SWORDS (The Paladin's Thief Book 3) Read online

  “You’re well informed for an innkeep.” I say, turning back. “And he’s not really my Paladin.” If anything, he’s Lucinda’s.

  She shrugs. “I keep pigeons in all the major cities. There’s a grain of truth in every good story, and I make it my business to collect the best. That’s why people come to The Golden Sisal.”

  “Good stories, good business,” I agree. I add another coin to the countertop, grinning mischievously. If there is a price on my head, I’m going to be sure to earn it. “Can you send messages, too? Can you send a pigeon back to Ector for me?”

  She nods, fear dissipating at my smile.

  I play my hands across the counter like I’m spreading a parchment. “The Slayer added another six Nightshades to the pile in Flow-By-Downs,” I embellish. “Says he would’ve preferred a game of darts, though. Kids, Paladin, and barmaid unharmed.”

  Lucinda snorts at being referred to as “the barmaid,” but squeaks when Magnus ties off her bandage a little too tightly.

  The proprietor scribbles the note down on slate with chalk. “I’ll put a note out tonight, when I close up shop,”

  Behind me I can hear the tramp of boots as a pair of guardsmen burst in.

  “That reminds me of a joke I heard once,” I lie, speaking so that most in the common room can hear.

  “What’s that?” the innkeeper asks, obligingly.

  “How do you make sure the town guards show up to a ruckus?”

  “I give.”

  “Kill the Nightshade yourself.”

  Only Timmy laughs, a nervous, staccato chuckle. That boy has an odd sense of humor.

  We climb back into the carriage in a rush, and the driver needs no urging. With a flick of the reins we’re surging forward. My body and sore bottom protest painfully. How long we can last like this is beyond me.

  Lucinda’s bare arm is bandaged and she’s smashed in next to Magnus on the rear seat. Together they take up as much room as me and the twins.

  Nobody talks. We just watch Magnus and Lucinda, and they watch us back, heads swaying with the natural movement of the coach over uneven terrain. Then Magnus realizes his shoulder is pushing Lucinda up against the carriage frame. He lifts his arm and drapes it across her shoulders, resting some of its weight on the coach’s frame. “Better?” he asks.

  She twists left and then right, before settling into his side, arms in her lap, one bandaged, one still whole. “Much.”

  Val breaks the silence next. “Da,” she says. “Why do the ’Shades want us so bad? Why don’t they give up? Why would they risk—she shudders and makes a sidelong glance at Magnus—losing their heads to get us?”

  “It’s complicated, Val.”

  She gives me the “I’m-a-big-girl” stare, which is a lot like the “I’m-really-irritated-with-you” stare.

  “Besides hunting Magnus, they want these.” I pull out the pouch and add a new one to it. I have thirteen now, one from the beheaded man just moments earlier.

  “Why? They’re just rings.”

  “Did you try one on?”

  “With people trying to kill us? No Da! We stuffed them down Timmy’s pants and . . . Wait! Are they magic?”

  I nod.

  “Can I try one on now?” Val asks.

  Magnus shakes his head, but I give her one anyway.

  “Sure.”

  She puts it on and pulls it off almost immediately. “Ew-ww.”

  “That’s not really how I would describe it.” I say putting the ring back in the pouch with the others. “I would say it feels like the silk-smooth sound of daggers sliding across sheath metal. I can also smell a breath of consciousness, like someone whispering madness in the night.”

  Val shakes her head. “Nope,” she says. “Just a weird tingle. And then I remembered where we hid them while you were getting strangled on the rooftop. Gross.”

  Magnus watches me intently.

  “You feel all of that?” he asks. “Smooth daggers and steel and stuff?”

  “And more,” I say.

  “Can’t you just give the rings back?” Val interrupts as the coach bounces over an especially uneven patch of road. “Along with some gold, so they’ll leave us alone?”

  “No,” I say. “We don’t have enough gold for that. I don’t think the King of East March could buy them off.” I point to her side where Sanjuste cut her. “And I don’t really want to. They’d end up in the wrong hands, and they’re powerful.”

