I waited.
"Fine, Rue. I'll get your potion. For the comb and the silver."
"Half the silver."
"All but five pieces. I've still got to find a buyer for, what? A blood comb."
"Seven pieces. That's Northern-made, and it was a gift."
"Sure it was." He thought, then pushed the seven pieces across the table. "One minute." He went in the back room.
"Thank you," Khal said. "I don't…" he stopped. His face was so pale.
"Hey." I put a hand on his arm, and he flinched, but he didn't shy away. "Don't worry. We're gonna save him."
He nodded, a jerky motion.
Prescott came back, a small box in his hands. "You're lucky, you lot are. These don't come through very often. I'll have to tell Mister Noble that a shophand dropped this."
I opened the box. A glass vial rested in straw packing. Khal reached past me for the vial. He unstoppered the vessel and ran it under his nose before pressing the cork back in. "It's real," he said. Relief was heavy in his voice.
"I don't deal in counterfeits. Not that I don't know a few guys." Prescott glanced back at me. "So, Rue." He cocked his head to one side. "You sticking around here? I can alert some of the old guards. I know someone'll have an outfit needs alight-finger."
I hesitated, Khal's presence a heat beside me. "I appreciate that. I've picked up a few more skills since we ran together, Press. I'll…keep in touch."
He nodded.
On the dark street again, the potion carefully stowed, Khal broke the silence. "Will you be happy here? You're…you're safe? With them?"
Now I was the one who didn't know how to meet his eyes. "I've never been safer anywhere else."
We passed under the crooked arch, towards Beatta's twisted stair and the window down. He caught my wrist. I turned, and he let go, as if he'd been burned.
"Sorry," he swallowed. "That's…a bad habit."
I waited.
"I could bring you back. To the city. After you saw Tyralk recover. I could gather…gather payment. For your comb. You’d be safe with us." His eyes were pinned on my face. My stomach twisted. When I looked at him, I wanted to give him everything he wanted, but I had to choose right.
"The others have made it clear that me going back would cause trouble for you." I swallowed, forced a smile. "Besides, Tyralk’s state is mostly because of me. I owe you."
"You owe me nothing." He said it too fast, too vehement, flinched back.
"... for Tyralk," I whispered.
He drew breath. "Right. For Tyralk."
I stepped closer, took his hand. "Let's go, then."
The door opened when I knocked. It was a long climb up the stairway, but every moment, every step, I was thinking that this was the last time I’d walk so near him, that Khal would disappear down the rope, and our lives would be sundered. And he didn’t owe me anything, but I’d have liked to wait longer, if it wouldn’t have harmed him.
The freedom I’d fought and suffered for was almost mine, and I was preemptively grieving him. I was a sucker.
We reached the top of the stair, and I pushed the trap door open.
Maybe if I hadn’t been so distracted, I’d have listened to the tug in my gut, the awareness that the shadows in the light that leaked around the door's frame were too many. Maybe if I hadn’t been pining like a ninny, I could have kept us safe. But I was seconds too late.
As the door pulled open to a circle of armed men, I did try to call out. “Wait, Khal, go back—" but then I was pulled through. And if you know Khal at all, you know he followed me.
