The Messenger's Last Road

The Hollow district smelled of wet wool, coal smoke and old fish.

It lay at the bottom of the city, in the crooked shadow of the citadel's great south wall, where the narrow streets twisted like roots and the houses leaned together so closely that their roofs almost touched. Washing hung between the upper windows. Children ran barefoot through puddles. A thin, grey, drizzling rain had started at dawn, and nobody paid us the slightest attention.

That was the point.

I wore a faded brown dress and a patched shawl that Mara had found in the laundry. My hair was bound in a plain scarf. On my feet were a servant's boots, one size too large, stuffed with rags at the toes. I looked, I thought, like a woman who scrubbed floors for a living.

Beside me, Kael looked like a dockworker who had been in a lot of fights.

He had put on a rough grey coat and a cap pulled low, and dirt rubbed along his jaw. He had also, somehow, made himself shorter. He slouched. He walked with a slight roll to his step. But he could not hide the width of his shoulders, or the quiet, alert way he moved through the crowd, and more than one woman in the market looked at him twice.

I tried not to mind.

"You are scowling," he murmured.

"I am not."

"You are scowling at a fishmonger."

"She was staring at you."

"Was she?" His voice held a note of dry amusement. "I assumed she was staring at you."

I did not answer. It was safest.

Behind us, ten paces back, Dorian walked with a young guard named Corin, both in plain clothes, both pretending very hard to be bored.

Harlow & Son, Teas & Spices, was a narrow shop wedged between a cobbler and a pawnbroker at the end of Hollow Street. The shutters were closed. A sign hung from a single hook, swinging in the drizzle. CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

"Convenient," said Kael.

"Very."

We circled round to the back, where a rotting wooden gate led into a cramped yard. The kitchen door was locked, but a window beside it had been left half-open. Inside, the shelves had been stripped. Tin canisters lay overturned on the floor. A broom leaned in a corner, and a spilled bag of cloves had scattered across the boards in a rust-coloured drift.

"Someone left in a hurry," Dorian said, vaulting lightly over the sill.

"Or someone wanted us to think so." Kael dropped in after him. I followed, with Corin's help, and landed with a small grunt on the dusty floor.

"There is nothing here," said Corin, turning a crate over with his boot.

"There is always something," said Kael.

I walked slowly along the wall. I had grown up in a house where secrets lived in odd places: behind loose bricks, under floorboards, in the hollow handle of a kitchen knife. I ran my fingers along the shelf. Under the counter, I found a small wooden drawer, and it came open with a faint, dry creak.

Inside lay a single scrap of paper, folded in half.

Delivery for the citadel. Fifteen tins. Paid in advance by the woman in the green hood.

The handwriting was neat. The sum written below was enormous.

"A woman," I said, and handed it to Kael.

"A green hood." He read it twice, then tucked it into his coat. "The boy's mother."

Tam Garrow's mother lived two streets away, on the third floor of a crumbling tenement that smelled of boiled cabbage. She was a thin, stooped woman called Bess, with a grey braid and red, swollen eyes, and she opened the door only a crack when Kael knocked.

"We are from the citadel," he said. "We have come about Tam."

She looked at his rough coat, then at me, then back at him. Her face went blank. Then it went slack. She said, in a small, strange voice, "You are the king."

Kael froze.

"I saw you once," Bess whispered. "At the harvest feast. You rode a black horse. You gave my boy an apple." She sagged against the doorframe and began to cry, without sound. "Oh, Majesty, I did not know. I did not know he was working for anyone."

Kael was silent for a long moment. Then he stepped forward, took the old woman's thin shoulders in his hands, and said, with perfect gentleness, "I know. Come and sit."

I watched him lead her to a three-legged stool by the fire, kneel in front of her, and wait. He did not say a word until her sobs had quieted. He was patient. He was kind. He had no idea, I thought, how rare a thing that was.

"Tell me about the woman in the green hood," he said.

"She came three weeks ago. To the market." Bess dabbed her eyes. "She was well-dressed. She spoke softly. She said she had a job for a quick boy, an errand, a few coins. Tam jumped at it. We were behind on rent." Her voice cracked. "He said it was only deliveries. He said she was kind. He never told me he was going to the citadel."

"Did you see her face?"

"No. The hood. But she wore a ring." She held up a gnarled finger. "A big silver ring, with a green stone. Cut like a leaf."

