She Who Rides the Storm (The Gods-Touched Duology)

When Knox’s eyes opened, everything was a dull, dusty dark. The air smelled of smoke and herbs, and his mouth, throat, and stomach felt raw. Whispers of chanting touched his ears, but they were muffled, as if from the next room.

His mind seemed to fuzz at the edges, circled in purples and blacks that pulsed and shuddered… until he realized it wasn’t something wrong with his eyes. It was Anwei’s aura, swollen up so large that it filled the room like a thousand-legged spider.

Knox gasped, the air burning clear down to his lungs. “Anwei?” he choked out.

“I’m here.” A hand appeared in front of his face, holding a spoon. “Drink this. Don’t move.”

“Where…?” he croaked. His mind flashed back to what he could remember. The governor’s study, a cloud of powder in the air. Anwei stumbling as she tried to support him. She’d been crying.

“We’re under the temple,” Anwei’s voice whispered.

The grasping bits of Anwei’s aura crept toward him. Knox closed his eyes tight, breathing deep to calm himself, but it didn’t shut the purple tendrils out, his aurasight making the edges of her magic glow like stained glass. Willow breathed inside his head as if she wished to speak, but then she didn’t. She couldn’t. A panicked desperation that was only partly his began to fill Knox, as if Willow were banging on a door between them that hadn’t been there before, blocking off her voice. Knox felt for the sword, frantically needing to touch it. “Where is my sword?” he moaned. “Where did you put it?”

“Don’t move, Knox. Open your mouth, you need—”

“No, I need my sword! What did you do with it? I need it now.” His voice crackled in his throat as Willow twisted inside him, her claws digging into him. It hurt, every corner of his head frosting over, energy draining from his limbs.

Anwei’s hands grasped his shoulders, her nightmare aura clouding in around them, the feel of her inside his head a warm, expanding glow. The crackles of ice receded even as Willow raged. But she couldn’t speak. She couldn’t speak.

“Knox, breathe with me.” Anwei’s voice was both in his ears and in his head. “We’re safe. You’re going to be all right.”

Forcing himself to inhale, Knox felt Anwei’s calm spread through his mind like a mouthful of hot water going down his throat on a snowy day. Each breath he took with Anwei thinned Willow’s screaming until he couldn’t feel her anymore. Until all that was inside him was his own breath. His and Anwei’s.

Suddenly Knox’s mind was clear, as if he’d been seeing the world through a dirty window—or perhaps through a ghost’s shroud—and now, with Anwei’s help, it was clean.

I can’t help you now. That’s why I brought you to Anwei. An echo of the goddess’s words from earlier warmed his chest. When Knox let his eyelids crack back open, Anwei’s face was above him, her smooth cheeks and deep eyes a spot of calm at the center of a storm of pulsing purple energy. His back was against the wall, and both of Anwei’s hands pressed against his shoulders to hold him there.

“What happened?” Ewan had been there, his aura diminished to less than that of a new initiate with a sweet cake hidden in his cheek. “The Devoted was coming.”

“What is happening right now?” Anwei’s voice croaked.

“It… there’s… it’s hard to explain. Ewan. How did we get away from Ewan?”

“He rode right by us. And I… got you away.”

Knox shook his head. That wasn’t what had happened. The ivy on the wall had swollen up, flowered, and pushed through the brick itself, giving them a way out. And Ewan had been too diminished to see the swell of Basist magic right in front of him. He’d just been riding to the stables, delighting in the terror on all the high khonins’ faces.

Brushing Anwei’s hands away from his shoulders, Knox hunched forward, covering his eyes even as the purple ink swirled in closer. Memories of what had happened were a knife in his stomach, sparking memories of other moments in his life when that swell of murky color had meant a Basist was trying to kill him. Saying he didn’t mind Anwei’s magic was a good deal different from sitting at the center of it like a fly caught in a web.

Back then the outcome had always been the same. Him and his sword cutting it all away.

