Sunbolt (The Sunbolt Chronicles) (11 page)

I crack open the door to the room I hope the window belongs to, then push it open with relief. It’s a cluttered storage room, full of things and empty of people. The others hustle in behind me. The window is one over from the hedge, but I don’t want to take another chance on the hallway. I ease open the shutters, then lean out to take stock of the near-palatial house around us. We’re at one of its sides; windows rising in rows above us. It can’t be helped. If someone looks out and spots us, we’ll just have to pray they don’t manage to catch up with us.

“Here,” I say, turning to Tarek. “Give me Alia, and I’ll pass her down to you.”

“I can carry her,” Saira insists, reaching for her sister.

“Would you just listen to her?” Tarek snaps. “She’s doing a lot more to save your life than you deserve.”

Saira flinches. She looks wretched, her hair in disarray, her face pinched with worry, her eyes dark with guilt and self-contempt.
Good.
After all, it’s her fault her parents are dead, her sister has been drained to within an inch of her life, and we’re running for our lives. I hope she feels even worse than she looks.

I suppose I should be kinder. She never meant for any of that to happen—except to the Ghost. Maybe, if I get out of this alive, I’ll be able to be more generous. Right now, I can’t manage it.

“Get down,” I tell her. “It will be easier to hand her over if you’re both there to take her from me.”

Tarek passes Alia to me as Saira lowers herself from the window. Alia’s eyes have opened, but her gaze is glassy, unfocused. She’s breathing hard, even though she’s barely exerted herself. “She needs a mage-healer,” I tell Tarek. “She’s lost too much blood.”

He nods.
 

“Listen, if we get separated, there’s someone who can help you. There’s a tea house called The Golden Cup.” I quickly describe how to find it and what to tell the proprietor. I have no doubt Kenta will come running if he gets the message, but hopefully it won’t come to that. Hopefully, we’ll all get out of this together.

Tarek listens carefully, ignoring Saira’s whispered questions from below. I don’t suppose she’ll ever learn to be quiet. Then he lowers himself from the window. I lean out, Alia light in my embrace, and hand her down to their waiting arms.
 

“Come on,” Tarek whispers.

I hesitate. “Just a moment,” I whisper, and move back to the door. I’m not sure what exactly I’m thinking, other than that I hate to leave the fang still caged. But when I reach the door I hear the faint tread of boots in the hallway: soldiers.

I bolt back to the window, sliding out onto the sill and dropping to the ground with a soft
thud.
 

“Hurry,” I whisper, reaching up to close the shutters. Tarek and Saira require no further urging, setting a brisk pace through the gardens. Saira takes over the lead as she gets her bearings.
 

About halfway through, I jerk to a stop, holding up my hand. Tarek nearly plows into me from behind me. He has the sense, at least, not to speak, his eyes darting to my face. I can hear the soft crunch of boots on gravel. Many boots.
 

“They’re behind us,” I whisper. “And they must know which way we’re going, or they’d be shouting and running.”

The Degaths stare at me.
 

“Run,” I say. “Fast.”

We tear through the garden, Tarek puffing under his burden. Past an ornamental fountain, across a grassy square, and—shouts erupt behind us. A dozen soldiers pour into the open space, almost near enough to catch us.

I spring forward, pushing Tarek ahead of me. We swerve around the corner of a hedge. Ahead of us, the path forks: one turns and leads into another section of the garden, its visibility blocked by shrubbery, the other passes under a stone arch.
 

“Go.” I shove Tarek towards the far path, knowing Saira will stick with him. Then I whirl and make for the arch, pounding through it without a backward glance. Split up, there’s a higher likelihood that at least one of us will escape, especially if the soldiers part behind us. They’ll be easier to outwit that way.
 

But I miscalculate. Given the choice between three miserable fugitives and catching the Ghost, the soldiers take off after me. All of them. Together.

My cloak flares out behind me, like a piece of night calling to them, and they follow. They must assume I’m the real Ghost, come to break out the Degaths, and not the imprisoned impostor.
 

Panting curses, I careen around the corner of another hedge and find myself facing a picturesque pond, lotus flowers floating serenely before me. On the far side, conversing with Blackflame beneath an ornate blue and white gazebo, stands the only person who could bring me to a standstill.
I stare, bewildered, hearing only the thundering of my blood in my ears.
 

It can’t be. It can’t be.
But it is. Swathed in a silk kimono of varying shades of blue, she looks like an artist’s rendering, a person who truly belongs among lotus flowers and gazebos. Except that she cannot possibly be here.
 

Gravel crunches behind me. I should not have stopped—I take one step forward, my eyes still glued to the figure in blue, and then a body crashes into me, slamming me to the ground. What follows is a brief and hopeless tussle, me against ten soldiers, all of them armed. It ends about where it began, with my face pressed into the dirt and a great deal of weight on top of me. Even though I’m frantic to get away from them, I can’t quite focus on anything other than the need to get to the woman in the kimono. I need to see her face clearly. I need to
know
.

I twist around, searching for the soldier in charge. “Who’s that?” I ask. “In the gazebo, the woman?”

“Shut up,” he says as I’m pulled to my feet.

“That’s not the Ghost,” one of the soldiers says. “That’s the bloody impostor.”

A confusion of voices follows. I squeeze my eyes shut, then quickly open them again and try to find the woman. She’s turned away and is descending the steps from the gazebo.
 

“The girl?” one soldier asks. Another says, “The Ghost isn’t so clumsy,” and another, “The Ghost isn’t so
short
.
”

My eyes follow the woman. Turn around.
Turn around.

The soldiers fall silent. Blackflame strides towards us with fury written across his face.
 

“What about the others?” he asks, hardly sparing me a glance.

“We’re still searching,” one of the soldiers responds.

