Bloodleaf (Bloodleaf #1)(26)

“No, I don’t. Sorry.”

He gave a nonchalant shrug. “Too bad. Best keep moving, then. Unless . . .” He scratched his chin. “Your horse. Is she an Empyrean?”

My eyes narrowed. “I’m not selling my horse.”

Another paper came off the nail with a yank and joined the stack. “I’d give you a fair price, seeing as how she’s in such bad shape. The girl’s half-dead.”

“No. Not for any price.”

“Everybody has a price. I’d sell my mother for the right price.” He shrugged again. “But she’s a scheming harpy, so the price would probably end up being pretty low. Too bad for you, though. I’ve got fresh straw in my stable, and I was about to sit down to some vegetable soup.” He put his back to me.

“Wait!” I fumbled in my pocket and pulled out my charm bracelet, twisting off another charm. “Would this work?” I opened my fingers to reveal the topaz gryphon, rearing on its hind legs, claws outstretched and curled tongue extended.

He raised an eyebrow. “Well, now. I suppose that would suffice.” In a blink he’d snatched it up and hidden it away in the ragged folds of his clothing. “This way now, miss.”

He led me past several other camps, gathering papers as he went. “Royal decrees,” he said, sensing my curiosity. “King Domh-nall issues a new one every few days and has them posted everywhere, in and out of the city, generally demanding thanks for things he didn’t do and praise for traits he doesn’t possess. Every time, we think his proclamations couldn’t get stupider . . . until the next one.” We stopped at a ramshackle structure of sticks and twine propped against the side of the wall, a few thin skins draped over the top. “I use ’em for kindling, see. Only thing ol’ Domhnall is good for: starting fires.” He crouched next to a smoking fire pit, crumpling the stolen decrees into balls and chuckling to himself as each new one smoldered and caught flame.

“This is your stable?” I asked with chagrin. “And what is that smell?”

“Oh, that.” He knelt next to the fire and pointed above his head. “That’s just ol’ Gilroy.”

I cast my eyes upward to see an iron cage creaking high above our heads, chained to a hook on the wall’s battlements. A gibbet. And inside, a jumble of bones and moldering flesh that had once been a man. My stomach heaved painfully, too empty to yield any relief by retching.

“Gilroy was a friend of mine,” Ray said, giving the remains a deferential tip of his cap. A ghostly face peered out from between the bars, returning a salute that Ray would never see. “Got on the wrong side of His Majesty. Beat him fair and square in a card game. Next thing any of us knows . . .” He drew his thumb across his neck. “Gilroy kind of deserved it, though. He should never have gone to the Stein and Flagon. It’s Domhnall’s favorite whorehouse; everyone knows that. And he definitely shouldn’t have sat down to a card game with the brute, no matter how slobbering drunk he was. But nobody ever accused Gilroy of being a genius.”

Gilroy’s ghost made a crude hand gesture at him from the confines of his cage above.

“Oh, well,” Ray said. “At least with Gilroy around, nobody tries to encroach on my territory. And he serves as a good reminder.”

I still had my hand over my nose. “Of what?”

“Of the fragility of existence, of course. And that King Domhnall is a bastard who reacts to losing a game of cards by executing the winner and then immediately issuing a decree banning cards altogether.” He stood and shoved a bowl of something into my hands. “There. Eat up.”

The soup was little more than tepid water and a few bobbing chunks of what might have been vegetables once. “Thank you,” I said with as much sincerity as I could muster, and led Falada to the rickety stall.

At least the straw was relatively clean, as Raymond promised. I took a few sips from the bowl and let Falada have the rest as I ran my hands over her white flanks. “That’s a good girl,” I murmured. “You have served me so well. Kellan would be proud of you.”

The sound of his name aloud struck like a dagger in my heart, and I finally succumbed to the grim cocktail of exhaustion, rage, and bitter grief. With my back to Achlev’s Wall, I sank into the straw, buried my face in my knees, and closed my eyes.





Part Two


Achleva





?11




It was still dark when I woke to the sound of voices outside the stall. The first belonged to Raymond Thackery, but the second was younger, clearer.

“She’s real pretty, I tell you what,” Ray was saying. “A little bit bedraggled and dirty, but real pretty. Long hair, nice legs. A little skinny for my tastes, but probably a decent ride, I’d say.”

“I want to see her before I pay you a thing, Thackery.”

“I know your tastes, Zan. She’s exactly what you’re looking for, I swear.”

I cast around in the dark for something—?anything—?I might possibly use to defend myself, eventually prying one of the knobby sticks from the wall with a prayer that its removal wouldn’t bring the whole structure down on top of us. When the door of the stable opened, I was blinded by the glare of a lantern.

“Not an inch closer!” I raised my stick, squinting into the light. “Don’t you dare touch me.”