Page 4 of Quicksilver
I couldn't count how many times I’d passed out at the billows here. I had no idea how Elroy survived it. For a moment, I gave the man the respect he deserved and considered his demand. And then I fantasized about what a cool breeze from the south might feel like, and the delirious weight of a full stomach, and how blissful a feather bed might be, and what a future for Hayden might look like, and my affection for the man who once loved my mother dwindled into insignificance. “I can’t do what you’re asking me to do.”
“Saeris!”
“I can’t. I just can’t. Youknowwe can’t go on like this—”
“I know that struggling to scratch out a life here is better than bleeding out in the fucking sand! Is that what you want? To die in the street in front of Hayden? For your body to rot in the gutter like your mother’s, stinking and picked over by the crows?”
“YES!Yes, ofcoursethat’s what I want!” I brought my fist crashing down on the table, and the gauntlet jumped, a cascade of rainbows leaping up the walls. “Yes, I want to die and ruinHayden’s life.Yourlife. I want to be made a spectacle of. I want everyone in the ward to know me as the glassmaker’s apprentice who was stupid enough to steal from Madra’s guard and got herself killed for it. That’sexactlywhat I want!”
I’d never spoken to Elroy like this before. Ever. But the man had experienced loss after loss at the hands of the city's guardians. People he'd loved, dragged from their beds and executed without trial. His own brother had died just before I was born, starved to death during a particularly hard year because Madra wouldn't divert any food from the Hub to the other parts of the city. The richest of the queen's people had continued to throw lavish parties, had dined on exotic imports sourced from pastures well beyond Haeland, had drunk their fill of expensive rare wines and whiskeys, and all the while the people of Zilvaren had starved in the streets or shit themselves to death. Elroy had borne witness to all of this. Even now, he barely survived from week to week himself. If the guardians weren't pounding on his door, checking to make sure he wasn’t making weapons, then they were kicking it down, hunting for mythical magic users who didn't even exist. And he allowed it all to happen. Just sat there and did nothing.
He'd given up. And there wasn't a single part of me that could accept that.
Elroy's heavy brows, shot through with grey, bunched together, his eyes darkening. He was about to launch into another one of his rants about staying out of the guardians’ way, avoiding drawing attention to ourselves, about how cheating death here was a daily miracle that he thanked the makers for each night before he passed out in his shitty cot. But he saw the fire simmering inside me, ready to burn out of control, and for once, it gave him pause.
“You know I fought. I did, I fought the same way you want to fight now. I gave everything I had, sacrificed every last thing Iheld dear, but this city is a beast that feeds on misery, and pain, and death, and it'sneverfull. We can throw ourselves down its throat until there's none of us left, and we won't have made the slightest lick of difference, Saeris. The people will suffer. The people will die. Madra’s reigned over this city for a thousand years. She will live as she has ever lived, and the beast will still feed and demand more. The cycle will go on forever until the sand swallows this cursed place and there's nothing left of us but ghosts and dust. And then what?”
“And then there will have been the people who fought for something better and the people who laid down and took it,” I spat. Snatching up the gauntlet, I made to tear out of the workshop, but Elroy still had a little speed left in him yet. He grabbed my arm, holding me back long enough to look me in the eyes. Pleadingly, he said. “What if they track you down and realize what you can do? The way you can affect metal—”
“It’s a parlor trick, Elroy. Nothing more. It doesn’tmeananything.” Even as I spoke, I knew I was lying. It did mean something. Sometimes, objects shook around me. Objects made of iron, tin, or gold. Once, I’d been able to move one of Elroy’s daggers without touching it so that it had spun around and around on my mother’s dining table, balancing on its cross guard. But so what? I met his exasperated gaze. “If they track me down, they’ll kill me for a slew of other reasons before they kill me for that.”
He huffed. “I’m not asking for you. I’m not asking for me, either. I’m asking for Hayden. He’s not like us yet. The lad still laughs. I only want him to keep that innocence a little longer. And how’s he gonna do that if he watches his sister hang?”
I tore my arm free, my jaw working, a thousand cold, hard insults clambering over one another, competing to be first out of my mouth. But my anger had fled me by the time I spoke. “He’stwenty years old, El. He has to face reality at some point. And Iamdoing this for him. EverythingI do is for him.”
Elroy didn’t try and stop me again.
There were ways in which Hayden and I were similar. His height, for instance. We were both tall, lanky creatures. We shared the same sense of humor and were both champions at holding a grudge. We both adored the briny, sour tang of the pickled minnows the skiff merchants occasionally returned from the coast with. But apart from our shared personality quirks and the fact that the two of us loomed over most people in a crowded room, there wasn't much about us that was alike. Where I was dark-haired, he was light. His hair was curly to the point of chaos, and there was somuchof it. His eyes were a rich, liquid brown and bore a gentleness to them that my blue eyes did not. The cleft in his chin came courtesy of our dead father, his proud, straight nose from our dead mother. She used to call him her summer child. She’d never seen snow, but that’s whatIhad been to her: her ice storm. Distant. Cold. Sharp.
