Windwitch (The Witchlands #2)v(49)

“Everyone knows this, don’t they? I’m the one fool who doesn’t.” Merik folded his arms over his chest, leaning back. The wood creaked a protest. “Noden’s breath,” he said to the ceiling. “I know nothing about this city.”

“You didn’t grow up here, sir. I did.”

So did Vivia. She’d grown up with the sailors and the soldiers. With the High Council and King Serafin. It gave her an advantage. One of many.

As a boy, Merik had thought he was the lucky one—living wild on the Nihar estate with Kullen at his side. Hunting and fishing and traipsing through forests half dead. While that had earned him loyalty and love in the south, here in Lovats, Merik was no one.

He could change that, though. He would make his amends. Be what the people needed him to be.

With a renewed sense of strength, Merik leaned over the map. “Can you get me to Shite Street, boy?”

“For this meeting, sir? Absolutely. But only so long as I can stay with you—because you know,” she lifted her voice before Merik could argue, “that if I’d been allowed to join you at Pin’s Keep, I could’ve whistled a warning before that first mate ever got upstairs.”

“Then you would have been the one facing her Waterwitchery.”

“A Waterwitch?” Cam’s eyes bulged. “A full Waterwitch—not just a Tidewitch…” She trailed off as a yawn took hold. With her jaw stretched long and eyes squinting shut, she looked just like a sleepy puppy.

Merik’s anger returned in an instant. He motioned stiffly to the bed. “Sleep, Cam.” The command came out gruffer than he intended. “We’ll brave Shite Street once the sun’s a bit higher.”

Cam’s lips parted. She clearly wanted to obey—to sleep—but her blighted loyalty wouldn’t let her abandon him so easily. “What about you, sir?” she asked, right on cue.

“I’ll sleep too. Eventually.”

Now came a cautious smile, and Merik tried not to smile back. Cam had that effect, though. A world of darkness, but she could still make a room glow.

In moments, the girl had curled onto the bed and was fast asleep. Merik waited until her chest swelled and sank with slumber before rising, quietly as he could, and tiptoeing for the door. He had two tasks to accomplish before he was allowed to sleep.

First, Merik had a pair of boots to find, though he had no idea where he might do so at this hour.

And second—the task that really mattered, the one that sent Merik hopping two steps at a time down the tenement stairs—he had a gang to find. One that lurked near Pin’s Keep. One that thought preying on the weak was an acceptable way to live.

Why do you hold a razor in one hand?

“So men remember,” Merik murmured as he stepped into the wet morning, “that I am as sharp as any edge.”

And why do you hold broken glass in the other?

“So men remember that I am always watching.” With that final utterance, Merik yanked his hood low and set off for the Skulks.





SEVENTEEN

The Pirate Republic of Saldonica was unlike anything Safi had ever seen. Oh, she’d heard stories of the vast city built into ancient ruins, with its factions constantly at war, their territories shifting and morphing. And she’d heard tell of the famed slave arena, where warriors and witches battled for coin—and where the rivalry between Baedyeds and Red Sails was deemed moot in favor of violence and wagers.

Safi had also heard how a person of any color or background or nation could not only exist in Saldonica but also could be bought or sold or traded. Then there were the legends of crocodiles lurking in the brackish waterways. Of sea foxes bigger than boats in the bay that would tow down men and ships alike.

Yet Safi had always thought those tales nothing more than bedtime stories for an unruly six-year-old who didn’t want to go to sleep yet, Habim, and couldn’t he just tell her one more story about the pirates?

Except it was real. All of it.

Well, maybe not the sea foxes. Safi knew—firsthand—that those creatures existed, but she had yet to see the Saldonican Bay, so she couldn’t confirm if they resided there.

An hour of travel through the steamy foliage had spit the Hell-Bards, Safi, and Vaness onto a second road. Churned up and grooved down the center from hooves and wagons, it was at present packed with hooves and wagons ready to churn it up all the more. Everyone trundled northeast, and only three people gave Safi or Vaness a second look. Actual help or any real interest, though, the people seemed unwilling to spare.

Safi couldn’t blame them. She wanted to blame them, but the truth was that she understood why others might keep their eyes on their own business. Zander alone, with his massive size, would have been enough to send a person running. Lev and Caden only added to the image of People Best Left Alone.

Besides, not everyone was selfless like Merik Nihar. Not everyone was a crazy Windwitch who would fly into fights, heedless of his own safety—or his own buttons.

Before long, the trees opened up to reveal a bridge. Here, the riverbank was scarcely higher than the lazy brown waters running beside it, and one good rain would submerge the wide bridge.

Crocodiles seemed to realize this, for the beasts lumbered and lounged on either side of the warped planks. Gods below, it was a lot of teeth. Caden didn’t need to prod Safi to walk a bit faster.