Koszmar, as if reading his thoughts. He didn’t turn his narrow, angled face. “He tells Felka everything. They used to work together, I think. Odd pair. Don’t know what she sees in him.” Then he added quickly: “I won’t tell the girl if you won’t, Lukasz.”
His heart sank even as he spoke, but Lukasz said: “Deal.”
“So,” said Koszmar after a moment. “What’s the problem?”
Lukasz stared unseeingly at the endless blue forest, at the mist lazily circumventing them. He kept his eyes on the haunted trees as he tapped some ash on the ground. It was deathly silent.
“I can’t do it,” said Lukasz at last. He raised his left hand. It looked normal, hidden in the glove. “My hand doesn’t work anymore.”
It used to be who he was. Dragon slayer. And now he was carrying a rifle and making deals with monsters in black forests.
Koszmar gave him a sidelong look. He was all smooth angles and languid smoke rings. Lukasz couldn’t quite put his scorched finger on it, but there was something different about him.
“Don’t worry,” said Koszmar softly. “I will help you.”
“How?”
“I can kill the Dragon,” said Koszmar. He put his hands in his pockets and the revolvers glittered in the dark. “It’s why I came to this godforsaken kingdom in the first place.”
Lukasz couldn’t help it. He snorted.
“Brought a butterfly net, have you?”
Koszmar’s head snapped over. It was almost inhumanly rapid. Lukasz fought the impulse to recoil.
“Don’t underestimate me, Lukasz. Butterfly nets don’t make majors.”
Maybe it was just the tint of strange lights, the sheen of strange silence, or that nagging, gnawing feeling . . .
Lukasz watched from the corner of his eye as smoke poured from the other man’s nostrils and drifted away to join the smog.
“All right.” He nodded. “I won’t underestimate you.”
Koszmar smirked.
Then he came off the tree long enough to offer his hand. When he spoke, the single word was slow and lazy and somehow musical. “Deal.”
They shook. Then Koszmar put the pipe back in his teeth and Lukasz stamped out the cigarette, and the pair settled back into their original positions, staring out at the silent trees.
“I saw your shoulder,” said Koszmar after a moment.
He half turned, chin tilted upward. His mouth was crooked in his face, stretched over his prominent teeth. In the strange light, his blond hair looked almost silver.
“It looks bad.” Then he added, jerking his chin over his shoulder: “Saw some dziurawiec a half mile back.”
“So?”
“Miraculous stuff,” Koszmar went on through a stream of smoke. “Just steep it in a bit of vodka, soak your bandages, and there you have it. The perfect cure.” He shrugged, more to himself than to Lukasz. “Not bad for a drink either, honestly.”
Lukasz didn’t answer. It didn’t matter which deals they made or what kind of help was offered—the fact was that Lukasz didn’t trust Koszmar, and he never would.
He caught Koszmar’s eye. The Wrony’s pupils were constricted to pinpricks in a sea of gray, and his eyes were rimmed in red.
“Kosz,” he said on impulse. “You all right?”
Slowly, Koszmar turned to Lukasz. Smoke poured from his nose, despite the fact that he hadn’t taken a draw on the pipe for several minutes.
Lukasz’s skin crawled.
“Don’t worry,” repeated Koszmar. “I can help you.”
17
REN WATCHED AS JAKUB SHUFFLED the sheets of paper in his lap before sliding them into a leather sleeve beside him. She had a glimpse of neat block letters and messy handwriting, and although she’d seen enough books in the library to know they were words, she couldn’t recognize any of them.
And for some strange reason . . . she wanted to.
Jakub’s hands shook. She knew he was scared.
“Are you . . .” She hesitated. “Are you . . . feeling better?”
He dropped the last of the papers and scrambled down to his knees to pick them up. He ignored her for a moment. Ren moved from the ground to the fallen tree and knotted her fingers in her lap.
She felt for him. She wasn’t sure what exactly. Not yet.
“Jakub,” she whispered, “are you going to be all right?”
He looked up.
The magic of the moths and the flickering light brought out the scars. The shredded eyelid flickered over his empty socket, and she noticed, because she was looking at him—really looking at him—head-on for the first time, that his lips did not meet properly anymore.
“My daughter died,” he said quietly. “Who would be all right after a thing like that?”
Ren was only half listening. She was mesmerized by his face. Slowly, she registered