The bent elbow forms a point, you see?He’d shown her using his own arm.It fits perfectly below the enemy’s ribs.
“The former king was a tyrant,” Safire was saying, her voice sharp with warning. As if speaking against the commandant and her cousins was a felony in itself.
Never fight fair,the captain’s voice rang through her mind. You understand? That’s not how you stay alive.
“I’m not judging you for killing him, princess. I’m just wondering....” Eris kept her gaze locked with Safire’s as she clenched her small fist. “Can it truly be justice when those who enforce the laws are the only ones exempt from them?”
Safire’s nostrils flared.
Before she could lash out, Eris punched—right where Jemsin showed her, all those years ago. Into the soft place beneath the girl’s ribs.
The air whooshed out of Safire as her eyes went wide. She doubled over in shock, her knife falling away from Eris’s throat, gasping for a breath that wouldn’t come.
Eris wasted no time. She took several steps away from the bed, then ran, diving beneath it and alongside Safire’s makeshiftrope, grabbing the dropped knife as she did. Her slight frame slid swiftly and easily to the other side, putting half the room between her and Safire within heartbeats.
Only half recovered from Eris’s punch, the commandant yanked on the rope, but there was too much slack now. Nothing happened.
Eris bent down and slashed the silk with Safire’s knife.
It severed easily.
Fingers trembling, Eris withdrew her spindle from its pouch and immediately drew it across the floor tiles. The night seemed to deepen. A bright line—pale as starlight—flared to life. It quickly formed a threshold over which silver mist poured and rolled. The air turned damp, cold, and with it came the gentle pull ofAcross.
It was then, with the door to another place yawning open before her, that Eris hesitated a second time.
Rising to her feet, she looked across the room to where Safire stood in her nightdress: her nostrils flaring, her mouth pinched with fury. Fully recovered.
I’m going to miss playing this game with you,Eris thought. The commandant had proven to be a formidable opponent.
“It’s been fun, princess. But I have to go.”
Safire moved, coming around the bed now. Coming straight for Eris. “The only place you’re going is into a prison cell, thief....”
The mist swirled, concealing her now.
“Good-bye,” Eris said softly, stepping into the gray. Leaving the commandant behind. Trading the palace of Firgaard for apath of mist and starlight.
She heard Safire begin to say something else, but the words were lost. Which was how Eris knew she was already a world away.
When the mist receded and Eris opened her eyes, she was alone.
But that was all right. Eris was used to being alone.
Loneliness was a small price to pay for staying alive.
The Shadow and the Fisherman’s Daughter
Once there lived a boy with eyes as black as the sea, hands as swift as the wind, and footsteps as silent as death. He was a creature of the shadows who walked through the world alone and unheard and unseen.
But the fisherman’s daughter saw him.
Whenever he passed by her father’s wharf, Skye shivered. Each time she looked up, she saw the shadow moving through the meadow. Curious, she stepped away from the women of the cove and the codfish drying on the salt flakes, and followed him.
The first time, she followed the lonely shape of him for three days. By the time he turned around and saw her, Skye was weak with hunger.
The shadow recoiled at the sight of her.
Skye knew what she looked like. Her body was too small, too slight, too bony. Her eyes were set too wide apart and one of them always looked in the wrong direction.
