Eighteen Blood Ties

EIGHTEEN

Blood Ties

MARY

B enedict dodged one way, I the other. Three guards and the Provost bolted after Benedict while the last two charged me.

Here . Tane pulled me around a corner and down a flight of stairs.

Where did Ben go? My reply was more image and nerves than words.

I'll find him. Go right, then left. Through the door.

Tane left me, ghisten light vanishing into the shadows and the thunder of running footsteps. I felt naked, though a tether of ghisten flesh remained between us—thinning with each passing moment.

"Stop!" a guard roared.

The stairs ended. I darted right but instantly stopped, flattening myself to the wall. I began to whisper under my breath, subtle notes turning into a melody that barely reached the ear but it stole the air from the hallway as surely as punch to the lungs. It would not work as well, not here in a space without doors, but even if I could disorient the guards—

One barreled around the corner, cudgel in hand. I stuck out my foot and he fell hard, his cudgel clattering away. I seized it and backed away, making for full, clean air before I lost the breath to sing.

The first guard, gasping like a fish out of water, fumbled to his knees. The second—a middle-aged man, cold-eyed and moustached—stumbled to a halt behind him, registered what was happening, and leveled a musket at me.

A bullet tore through the air beside my head, and the crack of the shot was deafening in the enclosed space. I barely twisted away, breath gone, song disrupted. Air rushed back into the hallway and Moustache charged.

I ran, cobbling together fresh notes, but my pursuer was too close, my control shaken. I crashed into another door, pulling the keys from my pocket as I went and shoving in the first one.

It didn't work. The second. No luck.

My hands were trembling so hard I nearly dropped the whole ring.

Tane, I need you! I can't find the key!

I'm coming.

The third key jiggled uselessly in the lock as Moustache charged around the corner so fast he nearly hit the opposite wall of the passageway. Pushing off with a growl, he lunged for me with his sidesword drawn.

I could feel Tane rushing back to me, our tether winding back on its spool, but the guard was four paces away now. Three.

I spun, pulling out the stolen dagger and ducking into a lunge just as the soldier came into range. I caught his sword with my blade as I sidestepped and grabbed his wrist with my other hand, wrenching hard. His sword dropped with a clatter.

His elbow struck me right in the head. I managed a stumbling lunge as I fell and he caught me gracelessly—a child tackling a runaway goat. We toppled to the floor, I flailing and cursing, he slapping my hands away.

Somewhere in the chaos my head took a second hit. My vision blurred, and when it cleared again the guard was pinning me to the wall—one hand on my throat, the other on the wrist of my dagger hand. My pistol was on the floor, kicked out of range.

He shouted something in Mereish, but with no Tane to translate, I couldn't understand. No Tane. Without Tane, I was vulnerable. Without Tane, I could die. Then she would cease to exist, and—

The guard's hands closed tighter, cutting off my breath and crushing my wrist until my fingers felt as though they would rupture with trapped blood. My grip shuddered open and the dagger clattered to the floor.

The guard's eyes grew suddenly wide. He tilted his head to one side like a startled hound, but whatever he heard was beyond me. His hands began to tremble and his gaze turned inwards.

A surge of courage hit me, so fierce and vivid that I no longer felt the hand loosening on my throat or the cold stone grating against my back.

The guard stared at me, his face a muddle of confusion and distraction. I smashed my forehead into his nose, and he reeled with a shrieking gargle.

Before I could go after him, a shadow stepped between us—a large, masculine shadow stinking of sweat and dirt and worse.

Benedict threw a punch. The guard's head rebounded off the wall with a solid crack, and he crumpled like a sail without wind.

Benedict watched him fall while I staggered away and stooped to pick up my dagger. This proved to be unwise. My head swam, and the next thing I knew, I'd sat down hard on my backside and Benedict was staring down at me in wrathful disapproval.

"How are we supposed to get out, Mary?" he demanded, not bothering to ask if I was all right. "Tell me you have a better plan than this."

I bit off a colorful retort, centered around his ingratitude, and instead pointed to the locked door. At the same time Tane reappeared from the wall, a half-formed gust of sapphire mist, and we reunited.

My dizziness and aches began to abate, though they didn't fade entirely. I fumbled for my dagger and sheathed it, then snatched up my pistol and patted at the wall for a handhold.

"Where are the keys?" Benedict hauled me upright, his grasp debatably more painful than my head, then began to search my pockets.

"Already in the door, you ungrateful prick." I fended him off and pointed to where the ring dangled in the lock. He immediately abandoned me, stepping over the unconscious guard and beginning to try keys.

I crowded in as he worked.

"Back away. I will not leave you behind," he growled without looking at me. The keys jingled, obnoxiously merry in the tense stillness.

Back on the floor, the guard twitched and moaned.

"I wouldn't put it past you," I returned, one eye on the keys, one on the guard.

He scoffed. "I just saved you. Where do you think your courage came from?"

"I know," I admitted. "Though I didn't know your power was good for anything other than murder and seduction."

A key turned in the lock with a satisfying clunk . He shoved the door open and pocketed the keys. "Then you know very little."

