Meek

Laranya's stomach soured with worry. Not at first, not when Eli tied her wrists behind her back, but a moment later when he moved her onto the bed. What if she'd misjudged him completely?

Of course, she didn't let her anxiety show in her face. Chivat Lo had punished her if she'd showed fear--though he'd also punished her if she hadn't.

But after Eli lowered her onto the bed, he knelt like a gentleman suitor asking for a lady's hand ... and roped her ankles together. Which, granted, wasn't exactly like a gentleman suitor. Still, she'd judged him right. Plus, she liked the growl in his voice, as if his throat was rough from speaking Trollish. He stood taller than average but not looming, with the long, ropy build of a woodsman instead of the bulk of a warrior. His eyes were green in sunlight and black in shade and she imagined that his hands had been delicate as a scribe but now they were mostly just big.

And clearly, there were lines he wouldn't cross. All of which made her want to test him, a little. To tempt him.

She recognized her old self-destructive urge, her impulse to roam beyond the safety of the canopy. Her appetite for risk. Then she put it out of her mind. She'd judged him right. That's what mattered.

Not that he wasn't a monster. She hadn't lied about that. Something had broken in Eli, between the dungeon and the mountain, a crack had spread across the grain of his humanity. Or perhaps something had germinated inside him, some inhuman seed.

Yet what remained ... called to Lara, like soil called to roots. She didn't know why. Perhaps because after so long with Chivat Lo, a man who dealt pain yet never seemed to suffer any, the rawness of Eli's suffering had loosened the knots in her heart. Maybe because she needed redemption. She was desperate for redemption, and Eli had dropped almost literally into her lap. Or maybe because after so long in unforgiving service, she's lost the capacity to put herself first. She need someone else in whom to invest her hopes and dreams.

Maybe all of those things, plus--plus the simple fact that something about him called to her.

Yes, he'd told her everything he'd done; she hadn't lied about that, either. But she hadn't mentioned that he'd wept in her arms, that she'd held him and rocked him. She hadn't described how he'd bared his soul to her, not really. That wasn't the sort of thing you could describe.

So she ended up saying, after he bound her hand and foot, after he'd absolutely proven that he didn't trust her: "We're connected, you and me. We're a matched pair. Partners."

Distrust sharpened in his moss-dark eyes, and he asked what she knew of him.

"I know what you need to do," she told him. "I know the reason for you. The only goal that makes any sense."

He hesitated for a hopeful moment. She saw in his face that he wanted to know more. Partly from curiosity but mostly because so many questions burned white-hot inside his chest. Such as: why? Why had this happened to him? Who had he become? What was he supposed to do with this new life?

Kill the marquis? That was all he knew for certain ... but then what?

For that hopeful moment Laranya thought she'd snared him with her words.

Then he smiled gently and left her there ... without bothering to gag her. She made a face at the closed door. What a burl. Too suspicious in some ways, far too trusting in others.

"Make up your mind," she told the empty room.

Not that she actually planned to scream to the landlady for help. Though for all Eli knew, if he'd gagged her she might've stay tied here until days after the marquis's guards killed him in the--

Oh! Maybe that's why he hadn't gagged her. Not to test her, but so if he died, she could call for help. Instead of, say, starving to death in this room.

Didn't matter. Lara didn't need help to escape.

She straightened as much as possible, then turned sideways to the wall. The cords dug into her wrists. She tilted her chin upward and looked at the ceiling then rolled her head a few times until her braid swung free and easy. The end brushed her tied hands. Once, twice--

There!

She caught her braid with her fingertips, then skootched the end into her palm. Behind her back, her fingers found the hair clasp.

She grunted in satisfaction and opened the clasp, revealing the cutting edge.

She still hated Chivat Lo--bones, she still feared him--but give the horrible man credit, he'd known how to prepare for any eventuality. Well, except for a man with mage-sparks and troll blood, who refused to die. Still, he'd made Lara wear the blade-clasp in her braid, so if they were ever imprisoned together, she could free him.

Instead, she freed herself.

Took longer than she expected, but eventually the cords fell away.

She returned the clasp into place, rubbed her wrists, straightened her dress, and didn't leave the room. She wasn't sure what to believe about those impossibly-lingering mage-sparks. Because they were impossible. And invisible. And ... impossible.

Still, she'd seen Eli move. She'd seen him aim behind himself with such confidence and accuracy that he couldn't possibly have been working blind.

Also, he'd told her about the sparks, under the influence of Chivat Lo's most unusual drug, which didn't make you tell the truth so much as it made you tell everything. Every thought that flitted across your mind, you announced to the world. So yeah, Eli believed in the sparks ... and so did she.

So following him unseen was impossible. Well, or would've been if he'd been trained instead of learning as he stumbled along. A few years as Chivat Lo's servant would've taught him valuable lessons, at the low, low cost of his self-respect.

Lara caught herself smiling bitterly. But no, that was done. Thanks to Eli, that was over. You couldn't deny the dirt from which you grew but you still needed to raise your head to the sun. To the future. So she forced herself to think ahead instead of dwelling on the past.

Eli was long gone. Which meant he wouldn't be in the streets nearby, looking behind him. He'd be doing ... something to prepare for the marquis's arrival in the tower.

