
“Miss Locke,” North says, before I can.
“M’lady,” Solch says with a smirk and an exaggerated bow. “Come in, come in!” He beckons us to follow as he turns back upstairs.
He leads us into the right wing of the house, separated from the rest by a dank velvet curtain. Beyond, the air dims with smoke and rattling coughs muted behind doors with numbers chalked across the painted wood. Cheap silk screens hide the peeling wallpaper, shoved in between ratty cushions and discarded pipes. There’s vomit on the floor.
Solch unlocks a door at the end of the hall and shoulders it open. A girl looks up from a bed of pillows, counting stacks of coins with stained fingers. She isn’t wearing a blouse and her breasts are cracked, blistered; her bare stomach riddled with smears of infected magic and patches of scaling gray skin. She sees North and stands with a crack of bones and a look of tired expectation.
“My client, not yours,” Solch says, slapping her hand away.
The girl looks at me in dubious question: Am I the client? She can’t be much older than me—maybe even younger, and my stomach tightens with anger, with disgust. This is what Cadence will become if Bryn wins. This is what Tobek used to be, what he might become again if Baedan does. For the first time, I truly understand what North is fighting for.
Solch leads us into another room, larger than the first, a nobleman’s bedroom gone to seed like everything else in this house, in this city. There’s a wide, rumpled bed against one wall with swaths of dark fabric circling the top. A worktable is pressed against the other wall, littered with strange and wicked medical equipment. Blades of all sizes are intermixed with bottles of all colors, scraps of bones, and a forgotten dinner. Clean needles overlay used ones, cradled by dirty wads of bandages.
And teeth. Dozens of teeth in all colors.
“Are we buying or selling today?” Solch asks.
I look at North, who looks ahead, mouth thin and expression grim. “Buying,” he says.
Solch sinks into a tatty velvet armchair by a pair of doors propped open to a small balcony. He bends one leg over the other with an expectant look to me. “The offer?”
My skin crawls and I fold my arms over my chest, away from his prying gaze.
“I pay gold,” North says.
“I prefer skin,” says Solch, still sizing me up, assessing my value. “Skin makes me more money than gold ever has.”
“Gold and poison,” says North, “or I find another transferent.”
“At this hour? Who can hold their tongue the way I can?” Solch settles back in his chair, fingers tented. “Silence costs, my friend.”