Hands Like Secrets, page 9
The woman nods, the barest tilting of her crimson-clad head.
“I don’t have to kill nine Anjahel,” Rafel taunts in a louder voice, “when I can simply threaten one student.”
Before I can react, he’s yanked me around so that I am in full view. The Priestess lets out a strangled sound.
“Wait!”
Her professors falter in their weaving. I twist my head and let my dark hair obscure my face, not even having to pretend to be frightened. Then Rafel is shoving me to the ground, and we are ‘porting.
I’m pretty sure I scream, but it’s swallowed in the lurch and colors.
We land on a cracked, narrow street, dark shops lining both sides. That’s all I have time to observe before he yanks me up and takes off running, me in tow. Boarded windows flash past in a blur as I struggle to keep up. I search in vain for some familiar landmark; however, even though I’d been born and raised in Aschera, I’ve never been to this part of the city.
Rafel pulls me into a narrow alley between two boarded-up, white-splattered buildings — ankarka smears, courtesy of Aschera’s large bird population— and thrusts us both against the wall. It is then that I realize we are alone; his tall Iadnahn partner must have teleported elsewhere. When a few tense moments pass with no sound of pursuit, I feel him exhale, his grip on my wrist lessening slightly.
This is my chance.
I wrench my arm free and sprint for the alley entrance. His world is just too dark, too frightening, too incomprehensible, and I still don’t know what he wants with me. And after that weird, tense encounter with his cell, after watching him torture somebody...I decide that I don’t want to know.
I manage maybe a dozen steps before he catches my wrist again.
“Let me go!” My voice cracks. He says nothing, only rakes me with those pale, soul-cutting eyes.
“Look, you outran them.” I gesture with my free hand. “You don’t need me anymore.”
“Don’t need you?” he echoes in an incredulous voice. “I just risked my life, my suras’ life, and my point-runners to get you out from under Aschamon’s wing for a watch or two.”
“Why?” I cry, exasperated. “What do you want?”
His mouth curls in a half-smile. “To talk.”
Anger curls in my chest; I am done with this charade.
I whirl and knock his hand away. He darts forward, but I sidestep to the inside and snap my arm around, seizing enough qi to give him a jolt to the solar plexus. If I can just stun him for a few seconds, I have a chance of teleporting away.
He deftly blocks my thrust; qi sizzles between our locked wrists.
Undeterred, I use my momentum to step behind his back and come in from the other side. He spins and strikes first, catching my hand in a crushing grip. We remain locked like that for a few seconds, my heart still pumping with rage.
Rafel grins, teeth flashing in the dimness. “You have good instincts. But let me make myself clear.”
In the space of a heartbeat, he swoops behind me, scooping up a handful of my hair and laying his face next to mine. I freeze, all the rest of the hair on my body standing up. His touch is softer than a pawa wing, but all the more uncomfortable for that.
“You aren’t going anywhere except with me.” He runs his fingers from my scalp to the tips of my hair, drawing a pained sound from me. “And unless—are you whimpering? I’m not hurting you.”
Except he is and doesn’t realize it; every slight tug against my scalp is like blueflies crawling over my body.
“Hair,” I gasp out. “Don’t touch...sensitive. Please.”
To his credit, he stops with the hair touching, though he still doesn’t let me go.
“Unless you cooperate,” he says, as though he hadn’t been interrupted, “you’ll not see the inside of your cozy little dorm room again.”
I consider a dozen offensive forms and discard them all with a shiver. He’s too fast, and I’m not combat-trained. What’s left of my anger ebbs, leaving the bitter taste of fear in its place. Fear for my life...
...but also fear of how much I am starting to like this Cowl, a feeling that grows every time he outwits or outmaneuvers me like it’s nothing.
I’ve never met anyone with smarts and charm and daring like his. He fights like a seraph and by the gods, he’s almost as beautiful as one. What on Verre could such a man want with a nobody, a failure like me?
It just doesn’t make sense. Nothing about him makes sense.
