Steel's Edge

FOUR

JEANS definitely had their advantages, Charlotte decided. For one, they provided a nice protection for one’s thighs when in a saddle. Unfortunately, they did nothing for the ache in her core muscles. It had been two and a half years since she had last ridden a horse, and although her posture and balance were still good, after eight hours, her inner hip muscles and her butt had turned into painful mush. The reality of expending so much magic so quickly had crashed into her a while ago. Her head felt fuzzy. Her eyes wanted to close.

“Almost there,” Richard murmured.

“I’m fine. Please don’t worry.”

Considering that he was near death less than twenty-four hours ago, of the two of them she was in much better shape.

They rode side by side on the Salino-Kelena Adrianglian highway. Around them tall oaks dripped long beards of moss. The day had long since burned down to night, and the moon shone from the sky, drenching the road in silver light. Darkness hid between the tree trunks. Strange noises came from within the woods: a deep guttural grunting, followed by the distant snarls of a predator, the high-pitched squeaking of some rodent, and the eerie hooting of the great twilight owls trying to flush out their prey. Somewhere between the shrubs, the dog glided, silent despite his bulk.

They had searched Voshak’s bags and found the cipher and another map, hidden in the false bottom of his canteen. Richard translated it while she chose the best horses and searched for useful weapons. The map indicated a pickup point just north of Kelena, a large harbor city. The map gave a specific date and time, eleven o’clock, evening, the day after next. The moment they had finished gathering supplies and Richard finished stuffing some of the more outlandish pieces of leather into their saddlebags, they had ridden out.

Richard slowed his horse.

“What’s wrong?”

“My wound is aching,” he said.

Her magic told her that his wound was no worse than it had been hours ago. He was giving her an opportunity to rest, and she was too tired and too grateful to fight him on it. Still, she had to. “I appreciate it, but please don’t make allowances for my sake. I’ll manage.”

“We’re only a few miles away,” he said. “Have you ever been to Kelena?”

“No.”

“It is a noisy, garish hive of a city. We’ll be walking into the Cauldron, one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Adrianglia. They call it the Cauldron because that’s where the worst humanity has to offer is thrown together and allowed to boil until the scum floats to the top.”

Charlotte laughed softly. She hadn’t thought she would ever laugh again after what she had done, but her body had passed the point of pain, and she felt weightless and disconnected. “You’ve missed your calling.”

“I’m a complete failure as a poet,” he said. “When I was fourteen, I wrote a long ballad about the bleakness of my life and the heaviness of the burden that was being me. My brother stole it and read it out loud at a family gathering. That was the first and the last time I managed to make the entire family laugh.”

The laugher kept coming. She heard the hysterical tone in her own voice but couldn’t stop it.

Richard halted his horse and dismounted.

The back of her eyes grew hot. She had to get ahold of herself.

Richard took her reins and led their horses off the road. She slid out of her saddle, her body whining in protest. Her limbs were shaking. A big poplar loomed in front of her. Charlotte circled it and sat on the ground, wrapping her arms around her legs and gathering herself into a ball the way she used to do when she was a homesick little girl.

It was all over. If you were more grounded, you’d sprout roots, Charlotte. She wasn’t grounded anymore. All of her trials, all of her self-imposed exile, all of it had been for nothing. She murdered people. She held their lives in her hands and snuffed them out. It brought her joy. And Éléonore was dead, and there wasn’t a damn thing Charlotte could do about it. Éléonore was gone, and she must’ve suffered before she died. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

Charlotte bit her lower lip, trying to hold back the flood.

Oh Dawn Mother. How did it all go so wrong? Please, she prayed silently, please, please make this all into a nightmare. Please let me wake. I just want to wake up. Please . . . She would have given anything to turn back the last twenty-four hours. Anything to keep Éléonore and Daisy from dying. Anything to shield Tulip. Poor Tulip. She was all alone now. The slavers wrecked her life. One moment she had a sister and a future, and the next she had nothing, only grief.

The warmth behind her eyes turned into tears. They rolled, wetting her cheeks. Her chest hurt. She sobbed. Suddenly, she couldn’t hold it any longer. The tears tore out of her.

A dark shadow emerged from the bushes. The dog lowered himself on the ground by her feet and licked her ankle. She slumped over her bent knees and cried like a child.

Please. Please let me wake up.

