Page 114 of Stealing Tink

A shudder runs through me.

Still, it isn’t news to me that the Nomad wants to use the artifact to return to his home realm. He’d been open with me about that from the start. Even invited me.

“You know what’s back in that realm for him, don’t you?” asks Peter.

When I don’t move, he laughs. “Oh, come now. What’s always at the bottom of a man’s obsessive endeavors?”

I can’t help myself. I tilt my head to the side.

“Why, a girl, of course.”

This time, the fissure in my heart does crack. My thoughts race to the rescue, to sew it back up. It’s not true. The Nomad cares for me. He wants me to come away with him when this is all over. In the future, he even marries me.

Right before he kills you, an unwelcome voice in the back of my mind whispers.

And then there’s the evidence standing before me. If anyone had tried to tell me years ago that Peter was only using me to get to Wendy, I would have laughed in their face. I would have argued vehemently that when this was all over, Peter wanted me to come away with him, to a world that was better than this one.

Peter must notice the crack in my faith, because he says, “The Sister never told me her name. What I do know is that he’s been roaming the worlds for lifetimes now, searching for a way to get back to her. Can you imagine? Living and dying over and over again just to get back to the life your beloved is living?”

It occurs to me that it doesn’t matter that I can’t answer. Peter would fill the silence anyway. “Oh, and she did tell me one more thing. That, however he plans to get back to her, you’re the key. Don’t believe me? Let me ask you this—where is your new lover right now?”

CHAPTER 51

He’s right where Peter said he would be.

The ringmaster is dead, slain and laid out on the floor of his own tent, where, according to Peter, he slept with a tapestry. One Peter had stolen from the Middle Sister’s lair long ago. It had been her favorite, her most prized of her creations. When she discovered it was missing, she had assumed her Eldest Sister was to blame. Free of suspicion, Peter had hidden away in a bank in Estelle, then bartered with the ringmaster in exchange for someone who could make him a new wing.

I don’t know how the Nomad came to know the tapestry’s whereabouts, but my mind has constructed a story. The Nomad hears rumors—in my head it is a loose-lipped banker—that the Shadow Keeper stores a Fated tapestry at the bank. He knows this tapestry is his way back home, to his own realm. To the woman Peter mentioned. The Nomad knows he cannot risk infiltrating the bank, so instead, he decides he needs the tapestry transported. Then Peter shows up on the Nomad’s ship, and the Nomad devises a plan. He cannot enact it himself. It would be ill-advised to maim a servant of the Sister.

So the Nomad waits.

Knows of my vendetta against Peter.

Waits for the perfect moment.

Hands me a blade.

A few hacks later, and Peter is maimed—useless to the Sister and in need of a new wing, but without means to pay.

So Peter moves the tapestry from the bank. Barters it to the ringmaster—a much easier target than the bank.

Best of all, the Nomad already has a story laid out, inspired by Peter’s story about the Eldest Sister stealing the tapestry. All the Nomad has to do is substitute my voice for the tapestry, and the lie is reusable.

The only part I can’t figure out is why he ever needed me at all.

He’s on his knees, a tapestry spread out before him, a wooden pan flute pressed to his lips. The tune is a somber one, one that sounds of a love lost. In fact, the Nomad himself is lost, so lost to the music that he doesn’t hear me entering.

As he plays, the threads rearrange themselves. Faintly, I glimpse dark smudges that look to be finger-painted over certain parts of the tapestry. Vaguely, I remember Lars stoppering some of my blood after examining my wings.

I guess I have my answer.

That’s not even what I’m concerned with at the moment.

It’s the woman at the center of the tapestry that catches my attention. I can’t see her face, not at this angle, but I can see that she’s spread out upon a dais, dressed in a gown that vacillates between pink and blue. Her hair cascades from the dais, pooling onto the floor below her.

And as the Nomad plays, the woman’s fingers begin to twitch.

If I were someone else, I would whisper a question into the night. Reveal my presence with a quiet but bold, “Who is she?”