“You stole from the wrong man,” Solch says with a terrifying grin. He grabs a scalpel from the mess on the floor and leans against Kellig, grabbing him by the hair and yanking his head back. “I should carve you up and sell you piecemeal. But I’ll settle for a few teeth.”
The scalpel scrapes into Kellig’s mouth and I roll away with a shock of nausea. Swallowing back the taste of blood, I scramble to my knees and then, with a lurch of vertigo, to my feet. North is slumped against the wall, head hanging low, swollen fingers digging at his neck.
He flinches when I touch him, but then his eyes focus, shifting beyond me to Kellig. Shoving himself off the wall, he pulls Solch back and Solch edges out of the way, hands raised in peace, still holding the scalpel and now, a tooth. Blood runs down his palms. “By all means,” he says. “Take whatever you want.”
North ignores him. Dropping to one knee, he bends over Kellig, his voice lowered to a gravel whisper. Already his skin is the color of charcoal as poison fills his fingertips, waiting to be transferred. “You have thirty seconds.”
Kellig pales even more, one hand wrapped around the hilt of the awl. Blood bubbles out of his mouth. “Baedan’s going after the daughter of the king,” he rasps at last. “I’m only supposed to delay you; she doesn’t know who you are. I—I won’t tell her if you don’t.” He tries to smile, revealing a hole where his left incisor used to be before he begins choking on blood. Turning his head, he spits on the floor.
North shifts to regain his faltering balance. “You expect me to believe you’re a loyalist now when you’ve done nothing but bring her bodies to burn and spells to cast that she would never be able to do on her own?”
“Come on, North.” Kellig blinks rapidly. His breath rattles out of him in thinning gasps; the threadbare carpet is soaked. “If she finds Merlock, we’ll all be pissing poison and eating our own skin.” Desperation inches his voice higher. “A bastard on the throne is better than a bitch.”
North stares at him, fingers curling into a fist. “Does she have a lead?”
At last, a more genuine smile, a hint of the man from the marketplace, eager to barter. “I can’t tell you if you kill me.”
“North.” I touch his arm; his eyes jolt toward me and struggle to refocus. “Tobek can’t fight Baedan on his own, and if she gets to Bryn . . .” I trail off pointedly. Bryn could persuade an agreement with anyone, and we need Bryn to believe she’s on our side as long as possible.
North nods, rubbing the heels of his hands against his eyes. Kellig drops his head back, relived, but then North grabs him by the throat. “You stole from the wrong man,” he says, echoing Solch.
Kellig’s feet kick out in protest as North takes back the magic Kellig tore out of me. But North doesn’t stop, even after the last line of silver dims out of Kellig’s skin, and poison begins to spread, rolling down his throat. The skin starts to burn, tiny cracks widening into seeping wounds. The blood at his shoulder darkens and slows to an ooze of thick sludge.
Kellig grabs North’s wrist, trying to leach the infection back into him, but it’s not enough. His eyes flood black; poison drips from his nose. A moment later, he goes still. Dead? Or is he bartering with the gods now, choosing his vices over his soul?
“North.” When I touch his hand again, a shot of pain sparks up my arm with warning. Sweat beads his forehead, rolling down the side of his cheek.
Guilt immediately overtakes anger as he looks to Kellig and back to me. “I—I’m so sorry,” he says, stricken. “I didn’t—”
“We have to go,” I say softly. Even through the cotton of his shirt, I feel his skin burning.
“You have blood on your face,” he whispers, and it’s heartbreaking, the sorrow in his voice, the shadows in his eyes. He reaches for me only to recoil when he remembers his hands.
“It’s probably mine, damn it,” Solch growls from the armchair. His glasses hang from one hand; the other hand pinches the bridge of his nose.
Hate needles through me. For a moment, I’m tempted to cut Solch’s throat with the scalpel balanced on the arm of the chair next to Kellig’s incisor. Is that me or the infection in my blood?
Instead, I grab North’s coat off the bed and Kellig’s knife from the floor, leveling it in Solch’s face. The truth is, he’s harmless beyond this city, without North’s name to barter, and hurting him would be an act of self-indulgent cruelty. I don’t understand North’s friendship with this man, but I do understand that poisoned or not, I will never be like Bryn.
But he doesn’t have to know that. “If I ever see you again,” I warn.
“You won’t.” He snorts, waving a hand in dismissal. “You don’t even have to pay for the room. Consider it a parting gift.” His pale eyes settle on me and I hold his gaze.
He looks away first.
On second thought, I pocket the scalpel after all, grabbing North’s sleeve before he can step out onto the balcony. “Wrong door,” I say, squeezing his arm with a sudden affection.
We’re like two drunks defying gravity as we stumble downstairs. Giddy and slow, clumsy and heavy, I miscount the last step and we fall, landing in each other’s arms with matching looks of panic. He’s losing color fast, but at the very least, he can get on the horse.
Dewy morning humidity turns the cobblestones slick as we ride out of the city, relying on North’s failing sense of direction. He clings to my waist, whispering words and nonsense against my back. Promises, prayers, magic spells, or curses, I don’t know. I don’t care. Only one thing matters.
“Don’t let go of me,” I say.
He presses his head against my back and holds on all the tighter.
Twenty-Three
NORTH BEGS ME TO STOP just beyond the mountain pass, when the land opens into a sea of hard swells and pitted divots, all grown over green with moss and lacy wildflowers. Lava fields. Water slips in and out of view, running in narrow streams full of stones and silver fish. The road itself has worn a flattened path forward, but the ground on either side is misshapen, uneven, a potential labyrinth of dangerous footing.
Though the sun rises on the southern half of Avinea, storm clouds knot the sky this side of the mountains, and an eerie mist turns the world into something surreal. To our left, the Burn simmers, a ribbon of ash and gold that stretches as far as I can see.
“There,” North directs with a grunt, and I steer the horse to a ring of stones too perfectly arranged to be accidental. A forgotten temple, maybe, or a traveler’s shrine. Faded wreaths of flowers blanket the ground; scraps of clothing snap in the wind, held in place by totems of various saints. All meager offerings from pilgrims preparing to wind through the mountains, or grateful tokens of thanks to have arrived on the other side still alive.