She cried and cried, praying in her head even though she knew nobody heard her. It was godsdamned unfair. Why? Why did they have to die? She’d killed the bastards who killed them, but it didn’t make things right. It was just a circle of pain and death, and she was trapped in it, angry, grieving, and helpless.

The sobs turned into dry heaves. There was no balm, no poultice, no pills she could create to make things better. Dead would remain dead. Nothing could take back their suffering or hers.

Finally, even her dry heaves died. Exhaustion smothered her.

She felt alone. So utterly, completely alone. She raised her head, straightening, and realized that fabric was touching her shoulders. Richard had draped his cloak over her. She hadn’t even noticed.

“Thank you.” She pulled the cloak tighter around herself. It was a kind gesture, completely at odds with his confession of being a killer and the air of danger that still emanated from him.

He was sitting next to her, leaning against the rough bark, his profile etched against the moonlit sky. Had she met him under different circumstances, she might have felt fear at his proximity. Now she was too numb and too beat-up emotionally to muster any anxiety.

“I suppose you’re regretting bringing me along,” she said.

“I’ve regretted it from the moment I decided to do it.”

Her pride was stung. “I won’t be a burden.”

He turned to her, dark eyes filled with concern. “I never viewed you as a burden.”

“Then why?”

He looked up to the moon. “In this life, some of us are killers, born with a predatory instinct. I’m one, but you’re not.”

He must’ve forgotten she had just murdered a dozen men. “Why? Is it because I’m a woman?”

“No, it’s nothing so obvious as gender. My aunt was the best killer I’ve met. For whatever reason, some of us are born to kill, and others, men and women both, are born to nurture. Your instincts drive you to help others. My instincts drive me to end lives.”

She sniffed. “You don’t know me.”

Richard smiled. Despite the dirt, he really was a strikingly handsome man. Arrogant, predatory, but handsome.

“Those of us who are killers learn to recognize others of our kind. We know rivals because they pose danger.”

“And I don’t?” Charlotte asked quietly.

He smiled again, and this time his face was almost mournful. “Even the most peaceful and kind person will become dangerous if backed into a corner. I don’t question your power, but you don’t have the innate aggression or the predatory drive of a natural-born killer. I’ve been one all of my life, and what I’ve done and seen during these past months haunts me. I know what lies ahead. I know it will be very difficult for you. You think now that you’re dealing with grief and purging it from yourself, but it’s only the first taste of what’s to come. Are you sure you don’t want to return? I would consider it an honor to escort you to the Edge.”

“No.”

“Do you think the Edgers wouldn’t take you back?”

She sighed. “They would, but I can’t go back to East Laporte. When the slavers surrounded the house, Éléonore called me. I drove to our neighbors to ask for help. They gathered about twenty people together, all carrying guns, then they stood around.”

“Nobody wanted to fight,” Richard said. “They probably delayed until the slavers were gone. Typical.”

She turned to him. “Yes. Éléonore lived among them all of her life. She helped many of them, and they just abandoned her and left her to die. And when I asked them for help to go after those bastards, not one of them would meet my eyes. I can’t go back there. I’ve made my decision. I don’t know what your motivations are, but mine are just as valid. Please respect my need for justice.”

“My apologies,” he said. “I won’t mention it again.”

Charlotte wiped her face with her sleeve and rose. Richard got up.

She held out his cloak. “Thank you for your cloak.”

“My pleasure.”

Richard held her horse’s reins while she put her foot in the stirrup and mounted. He handed them to her, got into his saddle, and they rode out.

Half an hour later, the forest parted. Charlotte halted her horse. A wide field of waist-tall grass spread in front of her, rolling into the distance, where a nacre sea lapped at the shore under a bottomless dark sky. To the left, bathed in the salt water of the ocean, rose impossibly tall towers. Built of pale gray stone, they were triangular in shape, smoothly curved at the corners. A turquoise metal wave tipped each tower, sending rivulets of metal down the pale stone sides, like climbing plants that had sprouted a network of thin roots. The moonlight played on the metal, and its gleam matched the reflections on the placid ocean. The towers stood in a perfect semicircle, enclosing most of the city, like wave breakers.

“Kelena’s Teeth,” Richard said. “During hurricanes the towers send out a magic barrier, shielding the city from the storms and the worst of the surge.”

