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She could do nothing about her lack of shoes or the grime that covered her bare feet. But she would think of something. She always did.
Gripping the handle of the guitar case in her hand, she walked out of the swamp and to the edge of the fire’s warmth. Two men sat on the end of a covered wagon that was parked by the fire’s edge. One had dark black skin, his head shaved on the sides, the thick hair in the middle styled into short twists. The other man seemed his mirror opposite, his pale skin and long blond hair a sharp contrast.
And yet she knew, looking at them, that they were less opposites than they were different sides of the same coin. Complements.
They looked at her, and that soft light that had drawn her back to herself washed over her again, beckoning her forward. She dug her heels in and stood. She couldn’t tell which of them the light came from. They were too close, the blond leaning back against the other man’s chest.
The short-haired man spoke, his voice deep and melodious, and she didn’t understand a word he said. Had she forgotten how to speak? Did words only make sense in her mind, in her thoughts? Hesitant, she opened her mouth. Her throat, disused to speech, made a single hoarse word. “Hello.”
“Hello,” the man replied, and this time she understood it. Because, her brain put together, there were more languages than one in the world, and he’d switched to the tongue she’d used after her greeting.
Common, the universal language of the Faelhorn Provinces.
“I’m Marquin,” he continued, “and this is Verol.” He indicated the blond who still hadn’t spoken. “Do you have a name?”
For a heart-pounding second, she didn’t have an answer. Then her spine steeled and the name came to her lips. “Clare. I’m Clare Brighton.”
“Well, Clare Brighton, if you play that”—he nodded at the guitar—“you’re welcome to travel with us. We’re going to Veralna City.”
It couldn’t be this easy, this simple, to get to somewhere new. And yet she felt no fear, no danger from the two men before her. That they were dangerous, she had no doubt. But it was easy enough to read that, so long as she didn’t come between them, they were not a danger to her.
She licked her dry lips, hesitant. But she had a promise to keep. One she’d made to herself from years of blood and pain and enduring. If she was going to keep it, she needed something she didn’t have. Something she intended to gain in the capital city of the Faelhorn Provinces. She licked her lips again, her tongue catching on the rough, peeling cracks in them. “I’m going to Veralna, too.”
Shadows flickered in the depths of Marquin’s eyes, as if he’d known she would accept their offer, but had hoped she might not.
“Then come sit by the fire”—he nodded to the empty chair that indeed sat by the flames, as if waiting for her—“and play us a song.”
Chapter One
The Hawk and Scepter
The life Clare Brighton remembered as she stared at the door to the Hawk and Scepter, willing herself the courage to enter, was not her own. It was some other young woman’s life, one to whom cities and inns and civilization were ordinary, expected things.
She sank herself into the normality those memories offered, even as a small part of her wondered if the woman whose life she’d donned like a cloak had actually existed. Were these real memories, taking the edge off her uneasiness, or were they simply a pretty dream she told herself? A pretty dream that steadied her nerves as she grasped the handle of the inn’s door. A pretty dream that let her paste a bright, unworried smile on her face as she stepped into the inn’s tavern, guitar case clutched in her left hand.
For all the loftiness of its name, the Hawk and Scepter huddled in Veralna’s Midtown, and the bad edge of Midtown, at that. Still, the quality of the carpets in the dining area, the rich mahogany of the bar and chairs, the ornate attention to detail in the fixtures, showed the innkeeper hoped to earn a clientele to match the majesty of the inn’s name. He had even paid for magelights that glowed pure white, when the yellow ones cost a quarter of the price. They shone from within small spherical cages of white stone, and though she knew it wasn’t quellstone, it looked so like it that the sight tore her from the pretty fictions she’d told herself to get through this door.
The cloak of civility fell away and she wasn’t some farmer’s daughter who navigated city streets on market days and dreamed of happy futures. She was a nameless, feral thing, one whose closest brush with stability had come at a cost no human should pay, and she was mad to have come here. To the capital city of the Faelhorn Provinces, with its rules that were so different from those in the place she had survived. It mattered little that she’d been trained for this place, this society. She didn’t think any amount of knowledge on how to act and dress and speak could ever truly make her belong here and it would be easy—so easy—to leave.
The innkeeper was nowhere in sight, the only patron an early afternoon drunk. Her hand clenched tighter on the guitar case. Her resolve wavered and in that instant the Song struck, sinking hooks into the opening her hesitation provided, raging its fury against the cage she had locked it inside. The force of its anger blossomed as heat in her head, as if Ferrian’s own flames licked at the insides of her skull.
The taste of dirt coated the back of her tongue, the smell of moss and swamp water thick in her nose. The stone floor beneath her worn boots gave way to the feel of brittle bones snapping underneath the bare soles of her feet. Her vision doubled, the bright interior of the inn overlapped by hanging vines and murky water. She could almost hear the call of a marsh loon, or the soft swish of something rising from deep water long enough to break the surface before disappearing once more into its depths.
Madness clouded her thoughts, comforting in its familiarity, its power, its safety.
Come back. The Song’s voice swam through her mind, a soft, resonant contralto. She had fought it, she had betrayed it, and she had caged it, but it would welcome her back.
All she had to do was let go.
The drunk coughed with startling loudness, the roughness of the sound shocking Clare back to the present. She grabbed hold of the momentary clarity with lion’s jaws, reciting the words that had become her mantra for sanity.
You are Clare Brighton. You fled Renault County and lived, and you are in control.
The mantra strengthened the bars of the Song’s cage and the power quieted, her senses emptying of everything save the sight of the rich interior of the inn, the sound of the drunk’s throat clearing another time. Clare did not make the mistake of hesitating again. She forced herself to be a woman and not the madness. She would not turn back now. She had made a promise, and to keep that promise, she needed power. To gain power, she needed money, and to gain money, she needed adoration. Adoration required an audience.
She clutched the guitar case more firmly in her hand and took a seat at the bar. For a woman who needed the world to fall in love with her, she was grateful the establishment was almost empty. The soft corners of civilization rasped irritatingly against her skin, and she did not think she could handle a crowd. Later she would have to, but for now she had only to contend with the middle-aged drunk three seats down.
His stomach strained at the edges of a shirt he apparently refused to admit no longer fit. His bleary-eyed face hung over his wine tankard. The cut of his clothes was expensive, though the fabric’s wear told Clare he was not as well-off as he had once been.
