Brimstone By Callie Hart - 26

SCREAMS RANG OUT in the darkness.

Like a contagion, chaos was spreading throughout the city.

“Quickly! This way!”

Carrion led the charge. It had been the work of a second to give him the Sight so that he could guide us through my shadows. He was now one of only four people in existence who boasted that capability—a number I hadn’t planned on increasing today, but necessity had required it.

Around us, crowds of people swarmed out of buildings, their panicked shouts filling the air as they stumbled around, searching for familiarity. Next to me, Hayden tripped on a lip in the cobbled street. I barely had time to catch him before he hit the ground face-first. Grabbing a fistful of his shirt, I wrenched him to the left. “Just keep running, Hayden. I’ve got you.”

“This way!” Carrion was a head and a half taller than anyone else on the street now. At some point during the assault in the square, I’d relinquished my hold on the glamor that had been hiding our true Fae nature. My canines were sharp in my mouth again. It felt good to be back in my own skin.

Like wraiths, we darted through the streets, careening around people as they stumbled blindly, calling out for their loved ones.

“Take this right,” Carrion hissed. “Here!”

Up ahead, a phalanx of guardians was proceeding down the tight street, keeping close formation. The pale green glow of the even-light torches they carried barely cut through the shadows. They shouldn’t have even had evenlight here. The burning heat rose up within me again—the same heat that had all but suffocated me back in the square, until I couldn’t fucking breathe around it. I wanted to kill the bastards for what they’d done to my mate. For what they’d done to her mother. For what they were still doing to this ward. My vengeance was incomplete. A heavy debt was still owed by the men who carried out Madra’s orders. It wouldn’t be settled until the streets of this city were piled high with their corpses and a mountain of golden armor blotted out the suns. But vengeance was going to have to wait.

We swung right, turning mere seconds before the guardians reached us.

“There. Up ahead. That wide building with the heavy wooden door! Go, go, go!” Carrion whispered.

I shoved Hayden toward the door first. He found the handle and turned it—but the door didn’t open.

“Gods alive. Move out of the way.” I would kick the fucking thing down if I had to.

“No, no. Wait!” Hayden held out a hand behind him, urging me back. “It sticks is all.” Leaning his shoulder against the wood, Saeris’s brother gave the door a firm nudge. “You just need to . . . finesse . . .” The door swung open.

He couldn’t see, but he knew where he was? There wasn’t time to process that piece of information. Exhaustion sank its claws into me. My shadows were dissipating. As I looked back over my shoulder, I saw that the air was clearing, swaths of black silk disintegrating right before my eyes.

Inside. Inside! the quicksilver urged. It was louder than it had been since Gillethrye.

Carrion’s eyes met mine, his worry matching my own. “After you.” He gestured for me to head inside. Hayden had already crossed the threshold and disappeared. Cursing under my breath, I slipped through the doorway. My shadows had already vanished here. The room was sweltering, a fire raging in a—

“Fuck!” Pain exploded between my shoulder blades. My head spun, my vision seesawing. I’d been struck with something hard. Something really fucking heavy. The air rushed out of my lungs, but I kept my feet beneath me. Just. “What in the fifth circle of hell?” I wheeled to face my attacker, ready to tear them limb from limb, but there was Carrion, blocking my path, standing in front of a grizzled old man brandishing a fire iron.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Carrion held his hands up. “Don’t do anything rash. It was only a pat on the back.”

“I was aiming for his head,” the old man seethed. “I wasn’t expecting the bastard to be so tall .”

A pat on the back? A pat on the back didn’t leave a fucking bruise. I stepped forward, ready to forcibly remove Carrion if I had to, but the smuggler grabbed me by the shoulders. “Don’t hurt him, Fisher. For the love of the gods—”

“He tried to cave my skull in, Carrion.”

The human shoved Swift aside himself, pushing him out of the way. His hair had once been dark brown but most of it was salt-and-pepper now. Lines marked the man’s face. He was strong and broad, like a bull. Massive by human standards. A fire burned in his eyes as he squared up to me and snapped, “And what else should I have done, then? You’re the one who broke into my forge!”