“It looks as if the city is halfway in the water.”

“About a third. There are canals running all through the city, so when the tide rises, the water simply passes through Kelena into the salt marshes. All that grass is deceptive. That’s not solid ground under it, it’s marsh flats with a thin layer of water over mud. An ideal home for horned turtles. They grow to five feet wide and can snap a human femur in half with their jaws. Fortunately, they are slow and rarely venture on the road. Shall we?”

Charlotte nodded and they trotted down the highway toward the city. She could see between the towers now, and from her vantage point in the saddle, the interior of the city looked like a mess of roofs, balconies, and bright, frayed banners. A human hive, just as Richard had described it: messy, chaotic, filled with strangers. A vague anxiety rose in her. From here, the city appeared too large, too full of people. While at the College, she had dreamt of traveling, but once she left it, the marriage and the house had taken precedence.

Now she was riding toward this teeming city through the night, accompanied by a man born between the worlds who cut steel with his sword and had flawless manners. It felt surreal.

“My brother says the Broken has a city in this exact same spot. According to him, its citizens have an unhealthy fascination with pirates,” Richard said.

She found his voice strangely reassuring. “The same brother who stole your ballad?”

“Sadly, yes.”

“What does he do?” she asked to keep the conversation going.

“He’s an agent of the Mirror.”

Charlotte turned to him. “He is a spy?” The Mirror was Adrianglia’s intelligence and espionage agency, the realm’s main weapon in its cold war with the neighboring Dukedom of Louisiana. It operated in the shadows, and the exploits of its agents were legendary.

Richard grimaced. “He steals anything that’s not nailed down, cons people into going along with his improbable schemes, and possesses a unique talent that lets him win when he gambles. It was the Mirror or a prison cell.”

His distaste had a false, put-upon quality about it. “You’re proud of him,” she said.

A narrow smile lit Richard’s face. “Extremely.”

“I’ve never been to the Broken,” she told him. “I tried, but my magic was too strong.”

“Neither have I,” he said. “I also tried to cross and nearly died. The Edge is my limit. I would love to see the Broken.”

“I would, too.”

The Broken’s gadgets fascinated her. Some, like microwave ovens, had their equivalent in the Weird, but others, like plastic wrap and cell phones, were completely new to her. When she had received de Ney manor, she had climbed into the attic. It was filled with strange things from the previous owners’ travels, and she loved to sort through their abandoned treasures. Each item was a little discovery, wrapped in echoes of adventure. She felt the exact same way about the swap meets she’d gone to in the Edge. She rarely bought things, but accompanying Éléonore on one of her treasure hunts was an experience in itself. Éléonore would find some strange gadget from the Broken, and her face would light up.

Grief stabbed her. Charlotte stared ahead at the city. She would make them stop. They would regret the day they ever came to East Laporte.

“Do we have a plan?” she asked.

“The slaver ship docks tomorrow night,” Richard said. “They will expect a crew of at least ten men and a group of slaves, usually twelve to fifteen, typically adolescents and young adults. If they don’t see that on the shore, the ship may not dock. It’s imperative we get on that ship.”

“Because it goes to the slave market?”

“Yes. The slavers are run by a board of trustees, like a business. The individual slaver captains don’t know who the trustees are.”

“You seem very sure of that,” she said.

“Once you hang a man over an open fire, he usually answers your questions honestly,” Richard said. “The slavers don’t know the identity of the trustees, but they do know that once the slaves board the ships, they are taken to an island. There are sixty-seven islands along the Adrianglian coast. The slaves are sold at the market, and the sales are recorded and presided over by a bookkeeper. He’s directly accountable to the trustees. He will know their identities and faces.”

“So where are we going to get a crew of slaves and slavers?” she asked.

“We’re going to bargain with Jason Parris,” Richard said.

“Who is he?”

“The most vicious crime lord in the Cauldron.”

The anxiety she’d been feeling since coming into view of Kelena returned full force. “Ah,” Charlotte said, forcing her voice to sound light. “I’m so relieved. I thought we would be doing something dangerous.”

RICHARD strode down the wooden boardwalk along the Cauldron’s Sharkmonger Canal, aware of Charlotte walking next to him and the dog trotting a few yards behind. To the right, two-story buildings rose in a continuous wall, built of anything from stone to discarded lumber, each story with its own faded, weather-beaten awning. The awnings hung over the boardwalk, shielding it from the rain and sun. It was late evening, and the numerous colored lanterns hanging from chains and ropes seemed almost to create more shadows than they banished.

