Blood Heir Read online

  He sounded sincere, which made her even warier. “A what?”

  “A Trade. A con man’s promise.”

  “You realize you just contradicted yourself, don’t you?”

  The corners of his eyes crinkled. “Believe it or not, there is a code of honor among the thieves of the underworld. The Trade. It’s a contract of a mutually beneficial exchange. Think of it more as a…a type of currency, for us. Once you invoke the Trade, there’s no reneging—otherwise, you face dire consequences.”

  “Why does that matter? You’ll face dire consequences if you renege on your offer, Trade or no Trade.”

  The con man sighed. “Look. I’ll find your alchemist,” he said, and Ana felt hope rustle its wings inside her. “I’ll do it in three weeks. I could track jetsam back to its ship if I wished. And in return, you’ll pledge your allegiance to me for three weeks.”

  It sounded straightforward enough. “All right,” Ana said. Her mind was working fast, searching the agreement for holes, buttoning up the last of the terms. “So you agree to my terms?”

  Ramson Quicktongue looked at her in that calculating, inscrutable way of his—yet Ana sensed something else in his gaze. Something like…curiosity.

  “Very well,” he said at last, and pushed himself off the wall, tossing his washcloth on the floor. “I agree to your terms. Six weeks together, during which I keep my nose out of your business and you keep your nose out of mine. You’ll have your revenge, I’ll have mine, and we’ll part ways with nothing but fond memories of each other.” He spread his arms. “What do you say, Witch? Trade up?”

  Her head was light with elation and disbelief. It felt as though a huge weight had lifted from her chest.

  She had survived a jailbreak from one of the most secure prisons in the Empire and had gotten one of the most infamous crooks in the Cyrilian Empire to agree to a bargain on her terms. And, most important, within three weeks’ time, she would have the true murderer of that unforgettable night.

  It had taken her nearly an entire year to get here. Several moons to crawl out of the black hole that Papa’s death had left in her heart; several more wasted on bounty hunters and trackers that went nowhere; a few more to find Quicktongue and form a plan to enter Ghost Falls.

  She was close. So close.

  Almost a year ago, Papa had been murdered, and everything in her life had fallen apart. And, in three weeks, she would be on her way back to Salskoff to clear her name.

  That was her endgame.

  Ana stared at Quicktongue’s hand. At the crooked grin on his face. At the gleam of intent in his eyes.

  “Trade up,” she echoed, and grasped his palm.

  Ramson woke long before the first light of dawn broke, its cold blue rays filtering through the tattered curtains and rimming the thin window. He leaned against the wooden walls of the shack, running his fingers over the inside of his left wrist.

  A tattoo the size of his thumb occupied that spot: a simple yet elegant design of a single stalk of lily of the valley, with three small, bell-shaped flowers and a razor-sharp stem. The ink was black as night, carved so deep into his skin that it had become a part of his living flesh, just as the Order of the Lily had consumed his life. And then destroyed it.

  The sight of the tattoo brought back memories as vivid as they were painful. It was as though no time and all the time in the world had passed since he had stumbled up the gleaming marble steps to Alaric Esson Kerlan’s home. Kerlan was the founder of the largest business enterprise in Cyrilia. The sprawling Goldwater Trading Group held monopolies over most of the prominent industries in the Empire—timber, nonferrous metals, weaponry, and the prized blackstone mined in the far north at Krazyast Triangle—as well as private ownership of Cyrilia’s busiest trading port, Goldwater Port.

  The trading port that Ramson had run, up until several moons ago.

  But few associated the Goldwater Trading Group with the most notorious criminal organization in Cyrilia: the Order of the Lily, which ran underground businesses with traffickers and illegal Affinite trades. Indentured labor was the backbone of the Goldwater Trading Group, and the cheap employment contracts it purchased from its owner’s criminal organization helped keep its prices the lowest in Cyrilian markets.

  Amid all this was Alaric Kerlan: successful businessman who had built his commercial empire as a foreigner to Cyrilia with merely a cop’stone to his name, and ruthless Lord of the Lilies in the dark underbelly of Cyrilia.

