It took Vaness three yanks to get the neck of her gown past the wooden collar, and by the time it was on, Lev had poked her head in the room. “All ready?”
“Almost,” Vaness trilled. Then, in a hurried whisper from the side of her mouth, she added, “Be ready, Safi. For soon, the Baedyeds will come for us.”
“Good.” Safi couldn’t resist a dark, triumphant grin while she tugged on her forest green dress. It was a loose in the bodice and the skirt barely made it mid-calf, but she preferred it that way. There was room to move. Room to fight.
I’m coming, Iz.
The door whooshed wide, and Caden strode in. He aimed straight for Safi, eyes flying over her gown—and chin dipping ever so slightly in approval. He too was clean and freshly clothed. His armor, however, was absent. No chain mail or brigandine, no gauntlets or steel helm.
Yet a sword still hung at his waist, and his shoulder appeared leagues sturdier than it had an hour before.
“Heretic,” he said, coming to a stop before Safi, “don your boots.”
Safi arched a cool eyebrow. “Why, Hell-Bard?”
“Because you and I are taking a little trip, and there’s a reason the locals say the streets of Saldonica are paved with shit.”
*
Though Caden didn’t tie up Safi, he did keep a dagger out, and he forced her to march directly before him. Within grabbing distance, should the need arise.
The need wouldn’t arise, for Safi had no desire to bolt. Her Threadstone might have stopped flashing, but that didn’t change her need for escape—and her odds of survival were much higher with an entire contingent of Baedyed Pirates coming to her aid than all alone on the streets of Saldonica.
Which were indeed layered in shit and trash, something she noticed as soon as they left behind the clean corners of the Baedyed territory.
“Where are we going?” Safi asked, her head dipped back so Caden could hear. They were once more in the open market, but there was no missing the Red Sails’ scarlet banners flapping ahead. “I thought you said the Red Sails would kill us all.”
“They will,” Caden said, pitching his voice over the noises of the afternoon. “They’ve a vow to kill all Cartorrans on sight, which is why we won’t be speaking in Cartorran—and why we won’t be staying long.”
Staying long where? Safi wanted to press. And why bring me at all? But she didn’t get the chance, for they were approaching a massive archway, where men waited, armed with more blades than they had teeth.
The men watched Safi and Caden saunter past. Bad men. Wrong men. The shivers against her witchery told Safi all she needed to know. At least none made a move to follow Safi and Caden into the world of torpid swamp that was the Red Sails’ territory.
The Baedyeds might have cleared the land and established a proper city on their claim of the peninsula, but the Red Sails had left the jungle to its own devices. Theirs was a world like Safi had imagined, a world like Habim had described. Dilapidated huts sank against massive roots or nestled beside vine-covered ruins. Haphazard. No organization. And almost all of it built on stilts, as if this soggy earth flooded during storms.
Rope bridges were slung between buildings, and as often as Safi saw laundry dangling from a crooked window she saw corpses hanging as well. Some were bloated, fresh; others were decomposed all the way to gleaming skull.
This was what complete freedom allowed. This was what men did in the absence of rules or an imperial yoke.
Cartorra has its flaws, Heretic, but it also has safety. Food too, as well as wealth, roads, education. I could keep going, for the list is long.
Curse the Hell-Bard, for there was no denying the truth in his words. They sang, deep in Safi’s witchery, a soothing, golden pulse beneath the erratic scritch of wrong that surrounded her.
Caden guided Safi up a narrow street that cut between ruins and trees. Muffled music, conversation, and sounds heard only in a whorehouse preceded a blossom-shaped sign that squeaked on the marshy breeze: THE GILDED ROSE.
Caden towed Safi to a stop outside the clapboard building. “There’s an admiral inside whom I need to … interview. And you, Heretic, will be there to ensure she remains truthful.”
“Over my grandmother’s rotting corpse.” Safi snorted. “I will never let you use my magic, Hell-Bard.”
“You have little choice.” He wiggled his dagger. Sunlight bounced off the steel.
“Oh, but you can’t force me.” She batted her lashes, hooking her arms behind her back. “As I believe I’ve mentioned before, I can smile at even the ugliest toad, and not once will he sense a lie.”
Now it was Caden’s turn to snort. “Oh, Heretic, you don’t even know it, do you?” He eased his knife into a hip scabbard. “It wasn’t my Hell-Bard protection that gave you away in Ve?aza City. It was you.”
Safi stiffened. Then against her better judgment, she took the bait. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” he said, closing the space between them, “that you have a tell.”