Chapter 3

Clara's POV

The tavern at Raven's Perch smelled of old malt and damp wood — a sour, familiar reek that had soaked into the walls over years of neglect. I knew this place well. Back when I was still a halfway decent fence, I'd done regular business here, trading pilfered trinkets for copper across that same greasy bar. But the empire's advance had choked the trade routes months ago, and with them, any honest work I could pretend to do. That was why I'd been reduced to risking my neck over a sack of flour.

I set a silver coin on the counter with a sharp crack. It wasn't a loud sound, but in a room that dead, it carried. Old Hale was working a rag around the inside of a glass, moving with the unhurried lethargy of a man who had long since given up on the world. When the coin caught his eye, something shifted in that clouded gaze — the lines of his face rearranging themselves into something that passed for warmth.

"Well, if it isn't Clara." He snatched the coin, buffed it against his shirt, and tucked it away before I could blink. "Knew you were too stubborn to die. Come into money, have you? Or did you lift some poor bastard's wallet?"

"Best room you've got," I said, ignoring him. My voice came out rougher than I intended. "Top floor, south-facing, with hot water. Send up a bowl of stew and bread. Now."

He blinked, then produced a heavy copper key from somewhere beneath the counter, his smile sliding into something more professional. "Of course, of course — room three, fresh coals in the grate, warm as a mother's arms. The meat'll be up before you know it."

I took the key without another look at him and climbed the stairs.

The room was better than I'd expected. Heavy curtains shut out the street, and the coals in the small hearth had already caught and were burning steadily, pushing the chill back from the walls. I turned the bolt behind me and went straight to the wooden bathtub in the corner. When the hot water rose past my ankles, I had to press my lips together to keep quiet. The cut on my left arm screamed when the water reached it, but I didn't have the luxury of babying it. I scrubbed the dried river mud and blood from my skin with a rough cake of soap, then gritted my teeth and bound the wound as tightly as I could manage with one hand.

My wet clothes went over the back of a chair near the hearth, steaming gently in the firelight. By the time I'd finished, the stew had arrived. I ate with the single-minded efficiency of someone who hadn't been certain of their next meal, dragging the last of the bread through the bottom of the bowl until there was nothing left. The warmth spread through me slowly, and the knot of tension behind my ribs began, at last, to loosen. I dropped onto the bed without bothering to think too hard about the man named Silas — who he was, why he'd let me go — and sleep took me before I could form the question properly.

I don't know how long I was out. It was the voices that pulled me back.

"— sweep this way! Move!"

"Has anyone checked upstairs? Every room, I said every room!"

I was on my feet before I was fully awake, one hand already reaching for my boots. The room was dark except for a thin, wavering line of light beneath the door — torchlight, shifting with movement. I stood still and listened. Even in peacetime, this town was the kind of place soldiers didn't bother with. In wartime, it was practically abandoned. There was no reason for this many boots on these stairs at this hour, and the cadence of the commands was unmistakable: imperial.

The only question was who they were looking for. The building held Hale and two hands. Which left me.

And Silas. I thought of that composed, unreadable face. Surely he wouldn't mobilize a search party over a stolen purse.

The footsteps had already reached the landing. Heavy soles on old wood, the boards flexing and creaking under the weight. There was no time to reconsider.

I pulled on a shirt, grabbed the coil of rough rope hanging near the fireplace — put there for bundling firewood — and crossed to the window. I eased it open and the cold came in immediately, sharp enough to make me flinch. Three floors down, the back courtyard held a pile of loose hay. I tied one end of the rope around the bed frame, tested it twice, then swung myself out over the sill and began to descend, hand over hand, the wall rough and cold against my bare feet. The rope bit into my palms badly, but I made no sound. When I dropped the last few feet I hit the hay pile and rolled, killing the impact, then pressed myself flat against the foundation wall and moved toward the stable in a low crouch.

Inside, the air was thick with the smell of manure and dry straw. A few thin horses stood at their troughs, pulling at hay with disinterest. I worked my way to the furthest stall and burrowed into a pile of old burlap sacks, pulling them around me, and went still.

Through the gaps in the planking I watched the window of my room get kicked open, the frame slamming back against the wall. A soldier leaned out, torch in hand.

