Night of Masks and Knives (The Broken Kingdoms Book 4)
Night of Masks and Knives: Book 2 – Chapter 14

The Nightrender was gone.

Hours ago, I’d watched from a window as he, Gunnar, and Fiske were swallowed by the shadows of the forest. I’d been told to sleep, but how could I when turns of suffering and praying had all been for naught?

I now sat atop a feather stuffed sleeping mat, picking at a plate of berries in Tova’s room, taking some solace in the blue skeins of moonlight.

The back of my throat had a scratch I couldn’t clear and sweat beaded my forehead. Joints ached like I’d rusted over, but I assumed the pains were from all the moments of looking death in the eye.

″You all are cruel,” I said, my first words since replaceing out the truth.

Tova stopped combing a pick made of bone through her curls. “Don’t be a child. You are no better than us. I know what you’ve done to get some of those memories.” She pointed at my basket, which was brought in after I’d cried out all my tears in a dusty alcove after Kase stormed out on me.

Tova watched as I reached into the basket and added the vials to a small pig skin pouch I kept in the bottom. Burned into the hide were runes, protections to keep the vials safe. I frowned as I worked. What hurt most was all these turns of bribing and scheming were done for a man who was not worth it.

″Thinking of terminating our deal? I’d think less of you if you did simply because the Nightrender hurt your feelings.”

My chest squeezed. This was more than hurt feelings. It was agony. “I’m not leaving. Hagen matters more than anything.”

″Good.” Tova rummaged through a small chest against the wall, then lifted out a basket filled with soaps and towels. “Care to wash a bit? You stink.”

I glared at her and took a pearl of soap perfumed with sprigs of lavender. “You don’t smell so fine yourself.”

She chuckled and filled a clay washbasin. Tova added mint leaves and drops of rose oil. Tova stripped her shirt, and shucked off her trousers, unashamed she had an audience. She had a simple beauty; I could admit as much without liking her.

Desperate to be free of my rancid clothes, I peeled back my tunic and trousers to my undergarments.

″I’ve got lavender, amber honey, oh, and a bean from Furen,” Tova said. “When you crush it down it smells like sugar. Care to try some for your hair?”

She handed me a glass jar of the beans and I took it with shaky hands covered in cuts and mud and smelling like old fruit left out in the sun.

My arm throbbed where something had cut my skin, and my hair stuck to my face like wet grass. Discreetly, I tipped my nose into my armpit and sniffed. The curdled sweat soaked in the threads of my undershirt drew out a cough.

″You don’t happen to have any blue moss for this cut, do you?” I asked and pointed to the gash on my arm.

″Medicinal herbs are kept down the hall, do you need some desperately?”

″I’ll see to it later.”

″I can heal it.”

I paused my scrubbing. “Heal it? Are you a Mediski?”

″Not a skilled one, which is why we have medicinal herbs, but I think I could manage a simple cut.”

I glanced at the wound. The edges were a greenish yellow under the dried blood. “I think it’s infected, so I don’t suppose you could do much more damage.”

Tova licked her lips and shook out her hands. She gently rested her fingertips over the gash, and mesmer tingled like tiny bursts of heat under my skin at once. I gritted my teeth when mesmer deepened into an unsettling sensation of my skin knitting together as though tugged by a needle and thread.

″It feels so . . . odd. How is it done?”

″As it was explained to me, my mesmer quickens the innate healing process everyone has. Something to do with my touch and concentration. Helps if I study how the body naturally heals, then envision it.” Tova stuck her tongue out one side of her mouth. “But the concentration is where I am lacking.”

What a sight. Two nearly naked women, oily water puddling at our feet, with our utmost attention on a gash on one shoulder.

″That’s all I can do,” she said after a few moments.

The gash had narrowed into a shiny, rosy line. “Thank you.”

″It’s nothing.”

I reached for a shred of a towel over one side of the basin and gently scrubbed pulpy, sore bruises across my ribs from the brutal kicks the skydguard had landed at the stables.

While I washed, Tova foraged through a cedar chest, drawing out two stacks of trousers and tunics. She offered one to me as something extra to wear, then tossed the nightshirt I’d brought in my satchel onto the second sleeping mat, telling me to inform her if I needed more clothes. One of the Kryv would get more when they next went to a trade exchange.

″So, how am I to be treated here?” I asked once my skin was clean, and my hair no longer reeked like the hog pens at House Strom. “Any of the men I should avoid?”

Tova wrinkled her nose. “What, you think you’d be their personal cheery?”

″Would I?”

″Hear this now—men are not superior in Felstad. Hanna and I are treated the same as anyone. Because you have breasts does not mean the Kryv abuse you.”

Her voice boomed with fierceness, and I believed her. At least one worry faded away. “Hanna? She’s the child?”

″Ash’s younger sister. One of the last beautiful souls left in this godsforsaken place.”