She didn't know how he planned to murder the marquis and his guards, but she knew his plan would involve testing the limits of his own endurance. That was how he thought. Which meant he'd trap them in the stairwell or the apartment, probably. Roots, for all she knew he'd cut his own throat and wait until they stepped over the 'body.'

"Oh, blight," she murmured, her blood running cold at the thought.

Eli wasn't stupid, but he was reckless or, or unthinking in a stupid way. Maybe that was the trollblood whispering in his ears. Maybe it was what happened to you when the world you believed was fundamentally sensible suddenly savaged you ...

Whether he knew it or not, he needed a partner. He needed someone who understood exactly what he was--and what he could become.

After rummaging in the trunk for a dagger, her fly switch, and bracelet of darts, Lara left the lodgings. She wrapped herself a drab cloak with a voluminous hood--in case of inquisitive sparks--then wasted too much time finding a couple of street kids she trusted to vanish at the first hint of trouble.

Finally, she slunk into the manor stables for the donkey and cart that Chivat Lo kept on the sly. The cart wasn't much more than two wheels beneath a wide, rimmed platform, and the donkey looked no better, but both of them were sturdier than they appeared.

She led the donkey the long way back to Eli's lodgings, where the street kids helped her load her baggage. They thought that was why she'd paid them. And it was one reason, sure. But only one. Chivat Lo had told her that you planned an assassination backward: you began with the end, with your escape. Nothing mattered more than that. Or more than those, because he insisted on as many potential paths of retreat as possible.

Lara hoped that Eli had planned a single one, but she wasn't all that confident.

She bought the kids a meal at a tavern just outside the manor, and promised them another three coppers to watch the cart. Then she headed off, absently swooshing her fly switch across her shoulder--though her fly switch was actually a blowgun.

Dryns didn't only use blowguns. That was a myth. Still, bows snagged in the forest, and you often couldn't see far enough to justify their range anyway. So she'd been raised with a blowgun in her hand. Well, and with the birdsong in her ears, with canopy leaves dancing beneath the gentle, rolling rainstorms, with her father calling from the table and the Mother Glade in her heart--

Stop daydreaming, Lara.

Focus.

She'd known how to use a blowgun for ten years--and that was before Chivat Lo's training. He didn't care about hunting fowl in the treetops; he cared about hunting humans in a city. Of course, the disguised 'fly switch' blowgun was far too short. Laranya preferred one as tall as herself. Still, even with an undersized weapon she could put a dart in an apple at thirty feet, every time. Well, in the right conditions. Against a stationary target. In the real world, with movement and shadow and wind ... she might need to get closer.

So she made herself small, bustling along the streets. A frightened girl in the encroaching dusk. No reason to look twice ... and no reason to keep her at a distance.

She stayed alert, but still almost missed them. Two runners flanked a body of eight or ten people moving in the shadows of the tree-lined fence. Soldiers dressed like thugs. Moving fast instead of stealthy, despite the limping man in the center. Moving with the sort of intensity that kept trouble away.

She swore under her breath. "Blight..."

How in the Glade's green groves was Eli supposed to handle that many of them? She waited a moment then followed along, scurrying openly after them, the opposite of suspicious. She had to veer off when the soldiers approached the tower, though. Still, from across the courtyard she caught a glimpse of them climbing the stairs.

She breathed to slow her rabbiting pulse. Okay. She couldn't help Eli, at least not inside. She knew her limitations. So instead she circled the great house, looking for more of the marquis's soldiers, scouts or perimeter guards, and trying to understand the battleground or perhaps discover a trap.

She found nothing, though. Which didn't really surprise her. There was no reason to bring more than a single squad to visit a playwright/poisoner. Well, not one in your own payroll, who--

A faint woof sounded above the city noise

Not from a dog. Not that kind of woof. More of a hollow roar, though she couldn't tell where it had come from. Nobody else seemed to hear. At least nobody else seemed to care, and she completed another circuit of the manor before she noticed the distortion around the top of the tower.

In the twilight, the few faint stars twinkled too quickly as if distorted by--

Oh! Smoke.

A haze of smoke and overheated air surrounded the top of the tower. When she looked closer, she saw flames flickering through the shutters, a blaze that shone brightly enough to seep through cracks and--

A shutter snapped in half. Bits of wood rained down upon the rooftops below and she caught a glimpse of an inferno.

Fire. That absolute hedgehead had set the entire place aflame, with himself inside. Sure, kill them with fire, burn the guards and the marquis alive, choke them with smoke and--and then what? Did he think he'd hide in the wreckage when the rest of the soldiers arrived with water and sand, and dug through the ashes and found him alive? Or did he figure ...

She frowned at the top of the tower, six stories above the road. She frowned at the flames raging through that broken window.

And she said, "Oh, no."

Well, he wasn't stupid. He was damaged but not dumb. Surely he'd thought of a better exit then falling to the street. At least he must've prepared a way to soften his landing or--

Fiery rubble puked from the broken window, and Lara trotted faster along the street. Then a crate or chair burst through, spinning in the air, leaving a trail of ash, and burning coals and then--

And then a man fell into sight.

Burning, spinning, his limbs flopping at bad angles.

Plummeting downward, as broken as a grasslander's promise.