“But a week…” says Soren softly.
“I know,” says the woman. She sounds as if she’s on the verge of tears. “You think I don’t know that? She’s my daughter.”
“I’ll find her.”
“You better,” she says. She looks at the door. “And don’t come back here until you do.”
We leave in a hurry. Back in the street, I look to Soren for an explanation.
“One of my shadow-born. A young woman, maybe around your age.”
I try to ignore the way my heart skips a beat when he calls herhis.“She’s missing?”
He nods grimly.
I’m not understanding. She’s just reporting on some of his competitors’ dealings from what Soren said. “Do you think one of your competitors did something to her?”
“I don’t know,” says Soren. “But I intend to find out.”
“Could the city watch help? Or maybe Ronan’s guards?”
I honestly don’t know if there’s a difference. The guards I’ve seen so far in the streets of Faros are dressed about the same as the Royal Guard: chainmail, leather bracers, black cloaks. They just lack the gold crest on their mail.
Soren laughs bitterly. “Not for some lowly shadow-born girl. If her mother were rich, maybe.”
Lowly shadow-born. That’s what I am to these people. By birth, I’m noble, but I’m from the house that started the war. And I’m just a shadow-born.
Does Soren think the shadow-born are lowly? Maybe he does secretly look down on them like everyone else.
It shouldn’t matter. I’m never going to see him again after tonight, and he doesn’t even know my real name.
But I have to know.
“I’m shadow-born,” I say.
“I know.”
How could he possibly know? I haven’t told him what I am, haven’t used my magic in front of him. Had he guessed it from my personality?
“What gave me away?”
“The way you looked at me when I talked about the shadow-born earlier. I knew you either were one or hated them, and if you hated them, you wouldn’t have shown any concern for Vesper. Or for Nico, for that matter.”
“Do you hate them? Us?”
Soren lifts an eyebrow in surprise. “No, not at all. I’m not saying the city guardshouldn’tcare about a missing shadow-born girl. I’m just saying that they don’t. But there are channels other than through the guards.”
That’s interesting. It could be good to find out about some of these unofficial channels. And, jealous or not, I can’t imagine not doing anything I could for a fellow shadow-born in trouble. “Can I help you?”
Soren smiles. “That’s nice of you to ask. Maybe keep an eye out at your shows. She’s thin with long red hair and several piercings in each ear.” He gestures to the places on his own ears to show me. He’s speaking calmly now, but I heard the concern in his voice in her mother’s shop. He probably doesn’t want me to worry, but I’m an expert worrier. I spent years doing little else while my family fought a war they wouldn’t all come back from.
He must see something along those lines written on my face because he says, “Come on. Her mother’s probably right about her being at the bottom of a bottle, and there’s not much we can do with the shops closing for the night. Let’s get something to eat.”
I do feel better once I’m in the tavern. It’s a lively place, and it reminds me of home, only a little less dour. I haven’t spent much time in the taverns back in Kalla; Larus wouldn’t let me until I turned eighteen, although I did sneak in once or twice when he was away dealing with house business. But the keep had a small bar of its own, and he’d let me sit there with him while he drank. Sometimes he drank because of bad news, sometimes because of good.
But the news was mostly bad, and the mood was mostly bad.
Here, it’s different. It’s as if they were never touched by the war. There are people laughing against the bar, people shouting and cheering at tables playing cards, a band playing a lively tune, and a couple in the corner kissing so passionately it makes me blush. The Great Festival is about to begin, and these people have gotten an early start to it.