I inched past him warily. As soon as I was through Tane slipped out, heading for the far reaches of her tether to check the path ahead. That left me aching and weak, but my knees held, and I was grateful when Benedict fell in at my back—where he couldn't see my sweating, pain-pale face.

We met no one else on our flight. Cellars packed with goods began to appear, and, at last, I smelled salt and brine and lantern oil.

Light bloomed as we entered an underground docking area, brimming with crates and barrels and rope-fastened bundles. A large archway of stone led to the sea, tall enough for a short mast to pass under at low tide—though it was waxing now—and it provided a murky glimpse of the sea beyond.

I stumbled to a halt, looking to Tane at the same time as Benedict looked at me.

"No boat?" the Magni asked.

No boat, no Illya. I spied the body of a guard down the way and signs of a struggle, but there was no one alive now.

"They were here, but they didn't wait." I darted onto the empty dock, boots clattering on the icy stone of the quay. I looked at the sea entrance, shrinking with the rising tide. "But we can't be so late! The tide is coming in faster than we expected but it's still not… He should be here. Why would he leave?"

Benedict looked around, taking in every inch of the man-made cavern. His expression was dangerously flat. "There's nothing else. Not even a skiff."

I stared at the water and the ice on the rocks. Readying myself, I slipped my fingers up to pull my pistol from its brace. It might be wet and useless if we followed my new plan, but even a water-choked pistol was better than none.

"I can swim out. Can you?"

"I'd rather drown than go back to a cell."

As ready as I was, the cold water left me clinging to a mooring post, gasping and trying not to let my muscles seize. Luckily my toes touched the bottom, and I didn't go under as the initial shock passed.

Shivering in nothing but his breeches, Benedict watched me from above with a critical eye. He held our bundle of clothing, belongings and two muskets—all tightly wrapped in plentiful oil cloth—on his shoulder. As I slowly stopped gasping, he handed it down to me.

I held the bundle as he lowered himself into the water.

"Bloody fucking Saint," he rattled, nostrils flared and every muscle taut—which, as thin as he was now, were already prominent beneath bruised, sore-scattered flesh. He stifled the rest of his complaints and took the bundle back from me. "I'm ready."

I heard the lie in his voice but let my legs float up and began to swim.

Each stroke felt like an eternity. Each little wave that rocked me found a portion of skin not yet numbed and the shock of the cold went through me again. But by the time we splashed out into the open air, Tane's preserving warmth had come. I moved more quickly, eyeing the cliffs for a path or staircase.

We swam and swam, buffeted by salty waves, and, with each moment that passed, Benedict fell farther behind.

"Let me take it," I said, treading water. I nodded to the bundle as another wave jostled Benedict.

"No," was all he said.

An eternity later, I sighted what appeared to be a path lancing up the steep embankment. I made for it, glancing out to sea as I went. There were no shadows on the waves or lanterns to mark a ship: nothing but silver-crested water under the half-moon, cliffs draped with snow and ice and the single path—which looked more like a happenstance of ridges and flat rocks than any intentional way.

I clambered onto the ice-caked shore first, and finally Benedict let me take the bundle as he clawed up after me. He moved like a lizard in spring and still shivered, but every child of the Winter Sea knew that was better than the alternative.

He looked too much like Sam in that moment, and it was too easy to think of his brother, with his lingering eyes and the way his arms enfolded me in rare moments of intimacy. Hart was nowhere to be seen, and our plans already in disarray. Had Sam been captured? Had Illya and Charles?

I shook myself and opened our bundle. I passed Benedict his stinking shirt then the coat and scarf stolen from the dead guard. He did not look grateful for my help, but I attributed the grinding of his teeth to the cold rather than my patient distribution of clothing.

While his goosefleshed skin disappeared under dry wool and buttons, I threw a short Mereish cape around my shoulders and pulled up the hood.

"Your clothes are still soaked," Benedict pointed out—a statement of fact, not concern.

"They will just freeze. The cold won't kill me."

He strapped on his weapons belt—still holding the sword I'd stolen from the armory—and adjusted it, checking his pouch of ammunition.

"Maybe I should have let Lirr infect me," he commented, and I noticed his fingers were still shaking, white with cold. We needed to get him somewhere warm. Quickly.

"That's nothing to jest about," I returned tartly. Unrepentant, Benedict passed me a musket and threw the oilskin over his shoulders like a second cloak. "No, it's not."

I bit the inside of my lip to stop myself from speaking again, tasting salt. Though the source of his corruption had been different, it was all too easy to draw lines between Lirr and Ben. The image of Benedict possessed by a ghisting, nearly immortal and funneling unpredictable power from the Other, chilled me more than any waves.

When we capped the rise, we looked back down the coast. The hulk of the fortress was distant now, its lights little more than pricks in the night. There were no sounds save the wind across the hard crust of the snow and the crash of the waves on the shore below. The musket was cold beneath my hands, and I wished for mittens.

"What now?" Benedict asked through chattering teeth.

"We find somewhere to shelter and light a fire, rest, then head east. Hopefully Olsa and Hart will be waiting for us."

Benedict surveyed the land to the east, all bare cliff and smooth snow. "Then we had better start," he said, took one step, and collapsed into the snow.