Page 151 of The Ragpicker King
“No.” Elsabet dismisses the soldier hovering outside her tent with a curt word. He hesitates a moment before scuttling off, half frightened and half relieved.
She lies back on the hard ground. She has been provided with a feather-tick mattress and a camp bed, of course, but she does not want to sleep. Too many thoughts burn in her mind for rest to come.
Beyond the fragile enclosure of her tent, she can hear the Malgasi soldiers moving around their encampment, deep in the sea caves outside Castellane. She knows she had terrified the men when she’d appeared in the night, bloodied and covered in plaster dust, only to collapse in their midst.
The shame of it—for her, a Belmany, to collapse among peasant soldiers—but her legs had no longer been able to hold her up. Kalman, the captain of the guards, had barked orders for a medic to attend to her burns, but Elsabet had waved him off. She wanted the pain, wanted to feel it. It was the pain of her failure.
The scope of that failure became clear to her over the next days. Seven—Joss Falconet—had done all that she asked, but theSword Catcher had escaped from the Trick and been executed by the Prince. The Temple of Anibal had been destroyed, and Bagomer and Janos had been killed. Elsabet’s stone had saved her life, but the effort had cost it nearly all its power. It is cold now beneath her skin, cold as a dead man’s skin. It will need to be replaced by one of the Belmanys’ few remaining Source-Stones before Elsabet can use her power again.
Worst of all, Elsabet now knows there is another magic-user in Castellane—the red-haired girl who caused all of this. Somehow, one of the filthy Ashkar, that class of diseased vermin, has gotten her hand on a Source-Stone and used it to unleash a power that rivals Elsabet’s own.
But Elsabet is not beaten yet. As she listens to the sounds of the sea crashing against the inner walls of the cave, she feels her own fury pulse inside her, stronger than any magic. She has lost her guards, but she still has her army. She has drained her stone, but there is still power to be accessed, behind the walls of Marivent. The blood of the Belmany phoenix runs in the veins of both the King and the Prince of this city.
She will reclaim her birthright. She will take Castellane for her own. And when she does, she will destroy the woman with the Source-Stone. She knows her name already, the name of the Ashkar woman she had seen first in the library at Marivent. It had come to her with the fading power of her stone, which had recognized a fellow sorcerer and whispered its dying alarm into Elsabet’s ears.
Her name is Lin. Lin Caster.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
When Kel regained consciousness, the red moon had changed positions in the sky. It hung lower now, a coral pendant on an invisible chain, descending toward the horizon.
Gingerly, he pushed himself into a sitting position. His limbs seemed to work again, though his body ached. He wondered how long he had lain here unconscious. Long enough for the moon to change positions, and for his clothes to dry, stiff with salt, against his body.
Kel rose to his feet, the heavy necklace Conor had flung around his throat bumping against his chest. He looked out at the ocean, at the blood-red horizon. He had half thought the Arrow Squadron would be out looking for him, but he knew now it was unlikely. The approaching Castelguards would have seen Conor throw him from the cliffs of Marivent into the ocean, and that was a death sentence. That he had survived it due to the amulet’s magic would not be something they could guess.
Kel turned back toward the city. He was bedraggled and filthy. He had just escaped from the Trick. He could, he guessed, go to the Black Mansion, throw himself on Andreyen’s mercy, but if Jolivet orthe Vigilants were to look for him even perfunctorily, that would be the first place they would seek him; they already had people watching Scarlet Square.
There was still, by his accounting, one other place he could go. Even if he didn’t know exactly where it was.
Kel began to walk toward the Key. He could feel every pebble of the beach against his bare feet, but louder than any pain was the sound of Jolivet’s voice in his ears:You are a Sword Catcher, Kellian. Your life belongs to the Palace. But you can never return to what you were.
Kel felt strangely calm. Perhaps this was because if he let the tide of recent events wash over him fully, it would drown him. In thinking of his own mistakes, of the danger to Castellane, of the way he had let down his friends in the Black Mansion. In thinking of Conor and the fact that wherever Kel woke up tomorrow, it would be the first time in more than a decade that he had woken up outside of Marivent, and far from Conor.
But he would wake up. And for the first time, when he did, he would not be playing a part. He was Kel Saren now, and he knew who his friends were. His enemies had removed their masks, so he knew them, too. He knew what to expect from all save one person, and the need to see that person thrummed through his blood, propelling him as he shouldered through the crowds of the Key, taking no heed of whether they stared at him. Though why should they? He might be ragged and damp looking, but that was not unusual, and if his hands were bloody where he had dragged himself up the beach, he kept them at his sides where they would not be seen.
He turned into the Maze, heading down Arsenal Road. It was crowded, as it always was at night, the usual mix of foreign sailors, beggars, and painted prostitutes hooting and calling from the balconies of tumbledown houses. The occasional burst of naphtha light seared Kel’s eyes. He found it at last: the warehouse whose windows had been blacked out with paint.
The front door was not locked, but it seemed stuck in its frame; wood warped often here, so close to the sea and the humid air. Kelshouldered it open and stepped into the long corridor. It was lightless, illuminated only by the street outside.
He made his way to the enormous main room. It was empty, the glass lanterns swaying unlighted over a dusty floor stacked with unmarked wooden boxes.
If he closed his eyes, he could imagine what this place had been like the first time he’d visited it: filled with the sons of nobility gambling and carousing with poppy-juice addicts and masked courtesans. Where there had been music and glowing naphtha torches, now there was a profound silence, the only illumination the pale-red moonlight that spilled through the cracked windows.
“Kel.”
He turned. Standing in the entranceway was a familiar figure in a black cloak. His silver quarter-mask gleamed, as did his boots. His hood was up, drawn close about his face. Kel could not see his expression.
“Jerrod,” Kel said.
“I have to admit,” Jerrod said, “I didn’t think it would work. No one’s ever gotten out of the Trick.”
“I suppose you taught me well,” Kel said. “I Crawled down the side of the tower. Though I can’t brag about it without getting arrested. Unfortunate.”
Jerrod said nothing. His eyes gleamed, brighter than his mask.
“I just have one question,” Kel said. “How in gray hell did Conor end up with Gremont’s amulet? Beck must have given it to him, but I’m having a hard time picturingthat.”
“Beck has his reasons for doing what he does—”
