So no one objected when she took whatever money she’d saved up and walked off the farm a few months before her eighteenth birthday.
She’d set out for Antica, a city of learning on the southern continent—a realm untouched by Adarlan and war, where rumor claimed magic still existed. She’d traveled on foot from Fenharrow, across the mountains into Melisande, through Oakwald, eventually winding up at Innish—where rumor also claimed one could find a boat to the southern continent, to Antica. And it was precisely here that she’d run out of money.
It was why she’d taken the job at the Pig. First, it had just been temporary, to earn enough to afford the passage to Antica. But then she’d worried she wouldn’t have any money when she arrived, and then that she wouldn’t have any money to pay for her training at the Torre Cesme, the great academy of healers and physicians. So she’d stayed, and weeks had turned into months. Somehow the dream of sailing away, of attending the Torre, had been set aside. Especially as Nolan increased the rent on her room and the cost of her food and found ways to lower her salary. Especially as that healer’s stomach of hers allowed her to endure the indignities and darkness of this place.
Yrene sighed through her nose. So here she was. A barmaid in a backwater town with hardly two coppers to her name and no future in sight.
There was a crunch of boots on stone, and Yrene glared down the alley. If Nolan caught the urchins eating his food—however stale and disgusting—he’d blame her. He’d say he wasn’t a charity and take the cost out of her paycheck. He’d done it once before, and she’d had to hunt down the urchins and scold them, make them understand that they had to wait until the middle of the night to get the food she so carefully laid out.
“I told you to wait until it’s past—” she started, but paused as four figures stepped from the mist.
Men. The mercenaries from before.
Yrene was moving for the open doorway in a heartbeat, but they were fast—faster.
One blocked the door while another came up behind her, grabbing her tight and pulling her against his massive body. “Scream and I’ll slit your throat,” he whispered in her ear, his breath hot and reeking of ale. “Saw you making some hefty tips tonight, girl. Where are they?”
Yrene didn’t know what she would have done next: fought or cried or begged or actually tried to scream. But she didn’t have to decide.
The man farthest from them was yanked into the mist with a strangled cry.
The mercenary holding her whirled toward him, dragging Yrene along. There was a ruffle of clothing, then a thump. Then silence.
“Ven?” the man blocking the door called.
Nothing.
The third mercenary—standing between Yrene and the mist—drew his short sword. Yrene didn’t have time to cry out in surprise or warning as a dark figure slipped from the mist and grabbed him. Not in front, but from the side, as if they’d just appeared out of thin air.
The mercenary threw Yrene to the ground and drew the sword from across his back, a broad, wicked-looking blade. But his companion didn’t even shout. More silence.
“Come out, you bleedin’ coward,” the ringleader growled. “Face us like a proper man.”
A low, soft laugh.
Yrene’s blood went cold. Silba, protect her.
She knew that laugh—knew the cool, cultured voice that went with it.
“Just like how you proper men surrounded a defenseless girl in an alley?”
With that, the stranger stepped from the mist. She had two long daggers in her hands. And both blades were dark with dripping blood.
CHAPTER
3
Gods. Oh, gods.
Yrene’s breath came quickly as the girl stepped closer to the two remaining attackers. The first mercenary barked a laugh, but the one by the door was wide-eyed. Yrene carefully, so carefully, backed away.
“You killed my men?” the mercenary said, blade held aloft.
The young woman flipped one of her daggers into a new position. The kind of position that Yrene thought would easily allow the blade to go straight up through the ribs and into the heart. “Let’s just say your men got what was coming to them.”
The mercenary lunged, but the girl was waiting. Yrene knew she should run—run and run and not look back—but the girl was only armed with two daggers, and the mercenary was enormous, and—
It was over before it really started. The mercenary got in two hits, both met with those wicked-looking daggers. And then she knocked