  She puts a hand to her own bandaged ribs, understanding. “Then why don’t we melt them down, Da?”

  She’s really working hard on this one, trying to find a way out for me. It makes me smile on the inside.

  “No good,” Magnus says. “The metal holds its charge, even when it’s melted down. Or it defers its power to other existing artifacts. The records in the Reliquary have evidence of both things happening, though we’re not sure what determines the result. They can’t be destroyed. But Fortrus keeps a collection, and it’s never been compromised since the dawn of the abbey. The keepers guard the Reliquary day and night, and no assassin has ever crossed the threshold of Fortrus Abbey.

  “I bet the Dreadlords in Byzantus were saying the same thing about your lot few months ago,” I point out.

  Magnus doesn’t have a ready response to that. Soon the cobblestone is left behind and the clatter lessens. Now I can hear the squeak of the wood again and the rush of the wind. As the night wears on, I begin to feel restless, imagining I can hear an extra set of hoof beats behind us. Nobody complains when I open the door and clamber up top while the coach is still in motion, least of all Magnus and Lucinda, who have curled into each other, his head drooping over hers.

  The driver doesn’t notice me at first, and the world whips past. The rain canopy is stowed and he is humming a children’s lullaby to himself as his head sweeps from left to right and then back, surveying the country side. The cold, late-autumn moon shines down on the ever dimming landscape of fields already robbed of barley, wheat, and rye.

  I cough politely to alert the driver but he fails to notice. And coach drivers are supposed to be observant. . .

  “Sir,” I say. “Sir!” I repeat more loudly.

  He leaps half-way up from his padded bench, boots clanging down on the footboards. “Aii!”

  “Yeh skeered me a’half to Fortrus,” he says accusingly.

  “Sorry,” I say as he makes room for me on the bench. “Have you ever met a Nightshade?” I ask.

  “Neh, and you best not tell me a’neither.”

  We stop along the roadside when dawn breaks, and all share a meal. Then Magnus, in sleep-matted hair and with an embarrassed look at Lucinda, insists on riding with the driver. She just smiles. When he’s gone, she leaves the coach interior and climbs into the trunk space with the blanket and pillow for a change of scenery, leaving me and the twins in the cabin.

  “What was that about?” I ask once we’re underway.

  Timmy shrugs.

  “Magnus was talking in his sleep,” Val says, giggling. “Mumbled something about being the first married couple accepted into the Order since Father Hugues.”

  Gradually the motion of the coach and the soft whispers of my twins playing finger chop lull me to sleep.

  The miles float past in that uneasy way they do for one who sleeps far from home.

  #

  “I made it for you,” Tom says, sitting across from me where my twins were moments ago.

  “You’re dead, Tom.”

  He grins, teeth glinting in imaginary torchlight. “Death means different things to different people, Teacup. That’s what Wisteria used to say, anyway.”

  “Wisteria?”

  “My old partner.”

  “Who?”

  “The one they made me kill.”

  The coach jolts, and my eyes jump open. Val and Timnus are still playing finger-chops, though it looks like Timnus is about to lose. My eyes drift shut.

  Tom is there again. I struggle to recapture my last dr
eam thought, but can’t. “You made something for me, Tom?” I mutter instead, tongue thick.

  “Your ring. It’s special. It touches the other rings, bleeds them.”

  “So I don’t have to worry about becoming a Nightshade?”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Tom drawls. “It’s still an Oathmaker. That’s the only ring a Dreadlord makes. Any move you make will flavor it.”

  “What about self-sacrifice?” I say this out of spite, but the question interests me almost immediately. How would a ring’s magic—dedicated to killing—react to unselfish actions?

  Tom shrugs. “Nightshades are a self-interested lot,” he says with a wicked gleam in his eye. “It’s never been tried.”

  When I wake, I know that’s exactly why he’s given it to me.