I press my lips together. He’s still the most dangerous Cowl on Verre, Saeli. With his skill, you’re as helpless as a downed taufen bird in a rainstorm.
“You’ll let me go?” I ask softly. “If I listen?”
He steps in front of me and holds out a hand.
“I will.”
His face holds no trace of mockery that I can discern, but I still hesitate.
“Swear it by your goddess,” I say in a burst of inspiration.
“What has she got to do with this?” He raises an eyebrow. “You either believe me, or you don’t.”
I hesitate for another moment, but the unorthodox answer, strangely, convinces me he’s being serious. I finally put my hand into his.
“Fine.”
He smiles, the barest lifting of lips.
“Let’s go, then.”
Chapter 11
“What?” My skin prickles. Going is not talking. “Go where?”
“Aschamon’s echelon will comb the city, looking for me,” he explains. “They’ll give it up for the night when they get you back, but meanwhile,” and he peeks out of the alleyway, “it’s harder to locate a moving target.”
I have to concede the logic of this, though the prospect of dodging my professors like a criminal, like a Cowl, makes me feel sick again.
He leads me down the moonlit street in silence, not touching me, not even looking back to make sure I’m still there. His absolute confidence that I’ll follow rankles at first—does he think I would just blindly trail after a Crimson Cowl? —but after a while, I wonder if I’ve misjudged him.
Maybe it isn’t arrogance on his part, but honor.
I’ve seen enough of his twisted sense of honor to suspect that if our positions were reversed, and he’d given his word to follow, he would keep it. He must know I’d done as he asked and pretended we hadn’t met last night, or I’d have not been so easy to kidnap from Aschamon.
Of course, that probably proved I should have told the High Priestess the truth...
No. If I start thinking about all the what-ifs, I’ll drive myself crazy.
I study Rafel’s black-clad, red-hooded figure as we walk. Despite what he’d done to Arik, I’m starting to think the most dangerous Cowl on Verre is not a leader who rules by fear. He might like his enemies to be afraid, but he wants his allies to trust him.
I wonder what that makes me, in his eyes.
“So talk,” I say, breaking the quiet.
He glances at me. “You do go right to the heart of things, don’t you?”
I grind my teeth. Switching back to charm again, are we?
“And you seem determined to flit around it as long as possible,” I point out. “In case you haven’t noticed, you’ve got me all to yourself now. Maybe keeping me off-balance makes you feel powerful, but there’s no need anymore.”
His eyebrows drop, but his eyes and mouth soften, and for a moment, he looks less cold and implacable and more...mortal. Yet his expression is still impossible to read.
“Off-balance people are more honest,” he admits. “I’ve been trying to figure you out since you followed me into that sorarc tower.”
My heart skips, though I sternly order it to knock it off.
“And?”
“You have strong convictions, and you are unwilling to change them to conform. I suspect Aschamon has not been kind to you as a result. Your struggles have cultivated an extraordinary level of courage and discipline in you, but you are still naive, your true strength untested.”
His eyes rake over me. “And you’d make a terrible Mantle.”
After so many unexpected compliments, the last words are like a knife in the gut. I’ve questioned my own heart a thousand times, but to hear a Crimson Cowl voice what I fear my professors believe...I look away, unwilling to let him see how much that hurts.
“If you think tonight makes me a Cowl sympathizer,” I say, biting off my words, “you are mistaken.”
“Why did you defend your Priestess so bravely last night?” he asks.
I stare at him. “Because you were going to kill her!”
“Precisely!”
He steps in front of me, forcing me to halt. I shake my head.
“I don’t understand.”
“Unlike the Anjahel student I had to kill, you didn’t care at that moment who or what I was. You didn’t care that I was defiling your god’s sacred space. Her life was your only concern.” Rafel leans closer. “I let you live because I saw kindness, rather than zealotry, in your actions.”
He runs a finger along my jawline, making me shiver. “I am not a monster, Gray Robe. Piety I would have killed you for, but you cared; valiantly, passionately.”