It didn't take long to find Hayden. Trouble had a way of following him, and I was an expert at seeking it out, so it was no real surprise I almost tripped over him, sprawled out and bleeding into the sand in front of The House of Kala. Kala's, as it was known by most, was one of the only places in the ward that would trade food and drink for goods instead of money. A chancer with empty pockets and an empty belly could also gamble for goods with some of the tavern's more disreputable types if they were brave or stupid enough. And, since we never had any money or items for trade, and Hayden was anoutrageously proficient cheat at cards (second only to me in Zilvaren, perhaps), then it made perfect sense that he would be here, trying to swindle a pitcher of beer out of someone.
Blazing-hot gusts of sand blew over Hayden; they gathered in little pools in the bunched-up material of his shirt, which still bore the handprints of whoever had grabbed him and tossed him out of Kala's onto his ass. A bawdy group of revelers passed by, their scarves pulled up over their faces against the twins and the sand, stepping over him without sparing him a glance. A young man with a split lip and the beginnings of a black eye lying in the gutter was nothing out of the ordinary in this part of the world.
I stood at my brother’s feet, folding my arms across my chest, careful to keep the satchel containing the gauntlet pinned against the side of my body. Pickpockets and cutpurses weren't unusual here, either. A crew of hungry street rats wouldn't think twice about performing a snatch-and-grab if they suspected the prize would be worth it. I kicked Hayden's dusty boot. “Carrion again?”
He cracked an eyelid, groaning when he saw me.“Again! You’d think...the bastard would...have better things to do than beat the shit out of me.” The way he gingerly clutched his ribs suggested a few of them might be broken.
I nudged him with the toe of my boot, considerably harder this time. “You'd thinkyoumight have learned your lesson and would steer clear of him by now.”
“Agh! Saeris! What the hell? Where's your sympathy?”
“In Carrion's back pocket, right alongside the money I gave you to buywater.” I considered bruising the other side of his ribs, but the sheepish smile he sent my way doused my anger. He had that way about him. He was foolish and careless more often than he wasn't, but it was impossible to stay mad at him for very long. Offering him my hand, I helped him to his feet. After much grumbling and complaining, Hayden dusted off his shirtand pants and adopted a wolfish grin that implied he'd discarded the ache in his ribs and felt brand spanking new. “Y'know, if you have a chit, I bet I could win back the water moneyandthe red scarf Elroy gave me.”
“Hah! Keep dreaming, buddy.” I skirted around him and jogged up the steps to the tavern. As always, Kala's was packed to the rafters, and stank of stale sweat and roasting goat meat. A dozen heads swung in my direction as I entered, a dozen pairs of eyes going wide when they observed who had just walked in. Hayden was a daily visitor here, butIonly ventured across the tavern's threshold when I'd had a bad day. I came here to blow off steam. To fuck. To fight. A wild array of outrageous things was whispered about me behind the backs of sunburned hands here: that a man might either get lucky or be beaten unconscious depending on my mood when I sat my ass down at the bar.
I didn't sit at the bar today. Peering over the drunken rabble before me, I craned my neck, searching for a flash of color amongst all of the dirty whites, greys, and browns. And there it was. Therehewas, sitting at a table on the far side of the tavern with three of his dim-witted friends, his back to the corner so he could keep a weather eye on the crowd. Carrion Swift: the most notorious gambler, cheat, and smuggler in the entire city. He was also uncommonly good in bed—the only man in Zilvaren who'd ever made me scream his name out of pleasure rather than frustration. His bright auburn hair was a signal flare in the dimly lit tavern.
I beelined right for him, but my pathway was quickly blocked by a beleaguered-looking woman in her early forties brandishing a giant wooden ladle.
“No,” she said.
“Sorry, Brynn, but he swore he'd leave him be. What am I supposed to do, just let him get away with it?”
Brynn had a surname, but no one knew it. When asked, she'd say she'd lost it as a child and had never bothered to locate it again. She said family names made you easier to find, and she was right. As proprietor of The House of Kala, folks who didn't know any better tried to callherKala, presuming she'd named the place after herself, but she'd glower at them and show them her teeth. Where she was from, Kala meantfuneral,and Brynn didn't appreciate being likened to death.
“Doesn't matter to me whether he gets away with it or not.” She cast a baleful sidelong glance at Hayden, who had skulked back into the tavern on my heels, looking rather sheepish. “Heknows Carrion cheats, and I don't need another full-blown brawl breaking out in here. Not tonight. I've already had to toss two chairs out the back for mending, thanks to that swine and your idiot brother—”
“I'm not an idiot!” Hayden objected.
