Shadow Blessed (The Shadow Accords Book 1) (12 page)

The way she said it made Carth wonder if shadesbreath was the reason that the A’ras blades were so dangerous. Did they use something like that to poison the blade? Probably not. Carth had touched the blade countless times and had never been harmed.

“Was there anything in particular that you wanted?” the herbalist asked.

Carth scanned the shop, looking around one more time before turning away. She had thought… no, there was nothing for her here. Her mother might have wanted her to know about leaves and plants, but she had never taken the time to understand them. And now… now she would never get to learn. Now she had become a thief.

“I’m sorry to have bothered you,” she said.

The woman watched Carth for a moment, then smiled. “There is no bother. Come as often as you would like. It’s always pleasant speaking to those with a shared interest.”

Carth turned away without saying anything more. She didn’t want to hurt the old woman’s feelings by telling her that she had no interest. Had she any interest in learning from her mother, she might have something of a future. Instead, she was forced to use the skills her father had taught her, but there was only one way she could use his skills, which meant that she had no other destiny but to be a thief.

Did that mean that someday, the Thevers would expect her to join? Was
that
what she was meant to become?

D
ays passed uneventfully
. As much as Carth wanted to find Jhon and discover what he might know about her family, she feared what she might learn. What would she say if she learned that her father
had
been a thief of some sort? Realizing that he’d prepared her for it made her more concerned about the man he was, and in a way, she didn’t want to know the truth.

She wondered how she had not seen it before, but she hadn’t
wanted
to see it. Her father had been… well, he’d been the one person she’d looked up to. With him gone, she had no one.

With each day, she wandered the streets near the docks, hesitating to travel too far into the rest of the city. She didn’t need to go beyond the docks to grab enough coin to appease Vera, and with Stiv wandering through the streets, still intent to sell Vera’s sweetbreads, she preferred to keep an eye on him. He hadn’t tried any of Kel’s techniques, but she suspected that it was only a matter of time before he did, especially with as difficult as it would be to sell the breads.

Some days, Carth felt drawn to the herbalist shop. Most of the time, she stood outside, staring at the sign outside the door, standing off to the side and in the shadows, hiding as her father had taught her. The more she thought about it, the more it bothered her that she had no real trade. Staying with Vera, she might learn to run a kitchen and she might learn baking, but the only skill that offered her a way out was thieving, and that risked her safety more than anything. Had she taken the time to listen, and had she been willing to learn from her mother, she would have had another skill she could have leaned on.

It had been three days since she’d last visited the herbalist shop when she again found herself standing outside and in the shadows, watching a few people as they made their way in and then out of the shop. What did they buy? What powders or dried fruits or leaves did they come for? Was it for healing, as she suspected the older woman with the limping gait came to the herbalist for, or was it something else? Carth imagined that the young woman with the raven hair came to the herbalist for a love concoction. Her mother had scoffed at the idea that there were mixtures that would change emotion, but she had continued to mix powders specific to Carth and instructed her to take them each day.

As Carth waited, she pulled one of her mother’s books from her pockets and flipped through the pages. She might not be able to read any of the writing, but a few of the pages had pictures, diagrams with labels written in Ih, mostly of plants or leaves or fruits. An herbalist guidebook of sorts. When Carth had discovered this, she began to wonder if the old woman would be able to help translate it for her.

The shop emptied again and she waited, uncertain if another would come to the shop. No one did, so Carth crept slowly, making her way across the street and to the door. Once there, she hesitated. Would she bother the woman by coming again?

Pushing open the door, she found the main portion of the shop empty.

Carth looked around, expecting the herbalist to come from behind the counter, but she did not. “Hello?”

Silence answered her.

Carth peeked behind the counter, but the old woman wasn’t there. Hadn’t she just been here?

A door led out the back of the shop and Carth considered going through it, seeing where the herbalist might have gone, but she didn’t want to scare her, especially not when she had questions.

Carth returned to the main portion of the shop, determined to wait, and looked at the jars of powders. The flatwort was gone, the space where the jar had been now missing. Curious, Carth made her way to the back of the counter, looking for the jar of gardash, but didn’t see it there either.

She felt a flush of embarrassment that she would even be looking. The herbalist had been kind to her and had offered help and suggestions when Kel had needed something to obscure his injury, and this was how she would repay her?