For the Commonwealth. To protect the people.

But this time he’d been the one running. The one hiding under a veil of purple. And it had saved his life. “Was it always a fight because they wanted to kill you, or because they knew you’d come to kill them?” Anwei had asked.

“Tell me what is happening to you, Knox. Something is happening, and I can’t…” Anwei’s voice was ragged. She’d dropped her spoon, new tears marking the old trails of salt on her cheeks.

“I’m…” He breathed in long and deep. It burned, but only in the spots the poison had touched him. “I’m alive.”

She tipped forward, her forehead hitting his shoulder, her arms wrapping around him. He didn’t have the energy to push her away, didn’t want to push her away, which was wrong on all the levels of his existence. “No, I can smell the sword on you—I can feel something—”

“I was going to die last night.” Knox looked up at her aura, the tendrils slipping down around her like a crown. “I could feel myself fading away.”

“But you stayed.” She sniffled, her breath hot through his tunic. “I had to leave my bag—it didn’t have the things I needed anyway. There’s a store of herbs here.”

“You saved me. With your power.” He stared hard at her aura. It had already begun to spool back up over her head, growing smaller now that she wasn’t actively using it anymore.

Anwei abruptly pushed away from him to grab the spoon from the ground. She turned to a little pot over a tiny flicker of flame and dipped in the spoon, then held it out to him, one hand under it to keep the mixture from spilling. She wouldn’t quite look him in the eyes. “Drink it. You’re lucky I earned my hundred braids.”

She was more than her Beildan braids. Both of them knew it, even if she wasn’t able to say it out loud. Knox stared hard at the spoon, feeling the purple afterimages of her magic all around him.

Then he opened his mouth, letting her dribble the medicine onto his tongue. The herbs tasted bitter, but he swallowed, and all he felt was sorry.

Six years of hunting people touched the way Anwei was. One year watching Anwei from the corner of his eye as if she’d suddenly sprout claws. But he was the one with a ghost living in his mind who was trying to make him drag everyone into the darkness with her.

“I’m… sorry.” Speaking took his breath, making him feel starved for air.

“Don’t apologize. You’re alive.”

“No, I’m sorry, Anwei. I’ve been… awful to you.” He’d been doing what he’d been told, believed what he’d been told. Calsta! he asked. What does this mean?

Calsta sighed in his head, answering for once. I can’t, Knox. Not right now.

Then when? he wanted to shout, still feeling shivers of revulsion at the touch of Anwei’s magic. Was it the magic itself that was wrong? That couldn’t be it. He knew that wasn’t it. It was just what he’d been taught his entire life, because Basism led to shapeshifters and shapeshifters had ruined the world. All Basists had gone that way before the first Warlord. At least, it seemed like that was the case according to what he’d been taught, starting long before he entered the seclusion.

But had Knox ever actually met a shapeshifter in all those years of hunting purple auras? He didn’t think he had. So did Basism really always lead to shapeshifting? Did just having the potential for evil actually make someone evil?

It didn’t seem that way right now. Which made him a murderer. Clear and simple.

What if… what if he’d been the one doing the evil?

Anwei blinked at Knox and set down the spoon. She didn’t acknowledge the apology, moving on smoothly as if he’d just stayed quiet. “We have to figure out how to get into the dig before the wardens track us down. A lot of people saw us last night, and the governor will be missing his book.”

Knox tried to shake the fog of blood and auras and swords from his brain, but it wouldn’t quite go. He put both hands to his face, speaking through them. “Now that we have the book, getting in won’t be difficult. We can do it…” He felt Anwei go still. Peeking through his fingers, Knox sagged back at her expression. “We don’t have the book.”

“I have a few pages.” She shook her head slowly. “But I had to burn the rest.”

“You had to what?” He coughed, the force of the words too much for his lungs.

