“He must miss you, too,” Darius says intently.
I catch his gaze and my cheeks burn. Does Rollo miss me? Or has he already forgotten about me? And why does Darius care?
“Take care of yourself while I’m away, will you?” he says.
Then he’s gone. I listen as his footsteps travel farther and farther away from my quarters. Then, suddenly, I think of Eban, stuck in that infirmary bed, and feel a strange stab of guilt, but I shake it off. He’s more than capable of taking care of himself. But did anyone bring him a hot meal? And tea?
I sit on the bed and remove the bottle from its hiding place to consult Tadhana about my dilemma. “Are you still there?”
Always.
“What do you think of Darius?”
The real question is, What do you think of him?
I think about his kind eyes, and his fierce loyalty to his people. But I don’t know him, truly. “Is he trustworthy?”
That depends on who you ask.
“Why are magical beings so aggravating?”
Tadhana harrumphs at me.Well, I never! Magical beings aren’t aggravating. We are precise. In my experience it’s the nonmagical beings who cause all the problems. I’ve merely been minding my business for all these many years, until your lot appeared and began demanding—
“Perhaps Ishouldsell you to the highest bidder,” I mutter.
What was that?
“Never mind.” As tempting as the coin would be, I know I’ll never sell the relic. Not for all the estates in Lacon. I think of all the relics we had to leave behind in the barrel, falling into Laconian hands. If news of the heist has reached even the Lashing, then most of Lacon must know what happened, too. And I need to tell Eban that Darius knows about the relics. I flop back on the bed and stare at the canvas ceiling. Some laughter drifts through the air from a nearby tent. It sounds like a party. A memory comes to me: Rollo, after one of his mother’s grand balls, bringing me a goblet of wine. His face flush and his lips curled into a secret smile just for me.
I get out of bed and walk over to the tray of food and pick up the goblet. I knew I’d seen it before. Sure enough, on the bottom of the stem, there’s an engraving: the sigil of House Eternal.
I whip open the curtain at the doorway, but Darius is long gone.
As soon as he returns, I’ll ask him when he was at the palace, and what else he’d stolen from the Great House. Whether he’d ever seen me there.
And how he knew my full name.
CHAPTER EIGHTEENEBAN
On our third night in the Lashing, I awake from a nightmare. I’d been running through the alleys of the Sleeve as a little boy, except I couldn’t run, because the ground was slick with blood, and when I looked down at my palms, they were stained deep blackish red. And then, suddenly, people were crying out for me, from every direction.
Only, the cries are real. I sit up, disoriented. Shouts ring out in the night, followed by loud banging. The room shakes. Then anotherbang, this time followed by metal clanging and shouts of, “Breach! Breach!”
The other men in the infirmary sit up in their squeaking beds and look around, too. A couple of them have bandaged heads, one has a broken arm in a sling, another is battling a fever. None will be able to defend themselves if we’re attacked. I fly out of bed and grab my blades from beneath the straw mattress where I’d stashed them.
“Where are you going?” the healer, a small elderly woman with cropped hair, calls to me. I ignore her and rush to the exit. Whatever’s happening, first I have to find Gin.
Outside the infirmary, people are running to the south end of the colony, armed with bows and longswords and sticks, prepared to fight. There’s thick gray smoke coming from that direction. It billows into the air, an ominous cloud. A young boy, around age twelve, runs by. I grab the sleeve of his scruffy, homespun tunic and yell, “What’s happening?”
Then the piercing sound of atambulihorn echoes throughout the night. A warning.
“Lacon ambush,” the kid tells me. He yanks his arm away and runs back with the others. “Another one!”
I head the other way, fighting against the current of the crowd. They shove past me, eager to take on whatever enemy awaits, so focused on the goal they hardly seem to notice me, barking information and commands at each other. “A dozen ships!” “Fire the arrows!” “To the towers!”
When I finally get to Gin’s quarters, I whip open the partition to her room without knocking. “Gin? Where are you? Gin!” I don’t see her anywhere. The room is empty. My stomach sinks. What if the enemy got to her before I could?
As I’m about to leave and rush straight into the chaos, she steps out from behind a changing screen. “Eban! I said I’m right here! Couldn’t you hear me?”
