Page 64

She shakes her head. “After sundown.”

I tell her how to get to my tiny chamber.

She turns, but hesitates. “Be careful, Lark. Grodd may have fallen in the tournament, and in his caste, but he still has allies. I’ve heard rumors.”

I swallow. “That I’m a witch?”

She frowns, but nods. My sense of safety shatters.

“You’re a human,” she warns. “Remember your place here, beneath the feet of even the lowliest troll. Do not forget it.”

She glances around, heaves her sack onto her other shoulder, and hurries away, leaving me shivering in the shadows, alone.

After dinner I sew a patch over a pair of beige slacks that I tore while climbing the city. I’m in Unach’s apartment, using her thread and my needle. And I’m distracted. Did Grodd strike Ritha out of anger, or did she provoke him? Ritha is so demure ... I couldn’t imagine her so much as crossing a trollis’s path. And what does she want to talk to me about that she feared speaking of it in the marketplace?

The fire diminishes, and the sunlight has already gone from the window. I poke myself with the needle.

“You’re distracted.” Azmar’s voice resonates cool and calm. He approaches me—from where I sit on the floor, he seems enormous—and lowers himself into the oversized cushion beside the dying embers. Unach busies herself in the kitchen, violently shucking the scales off a fish.

I pull the thread through my stitch and sigh. “Something one of the other humans said to me today.”

Azmar leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Ritha?”

“How did you know?”

He offers a one-sided shrug. “I do remember their names. You interact with her the most.”

I know Azmar is different, but I’m again surprised at his impartiality toward my kind. I chew the inside of my lip and push the needle through the fabric again.

“You can trust me, Lark.”

“I do.” I look up at him. Surprise widens his eyes, just a bit. I smirk at him. “Why would I not?”

He leans back, and the air grows decidedly cooler. “There are many reasons.”

Lowering my work, I dare to put a hand on his bare foot. “I do trust you, Azmar.”

His gaze shoots to my hand, and remembering myself, I draw my fingers away, curling them into my hand one at a time.

“Ritha didn’tsaymuch at all. But she had a bruise on her face from where Grodd struck her. In passing, I assume.”

Azmar’s brows pull together. “I’m sorry.”

I shake my head, pinching the needle. “Nothing can be done?”

“No.” Regret colors his words. “Not unless he kills her.”

And then what is the point of justice?I don’t need to say it. It hangs in the air.

I hesitate, but if I cannot tell Azmar, whom would I tell? “A few of the trollis have said unkind things to me. Ritha says Grodd has allies.”

Azmar looks away. He’s thinking. I take the opportunity to look at him, the line of his jaw, the way his hair coils and falls into thick ropes, currently unbound. The divots of his neck, shaped just like a human’s.

“Perhaps you should spend more time here,” he suggests.

My needle stills. I look at the small fire, the glimmering coals. For a moment the apartment isn’t a hole in the great rock of Cagmar, but a little cabin tucked away on a plain of dust and sagebrush. A safe place to be ... with family.

“Her hide’s thicker than that,” Unach chimes in, snapping me from the reverie. “A few foul words never hurt anyone.”