Anwei reached for a small pile of folded vellum on the floor. One looked like a map, one a list, and one… a letter perhaps. “I had to get you out, and Noa wasn’t coming. I took what I could.” She spread the papers out before him. “The rest—I thought there was still a chance he wouldn’t find the missing book for a few days. If he found it in his entryway with pages ripped out, he’d know for sure someone was going to break into the tomb. We have to do this fast and then get over the border.”

“With what money?” Another cough ballooned up inside of Knox, cutting through the words. “We both know Shale won’t give us twenty thousand in silver for that sword.”

“Yes. But we might be able to get something. Now we have leverage.”

Knox blinked at her, unsure of what she could mean. Until he looked past her aura to where she was gesturing. There, hidden in the tunnel between the malthouse and the temple, was an aura slippery with some kind of sedative.

The pineapple.

Walking wasn’t as difficult as Knox expected, but it wasn’t easy, either, his breath short. The blistering morning sun made his eyes ache. On their way out, he eyed the carriage and horse Anwei had paid the malthouse owner to store in the back courtyard, but he knew they couldn’t use it. Not if Shale was looking for where they’d stashed his spy.

Knox took Anwei’s arm when she offered it, letting her lead him across the island where the canal ran between the Gold and Ink Cays. Anwei hailed a boat headed toward the trade gate and paid a loose copper for them to sit at the prow until they got to the Coil.

“We have a map of the tomb’s upper rooms and a staff manifest.” Anwei sat up a little straighter. “If Shale does care about his spy, we can put the pressure on him to give us the rest. Before they double the guards on the compound, and before the Warlord comes.”

“So within the next few days?”

“It’ll have to be. I have some ideas—we can talk them over once we’re home.” Anwei fumbled in her pocket, then pulled out one of the papers. She glanced over her shoulder at the oarsman before holding it out to Knox. The Warlord’s signature was at the bottom. “Do you know what this means?”

Knox stared at the paper, addressed to a name he’d heard but couldn’t place. It had dates, symptoms… and suddenly it made sense. “The Warlord is sick, Anwei. This letter is to her aukincer.” Knox had heard of the aukincer—that he’d helped ease and lessen wasting sickness in the seclusions.

If the Warlord was wasting away, who would take her place? The last time a Warlord was chosen, Lia and Knox had hidden in the seclusion kitchens for most of the fighting and wooing and politicking, emerging to smile and nod only when the new Warlord gave up her name. Now, though, all the masters were so old, and many with influence and support enough to have succeeded in taking over had been pruned away by the wasting sickness. Who would maintain the borders if Devoted all died off? Who would keep the governors from fighting one another?

Would shapeshifters return if there was no one strategically hunting down Basists? Knox glanced sideways at Anwei, who was still bristling over the letter.

“An aukincer? Surely, the Warlord couldn’t be so stupid.…” She cleared her throat, tucking the letter away. “Well, more information is good. We have a dying woman coming to town, so desperate that she’ll call in an aukincer. Maybe I should stay long enough for her to arrive just so I can help her.”

Every inch of Knox went taut. “No.”

Anwei looked up. “No?”

Knox glanced at the oarsman as they pulled up to the Coil dock. He stepped out of the boat, hating the way Anwei had to hold him up when his head began to spin. “Do you not remember what happened last night?”

“I do remember.” She linked her arm through his and started down the walkway toward the apothecary. “I managed to help you because I’m a really good healer. The kind the Warlord should call on instead of a charlatan wannabe shapeshifter.”

“You broke a wall! With plants!” Knox stumbled and had to catch himself on a brick wall. The apothecary’s blue door was in sight ahead, a blessing from Calsta because he wasn’t sure how much farther he could walk. “I was about two breaths from dead last night, and now I’m not. You may have learned the best medicine on this side of the Castal Sea, Anwei—”

“The best in the world.”

“—but last I checked, flower petals aren’t enough to bring someone back from death’s pit once they’ve already jumped over the edge.”