I shake my head again, harder, ignoring his touch. “Cowls care nothing for kindness.”
“So you’ve been led to believe.” He steps back, leaving my skin tingling. “You weren’t defending a Mantle High Priestess last night; you were defending a woman who meant something to you. That’s not Mantle courage.” He smiles; warmly, sincerely. “That is real courage. Courage enough to stay my hand.”
With that he walks on, leaving me no choice but to trail behind again.
How in shayol does a Cowl talk about kindness, courage, or any of that? I rub my jaw, my emotions a tangled mess. Especially after what he did to that Arik not ten minutes ago?
The mystery that is Rafel Kailar just keeps deepening, drawing me further and further in.
We round a corner and come upon a fountain carved with ivy, delicate sunrose, and oleansel flowers. The bowl, however, is dry, cracked, and coated with old feathers and white ankarka smears. I frown and truly look around the neighborhood for the first time.
Boarded windows, narrow streets, dirt, grime, and kark that clings to everything. No wonder I hadn’t recognized this place. Such slums dot the city, tucked in alleyways and between prosperous neighborhoods; places that are falling apart, places where the destitute endure as best they can.
Places the Council of Aschera likes to pretend don’t exist.
“This fountain angers you.” Rafel comes up behind me.
“How would a killer like you know what angers me?” I shoot back, hiding my unease at his perceptiveness. Because it is hard to conceal the feelings this place dredges up, harder still to ignore those sharp, cunning eyes on my back.
“I see it in your eyes, the same passion I saw last night when you defied me to save your Priestess.” He plants himself in front of me. “Suffering and death and pain make you angry, and not because your god demands your ire. Not because it means your side is winning or losing. With you, it’s far simpler.”
I force a smile. “You think you’ve got me all figured out.”
“You care, Gray Robe,” he continues as I stare hard at his collarbone. “And you don’t even realize how extraordinary that is. They haven’t managed to brainwash it out of you yet. You don’t judge people by status, pretty words, the color of their clothes, or to which god they swear allegiance. You judge people by the simplest, truest metric: their actions.”
His voice drops to a near whisper.
“That is the real reason you are still alive and I am still free.”
My jaw clenches, because damn him, he’s right. He’s more right than he could know.
Once, when I was younger, my mother and I had detoured through a slum on our way home from shopping. A wares wagon overturned on South Street that day, blocking traffic, and our cab driver was forced to take a different route. My mother warned that certain places were “not as nice” as our neighborhood, but the reality had shocked my eight-year-old self.
Grime-streaked, roofless shells of buildings, broken windows like dark, lidless eyes. Piles of rotting food and garbage staining cracked cobblestones. Poisonous gila lizards feasted in the shadows while voors watched from the eaves, beady eyes bright in their red, mottled heads. The stench of urine and unwashed bodies was nauseating.
And the people, those poor, pathetic people huddled in corners, wrapped in rags, their wary eyes watching us as we bumped along the rough road.
“Do they live here?” I’d asked my mother, tears in my eyes. “Why doesn’t the Council help? Don’t they know?”
“They know,” Tammar answered in a grim voice. “But this is nothing compared to what the Crimson Cowls would unleash upon our world if we lose this war. All suffering can be traced back to them, Saeli.” She pulled me close and turned my face away, running a gentle hand through my hair. “Remember that.”
I had cried then.
Not from fear of Cowls, but because my mother’s stern, beautiful eyes were dry when she asked our driver to speed up.
Years later, when I’d enrolled at Aschamon, I learned that our Council had every intention of dealing with the slums, just as soon as the Cowls were defeated. After the Mantle conquest of Iadnah four years previous and the fall of the last southern Cowl strongholds, it was thought that ultimate victory was nigh. I threw myself into my studies with the hope that by the time I graduated, the war would be over, and I’d be free to do the work that desperately needed doing in Aschera.
The year I became the oldest gray at the school was also the year I realized most of the pious words spouted by the echelon were just that: words.