Beyond the buildings, even higher structures stretched upward, making the canal resemble a river running along the bottom of a deep, man-made canyon. The water, the color of milk tea, was completely opaque. Small docks punctuated the canal here and there, marked with bright orange-and-green sail-like banners that stretched all the way from the top story to the ground.

The air smelled of bitter salt, seaweeds, smoke, and a confusing, slightly nauseating amalgam of odors particular to the Cauldron: incense; cooked meat; alcohol fumes; the distinct reek of sumah, an illegal narcotic; and the ever-present stench of fish guts.

They passed a small square dock. A body floated facedown, bumping against the wooden supports. Next to him, Charlotte stopped for a short moment and then kept walking.

She had probably never been to a place like this before, but if she had, he wouldn’t know. She obviously didn’t belong here, in the vicious human gutter. In her place, Cerise, his cousin, would’ve put her hand on her sword and stalked like a predator in unfamiliar territory. Rose, Declan’s wife, would’ve been wary, alarmed, at the very least cautious. Charlotte floated. The way she held herself with assurance and slight indifference, as if she were strolling through a garden listening to the slightly boring droning of a friend, made it impossible to question her right to be here. She made herself belong, and when she saw a bloated corpse in the water, she’d merely paused for a moment, as if it were an odd flower, and resumed walking.

Her training was so strong that even here her poise was flawless. Charlotte must’ve had a mentor, someone with an ancient bloodline and an instinctual understanding of etiquette. He recognized it because despite being a poor Edge rat, his own education had come from such a man. His mentor was his granduncle, an exile from the Dukedom of Louisiana, and he was sure that if Vernard were still alive, he would’ve offered Charlotte nothing but praise.

Who could’ve hurt her so much that she had abandoned everything and fled to the Edge?

DAWN Mother, there was a dead person floating in the water.

Ice rolled down Charlotte’s spine, an alarming mix of revulsion, fear, and anxiety. The sight of a single corpse after she had created so many shouldn’t have been so unsettling, but somehow this lone bloated body, discarded like garbage and ignored by everyone, nearly made her gag.

“Tell me about this crime lord,” Charlotte said, hoping for a distraction before her stomach rebelled and emptied itself on the boardwalk.

“Jason Parris was born in the Broken, in a small mountain town,” Richard said. “His family was poor, so after he finished high school, he joined the Marine Corps. It’s one of the elite branches of the Broken military. He survived a war in a foreign country and decided to leave after his four-year term of service was completed. When he returned home, he couldn’t hold a job. He worked for a series of businesses doing manual labor and was either fired or quit—he didn’t last long at any of them.”

“Why? Wouldn’t being in the military teach him discipline?”

“Oh, he has discipline.” Richard shrugged. “He also has very definite ideas about who is and isn’t worthy of his loyalty. He listened to his sergeants and officers because they had done what he did and he was smart enough to recognize that they were trying to keep him alive. In his mind, they had earned the right to give him orders. His civilian employers weren’t worthy of the same respect. They understandably took a rather dim view of his attitude. Jason found himself often unemployed. He was used to having his own money, and suddenly he had to depend on relatives for a roof over his head. It made him angry. One night, in a bar fight, that anger boiled over, and he severely injured a man. A relative took him to the Edge to keep him out of jail. He was just coming to terms with the idea that magic existed when slavers raided the Edge settlement. Jason was fit and healthy, prime merchandise from their point of view. They overpowered him. He proved to be a difficult captive and attacked them every chance he got. Voshak tried his best to break him but couldn’t. Jason went through the Market and was sold to a garnet mine. A month later, I raided that mine and found him in a hole in the ground. It was my second raid, and knowing what I know now, I would’ve had doubts about pulling him out of that hole.”

“He didn’t want to go home?”

Richard grimaced. “No. He asked for directions to the nearest city instead. I dropped him off at Kelena. He started calling himself Jason Parris and said that this city would become known as his island. An allusion, if you will, to the place where he first received his military training. Now, a year later, he owns everything you can currently see. The old crime lords that ran the Cauldron had established certain boundaries. They had families and business interests, and were unwilling to risk them. Parris had nothing. He tore through them and took over all of their territory. He kills whoever whenever however he feels necessary, without reservation or remorse.”