Anwei dropped his arm, pushing away to fiddle with the scarf covering her braids.

“You saved me. I’ll never run from your herb pots again, Anwei. Why does it matter—”

Her head jerked up, her eyes narrow. “Yes, why does it matter?”

Knox swallowed, his throat ablaze. “Because no matter how much you don’t want to admit it, putting you in the same room as the Warlord could be a death sentence. No matter how good you are or how many people you save, all she would see is your aura.”

Anwei blanched. But she didn’t fly at him. Didn’t deny it. She just linked her arm back through his and continued toward the apothecary door. “We need to concentrate on getting into the dig, not any of this aura nonsense. How long do you think Shale will wait before attempting to get Altahn back?”

Knox pointed to the shop. “He’s in there waiting for us right now.”

Gulya found extra skin folds to make a properly disgusted scowl for Knox as he and Anwei walked in. He compulsively glanced at the calistet jar, relieved to see the heavy clamps shut tight.

“You have a client waiting, Anwei.” Gulya’s hand jabbed toward the herb room door, through which Knox could see Shale’s aura. “The stupid one. With the mole. He needs a calfel tincture or it will begin to grow its own face.” She carefully turned one of the glass globes, brushing off some imaginary dust. “Where have you two been? This man is not the only client who has asked for you since yesterday. I got word from the Fig Cay that your visit was brief and insufficient and that he was with you. People are dying, Anwei.”

“I know. It’s not behaving like a normal sickness, Gulya. I’m going down again today. Nothing else too serious?” Anwei’s smile was the exact right portions of sweet and worried, as if she’d measured them out and ground them up in one of those medicine bags for Gulya. She waited for the old woman to shake her head before turning to the herb room. “I’ll just go take care of this mole, then.”

Gulya’s withered hand shot out to grab Knox’s, to stop him from following his partner. “What have you gotten her into?” she growled.

“Nothing?”

“Knox was helping me gather lilia blooms outside of town.” Anwei paused in the doorway, Shale’s aura shimmering just behind her. “You know how hard they are to get at full bloom.…” Anwei snapped her fingers, spinning to point at the old apothecarist. “A lilia infusion for the mole. That would help combat the—”

“The risk of warts! But wouldn’t it interfere with the calfel’s—”

“Not if we use a half-malt base.”

A surprised smile gleamed out from between Gulya’s wrinkles. More a baring of teeth than anything else. “You are a treasure.”

She didn’t let go of Knox, watching the door swing closed behind Anwei before she pulled him around to face her. “You make sure she gets home at night. That she eats and sleeps. No more of this running away for days at a time, do you hear me? She looks sick. What are you worth if you can’t even get her to eat?”

“It’s my job to make sure Anwei eats?” Knox looked Gulya full in the face, trying to listen to what was happening in the room through the door at the same time. “Anwei’s been taking care of herself for years, Gulya. Why would she need me?”

“Exactly.” Gulya frowned. “She’s talented. Brilliant, even. She doesn’t need a rock like you to drag her to the bottom of this pond.”

Knox breathed in long and slow as he’d been taught, then let it out. “I’m not dragging her anywhere. If you need assistance with herb gathering or anything else, I’d be happy to help you, too.”

“I don’t need help from a loose-copper mercenary who can’t get a job. A thief. I know about the sword you keep hidden up there.” Gulya glanced up at the ceiling toward his room. “I bet the Devoted in town would be very interested to hear about it.”

“You’ve been searching my room now?” The idea of the old apothecarist pawing through his things grated at Knox. He shook off his annoyance, though. There were bigger arguments to be had. “I promised to help Anwei.” Knox held up the bag of herbs Anwei had shoved into a box to bring with them just in case he had some kind of relapse between the temple and the apothecary. He hoped they looked like lilia petals, whatever those were. “So I’m going to… go?”

His mouth stalled, the auras milling outside the shop suddenly coming into sharp relief. One in particular, sparkling with Calsta’s energy. A Devoted. Another depleted Devoted.