″Can she . . .” I waved my hands on the sides of my head, not wishing to offend, for I didn’t know what offended Tova.

″Hear?” Tova nodded. “She can, but she only speaks with the hands. We don’t know why. She just never spoke. I’m terrible at translating, and Ash is not a patient teacher. Don’t underestimate her because of her age. The girl is wickedly clever with a knife.”

I made grand plans not to underestimate any of the Kryv.

Tova went to the door. “I’ll be with the others, so stay here until I get back.”

″Locking me in?”

″I’ll show you more of Felstad tomorrow, I promise.” She grabbed her quiver and bow leaning against the wall. “Then you will know the places to avoid and be free to jaunt about as you please.”

In my haze of learning Kase Eriksson was alive, Tova had dragged me around Felstad, as if my life had not upended in one moment. I’d walked through back gardens. Been instructed on how to free the front gate of the entrance tunnel. I was shown the dry storage, bottled fruit shelves, then the water and ale casks.

All of it took most of the day, and now she and the guild were locking me away. I didn’t like secrets and they had countless. “If you’re planning anything, I ought to be involved. We need to begin the search.”

″What makes you think we haven’t already started?”

I had no answer.

″Remember what I told you about this guild being a clock,” Tova went on. “There are pieces, and you’ll help us with those pieces when the time is right. For now, learn all you can so you don’t get us all killed, and be still. You want to always go, but these things take finesse and patience.”

″Maybe Hagen doesn’t have the time for us to be patient.”

″And if we rush into this, he will be dead. You think you’re the only one who cares? Gunnar is our Kryv brother, and this mark is his father. Folk may have more than one brother, but only one father makes them.”

I leaned against the wall. Another Kryv I’d yet to speak with. Gunnar. My nephew of sorts. He looked at me like I was a disease, but one he might like to catch to get to know a little better.

″Sitting here seems wrong,” I said.

″Think as you please, but I’m not here to impress you. You’ve asked us to do a job, and we’ll do it our way. I’ll be back.”

At the click of the door, I was alone.

I obeyed—for a time—but when Tova didn’t return, I grew restless.

From beneath the flap of my satchel a bit of yarn stuck out. I’d nearly forgotten about Asger. Sight blurred as I fingered the roughly spun horse. A piece of me broke, hardening into something rough and jagged. The pads of my thumbs ran over the missing button eye, the yarn mane.

Once a comfort to imagine the boy I lost. Now, a cruel reminder the boy had grown to be a killer.

I wanted nothing to do with it.

Wiping my eyes, I tucked Asger into my belt, and hurried to the door, fishbone pick in hand. Pointless, since I jiggled the handle once and the door swung open.

Tova didn’t even seal the latch.

I stuck my head into the dimly lit corridor, glanced side to side, and only stepped out once I believed it to be clear of Kryv. Somewhere in the ruins laughter rang out, curses, and a few folk tunes with slurred voices.

So, this was the fearsome Guild of Kryv. Drunkards who spent time singing sagas of poets long gone when the moon was highest.

A guild of feckless fools with knives. Nothing more.

The corridor was long and arched. A steady water drip splattered somewhere in the dark, and each breath drew in a heady bit of damp. My grip curled around the hilt of Tova’s knife when the path curved to a stairwell marred in shadows from a small flame.

Where I expected an empty space, I slammed into the firm back of another body. A short, garbled noise scraped from my throat, and my face heated in shame. Was I the Anomali Alver who had Hob the Street Hawker on his knees mere days ago, or was I a whimpering girl afraid of the dark?

When my eyes adjusted to the face of the man, anticipation and a touch of nerves sent my pulse pounding in my head. “Gunnar. You’re back.”

The young Kryv eyed me with suspicion, but unless I was mistaken, there was a bit of longing there too.

″Where are you going?” he asked.

Lie? Truth? I didn’t know and began speaking before the decision was made. “I was looking for the Nightrender’s room. I have something to return to him.”

Gunnar’s eyes went to the exposed leg of the stuffed toy tied to my back. If he wondered, he didn’t ask. “His chamber is up the stairs.”

Gunnar flicked a quick smile and went to leave.

″I wouldn’t mind speaking to you,” I blurted out. “If you’d like, that is.”

″I am on watch tonight,” he said, voice soft. “But I have a little time.”

A weight lifted off my shoulders when he smiled. Hells, he did look a great deal like Hagen.

I smiled in return. “How old are you?”

″Eighteen.”

Bleeding skies. He’d been born before my fifth turn. Nearly all my life Hagen had kept him from me. “And you said you have a sister?”

Gunnar softened. “Yes. Laila. She’s nearly nine turns now.”

″And . . . your mother?”

Gunnar’s face sobered. ”Dännisk, I know this is not easy for you—”

″Malin,” I whispered. “Or Mal. Please. You look so much like Hagen, and he called—calls—me Mal.”

