The Reader (30 page)

It was small enough that you wouldn't notice it if you weren't looking for it, but Sefia knew it so well she could see it even when she closed her eyes.

Two curves for her parents, a curve for Nin. The straight line for herself. The circle for what she had to do: Learn what the book was for. Rescue Nin from the people who killed her father. And get her revenge.

“Look,” she said, pointing.

Archer nodded solemnly.

“Well I'll be . . .” Horse muttered. Then he hugged them both to his massive barrel chest. “You see Serakeen, you even hear a whisper that he's around, you run, hear?” His voice rumbled on Sefia's cheek. “You run as fast and as far as you can.”

She hugged him tighter.

“Lemme hear you say it. You won't mess with Serakeen.”

“Yes, Horse.”

Once the big carpenter released them, thumping them both on the backs for good measure, Meeks peered at them anxiously. “You got the wand the mate gave you?”

Sefia patted her belt.

Meeks hugged them, first Archer, then Sefia. “I know you want answers, Sef,” he whispered in her ear. “You want 'em like I want stories, and if you're like me, you'll do anything to get 'em.”

She nodded.

“Use the wand if you have to. Even if you have to use it tonight.”

As he and Horse started off down the alley, they kept looking back at the two young people, until finally they turned the corner and were gone.

Sefia fingered the wand the mate had given her. “I guess this is it.”

Archer nodded and pushed on the door, but it didn't open.

“Locked?” Sefia dug into her vest for her lock picks and went to work. In a minute, the teeth clicked and the door swung open. There was little light inside, but they could make out a stained floor, round tables, and row upon row of dusty brown bottles lining the wall to their right. The bartender was nowhere to be seen.

They crept inside, wary of ambush, but the place was empty. Breathing in the stale air, Sefia grew light-headed. She knew this place.

“Palo Kanta was supposed to have come here too,” she whispered.

Archer looked at her sharply.

“Here.” She stood at the corner of the bar and looked out over the empty tavern. Then she stepped back again. “And here.” All around the room, she could see glimpses of the tall man with the cut across his chin: Laughing, mouth open, molars showing. His fingers fondling a gold mai. Dirt under his nails.

She wove between the tables, feeling as if she were walking in his footsteps, and stopped at the far end of the room. She thought she heard a few distant shouts. “And here,” she murmured.

Archer came to stand beside her.

“He should have been here . . . and below here.” She knelt, searching the floor with her hands until they found a round metal handle in the shape of the
.

“I thought this tavern was on a floating barge like the others,” she whispered.

With Archer's help, she heaved open the trapdoor, revealing a narrow stone staircase illuminated from below. The sounds of shouting, which she thought she'd only imagined, were clear now—excited and agitated.

“Palo Kanta was supposed to go down there.” From her pack, Sefia took out a brush and the small jar of paint Horse had given her as a parting gift. Carefully, she wrote Palo Kanta's name on the inside of the trapdoor, near the hinge. She blew on the words to dry them and whispered, “You miss a man so much.”

Archer's eyes looked large and bright in the dim light. As she put the lid on the jar and stowed it back in her pack with the brush, Sefia was reminded again of what Hatchet's men had said:
One of them big cats, with the golden eyes.

Together they descended the stairwell. The farther they went, the brighter and noisier it became, and with every step Sefia felt Archer growing more and more tense beside her, until he seemed hard and brittle as glass.

“What's wrong?” She reached out, but didn't touch him, afraid he would break under her fingers.

He shook his head.

When they reached the bottom, they found themselves in a low stone room with a loud, stinking crowd of people clustered in the center. They were shouting—numbers, bets, odds—and laughing uproariously. The stone walls were wet with condensation, and the hot moist air smelled like sweat and iron and liquor.

Archer's breathing quickened. He shook his head again, gripping the hilt of his sword so tight his knuckles turned
white. From somewhere in the center of the room came a sharp sound:
bang!—bang!—bang!
Metal on wood. Archer flinched.

“Oh no . . .” Sefia's heart sank in her chest. “It's a fighting ring.”

P
anting, Archer stumbled back against the wall, his eyes wide with fear. Sefia tugged him toward the stairwell. “C'mon. We'll come back later.”