“Why would anyone follow him?” Sooner or later, someone like that would turn on his own people.

Richard shook his head. “Jason isn’t a psychopath. He’s vicious, but he kills selectively, with a strategy in mind. His people fear him, yet they also know that as long as they comply with his demands, they will be safe and rewarded. He respects strength. He can be charming, but no matter what he says or how he greets us, don’t trust him or his second, Miko. In fact, don’t trust anyone in that building. Jason is the drive and the muscle, but Miko is his mind, and that mind dreams up plans with high body counts.”

Richard stopped, and Charlotte paused next to him. The continuous wall of buildings here was particularly ramshackle, the awning pale and weather-bleached from a once deep rust to a pale, sad orange. Loose lumber had been nailed to the wall in every direction.

“Why did we stop?” Charlotte murmured.

“There are sentries watching us,” he said. “Across the street on the roof, one on the right in the boat, and there is one directly above us on the balcony, listening to everything we say. They will report to Jason, and we’ll wait here and see if he decides to see us.”

She leaned closer to him. “And if he doesn’t?”

“Then I’ll knock,” Richard said.

The wall of the house behind them slid open. An old woman emerged, wearing a shapeless red dress and a red scarf on her hair. She waved at them with a wrinkled brown hand and disappeared inside, into the gloom.

“We’ve been invited.” Richard smiled.

“Indeed.”

“Follow me, please.”

He strode through the narrow hallway. The dog trotted in after him. She was last through the door, in command of Rear Ward, or whatever the proper military term was. Charlotte followed the dog up a short flight of narrow dark stairs, into a hallway, and through another doorway. A spacious room stretched before them, illuminated by the familiar Weird-style lanterns. Shaped like bunches of delicate glowing flowers, the lanterns cascaded from the hooks between the windows near the tall ceiling. An expensive rug stretched across the polished wooden floor to the stone fireplace. In the center, a tea table waited, surrounded by soft chairs upholstered in light leather.

A man sprawled in the largest chair. His broad shoulders stretched the fabric of his gray shirt. His chest was broad, and his arms, revealed by the short sleeves of his tunic, bulged with muscle. He had to be over six feet tall, and his huge frame dwarfed the chair. His head had been shaved in a series of meticulously spaced strips of various widths that ran from his forehead to the nape of his neck; the effect was alternating stripes of glossy hair and smooth, shaved, light brown scalp.

His features would’ve been handsome in a masculine, square-jawed, leader-of-the-pack way, but a scar covered most of the left side of his face. A burn, Charlotte diagnosed. Not by direct application—either from steam, or more likely, flash-magic heat. Deeper lines crisscrossed the scar. Probably from a grate of some sort that had covered the heat source. So this was Jason Parris. She had expected someone older, but he appeared to be in his mid-twenties.

The man’s eyes, startling green against his darker skin, surveyed Richard and paused on her. Intelligent eyes. He radiated power and menace, and when she met his stare, his eyebrows crept up a hair. Perhaps he had expected her to flinch.

A girl stood next to him, as lean and slight as he was bulky. She looked too young to be here, seventeen, perhaps eighteen. Her face was smooth and a shade darker than his. Her hair hung over her face in stiff, straight locks, the result of some sort of hair product. She wore close-fitting jeans and a gray sweatshirt with HARVARD printed on it in red letters. It had to have come from the Broken.

“The Hunter,” Jason said. His voice was deep and resonant, and he spoke in an unhurried manner. “I feel honored. Do you feel honored, Miko?”

Miko said nothing.

“See, she feels honored.” Jason spread his massive arms. His voice had a slight mocking quality to it. “You smell like piss and you look even worse.”

Jason’s stare slid over to her. His light eyes widened. “Richard, you have a girl. And you got a dog together. Where are you registered? I will buy you a toaster.”

“The dog is hers,” Richard said.

The wolfripper showed Jason his big teeth.

“So, what can we do for the mighty Hunter?”

Richard reached into his bag.

Miko leaned forward, focused.

A man stepped from the doorway, a crossbow in his hands.

Richard extracted Voshak’s bleached-blond braid from the bag and tossed it to the crime lord. Parris snatched it from the air and looked at the blond strands. “When?”