  On the day of Ramson’s initiation, Kerlan had strapped him to a hard iron table in his basement and crushed a white-hot tong into the flesh of his chest. You feel this, boy? he’d gritted out to a screaming, half-delirious Ramson. You’ll only feel pain like this twice in your life. The first time, when you’ve earned my trust and passed the gates of hell into the Order of the Lily. The second time, when you’ve broken that trust and I throw you back into hell. So remember this moment, and remember it well. And ask yourself if you ever want to feel this kind of pain again.

  Kerlan had flung the iron tongs onto the floor and asked the stencilmaster to tattoo Ramson.

  Ramson closed his hand over his wrist, blocking out the sight of the tattoo and the memory of the searing pain from the brand. In the silver-blue sheen of an impending wintry dawn, he could just make out the outlines of the two sleeping girls, huddled beneath a ragged fur blanket, their chests rising and falling with each breath.

  Which meant it was time for him to move.

  He stole across the dacha, carefully planting his feet near the walls where the old wooden floorboards had the least flex. He had noticed the small worktable by the door as soon as he’d stepped inside last night. Its worn surface was strewn with papers and scrolls and pens.

  Life had taught Ramson that he would never allow himself to get the short end of the stick. Even as the conditions for his end of the Trade had rolled off his tongue, smooth as marbles, another plan had quickly taken form in his mind.

  This girl was by far the most powerful Affinite he had seen in this empire throughout all his years of working for Kerlan’s organization. He’d studied enough about Affinites to surmise that hers was likely an Affinity to flesh. He could draw up an unending list of people who would kill for her talents. Which was why she was the key to his regaining his standing in the Order of the Lily.

  Alaric Kerlan was a harsh, brutal person—the type of cold-eyed, stone-cut demon of a man one needed to be to succeed in his vast criminal empire—yet he was also a logical one. He’d seen Ramson’s uncanny talent for business and negotiation from the start, and trained him from running small errands to gradually managing parts of his enterprise. By age eighteen, Ramson had become a Deputy of the Order with the precious Goldwater Port under his purview. Controlling Cyrilia’s largest port meant he held a hand and a generous cut in Cyrilia’s lifeblood of foreign trade, from anything as harmless as Bregonian fish and Nandjian cocoa to powerful Kemeiran weaponry.

  It also meant he had the power to start distancing himself from the Order of the Lily. For most of his employment under Kerlan, Ramson had been a grunt running menial tasks and conducting side schemes to raise the margins of the criminal organization. He’d heard of the blood trades they conducted, yet with the little freedom he’d had to choose his projects, he’d kept to conning rich men and swindling businessmen: taking down competitors of the Goldwater Trading Group to allow it to maintain its monopoly in the Empire.

  The darkest deeds of the Order—assassinations and trafficking—had been beyond what Ramson could stomach, and he’d gone out of his way to avoid being assigned to any such tasks.

  Until a year ago, when Kerlan had chosen him for a suicide mission that had resulted in him being arrested, stripped of his ranking, and thrown into Ghost Falls.

  He’d failed Kerlan in many ways: botched the most important job of his life, left the Order without a Deputy, a
nd left his betrayer to roam free for the duration of his imprisonment.

  He’d fix all that; with the witch’s help, he’d root out the mole in Kerlan’s ranks and claw his way back as rightful Deputy of the Order, Portmaster of Goldwater Port. And when all that was done…he would hand her over to Kerlan. To have an Affinite as powerful as her under the Order’s control would be the cherry on top of his cake.

  He’d take it back—he’d take it all back. His title. His fortune. His power.

  But Ramson hadn’t become the former Deputy of the most notorious crime network in the Empire just by luck. He was thorough and calculating in every aspect of his job, and he made an effort to understand everything down to the colors of his associates’ window curtains and bedsheets. There was nothing not worth knowing.

  And if there was any due diligence to be done in this ramshackle little dacha, it had to be on the worktable.

