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“It’s your turn for watch,” Andry muttered, wincing under the strength of Dom’s grips.

But it was worth the pain.

23

BELOW THE PRIEST’S HAND

Corayne

Corayne had heard stories of Adira from nearly every member of her mother’s crew, her mother included. The card tables, the concubines and brothels, the night markets hawking goods from all over the Ward, stolen or otherwise. Real dragon scales, ancient and crusty, in the curio shops. Spindletouched mages brewing up tonics and poison outside taverns. Thieves’ gangs and pirate crews outfitting their companies. The crown of Treccoras, the last Cor emperor, had been won in a game of dice in the House of Luck and Fortune, then immediately lost to the marshes. But the history was there too; she’d heard it mostly from Kastio. When moved to talk, he spoke of distant years, centuries long since passed, as if he were reciting from the pages of a university tome, or had an impossibly long memory.

It had been Piradorant once, truly the Adoring Port, beneath the ancient empire. The small city and surrounding territory had sworn allegiance to Old Cor long before her armies arrived. There was no conquest. She was a willing bride, and the Cors treated her as such. Her walls were gilded, her streets wealthy. She blossomed, a flower basking in the light of a doting sun. But the empire fell, night came, and the world moved on in its shadow. The stumbling kingdom of Larsia grew and eventually chafed with the might of neighboring Galland. The Larsians fought to defend their border from encroachment. The city now called Adira filled the cracks between.

Wedged between warring kingdoms, often cut off by battle or blockade, Adira survived through less than honorable means. Pirate ships regularly ran Gallish blockades to feed the hungry city. Cutthroats and rogues slipped around entrenched armies. Within the walls, the city rotted like an apple. The King of Larsia did not have the strength to wrest it back from the criminals who controlled it, and Galland would not bother. The Gallish kings cared for glittering capitals and vast expanses of rich land. Not a fortress slum on a marshy peninsula, its streets bristling with rusty knives and gutter rats. Adira adapted to the world as it was, becoming what it needed to be.

The peninsula had a gray-green look as they approached from the north, a spit of land shoved out into the Bay alongside the mouth of the Orsal. The river flowed through marshland, belching silt into the bluer salt water. Adira sat at the peninsula’s head, the city walled in by a crown of mossy stone and wooden palisade. A stone causeway zigzagged over the marshes, through the worst of the mud, with no less than six drawbridges, all of them pulled up. It was a Cor-built wonder, like the roads, aqueducts, and amphitheaters within the old borders. There would be no assaulting Adira from land, not by any army upon the Ward.

As they rode onto the causeway, Corayne caught sight of the docks before the mist closed it. The sails of a dozen ships crowded the harbor like needles in a pincushion. Pirates and smugglers all. Not a single flag of a lawful kingdom. Corayne smiled as she had in Lecorra, drawn to this place, rooted in it somehow. But this time it wasn’t the Spindletouched echoes of Cortael she felt. This was the land of her mother, of Hell Mel.

Andry balanced her obvious excitement with naked fear. His eyes locked on the first drawbridge, drawn up against the sky like a flat hand ready to fall and crush them all. The squire of a noble court had no place here. He already stuck out like a sore thumb, even next to Dom. And that was a very high mark to clear.

“Hey, no worries,” Corayne murmured to him, drawing her horse in close. She bent, the sword digging into her back. “Half the stories aren’t even true. No one’s going to boil your face off and sell your skull.”

The reins cracked in his fists. His eyes widened. “I never heard that one before.”

The first drawbridge fell without so much as a word from any of them, not even a bribe from Dom or a threat from Sorasa. On the other side, two bridge wardens stood, toothless and gray-faced, silent as they rode on. Corayne thought a bit of face boiling might improve their appearance.

“Draw your hoods,” Sorasa said, pulling her cowl into place. She arranged the shawl around her shoulders so the daggers in her belt and the sword at her side would be easy to wield.

Dom did the same, stone-faced, sweeping the green cloak of Iona back from his left hip. He seemed a bit lighter these days.The road must agree with him,Corayne thought. The mist closed in, nearly obscuring Valtik as she plodded along at the rear. On her gray horse in her gray clothes, she was a shadow as much as the bridge wardens, a ghost of the marsh. Even her lurid eyes were veiled, gone to gray like the rest of the world.

Corayne felt like a horse blinkered. There was only the causeway and the muffling silence of the mist. The land around Adira existed in some eerie in-between, part of no kingdom, separated by a narrow barrier of mud.

At the second bridge, the wardens had bows ready, arrows quivered at their hips. Corayne suspected there were more hiding in the wetlands.

“You lost?” one asked, his voice lisping over his broken teeth. His cheeks were pockmarked.

“Not yet,” Sorasa answered.

The bridge fell.

Such was the way at every turn: wardens shouted challenges and Sorasa answered. Corayne couldn’t tell if it was a code or not. She memorized the responses all the same.You lost? Not yet. What’s your business? Same as yours. Who do you know in the city? Too many to name. Are you going to make trouble? Most likely.In truth, it was probably the combination of a tattooed Amhara and a hulking mountain of a man with a sword to match his glowering face that opened the bridges. The rest of them were inconsequential. Even Valtik kept her mouth shut, following in off-putting silence.

The final bridge dropped without a challenge, connecting the causeway to the city hill. The mist lifted while they climbed, and the world came back into sharper focus. A shantytown bunched around the gate and walls, loosely organized, as the city spilled out of its own boundaries. It had the look of a slum but none of the despair.

Adira was bigger up close, hunched on the rise, thrust out of the haze, with clear sight in all directions: over the marsh and the foggy causeway, over the flat waters of Mirror Bay. The border was not far but felt a thousand miles away.Taristan and Erida cannot touch us here.As the smell and sounds of the city intensified, Corayne felt something like an embrace. She sucked down a breath of fresh salt air, raising her face to the sun. This was one of the most dangerous corners of the Ward.And the safest place we can be.

“All those bridges, and they leave the gates open,” Andry said, eyeing the city wall.

Indeed, the gates were flung wide, flanked only by a pair of wardens. They leaned on old spears, more for show than for function. Corayne smirked. “I suppose after six bridges, the marsh, and whoever else watched our approach, they have no reason to keep the gates shut all day long.”

The wardens were dressed in leather and rough-spun cloth. Like the bridge guardians, they wore no uniform or color to unite them in their work. They watched, silent but sharp.

Sorasa said nothing to either of them, urging her horse onward. She only pulled down her cowl, exposing her face as she rode first through the gate. Maybe it was a trick of the shifting light, but Corayne thought she saw the assassin’s shoulders droop, releasing some tension. A criminal haven was a lullaby to a contracted killer.

Andry retreated into his hood, showing only the hard set of his jaw. Despite his unease, he seemed less a squire and more a traveler, weary but unafraid. Still, his fingers twisted on the reins. Corayne was struck by the very odd impulse to grab his hand. She blinked, startled, and pushed it away. Warmth flushed in her face, and she willed her cheeks not to turn red.

The wall wasn’t thick, barely as wide as three men abreast. Corayne passed through quickly. She couldn’t help but notice murder holes pocking the ceiling. Her skin crawled at the thought of a man pouring hot oil down on her.