“About ten hours ago.”

“Anybody left from his crew?”

“No.”

Parris glanced at the crossbowman and tossed the braid into the air. A bolt whistled and bit into the opposite wall, pinning the braid securely in place.

The crime lord turned to Richard. “You bring me such fine gifts, Hunter. What do you want?”

“There is a slave ship docking north of the city at eleven tonight. They expect a crew of slaves and slavers to board it,” Richard said.

Parris leaned forward, his eyes suddenly predatory. “They will take them to the Market.”

“Yes. One small problem: the slaver crew is dead, and they’d failed to capture any slaves. If someone was in charge of a rough crew, that someone could take their place.”

The crime lord smiled. It was a chilling smile. “If only we knew a man with such a crew.”

Richard shrugged. “He might be a valuable man to know. He would become quite wealthy, but more importantly, he would be the man who sacked the Market.”

Parris raised one eyebrow.

“The security on the island is geared toward dealing with runaway slaves and irate customers. They won’t expect an assault from a couple of dozen armed fighters. It’s an opportunity for money from the slave trade, wealth from the buyer’s agents, and a chance for revenge.”

“Risky,” Parris said. “We don’t know how well the place is guarded. I was half-dead when they dragged me through it, but I remember guards.”

“‘No guts, no glory,’” Richard quoted.

Risky was an understatement, Charlotte reflected. This plan Richard had hatched made a hardened criminal pause, yet he didn’t even mention it to her beforehand. Unquestionable obedience was one thing, not being used to her full potential was another. She would have to point this out to him when they were alone.

“What share do you want?” Parris asked.

“None. I want the bookkeeper, and I want him alive.”

The crime lord pondered it. She could sense Parris’s hesitation. They needed to offer him something to tip the scales in their favor. What could they possibly propose to him? What would a crime lord be interested in? Money, of course, but even if she could get access to her finances, she doubted money alone would make him risk his life and his people.

Her gaze paused on his face. The scar stood out against his skin like a brand. It must’ve made it difficult to look in the mirror every morning.

“How did you get your scar?” Charlotte asked.

Parris turned to her. “A gift from Voshak. I’d broken out of the cargo hold. The plan was to take a swim, but the plan failed, and Voshak had his boys hold me against the ship’s heating unit. Tried to teach me a lesson.” He flashed his teeth at her. “I’m a hard learner.”

“Would you like me to remove it?” she asked.

Parris raised his eyebrows. “You can do that?”

“Yes.” The skin was the easiest of all body tissues to heal.

Parris pondered the idea for a moment. “Thanks, but I think I’ll keep it. It’s part of me now.”

Miko leaned over to him and whispered something, her face urgent.

Jason frowned. “Yes, but you’d have to make it look old.”

Miko whispered again.

Parris considered it. “If she heals me and I get all profits from sacking the Market, you have a deal.”

“Before she does anything, she needs rest and food,” Richard said.

They were talking about her as if she weren’t even in the room.

Parris stared at him. “Do I look like a Holiday Inn to you?”

“Eight hours of uninterrupted rest behind a solid door, a fresh change of clothes, food, and clean water to wash up,” Richard said. “Those are our conditions.”

Parris sighed. “Fine. But if my face isn’t fixed by noon, you’ll be resting six feet under for a lot longer than eight hours.”

CHARLOTTE followed Richard and a woman armed with a sword up the stairs. They walked into another narrow hallway, and the woman stopped by a door and swung it open. Richard stepped inside, and Charlotte and the dog followed him into a small suite. Perfectly clean, with pale, almost golden wooden paneling on the walls and large windows framed by green curtains, the room could’ve belonged to any of the nicer hotels. A large bed dominated the floor, its linens and bedspread an inviting light yellow. Two stacks of clothes lay on the bed. To the right, another door opened to a small bathroom.

A single bed in a single room. Jason was assuming they were a couple.

The dog flopped on the rug and sniffed at the floor. Richard shut the door, locked it, and lowered a heavy wooden bar in place, securing the door as if it were an entrance to an old castle.

His skin had turned sallow. Grime stained his face. An abominable stench rose from his clothes. He had to be squeezing the last drops of energy from his exhausted body to remain upright.

“I don’t mind waiting for the bathroom,” she said.

He bowed his head slightly. “Neither do I.”