“Who is that woman?” I demand, straining at the soldiers’ grip, trying to see past Blackflame.
 

He must not hear me properly, or maybe he can’t imagine that at this precise moment I couldn’t care less about him. Or me. “That was very foolish, girl. Did you really think you could escape me?”

I launch myself to the side without a thought for the mage in front of me. I only make it a step or so, given the number of soldiers hanging off of me, but it’s just enough to see the woman’s back as she departs, her shining black hair cascading over cobalt and turquoise silk. And I know, I
know
it’s her. But I still need to hear it.

“Her,” I gasp, wishing I could point. “Who is that woman?”

He shifts uncertainly, glancing over his shoulder and then back at me, momentarily forgetting his ire. “Do you know her?”

“Who is she?”

Blackflame smiles, a lazy turn of his lips that brings me back to myself: restrained by soldiers and at his mercy. “That is my current pet. Hotaru Brokensword. A pretty thing, isn’t she? Though a bit obtuse. It’s always helpful when they are so exceptionally blind and stupid.” He chuckles, watching me.

Even though it’s the name I expect, even though I recognized her the moment I saw her, the name slams through me with the force of an earthquake. It’s a name I know as well as my own, just as I would know the fall of her hair, the way she walks. Just as anyone would know their own mother.

“Oh,” Blackflame says, his voice sweetly malicious. “She’s still alive. Had you heard differently?” He leans closer. “She’s simply chosen to stay with me.”

“
Liar.
” I bare my teeth at him, wishing I had Kol’s fangs and could rip his throat out.
 

 
“What do you care?” he asks. He pauses to study me, really study me. If he hasn’t recognized me yet, I’m certainly not telling him.
 

“Brokensword has more honor than you,” I say to distract him. “She can’t know what you really are. She can’t know what you’ve done here.”

He laughs. “Ah, but she does. She knows precisely what I do.”
 

I shake my head. He can’t be right. My mother would never—but I had seen her a handful of minutes ago, healthy and strong, and unrestrained. No one’s forcing her to stay here. If she’d wanted to find me, she could have. How hard can it be for a mage of her caliber to find her own daughter? But she hadn’t bothered.
 

Blackflame leans towards me. “She has even become an advisor of sorts to me.”
 

The fight goes out of me. I sag in the soldiers’ grip, sick with his words, with my mother’s desertion. Blackflame chuckles as he watches me. I pretend to ignore him. The anger that burnt through me has gone out, quenched by the realization that my mother chose this life over me. Chose Blackflame.

Still smiling, he gestures to the soldiers. “Put her under guard and find the Degaths. I don’t care what you have to do, I want them back.”

I clamp my arms against my side and stare at the cobbles in Blackflame’s courtyard, trying not to consider what Kol has in store for me. I’ve spent the last hour under close watch in a cell of a room, unable to coax any information from my guards. Blackflame’s guards had been almost immediately relieved by Kol’s: the fang lord’s bid to assure he doesn’t lose his claim on me in the unfolding chaos of the Degaths’ escape.

Kol is, of course, far more dangerous than his escort, but I suppose he must keep up appearances. What human lord would travel alone? The guards are useful, at least, for handling prisoners.

The guards straighten to attention as Kol and Blackflame cross the courtyard towards us. In the gardens, Blackflame had been calm, still relatively certain the Degaths wouldn’t evade recapture. Now he vibrates with pent-up fury. I keep my face down so that he doesn’t notice my pleasure. They just have to make it to tea house I’d told Tarek about, and they’ll be all right. With the help of a mage-healer, Alia should recover.
 

They have a much better chance of surviving than I do.

“If I had not already given you away,” Blackflame tells me, “I would look forward to taking you apart, bone by bone, sinew by sinew.”

Is it strange to be grateful that I’ve been traded like a goat, especially when I can hardly expect mercy from Kol? I glance towards my unlikely savior. Kol has added boots and soft leather gloves to his attire of the night before. As further protection from the potentially damaging rays of the sun, he wears a short cloak that brushes his thighs, the hood pulled up to shade his face. The morning is bright enough that I can still make out the faint quirk of his lips revealing his amusement. What does he care if his meal escaped? He still has me. If I had the energy, I would fear him, fear that smile, but as my delight in the Degaths’ escape fades, I feel hollowed out, my heartbeat echoing in my lungs.
 

My mother is here. And well.
My mother, who was supposed to be dead, who came here for help and never returned. I swallow the bile in my throat, barely registering Blackflame’s threats, his ire washing over me like water over a stone. Four years I’ve thought her dead, scrabbling to find my next meal and keep a roof over my head, while she has dressed in silk and wandered sunlit gardens. How could she have forgotten me? How could she be
here
?

Blackflame turns on his heel, leading the way from the courtyard. Kol falls into step beside him, the guards prodding me along after them. Instead of approaching the gates, or calling for horses, we make our way through the gardens to an unpretentious square in which a quaint stone arch has been built, a hedge grown up around it. The white wooden gate, latched closed with a hook, gives the impression of some prosaic, feminine hand at work. Which is ridiculous. There is nothing prosaic or gendered about a magic portal.

I lick cracked lips, staring at it. I could be wrong, of course. I’ve never seen one before. But why else would we have come to a stop before this particular arch? What other purpose could it serve than to allow Kol and his men to arrive and leave unremarked, without a carriage and, now that it occurs to me to look, with no more baggage than a few large packs strapped to the guards’ shoulders?
 

Blackflame unhooks the gate, swinging it open. He casually sets his hand on the stone of the arch, his lips shaping a single word. The view through the gate shivers, rippling as if what fills the gate is more water than air. Kol nods to Blackflame and steps forward, the light bending around him and pushing him through to another place. It is as if the sunlight has suddenly failed him.