Saeris had made Elroy sound pleasant to be around. She’d spoken of him fondly, but my first impressions of him were not particularly favorable. My back was throbbing, and I was developing a tension headache—an ailment that wasn’t being eased by the glassmaker’s whisper-shouting.

“He cannot be here!” The old man hadn’t moved away from the door since we’d arrived. He really wanted us gone. “You can stay. Hayden can stay. But he has to go.”

Carrion wasn’t proving to be a great negotiator. “Calm down, Elroy. It’s going to be fine. We just need a place to lay low for a couple of hours until it all calms down out there.”

“I won’t say it again. I know who he is. I know what kind of trouble he has chasing on his heels.”

Hayden had been lurking by an array of heavy, well-used tools hanging on the wall. He stepped forward and spoke, reminding us all that he was in the room. “He says Saeris is alive, Elroy.”

“I don’t doubt it.” The old man narrowed his eyes at me accusingly. “She’s Saeris . Of course she’s alive. But it looks like she’s jumped out of the frying pan and straight into the fire with this one, doesn’t it?”

Carrion slipped behind me, pressing his back to the door so that Elroy couldn’t open it. “He isn’t a rebel , El.”

“I can see that plain as day. He’s a Fae warrior, and he’s about as subtle as a sledgehammer.” He shoved the end of the poker he was holding into my face. “Those shadows you just cast across the whole city? That could have gotten us all killed. How would that have helped your cause?”

Gotten them all killed? Gods alive, the dramatics . “It would have helped immensely actually. If everyone in Zilvaren was dead, I’d be able to just go home ,” I growled.

“He doesn’t mean that! He doesn’t mean that. Okay, whew, everybody just take a deep breath.” Carrion dragged his hands through his hair as he paced in front of the door. “You’re going to have to forgive my friend here. He hails from cooler climes. The heat makes him irritable.”

“Don’t apologize for me !” I was going to open-palm slap him. “If he wanted cordiality, he shouldn’t have struck me, should he?”

Shouting from the street cut off whatever angry retort Elroy had been about to fire back at me. The ground rumbled with the thunder of many boots. The forge boasted one small, shuttered window; Hayden had cracked the wooden shutters open an inch and stared morosely out of the gap like he was watching the end of the world unfold. “We can’t go back out there,” he said. “Not yet.”

“ You aren’t going anywhere,” Elroy stated. “Saeris would string me up if she knew I let you leave with him.”

I bared my teeth. “Who do you think sent me here to fetch him, old man?”

“All right. We’re done with this!” Carrion had found a hammer. Not a difficult thing to do, considering where we were. He held it up like a gavel, a very serious look on his face. “Normally, I’m all for a solid argument in the name of fun, but over the past few days I’ve been stung by a million scorpions, been chased repeatedly, and had to kill a ravening lunatic, and I just watched a woman who cared for me and protected me go up in flames. So now . . . we are fucking done .” His voice cracked. He shrugged, laughing that roguish, devil-may-care laugh of his, but I’d heard the break in his voice. Elroy had, too. I watched, amazed, as the fight visibly drained out of the old man.

“I was heartsore to hear about Gracia, Carrion. I really was.”

Carrion lowered the hammer. “She was old.” He said this with no emotion at all. As if he’d said this to himself a million times over the past few hours, and the words were the only things holding him together. “I just wish I’d been here to say goodbye. She was . . . the last of her line. There won’t be any more Swifts.”

I felt the gravity of that in my bones. The Swift women had cared for Carrion and explained away his existence over the course of centuries. As far as the outside world had known, they had been his sisters. His mothers. His aunts. His grandmothers. But they had been his friends. His protectors. And now they were all gone. Carrion had lived in Zilvaren a long, long time, but he had never been without a Swift.

For the hurt the smuggler was enduring right now, I set aside my irritation and took a calming breath. “Tell me, Elroy. How many promises have you made to Saeris and then broken?”

The human’s eyelids shuttered. “None.”

“Me either. And I plan on keeping it that way. Make no mistake. I will burn worlds to keep my word to her, old man. There isn’t a single person in this realm or any other that I wouldn’t sacrifice to make sure I don’t let her down. I promised her that I’d bring her brother home. Will you test my resolve in this?”

