Pretender to the crown, p.2
Pretender to the Crown, page 2
“Quick, take off your coat and hat,” the man said.
“What?”
He crossed the room to her side and grabbed her hand and towed her back to the bed. “Your coat, quickly!” he repeated.
Dazed, Willow removed her coat and handed it to him. He tossed it far away, beyond the bed, yanked her cap from her head and shoved it under a pillow. “Lie down,” he said, grabbing her shoulders, and bore her down beneath him.
She heard pounding again, much closer now, but most of her attention was reserved for the man lying atop her, his dark eyes intent on her. He put one arm around her and pulled the quilt up over them to his waist. “Sorry about this,” he said, and kissed her.
His mouth was warm and firm on hers, and without thinking she put her arms around his neck and pulled him closer, returning his kiss. His free hand caressed her side and settled on her hip, and he worked his fingers under her thin linen shirt and stroked her skin, making her gasp. She felt him smile, and then someone was pounding on the door, and she heard it fly open. A gruff voice said, “Where—oh.”
The man lifted his head, just a little. “Do you mind?” he said with some irritation.
“Sorry, sir,” the gruff voice said, and the door closed abruptly. The man rolled off Willow and lay with his arms spread wide, one of them still trapped under her body. She sat up, tugging her shirt down where his fingers had rucked it up a bit, and resettled the bag, which had shifted during their embrace. Retrieving her cap, she pulled it down over her ears with some force.
“Why did you do that?” she said.
“I was hoping for ‘thank you,’ but I suppose that will have to do,” he said.
“Thank you. Now, why did you do that? And who are you?”
“Isn’t that something you ought to ask before you kiss a man?”
Willow flushed. “You kissed me first.”
“That I did,” he said, and he sounded so satisfied she blushed again. “And I take it back. I’m not sorry at all.”
“You probably should have let them capture me. Lord Adolon won’t be happy with you if he finds out.”
“He’s not going to find out. Besides, he can’t afford to be unhappy with me. I’m his dowser.”
“Oh.” Lord Adolon’s dowser, the man who located sources of magic for the Ascendant to fuel his magic. The idea made her feel unexpectedly downcast. “You must be a recent addition to his household. This room was empty three days ago.”
“I arrived yesterday. So you’ve been planning this for a while. What did you steal?”
“What makes you think I stole anything?”
“Because you don’t look like the kind of woman who fails to get what she wants. You don’t kiss like that kind of woman, either.”
“You startled me. I reacted as anyone would have.”
He sat up and bounced gently on the mattress. “I think most women’s reactions in that situation would be to scream and shove the half-naked man to the floor.”
“Maybe.” Willow got up and went to the window again. Shadows moving below told her the guards were still searching the grounds. Guards or not, she couldn’t stay here forever. She’d need to move soon.
“What’s your name?” the man said.
“Does it matter?”
“You were just in my bed. I think it matters a little.”
“I—” Willow stared at him. “I think you’re a madman.”
“My name is Serjian Kerish. What’s yours?”
“Mister Kerish—”
“Kerish is my given name. Eskandelics put family names first. I’ll make up a name for you if you won’t tell me.”
“I don’t—”
“It will be an embarrassingly sentimental name.”
Willow closed her eyes briefly. How much stranger could this night get? “Willow,” she said.
“Willow. A beautiful name for a blue-eyed beauty.” He stood and came toward her, his dark eyes fixed on her. She took a step backward and came up against the wall next to the window. “What did you steal?”
“Are you planning to take it from me?”
“No. I’m just curious as to what you’re risking your life for.”
“A necklace.”
“May I see it?”
He was close enough now that she could easily stab him in the heart with her forearm blade that burned silvery light up to her left wrist. Close enough that he could kiss her again if he wanted to—or for her to kiss him. Don’t be an idiot, she told herself, he’s a dowser, he’s as much complicit as any Ascendant. “I have to leave now, before they think to search the roof,” she said.
