“Oh, sir!” Cam scooted in close. “You’re bleeding again.”
“Hye.” Merik sighed. So tired. Stix’s ice had shredded his right forearm, and who knew what injuries the escape from shadow man had opened up? He felt nothing, though. It was all old blood.
“I have an Earthwitch healer salve, sir. I got it at Pin’s Keep.”
Merik swiveled wearily toward the girl, with words of gratitude rising to his lips.
Cam misread him. Her mismatched hands shot up. “I didn’t steal it, sir! My friends at Pin’s Keep gave it to me!”
“Oh … I … thank you,” he said at last, and he meant it. Though he hated that her first reaction was defensive—had he truly scolded her so much over the last two weeks that this was her first reaction?
After shoving into Kullen’s apartment and hissing for the lanterns to ignite, Merik shuffled to the sagging table. The bread from yesterday had soaked up the water, and though by no means soft, now it was at least edible.
He bit off a chunk before removing the wet map from his belt and smoothing it across the table. Then he forced himself to say, “I’m sorry if I worried you, Cam. As you can see, I’m fine.”
“You’re alive,” she accepted grudgingly, “but I wouldn’t say you’re fine. Water?” Her shadow stretched over the map, and a clay cup appeared before Merik.
“Thank you.” He took it, only to glimpse Cam’s wrist, puffy with fresh bruises. A cut stretched down her inner forearm. “What happened?”
“S’nothing, sir.” She sidled away, and before Merik could follow, her shadow returned. This time, with a ceramic jar. “The salve, sir. For your face … and everywhere else too.”
“You first.” He pushed to his feet.
She thrust out her jaw. “I said it’s nothing, sir. Just got cornered by the wrong sort near Pin’s Keep. You, meanwhile, were only Noden knows where getting your face pummeled by only Noden knows who, so that you could then leap into a canal and almost drown. I reckon if anyone’s owed a story here, it’s me.”
Merik hesitated, his fists tightening. Knuckles cracking. “Who cornered you?”
“You first,” she countered.
Merik made the mistake of meeting Cam’s eyes, where there was no missing the sharp stubbornness that burned within—one he knew well from a different friend. A different lifetime.
Merik sighed and plunked himself into his chair. “Sit,” he ordered. Cam sat. Merik downed the water she’d brought in two gulps and finally said, “What happened, Cam, was that I got caught because I’m a blighted fool. But Stix … that is to say, First Mate Sotar let me go once she realized I was the Fury.”
Cam shivered and hugged her arms to her chest. The bruises were hidden in that position. “But you’re not really the Fury, sir. If anything, you’re a ghost who should be dead a hundred times over.”
“The Hagfishes can have me,” Merik murmured, staring into the empty cup, “if they’ll release Kullen or Safiya or … any number of souls better than me.”
“You might feel that way,” Cam murmured, “but no one else does.”
Merik knocked at the table, at the map—anything to change the subject. “I found this on my sister’s desk at Pin’s Keep.”
“The Cisterns.” Cam’s tone was matter-of-fact, and if she noticed Merik’s discomfort, there was no sign of it. Instead, she leaned over to tap the X. “What’s this, though?”
“I was hoping you might know. Didn’t you say you once used the Cisterns to travel the city?”
“Hye.” Her face scrunched up, lips puckering to one side. “I dunno that place precisely, but I know vaguely where it is. This here”—she pointed to a wide tunnel that ran half the length of the map—“runs below White Street. We call it Shite Street ’cos it’s where all the city’s sewage collects.”
“And these times?” Merik circled his finger around the list.
Instantly flags of scarlet raced up Cam’s cheeks, splotching across the paler marks. “I know my numbers, sir, but I can’t read them.”
“Ah.” Merik was struck by an embarrassed blush of his own. Of course most of his crew couldn’t read. He’d forgotten it was a luxury he’d earned by simply being born into the right family.
“Well, there are six times listed,” he said, “starting at half past the tenth chime and moving up in increments of half an hour.”