Page 8 of Quicksilver
Normally, the stakes were pretty low when he misbehaved, but today, the stakes were more than high. They were astronomical. They werecatastrophic.
I did my best to walk calmly in the direction of The Mirage—there was every chance Hayden had grown bored of waiting for me and decided to make his way back to the other tavern with the bag. But the more I played out the various scenarios in my head and thought about which was more likely, a creeping panic began to tighten a handhold around my throat.
If he'd looked inside the bag...
If he'd gone rummaging around in there, martyrs only knew where he was now and what the hell he was up to. The Twins beat down on the top of my head, their punishing heat making my mind swim. When was the last time I drank any water? This morning? No, I'd saved my ration for when I got back tothe forge, but after the disagreement with Elroy, I'd forgotten to collect it. I shouldnothave had that whiskey.
Once I was a respectable distance from The House of Kala, I broke into a nervous trot, and then a jog. I tried to look casual, but there was no such thing as a casual jog in Zilvaren. The people here conserved energy as best they could. There was only one reason a person might run here, and that was if they were being chased.
Suspicious eyes trailed after me as I darted through the streets, past crumbling sandstone houses and covered market stalls owned by vendors selling stringy roasted meats, swathes of cloth, and pungent herbal remedies from the north. Familiar, faded posters papered the alleyways, promising hefty rewards for any information leading to the capture of suspected magic users. I knew the side streets of my ward like the back of my hand. The left up ahead would take me by Rojana Breen's place—my mother used to send me by there when she'd heard the traders had come back with fruit. Unlike the rest of the Third's smugglers, Rojana only traded in food and water. Her illegal trade would still get her hands chopped off for her, but they wouldn't get her killed.
Ahead on the right, however, another trader had set up shop. Vorath Shah peddled snake oil: tiny fragments of metal that he claimed contained traces of arcane magic; the stuffed, stinking feet of sand rabbits that were said to ward off disease; glass vials full of cloudy liquids that were supposed bestow gifts upon you if you drank them. Gifts that had long since been lost to us. Humans were no longer capable of reading each other's minds, or making the blood boil in their enemy's veins, or granting themselves eternal luck. Everybody knew that we'd been stripped of those heretical powers hundreds of years ago, but Shah still made a handsome living selling useless trinkets to the hopeful and the desperate. He had outlandish explanationsfor the eternal question that all Zilvarens asked in hushed whispers behind closed doors: how, after over a thousand years, did the queen still live? Madra was human, so why didn’t she die? He claimed to have access to the font of her eternal youth and peddled that in bottles, too.
Shah was also known to buy artifacts. If a thief found themselves in possession of a very niche item, Shah could theoretically connect you with an interested buyer. But there was also a chance he might gut you and pick your body clean before leaving you out for the drift crabs. Catch him on a bad day, and by the next morning, there'd be nothing left of you but sun-bleached bones.
“Tell me you didn't,” I muttered under my breath, taking the right. “Hayden Fane, tell me you didnottry to take that gold to Sh—”
A piercing cry tore the arid air apart. It was distant. Muted. But it came from the east and set my teeth on edge. TheMiragewas to the east. And the only time anyone screamed like that in the Third was when a guardian was taking liberties or spilling blood. Instinctively, I knew. I felt it in the marrow of my bones: the cry had something to do with Hayden. My brother was in danger.
I was running before I had time to think. The streets blurred by in my peripherals. My heart thrummed out a chaotic rhythm. Fear pooled like acid in my gut.
Behind me, out of nowhere, came the sound of clanging metal.
“Stop her! Stop that girl!”
The shout came from behind. Guardians. Five of them? Ten? I risked a glance over my shoulder, but all I saw was a wall of brilliant, flashing gold. The thunder of their boots striking the ground flooded my ears.
Gods, Saeris, move. Fuckingmove!
I urged myself on, digging deep. Ihadto run faster. If they caught me, I was done for. Hayden was done for.