  The table was strewn with objects—a wealth of information. He palmed a few dusty globefires that had burned out, reduced to empty glass orbs filled with ashes, and carefully pushed aside some blank parchments and charcoal pencils.

  The first thing he discovered was a book, its cover worn to the point that he could barely make out the title: Aseatic Children’s Stories. Somebody had written several lines of a poem on the cover page inside; the elegant penmanship resembled that of a professional scribe.

  My child, we are but dust and stars.

  Ramson set the book aside.

  He picked through a dozen or so blank scrolls before he hit treasure in the form of a map.

  With practiced fingers, he wiggled it loose. The map unfurled with a sigh.

  Like the children’s book, it showed signs of wear: someone had penciled in notes all across the outline of the Empire in the same beautiful penmanship. Some of the notes were smudged with age, while others were as new as a freshly minted contract.

  The notes were brief but to the point, written in formal Cyrilian. Buzhny, one read, directly on top of where the small town of Buzhny might have been on the map. Inquiry; no sign of alchemist.

  Pyedbogorozhk, said another; Inquiry for bounty hunter. Received name from trader.

  The map was gold. The witch—if this was, indeed, her map and handwriting—had written the history of her mysterious mission all over this map like a set of footprints. Ramson set it aside carefully to scan the rest of the items on the table before he returned to it.

  His eyes caught on something at the corner of a page: the outline of half a face, peering out from the pile.

  Ramson reached for it too eagerly. His tunic sleeves caught on a scroll. The papers slid, cascading into a graceful pool on the worktable. As though they wanted to be seen.

  They were sketches. Dozens of them, fanning out over each other on the coarse surface of the table. He caught glimpses of a shaggy-haired dog, curled up by a fire; portions of a domed castle in what looked like a wintry landscape; a beautiful, doe-eyed woman with long locks…

  But his eyes landed on one, fluttering at the edge of the table as though it had a life of its own. A boy, in his teens, caught in midlaugh, the joy in his eyes nearly palpable. So much care and effort had been put into this drawing, the lines traced to perfection, every detail etched into the crinkles of his eyes and the quirk of his mouth. Still, it was incomplete, only half a face. It seemed the artist had only wanted to capture the life in the moment of the laugh.

  “Get away from there.”

  Ramson swore and spun around.

  The witch was on her feet, her outline stiff with fury. In the half-lit room, he could make out the tightness of her jaw and the glint of her narrowed eyes.

  “Put that down, unless you want me to rip you to shreds this instant.”

  Any excuses he had planned dissipated in smoke. He’d been caught red-handed before; Ramson found that the best tactic was to admit guilt and lie his way out from there. So far, he’d been lucky.

  He slid the sketches carefully back onto the table. The girl’s eyes followed his every move. “I’m sorry,” he said, injecting as much sincerity into his tone as he could. “I was looking for a map.”

  “Get away from there,” she snapped again, and he obeyed. She was at the table in an instant, her fingers scurrying across the papers, checking to make sure that nothing was missing. She snatched up the sketch of the boy and glared at Ramson, livid. For a second he thought she would change her mind and kill him on the spot. But then she took a deep breath and swiped a strand of dark hair from her face. As though she had wiped a slate, the fury in her expression was gone, replaced by cool sternness. “We made a Trade last night. You have a funny way of showing diplomacy.”

  “Well, you know what they say about diplomacy. It’s the only proper way for two parties to lie to each other’s faces and be happy about it.”

  “Don’t lecture me.”

  Ramson raised his hands. “All right, I was prying. But as you said, we made a Trade, so what’s the point of being stuck with each other for the next six weeks if we can’t trust each other?”

  Behind them, on the bed, May had sat up and was listening with her head cocked to one side. The witch’s eyes flickered to the girl and her expression softened momentarily. “All right,” she said, lowering her voice as she turned back to Ramson. “Since you mention ‘trust.’ Here.”

  Ramson took the drawing she offered him. This sketch was swathed in shadows. Whereas the others had seemed to capture moments and memories, this one had captured the subject like a portrait. He recognized the man on the page: bald, with distrustful large eyes that were set far apart from his thin nose. It was a sketch of the same man she’d shown him in prison.