Lia?

Knox let whatever Gulya was snarling about slide off him as he ran for the herb room door. He slipped through and pulled it shut after him, keeping his back to the wood. Anwei and Shale looked up, the two of them glaring daggers at each other across the table. Well, Shale was glaring, one hand fingering his long tail of hair, the other on his belt knife. He did have a mole, though Knox didn’t think it was worth all the rancor and disgust Gulya had given it.

Anwei looked as chipper as she ever did, as if she were about to bring out a copy of A Thousand Nights and laugh with the Trib over the naughtiest illustrations.

“Thank you for finally joining us.” The man stood, silver jingling at his throat. “I told her I wouldn’t deal with a flunky anymore. I bring you a job and you kidnap one of my men?”

Lia’s aura didn’t walk past the shop. It paused, then came in.

“I’m not…” Knox’s breath caught. He gulped down his panic, forcing himself to focus on the Trib as the old man advanced on him. “I didn’t kidnap anyone.”

Anwei stood up from the table and walked over to Knox with false nonchalance. Her hand snaked down into the box he was holding and the herbs inside. “You send a tail after us, you come back here after I expressly told you not to—”

Shale drew his knife, holding it downward like a man who knew how to use it but hadn’t decided whether or not he was going to do so. “You tell me where my son is, or I’ll kill you both.”

“Your son?” Anwei’s rosebud lips curved in a smile, and she withdrew her hand from the box, crumpling the leaves in her hand. Knox could almost feel her mind turning, the celebrations that would be had later. How could Shale have been stupid enough to leave his son out where Anwei could find him? She turned back toward Shale. “If you run me through, you’ll never find him, will you? Please”—she gestured to the table—“let’s talk.”

Knox’s brain felt split in two, trying to watch the knife and Anwei’s casual air, which was not casual at all, while also trying to listen to Lia on the other side of the door. Another aura walked into the shop, hovering next to Lia’s, white and unremarkable. A male voice rumbled through the door, asking for specific herbs. A healer? What would she be doing with a healer?

Anwei sat down, clasping her hands in front of her. “Your son is safe. I’m sure we can resolve this in a way that works for both of us. Why were you watching us?”

“You’re thieves.” Shale kept the knife out, looking between Anwei and Knox before going to the table as Anwei had asked, though he did not sit down. “I was right to watch you. You went to the dig last night after you took Altahn, and now there’s no chance we’ll get in.”

The dig last night? Knox forced his eyes to focus on Shale, but then Lia laughed, that familiar I’m-not-actually-amused-but-I’ll-humor-you chuckle ringing bells in his memory every which way.

“You’re watching the dig, too? Interesting.” Anwei leaned forward, cocking her head. “Why exactly do you think we raided the tomb last night?”

“Everyone knows. Ghosts, just like you did at the governor’s party. You used the information I gave you, told me you’d help me, stole my gold, stole my son, took valuable artifacts from the dig, and now you’re going to, what? Use him to extort money out of me? Calsta’s teeth, how did I let myself get mixed up in all this?” He growled the last into his own fist, so low Anwei might not have heard.

Anwei blinked once, confusion she wouldn’t show radiating toward Knox. They had taken Shale’s son, but they hadn’t been to the excavation compound the night before. Knox almost wished they had, since it seemed whoever had gone over those walls had been successful. Shale had had his son tailing them, so he had to have known what their plan was, or Altahn wouldn’t have been there with the carriage the night before.

And yet the same day Knox and Anwei had unleashed ghosts on the governor’s friends, thieves pretending to be ghosts had haunted the dig, too? That was a little too much of a coincidence. Anwei’s eyes flicked over to Knox, one eyebrow rising a bit. He jerked his head toward the shop, trying to convey that Shale wasn’t the only threat at hand. Her gaze moved to the door, then back to him, her brow furrowing. But he didn’t know what to do further—Lia wasn’t coming in, and Knox liked knowing where she was much more than the idea of running away and not knowing—so Anwei turned back to Shale’s growling. “What kind of ground worms are you two? The sword is the only thing worth its metal in that tomb, and it would take a miracle to get it now. Give me my son, or I’ll hand you over to the magistrate.”

