Wayfarer

“That was…” he began at the same time that Sophia said, “It’s the same weapon, isn’t it?”

Trying to rub away the prickling pain from his right arm, he glanced down, searching for a wound that might explain the slash of hot pain that stretched across the back of his hand. But there was nothing, not even a cut.

A word hissed through his mind, unbidden. Poison.

Impossible. If anything, he’d strained a muscle or given himself a sprain. This would resolve itself, with nothing so nefarious to blame.

But the sensation did not disappear. It worsened. There’d been longer and harder battles fought for his life that had left him feeling nowhere near the level of exhaustion overtaking him now, like a sudden illness. Nicholas coughed up dust he’d inhaled and spat out a wad of blood, retrieving the satchel from where it had fallen some distance away. The hollowness at his core spread as he checked to make sure the string with Etta’s earring was still around his neck, still safe. He clutched it in his left fist, as his right felt nearly too numb now to move.

Not good. Nicholas glanced down at the ring again, and forced himself to look away before his thoughts sank him any deeper into worry.

“Come on, we need to get rid of the bodies before—” Sophia interrupted herself midsentence, her gaze shooting up toward the warehouse above.

But Nicholas had seen the shadows first—five of them, fluttering around like ravens, jumping between the buildings with animalistic ease. Nicholas took her arm and forced himself into a run, moments before the first arrow cleaved through the air over their heads.

He looked up in time to see another shadow on a nearby roof. With the lingering traces of his composure, he hefted a large stone and threw it as hard as he could. It startled their attacker long enough for Nicholas to drag them under the cover of the nearby building’s overhang. But the pounding steps behind them didn’t cease, nor did the realization that they were running without any particular destination in mind.

Better to be like rats, he thought, and try to confuse a pursuing cat by taking as labyrinthine a path as possible. It was just a matter of finding the right hole to disappear into.

“Who are they?” Sophia gasped out.

The Belladonna’s men? The rogue idea cut up through the rest. She had taken particular interest in getting the claw back, hadn’t she? She might have overheard where they were going and taken action after his refusal to serve her.

“I’m reasonably sure we should not stay to find out,” he told her, craning his neck just far enough to check for the shadowy figures on the roof. Seeing nothing but the clouds and stars, he motioned for her to follow, and picked up his punishing pace again.

The whole of the city reeked as though it had been boiling in its own waste for a month. It felt like climbing into a festering wound. Unwashed bodies, living and near-dead, blocked their path no matter which street they turned onto, sleeping scant inches away from rotting garbage—or, in a few sorry instances, using the rotting garbage as a kind of pillow against the unforgiving stone streets.

Sparks flew up, scattering across the night, as they passed a blacksmith busy beating a sword into submission despite the late hour. Feeling the unwanted prickling in his right hand again, he switched his knife to his left, and he kept his head down as they passed, only glancing at the pile of metal goods waiting to be melted down and re-formed, and the pile of finished, somewhat crude weapons waiting to be picked up and taken to battle.

There was a sliver of space between his workshop and the next building, an alleyway that curved around. He led Sophia into it, giving them a moment’s reprieve to catch their breaths.

“I think we’ve lost them—”

Sophia had cursed them with that. A darkly cloaked woman burst out of the streams of fabric that had been draped over lines to dry, like a wraith.

Without a second thought, Sophia tossed Nicholas the soldier’s blade she’d been carrying and, catching it, he whirled back, smashing the hilt against the attacker’s throat, stunning her. While she gasped, Sophia seemed to flow in, cutting the woman across her face with her knife. The moment the attacker hit the ground, pressing her hands against the flowing blood with a howl, they were running again.

The city curved before them like a question mark, laid out like a maze within a puzzle. Pale, sturdy limestone buildings leaned against their close neighbors, and lines of them stretched as far and wide as Nicholas’s eyes could see, culminating on a hill at the city’s heart. The homes rose not just two stories, but usually six or seven, as if the city had one day decided the best course was to grow up, rather than out. Much like, he thought with a sad sort of smile, the way Etta had described her Manhattan.

At the next small lane they approached, Sophia stopped, blocking him.

“Let’s go a different way,” she whispered quickly.

Nicholas held his ground as he felt Sophia pull at his shoulder, searching for what had upset her—and, with a shudder, located it. Stretched across the stone, curled up on his side as still and pale as a seashell, was a child. On closer inspection Nicholas saw that his eyes remained open, unblinking, that his skin was dotted with scabbed-over sores. He followed the line of the boy’s desperately thin arm. His fingers were still hooked around a slender hand hanging out of the bottom of a pile of bodies, already at the mercy of flies and vermin.

He kicked a rat away before it could reach the boy, his stomach rioting. The only reason he didn’t cast up his accounts was because there was nothing left in his stomach to lose. Sophia heaved once, twice, pressing the back of her hand against her mouth, and looked away.