He made a face—the same one he always made when he was about to give in but didn’t like it. She’d seen it a lot over the years, and it always made her feel a little guilty. Especially this time.
“Being a mage will just make you a target,” he murmured, “especially if you advertise it.”
“I know that,” she replied tartly. “I can take care of myself.”
“What about the rest of the semester?”
“I already contacted the headmaster. I have to do this, Zach. And I have to do it now.”
He stared at her for a moment longer, but then his eyes finally softened. “I had a feeling you’d say that.”
Eve raised an eyebrow. “But you came here anyway?”
“I figured it was worth a try.” He smiled and reached into his pocket. Inside was another train ticket. “But I am going with you.”
“Zach…”
“You’re not arguing this,” he said flatly. “I haven’t found work around here yet anyway, and I have at least another few months before the army ships me off again.”
Eve tried her best to glare at him, to hold firm and insist he not do anything so foolish. But her heart wasn’t in it, and finally she just sighed and leaned forward to hug him. His umbrella dropped to the ground, and he wrapped his arms around her back. It was the same embrace that had calmed her ten years ago when her father had died. It was the same embrace she had grown to depend on since she was a child, and one she had desperately missed in the last two years.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Come on. Let’s go inside.”
Chapter One
“One drake,” the charlatan proclaimed. “Just one drake for an authentic Sunoan necklace. Straight from Vayrise, it is! You want one for your sweetheart, son? Make her neck as pretty as her eyes.”
“Uh, no, thank you,” Zach said as politely as he could manage while still pushing through the veritable wall of other shills. He clamped his hand over his wallet for good measure, and he noticed that Eve was clutching onto her purse with both hands.
“They really need to make this illegal,” she muttered once they’d finally made it through. “Half the lines in there are because of these kreel.”
“It seems to get worse every year.” He glanced back over his shoulder to check if anyone was following them. So far the people seemed more concerned with escaping the swindlers than paying attention to him and Eve. “Let’s just try and get to the exit.”
In any practical sense, Radbury Station had no right being as busy or as large as it was. Zach’s parents had lived out here some twenty years ago before the tracks had been laid, and at the time Radbury had barely been more than a poor fishing village. But for some reason the station itself had become the major junction of every rail entering or leaving the north-eastern coast, and at this point the collection of ramshackle cabins had been replaced with chintzy coin stores and street-side peddlers.
He’d traveled through a dozen similar towns overseas in Esharia during his tour there, but Radbury was the worst of them all. He couldn’t put his finger on why, exactly, though part of it was undoubtedly because he had no desire to be here. The smell certainly didn’t help, either.
“If they’re going to insist on hawking all this useless drek, they could at least offer gas masks,” Zach grumbled as the two of them finally stepped out of the main building. “Goddess, I’d settle for a thick towel to put over my face.”
“And you say I’m the prissy one,” Eve chided, though her nose was wrinkled. She squinted out to the horizon and the double silos silhouetted against the crimson skyline. Each stack was busy spewing out a black cloud of Goddess-knew-what into the air. “It’ll just get worse if Chaval wins the election. He’ll build those things all over the country.”
Zach winced at the mention of the Industrialist Party leader. He didn’t particularly care for Chaval’s politics, but the man was wildly popular out west. Publically disparaging him was a bad idea all around.
“Maybe, but I think we should keep those observations private,” he said softly.
She rolled her eyes. “We aren’t in Vaschberg yet, you know. And I’m not afraid of his Dusty thugs.”
“You should be.”
Eve stopped and looked over to him. “You’re doing it again. You promised.”
He opened his mouth to reply but stopped himself before anything came out. She’d been scolding him for days about his overprotectiveness. She kept saying he was “acting like a tough guy,” but this had nothing to do with being macho. They were both in danger here, whether she wanted to admit it or not.
“You’d think with all these other shops there’d be a café or something around here,” Eve said, glancing about the buildings surrounding the station. “I think that might be a diner over there on the left a few blocks up.”
“It’s a little far,” he pointed out. “If we take too long we might miss the train. I’d rather not be stuck here all night.”
Eve shrugged. “I bet ours will be late. People complain all the time about these things running behind schedule. Come on, I’m hungry.”
She walked ahead, he begrudgingly followed. He’d been expecting trouble for days now, ever since he’d first gotten home. The police thought the murder was a random shooting, but Eve had never believed that. At first she’d assumed it was a targeted attack by one of the Dusty gangs. They’d been assaulting magi out west for years now, and things had gotten so bad that even most of the temple priestesses out there had migrated east. Rumor had it that the gangs had been gaining strength out here now, too, and Zach had read in the papers that there’d even been shootings as far north as Selerius, the nation’s capital.
Once Eve realized that one of her mother’s books was missing, she’d started thinking it was more than just a hate crime. Zach wasn’t sure what he believed yet, but if the murder had been more than a random spat of violence—if the killers had targeted Tara DeShane intentionally—then they might come after Eve, too.
