LITMIR.BIZ

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“I wouldn’t be so confident. If this man isn’t standing in front of me in three weeks, I’ll bleed you dry.”

      “Relax,” he said lazily, waving the sketch in front of her. “I have a plan.”

      Ramson tapped his fingers on the sketch. Two sightings, ten years apart—the trail was colder than death by now. But he had two leads: First, this man used to work at the Palace. And that the man was likely an Affinite on the run meant he might’ve had to reinvent his identity and reestablish himself.

      But if there was one source that tracked Affinites’ movements as closely as an eagle tracked its quarry, it was Kerlan’s brokers. The thought of strolling into their territory was one he didn’t care for. Ramson glanced at the witch and the child, unease twinging in his stomach. Could it be that they were victims of the very brokers that they needed in order to find this alchemist?

      “Good.” Ana launched herself from the table and marched toward the bed, where she retrieved a small satchel from beneath the furs. May glared at Ramson, and then promptly began folding the few items of clothing on the bed and slipping them into the satchel. “We leave in one hour. I assume you’ll have figured out where we’re going by then.”

      “I already have.” There was only one city in the vicinity of Ghost Falls that was crawling with ruthless Affinite traffickers hungry for information and bounty. “We’re going to Kyrov.”

       7

      The morning air was crisp, the snow glittering and dusted with gold from a distant sun by the time they set out. The quiet was broken only by the huff of their breath, that clouded in the cold air, and the crunch of their boots through snow. The boreal forest stretched from the Krazyast Triangle at the northernmost tip of Cyrilia to the Dzhyvekha Mountains that bordered Nandji in the south. Here, up north, the snow never melted, but farther south, Ana knew, summer saw the tips of green grasses and conifer pines peeking out from beneath a veil of white.

      Ana hoisted her rucksack farther up her shoulders, the rustle of her parchments and the clinks of her remaining globefires strangely calming. By her side, May plodded along, turning her head this way and that to whatever sensations she felt coming from the earth buried deep below. She held a freshly lit globefire between her hands, the flames inside crawling along the oil that coated the glass, warming hands and providing light during nights. They’d spent many moons traveling like this, just her and May, a globefire, the compass she held in her hands, and the eternal silence of the forest.

      Which, at the moment, was being disrupted in the most irritating way possible.

      “So, how did you two beautiful damas end up all the way over here?” Quicktongue’s cheerful voice drifted to them from a dozen paces behind.

      Ana gritted her teeth. May shot her a knowing look and rolled her eyes.

      “Rather far north for a girl from the Aseatic Isles,” the con man continued. A flock of pine harriers burst into flight from some shrubs ahead.

      Ana was about to spin around and snap at him, but the meaning behind his words settled into her with a chill. Everything Ramson Quicktongue said was deliberate, every word carefully chosen—it could hardly be coincidence that he was questioning May’s origin. And the last thing Ana wanted was for the con man to know about May’s status: a lost Affinite with no identity and no protection.

      “It’s none of your business,” she replied.

      “Oh, but it is,” Quicktongue pressed on in that tone of voice that made Ana want to strangle him. “Seeing as we’re going to be partnering together for six weeks.”

      “Let’s keep it at that. A partnership, where we don’t speak to each other unless absolutely necessary.”

      “This is necessary.” He was catching up to them now, his voice growing louder and more obnoxious by the second. The crunch of snow beneath his boots drew closer. “I’ll have to keep you both safe, especially if we run into Whitecloaks.”

      Ana whirled around. His last sentence had set off a series of sparks in her head that ignited into fury. “Keep us safe?” she repeated, ignoring the way the compass arrow spun in her hands to readjust. “Listen, you arrogant man. May and I have survived this long by ourselves, and we don’t need you to keep us safe or whatever you think you need to do. This was a Trade, and I will hold you to getting your part of it done. No more, no less.”

      She was breathing hard when she finished, and she realized she’d closed the distance between her and Quicktongue so that they were barely two steps apart. He’d stopped where he was, his face a mask frozen like the forest around them. His hazel eyes, however, watched her with the intent and cunning of a fox.

      “All right,” he said softly, his breath unfurling in a small plume between them. “But let me ask you this: Have you ever been to Kyrov?”

      Ana thought of all that she’d read of the trade town that thrived for its proximity to the Krazyast Triangle and its commerce of coveted blackstone. The truth was, she could recite an entire tome’s worth of facts about Kyrov … yet she had never seen it for herself.

      “No,” she admitted sourly. “But I’ve studied it.”

      Quicktongue’s face warped into a smile, and it was not a pleasant one. “The winners write history, love. Ever wondered why the topic of Affinite indenturement is so scarcely seen in a Cyrilian textbook?”

      It felt like a slap to her face. She recalled the plush carpets of Salskoff Palace, the crackle of the fireplace and the smell of leather chairs and old books in Papa’s study. She and Luka had spent half their days sitting at his tall oak desk, listening to him read through Cyrilia’s histories with them in his low, steady voice.

      Before he’d fallen sick, Papa had personally seen to her education. He hadn’t been able to love her Affinity … but he had loved her, in his own way.

      She really believed he had.

      “If you have a point, make it,” she found herself saying, though her heart wasn’t in the argument anymore.

      “Kyrov’s a dangerous place. I’d normally caution any Affinite to stay away from it, but seeing as I’m being held to getting my part of the Trade done, it’s a risk I’m willing to take.” Quicktongue shrugged and plowed past her, snow flying in the wake of his steps. “Especially as I’m not an Affinite.”

      He spoke as though there could be a large city in her own empire that was dangerous for an Affinite to cross into. Ana knew corruption existed in her empire, but it wasn’t as though Affinites were pulled off the streets.

      The tip of the compass spun unsteadily as she turned to follow Quicktongue northeast, toward Kyrov.

      Half a day’s journey left, by her calculations. Somehow the forest looked less peaceful, the sunlight cold and the pines’ shadows jarring as they stretched across the snow. It was only when May slipped a small hand in hers that Ana’s breathing steadied slightly.

      A small ball of mud rose from the ground, hovering above May’s palm. With a flick of her fingers, it shot toward Quicktongue, hitting him squarely on his back.

      “I know you like to hear yourself talk, arrogant man,” May said as they marched past him, “but speak again and I’ll aim for your face.” She paused and grinned viciously. “You’d look better, too.”

       8

      Ana’s first glimpse of Kyrov was a bundle of silver-white spires that rose above the snow-covered trees. After almost a day’s travel, the sun hung low in the west, painting the city in a sheen of dusky gold. When the red-brown bricks of the dacha cottages came into view, Ana thought of the gingerbread houses she used to make as a child every year in celebration of the arrival of the Deity of Winter.

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