Knox closed his eyes, trying to concentrate on both Shale and Lia in the shop. Lia wasn’t speaking. Wasn’t moving. Her aura was just hovering there on the other side of the door. Had she come with a knife or for explanations?

“We didn’t go to the dig last night. Who have you told that we are working for you? You knew we were going to haunt the governor and whoever you told did too.” Anwei’s voice was deathly quiet as she stared Shale down.

Lia’s aura suddenly moved toward the herb room door. Knox tensed, waiting for her to slam the door into him, maybe to not bother opening it, just stab her sword straight through the wood into his back. But she didn’t.

Was it possible she didn’t know he was here? Her aurasight was gone, but there was no way that of all the apothecaries in Chaol, Lia had walked into Gulya’s by coincidence.

Shale was still glaring at Anwei across the table. “I haven’t told anyone yet, but that is going to change if you don’t give me my son now.”

“You’re willing to give up on getting your sword back? After offering so much money? After already paying me some of it?”

Shale paced up and down the length of the table. His jaw twitched, his fingers clenching and unclenching around the hilt. “I’ll hire someone else.”

“We are the only people in this city who can get to that sword, Shale.” Knox pitched his voice low. Quiet. Wondering if Lia would hear it through the door. “And we didn’t go to the dig—which means Anwei is right. Someone knew what we were planning to do and copied us. All the people who knew on our end are accounted for.…” His mind stopped on Noa for the first time since the spray of poison the night before. Noa wasn’t accounted for in all this. But Shale didn’t need to know that. “Your son must have heard us planning. Either he told someone or you did, which is how we find ourselves in this situation.”

Shale kept pacing, one hand pulling hard on the silver necklace until it dug into his skin. “This… this is a problem.”

“We’re going to do the job, Shale. We’ll give you your son along with the sword once you’ve paid us.” Anwei stood, her voice brisk. “If you tell the magistrate, he’s dead. If you follow us from now on, he’s dead. If you come back to this shop? Dead.” She smiled, the sharp one that made Knox feel antsy inside, wondering what she would do next. “You’ve kept back information on the dig, and I want it now. Maps? Guard schedules? The archeologists in attendance? Here, let me give you an example.” She cleared her throat, putting her hands up and staring off into the distance like some kind of orator. “ ‘Anwei, the Warlord herself will be here in less than two weeks to take the thing I want you to steal.’ That is the kind of information that would have been helpful from the first day you came in here.”

Lia was now standing between Gulya and the other aura that had come in with her. Were they talking about… fish bones? Knox cracked the door open, wanting to see with his own eyes. She was by the counter, in a dress of all things, her wrists and hands showing and everything. She’d wrapped her face and hair in an eastern-province-looking scarf, but when she turned from the door to speak to the man beside her at the counter, Knox saw her eyes for the first time in two years. Blue, like so many who lived in Chaol.

Knox scrubbed a hand through his hair. Lia was from Chaol. How had he forgotten that?

“All I have is a rough log of items going in and out and a map from when the compound was first being built.” Shale’s voice was hollow. “Everything is different inside now—we only got maps of the first rooms they uncovered. That’s why I hired you. So you would figure out how to get in.”

“You don’t have a map? Delivery schedules? You promised me both.”

Lia had a familiar sharp look to her eyes, as if she were unpeeling everything around her to get a look at what made it work. The man with Lia laughed, a great booming that sounded too jolly to be real. He was wearing an expensive coat, dirt-smudged boots, and an expression that seemed altogether too good-natured considering the fact that he was speaking to Gulya. The man reached a hand out to Lia as if to draw her into his animated conversation, and Lia stepped forward, accepting the unspoken invitation.

