Page 58

Lin was still, her hand on the carriage door. She recalled Kel saying,I know who left me outside Marivent. It wasn’t the person who stabbed me.

She drew her hand back from the door. “But why?” she said.Why would a Sword Catcher to the Prince know a common criminal, someone who works for the Ragpicker King?“Why did you save him?”

“Oh,look,” announced Ji-An. “We’ve arrived.”

And so they had. They had reached Scarlet Square, the center of the Warren, and the Black Mansion was before them, its dark dome, all strange unreflective marble, rising like a shadow above the rooflines of the city.

—

How strange to dream about a phoenix screaming, when no phoenix still existed in Dannemore. Kel knew they had lived once, and been the companions of Sorcerer-Kings, as had dragons and basilisks, mermaids and manticores. They had been creatures of real magic, created from the now-vanished Word, and had vanished when the Sundering stripped magic from the world.

Still, in his dreams, they cried out, and their cries sounded like children screaming.

Later, in the dream, he was playing a game of Castles with Anjelica Iruvai, Princess of Kutani. She was dressed as she had been in the portrait Kel had seen, which was perhaps not surprising. The coils of her dark hair were caught in a net of silver, spangled with crystal stars. Her lips were red, her eyes soft, the color of honey wine. She said, “It is not unusual to dream of fire when you yourself have a fever.”

He saw Merren in his dreams, surrounded by his poisoner’s alembics, cross-legged in a circle of hemlock and deadly nightshade. With his threadbare jacket and unkempt blond curls, he looked like a forest spirit, something not quite tamed. He said, “Everyone has secrets, no matter how innocent they may seem.”

Kel saw the Ragpicker King, all in black like Gentleman Death, and he said, “Your choices are not your own, or your dreams, either.”

Lastly, Kel saw the steps of the Convocat, and he stepped out onto them, clothed in Conor’s raiment, wearing the crown ofCastellane with its sharp wings on either side. He looked across the cheering crowd that filled the square and saw the arrow flying toward him, too quickly for him to move away; it pierced Kel’s heart and he fell. As his blood spilled red down the white steps, Conor nodded to him from the shadows, as if to say that he approved.

—

Kel bolted up in bed, his heart racing, his hand pressed to his chest. He had felt the pain in his sleep, and felt it still—a deep sharp ache to the left of his sternum. He knew it had been a dream, the arrows a mist of morphea and half sleep, but the pain was real and present.

He remembered, in a confusion of images, lying here among wet and bloody sheets. Drifting in and out of waking and sleeping; seeing Conor there, but being unable to speak to him. The look on Conor’s face.I ought to have died in the alley,Kel had thought,not here, where he can see me.

He slid a hand into the collar of his nightshirt, discovering the texture of bandages—wrapping his chest, and bound over his right shoulder, like a sling. There was a thicker patch of them just under his heart. He prodded at the spot and jumped as a stab of pain shot through him.

With the pain came a memory. A narrow black alley, Crawlers on the walls above him. The flash of a silver mask. A hot needle in his side. A glimpse of violet…

“Sieur Kel! Stop that!” Kel glanced over to see Domna Delfina, shaking her head until her gray curls flew, rising from her seat near his bed. The senior housemaid was holding a pair of knitting needles, the half-finished project she’d been at work on abandoned in her haste. “You mustn’t touch the bandages. Sieur Gasquet says—”

Kel, peevish with fading morphea, poked himself hard in the lumpiest part of the bandage with a forefinger. It hurt.Genius,he thought.Of course it hurts.

“Gasquet didn’t do this. He’s terrible at bandaging.” Kel’s voicescraped out of his throat, dry from disuse. How long had he been asleep?

Delfina rolled her eyes. “If you won’t behave, I’ll get him myself.”

Kel had no desire to see Gasquet quite yet. “Delfina—”

But she had already gathered up her knitting. She was making something very long and narrow, with a great deal of green and purple. A scarf for a giant? Formal attire for an enormous snake? She muttered something dismissive in Valdish and left, leaving Kel to rub his eyes and search his brain for bits of memory.

He knew he must have been in bed for several days. His muscles felt limp, debilitated; he imagined if he stood up, his legs would shake. His memory was beginning to come back, though. He remembered the arrow, the fleeing Crawlers, Jerrod. He thought he could recall a red haze of pain, though pain was difficult to remember in its entirety. One knew one had felt pain, but the experience could not be truly re-created in memory. Probably all to the best.

Then, somehow, he had gotten from the Key to the Palace. He had a strong suspicion regarding the method of his return, but he planned to keep it to himself for now. After that…He thought he recalled Mayesh, speaking in Ashkar. And later, a girl with auburn hair and a serious face. Her hands had been gentle, fading pain into memory.Truly, that is magic.

It is medicine,Lin had said. Lin Caster—that had been her name. Mayesh’s granddaughter. She had healed him. After that, his memory was only flashes of light between dreams. A hand holding his head up, someone spooning salty broth between his teeth. Morphea grains being shaken from an ampoule, placed on his tongue to dissolve like sugar.

There was a bustle in the corridor—Kel heard Delfina’s voice, and then the door was thrown open and Conor came into the room. He had clearly come from the stables: He wore his riding jacket and was crownless, his hair a windblown tumble. His face was bright with color. He looked the picture of health, which only made Kel feel more like a chicken that had been recently deboned.

He grinned when he saw Kel sitting up, that slow grin that meant he was genuinely pleased. “Good,” he said. “You’re alive.”

“I don’t feel it.” Kel rubbed at his face. Even the texture of his own skin seemed strange—he hadn’t shaved for days, and the stubble of his beard was rough against his palm. He couldn’t recall the last time that had happened. Conor kept himself clean-shaven, so Kel did, too.

“Delfina seemed concerned that you were tearing at your bandages like a madman,” said Conor, flopping into the chair beside Kel’s bed.

“They itched,” Kel said. He felt slightly awkward, which he did not like. He was not used to feeling awkward around Conor. But his memories of the alley behind the Key were coming back, more and more clearly. He could hear Jerrod’s voice in the back of his mind.Beck owns you now, Aurelian.