She crossed her arms.

“You agreed to follow my orders,” he said.

“The order of our bathing has nothing to do with our mission.”

“Charlotte,” he said, his voice tired. “I’m not going to shower before you.”

The sound of her name coming from him startled her. Something about the way he said it touched off the same feminine flutter she had felt when he called her beautiful. It was the strangest feeling, a mix of anxiety, surprise, and pleasure, soaked in excitement. But nothing about this made sense. She was covered in blood and dirt. Not only that, he had recently watched her kill people, then go through their pockets. Romance had to be the last thing on his mind and should have been the last on hers.

“Richard,” she said, her voice firm. “You smell awful. Please have mercy on my nose.”

“You deserve the first turn at the bathroom. Offering to fix his face was a stroke of genius.”

“Thank you, but I’m perfectly happy waiting.”

Richard stared at her. They were at an impasse.

“While I have your attention,” Charlotte said, “I’d appreciate it if in the future when you come up with a plan that makes a hardened criminal pause, you could at least give me the gist of it ahead of time. In broad strokes. While I don’t have your expertise in dealing with the criminal underground, I’m a woman of reasonable intelligence, and I react badly when surprised. I understand that you’re used to being the lone swordsman, but I promise you that I can be an asset at the planning stage and can assist you better if I know where you’re going. Use me as your, what’s the Broken expression? Sounding door?”

“Sounding board,” he said, his voice dry.

“Exactly.”

Richard’s face had a most curious expression. Two parts exasperation, one part shock, and three parts politeness so ingrained in him that it was keeping the rest of his emotions in check. “Will there be anything else, my lady?”

“Yes. It would bring me great pleasure if, when both of us are present during a conversation, you could occasionally acknowledge my presence and allow me to speak for myself instead of referring to me in the third person.”

Richard locked his jaw. She waited patiently to see if he would explode.

“The next time we have to talk to a violent psychopath, I’ll strive to keep that in mind,” he said.

The next time you don’t, I won’t stand there quietly. “Thank you for indulging me.”

“My pleasure.”

He bowed his head, managing to put enough exasperation into that bow to fuel a small ship for a voyage across the ocean. Very well. She curtsied. The effort of bending her legs nearly took her off her feet.

They straightened.

“We still have the question of the bathroom,” she said.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver doubloon. “Heads or tails.”

“Heads.” She took the coin from his palm. “And I will do the tossing.”

“You don’t trust me.”

“You told me not to trust anyone. Besides, I’m not the one with a brother who magically wins bets.”

She flipped the coin and slapped it onto the back of her wrist.

“Tails.” Richard smiled. “I win. The bathroom is all yours, my lady.”

Accusing him of cheating wasn’t just illogical, it was silly. Charlotte took her stack of clothes and walked into the bathroom. The dog followed her.

“No,” she said firmly, and shut the door. A disappointed whine answered her.

Inside an Adrianglian-style drencher shower waited for her: a wide showerhead positioned directly above, over her head. Charlotte turned the handle and warm water cascaded down in a welcome waterfall. Charlotte stripped and stepped under the flow.

The water splashed over her in a cleansing stream. Her legs buckled a little. Her muscles ached all over, and the shower did nothing to wash the encroaching drowsiness from her. Charlotte washed her hair with detached thoroughness. It felt like someone else was driving her body. If she didn’t hurry, she would collapse before she reached the bed. She washed all the dirt off, wrapped a towel over her hair, dried herself with the larger towel, and picked up the first garment from the stack of clothes.

RICHARD heard a muffled word from the bathroom. His body was giving out from fatigue, and the bathroom door was relatively thick, but he was absolutely sure that Charlotte de Ney had just called someone a prick.

Considering her latest stand, he shouldn’t really be surprised. Their partnership was less than a day old, and he had already received a dressing-down. Your own damn fault, he congratulated himself. You took her with you.

The dog rose from his spot by the bathroom door, trotted over, and flopped by him with all the grace of a sack of potatoes. Big shaggy paws rose in the air, and he was presented with a canine chest.

“Really?”

The dog looked at him. Fine. Richard reached over and rubbed the fur. He couldn’t possibly smell any worse. The wolfripper dogs weren’t trained to kill humans, only to find them and keep them put. The slavers didn’t wish to unduly damage their merchandise. Aside from their size and their teeth, the wolfrippers were just dogs, and this shaggy idiot seemed starved for affection.