  Her alchemist.

  This sketch bore the same painstaking detail as the other one, which had likely been destroyed in their waterfall escapade. Ramson studied the drawing more closely, taking in the man’s white priest’s robes and the circlet of the four Deities that hung around his neck. “This is a good start, Witch. I need you to tell me everything you know about him.”

  “He worked in the Salskoff Palace ten years ago. He disappeared and was back in…in Salskoff eleven moons ago.”

  He waited for more, but she clamped her mouth tightly shut. “That’s it?”

  “I know nothing else,” she said curtly. Her eyes burned, and her hands had curled into fists as she spoke. Whoever this man was, this girl had a debt to settle with him.

  He’d find out why soon enough. For now, Ramson settled on a different question. “An alchemist, you say,” he mused. “Was he an Affinite?”

  Many alchemists possessed unique Affinities and were hired by the upper crust of Cyrilia to lengthen and strengthen lives with their peculiar practices. Some of the most powerful alchemists, Ramson had heard, had metaphysical Affinities. Pain. Calm. Happiness. Intangibles, coveted by those who had coins to spare.

  “I’m not certain,” the witch said, looping a strand of her hair behind her ear. Ramson had already picked this up as a nervous tic of hers—like the way she fidgeted with her hood. “He brewed Deys’voshk and other elixirs.”

  Likely an Affinite, then. His mind snagged on another detail, on the Deys’krug and the prayer robes. “Was he a priest—or a devout man? Have you tried starting from there?”

  “He wasn’t a devout man,” she said bitterly, and then sighed. “I’ve tried that. I’ve looked all over the Empire for him, but I haven’t found a thing. The bounty hunters I hired never even got close.”

  “Amateurs.”

  She looked as though she wanted to slap him. “I wouldn’t be so confident. If this man isn’t standing in front of me in three weeks, I’ll bleed you dry.”

  “Relax,” he said lazily, waving the sketch in front of her. “I have a plan.”

  Ramson tapped his fingers on the sketch. Two sightings, ten years apart—the trail was c
older than death by now. But he had two leads: First, this man used to work at the Palace. And that the man was likely an Affinite on the run meant he might’ve had to reinvent his identity and reestablish himself.

  But if there was one source that tracked Affinites’ movements as closely as an eagle tracked its quarry, it was Kerlan’s brokers. The thought of strolling into their territory was one he didn’t care for. Ramson glanced at the witch and the child, unease twinging in his stomach. Could it be that they were victims of the very brokers that they needed in order to find this alchemist?

  “Good.” Ana launched herself from the table and marched toward the bed, where she retrieved a small satchel from beneath the furs. May glared at Ramson, and then promptly began folding the few items of clothing on the bed and slipping them into the satchel. “We leave in one hour. I assume you’ll have figured out where we’re going by then.”

  “I already have.” There was only one city in the vicinity of Ghost Falls that was crawling with ruthless Affinite traffickers hungry for information and bounty. “We’re going to Kyrov.”

  The morning air was crisp, the snow glittering and dusted with gold from a distant sun by the time they set out. The quiet was broken only by the huff of their breath, that clouded in the cold air, and the crunch of their boots through snow. The boreal forest stretched from the Krazyast Triangle at the northernmost tip of Cyrilia to the Dzhyvekha Mountains that bordered Nandji in the south. Here, up north, the snow never melted, but farther south, Ana knew, summer saw the tips of green grasses and conifer pines peeking out from beneath a veil of white.

  Ana hoisted her rucksack farther up her shoulders, the rustle of her parchments and the clinks of her remaining globefires strangely calming. By her side, May plodded along, turning her head this way and that to whatever sensations she felt coming from the earth buried deep below. She held a freshly lit globefire between her hands, the flames inside crawling along the oil that coated the glass, warming hands and providing light during nights. They’d spent many moons traveling like this, just her and May, a globefire, the compass she held in her hands, and the eternal silence of the forest.