But it was too late. An old balding man detached from the crowd and came toward them, leaning heavily on a broom for support. “What are you doing here?”

Sefia was struck by his thinness, as if he had wasted away down here, and all he had to hold himself up now was the broom he clung to like a walking stick. Curled around the handle, his hands were as smooth and hard as river stones.

“Who's that?” someone cried from the crowd. The others began to turn. They had greedy gleaming eyes. Cut knuckles. Guns and swords and hidden knives. People accustomed to violence, who sucked it down like ale.

Archer cringed but remained at her side.

“I'm Sefia and this is Archer.”

“I'm the Arbitrator here,” said the man with the broom. “What do you want?”

Arbitrator.
She recognized the word. Arbitrators were the men who ran the fights, men who worked for Serakeen. She swallowed hard. “We saw the sign under the cage.”

The Arbitrator looked Archer up and down, his gaze resting fleetingly on the boy's neck. Archer swallowed so hard Sefia felt his entire body shudder. “We've already got two candidates tonight,” the man said.

“Boys?” She glanced at the crowd. Were they impressors? Cutthroats and kidnappers, like Hatchet? Archer wasn't safe here. She twined her arm in his.

“Candidates.”
The Arbitrator swung back to the crowd. “It's all right. He's got the mark.” He waved Sefia and Archer over with a large hand. “Come on, then. This is what you're here for, isn't it?” Without waiting for them, he shuffled back into the crowd, which parted for him like water parting for a stone.

The stairwell rose in a black spiral behind them. They could still get away if they had to.

She looked to Archer. It had to be his choice to go on.

He nodded.

Sefia tightened her grip on his hand, and together they waded into the throng.

The crowd had closed behind the Arbitrator, and they jostled her as she approached the wide depression in the center of the room. Some of them sneered. She caught glimpses of leering
wag-tongued expressions and slitted eyes. Beyond them, she spied a tunnel at the opposite end of the room. Another escape, maybe. In case they had to fight their way out.

As she reached the hole, she could feel Archer still quivering beside her. Inside, about ten feet down, the floor was strewn with straw and sawdust. On opposite ends of the pit were two wooden doors notched and spattered with dried blood, and behind them, in narrow stone chutes, were two boys.

One of them was tall and slender as a whip, with a shock of dark hair tumbling over his eyes. He leaned on a spear, silent and still, watching the other boy through the slats in the door.

His opponent was shorter and thicker, built like an ox, with a low jutting brow and broad cheeks, and he hacked and battered at his door, making it shudder and jump under his sword. Every time he struck, Archer flinched, gripping his sword tighter and tighter and tighter.

Both were shirtless and barefoot, like Archer had been when Sefia found him, and their arms were marked by fifteen burns—one for each of the fights they'd already won.

Forty-five fights.

All told, the three of them had killed forty-five other boys. At least.

Sefia's hand slid to her knife. That people could
do
this. Over and over again. With such rabidity.

She'd find out where Serakeen was. She'd find out what happened to Nin. And then—

“He's been marked?” Someone shoved her way through the crowd—a gray-haired woman with a hooked nose and a scar
across her cheek. A whale-tooth necklace, the kind common in the northern parts of Deliene, hung around her neck.

“Yes, Lavinia, he's got the mark.” The Arbitrator grunted.

“He can't be here unless he's got the count too,” said a man whose old blue military cap marked him as a former member of the Everican Navy.

Sefia scanned the crowd. Clustered around one end of the fighting pit were people who must have been impressors from the Stone Kingdom of Everica. From above, they goaded and prodded the short boy, who responded by hacking away at the door with his sword. Opposite them, the impressors from northern Deliene waited while their boy stood silently in the chute below.

The rest must have been spectators, bettors who came to gamble on the outcome of the fight. It made her sick.

The Arbitrator leaned on his broom and peered at Sefia and Archer. “Where are you from?”

“Oxscini,” she said. Clasping his hand, she could still feel Archer shaking like a leaf clinging to its stem.

“Is he one of Garula's?”

Sefia shook her head.

“Berstrom's?”