But nothing had happened while they were in Lushden. He hadn’t seen anyone lurking around the house or following them around town, and other than neighbors stopping by to express their condolences, the two of them had been left alone. Eventually he’d finally started to let his guard down, but the moment they’d pulled into Radbury Station a mental alarm had been ringing in his head.
And it was getting louder.
“Do you know that man over there, by chance?” Zach asked, gesturing with his head. “The balding guy with the brown jacket and newspaper.”
Eve frowned as she followed his eyes. “You mean the guy under the streetlamp? I’ve never seen him before. Why?”
“Because he’s looked over at us about five times since we left the station.”
“Maybe he likes my dress,” she muttered.
Zach frowned. It was probably nothing. It was almost certainly nothing, in fact. But that didn’t silence his mental alarm or make him feel any better. He eyed the stranger as they moved, trying to be as subtle about it as he could. The man didn’t look over at them again or even so much as flinch when they walked past, and Zach wondered briefly if he really was just being paranoid about the whole thing.
It was perhaps ten seconds later that he noticed a second man watching them from a bench just down the street near the café. He locked eyes with Zach for just an instant before smiling politely and then glancing away again. It was just the kind of thing a random stranger might do. A stranger…or a professional who didn’t want to blow his cover.
“Drek,” Zach swore, his stomach tightening. His mind flashed back to his last mission in the Kelpek border region when his unit was being stalked by rebels in the forest…
“What’s wrong with you?” Eve asked. “You’re supposed to be the calm one—”
“We need to get out of here,” he cut her off, instinctively patting the reassuring lump of his holster through his long jacket. The station had still been crowded despite the late hour, but at this point they were almost totally alone out here on the street. He assumed the Dusties—if they were Dusties—wouldn’t start shooting in the middle of a crowded station, but if they wanted Eve badly enough, they might settle for opening fire on a mostly empty street.
Eve stopped and jerked away when he put a hand on her wrist. “Zach, I’m not going anywhere. If you want to go back to Lushden, you can. I’m not forcing you to come with me.”
Zach pulled his eyes away from the second suspicious man and looked down at the girl he’d known since they were barely five years old. Other than growing out her mouse-brown hair and developing a few more curves, Eve hadn’t changed much in the two years they’d been apart, certainly not as much as he had. The legendary DeShane stubbornness was still there in her amber eyes and stiff posture, and as always it was coupled with the vaguely elitist attitude all the magi caste seemed to wear like a cloak. He hadn’t noticed it back when they were growing up together with her magi parents, but after a couple years surrounded by other torbos like himself—men and women without the wealth or privilege to attend one of the universities—it was painfully obvious. Just as obvious as the fact she wasn’t going to believe anything was wrong here until it was too late.
“I think we should head back to the station,” he told her. “They’ll have food on the train. I’ll even buy it for you.”
She grunted and put her hands on her hips. “Zach, you don’t have any money. And I haven’t eaten since breakfast. I’m famish—”
Her voice cut off when she glanced back over to the diner. The second suspicious man had gotten up from his bench and was lurking in front of the door holding his newspaper.
Smiling directly at them.
“Come on,” he said, grabbing her shoulder and spinning her around. They only managed two steps before he noticed that the first suspicious man had also moved. He was standing in the middle of the sidewalk behind them, cutting off their obvious escape back towards the station. And he, too, was staring right at them.
“What do they want?” Eve asked, her voice suddenly trembling.
“I don’t know, but I’d rather not find out.” One of the first things Zach had learned in the service was to always be aware of his surroundings, and it was a habit he still carried with him. Other than the sidewalk itself, their only other clear exit was an alleyway about twenty feet in front of them, but that was probably exactly where the Dusties wanted them to go. He had no interest in getting backed into a dark corner. No, their best bet was to stay out in the open near as many other people as possible. And hope that the Dusties weren’t willing to just shoot them anyway.
“This way,” he said, nudging her towards the opposite side of the street. In a larger city like Selerius, running out into the middle of the road would have been nearly as suicidal as charging a group of Dusties, but here in Radbury traffic was light enough that they could easily maneuver through the carriages and only draw a few annoyed glares as a result. The two men didn’t follow, but the moment Zach and Eve reached the other sidewalk it was obvious why: there were three more men waiting there in an adjacent alleyway, all with pistols hanging from their hips.
“They’re herding us,” Zach said hoarsely. “They don’t want a confrontation out in the open streets.”
He expected Eve to grab his hand and squeeze or maybe even wrap her arms around him, but she didn’t do either. Instead she just stared at them, her face twisting in anger.
“Maybe I do,” she whispered.
Zach glanced down at her again. The fear in her eyes had transformed into a cold, smoldering rage. He had no idea what spells Eve might have learned in her first year at the academy, but he was positive she didn’t know one to get them out of this. He’d fought with a few magi overseas and he’d seen what they could do, but those men and women had also been soldiers. Eve was not. And even if she had been—even if Zach had half his regiment here with them—he wasn’t about to start a firefight in the middle of town. They needed another option, and they needed it quickly.