The Whitefire Crossing - By Courtney Schafer Page 0,123
sorry for what Simon did to you—I yielded to him, to save your life! You know how monstrous he is—will you not help me against him?”
Iannis’s stone-faced mask cracked. Her lips drew back from yellowed teeth, her eyes glittering with a hatred so intense it stopped Kiran’s breath.
“Help you?” She spat in his face. “A mage-born whelp like you should’ve been strangled at birth. You’re all monsters, every one.”
Kiran wiped her spittle from his cheek with a shaking hand. “But...I saved you! And if you help me, I can free you—”
Her mouth curled. “Death is the only freedom from a blood mage’s grip. If you speak truth, you’ve stolen that from me today. I hope he flays your soul to screaming shreds for it.” She turned her back on him and stumped out of the room. When she returned with bucket and mop, her face was blank as sand-smoothed stone again. Kiran’s continued pleas might have been shouted into a void, for all the attention she paid him as she cleaned.
When the door shut behind her, Kiran sank onto the bed and buried his face in his hands. Flashes of the ritual leaked through his control. Alisa’s ragged screams, Ruslan’s hot triumph, the taste of blood in his mouth; all overlaid by the bitter hatred in Iannis’s eyes.
I should have let Iannis die.
No—surely saving Iannis had been right, regardless of her feelings. Alisa would have been proud of his choice. Kiran tried to picture the brilliance of her smile, the fond warmth in her eyes...but saw only her bloodstreaked face, twisted in agony as Ruslan cut her life away.
He returned to the most basic of centering exercises, taking deep, slow breaths and counting each one. He couldn’t change Alisa’s fate. Yet if only he could anticipate Simon’s plan, he might still change his own.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
(Dev)
Once again, I found myself chewing my nails on the roof of the Silver Strike’s stables. Only this time, my jangled nerves were for Cara’s sake, not my own. The man laughing it up with her in her candlelit room wasn’t some lusty trader. It was Pello.
One evening’s work was all we’d needed to draw him straight to her. One evening, in which Cara held forth to gossiping traders in the Silver Strike’s common room that rumor had it wrong—I was the cause of all the convoy’s woes, not Pello. When curious listeners asked for her evidence, she’d shaken her head and muttered darkly that it wasn’t good for the health to repeat anything overheard from mages.
The lure of information wasn’t something a shadow man could resist. Sure enough, the next day Pello had sent Cara a message asking to meet. She’d played it like I asked, starting off willing but wary at a riverside tavern. She had let him buy her drinks and ply that smooth tongue of his in a series of convincing lies supporting his innocence, while she gradually softened but still refused to speak of Ruslan’s visit to the convoy. He’d turned up the charm, asking if he might see her again. Tonight they’d begun with more drinks and talk in the Silver Strike common room—and now here he was, ripe for Cara to put the first part of our plan into action.
Cara’s quick wit and brash demeanor made her a natural at this kind of game, but I still didn’t like it. Her main protection was that Pello thought himself the hunter, with no inkling of any hidden motives on her part. A good cover, but I couldn’t shake the fear that he’d pick up on something we’d overlooked.
In the bedroom, Cara swaggered over to her pack and withdrew a sealed bottle of hekavi spirits. Pello made properly appreciative faces as she cracked the seal and poured out two cups of thick, honey-gold liquid.
I held my breath. Now came the part that knotted my stomach. If Pello detected even the slightest false note in Cara’s playacting...
They tapped cups and drank. Pello sipped, while Cara tossed hers back with abandon. She spluttered and broke out into red-faced coughs. Waving off a soliticious Pello, she crossed to the crooked table by the door, shoved the chair aside, and reached for the jug of water beside the empty washbasin. Missed her reach, and knocked the jug over. Water splashed in a gleaming arc to soak the oiled leather of Pello’s coat slung over the chair back, and spill onto the muddy-soled boots lying on the floor below.