It was all very confusing.

“Are we boring you?” Shale’s voice lashed toward him.

Knox pulled away from the crack in the door to meet Shale’s glare. The old man sat down at the table like a king on his throne. “There are customers in the apothecary. This is the sort of conversation I’d rather not have overheard.”

Shale rolled his eyes, turning back to Anwei. “I want proof my son is alive.”

“I want proof you have twenty thousand silver rounds,” Anwei countered. “Also, if you’ve been watching the dig, you have more than lists of items going in and out, and if you don’t give it to me, you can say goodbye to your son. I want guard schedules. Numbers of workers. Typical delivery days, anything special about the way the dig functions—do they all stay in at night? Do the archeologists leave? Don’t try to tell me you don’t know.”

Knox squinted at his partner, the knife’s edge in her voice different from anything he’d ever heard. Anwei didn’t threaten, usually. At least, not when he was around.

“I’ll give you what I have, but there is no map. There are no comprehensive lists of workers. I can only give estimates, and no names.”

The man who’d come in with Lia spoke again, pulling Knox’s attention back to her. His only family, so close and yet so very far away. “I gave him three knuckles’ worth, and still he couldn’t see straight for a week,” the man laughed, and Lia joined him. Lia laughing. It made Knox want to smile too. “They expect aukincy to come with magic. As if I can snap my fingers and all their bones will unbreak.”

Anwei’s voice: “I’ll meet you down in the Fig Cay near the plague house tomorrow after the seventh drum. I assume you know where that is, since your son followed us there?”

Lia’s attention wandered past the counter, trailing across the glass globes of powders, flower petals, and leaves long dead. Slowly but surely creeping toward the cracked-open door where Knox stood. Knox tensed, whispering inwardly, She’s diminished. Ewan was diminished. I could use my aura to run around Chaol twice without a boat, then hang upside down from the drum tower, and they wouldn’t see me. But still her eyes slid toward him.

“… substantial proof of our fee and the information I asked for. For every day you make me wait past tomorrow, I’ll take one of your son’s fingers. Do you understand?”

Shale’s voice was faint. “I thought he was Yaru.”

Knox’s eyes focused on Shale as the Trib looked him up and down. “You’ll never get anywhere close to Yaru,” he said quietly. Not that diverting Shale mattered much now; the damage was already done. This was why Anwei used the temple and drops and sneaking behind the scenes. People who knew where you lived tended to feel the lack of coin in their purse once they’d paid.

Anwei rolled her eyes behind Shale’s back as he stood up from the table. Knox opened the door for him, shielding himself by staying behind it. Anwei, however, skipped forward to lead Shale out into the apothecary, pulling herbs from the globes as she went and shoving them into one of the herb packets. She buttoned the packet closed when she got to the counter, gave it a vigorous knead, then held it out to Shale. “Here’s everything you’ll need. In a half-malt, half-acidic-fruit-juice base with that lilia infusion, twice a day. You can pay Gulya.”

Through the gap by the door’s hinges, Knox watched her pass by Lia, his breath catching when Lia’s hand slipped into her sash. He knew from experience that she preferred larger weapons, but a sash that size could hide a knife or two or five, and Lia was deadly throwing or fighting in close quarters either way. If she was here for him, knew his connection to Anwei…

Shale tossed a few coins on the counter with a bit more force than necessary. Lia watched him curiously, the man she’d arrived with stopping his story long enough to smile at Shale.

“You’ll be pleased once that unsightly thing is gone.” Gulya slid the coins into a little pile with a satisfied smile.

Shale put a hand up to cover the mole on his chin and stalked past Lia to the door.

“Be sure to apply it at least twice a day!” Gulya called, looking as if she meant to run after him. Anwei helped to count the money as Lia’s companion paid, then waved them out the door.

Before Lia could get too far, Knox went to the herb room window and climbed out.