a bit over five days. That gives us four days before the Fyrva’snezh to save May, get our names on Kerlan’s guest list, and find your alchemist.” He sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. “We’re working with very slim chances here.”
“You’re the most infamous con man of Cyrilia,” Ana replied drily. “Slim chances are your friends. You’ll make it work.”
“I don’t have any friends. And if Kerlan happens to learn of our Grand Theft Affinite, I’m blaming you. I’m not letting him kill me because of your righteousness.”
“I might very well kill you first.” Ana watched him pick his way over to the pile of logs. “Ramson?”
“Yes?”
She hesitated, and then the words left her in a rush. “What’s his name? The alchemist. You said you had his real name.”
For a moment, she almost expected him to bring up the Trade, tell her that it was a piece of information she would need to bargain for. But Ramson only looked at her and said quietly, “Pyetr Tetsyev.”
Pyetr Tetsyev. She tasted the name on her tongue as she closed her eyes. Pyetr Tetsyev. It didn’t sound like an evil name; it could have belonged to anyone—a scholar, a professor, a man she might have met on the corner of a street.
Pyetr Tetsyev. The Palace alchemist existed. She hadn’t spent the past year chasing after a phantom; he was real. And he was close. The missing piece to her father’s murder was less than a week’s travel away.
And she repeated his name over and over again until she fell asleep: a chant of prayer, a vow for vengeance.
Unlike the open oceans and rain-slogged moors of Ramson’s childhood, Cyrilia was a land frozen in perpetual winter. The forest held its eternal silence, silver dusting the branches of tall pines and occasional stretches of white snow in areas where nobody else had traveled before. His breath curled in plumes, and the crisp coldness of the air kept him alert as he steered the valkryf forward, the Affinite sitting uncomfortably close to him. Above, the misty gray skies promised snow very, very soon.
They had spent the first day of their travels hashing out their plan. He had told her the details of the Playpen, of Kerlan’s estate and his ball—not all of them, of course, but the ones she needed to know—and they had finally, finally, after hours of persistent questioning and arguing from the stubborn girl, come to an agreement.
They set up camp the second night in an abandoned dacha at the edge of a small town named Vetzk. After ensuring that the curtains were drawn, Ramson started a fire and settled down to treat his wounds. The witch sat across from him. Curled up with her knees against her chest, she looked smaller, more vulnerable. Almost like the young girl she was.
Ramson knew she was anything but. He’d meant to ask her about her Affinity after that fight in the rain, after he’d seen that mercenary who’d been bled dry. Throughout his years working with Kerlan, he’d thought he’d witnessed everything—monstrosities, Affinities strange and twisted—but that dead mercenary had been something else altogether. Something of nightmares.
“I never thanked you for saving me,” he said, breaking the silence.
She started, blinking as though emerging from a trance. For once, the defensiveness was gone from her expression. She dipped her chin in a regal gesture. “You’re welcome.”
“You’re the most powerful Affinite I’ve seen,” he said. “What, exactly, is your Affinity?”
He could see the guard going up in her eyes, the way her face closed off as though preparing for a fight. “Flesh.”
It had been a clever lie—and she’d fooled him at first. The effects of the two could almost be interchangeable. Flesh Affinites, though potentially powerful, were seen apprenticed to butchers or the like. An Affinity to blood, on the other hand—well, the Blood Witch of Salskoff was the only rumored blood Affinite to have been known. Ramson pushed on. “Is that how you bled that mercenary dry? With your flesh Affinity?”
Her lips tightened.
“There’s a story,” Ramson continued, “of an Affinite who showed up in Salskoff around ten years ago.” Her eyes glittered in the firelight, but she betrayed nothing. “She killed eight people with a single thought.
“They named her the Blood Witch of Salskoff. She was never seen again; her particular way of killing, of bleeding her victims dry, was unheard of for a long time.” The fire crackled between them. He was walking a tightrope; a single misstep could send him plunging. Ramson