Page 3 of Cage of Starlight

CHAPTER TWO

T he trees blur past.

Everything blurs. Tory’s feet tangle, consciousness barely tethered to his body.

He’s lucky to be walking after a healing like that.

He won’t be walking for much longer. He needs someplace safe.

Thatcher’s. He needs to get home—get back —to Thatcher’s, but his vision is a haze of light and smoke and the dark blots of tree trunks.

There’s no chance he’ll find his way to the old man’s shop.

Someplace dark, then. Small. A place he can hide.

Before he can stop to get his bearings, he runs straight into a solid torso. A strong grip closes just above his elbow, over the tattoo. His hands might as well be feathers for all the strength they have to free him.

“Tory! Whoa there, it’s just me,” a laughing voice says.

His brain is slow to identify it, but his nose serves up the comforting smell of turned earth and the spice of pipesmoke.

“Hasra?” He blinks her into focus. Lit gold by the lamps hanging from the eaves of Hulven’s pleasure house and painted with a kaleidoscope of color from its faceted glass windcharms, Hasra offers him a smug smile, hazed in curls of smoke from her long pipe.

His fool brain says safe, safe, safe, but he swats the thought away.

“Who else would it be?” Hasra blows smoke at the sky. “Knew I’d be seeing you as soon as I felt the collapse. Why the hurry?”

He blinks and light pours sideways across his vision. “It’s—Kelly was . . .” His knees nearly buckle but he catches himself. He can’t fall here. “Soldiers saw me. Hasra— ”

Her grip on his arm goes tight, expression flattening. “Okay.” She taps her pipe out on the windowsill.

“Okay,” she says again, and drags him behind the House to the barrel they use to catch rainwater. Dipping a basin out, she presses him to his knees. “Wash your hands. Wash them now , get the blood off.”

It takes a moment for the words to register, and by then she’s kneeling to help.

He splashes Kelly’s blood off his fingers and scrubs ineffectually beneath his nails. Too soon, he hears running footsteps, and Hasra pulls the bowl away, slinging the bloody water down the hill. Tory clenches his fists and hopes they’re clean enough as a soldier rounds the corner.

“We’re looking for some men,” the soldier says when he sees them. “Tall, moving fast. There was blood at the scene. One of them might have been injured.”

“Haven’t seen anyone.” Hasra winds a protective arm around Tory and gestures away with her chin. “Heard rustling over that way, though.”

The soldier pauses. Delicately, he says, “ He’s injured.”

Shit. He didn’t get it all off. A blot of watery red dribbles down between his fingers.

Hasra stiffens. “A client of mine.”

“A client,” the soldier repeats, dubious.

They’re an odd match-up, for sure. Hasra is old enough to be Tory’s mother, even though she’s nothing like his mom, who was pale and mild-mannered and slender like a waif. Hasra is taller, all lean muscle beneath brown skin.

“Ma’am, I’ll have to ask you—”

“A client ,” Hasra says again. She turns Tory’s hand to show the soldier his fingers and palms, marked with thin white lines and thicker, rounded scar tissue he earned assembling weapons as a child.

The horror that unfurls in Tory at the soldier’s widening eyes is instinctual, instilled in him since he was young. Will the soldier recognize the marks? Has he seen hands like Tory’s before?

“What can I say?” Hasra continues blithely. “This one likes a whip.”

Tory’s panic morphs all the sound in the world to the bright ring of a bell, so he barely hears her when she says, “If you’d like a sample of what I can offer, you only have to ask.”

The soldier sputters a response, but by the time Tory’s hearing fades back in, they’re alone, and Hasra is stroking his hair back like he’s a child. She only smiles when he flicks her hand away.

“Let’s get you home. Can you stand?”

He knows without trying that he can’t, but that’s not important. “Hasra, I need . . .”

It’s harder to say now that his heart is slowing, Hasra’s wide hand warm against his back, but that’s why he needs to say it now.

Once he sleeps, the situation will feel even less urgent, and he’ll promise himself he’ll do it next week , then next month, and then after the winter, perhaps.

Plenty of time for these foolish roots to grow so deep he’ll never be able to leave.

For years, he’s told himself he stayed here for practicality, because his mother told him to lay low and his deal with the people of Hulven was no worse than any other he’d struck in exchange for food or shelter.

He told himself—and Hasra, when she bothered him about it—that Arlune might not be better.

It could just be a different sort of bad.

What a good liar he’s become.

“What do you need?” Hasra coaxes when the silence stretches long.

“Need . . . some help getting up,” he finishes, pathetically.

He’ll say it. He will. He just needs a second.