A loud crash shook the air outside, followed by a piercing scream. Elroy stared at me, the lines around his eyes tightening a fraction. I met his scrutiny, unflinching. The old man looked away. “No. I don’t suppose I will.” Resignation colored his words. “But the boy should have a say in the matter, don’t you think? You say that you’ve made a promise to bring him home . . . but this is the only home he’s ever known.”

Murder. Starvation. Oppression. Hate.

These were the foundations Zilvaren was built upon. It was no wonder the footings of this city were incapable of holding itself up. This place was no home . It was a cage. A death sentence. But the old man was right. It should be the boy’s choice.

Reluctantly, I dipped my head.

Three pairs of eyes turned to Hayden Fane.

Gods, he was nothing like her. Nothing like her at all. But when he met our gazes and I saw the resolution in his eyes, the way his jaw set, I saw the fleeting shadow of her there. A part of her I recognized. Something I could get behind. “It’s okay, Elroy,” he said. “I want to go.”

Carrion explained everything.

I sat at the window, watching the people of Zilvaren slowly disperse back to their homes. Hours passed, and I listened to Carrion’s story take shape. Every once in a while, a unit of guardians marched past the forge, armor clanking loudly, feet striking the sand with purpose. It was rare that the guardians patrolled the Third in these numbers. Saeris had explained that many of them believed the lie Madra perpetuated—that the Third was a plague ward. Infected. It helped her cause if her own soldiers were afraid of the people here. An army wasn’t as effective if it didn’t hate its enemy.

Elroy paced the forge as he listened to Carrion speak. Occasionally, he worked the bellows, feeding oxygen to the fire that burned in the hearth. I saw Saeris’s movements in him. The way he held his tools. The way he simply moved around the space. But they were his movements, I knew. He had been the one to teach Saeris how to work a forge, after all. He said nothing to interrupt Carrion. Not when he explained about the Fae. His transformation. The portals that enabled transport between this world and Yvelia. Hayden interrupted plenty, rapt, eyes the size of saucers. But not the old man. He took it all in stride.

When Carrion was finished, Elroy sat down heavily on a rickety stool that looked older than he was. The weight of the entire realm seemed to be pressing down on his shoulders. I left the window and faced him, arms folded across my chest.

“How do you know all about this?” I demanded.

The clues were all there.

He’d called me a Fae warrior.

He’d known they were my shadows, blotting out the suns.

He hadn’t even blinked when Carrion had stormed into his forge, much taller than he’d been before, sporting pointed ears and the kind of teeth that could do some serious damage.

He had known .

Elroy looked up at me, the truth right there in his eyes. I was right. “Plenty of people still tell stories about before. When your kind still visited Zilvaren,” he said.

I shot him a disappointed look. “No. That’s not it. Try again.”

Wearily, he shrugged, shaking his head. “Fine. You’re right. I’ve known about the Fae my whole life.” He nodded at Carrion. “I’ve always known about him, too.”

“I’m sorry, what ?” Carrion’s voice was three octaves higher than normal. “You’ve always known about me? Always known about—” He threw his hands in the air, staring up at the ceiling. “Don’t you think you should have mentioned that? Y’know, during any of the hundreds of interactions we’ve had over the years?”

“Why?” Elroy looked genuinely confused. “It wouldn’t have changed anything. You would have still been an annoying, loud-mouthed smuggler with a penchant for stealing my glassware.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it would have been nice for me to talk to someone who knew who I really was? Maybe it would have been nice to—to—Oh, never mind. Forget it. You’re right. It wouldn’t have changed anything. You’d still have been a miserable git with no sense of humor!”

Elroy leaned his elbows on his thighs, hands clasped together. “You had Gracia .” He sounded exhausted.

“I did.” Carrion nodded. “And she was enough. But one person out of millions? It would have been nice if that number had been two.”

“Look, I’m sorry, okay. But I wasn’t supposed to tell you I knew, anyway. There were rules I was supposed to keep, and—”

“What rules?” My body felt strange. Too hot. It could have been the fact that I was standing in a forge, in a realm that was already unreasonably fucking hot, but this felt different. I could feel my heart beating all over my body.