Gunnar hesitated. “Mal, I swear to you there are a great many people beyond these borders who will go to the hells to replace my daj. My mother is one. She blames herself for what happened.”

″What did happen?”

Gunnar ran his fingers through his hair. “My mother begged my father to run with my sister and me when war came. To free us. He obliged and we were caught.”

″Free you from what?”

″I was born into captivity. My mother is a warrior. Born of the royal fae in the north, but an enemy to the non-magic king. She became a game to be played, to be won. Should an opponent best her—that man would win her body.” Gunnar’s fists tightened. “If she won, it meant he’d die a bloody death. She never lost. Until Daj.”

A grimace hardened my face. “No. Hagen would never—”

″He didn’t,” Gunnar said with a grin. “He was simply the first to ask her to sit and talk to him before she killed him. I suppose that was the way to her heart.”

I let out a soft laugh. “Why did he play such a game?”

″From what I was told it was to keep him from this bleeding festival here. House Strom made an arrangement—should he play and win in the name of the Klockglas, then the Lord Magnate would not punish him for using his mesmer to protect . . .” Gunnar’s eyes drifted up the stairs.

By the gods. “Me? Or Kase?”

Hagen had used his mesmer gift of blocking magic to conceal Kase and me time and again. I never imagined his protection had cost him so much.

″I think the Lord Magnate only knew he’d protected other Alvers. Not the specifics of who those Alvers were,” Gunnar said. “I know little of the Nightrender’s past, Mal. But I believe he feels a great deal of responsibility to my daj.”

I understood. So did I. With a forced smile, I rested a hand on his arm. “You said Hagen failed to free you, but you are. How?”

A horn bellowed in the night. Gunnar turned his head toward the sound. “My watch is beginning,” he said softly. “I am free because magic is powerful, and fate has bigger plans for us all.”

He tipped his chin in a sort of bow, then disappeared around the corner.

My heart ached for him. Not as a Kryv, not even as Hagen’s son. More for the pain beneath his sharp eyes. I made grand plans to be his confidant, should he need one.

My attention turned to the stairs. Instead of clinging to the past, for Gunnar’s sake, I’d let go and stand at Hagen’s son’s side as we found my brother again.

Bard and Jens had little affection for me. If all went wrong, Gunnar Strom would be the last family I truly had left.

I was careful as I climbed the stairs. Many were broken and tilted. It was the sort of staircase one would need to get used to climbing before they could do so without stumbling. On the upper level, a few tapestries lined the walls, centuries-old dust gathered over the flagstone corridor, and only two doors were accessible. The other rooms were caved in, or hardly a room.

Only one had a glimmer of light beneath the crack in the door.

Heart heavy, I placed Asger on the ground. My fingers went cold as I dug beneath the neckline of my tunic and pulled out the raven charm. The way Kase had studied it, almost gently, in the courtyard, I’d give up half my bone-dust memories to know what thoughts plagued his mind in that moment.

I bit on the inside of my cheek as I pressed the raven to my lips. A final farewell to the past I had fought to keep.

I was no Kryv. My steps were not feathery and silent. Adjusting to place Asger upright, my shoulder tapped against the wall, my boots scraped over the gritty dust. It should’ve been no surprise my every move was heard throughout Felstad, but when the door swung open, a short gasp escaped all the same.

I was still down on one knee. The back of my throat grew dry as my eyes lifted to meet his. He wasn’t Kase. He couldn’t be Kase, or I would shatter every wall I’d been carefully building between us since he removed his shadows.

But he looked so like him. Hair tousled, frowning lips, the quirk to his left brow.

There were differences. Things I wanted to know and understand, like the small scar marring his chin. Where did it come from? I was only a little ashamed for admiring the divots of muscle which had replaced lanky limbs.

He’d known me all this time, known right where I was, and never revealed himself to me. No mistake, Kase stopped caring for his hayloft friend, but my heart simply forgot to do the same.

His eyes lowered to the horse and the raven charm.

When he looked at me again it was as if I’d taken my sharpest knife and carved out his heart through his spine. A look I’d never forget, and one he promptly buried beneath those strange shadows.

His eyes went dark as pitch. How he did it, I didn’t know. The Kase I knew was a Rifter like Bard, and not a good one. Those shadows, those illusions, I didn’t understand how his mesmer changed into something so vastly different.

I dug my fingernails into my palms and took a step back. “These aren’t mine. I don’t want them.”

The Nightrender said nothing. He didn’t blink.

Disappointment burned harsh and cruel in my heart. Why hope for anything more?

Halfway to the staircase the soft rasp of his deep voice sent a shiver down my spine. “Wise to let go of something that died long ago.”

Each word was broken glass slashing every surface of my body. I did not dignify him with a backward glance. Not even a word. I lifted my chin and left him to his darkness.

Kase Eriksson was dead, after all.