After waiting for a while longer, Carth left the shop. As soon as she did, she felt something off.

Her skin felt tight and there was a heaviness to the air, an energy of sorts, like there would be with a coming rain, only the cloudless sky didn’t call out that there would be rain.

With a fluttering of her heart, she quickly crossed the street, receding into the alley. From this alley, she could wind her way back to River Road, and from there she could hide in the tavern. Carth receded into the shadowed space between the buildings. Would she even see anything? It was possible that she detected nothing more than her imagination and that the A’ras hadn’t ventured this way.

A flash of color appeared on the street. Carth recognized the dark maroon of the A’ras. Three men made their way down the street. One had a sash of color wrapped around his upper arm. He was thick with muscle and his hair was cut short, revealing a few scars that gleamed in the sunlight. A wrap over his face obscured everything but his eyes. The man next to him was larger, appearing almost soft, but the eyes that searched the street were not. The third man was of average build, and a maroon wrap covered his entire face.

Carth willed herself back, wanting nothing more than to stay hidden in the shadows. That had been another game her father had played with her, though she was never as good at it as some of the others. In the shadows, he claimed that she could hide from almost anyone, if only she learned to find the edge. She’d never discovered what he meant by that. Probably another of his tricks. Her father had many tricks, most of them ways to keep her from finding him. If only he hadn’t been so good at his tricks, she might have been able to find him before the A’ras, and before he disappeared.

They paused near her. “Do you sense it?” the muscular man asked. Carth noted the curved sword at his side, and her hand reached for the knife she’d stolen from the dead A’ras.

“There was power here.” This came from the man with the hard eyes.

“Not
was
.”

Carth was surprised by the voice. Not a man’s like the others—this came from a woman.

Now the average build made more sense, as did the simple robe she wore. The wrap that covered her face would cover her hair as well. Carth didn’t note any sword, but that didn’t mean she would be unarmed. The A’ras always carried weapons, but even when they didn’t, they had their magic, which made them dangerous.

“You think there is something still here? We would have sensed it had they entered the city.”

The woman shot the hard-eyed man a withering glare. Carth shrunk back, moving as silently as she could and wishing that she could shrink into the shadows even more and find a way that they couldn’t reach her through them.

The woman stopped moving. Her eyes scanned the street. “Do you not feel it?”

“I feel nothing.”

“Because you have no subtlety,” the woman said. “Focus. There was power used here. The Reshian were here.”

Carth wished she could hide better. She wanted no part of the battle between the A’ras and the Reshian.

“Then we should find Al—”

“Shad would not reach us in time, and he must still recover. The attack nearly ended him. Had he not been so careful, it
would
have ended him.”

She made a motion and the other two A’ras spread out on either side of her, searching the street. Carth didn’t move. She wouldn’t let herself move. Doing so would only risk drawing attention to her, risking revealing her position. So far, they hadn’t noticed her, but how much longer would that remain true?

If only she could steady the pounding of her heart. It sounded loud to her, and she worried that her own fear would give her away. A bead of sweat formed on her brow and began a steady, irritating trickle down the side of her face. Carth refused to move and wipe it away, even when it dripped into her eye.

One of the A’ras—she could no longer tell which—appeared in the mouth of the alley.

She didn’t dare move, but at the same time, she
wanted
to move. If she could take even a step back, slide away from the A’ras, she thought she would have a chance were she to need to run.

He took a step into the alley.

Carth knew she had been found.

She spun, and sprinted.

A’ras shouts followed her, but she had lived here long enough now that she knew the ways of hiding, and she raced through the streets, winding first toward the docks, then away. The shouts following her grew ever more distant, until she thought she had gotten away.

When she slowed, she discovered that she had run almost to the temple.

Why would she have ended up here? Was it coincidence that she’d returned to the same place she had come after her parents had disappeared, or had the A’ras somehow chased her here, guiding her?

She walked along the street, keeping her eyes alert as she scanned for other A’ras, but saw nothing that was out of place.

Sighing heavily, she allowed herself to relax. She had escaped the A’ras again, but how many more times did she really think she’d be able to do it? Eventually she would get herself caught if she kept doing the same thing. Better to remain hidden near the docks and not draw attention to herself.

