Nephele keeps her face neutral, her chin high, staring out at the houses too. “If you want to find out, don’t die.”
Joran offers a small laugh and one last glance at her, then he takes off, running across the cemetery, into the enemy’s den.
51
RAINA
Joran doesn’t die.
He returns with a location. Seventh street toward the sea, thirteenth house on the right.
He also offers a few tips.
“Stay to the shadows. There are more than Vipers living here. There are common people. If you want a distraction, set fire to house number eight. It’s abandoned. But be aware that these homes are very close together. The fire will spread.”
Fire. I feel the blood drain from my face. “There has to be some other distraction,” I sign, and Nephele translates.
Everyone’s faces grow somber because there really isn’t another option unless Joran floods their streets. A fire can be put out. I tell myself that. But I don’t know if I can inflict the horror of a burning village on innocent people. In fact, I know I can’t.
Perhaps that’s why the Vipers have bedded down in the middle of a sprawl of innocent people. Or maybe this is just where they live. Where their families live. Maybe I’m the villain in this tale as the Collector says. We’re the ones on their soil, searching for their queen. They’re only doing their jobs, and yet I can’t stop thinking about how they’ve hurt him, hurt Alexus.
“Can you douse the fire once Raina has everyone safely out?” Nephele asks Joran, as though sensing exactly what’s worrying me. “There’s an entire sea right there.”
A strange look passes over his face, as though he isn’t sure if he can or not. “I’ll make certain the fire is out when the time comes,” is all he says in reply.
“Swear to Loria,” I sign, and my sister translates.
Joran hesitates, but then he presses his hand over his heart and says, “I swear. To Loria.”
It doesn’t take Nephele long to wrap us in a shielding construct. Once it’s complete, Rhonin, Hel, and I head into the night, crossing the cemetery, our heads low. Brittle tufts of sun-scorched vegetation crunch under our steps until the terrain changes to baked earth again, though the pathways here are sandier and grittier beneath my boots.
Quietly, we slip across the main road between the cemetery and the village and become one with the shadows. The moon is bright, but with the homes so close together, the in-between places are dark as pitch. Though we’re shielded, the darkness creates the perfect hiding place, and staying to the dark gives me an added sense of safety, though it isn’t simple to navigate.
That will all change in minutes, though, because the second we reach house number eight, Rhonin gives the interior a quick sweep to ensure its emptiness, and then I light it up like a bonfire.
My nerves tingling, we hunker down between the eleventh and twelfth houses while the fire grows and devours. Impatience eats at me as Rhonin peers around the back corner of house number twelve into the street.
People don’t flood from their homes instantly like I imagined. It takes several minutes and Rhonin throwing a small rock across the way at another house for anyone to step outside and notice what I’ve done.
But they do come. A handful of panicked faces at first, but as the shouting begins and people being running from house to house pounding on doors, more villagers pour from nearby homes into the now fire-lit street as guilt eats at me.
We creep closer to house number thirteen. Four men hurry out the front door, staring toward the neighboring home, their eyes aglow from the reflected fire. Several villagers gather buckets and head to what I imagine is a well so they might drench the growing fire.
My heart squeezes. I don’t want to hurt anyone who didn’t ask for my wrath. I just need time to do what I came to do.
Joran had better not fail me or these people. Or I will skin him alive.
House number thirteen has a rear entry. Rhonin goes first, moving swift as a wind across the tiled floor into the dark home with his hand raised to me and Hel. The moment he feels it’s safe, he flicks his fingers for us to follow.
Voices shout from the front of the house, warning about the fire, but other than the external noise, all is quiet.
Daggers raised, we stalk across layered rugs into the rear workroom, a place where meals are prepared by the smell of it. There’s a faint, golden light emanating from the front room through a narrow doorway ahead, and another dimly lit room toward the western side of the house.
But my attention fixes on a rug haphazardly tossed aside on the eastern end of the workroom, revealing what might’ve, at one time, been the hatch to an underground cellar. Now it appears it’s become an interrogation room.
I touch Hel’s shoulder, and she in turn touches Rhonin’s. They stop as I point to the door, its latch unlocked. The bolt rests on a small wooden table along with a short, curved sword that looks like it was set aside in haste. A poor decision.
Hel snatches the blade like the Knife Thief Vexx dubbed her and studies the door. It isn’t the largest entry. I imagine there are wooden stairs or a ladder beneath. I’m not sure Rhonin can fit his broad shoulders through the opening.