Hasra hefts him to his feet. “And?”

The soldier bought Hasra’s story. Healing Kelly didn’t kill Tory.

With the sunset and the vines, there’s no way that soldier saw any of them clearly, or Hasra’s little bit wouldn’t have worked.

Hulven is the closest active mine to Arlune’s border, but none of the infiltrators have made it far enough inside the country to bother anyone here yet.

The strange blood tests Vantaras supposedly uses to single out people like Tory and draft them into government service are only set up at the gates to much larger cities.

He could keep his secret here a while longer.

Hulven is a good place, maybe the best he’ll ever find.

Tory’s eyes burn. He forces a laugh. “Got any openings at the House?”

It’s a bald delaying tactic. He and Hasra sometimes joke about Tory signing a contract here.

Sex, while he has no particular interest in it, is no more burdensome to him than selling his body as a Healer, and he’d certainly make better money—and have a better chance of being able to stand up afterward, too.

But they’ve long since established that he abhors the idea of serving Vantaras again, even indirectly, and a portion of every licensed House’s profit goes into the Grand General’s war fund.

“ Tory ,” Hasra says, more patient than he deserves.

He could stay. He could stay here . He’s so damn tired of running. His work here hurts, but it could be so much worse. Hulven has familiar people, familiar pain. He knows what to expect here. But those are the sorts of thoughts that will get him killed, so he makes himself say, “I need to leave.”

“I’ve heard that one before. Watched you fall flat on your face trying to make it home on your own too many times to believe you.”

“Not that kind of leave. Is your offer still open?”

His chest aches as the silence spreads. At last, Hasra draws a deep breath. The white blur that spreads in front of his eyes is probably a smile, but Hasra sounds sad. “Oh? Will you really take me up on it? I can contact Belmin’s man tonight, have you halfway to Arlune by dawn.”

Belmin earned his fame as a merchant of artisanal blown glass and an enterprising trader of Arlunian wares, but in Hasra’s circles, he’s better known as a merchant of men and trader of information.

She’s one of his trusted informants. He takes people like Tory and, for a fee, will shuttle them across the border to Arlune where they can’t be conscripted into Vantaras’ war. That’s the story, anyway.

“Not tonight,” he whispers, heavy eyelids closing. “Need a few days to recover.”

“Okay. Three days, Tory. I’ll arrange it.” She loops an arm behind him. “I’m gonna carry you. If you’ve got any complaints, start walking.” She gives him a few seconds to move, but he doesn’t because he can’t, and he knows better by now than to try.

She lifts him with a clucked far too light, need to eat more, and booms a warning: “I’m out for the evening!”

“Yes, Hasra!” a soft voice calls back.

Clarity filters in: most of Hasra’s regulars are working men. They’ll come after dark. Unlike the illegal House his mother was arrested for working in, this one’s government certified, but payment still works the same. If she leaves, she’s losing the night’s earnings.

“Wait, you can’t—”

“Hush. Unlike you, I have the sense to look after myself.”

He hushes, but not everyone is so considerate. A pale, crinkled raisin of a woman stomps out the front door. Stellite earrings glint at her ears, worth more than Hasra and all her employees make in a month.

“ Leaving, Hasra? What of your appointments?”

“They’ll understand.”

“You can’t do this,” the woman snaps.

“I think you’ll find I can, Madam, if you examine my contract.”

Hasra walks away while the Madam of the House gapes.

Tory’s eyes slip closed, but he forces them open. “Your contract?”

Hasra’s laughter rumbles through her chest and into his. “If she checks it, I’m in trouble. But did you see her face ?”

“Mm, was it good?”

“The best.” Hasra whistles a slow tune as she walks. “Where to?”

He should say get me out of here . He should leave Hulven tonight. Instead, so low Hasra shouldn’t be able to hear, he says, “Take me home.”

Maybe she hears it or maybe she knows he’s weak, and a fool to boot, because she does. By the time they reach Thatcher’s shop, Tory can’t stop shaking.

Thatcher darts to his feet when the door’s bell, made from twisted pieces of shrapnel, clatters their arrival. “Oh! I was wondering . . . he was late. I was about to go and look.”

Tory’s long wondered if they have some sort of alliance, an unspoken pact to make sure he doesn’t pass out in a gutter somewhere.

“Thatcher, love, it’s been too long! Still letting wily customers barter your work down to a fraction of its worth?”

Thatcher chokes on a noise that means yes , because of course he is. He’s far too susceptible to sad stories. He took Tory in, after all.

Hasra chuckles. “I’d better put the kid to bed.”

“Ah, of course!”