Page 3 of The Dagger and the Flame
We are merely the go-betweens, little firefly. Nothing more, nothing less.
But that wasn’t really true. There was no in between with Shade. Playing with magic was like playing with fire, and in the end someone always got burned.
The Age of Saints was long over.
At night, the Cloaks and Daggers owned the city. Mama always knew to keep well away from them and having grown up in her shadow, never far from the cold slick of Shade, Seraphine did too.
As she got older, their trips to the city became fewer and lessfrequent, as though Mama feared they might be snatched off the street, even in daylight. Better not to be there at all, if they could help it. Better to be nestled in a faraway farmhouse than darting through murky, shadow-swept streets, where anyone – even one of the king’s nightguards – could find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Mama had spent most of her life looking over her shoulder, and yet, in spite of all her caution, she had run afoul of the guilds at last.
But why now?The question nipped at Seraphine’s heels.
Stop,she hissed to herself.Don’t look back.
The night had fallen silent, and her thoughts were too loud. Memories crowded in on her, catching her by the throat. She slowed down when she reached the Scholars’ Quarter, fighting the rising urge to retch. Towering, opulent buildings peered down at her, their beautiful stained-glass windows like wide, prying eyes.
What are you running from, Seraphine Marchant?she imagined them whispering.
She hated hearing the thunder of her own heartbeat, the chatter of fear in her teeth. In the main square, she slumped onto a bench under a pear tree, clutching the armrest with whitened knuckles. The fire was still crackling in her head, and there, between the violent whips of red and gold… lay Mama.
The memory rose like a tidal wave, and in the sudden stillness, Seraphine could do nothing but yield to it.
The setting sun gilded the cornfields as Seraphine and Pippin trudged home without a single measly rabbit to show for their hunt. Not that they hadn’t enjoyed themselves, racing each otherthrough the hills. Seraphine had stopped to tumble down the highest of them just to see if she could roll faster than Pip, and find out how much grass she could collect in her teeth. A lot, as it turned out. In her fist now, she clutched a bouquet of bluebells, a gift for Mama, to thank her for giving her the afternoon off. A bribe, perhaps, for tomorrow’s freedom.
They turned at a familiar bend in the road, and at the sight of smoke pluming in the distance, Pip set off into a run. Seraphine laughed at the mutt’s sudden sprightliness, sure she had run him ragged in the fields. But the sound died in her throat as she ventured closer, into the thickening haze. The cloud was too dark for chimney smoke, too high and black and choking and—Seraphine dropped the flowers.
She bolted for home, lungs aching, heart pounding. As she cleared the last of the low hills, she saw the flames that brewed the smoke. They made a violent ring around her house, like a dragon come to devour it. There was such a roaring in Seraphine’s head, she forgot to breathe.
The flames parted as though she had willed them with the strength of her horror. And there, beyond the open doorway of the farmhouse lay her mother. Already dead. Already burning.
It was no dragon that Seraphine saw standing over her, but the figure of a man. A shape she did not recognize. Tall and broad-shouldered with a sweep of wavy hair. His face was wreathed in smoke, except for a pair of violent, quicksilver eyes.
The roaring gathered in Seraphine’s throat, choking her. Or perhaps that was the smoke. She didn’t care as she stumbled towards the doorway, towards her mother’s killer. He was already turning away from Mama’s body, slipping his hands into hispockets as though he might take a stroll in the back garden. As though he did this kind of thing every day of his life.
And she knew,saints,she knew, exactly what he was.
An assassin, brewed in the dark heart of Fantome and sent here by Gaspard Dufort, the infamous leader of the Order of Daggers.
Mama had been marked.
If it wasn’t for Pippin whining and tugging at the hem of her trousers, Seraphine would have flung herself into the fire just to claw the Dagger back. But the dog at her ankle was enough to stop her, to kindle in her some vital instinct to run.
To run and run and never stop.
Now, in the stark silence of the square, Seraphine let the memory wash over her, knowing it would return again to ravage the shores of her soul. That question, like a shark in its belly.
Oh, Mama. What did you do?
She dropped her head and tried to breathe, but she couldn’t get enough air. Her head was too heavy, and her heart had been sliced right down the middle. If she stood up now, it would fall apart inside her chest.
Pippin yipped at her feet. She ignored him. He darted under the bench, and spun around so that she could see his tired little face peering up at her. She squeezed her eyes shut. ‘No, Pip. I’m too tired.’
Pippin nudged her ankle, then yipped again, as if to say,Get moving!
Relentless little gremlin. Seraphine groaned. If she gave up now, simply collapsed on the bench and waited for the same evil that had taken Mama to come for her too, then whatwould become of Pippin? She was all he had left. She raised her head and raked her hands through her hair. The city blurred into focus – the soft green of the pear tree, the cool touch of the wrought-iron bench.
She gripped the golden teardrop that hung from her neck, and reached for a different memory of her mother. Not as she had been that evening but on the morning of Saints’ Day a month before. Mama had stayed up all night to craft the necklace, pressing it into Seraphine’s hands like a talisman just after sunrise.
