The Liar's Key (The Red Queen's War #2)(151)

“What dreams?” Kara stepped closer, eyebrows raised.

My shoulders slumped. “Kelem hired a dream-witch, Sageous, we met him in Ancrath, Snorri and I. He plagued me with nightmares about Hennan until I found him. Hennan led me to Snorri. There, I didn’t come after anyone out of heroism. I came because I couldn’t sleep. Weeks of not sleeping will have a man ready to try anything for peace.”

“Weeks?” Kara smiled and turned away.

“Weeks!”

“But we were only captured five days ago,” she said.

I stared at her retreating back, trying to re-evaluate myself. Perhaps I did have a conscience after all . . .

Snorri took his hand from me and stepped back. “We both know the key is a curse, Jal. There’s no happiness in it, only trickery. You’ll save yourself more sorrow than you can imagine if you give it up.”

He held Loki’s key out to me, compassion in his eyes. “But you’re right—you earned it. I had no right to demand it from you.” Kara turned and stared with such intensity that I thought at any moment she might leap forward and snatch the thing from him.

Part of me suspected Snorri had it right—I should refuse it. Even so, if I had a future in Vermillion it probably started with me placing Loki’s key into my grandmother’s care. And more than that I just plain didn’t want to give it up.

I took the key from him. “I’m not going through the door if we find it, but I’ll come with you and carry this burden until the last. And if you stand before that door and ask me to unlock it . . . I will.” I made it a bold and manly speech, meeting him eye to eye. “It’s what a friend would do.” Also keeping his company while heading in an unexpected direction would probably be my best chance at not being caught by Umbertide’s authorities and thrown back in jail. Kara shot me a suspicious glance as if she could read my mind, but if she could then after all those weeks lusting for her in that boat her opinion of me probably couldn’t be lowered. I gave her a winning smile, slapped Hennan on the back and led off, the key deep in my pocket once more.

“Where are you going?” Kara asked as I passed her. “I thought you said you didn’t know the way.”

She had me there so I veered toward the river and knelt to wash my hands. “Cleanliness is next to godliness, dear lady, and since I’m keeping the company of heathens I should at least aspire to washing the dirt off.”

? ? ?

We camped by the river that evening beside a slow meander where the Umber snaked across its floodplain. All of us took the opportunity to wash off the best part of a week’s worth of prison filth. I had to remind myself several times that Kara was a treacherous dark-sworn heathen witch because she looked damn good dry and dirty and a whole lot better clean and wet. I’d been far too long without a woman. Being so focused on gambling does that to you. It’s the only drawback. Well, that and the losing.

I say “camped” but “lying down in a vineyard” would be more accurate. Fortunately the sky was clear and the air kept warm with the memory of the day’s heat. Kara sat with Snorri, cleaning his injuries and applying a paste made from some herb or other found along the riverbank. The cuts he’d taken from the manacles were deep and ugly and like to sour if not treated. Even with a chirurgeon wounds are apt to turn bad in the heat and once ill humours are in the blood they’ll drag you to an early grave no matter who you are.

The main wound, the one Kelem’s assassin put on Snorri, Kara couldn’t treat. I could see it would give him no peace, and the way he kept looking to the south-east let me know where it drew him. How much of his thinking was his own now, I wondered. If Kara truly had sealed Baraqel away from Snorri so as to give her more chance of working her charms and stealing the key then she had done him a double wrong. While he was light-sworn his own magics had worked against the wound. With Snorri undefended the rock-sworn infection would only grow until either it killed him or claimed his will.

When Kara had finished with Snorri I tried to get her to see to my nose, after all she broke it, but she claimed it wasn’t broken and if anything I should be tending her eye.

“Jal gave you that?” Snorri looked up from the grapes he’d been trying, wincing at their sourness this early in the season.

“Long story.” I lay back quickly and stared up at the first stars, just piercing their way through the deep maroon of the sky. My shoulders burned where Edris Dean’s blood had soaked them and had started to blister and peel as if I’d been out in the sun too long. It hurt but I consoled myself with the thought it probably hurt the necromancer more. If I’d had to let another gallon flood over me to know he was dead and done it would have been a price worth paying.

I wondered if the Silent Sister had seen this when she looked into a future so bright it blinded her. Or perhaps she’d not looked past the destruction of the unborn seeking the key beneath the Bitter Ice. Had she moved to stop the Dead King gaining Loki’s key only to have her two agents of destruction, one her own flesh and blood, deliver the thing to Kelem? From what Grandmother told me Kelem was closely tied to the Lady Blue and hers was the hand that sought to steer the Dead King. We’d carried it a thousand miles and more from frozen wastes to the dry and burning hills of Florence, bringing it to the very door the Silent Sister never wanted to open . . . In the end it seemed that Loki’s key had tricked even my great-aunt, reaching back through the years to fool her.