  #

  For the next few days we pass snow-dusted hills and townships, and watch early-morning frost turn the landscape silver and gray. The mountains get larger, ahead to the left, and continue into a low band of hills on our right. When we reach Avrigne, we skip the city completely and stay overnight at a farmhouse on the outskirts, courtesy of the goodwife’s kindness and her husband’s business sense. Nobody laments a night in the hayloft after the bone-rattling we’ve taken. Early the next morning we travel on, not bothering to change horses. The going is slower since we pushed them hard the day before, but we agree this is safer than to show our faces in a city the size of Avrigne after what happened in little old Flow-By-Downs.

  As we round the horn of the mountains and enter the heart of Solange, the landscape subtly changes, the snow disappears and the cold diminishes. The grass is long and yellowed, and the air dries out as we move westward. For two days, we see few farms and even fewer dwellings, just a few sod huts that an Ectorian wouldn’t consider fit for livestock.

  Here we stop again, pulling off the road between a pair of enormous willow trees flanking a small spring. I take Val to look for brushwood, but pretty soon she’s back by Magnus and Lucinda, helping them rub down the horses, and picking up tips from Lucinda about Pan knows what.

  Timmy’s more helpful, but he’s a city boy and lost in all this grass. I’m not much good out here either, I realize. I’ve never been this far from a city before, or out of East March, for that matter.

  Suddenly I feel a long way from home and that makes me think about Carmen.

  “You could write her,” Lucinda says later, when the horses have been set to graze and the bedrolls are laid out, with Magnus’s as far from Lucinda’s as is possible without leaving the comfort of the hot coals.

  “I know. I should.”

  I don’t make any move, though. What would I say? That I miss staring at her long, red curls? That I miss listening to her telling off the irresponsible residents of the Black Cat? That the smell of lavender and prairie sage out here reminds me of her?

  Or, should I tell her something more mundane? “I saw a hawk today, diving into tall grass.”

  My hands caress the silent fabric of the leggings she made for me.

  Lucinda isn’t impressed by my behavior. She’s a good decade younger than me but thinks she knows everything. She gets up and returns with the portable writing desk from the coach. It’s small, just big enough to hold a few sheets of parchment, a quill and an inkwell. She opens the top, pulls out the necessary items, closes the lid again, and stares at me expectantly.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  I give way to Lucinda’s unstoppable momentum. Who am I to argue? Carmen would do the same if she knew where I’d be. And she will write back, too. Carmen’s efficient like that, full of business. I put down a few of my thoughts.

  “What’s that letter?” Lucinda interrupts.

  “Huh?”

  “The one you just wrote?”

  “That’s an ‘a,’” I confirm.

  “I thought . . .”

  “They’re different depending on where they’re connected.”

  “Oh.”

  “And that one?”

  Eventually I stopper the ink and put down my signature. There’s still room on the page but I don’t care to write anymore. It isn’t as fun with Lucinda looming over asking questions about the letters. In a way, it’s reassuring, both that she’s interested in learning, and that she can’t tease me about what I’ve written. Recognizing letters is a far cry from stringing them together and understanding the words.

  The bedroll is cold at night, and that damn letter reminds me of a cozy place back on Lantern Street. I finger my ring—the soft gold one—and wonder if Carmen is staying there now, or if she’s still hiding out at Lucinda’s. Or at The Black Cat.

  Pan’s beard, Teacup. Go to sleep!

  We have to camp two nights on the plains because there aren’t any places to change horses, and they need rest as much as any two-legged creature I suppose. I don’t know a lot about horses, and I don’t care to. You can’t ride a horse across rooftops at night. And they bite and kick.

  I don’t mind the camping, though. It’s amazing what a bed of grass feels like after days of trying to sleep in a moving coach. I even feel some small breath of safety out here on the open plains. Nightshades aren’t like Brothers of Light. From all the stories, they stick to populated areas whenever possible. If Pale Tom is any indication, it’s because they like their comforts.

  But the campfire is comfortable, and I can’t help being awake on such a beautiful night. The stars seem brighter than I’ve ever seen them when the coals die down and the sound of a hunting owl overhead delights me. I can hear the rustle of his feathers and the click of his beak as he swoops low and is gone. I watch my kids for I don’t know how long. Timmy’s nose, eyes, and forehead are the only parts of him visible. Val’s head, shoulders, and feet extend from beneath the blanket. When she stretches her arms and rolls to her stomach, she plants the crook of her elbow right on Timmy’s nose. How they can continue sleeping like this is beyond me, but neither wake. Eventually he elbows her in the ribs inadvertently and she jerks away. Problem solved.

