forward, bony palms to empty outlines.
The door swallowed the gloves like he’d poured water onto hot sand.
9
Rags
After the door disappeared into the surrounding wall with the same liquid dissolution as the gloves, Rags was left holding two bare bone hands. Warm wind blew over him from the newly exposed path.
Though calling it a “path” was generous.
The room ahead was a chasm once spanned by a broken bridge now little more than a jagged platform. A crooked tooth in an otherwise empty mouth. The walls were decorated with the same style of arches that had surrounded Rags on his descent, only now he was going deeper, and there was nothing glowing to light his way. He could barely make out the knobbed shapes of twisting, metallic vines clinging to the stone.
Rags returned the arms to their owner—not like their owner missed them—and watched with grudging amazement as a force like magnetism drew them back, clicked to lock them into place. He set the hands on the corpse’s knees the way they had been. No point in making things hard for the next guy. Isn’t going to be a next guy. Then he rubbed his chest in thought.
When one is opened . . . let me know.
He fished the mirror out of his pocket, breathed on the glass. Wiped it clean.
“Uh,” Rags said. “I’m letting you know?”
Silence followed. Rags couldn’t make sense of whatever the connection was. Morien could reach into his head to talk outside the ruins—but not here. And he didn’t seem to know what Rags was thinking. Good. Rags couldn’t manage politeness inside and out, not at the same time.
“Hello?” Rags tapped the glass with one finger, feeling like a wet-brained idiot, when the sound of footsteps in heavy, single-file march revealed his success.
Rags turned to meet Morien and Lord Faolan’s retinue of six Queensguard, still blindfolded.
“Funny idea of company you sorcerers have.” Rags couldn’t help himself, figured he’d earned a smart remark by passing through the first door. “All those swords can’t be for me. You expecting we’ll run into something else that’ll need all that steel?”
Although Morien’s scarves swathed only the bottom half of his face, his eyes were as cool and blank as mask-glaze as he regarded Rags.
Not impressed.
“I trust you have something of value to show me.”
If there was this much secrecy to the venture, could a single shard of sorcery be enough to ensure Rags’s silence? No. There was no reason to believe death didn’t wait for him at the end of this, even if he managed to triumph where the others had failed.
Rags grimaced, pessimism having been his closest companion for the past sixteen years.
“There’s a big hole.” Rags jerked his chin toward it. “Should have brought a circus acrobat along, too. For jumping.”
Trust the fae to lock a door that opened onto nothing. From every whispered rumor and legend about the fae bastards, Rags wasn’t surprised they’d let him feel like he’d progressed, only to have him slam headfirst into another blockade.
“You’ve been nimble in past endeavors,” Morien said.
Yeah, without an audience.
Rags turned his back on the sorcerer, facing the next chamber. Pit of agony? It was too dark to tell how deep down the hole went. He edged onto the silver path. Impossible to figure out what supported it. What supported him. Rags eyed the vines on the wall. He was slender, skinny. This had aided him in his chosen profession on many occasions in the past. No reason that couldn’t continue.
“Question,” Rags said. Morien’s silence encouraged him to proceed. “How murderous are those vines?”
The sorcerer didn’t deign to respond.
“Guess I’ll find out for myself,” Rags said, and reached for the nearest one.
10
Rags
The vine he chose didn’t try to kill him.
But the edges of the leaves were sharp, almost serrated, like a torturer’s knife. They also folded, which Rags only discovered after he’d nicked his thumb at first touch. A warning before he discovered the trick to not slicing himself into ribbons.
Lovely and deadly, in keeping with what Rags knew about the fae.
Rags gave the vine a sample tug to see if it would hold—it held—then stepped onto the broken bridge. Its surface was slippery-smooth, like glass. He took a deep breath, wrapped the vine around one arm at the elbow, the wrist.
“This is nothing,” Rags lied to himself.
He’d scaled Ever-House spires, their walls slick, purchaseless polished marble. He’d danced around the wrought-iron spikes lining their tiled roofs.
Climbing up was ten times easier than going down.
But there was no preparation adequate