The Drowning City - Amanda Downum [56]
“Or courtesy?”
“That either.”
She snorted. “He was my partner for years. I thought I’d never come home again. It’s hard to leave a life behind, even for a better one.”
“What was it like, the north?”
“Strange, at first. Different. Mountains sharp as tiger’s teeth. Seasons so cold everything freezes, even your breath. People pale as ghosts. The forests taste different.”
Riuh shook his head. “I don’t think I would have been so brave. The elders used to rail at me for being wild, traditionless, but I don’t know if I could have left Sivahra.”
“I had nothing here. Aren’t you wild anymore?”
“Sometimes.” He grinned again, but it faded quickly. “But it’s not the same. I never cared much about the Dai Tranh, about the cause. I ran with the prides in the city, stayed away from Cay Xian.”
“What happened?”
“My father was arrested after a raid. They said he would be sent to the mines, a three-year sentence. Grandmother tried to find him—she knows people everywhere—but he wasn’t there. He was just gone. No body, no rites, no songs. We’ve never discovered what happened.”
Xinai laid a hand on his; he squeezed her fingers and frowned. “You’re freezing.” He shifted closer, his warmth burning against her shoulder, and pressed her hand between his. “It hit Kovi hardest of all, but even I couldn’t ignore that. We can’t let the Khas keep doing this to us.”
“No,” she whispered. Her head spun and she closed her eyes. Riuh’s arm settled over her shoulders, warm and solid. He touched the short hair at the nape of her neck and she shivered.
“Not very traditional, I know,” she said with a wry smile.
“I like it. We can do with a few less traditions.”
This was wrong. The smell of his skin, the fit of his hand around hers. She needed time…But she was so cold, a northern winter gnawing at her bones. He could make her warm again.
Riuh’s calloused fingers brushed her cheek, tilted her head toward his. His thumb traced her lower lip and her pulse throbbed like surf in her ears. She should say no, but his lips brushed hers, soft and tentative, and she couldn’t speak. Her hand rose to his shoulder—her body felt like a stranger’s. Like a puppet.
“No—” she whispered against his mouth. He pulled back, and she shuddered with the absence of heat. Clumsily she jerked away, hand slipping in mud as she landed on her hip. Her chattering teeth closed on her tongue and the taste of pain and blood filled her mouth.
“What’s wrong?”
She shook her head, scrambling to her feet; her flesh was her own again, but she couldn’t stop shaking. “No,” she said again, more to her mother than to Riuh, but she couldn’t explain that to him. Instead she turned and fled into the night and the rain. He didn’t follow.
Chapter 11
The room was pleasant enough, but still a prison, no matter how decorative the bars on the window. Isyllt paced a quick circuit after Asheris and the guards left—a bedchamber and a bath, all the amenities courtesy dictated, but nothing that might easily become a weapon. Nothing resembling a mirror.
She paused in mid-pace as the weight of her kit swayed against her thigh. At least that wasn’t at the bottom of the canal. She slipped it out of her coat pocket; the leather hadn’t taken well to water and the silk wrappings were sodden, the salt dissolved, but her tools were still intact. The mirror lay cold and quiescent in her palm as she wiped off water spots with a corner of the coverlet.
The black surface showed her pale and weary face, her hair hanging in knots over her shoulders. At least no spirits waited on the other side—she was in no shape to fend off anything deadlier than a gnat.
“Adam,” she whispered, leaning close to the glass. But the mirror remained still. Wherever he was, she couldn’t reach him through the reflected world.
Isyllt sighed and wrapped the mirror in its soggy silk. She was too tired for clever plans. The best she could hope was that no one killed her in the night and quietly sank her body into a canal. One more missing spy. She stripped off her damp and soiled clothing, tucked