  Lucinda sleeps peacefully, facing Magnus, though he’s across the campfire, her breathing deep and full, absent all her impish charm.

  The driver snores.

  Magnus is a different story. His sleep becomes increasingly restless. He calls out unintelligible warnings and tries to draw his sword in his sleep. It gets so bad that I worry he’s going to wake the kids up and frighten them. We don’t need that.

  “Magnus.”

  Nothing.

  “MAGNUS.”

  Nothing but a half sob, and more thrashing. The dirt clod I throw doesn’t wake him either. I creep over and tap him on the chest.

  This time he wakes, his hand leaping out to catch me by the throat as he sits up. There’s a wild look in his coal-lit eyes, and for a moment he doesn’t recognize me. “Teacup?”

  I nod, unable to breath.

  His hand relaxes. “They’re burning the Abbey, Teacup! They’re burning it to the ground!”

  I rub my neck. “They aren’t burning the Abbey, Magnus. It isn’t real,” I say.

  Magnus sits back on his elbows, breathing hard. “It felt real.”

  I shrug, adjusting my blanket and sitting across from him. “You want to talk about it?”

  “They were killing us. There were hundreds of them swarming over the walls. I tried to warn everyone, to wake them up, but I was too far away to do anything. I kept shouting and shouting, but the Brothers wouldn’t wake up.”

  “It isn’t real, Magnus.”

  Gradually his breathing slows.

  “I used to have those dreams about Sara, Magnus. She was already dead then. It’s always worse when it’s someone you care about.”

  Magnus nods. “That’s the strange thing. I didn’t recognize anybody. And I kept making wrong turns and getting lost. Whole sections of the Abbey were gone, replaced with pen-and-ink sketches.”

  “No sense in dwelling on it,” I say. “Send that dream back and ask for a different one.” />
  “You’re a good friend, Teacup,” Magnus says, sagging back into his bedroll. “I’ll try not to strangle you next time.”

  “Thanks, Magnus. But next time I’ll stick to rat poop.”

  He grins at me. “You might regret it.”

  For some reason, that bit of excitement is enough to make me tired, and it isn’t long before I’m sleeping peacefully, too.

  In the morning, after a quick breakfast and some bleary-eyed stretching, Magnus and the driver show the kids how to assemble and hitch the horses. The kids are small next to massive beasts, but I can see some of Val’s natural boldness coming back as she asks for a chance to “do one.” Timmy pays attention, too, asking a lot of questions, particularly about the leatherwork and tooling on the harnesses.

  I avoid the horses and look over the coach for any signs of wear and tear that might slow us down, but find nothing of concern. The driver notices, and shows me the grease bucket suspended underneath. I help him coat the appropriate parts. “You’d be amazed at how much longer a team can pull when the coach is properly cared for,” he says.

  Soon the grass gives way to farmland again—the crops mostly unfamiliar and hardy looking, jammed into thin soil between rocky outcroppings. Things get greener and warmer as we approach the Northern Ocean, but still the evidence says this place doesn’t get rain like Ector.

  We resume the night riding when we reach Aetnos, after changing coaches. From here on there are houses, farms, and villages, and it’s amazing to me that the people here have managed to pound this rocky place into farmland.

  Magnus seems to get more nervous the closer to Fortrus he gets. He starts dry-washing his hands whenever he’s not riding topside with the coachman.

  “Magnus. Stop that,” Lucinda says, waking from a fitful sleep. “You’re starting to make me nervous.”

  “Stop what?” Then Magnus notices his hands. “Oh.”

  What makes a grown man like Magnus nervous like that?

  The road travels west along the ocean, and for a few hours the clouds clear and the ocean turns a light blue color that I’ve never seen before. Even Timmy notices it, and we all stare until more clouds roll in and treat us to a sprinkle of rain.