"Third floor's empty, sir! But this window was open — she ran!"

"Then find her. She doesn't leave this block."

My pulse was loud in my ears. So it was me. Whatever Silas wanted, it was worth this.

The sound came without warning — a faint scrape of metal on metal, so quiet I almost missed it. Then a hand closed over my mouth from behind, cold and firm, and the edge of a blade settled against my throat.

"Don't make a sound."

The voice was low, frayed at the edges, and carrying something underneath the command that sounded less like authority and more like a man running on fumes. I went rigid. In the thin light leaking through the stable walls, I could make out the face of the person holding me: young, pale as chalk, lips cracked and dry. He wore battered leather armor, and across his chest was a wound that had long since stopped being something he could afford to ignore — the blood had soaked through the padding and was still seeping, darkening the straw beneath him.

The hand holding the knife was shaking.

"I'm not a threat," I said carefully, raising both hands. "I'm just hiding from a debt collector. I don't have anything worth taking."

He studied me for several seconds, some internal calculation running behind his eyes. The footsteps outside were drawing closer. He pulled his hand from my mouth but kept the blade leveled.

"Who's after you?" he asked.

"Imperial soldiers," I said. "Who's after you?"

He almost laughed — a short, humorless sound. Before he could answer, a shout cut through the stable wall.

"Check the stables! She couldn't have gone far!"

His expression changed completely. He put his eye to the gap in the planking, and when he turned back, the feverish tension in his face had sharpened into something more deliberate.

"What did you do?" he asked quietly. "Why would Silas Veyne come to a place like this himself?"

The name stopped me. "Silas Veyne? Who is that?"

He looked at me the way people look at someone who has just said something so naive it circles back to being almost impressive. "Commander Silas Veyne. The Ash Hound. Master of the Cinder Talons." A current of hatred ran through the recitation, controlled but unmistakable. "He's the greatest traitor Lyr has ever produced — the man who opened the gates and let the dragon riders through. He's been hunting someone, and now he's followed the trail here."

"Hunting who?"

"The last of Lyr's royal line. The only living heir to the throne." He paused, steadying himself against the wall. "So I'll ask again — how does a thief get Silas Veyne's personal attention?"

I swallowed. "I stole his purse."

The silence stretched. "A purse," he repeated.

"I know how it sounds." I pulled the bag from inside my shirt and upended it into my palm: coins, and beneath them, a folded letter, its wax seal already broken. I hadn't noticed it before — I'd been too busy counting the money.

He snatched the letter before I could react. His eyes moved across it once, quickly, and then the color drained out of his face in stages — from pale to white to something approaching gray.

"Gods above," he breathed. The paper trembled in his grip. "They already know this much?"

He looked up at me, and whatever he saw seemed to settle something for him, though the decision clearly cost him. "Can you read this?"

"No," I admitted. I'd never spent a day in a classroom, and whatever alphabet the Veyr Imperium used was nothing I'd ever learned.

He folded the letter back into the purse and pressed it into my hands. "Listen to me carefully. You are in serious trouble — not because you took his money, but because of that letter. It's worth more than your life, more than mine. If Silas Veyne catches you, there won't be enough of you left to bury."

"Then what am I supposed to do?"

"Come with me." He pushed himself upright, using the knife as a prop, and swayed. "I'm the only way you survive this."

"Go where?"

"Don't ask." He closed his fingers around my wrist, and despite everything his body was failing at, his grip was iron. "You want to live — then be quiet and move."

The torchlight was already seeping between the stable boards, painting long orange bars across the straw.

"There — something's moving in there!"

He swore under his breath and hauled me toward the back of the stable, where a low door I hadn't noticed stood slightly ajar, opening onto darkness.

"Understand something," he said, pausing just long enough to look back at me. His eyes were burning with a conviction I didn't have words for yet. "From this moment, your life is no longer entirely your own. You've become the one thing in this game that nobody planned for."

Then the door swallowed us both, and I was running blind through the cold dark, the purse clutched against my chest like something alive.

I wanted to survive. I had always wanted that, above everything else.

But the price of it, I was beginning to understand, was going to be considerably steeper than I'd bargained for.