Sabina lowered her voice, mock seductively. “I’ll float down the river with you if only you ask, Sylas.”
“No, I mean…” What did he mean? Certainly not what his mother and father had, a companionship born of love and lust at some point, he had to assume, but then cooled to a barely contained resentment that occasionally, and more often as their shop suffered loss after loss, simmered over into outright cruelty.
No, not that.
“I don’t know what I mean,” he concluded with a sigh. Nor did he know what had come over him. The sunset, he suspected. Great beauty had that effect on him.
“I do. You’re not as mysterious as you think.” She adopted an airy tone. “You want someone to call your very own. To stay by your side no matter what. Someone who makes you want to do the same, despite yourself. Despite everything.” She dropped her affect and patted his chest. “You’re a dreadful romantic. It’s your least attractive quality. You go all moon-eyed, did you know?”
He felt himself flush. “I did not,” he admitted, grudgingly, brushing her hand away.
“Or you used to, anyway. I thank all seven skies no one has looked atmethat way. Let me tell you, the day I float down the river with someone is the day I die.” Sabina shook her head, her fringe bouncing with the motion. “Can you imagine me in charge of a household?”
“Hardly,” he agreed, laughing softly. They made quite the pair, in their way. Domesticity fit her like a circus tent; he could not imagine a household at all. Not with his debt. Who would take on such a burden? Not anyone he knew, and they could afford it.
Not anyone.
He’d known that. He’d always known that. It was only that he insisted on seeing meanings where there were none. And where had that gotten him?
When he’d been a bookbinder’s son in Lower Bunting, the picture of his future had been black and white. Bleak and detestable to him, but clear. Then he became a spellscribe, a King’s Wizard, and the picture of his future had been streaked with shades he’d never known possible, though muddied and seeping like over-wet watercolors.
Now, the promise of relief brought his future into vibrant, unmistakable color: he was trapped. And while some part of him had hoped an escape might come in the form of connection with another soul, another body, a connection that flowered in spite of everything, he saw now: it could only come from clawing, from cold calculation, from coin.
“Come along, Sylas,” Sabina said, sensing his unmysterious melancholy and tucking her arm through his again, apparently forgetting her promise to leave him at the colonnade. “Walk me home.”
After dropping Sabina at her brother’s manor in Äbender Heights, he strolled home with a lit cigarette, thinking again of parakeets in cages, and considered what she’d said. She’d been ribbing him for his self-seriousness, but there was a certain truth to it.
Despite yourself. Despite everything.
But why, he thought as he climbed the many stairs to his small, empty apartment,must everything be done in spite?
When he reached his floor, he stopped short.
A figure stood outside his door, her clasped hand hovering above the polished wood, as if she couldn’t make up her mind whether to knock.
Roughly the same age as Sy, only an inch or two shorter, she dressed plainly but for an exquisite leather jerkin, and wore a large knife sheathed in a belt on her waist. A messenger bag hung off her shoulder, and her ash-brown hair was pulled into a loose braid down her straight back, where a hatchet was strapped.
She carved a striking, statuesque figure, especially against the sunset’s last light streaming in from the window behind her. In her other hand, she clasped a folded, crumpled newspaper.
Excessive leather, excessive weapons. A hunter. Here to answer his ad. His heart leapt.
Even so, a heavily armed women outside his door was not a particularly welcome sight.
“Can I help you?” he called, making his voice firm, wishing he had carried his pen.
Arm still hovering, she turned to face him. Her eyes, round and keen, studied him, measured him. He almost took a step back; he felt like nothing so much as a sparrow under the eye of a hawk.
But what startled him most was their color, a beautiful spring green, almost seafoam. He felt compelled to sit her by the window and paint them. Instead, he stood poised – to do what, he wasn’t sure.
“My name,” she said finally, in a low but surprisingly melodic voice, “is Anya Degen. I saw your ad. I’m here to warn you to stay the fuck away from the forest.”
CHAPTER SIX
“Ah,” said the wizard. His expression did not change, but he studied her. Anya shifted uncomfortably, feeling underdressed, as she had since the moment she’d stepped into this accursed city. Everywhere she’d stepped, from the newspaper office to find the wizard’s address, to the patrolman, hand on his baton, she had stopped to ask for directions. The stares she’d received on the trolley here were not unlike the one he gave her now.
Like I’ve already sprouted antennae and wings, she thought, tucking a stray hair behind her ear.
“You saw my advert?” he prompted.
