Page 4 of A Tower of Half-Truths

“Let me finish. Please.” She forced her trembling hands into white-knuckled fists. And then she forced herself to ask the question that had lingered deep within her mind, the one she’d been too afraid to ask downstairs. “That wasn’t the first time you killed someone, was it?”

Neldren remained silent.

“Answer me, Nel.”

He hung his head. “No, it wasn’t.”

Mavery released a held breath. She’d already known the answer, though that didn’t make the truth any less painful. She shouldered her pack and began to move forward. Neldren stepped in front of the doorway, blocking it with his body.

“Look,” he said, holding out his palms, “I only killed when it was absolutely necessary.”

Mavery laughed coldly. “And that’s the difference between you and me. I would never think it was necessary.” She lowered her eyes. “So would the Neldren I knew a year ago.”

“A lot has changed since then. You would know, had you bothered to stick around for any of it.”

That was a low blow, even for him. But instead of enraging her, his words only made her all the more exhausted.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she said.

“Do what?”

“All of this.” She gestured vaguely at the dim room. “Roaming from village to village, never knowing what tomorrow will bring, never having a place to call my own. Yes, we had a good score tonight, but that money won’t last forever. And then what? I’m not getting any younger, and so—”

“You think you’re getting old? What does that make me?”

She scoffed. “Oh, please. You’ll live another century at least.”

“Not in this line of work.”

“See? You’ve just proved my point! If there’s little hope for you, then there’s even less for me. And everything that happened tonight proves I’m not cut out for this life anymore.”

“Then what’ll you do instead?”

She shrugged. “Maybe I could return to my studies, or—”

“Gods, not this again.” He shook his head, laughing incredulously. “You think living in dusty libraries, surrounded by ink-stained blowhards, is going to make you happy? Even Ellice couldn’t hack it, and she’s…”

Mavery crossed her arms as she waited for him to finish that thought.

Like Mavery, Ellice had once attended wizarding university.

Unlike Mavery, the brat had squandered the opportunity by failing out during her first term.

Ellice’s family had banished her for it, but that didn’t erase all the years she’d lived in privilege, attending the finest boarding schools, wanting for nothing.

“She’s what, Nel? Cultured? Well-bred?”

“All I’m saying is, don’t throw away everything just to go chasing old dreams. We’ve become a good team again.”

“Good for you, you mean. In all the years we’ve run together, never once have you asked me what jobs I would like to take.”

“Then let me ask you now, Mave. What do you want to do?”

She hesitated. All that came to mind was the bundle of textbook pages stashed in her pack. Beyond that, her ideas were all abstract.

“I… I don’t—”

“And now you’ve just proved my point. You never know what you want, which is why those decisions always fall on me.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fine, go fuck off with the wizards, be my guest. But we’ll see how long that lasts before you change your mind again.”

“I don’t need your permission to leave.”

“Then leave!”

“Yes, leave, so I can get some godsdamned sleep!” snapped a voice from the darkness.

“This is none of your business,” Neldren snapped back.

“You made it my business the moment you decided to have your lovers’ spat next to my bunk!”

As Neldren and the old man bickered, Mavery seized the opportunity.

She shouldered past Neldren, who didn’t move from the doorway but also didn’t prevent her from leaving.

No doubt their heated argument had traveled downstairs.

She took the back exit to avoid receiving Ellice and Itri’s questions, too—assuming they would even care.

From what Mavery had seen tonight, Neldren was molding his newest protégés in his own image.

It was still a few hours until sunrise, so Burnslee was dark and quiet. Only the light of the second moon and the glow from the windows of Seringoth’s Rest illuminated the village; it lacked even a single lamppost.

Mavery turned onto the main road and followed it out of the village.

She had no goal in mind, other than to put as much distance between herself and Neldren as possible.

Flurries danced in the bitter breeze, and snowmelt soaked through her worn boots.

But her coat remained unbuttoned. The residual anger from her argument had left her arcana flaring in her veins; that alone was enough to warm her.

After walking for a few minutes, she came to where the building-lined roads gave way to open fields.

The River Merimar was just over the horizon.

From there, she could hitch a ride on a boat and make her way…

somewhere. So long as she wouldn’t have to cross paths with Neldren again, her destination didn’t matter.

A few paces later, the ash-tinged scent of shadow magic made her stop in her tracks, but she did not turn around.

“Of course you followed me,” she sighed. “Thought you could change my mind?”

The scent faded as Neldren dismissed his shadows.

“No.” His voice lacked even a hint of emotion. “I realized you left with something that belongs to me—to the crew.”

She turned to him with a hard stare. He could control the shadows as though they were an extension of himself, but she had a more varied arsenal of magic at her disposal.

“You’re talking about my cut from the job.”

“It stopped being your cut the second you decided to leave.”

“Oh, piss off.”

As she turned away, he reached a hand inside his coat and whipped it out again with a flash of silver.

She threw up her left hand, summoning a ward, while her right hand reached for her dagger.

She sensed in quick succession a metallic taste, a small explosion, a white-hot pain deep in her gut.

She looked down to see a dark red spot blooming on her shirt.

She gripped her stomach, and her fingers became slick with blood.

Neldren had stabbed her.

No. She’d summoned her ward before he’d struck; a mere blade couldn’t pass through her magic that easily. This pain was deeper, more agonizing, than a stab wound.

Neldren had shot her.

Her eyesight blurred. She blinked, and the pistol in his hand came into focus. She could almost forgive him for stabbing her, but shooting her was an even greater betrayal. In her delirium, the only thing she could focus on was the weapon that had made their line of work all but obsolete.

“You…have…a gun?”

Speaking those four short words pushed her pain over the edge. Her legs gave out. Her bad knee screamed in agony as she fell forward, landing on her stomach, but the pain from her gut promptly drowned it out. As she began to fade out of consciousness, she heard Neldren rummage through her pack.

“Bastard.”

She wasn’t certain if she managed to speak the word, or only think it. One thing was for certain: if she needed a sign that she was due for a career change, she doubted she’d ever get one clearer than this.