Page 19 of The Dagger and the Flame
This is what you are. This is what you will always be.
And one day, the poison in your bones will take you too.
He turned and peeled off his clothes, trying to ignore the desperate hum of his own conscience.
He replayed the afternoon in his head and heard himself say, like a blundering fool,Why did the swan dance?
Why the hell did he ask her that?
Why did he say anything at all?
He had been so surprised at coming face to face with her at the Rascalle that he had broken one of Hugo Versini’s cardinal rules.Never talk to the mark.
Now, the mark had seen his face up close.
And he had seen the blue of her eyes, smelled thelemon-blossom scent of her skin. Ransom had known it was a mistake, but the second he saw that wooden box slip out of her pocket, he couldn’t help himself. He wanted to know what was inside, to see if it might be a clue to Dufort’s interest in her, the smuggler’s daughter. But it was so much worse than that. A ballerina, dancing to a sad, familiar song. The same one he used to sing to Anouk when their father dragged his temper through their house. The one she had sung back to him the night before they lost each other: ‘The Dancing Swan’. It was an antidote to fear. A promise of freedom.
And Seraphine had played it for him under the Saint of Destiny. The only one of the thirteen saints Ransom ever bothered to pray to. Not Calvin, Saint of Death. Or Maud, of Lost Hope. But Oriel, weaver of fate. Oriel, cruel and cunning. What a wicked little game. And yet, in that moment, he had wanted to play it.
So, he let himself speak to the mark. And worse than that, he let her name slip.
If Dufort found out, he’d have Ransom’s head on a platter.
He washed and changed in a hurry, running his hands through his damp hair to settle the unruly strands. His bedchamber was small but comfortable. He had everything he needed down here. The stone floor was covered by a fine sheepskin rug, the bed piled with woollen blankets to help stave off the chill that lingered in the catacombs. Oil lamps flickered on the walls, illuminating the framed sketch on his bedside table.
It was a portrait of Mama and Anouk, giggling with their heads pressed together. Ransom had drawn it on Anouk’sseventh birthday. It was little more than a child’s rough rendering but he had managed to capture the light of their smiles. On long nights, when Shade left behind its terrible gloom, Ransom held the portrait close to his heart and imagined a life where they would be together again, far from the darkness of Fantome and the long shadow of everything he had done since they left. Though he knew the shadows would never truly leave him, not now they were stamped on his body. Every kill a black mark on his skin, a fresh notch on his soul.
He shrugged on his coat before slipping out of his room. His bedchamber was located in the north-west tunnel of the catacombs, a stone’s throw from Nadia’s and Lark’s, as well as those of a handful of other younger Daggers who had been recruited shortly after Ransom joined the Order. Around the time Dufort figured out just how malleable broken children were. What perfect weapons they made.
It was a short walk down the main north passage to the Cavern, the sprawling underhall where the Daggers congregated to eat, drink, and play games. Gamble, if they were feeling lucky. Gamble even if they weren’t. Ransom preferred to spend his evenings off above ground, wandering down by the harbour to watch the night ships come in, on a rooftop with Lark or in a tavern somewhere with Nadia and Caruso.
There were other Daggers – older ones – who stayed permanently underground now, only venturing above ground when a new mark required them to. And even then, the coin had to be good. Over time, and after hundreds of vials of Shade, they had come to shun the daylight, the sun burning their faces even in winter, their eyes stinging even on a cloudyafternoon. For some, even the light of the Aurore made their skin itch. And as for summer – it was hotter than hell.
Ransom hated to think of himself becoming like that – afraid of the sunlight, afraid ofliving– but he knew all too well it was a consequence of the path he had chosen. He told himself he would stop before the shadows crawled up his neck, straining to meet the white scar that sliced his bottom lip, but after ten long years, he still couldn’t find the will to leave. He didn’t know where to go. There was no one waiting for him outside this life, and he was afraid of the unknown. Of his aloneness in the world.
So, he stayed and he killed, and he retched, and he slept in the smothering gloom, because that was all he knew. And in a strange way, it was comfortable.
Gaspard Dufort was waiting for him in the Cavern. The hall was empty, save for a couple of Daggers playing chess by the fire: Abel, the oldest of all of them at seventy, and his granddaughter Collette, who had joined only recently. A single black mark laced her left wrist. In time, it would grow and the song in her laugh would dull. Not Ransom’s problem. He had a much bigger one.
Dufort was sitting in his favourite armchair at the back of the Cavern, one leg propped on the knee of the other. His sandy hair looked amber in the flickering light, the sides shaved so short, Ransom could see the shape of his skull, the top pulled into a loose knot on the crown of his head. His usual scattering of fair stubble had grown into a scruffy beard since Ransom had last seen him.
Dufort drummed his fingers along the armrest, the silver skullring on his left hand catching the lamplight. It had belonged to Hugo Versini, once. Design-wise, it was a little on the nose.
‘You look tired, Ransom,’ said Dufort, his gold tooth flashing. ‘Have I been overworking you?’
Ransom shook his head as he sank into the armchair opposite him. ‘I was asleep.’
The Cavern walls were hung with tapestries for warmth, and the room smelled of pipe smoke and rum. Rows of skulls watched over them from the domed ceiling, relics from the reign of Hugo Versini himself. In the beginning, the founding father of the Daggers used to take the heads of his victims and hang them from the Bridge of Tears. Thankfully, the tradition had not lasted long beyond his death almost three centuries ago. Now, even the steeliest of Daggers could not stomach such a thing.
And yet the skulls remained, reminding them of the old adage:Those who refuse to wield the dagger are doomed to die by its blade.
A handful of words that had cleaved the Versini brothers apart; a story – and a warning – that Ransom had come to know almost as well as his own. The Versini boys had grown up in the northern mountain village of Halbracht, not far from the border of Farberg. A place so remote, the villagers used to cast their dead in the region’s Hellerbend River. But the Hellerbend was rough, the water hardened with minerals that dissolved the bodies and their bones. Over time, strange plants sprouted along the banks, their leaves golden as the summer sun, their roots black as a starless night.
Boneshade.
It was the Versini brothers who first discovered how to dig up the boneshade root, cut it, mix it, make magic from it.
Not the magic of old, however: the force that had flowed through the blood of the saints of Valterre, the power that had built a kingdom up from nothing and filled it with light. This was merely a remnant of that power. A powdered promise of darkness. Shade, the Versini brothers called it. To swallow it was to control every shadow, to become a deadly weapon, poised to kill with just one touch. To wear it meant to disappear entirely, to blend so seamlessly with the night you could take anything from anyone.
