“Slipskin.”
The shamaness studied him with bright, eager eyes. “Yes,” she murmured. “Yes. And Ashina at that. The blue wolves. A strong people. But what you have . . . I never felt that in any of you before . . .”
His free hand dropped the morning’s purchases and shot to his chest, as though to push away the massive weight crushing him—but of course, his hand grasped at nothing but his tunic.
I’ll kill you!
The girl’s voice cried out again. It was only in his head, he knew, and yet he could hear it, surer than the blood thundering in his ears.
The beggar woman’s hand tightened around his wrist, her nails digging painful little crescents into the flesh, bringing him back to the present.
His breath came back to him with a gasp. “Let go!”
She released him. He stumbled back, and for a taut moment the intimacy of his secret reared between them, terrible and unexpected, like a trod-upon snake. Nok stooped and retrieved his bag, never taking his eyes off her.
He ran.
“Your secret is safe with me, little pup!” The woman’s voice rattled after him. Her laugh was rough and sad. As he turned the corner, he heard her add: “We’re both a long way from home, aren’t we?”
Nok couldn’t say for how long he ran, but he finally stopped in a narrow alley with his heart pounding like it was set to kill him. The alley let out down into the harbor; he could see the Milk River, hear dock workers shouting at one another, tossing crates of cargo.
I’ll kill you!
He whipped a glance over his shoulder. The alley was empty—of course it was. He mashed a hand against his eyes. What was he expecting? The shamaness? Soldiers wielding steel? The whole imperial army at his heels?
Get ahold of yourself.
The only danger was his own fear, his own memories. And he knew how to control those.
“Nok!”
He jumped, but it was only Adé. She was smiling and waving, but as she neared the cheer drained from her face. “Are you all right?” she asked. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”
Her words almost made him laugh. He stumbled instead.
Adé leaped forward and caught his elbow. “Do you need to eat something? I bought an apple—”
“I’m all right,” Nok managed to wheeze. “I’ll be fine,” he told her. “Just got a bit dizzy.”
He threw up. Water yellowed with bile splattered the ground.
“Oh gods,” Adé cursed. “All right, definitely no food then. Sit.”
She led him toward a stack of packing crates. A trio of dingy chickens pecked at the dirt before them. Adé shooed them away, and Nok collapsed onto the crates gratefully, dropping his head into his hands. The scars on his palms and face were aching as they hadn’t done in years, the pain quick and lancing and panicky. It was as though with a croaked word, the shamaness had released some sickness that had lain dormant in his bones.
“Nok?” Adé’s voice sounded distant. She dropped down beside him.
His heart was hammering so loudly. Surely Adé could hear it. Surely the whole city could hear its pounding, screaming out who he was. What he was.
She rubbed his back, murmuring comfortingly in his ear, but he could not understand the words; the dissonance, the confusion of them made his stomach roil. He focused on trying to breathe.
“Dunno what’s wrong with me,” he muttered finally. “Guess I just got overheated.”
Adé’s brow furrowed. “Drink some water, then.”
Nok fumbled for the bladder he kept slung over one shoulder and drained a few weak drops onto his tongue before offering it to her.
“You need to drink more than that,” she told him matter-of-factly. “Finish it.”
“Oh, what are you now? A healer?” he teased weakly. “Some sort of apothecarist’s assistant?” She stuck out her tongue but watched him carefully to make certain he took another swig. The water in his mouth felt foreign and metallic and wrong. He forced himself to swallow.
He set down the bladder. Adé was staring off toward the harbor, where docked boats were bobbing lazily on the murky salt river. It was one of the rare things Nok had seen that made her sad: sailors and ships.
Her father, Tesfa Mak, had been a foreign mapmaker and navigator from the Western Empire, where the people dressed in silks of blazing white and deepest indigo, taking refuge from the heat in blanched palaces of marble, drinking iced nectar.
But now Tesfa was dead, along with Nok’s parents, gone wherever it was dead parents went.
Adé seemed to sense his gaze and turned back with dark, nervous eyes. They held his for a moment, then dropped. It wasn’t just melancholy for her father, Nok realized. Something else was on her mind. “Listen, Nok,” she said, reaching out a tentative hand. “I was trying to tell you earlier . . . ,” she trailed off.
“Yes?”
“Carmine’s father is throwing us an engagement party next moon,” she blurted. “It would be nice if you could come.”
“A party . . . ?” He paused, shook his head. “Wait, did you say ‘engagement’?”
She nodded.
“Con-congratulations,” he said. His voice was still weak and hoarse, and it made him sound less than enthusiastic. He cleared his throat. “Congratulations.”
“So, will you come, then?” she asked with a hopeful smile. “To the party?”
Nok wrinkled his nose. “In the Ellandaise sector? They’ll kick me out before I got two steps in.”
Adé laughed. “No, they won’t. Just tell them you’re looking for the Anglimn residence—they’ll know where it is.”
“Why do you want me to come?”
“It’s going to be full of strangers, and rich pink people, and—”
“Perfect for me,” he quipped. She poked him in the side.
