“I don’t understand,” Venick said. “Why? Why help me?”
“Consider it a blessing from one of your gods.”
“Elves don’t believe in gods.” Venick pushed a hand into his hair. He should be dead. He’d trespassed into the elflands, and lied about his reasons, and Ellinaknew, and she saved him anyway. He owed her his life. Three times over he did. “You risked yourself for me.”
“I risked nothing.” Her chin lifted, eyes flashing. Damn him if that wasn’t pride.
“That so?”
“Yes.” She ghosted a smile, already turning to leave. “Be thankful, human, that you are not the only one who lies.”
???
Venick decided he would count to one hundred, then he would follow her.
One.
He could still see that flicker-smile on her face, the one she’d given him before turning on her heel and striding back out the way they had come.
Two.
He could see everything the smile was meant to hide. The tension. The worry.
Three.
He watched her touch the hilt of her sword. Her fingers traced its edges.
Four.
Venick went to the bedroom window. He beat a light fist against the glass, then opened his palm to feel its cool surface. He could not understand why she’d chosen to help him. Why she’d lied to her comrades, created excuses to bring him to safety. Shehadrisked herself.
He thought again of the shadows in the windows, on the roofs. He imagined who might be following her. Who might wish her harm.
He shouldn’t care. He was an outlaw. He had no duty to anyone, no reason to honor his life price. He was not honorable. Maybe he had been once, but that was before he’d murdered his father and fled into exile. Three years in the mountains had hardened him, severed all loyalties, made him forget what it meant to fight for someone else.
Except, Venick felt the pull of it. Rusty, stiff like an unused muscle. A desire to help, todo. An unease at being indebted, a shame that he would even consider ignoring his debts. A memory of a time when he’d befriended an elf, loved her, would have done anything for her. Another memory, this one of Ellina in the forest, the gentle way she had touched his face when he was fever-dreaming. The surprise at discovering her gentleness.
Venick understood that his exile had hardened him. But as he gazed out the window, a plan taking shape in his mind, he thought maybe it hadn’t changed him. Not really.
Five.
Count to five, then. Close enough.
He tucked the dagger into his belt and went out the door.
SIX
Ellina forced herself to walk.
It would do no good to run. Running was for open spaces. For when you knew the city, knew the streets and the slopes and the tide of the crowd. For when you had somewheretorun. But Ellina did not know this city. She did not know the hidden paths or alleys like she knew the ones in Evov. If she ran, she would meet a dead end. She would become stuck against the river. And then she would be trapped.
No. Better to walk and wait. Count her steps, count the arrows at her back. Count the shadows trailing her.
Four, so far as she could tell. Two behind, two on the roofs above. She did not need to see their faces to know they were southern elves, the same ones who had hunted her in the forest. She could tell by the way their shadows seemed to follow her, peeling away from windows and corners in pursuit. That was not a trick of the light. That was conjuring.
And a skill Ellina did not possess. No northern elves did. Usually, she felt glad that she did not have that witch-magic inside her. It was bad enough that her hair was dark, almost as black as the shadows that followed her. Black hair was rare among elves and rarer still among northerners. If not for the certainty of her heritage, she might have been called a bastard fledgling and cast out to the wild for it.
Now, though, she would not mind some of a conjuror’s skill. To weave the shadows over herself and disappear.
