Yet, he had offended her grievously-rejecting her and making demands on her. For this, she would have revenge on him, favorite of the Lady or no.
With trembling fingers, Eden opened the scroll and scanned its contents. At first, the dark runes startled her. Then her excitement grew. And grew.
So the Horned One didn’t want her to impede the girl-Eden could cope with that instruction. But gold was gold, and the outlander who wanted her had promised much of that. She simply had to keep her hands clean of the business: time for Toytere to do it all himself. If she’d been right about the Fury inside of him, she knew just how to do it. This scroll would help.
But first-
“Come,” she called.
A secret door opened, admitting her favorite sentry. Compared to the Horned One, he was a mere brute, but at least he was hers. “Me lady?”
“I’ve just had a brush with death and it has left me … unfulfilled.” Eden clapped her hands sharply. “Take off your breeches.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
26 KYTHORN (HIGHSUN)
When Kalen returned to the Drowned Rat, the sun was high. The gang ruffians were mostly there, bragging of conquests that night or keeping a low cloak to hide their failures. Toytere took his leave to take care of one thiefly matter or another. Any other day, Kalen might have considered watching him, but at the moment, he had another goal.
Eden. Manipulative, scheming, dangerous Eden.
Eden, who had let slip no opportunity to frame him for stealing food, to add rotted rats to his stew, or to put live spiders in his bed.
Eden, who had ever hated him for reasons he could not name.
Despite all this, he’d loved her after a fashion-really, he’d had little choice. Their mother had scarcely known his name most of the time.
Kalen had been very young at the point their mother drank and drugged herself to death. Rather than stay to care for a brother she’d never loved, Eden had charmed and slept her way into an adventuring party and turned her back on Luskan. Kalen, then only a lad of six, had fallen in with a harsh crowd, including Toytere with his filed teeth. If he hadn’t met Cellica-Toytere’s compassionate and sensible sister-he might have become just as bad as Eden.
That Eden had returned and now ran the greatest of Luskan’s Five troubled him to no end. The fact that her gang held a semblance of respectability about it made resisting them all the harder. The Eden he’d seen today, with her protestations of reverence in “the Lady,” crossed his earliest memories of her. Perhaps she’d truly changed.
Perhaps.
“Her Majesty said what?” one of the Rats shouted.
Kalen turned his attention to the bar. There, Flick engaged one of the Dead Rats in a battle of will.
“You’re to take these here turnips and things down to Old Shim’s at the dock,” Flick said. “Them youngins is low on food, what with the plague and all.”
“But-but them’s our rations!”
Rations. Kalen’s stomach growled even if he didn’t feel hunger. He welcomed the reminder to eat. Flick had taken charge of the larder-a better quartermaster Kalen had never met outside the Guard.
What caught his attention, however, was what Flick said next.
“Orders of Her Majesty,” Flick said. “You take this food and you share it, understand? And you don’t demand no payment, neither.”
The Dead Rat stared at her as though she’d grown a second and third head. Kalen couldn’t blame him. Generosity? From the gang?
“Now get.” Flick shoved the crate into his arms. “Before I gets me cudgel!”
The man ran, crate bouncing against his chest. Flick gave a contented smile, which evaporated as soon as she saw Kalen watching. “Bah!” she said.
“I’ll be godsburned,” Kalen said. “She really did it.”
Myrin had spoken of taking a stand-of teaching the Rats to do the right thing-but he’d never dreamed she could actually do it. He felt a lightness in his chest, stirred by Myrin’s own perseverance. Was it truly possible?
Then he remembered Eden.
He had to get Myrin out of the city soon.
Rhett lay slumped against the wall outside Myrin’s door, snoring deeply. He must have been watching her for hours to be so tired.
This Kalen admired. Few men willingly stood guard until they dropped from exhaustion. What would Gedrin Shadowbane, the first of the line, say of this one?
Likely that the boy talked entirely too much.
At his belt, Vindicator felt warm, as though reacting to Rhett’s proximity.
“I’m glad you like him,” Kalen said, both to the sword and the sword’s old wielder.
Myrin sat in the room, surrounded by floating images. Cross-legged, she floated several hands off the bed. She moved images back and forth, mumbling to herself.
“This,” she said. “No, like this. No, I seem younger here …”
She sounded bone-weary, her voice crackling as though she’d had nothing to drink in days. She looked thinner than usual-ragged.
“Myrin,” Kalen said. “Do you-?” No, that wasn’t the right question. Not yet. He would begin gently. “What are you about?”
“Well met, Kalen,” Myrin said. “Just a little world-rending magic. Nothing serious.”
“I see.” He couldn’t tell if that was meant for a jest, but decided not to press. Kalen pointed at the tiny Myrins sculpted of her magic. “And those?”
“Umbra’s memories … and others. I just can’t decide where to place them.”
“Memories?” Kalen asked.
“Oh yes,” she said. “Umbra had many memories of me. We were lovers, I think.”
“Lovers?” At his side, his hand made a fist so tight that blood trickled. When Kalen noticed, he loosened his fingers. “Is that what you saw? Love-making?”
“Yes, or perhaps we were interrupted before we could, I don’t really know,” she said. “But the point is, he knew me over a period of time-he saw me grow and age.”
“Right.” Kalen looked at a plate of hard cheese and black bread left untouched on the bed. “Have you eaten anything today?”
“What a completely irrelevant question,” Myrin said. “The best one is this-look.” She pointed toward a central image: Myrin, blushing, looking darling as ever, her eyes sparkling. Her lips moved, but the images conveyed no sound. “He told me my age-I was twenty in that moment. Twenty! Only”-she frowned-“I don’t know how long ago that was. And I look the same age in all these other memories.”
“But you were twenty,” Kalen said. “For certain?”
“I said it myself, in the memory,” she said, her voice wavering. “It had to have been years ago, however-before whatever happened to Umbra to break him. The Umbra who remembered her-I mean, me-was young. Handsome, or at least not mad. I might be older than I thought.” She gave him a devious smile, one that betrayed a certain madness that came with exhaustion. “Maybe I’m older than you, fancy that?”
It was time. “Myrin, do you want to talk about it?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “It?”
“What happened to Umbra.”
“Oh.” She looked away. “No.”
He thought he smelled wine on her breath. “Have you been drinking?”
“Yes.” A half-empty wine bottle sat on the sideboard.
“And you haven’t eaten?” Kalen frowned. “You need to rest.”
“Pah!” Myrin turned back to her images, looking over them again. “Rest is for those who know themselves,” she said. “I’ve discovered something very important and I’ll not rest until I-damn!” One of the miniature Myrins wavered and faded. “I can’t concentrate to maintain so many images at once. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Listen to your body.” Kalen glanced at his numb hands. “And be glad it speaks.”
“My body tells me less than the memories do.”
“Then I’ll tell you,” Kalen said. “You’re worn out. You need to eat, drink, and rest.”