Because the war drags on.
The Council constantly complains that the cowardly gilas barricade themselves in the mountains, that it will take time to root them out, and that Isasar’s people just need to be patient. The memory of our victory at Iadnah grows dimmer every year. The war drags on, as it always has, and people have stopped talking about an end.
I glare at the crumbling statue of Isasar poised at the center of that silent fountain. Twigs and yellownape feathers, remnants of a long-abandoned nest, cling to the god’s sun crown. Isasar’s eyes have cracked off and fallen into the bowl. One hand is missing entirely.
Helplessness and yes, anger sweeps over me, feelings born in a slum like this when I was eight years old. Feelings I’d bargained around, dismissed, and finally hidden away entirely in my quest to wear the Silver.
“Cowls did not do this,” I say aloud. “This is the inevitable result of Aschera’s war tax. It’s how the Council affords to keep sending supplies and reinforcements to the mountains.” My fist clenches. “They refuse to see how it’s starving Aschera’s working class, as surely as any enemy siege would.”
“Is it worth it?” Rafel’s face reveals nothing of his feelings. “Is making one’s people suffer a fair price for our destruction?”
“Evil must be rooted out and vanquished at any cost.” So I’d been taught all my life.
“Are we evil?”
I perch on the edge of the fountain with a sigh. Because isn’t that precisely the question that’s always plagued me, that spurred me to obsess over every piece of Cowl lore I’d ever gotten my hands on? If the Crimson Cowls aren’t every bit as evil as our Anjahel make them out to be, then how can our war with them be just?
If they aren’t evil, then our majahel are being sent to die in the mountains for nothing. Aschera is starving itself for nothing. It feels morbidly appropriate, somehow, that a Cowl should be the one to finally voice such a blasphemous but inescapable notion.
“Gods, how can I even answer that?” I scoop up a black, mangled feather and rub it between my fingers. “Does that make me a sympathizer? You’re the only Cowl I’ve ever talked to.”
“Fair enough.” He sits beside me. “Let’s narrow it down to lived experience, then. Am I evil?”
My gaze wanders over the sleek musculature of his bare arms, his graceful fingers gripping the edge of the fountain bowl.
“You murdered Jeroen last night for getting in your way.”
“Was that his name?” His face is frustratingly neutral. “Unfortunate necessity.”
“You tortured a member of your cell.” The memory prompts a full-body shudder, and I zip a few feather barbs with my fingernails. “For talking back to you.”
“I demand respect and obedience from them.” Rafel’s brows furrow. “As their ras, I must. What if he’d challenged my authority when those Anjahel showed up? He’d be dead, and who knows how many more with him. Besides, I’ll wager that Kae is the best Healer in this region.”
He nudges down the neck of his tunic, baring his shoulder. I flush hard before realizing he’s just showing off the seraph wound from the night before. The mark is only a faint red scar, now. My eyebrows climb; I’ve spent enough time around Fien to recognize healing expertise when I see it.
“Arik won’t even carry scars.” Rafel covers his shoulder again.
Is he justifying his actions to me? Does he think that will be enough for me to trust him? I frown.
Is it?
“Intent to murder, then,” I say. “You would have killed our High Priestess while she lay helpless.”
“One life for many,” he counters. “Not to mention, I changed my mind.”
“You hit me that night in the Temple,” I recall, touching my cheek. I’d almost forgotten the incident since so much else had happened.
“And then I healed you.”
“Nice men don’t hit women,” I point out.
“I have never claimed to be nice.” He directs a dark look straight into my heart that makes me shiver. “I want to know if you think I am evil.”
I let the black feather go, and watch it float down to my feet. “Technically you’ve kidnapped me. That’s pretty evil.”
He smiles. “I will let you go back.”
“Blackmail, then.” I narrow my eyes. “To get me out here.”
He shrugs. I have him there.
“You refuse to tell me what you want with me.” I seize the advantage. “You’re keeping secrets.”
