Caris shot him a wary look, gaze cutting to Lore, who didn’t appear surprised at all. Meleri must have told her. The veil Caris wore had her looking like a dark-blonde young woman with muddy brown eyes, though it couldn’t hide the sharp intelligence of her gaze. “I didn’t bring a wand.”
He thought about lying to her, but the Auclairs had done enough of that in his opinion. If the North Star wished to allow Caris to dance in the thick of things, then so be it. He would do his absolute best to ensure she survived.
“We both know a wand wouldn’t stop you. But your magic is attention you can ill afford.” Caris sucked in a sharp breath, something akin to fear replacing the wariness in her face. Blaine forced a smile he knew probably looked more like a grimace. “Don’t draw from the aether.Don’tuse your magic.”
“I won’t promise that.”
“Now is not the time to discuss this,” Lore hissed.
Blaine finally spared a glance over his shoulder, seeing the woman who’d been following them had disappeared. He cast his gaze upward to the roofs of the densely packed buildings. Being crew on an airship meant they looked down as often as they looked up for threats. It was habit those who lived their lives on the ground never quite mastered.
In the darkening twilight, Blaine could make out a figure nimbly traversing the roofs, and hoped the bounty hunter in question didn’t have a ranged weapon.
“She’s above us. We need to go,” he said.
“We can make it to the catacombs entrance from here.”
“There’s no guarantee we can lose her, and that’s a secret you don’t want to give up.”
“Then what do you have in mind?”
Blaine shouldered his way past a couple of drunkards, aiming for a rowdy pub with music pouring out of the open windows across the street from the buildings their hunter was racing across. “We try to lose her.”
What he wouldn’t give for an escape by way of an airship pickup. But that wasn’t an option, and right now, he needed to make sure Caris was safe.
The pub they entered was hazy with pipe smoke. The scent of sour beer and unwashed bodies in close proximity made Blaine breathe through his mouth. The singer on the rickety stage was missing some teeth, but the bawdiness of her song had the crowd roaring approval. The floor was sticky underfoot as they pushed their way through the crowd for the rear of the pub, ignoring the annoyed looks tossed their way.
“There should be a back entrance to the alleyway where rubbish is collected. I didn’t see the entrance on the street we just left, which means it hopefully exits onto a different one,” Lore said.
Blaine was familiar with the way Amari’s blocks were laid out between the numerous city walls. Buildings were clustered together in little islands, with streets winding around them and through designated gates carved into the inner city walls. The layout was a little different from Glencoe, which prided itself on accessibility.
The one good thing about Amari was that it was easy to get lost if one wanted to. And they desperately wanted to. It was a pity they couldn’t.
They’d made their way down a narrow hall that smelled of piss from the nearby toilets, the back door lit by a flickering gas lamp. Lore had very nearly reached it when the door was shoved open, their way out blocked by the woman hunting them.
She reached up with one gloved hand to pull the hood back, letting the dark fabric pool around her shoulders. Blaine sucked in a breath as Eimarille’s beloved lady-in-waiting stared back at them with unblinking eyes. Hers was a face he’d seen many times in the broadsheets as of late, always a step behind the woman she served.
He realized then that she’d let them see her face because they weren’t expected to make it out of the neighborhood alive.
“I’m curious what your faces look like under those veils you wear,” Terilyn said.
Blaine had no idea how the people in the apothecary had seen past them, and he had no time to dwell on that miscalculation. Terilyn snapped her wrist, a knife dropping down into her hand from a hidden forearm sheath. Her fingers had barely curled around the hilt when Lore tossed a smoke bomb between them. It exploded instantly, filling the narrow hallway with dark smoke.
Blaine spun on his feet, dragging Caris with him back to the main area of the pub, Lore right on their heels. He pulled his pistol free as they ran from the Blade, careening into the raucous crowd. Blaine shoved a burly man with a reddened face out of the way, earning a startled yell for his efforts.
“Watch yourselves!” someone shouted.
“Get to the exit!” Lore yelled.
The singer’s voice trailed off, even if the upbeat tempo of the music did not. Blaine shoved Caris ahead of him before spinning to get eyes on Lore. She was between him and the Blade, frantically tipping over a card table and earning the ire of the players.
The crowd went from drunken friendly to drunken vicious in seconds. Someone grabbed Blaine’s arm before he could take aim at Terilyn, and he jerked his finger off the trigger so he didn’t inadvertently shoot someone else by mistake.
A bottle smashed over the head of the man holding him, beer and blood dripping down his face. He let Blaine go, howling in pain as he clutched at his head and stumbled away. Blaine looked back at Caris, who had already tossed the broken bottle aside and was looking for another one to use as a weapon.
“I told you to run,” Blaine snapped.
“I’m not leaving both of you behind,” Caris retorted.