“When can I see you again?”
Startled, she said, “You can’t. Why would you want to?”
“Because you’re the most remarkable woman I’ve ever met.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“Which is why I want to see you again.” She was tall for a woman, but he was taller, broad in the shoulders and muscled like someone who knew the use of a sword, and now he leaned over her, so close she could feel his warm breath on her forehead. “Tell me where I can meet you. Tomorrow. Somewhere obvious, because I don’t know this city well yet.”
He smelled as exotic as he looked, of spices from some distant Eskandelic marketplace. She put her hand behind his neck, pulled him toward her, and kissed him, lightly, then released him before he could react. “I’ll find you,” she said, and sprang backward out the window and scrambled up the wall, out of his reach.
She prayed to ungoverned heaven that he wasn’t watching her go, hadn’t foolishly stuck his head out of the window. With the way her luck was going, she didn’t want to trust to the guards’ disinclination to look up. She didn’t look back to see if he had. She focused instead on her hands, seeking out the narrowest purchase on the rough stone face of Lord Adolon’s house, bought and paid for by his Ascendant’s power, fueled by his dowser.
Her foot slipped. She cursed her momentary distraction. Maybe he wasn’t a selfish, arrogant Ascendant, but without a dowser, an Ascendant had only what little source he passively absorbed from the invisible lines of power. That made dowsers indirectly responsible for the things Ascendants did with that source. Made Kerish just as bad.
She pulled herself onto the roof, lay back and flattened herself on the freezing surface. She’d be damp after this, with her body heat melting the rime coating the tiles, but she was too distracted to continue. She could still feel his body against hers, his fingers on her skin. You don’t kiss like a woman who fails to get what she wants, he’d said, but the truth was she’d never been kissed before. And now she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
He’d rattled her, she who’d run from Lower Town to the top of the Hill without ever touching the ground. She who’d not only stolen Lady Marinnes’ famous ruby coronet, but had gotten the Lady’s household guard to give her an honor escort all the way home. Not that she’d been able to keep those lodgings afterward, but it was a story she’d dined out on for a month. And now a stranger with a charming smile and a body like one of the lost gods had kissed her, had looked at her with desire, and she was having trouble convincing herself not to go running back to his window.
She rolled to her feet and pulled on her gloves, then set off across the rooftops. She might still have time to escape the way she came in, down the wall into a sheltered nook where two ells of the house met, then across the kitchen garden and over the estate wall. Lord Adolon’s magic was external, the power to move things without touching them. He didn’t have the more dangerous (to a thief) skills of sensing movement or thoughts or the presence of someone in a place she shouldn’t be. That didn’t mean she was safe. She’d lost precious time—she shook the memory away and leaped from the roof, turning in midair to catch the eaves and plant both feet on the adjacent walls that made a V she could practically walk down.
She heard shouts now. The guards were coming. She bounded down the walls and landed a little too hard on the gravel, which crunched under her feet. Silver streaks of steel blades on either side, approaching too fast—she rose up and sprinted straight for the wall, not trying to outmaneuver the approaching guards. The velvet bag rubbed against her stomach like a burning ache. Behind her, she felt shining spikes bobbing fast, low to the ground. She pushed herself faster, because the dogs would be upon her before the guards were. Then it would be over.
She feinted left, dove right, and heard the low growl of the attack dog. Her hands were on the wall and she was up and over, jaws snapping at her heels. The broken glass embedded in the top of the wall tore through the leg of her trousers and caught at her gloves. Then she was falling, rolling as she hit the ground, momentum carrying her to her feet.
Behind her, the dogs scrabbled at the rough stone of the wall, and guards shouted. Willow fled. She dashed around a few corners, then backtracked a few steps until she was sure she hadn’t been followed. She found a quiet spot where she could catch her breath before heading out again, just an ordinary woman walking home late from her job—
who wasn’t wearing more than a thin shirt. She’d left her coat in Lord Adolon’s house. In Kerish’s room.