Richard scratched the dog’s belly. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t thought to tell her what he was planning. It was simply force of habit. He had been on his own for too long. Being chewed out for it, like he was a child who had committed a lapse in manners, however, wasn’t in his plans. She would have to get over it. Nor would he be obeying her orders. In fact, he would address it the moment she came out of the bathroom, to prevent future misunderstandings.

The door opened slowly.

“It appears our host has a sense of humor,” Charlotte said, and stepped out.

Her hair fell down over her back in a combed wet wave. She wore a flowing robe of pale pink that ended a few inches above her knees. The robe was completely, decadently sheer. He could see every curve of her body, from the elegant neck to the swell of her breasts, barely obscured by the folds of the fabric, to the supple bend of her waist and widening of her hips . . .

He was staring. All of his years as an adult male had vanished, wiped away as if they never existed, and he was a teenage boy again, awkward and dumbstruck. He gaped at her, unable to glance away, unable to make a sound, unable to do anything but stare.

He wanted her. She was an erotic dream.

This wasn’t real, he decided. He was still in a cage or lying by the road dying, and his feverish brain had conjured up a beautiful fantasy to taunt him one last time before he passed on into the afterlife.

A pale pink blush spread over Charlotte’s cheeks.

Look away, you fool.

Richard closed his mouth and forced himself to turn to the bed and pick up his own stack of clothes. “It appears you’re right. Jason does have a sense of humor. Let’s hope I don’t come out in a leather loincloth.”

He headed to the bathroom, forcing himself to look anywhere but at Charlotte as she crossed the room and climbed under the covers.

In the shower, he leaned against the wall, bracing himself with both arms, and let the water splash onto the back of his head and over his back, massaging his tired muscles. Richard closed his eyes and saw Charlotte in his mind. Get a grip. You’re the man she sprung from a cage, covered in filth, piss, and blood. She took pity on him and healed him. She had no idea that it was more kindness than he had seen from a woman in years. For her it was merely common charity.

She was a beautiful, refined woman. A man would have to be dead not to respond to her. He had come so close to death, and now his body was rejoicing in the fact he’d survived. Acting on it was out of the question. She trusted him, and he wouldn’t break that trust. Even if she opened that door, which she would not, Charlotte had just suffered an emotional catastrophe. Only a lowlife would take advantage of that, and he wouldn’t be the mistake she regretted first thing in the morning.

Richard shut his mind off, soaped up the sponge, and scrubbed himself until he could detect no odors other then the crisp, spicy scent of soap. The shower was almost more effort than he could take. As he stood under the water, he briefly considered simply sitting down on the floor and not getting up. But he was pretty sure she would come looking for him, and being found naked slumped on the shower floor would be truly disastrous.

Jason had left that outfit on purpose. The man was smart and perceptive. He would’ve read their body language, deduced that they were traveling together but weren’t intimate, and taken this opportunity to taunt him. If Richard was keeping score, this one would go to Jason Parris, but he wasn’t interested in side battles.

His clothes turned out to be plain Weird attire: simple dark gray underwear, a tunic, and brown cotton pants. It would do until he could acquire new ones. He exited the bathroom. Charlotte lay on her side, hidden under a sheet. Her eyes were half-closed, and he wasn’t sure if she was asleep or watching him through the curtain of her soft eyelashes.

Richard took his sword from where he’d left it, by the door, and sank down against the door, crossing his legs, his blade resting against his shoulder. Generations of his ancestors had slept just like this, and some of them had woken up with their blades in their attackers. If Jason had a moment of insanity and decided to disrupt their rest, he would join them.

“Richard,” Charlotte said.

“Yes?”

“Are you worried we may not survive the night?”

There was no point in lying. “I prefer to be cautious.”

“Would you like a blanket and a pillow?”

He would’ve liked to join her in bed. And what would you do if you did? You’re so tired, you can’t see straight. “No, thank you. I’m used to sleeping like this. It gives me comfort.”

She stirred on the bed. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For guarding the door, and for taking me with you.”

There were many questions he wanted to ask her. He wanted to know where she was from, why she had run away to the Edge, and how her ex-husband had hurt her, but the fatigue smothered him. Richard closed his eyes and surrendered to sleep.