Page 71 of Saint
“Don’t… say… a word.” Saint’s deep voice made me swallow. He didn’t look at me. I wasn’t sure he ever would again. “You’re not going anywhere near that croft.” He turned his attention back to Zola.
“I’m not?”
“No,” Clove answered. “Because if you do, we won’t just cut your throat and dump you somewhere you won’t wash up on shore. We’ll sail that ship of yours out into the deepest waters with you and your crew on it.” He took another step forward. “And we’ll set fire to it before we watch from theAsteras each of you chooses which way to die.”
A sick feeling bled through me looking between Clove and Saint. They meant it. Every word.
Zola’s eyes found me again. “I think you got a little morethan you bargained for, didn’t you, darling?” He stood, coat swaying around him again.
When I didn’t answer, he gave Saint another smile and turned on his heel, pacing back through the tavern. In the next moment, he was gone.
Saint and Clove stood silent, the sound of water dripping somewhere in the tavern the only sound.
“Get that idiot up,” Saint grunted, jerking a chin toward the stairs that led to the room where Nash was still sleeping. “And tell Griff nothing. Better to keep him out of it. We’ll meet you there.”
“Where?” I asked, looking between them.
“You’re not really in a position to be asking questions.” The cold tenor of Saint’s tone made me go rigid. He buttoned up his jacket, staring at the floor between us. “Go.”
I obeyed, walking straight for the door and thinking that any minute, Zola would appear on the other side with his knife drawn. But Saint was right. He couldn’t touch us. Not yet.
As soon as I stepped onto the street, the door shut behind us and I sucked in a breath. “Saint…”
“Don’t.” The word was so heavy, so final, that it felt like a stone in my chest.
He started up the walk without another word and I followed, staring at the seam of his jacket that ran down the center of his back. His broad shoulders pulled beneath the fabric, rising with each deep breath, as we snaked through the crowds in the opposite direction of the harbor.
We didn’t take the bridges. Too easy to be spotted, Iguessed. Instead, we zigzagged through the streets until I was so dizzy that nausea roiled in my belly. The alleyways grew narrower with each step until we were dumped into a pocket of buildings crammed so tightly together that the sunlight barely hit the ground beneath our feet.
Faces peered out from dark windows, the stench of rot and refuse thick in the air.
“What is this place?” I whispered, catching a pair of eyes in a darkened window.
He kept walking, not bothering to be sure I kept pace with him.
“Elias,” I said, using the name he’d given me in Dern. The one he was born with.
His steps faltered just slightly, slowing. “Somewhere no one comes looking,” he answered. “The Pinch.”
26SAINT
Daylight was the only reason we were still breathing.
The rain began to fall as the Pinch swallowed us up into its belly and we pushed farther into the tangle of winding veins that made up its suffocating corridors. There were more people living in this pocket of a neighborhood than the whole of North Fyg, each building stacked with flats that held several families whose mothers or fathers worked at the docks or out at sea. It was children, mostly. And they were the most loyal creatures in any village or city.
If Zola had come to the tavern earlier, before the sun rose, I wasn’t sure that the threat of the Trade Council’s retribution would have kept him from drawing blood. But in the daylight, there were eyes to see your sins. He knew that. Andonly hours after getting his trade license, he wasn’t going to risk it.
The feel of Isolde at my back was like a looming shadow as we walked. I didn’t speak because I wasn’t sure I had anything to say. Not yet. She’d had the chance to tell me the truth. I’d given her my trust, even if she’d done little to earn it. And as we made the last turn into the dead end of a circular opening of cobblestone, I knew I’d made a huge mistake. The question was, what was I going to do about it?
A blue-painted door was set into the white sandstone, barely hanging on its hinges. There was no need to lock it, other than the fact that a locked door in the Pinch was the only sign that a place had been claimed.
I could feel the eyes of the Pinch watching as I pulled the key from my pocket.
“Saint.” Isolde’s voice was careful.
“Not here,” I said, glancing up to the windows over our heads.
I trusted the kids in the Pinch to keep an eye on this door. But I didn’t need them listening.