Another eerie, agonized cry stopped my heart for a moment, but I willed it to pump again, needing it to drive me forward. I would not be run down in the streets by these bastards. I fuckingrefused.
The residents of the Third shouted, leaping out of my way as I hurtled past them. The guardians bellowed orders, again commanding someone to stop me, but no one did. I was known here. The people I tore passed loved me because they'd loved my mother. They also hated me because I was a troublemaker and a thorn in their side. But even so, they hated the guardians more.
My lungs burned. My muscles screamed, begging for mercy, but I ran faster, pushing myself to the brink of exhaustion. The twins throbbed in the sky, washing the streets in a pale golden light, the larger of the two suns rimmed with a strange blue corona as I barreled toward The Mirage and the attic, and hopefullynotmy brother.
If he had any sense whatsoever, he'd have seen the guardians or overheard talk of Madra's guard flooding the Third. That was a lot to hope for. Hayden wasn't very observant at the best of times, and Carrion had rung his bell for trying to shank him. He was probably still lost in his own little world, griping bitterly about the money he lost and his stupid fucking scarf.
I dragged my own scarf from my face, gasping for air, only to receive a lungful of blistering sand particles as I sped around the dumpling stand on the corner of Lark Street—
“Halt! Stop right there!”
Terror made me skid to a stop. It closed around me like an iron fist, squeezing my ribs to breaking point as I took in the scene playing out in front of The Mirage. I'd never seen so much gold in one place. A multitude of glittering suns reflected off vambraces, chest plates, and gauntlets, forming brilliant white-gold orbs bright enough to burn the retina. Spots and flares traced across my vision as I looked from one guardian to the next, trying to run off a count in my head. What use was counting, though? One guardian, I could outrun. I stood a fair chance of giving two of them the slip. But three guardians? No chance. And there were far more than three of Madra's city guards gathered in a phalanx formation outside The Mirage. There had to be thirty of them at least, and they'd come fitted out for a fight. The swords in their hands were held ready, a wall of polished, golden shields tessellated in front of them, building an impenetrable wall. Each of them wore glittering mail over their arms and legs. Their mouths were covered with loose white hessian cloth. The eyes visible above their masks were narrowed, full of a burning hatred that every one of them leveled at my brother.
“No. No, no, no....” Thiswasn'tsupposed to happen. I was supposed to process the gold at the forge and hide it somewhere inconspicuous. Hayden was never going to even know the gauntlet existed, let alone come into contact with it, the stupid bastard.
If he hadn't gambled with Carrion...
If he'd listened and stayed put...
If he hadn't looked inside the damn bag...
Even as I made the excuses and blamed him for this predicament, guilt choked me. I'd stolen the gauntlet. I'd been caught stealing. I'd decided that snatching the metal was worth the risk that came with it. And now Hayden was going to be killed by an entire unit of guardians, and it was all my fault.
Hayden staggered away from the men and their sharpened blades. He would have retreated further than he managed, but his back hit the wall after three feet. In his hand, he held the gauntlet loosely by the wrist, the armor damning him from a mile away. Terror shone from his face like a beacon.
“Stay where you are, Rat!” the guardian at the forefront of the phalanx roared. As one, the men crept forward an inch at a time, their polished boots sliding forward in the sand. Over the tops of their masks, they glared at Hayden with unbridled conviction, all drawing from that common well of hate. They despised him for his suns-bleached clothes, his dirty skin, and the hollows beneath his eyes. But mostly, they despised him because any one of them could have been him. Luck dictated where you ended up in this city. A stroke of good luck had allocated their grandparents lodgings in one of the higher-tiered wards closest to the hub. They'd never have had the opportunity to become guardians otherwise. Ill luck had rolled the dice against our grandparents, which was why we found ourselves quarantined in a plague ward—a filthy corner of the city that Madra hoped to starve to death or else allow sickness to bite chunks out of us until we all had the common courtesy to die.
