Page 4 of Cage of Starlight
No. Not now. Not like this.
Tory’s on his unsteady feet, fleeing through the woods, before the hand-wringing miner has the presence of mind to shoutrun.
CHAPTER TWO
The trees blur past.
Everything blurs. Tory’s feet tangle, consciousness barely tethered to his body. He’s lucky to be walking after a healing like that. He won’t be walking for much longer. He needs someplace safe. Thatcher’s. He needs to get home—getback—to Thatcher’s, but his vision is a haze of light and smoke and the dark blots of tree trunks. There’s no chance he’ll find his way to the old man’s shop. Someplace dark, then. Small. A place he can hide.
Before he can stop to get his bearings, he runs straight into a solid torso. A strong grip closes just above his elbow, over the tattoo. His hands might as well be feathers for all the strength they have to free him.
“Tory! Whoa there, it’s just me,” a laughing voice says.
His brain is slow to identify it, but his nose serves up the comforting smell of turned earth and the spice of pipesmoke.
“Hasra?” He blinks her into focus. Lit gold by the lamps hanging from the eaves of Hulven’s pleasure house and painted with a kaleidoscope of color from its faceted glass windcharms, Hasra offers him a smug smile, hazed in curls of smoke from her long pipe.
His fool brain sayssafe, safe, safe,but he swats the thought away.
“Who else would it be?” Hasra blows smoke at the sky. “Knew I’d be seeing you as soon as I felt the collapse. Why the hurry?”
He blinks and light pours sideways across his vision. “It’s—Kelly was . . .” His knees nearly buckle but he catches himself. He can’t fall here. “Soldiers saw me.Hasra—”
Her grip on his arm goes tight, expression flattening. “Okay.” She taps her pipe out on the windowsill.
“Okay,” she says again, and drags him behind the House to the barrel they use to catch rainwater. Dipping a basin out, she presses him to his knees. “Wash your hands. Wash themnow, get the blood off.”
It takes a moment for the words to register, and by then she’s kneeling to help.
He splashes Kelly’s blood off his fingers and scrubs ineffectually beneath his nails. Too soon, he hears running footsteps, and Hasra pulls the bowl away, slinging the bloody water down the hill. Tory clenches his fists and hopes they’re clean enough as a soldier rounds the corner.
“We’re looking for some men,” the soldier says when he sees them. “Tall, moving fast. There was blood at the scene. One of them might have been injured.”
“Haven’t seen anyone.” Hasra winds a protective arm around Tory and gestures away with her chin. “Heard rustling over that way, though.”
The soldier pauses. Delicately, he says, “He’sinjured.”
Shit. He didn’t get it all off. A blot of watery red dribbles down between his fingers.
Hasra stiffens. “A client of mine.”
“A client,” the soldier repeats, dubious.
They’re an odd match-up, for sure. Hasra is old enough to be Tory’s mother, even though she’s nothing like his mom, who was paleand mild-mannered and slender like a waif. Hasra is taller, all lean muscle beneath brown skin.
“Ma’am, I’ll have to ask you—”
“Aclient,” Hasra says again. She turns Tory’s hand to show the soldier his fingers and palms, marked with thin white lines and thicker, rounded scar tissue he earned assembling weapons as a child.
The horror that unfurls in Tory at the soldier’s widening eyes is instinctual, instilled in him since he was young. Will the soldier recognize the marks? Has he seen hands like Tory’s before?
“What can I say?” Hasra continues blithely. “This one likes a whip.”
Tory’s panic morphs all the sound in the world to the bright ring of a bell, so he barely hears her when she says, “If you’d like a sample of what I can offer, you only have to ask.”
The soldier sputters a response, but by the time Tory’s hearing fades back in, they’re alone, and Hasra is stroking his hair back like he’s a child. She only smiles when he flicks her hand away.
“Let’s get you home. Can you stand?”