It wasn’t the cold that chilled her. Lord Adolon’s talents might tend toward the flashy, but he had plenty of Ascendant acquaintances whose more subtle abilities could see a person’s identity, or location, from her clothing alone. With her inherent magic for sensing worked metal, she’d have become one of them if she hadn’t hidden her talent, stayed out of the Ascendants’ academy. If Lord Adolon had her coat—if Kerish gave it to him—
Willow began running again. Time to rid herself of her burning treasure, time to get paid, time to leave Aurilien and make a new life elsewhere.
Chapter Two
She was mostly frozen by the time she reached Rufus Black’s…it wasn’t his home, she knew, but she’d never seen him anywhere else no matter what time of day or night it was. Possibly he never slept. She rapped on the door in a staccato non-rhythm, then stood where she could clearly be seen from the upper window.
Eventually the door opened with a wailing scream that Rufus’s neighbors would have complained about if he wasn’t a duke of Lower Town and master of dozens of ruffians who were good at teaching people why complaining never got you anything but a faceful of knuckles.
Willow stepped inside and let Rufus’s invisible assistants remove her blade, then walked upstairs. The third step up let out a long sputtering fart. Someday she’d remember to skip that one.
“Didn’t expect to see you before week’s end,” Rufus said when she entered his lair. He stood at the window with his arms crossed over his chest. His long hair, slightly shiny with grease, spilled over his collar and halfway down his back. In summer, he never wore more than a thin tunic through which his back hair was clearly visible. Rufus didn’t so much have hair as a pelt.
“I made an opportunity and took it,” Willow said. She reached inside her shirt and took out the velvet bag. “But I could come back tomorrow if that would make you happy.”
“As if Willow North cared about what makes me happy,” Rufus said. He took the velvet bag from her hand and looked inside. “Can’t imagine wearing anything like this, can you?”
“Not really. And it wouldn’t suit your dainty features, anyway.”
Rufus snorted. “I’d melt it down and reset the gems, if it were mine, but it’s not, and who knows why these Hill bastards do what they do. I take it you want paying?”
“I was going to do this one for King and country, but you know how I feel about the King and I’m not much fonder of my country.”
“No loyalty to your home town?”
Willow had never been outside Aurilien and had never wanted to. “Loyalty to my friends, maybe.”
“Fair enough, so long as I’m one of your friends.” Rufus withdrew a small sack from a box inside his desk and tossed it at her. Flying, burning gold—she caught it, kept from wincing at even the indirect touch of the metal, and glanced inside, though she already knew it was the full amount.
“You are so long as you’re honest,” she told him.
Rufus sighed, then reached into the box again and came out with a smaller sack, which he also tossed at her. “Bonus for early completion,” he said. “From the client.”
“I didn’t know. You could have kept this, Rufus.”
“I almost did. I figure, if I deal straight with you, you’ll take my offer of employment seriously.”
Willow weighed the little bag of silver coin in her hand before dropping into her shirt it to fizz quietly against her skin next to the burning gold. “Jokes aside, I do trust you,” she said. “And if I change my mind, yours is the organization I’d join. Just…not today.”
She considered telling him about the coat, but held her tongue. Knowing she might have a target on her back would make him needlessly paranoid, and if an Ascendant were after her, he or she wouldn’t need to torture Rufus to get her location.
“Fair enough. Go home, get drunk, and for heaven’s sake put on some more clothes. I’m near frostbitten just looking at you.”
She trotted down the stairs, collected her knife, which had been left neatly on the table by the front door, waiting for her, and loped away down the street toward her lodgings. Kerish might have forgotten about her coat, or he might wait until morning to give it to Lord Adolon, but in any case the Ascendant wouldn’t be able to find anyone to track her with it tonight. He wasn’t a popular man, not that Ascendants liked each other all that much, but there certainly wasn’t anyone who’d put himself out to help the man at nearly midnight. She was probably safe going to her room, collecting her things, then finding a place to stay until dawn, when she could leave the city.