Kael glanced at me. I gave a tiny nod. It meant nothing yet. But a woman who could afford silver and emeralds and a poison made by an expert was no ordinary hireling.

"Thank you," he said. "You have helped more than you know."

"Will you catch her?"

"I will."

"Promise me." Bess gripped his sleeve. "Promise you will catch her, Majesty."

I held my breath.

"I promise," said Kael, and the old woman bowed her head over his hand.

We left the tenement shortly after noon, and the street felt different.

I noticed it first in the quiet. The market stalls had thinned. The children had vanished from the gutters. The clatter of cartwheels had stopped, and in its place came a heavy, listening hush, like a held breath.

"Kael," I said.

"I know."

"Where did everyone go?"

"Home. Quickly." His hand closed around mine and tucked it into the crook of his elbow, as if to anchor me. His voice was calm, but the muscles in his arm were rigid. "Dorian. Corin."

"I see them, Majesty," Dorian said, very quietly, from somewhere behind us. "Six. No, eight. On the rooftops."

I looked up.

At first I saw nothing but wet slate and grey sky. Then a shape moved against the chimney pots. A broad, shaggy outline. Two yellow eyes. A low rumble drifted down the street, and it was not thunder.

"Ironfang," said Kael, and his voice went flat and cold. "They wear iron collars. They are far from home."

"How many?"

"Enough."

Wolves poured into the alley from both ends.

They were huge, grey and mean-eyed, with thick ruffs and scarred muzzles, and they wore collars of black iron studded with spikes. Their lips curled back from yellow teeth. Behind them, in the shadow of an archway, stood a tall man in a hooded cloak, his face hidden, his hands folded patiently. He watched us as one watches a cart roll toward a cliff.

I could see their threads.

Two of the larger wolves, the ones at the front, trailed bright, even lines behind them. Silver wire, stretched tight. Leashes. They ran back through the archway and up into the grey sky, and they were pulled so taut that the wolves' heads strained forward on their necks.

Not their choice, I thought wildly. Somebody is driving them.

"Elena," Kael said, without looking at me. "Get behind me."

"Kael—"

"Behind. Me."

I obeyed. And then the king of Valmoor did something I had never seen, and that I would never forget.

He tore off his rough coat. He dropped his cap. His shoulders rolled, his spine bowed, and the air around him seemed to shiver and bend. A low, terrible sound came out of his chest, half growl and half roar. Black fur rippled over his arms. His face lengthened. His hands split into claws.

Then there was a wolf where the man had been.

He was enormous. Easily twice the size of the Ironfang beasts, black as a moonless night, with a broad chest and a powerful, ridged back. His eyes blazed amber. His teeth were as long as my fingers. He stood in the middle of the muddy alley with the grey rain bouncing off his shoulders, and the whole street seemed to shrink around him.

Varro, I thought. I could not look away.

The first Ironfang wolf lunged.

Kael met it in mid-air with a crash that shook the cobbles. They went down in a tangle of fur and claws. Blood sprayed across the wall. A second wolf leaped at Dorian, who had shifted to a rangy brown wolf, and a third went for young Corin. The alley exploded in snarls and the awful wet sound of tearing.

I pressed my back to a doorway and clutched the sleeve of my shawl, and for one terrible heartbeat I thought: I cannot do anything. I am useless. I have no wolf.

Then a gigantic grey shape broke through the fighting and charged straight at me.

I saw its open jaws. I saw the iron collar glinting. I saw the bright, taut leash dragging it forward like a puppet on a string.

Run, said every instinct I had.

I stood still instead. I raised my left hand, the one with the old scar, and I looked straight at the wolf's thread, and I thought with every ounce of will I possessed: Let go.

The thread shivered.

The grey wolf faltered in mid-stride, skidding in the mud. Its yellow eyes cleared, just for an instant. It looked at me, bewildered, as though waking from a dream.

And then something black and enormous hit it from the side and tore it away from me.

Kael stood over the fallen wolf, panting, his muzzle red. He had not been in time. I had not needed him. But I saw the way he looked at me over the body, with something wild and burning in his amber eyes, and I knew he had seen what I had done.

Varro took one slow step toward me. He lowered his great head. A soft, uncertain whine rose in his throat.

I stared at the wolf, and the wolf stared at me. And behind the fur and the fangs and the rain, I could have sworn I saw the king looking out through the beast's eyes, shaken to his core.