Yet, wasn’t that what she wanted? Didn’t she
want
a way to get revenge for her parents and attack the A’ras?

Carth turned away from the temple.

She slowly made her way back toward the docks, but watched the street as she went, searching for signs of the A’ras. They would still be out there. Maybe not after her, but she had drawn their attention in spite of not wanting to do so.

Night had fallen by the time she made it back to River Road. There were the steady and now-familiar sounds from the docks of vendors shouting to passersby, selling meats and breads and spices. How did Vera really expect them to compete with that? They were too young to sell effectively. Most who might be interested saw their age and thought to take advantage.

Other noises filled the air here as well. Mixed with the loud cries of the vendors were the steady murmuring of dozens of voices. They were loud during the day but grew even louder when night fell, mixing with music coming from taverns like the Wounded Lyre and the steady washing of water over the rocks. All of it mixed together to give a certain rhythm to life near the river, a pulse of sorts. It had been unsettling when she had first come here, but now she was a part of it, and the noise comforted her in some ways.

Approaching the Lyre, she noticed something felt off. Carth couldn’t quite place what bothered her, but it set her heart thrumming again, much as it had when she had been chased by the A’ras.

When she reached the Wounded Lyre, she found a somber atmosphere inside. Kel sat at a table picking at food, rather than making his way through the crowd, practicing at collecting scraps. Etan was nowhere to be seen, but neither was Stiv.

Carth stopped next to Kel. “What is it?”

He barely looked up. “Go away, Carth.”

She sat down and forced him to notice her. “What happened?”

Kel looked up, and she could tell he’d been crying. His jaw clenched, looking like he wanted to hide that fact. “Nothing happened. We’re strays. I just forgot about that fact.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means we’re strays.”

He turned his focus back to the hunk of bread lying on the table in front of him, picking at it slowly. Carth could tell he wouldn’t say anything more.

She stood and circled around the tavern, but there was nothing here for her. She might be able to collect some scraps, but that was all she would find—scraps. Nothing like the wealthier men she’d taken to targeting as they came off the riverboats.

For Etan to be missing wasn’t all that uncommon, especially these days, but where was Stiv?

She entered the kitchen, expecting to see him there, but found only Vera. She worked at a ball of dough, pressing it flat before lifting it and flipping it again, coating it in flour as she did. She moved with a steady rhythm, one where she barely blinked when Carth appeared next to her, not disrupted at all by her presence.

“Why is Kel so upset?” she asked.

Vera glanced over. “Kel should be clearing the tables. That’s what I asked him to do.”

“He’ll get to it,” she said, not wanting to get Kel into any trouble. He always seemed to find enough on his own. “But what happened? Why does he seem so upset?”

Vera pressed on the dough and flipped it over again. “I told him not to get too attached. Never does any good.”

“Attached to what?”

“That boy,” Vera said.

“Stiv?” Carth asked. “What happened to him?”

Vera stopped kneading the dough and met Carth’s eyes. “We do all we can to protect you. That’s why you’re here. But there are limits, girl, that even we can’t avoid.”

Vera returned to kneading the dough. Carth waited for her to say something more, but she didn’t. When it became clear that she would not, Carth made her way past Vera and out of the kitchen, hurrying down the hall to their room.

Inside, she found Etan sitting on his bunk with a new hole in the wall near his head. He barely glanced up when she entered.

“Where is he?” she said to him.

“Don’t pretend that you care,” Etan said.

“I care. What happened to him?”

“The same thing that will happen to all of us. We’re strays. We’re here until they get tired of us. Don’t think you’re so special that it won’t happen to you, too.”

Carth crouched down to his level. A flutter rolled through her chest as she did, never certain that Etan wouldn’t snap and hit her, but she needed to know. “Did Vera and Hal do something?”

He snorted. “No. They didn’t do anything.”

“Then what happened?”

“You want to know? That’s the problem with us being down here. Nothing happens. No one cares what happens to us. They might give us a place to sleep and offer us the scraps and leftovers from the tavern, but do they really care?”

“Vera and Hal keep us safe.”

“Do they? If they kept us safe, then that kid would still be here instead of caught by
them
. Your day will come, too, Carth. Don’t think you’re protected. Best if you find real protection. That’s what I plan on.”