ONE
This was a bad idea.
Venick adjusted his hood and tried to ignore the roil in his gut, the dread and irritation andhell. Evov’s streets were crowded, elves packed shoulder to shoulder. Barely enough room to breathe. Certainly not enough room to draw a weapon, and reeking gods, he wanted to.
But that would do Venick no good. Not here, not when he was supposed to be avoiding attention. His hood felt like a meager defense against this crowd of hundreds. All it would take was one elf getting curious, one elf looking too closely. If any of these elves discovered a human in their midst—not to mention this human—there would be trouble. And then he really would have to draw his weapon.
Not much good it’ll do you.
There was a time when Venick could have fought his way out of Evov alive. He’d done it once already. But that was before the southern elves had succeeded in overthrowing the queen and occupying this city. Venick caught glimpses of those elves—tall, cloaked, shadowed—in the windows above, the alleys, even out here in the open. It didn’t matter that Venick could have escaped Evov before. If the southerners noticed him now, he didn’t stand a chance.
So don’t be noticed.
Right. Even though he was broader than most elves. Even though he moved like a human, smelled like a human, spoke like a human. His only hope was that the crowd would be too large, the elves too preoccupied to give him a second glance.
Which they were. The city of Evov was a layered maze. Its streets and buildings had been carved into the side of a mountain, and most walkways were tight and winding. The elves moved around him with a fluidity Venick would never possess, streaming through the streets like water through a channel, each distracted by their own tasks, their own problems. They didn’t look at Venick.
But he looked at them. He noted their pearly skin, their long limbs. He marked the weapons on all of them, swords and daggers mostly, the occasional crossbow. And their faces. Those high brows and angled cheekbones. Beautiful, yes, all elves were, but utterly blank. That was typical; elves rarely allowed their emotions to show in their expressions.
And yet, this wasn’t to say their emotions were hidden. Dampened, yes, disguised, but still discernible if you knew what to look for. Venick did. He’d spent time around elves, more time than most humans, and so he’d grown accustomed to their subtleties. As Venick scanned the elves around him, he noticed their too-flat mouths, their sideways glances. He saw the way their hands fluttered over their weapons and thought he could sense it just under the surface: something pulsing. Brimming.
Tension. That was the feeling that claimed this city. No guessing why. It wasn’t every day that a new elven queen took the throne.
Killed for the throne, you mean.
Venick’s stomach soured at the thought. He’d been there in the palace stateroom to witness Farah’s betrayal, how she and Raffan allied with the southerners and plotted to overthrow the queen. How they’d spread the rumor of Queen Rishiana’s ill-ability to rule, hermercifulremoval. Had it only been eight days since Farah had stabbed Rishiana on the stateroom floor? Since the southerners had infiltrated this supposedly hidden city and slaughtered legionnaires and most of the royal court? And Ellina…
“Conjuror on your left.” Dourin’s voice came in close at Venick’s ear. Venick aimed a glance back at his elven companion, who pulled his hood up a little higher, then jerked his chin to the side. “Two in that window overhead.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Venick muttered.
“Another in that alley.”
“I can spot them for myself.”
“And one more—”
“Dourin.”
Dourin gave Venick a long look—half exasperated, half reproachful—then shrugged. The gesture was classically human. Wrong, to see it on an elf, and dangerous, should anyone notice. Dourin seemed to realize his mistake. He tugged again at the edges of his hood, glancing to their left and right to see if he’d been observed.
He hadn’t. Thank the gods.
“What you can tell me,” Venick murmured as they moved off the main thoroughfare and into a crowded market, “is what you plan to do if we’re stopped on the palace bridge.”
“We will not be stopped.”
“Really.”
“No.”
But Dourin’s confidence was absurd. Venick had seen the royal palace, had spent the better part of a month locked behind its high stone walls. He’d seen its bridge too, wide and ancient and black. That bridge was the only path in or out of the palace, unless you wanted to risk a swim across the bay far below, and elves didn’t swim. Though the palace bridge hadn’t been heavily guarded when Venick had seen it last, surely it would be now. Farah wasn’t stupid. Her claim to the throne was new and therefore vulnerable. Bet she’d positioned a whole host of guards on that bridge to keep watch. Bet she’d positioned conjurors there too, to protect their new queen.
“So what then?” Venick asked, dodging a horse-drawn cart and moving under a display of colorful lanterns. “You think Farah’s conjurors will just let us in?”
“No.” Dourin’s reply came easily. “But it will not matter. We are not going to the palace.”
Venick halted so abruptly that Dourin nearly collided into him. He spun around. “What do you mean we aren’t going to the palace?”