She didn’t have much. A change of clothing, a pair of boots for when she wasn’t midnighting. Her stash of coin, which was sizable. She might need to see about changing some of the smaller coin for one- or ten-guilder coins, certainly getting rid of the copper, which made her itch. Her books—she’d have to leave them behind, but they weren’t worth much except she loved the stories. The carved ivory bracelet that was all she had left of her mother. It was too impractical for her to wear while midnighting, but sometimes she put it on and lay in bed and remembered lying snuggled up with her mother, touching the bracelet’s smooth surface and running her fingers along its grooves. Everything else, dishes and a small stash of food and firewood, could stay here for the next tenant. She packed her knapsack and left without looking back.
She spent the night in a loft above a bakery, curled up against the chimney and dreaming of summer and sleeping on a mattress made of fresh, yeasty bread. For a moment upon waking , she couldn’t remember why she was there and was so comfortable she didn’t much care. Then she gathered her things and sneaked away.
She headed down to Baker’s Way, which didn’t have any bakeries but did have shops selling any number of useful, secondhand items, and bought a coat that fit her better than the old had and a hat with a floppy brim that obscured her face. Then she headed for the south gate. She had no idea what lay outside Aurilien, but there were other cities in Tremontane where she could make a living, and other countries than Tremontane where she could settle if she had to. This mistake didn’t have to be a death sentence.
But the closer she got to the gate, the harder it was to take the next step. She paused in a doorway within sight of the gate and rubbed her gloved fingers together as if that could warm them. Maybe she was overreacting. She hadn’t seen or sensed an unusual number of guards in any of the places she’d been all day. There hadn’t been any rumors about a thief making off with Lord Adolon’s property. Maybe Kerish hadn’t given him the coat. Or maybe he had, and Lord Adolon hadn’t found anyone who was willing to help him. Either way, it was possible she didn’t have to leave Aurilien. She tried not to dwell on how relieved that made her.
Just to be sure, she spent the day in motion, traveling between all the places she spent much time at, like her favorite tavern and Nan’s hovel. Not that she entered the latter because what she didn’t need was Nan bitching at her about how ungrateful she was. No guards appeared. No Ascendant came trundling down the street in a four-horse carriage with sign and shield on the door.
By midafternoon Willow was so tense from watching in all directions at once that a scream from an angry toddler in the middle of the Northside market sent her running for several paces before she reined herself in. She went back to the gate twice, and twice told herself she was being foolish.
At sunset, on edge and hungry—she’d been too worried about being caught while she was distracted to eat anything—she ditched her knapsack in the same loft where she’d spent the night and crossed the city to Lord Adolon’s estate. Either she’d be caught, tortured, and killed, or she’d get the damn coat back so she could sleep again. And you’ll see him, she thought, and chased that ridiculous, sentimental notion away. He was a dowser, and that made him the enemy.
It took almost half an hour for Willow to memorize the new pattern of the guards’ movement. Lord Adolon had at least taken her invasion seriously, just not seriously enough. There were still holes in their pattern, and she waited for the largest of these, then climbed over the wall—more carefully this time, she didn’t have any other trousers to spare—and crossed the frozen yellow grass of the dead lawn to the same hidden corner where she’d made her escape. It wasn’t her favorite ascent, but the place where the walls came together was invisible from all but the farthest windows of each ell, and by the time anyone in those rooms could raise the alarm, she’d be gone.
Slipping a little on the frost-rimed tiles, she crossed the roofs, occasionally crouching at the edge and looking down past the eaves to orient herself. It took her a while to locate Kerish’s room, and more time to plot out the best way of reaching it, but in the end she took off her shoes, tucked them into her belt, and climbed down the flat face of the house. Free climbing made her blood tingle as if she were sheathed in brass, made her feel more powerful than any Ascendant, with her toes and fingertips skimming across the blank face of a wall, looking for purchase.
