A Torch Against the Night
Page 21

It does not matter that the Roost is dangerous. I must go in. Elias will not make it if I don’t find a way to get the Tellis. Not with his pulse so irregular, not after four days of seizures.
“You can’t die.” I shake him. “Do you hear me? You can’t die, or Darin dies too.”
The horse’s hooves slip on the rocks, and it rears, nearly ripping the reins from my hands and throwing Elias. I dismount and croon at the beast, trying to temper my impatience, coaxing it along as the thick mist gives way to a wretched, bone-chilling drizzle.
I can barely see my own hand in front of my face. But I take heart from it. If I cannot see where I’m going, the raiders cannot see who is approaching. Still, I tread carefully, feeling the press of danger from every side. From the sparse dirt trail I’ve followed, I can see the Roost well enough to make out that it is not one rock but two, riven in half as if by a great ax. A narrow valley runs through the center, and torchlight flickers within. That must be the market.
East of the Roost yawns a no-man’s-land where thin fingers of rock rise up out of plunging chasms, punching higher and higher until the rocks meld together to form the first low ridgelines of the Serran Mountain Range.
I search the gullies and ravines of the land around me until I spot a cave large enough to hide both Elias and the horse.
By the time I’ve tethered the beast to a knob of jutting rock and dragged Elias off its back, I’m panting. The rain has soaked him through, but there’s no time to change him into dry clothes now. I tuck a cloak around him carefully, then rifle through his pack for coins, feeling like a thief.
When I find them, I give his hand a squeeze and pull out one of his kerchiefs to tie about my face as he did in Serra, inhaling the scent of spice and rain.
Then I pull up my hood and slip out of the cave, hoping he’ll still be alive when I return.
If I return.
«««
The market at the heart of the Roost teems with Tribesmen, Martials, Mariners, even the wild-eyed Barbarians that harass the Empire’s borders. Southern traders move in and out of the crowd, their bright, cheerful clothing at odds with the weapons strapped across their backs, chests, and legs.
I don’t see a single Scholar. Not even slaves. But I do see plenty of people acting as shifty as I feel, and so I slump down and slip into the masses, making sure the hilt of my knife is clearly visible.
Within seconds of joining the crowd, someone grabs my arm. Without looking, I lash out with the knife, hear a grunt, and wrench away. I pull my hood lower and hunch, the way I did at Blackcliff. That’s all this place is. Another Blackcliff. Just smellier and with thieves and highwaymen, in addition to murderers.
The place stinks of liquor and animal dung, and beneath that, the acrid bite of ghas, a hallucinogen outlawed in the Empire. Ramshackle dwellings squat along the defile, most tucked into the natural cracks in the rock, with canvas tarps as roofs and walls. Goats and chickens are nearly as abundant as the people.
The dwellings might be humble, but the goods within are anything but. A group of men a few yards from me haggle over a tray of sparkling, egg-sized rubies and sapphires. Some stalls are filled with slab after slab of crumbling, sticky ghas, while others have firepowder barrels packed together in a dangerously haphazard fashion.
An arrow zings by my ear, and I’ve bolted ten steps before I realize it isn’t intended for me. A group of fur-clad Barbarians stand beside an arms dealer, testing out bows by casually firing arrows every which way. A fight breaks out and I try to shove past, but a crowd gathers, and it’s impossible to move. At this rate, I’ll never find an apothecary.
“—sixty-thousand-mark bounty, they say. Never heard of a mark that big—”
“Emperor doesn’t want to look a fool. Veturius was his first execution, and he botched it. Who’s the girl with him? Why would he travel with a Scholar?”
“Maybe he’s joining the revolution. Scholars know the secret of Serric steel, I hear. Spiro Teluman himself taught a Scholar lad. Maybe Veturius is as sick of the Empire as Teluman is.”
Bleeding skies. I make myself walk on, though I desperately wish to keep listening. How did the information about Teluman and Darin get out? And what does it mean for my brother?
That he might have less time than you think. Move.
The drums have clearly carried my and Elias’s descriptions far. I move swiftly now, scanning the myriad stalls for an apothecary. The longer I linger, the more danger we are in. The bounty on our heads is massive enough that I doubt there’s a soul in this place who hasn’t heard about it.
Finally, in an alley off the main thoroughfare, I spot a shack with a mortar and pestle carved into the door. As I turn toward it, I pass a group of Tribesmen sharing steaming cups of tea beneath a tarp with a pair of Mariners.
“—like monsters out of the hells.” One of the Tribesmen, a thin-lipped, scar-faced man, speaks in a low voice. “Didn’t matter how much we fought. Kept coming back. Wraiths. Bleeding wraiths.”
I nearly halt in my tracks, but continue on slowly at the last moment. So others have seen the fey creatures too. My curiosity gets the better of me, and I lean down to fiddle with my bootlaces, straining to hear the conversation.
“Another Ayanese frigate went down a week ago off Isle South,” one of the Mariners says. She takes a sip of tea and shivers. “Thought it was corsairs, but the only survivor raved about sea efrits. I wouldn’t have believed him, but now …”