Elroy huffed, annoyance carved into the lines of his face, but he answered. “Don’t tell anyone about the Fae. Don’t talk to Carrion about the Fae. Don’t tell anyone about any magic users I came across. Things like that.”

“And who made you promise to observe these rules?”

“My father,” he said. “And his father made him promise. I’m a forge master, warrior. The son of forge masters. The Swift family wasn’t the only bloodline that was charged with a task they handed down through the generations. Gracia and her lot watched over the boy. Me and mine were given a different job to do.”

I could hear it now, pounding in my ears.

Thrum.

Thrum.

Thrum.

I swallowed hard and spoke, my voice just a whisper. “Tell me.”

Elroy grimaced, running his tongue over his teeth. Slapping his palms against his thighs, he got to his feet. “I think it’s probably better if I just show you.”

“I’m not offended, per se. Just a little . . . outraged .”

Carrion hadn’t stopped grousing since the glassmaker had yanked back the rug that covered the wall and revealed a secret door. The tiniest scrap of magic, cleverly woven, was all that hid the door. When Elroy had pricked his finger and daubed a small amount of his blood against the wall, the heavy blocks of sandstone had moved back, filling the forge with a grinding sound that had set my teeth on edge.

Elroy had grabbed a torch and descended the stairs first, followed by Hayden. Carrion had followed behind me, which meant that I was the one who had to listen to his string of complaints.

“Centuries. Centuries! There were Fae plans underway here for years, taking place right beneath my nose, and no one thought to tell me , the only member of the Fae in Zilvaren?”

“Your friend says they had their reasons,” I muttered over my shoulder. “So they must have had their reasons.” I didn’t know if that was true—humans lied all the time, sometimes for no good reason whatsoever. Elroy could have been making all of this up for all we knew, but he had no discernible reason to lie. None that I could see, anyway.

The stairs went on forever. Down, down, down . . .

The walls weren’t made of sandstone here. They were granite. Smooth, cool, and hard. The kind of stone that could withstand the test of time and a shifting sea of sand. Wherever Elroy was leading us, he did so in silence, the back of his head and his shaggy shoulder-length gray hair the only part of him I could see over Hayden’s shoulder. I could feel the tension pouring off him, though—felt it strongly enough that I confused it with my own.

“How much farther?” Hayden asked softly. He’d intended the question for Elroy’s ears alone, but the boy didn’t know anything of Fae hearing yet. He sounded nervous.

“Another two hundred steps or so,” Elroy answered.

“How many are there?”

“Twelve hundred and twenty-three.” Elroy’s whisper echoed off the walls.

Eventually, we reached the bottom of the stairs. The space ahead was vast and cloaked in darkness. When I saw what lay before us, I felt like I’d been kicked square in the chest by a horse.

“Gods and sinners . . .” I gaped at the sight.

“What? What is it?” Hayden hissed.

“Our way out of this mess,” Carrion answered breathlessly. His mouth hung open, his eyes roving over the pillars that held up the arched ceiling, and the stacks of discarded pieces of armor, and the coins, and the chalices, and trunks overflowing with all manner of metal goods. Finally, his eyes went to the huge, recessed pool at the center of the cavern . . .

A spark of light bloomed on the other side of the cavern. The flicker was just a small orange-golden glow at first. Soon, there were two sparks of light, then three. Elroy skirted the perimeter of the space, lighting torches as he went. I’d been so distracted by the contents of his secret trove that I hadn’t even noticed him leaving us. By the time he had lit half the torches in their sconces and returned to us, the cavern was suffused with a dim light strong enough to see by.

Hayden was wild-eyed as he stepped toward the giant pool.

It was the first of its kind I had seen: recessed so that its steps led down to the still, solid surface of the pool below.

You came, you came. Came. You came . . . The sound flooded my ears. It was loud again. Many voices. Scores of them, all speaking at once. I hadn’t heard the voices this loud since Iseabail and Te Léna had begun working together to heal me.

Join us. Come, come, come . . .

Hayden cocked his head, squinting at the surface of the mirrored metal that slept at the bottom of the pool. “What is that?” he asked.

Elroy grunted, gruffly clearing his throat. “That, my boy, is a dangerous amount of quicksilver.”