“And,” she pressed on, “it would be nice if I had a friend there.”
“Not,” she said, “like you.”
A trio of Ring girls traipsed into the alley, a flurry of arms joined at the elbows and excited chatter. Nok and Adé stood to give them room to pass. As they did, one of them flitted a glance toward Nok, then whispered something to her friends. The three of them dissolved into giggles before hurrying away toward the harbor.
“What are they looking at?” Nok frowned. People his age were always laughing. It made him nervous.
“They’re looking at you, dummy,” Adé told him, crossing to the opposite wall of the alley, facing him.
“Why would they look at me?” he asked stupidly.
“They . . . well, you know . . .”
Nok looked at her, uncomprehending.
“They like what they see,” she said, exasperated.
The color rose in his cheeks, uninvited and most unwelcome. Reflexively, he made to rub his scarred palms together, but he forced them back down. “They wouldn’t look if they knew what I was really like,” he muttered, looking at the ground.
“True,” Adé retorted. She produced an apple from the folds of her robe and flung it at his chest, giggling as he scrabbled to catch it. “I can barely stand you myself.”
He rolled his eyes, lobbing the apple back to her. “It’s so charitable of you to leave your job in the middle of the day to spend time with me, then.”
“I,” she said loftily, “am the picture of charity.” Then she threw the apple to him in an underhanded arc high in the air. Her aim was poor; Nok was forced to lunge forward to catch it, nearly colliding with her. Instinctively, he reached a hand forward to brace her around the middle with one hand as the apple fell neatly into the other. He caught the scent of vanilla and cedar in her hair as he pulled away.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, releasing her waist and making to hand the apple back over. As he placed it in her palm, though, she closed her other hand over his, pulling him even closer.
“I’m not,” she said. And when he looked up she kissed him.
It was soft and dry. Chaste, as far as kisses went. At least, Nok assumed it was. He didn’t know much about kisses; this was his first. He wondered for a fleeting moment if he should kiss her back. What trouble it would mean if he did. A part of him wanted to, regardless.
He pulled away. As he did so, the apple slipped from their hands and rolled down the street, coming to a rest in a wagon rut. Nok watched it go, guilt over the wasted food rising in him. Adé was still looking at him.
Someone else with Adé’s past, someone who had once been so intimate with starvation that it was like a sister, a lover, might never be so careless with food. But that was how Adé had always been, he knew. Even in the throes of her family’s troubles, even staring death in its gaunt, hungry face, she’d been distracted, looking expectantly for some brighter future that was inevitably around the next corner with those eager brown eyes. Not like him.
“You’re angry,” she said. It sounded like she was chewing her lip; he couldn’t look at her to say for certain.
His hand was still in hers, a holdfast. For a dumb, animal moment, he felt a jolt of pleasure at the warm contact. When had he last been touched without violent intent? With gentleness and love? It had only been Omair, tending his wounds four years ago, and Adé—always Adé. She’d been holding his hand when he awoke that first morning in Omair’s home, so far from the desert, and all he’d known.
A dozen sense memories surged to the surface of their stagnant pool: his mother’s fingertip against his forehead, stroking a loose hank of hair back into place; his cousin Idri playfully scooping him and his sister into a bear hug as they squealed in protest. His little sister Nasan, toddling at his side when she was small, then running across the barren red flats together when her legs shot up and sprawled nearly as long and lanky as his own.
You could have that, and more. The thought whispered through him like a dry wind, and he knew with certainty that at his word, Adé would leave Carmine. You could court her, marry her, have a family again, the voice in his head insisted. And he could see it, feel it all, the knowledge of a hundred moments elapsed into one: Adé at his side shopping in the market for a supper they will share, Adé reaching a small hand up to cup his face and kiss him, Adé holding him close at night . . .
What would she think if she knew what he really was? Would she still want to kiss him? She was the best person he knew—and yet, he couldn’t say for certain. He’d seen too much evil to trust the immutability of good in anyone.
I would only put her in danger, anyway.
He shook his hand free.
“Carmine is a good match for you,” he said.
“I know,” she nodded vigorously. “I know that. And I—he’s a good person. He’s kind to me, and he makes me laugh. I don’t mean to . . . I just always thought that you and I would be, you know, when we were kids. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t at least ask.” She paused, frowning. “Did you ever—?”
“No,” he said, cutting her short. “I don’t think about the future.”
“Oh.”
Nok rubbed his palms together.
Adé brushed one slippered foot over the other. “Does this mean you won’t come to my engagement party?”
“I’ll think on it,” he said. He stepped away, not meeting her eyes. “I should get going.”
Adé frowned. “Back to Ansana already?”
“Omair needs me,” he told her lightly. “I’ve lingered long enough as it is.”
“Do you want me to walk you to the Northern Gatehead at least?” Adé asked hopefully.
“No, it’s all right,” he said, forcing a tight smile. “I know the way.”
He left quickly, before there could be any other objections. If she watched him go, he did not turn around to see.