“No.”

“Fengway's?”

How many impressors were there? She shook her head again. “He's his own.”

“Then you're a fool for coming here.” The Arbitrator scratched his forehead. “Do you even know what you're getting into?”

Sefia took a deep breath. “Where's Serakeen?”

Bang!—bang!—bang!
The sounds echoed from inside the chute.

“But has he got the count?” said the man in the blue cap.

Sefia glared at him. “What's so important about this ‘count'?”

“You really are a fool, aren't you, kid? It's how Serakeen vets the candidates. He's got impressors working for him in every kingdom except Roku. Candidates fight fifteen times in their own territory, and when they're done, they come to the Cage. I arrange a fight, and if they win, they get sent to Serakeen.” The Arbitrator shrugged. “No one knows what happens to them after that.”

“'Cause all that matters is we get paid!” someone shouted. There was a round of hideous jeering laughter.

Sefia squeezed Archer's hand. “We don't want to fight.”

More laughter in the crowd. “He's got to,” the Arbitrator explained. “No one moves on without a fight.”

Archer collapsed at the knees, stumbling. The others laughed.

“We've never had a three-way fight before,” said Lavinia, eyeing the Arbitrator carefully.

“It doesn't matter if he doesn't have the count,” the man in the blue cap repeated. “He can't fight if he doesn't have it.”

“I
know
, Goj,” snapped the Arbitrator. “Don't make a fool of yourself.”

“Stop it!” Sefia shouted. “He's not going to fight!”

“Then you're not seeing Serakeen.”

She reached for her coin purse. “I'll pay—”

Lavinia laughed. Her canines were sharp in her mouth. “The last person who tried to bribe an Arbitrator had his tongue removed.”

“Then how about—”

“Show us the count or get out,” said Goj.

“He has my aunt! I have to find out—”

“You'll find out nothing if he doesn't make the kill.” The Arbitrator pointed at Archer, who shook his head again. “And it doesn't look like he's up to it. Fight or leave. Those are your choices.”

Sefia glared at the Arbitrator, but his eyes were stony and his jaw was set and she didn't need the Vision to know he wasn't going to relent. And then she turned to Archer.

The crowd seemed to have parted around him, and he was standing all alone, the lamplight glinting off his hair and glimmering in the wells of his eyes, and he looked at her, and never in her life had anyone seen her so perfectly, seen all the best and worst parts of her, and she had never wanted so badly for things to be different.

Serakeen was the only clue she had to the symbol on her book. The only way she could find out who had taken Nin. And if she was still alive.

But it would cost her Archer. Because he'd have to do what she'd promised, over and over, he'd
never
have to do again.

She had been right all along.

No one she loved was safe.

She longed to wrap her arms around him and tell him he didn't have to. He didn't have to fight again. But she didn't
move, and the words didn't come, and while she hesitated, he tilted his head to the side in a movement that was so familiar it looped around her heart and pulled tight.

The corners of his mouth twitched.

And his pack dropped to the floor.

All around her, the crowd roared its approval. The cruel, many-throated sound was like a hurricane. And she realized what he had done.

“No—!” She picked up the pack and tried to return it to him, but it was too late. He pulled his shirt over his head.

The crowd rushed forward to see the burns on his arm.

“He's got it! He's got the count!”

“But do we get paid for
each
kill?” Lavinia asked.

The Arbitrator sighed. “Yes.”

“Looks like we'll see two kills tonight!” someone cried.

Eager chatter spread across the crowd. Counting and calculations. Weighing the odds. Coins clinked in their palms. Money for blood.

“Fifty peschles on the new kid!”

“Twenty!”

“Another ten on Haku!”

Sefia shook her head. What had she done? What had she let him do? Archer passed her his discarded clothing, which she uselessly tried to press back into his hands. He hadn't fully recovered from the fight on the
Current
—his cuts were still healing, his ribs were still bandaged. She had
promised
him. “No. No! You can't—”

The low-ceilinged room echoed with shouting and the
jangling of coins. Bets made, money exchanged, taunting and heckling and whooping with greed.

Archer unstrapped his holster and was undoing the buckle on his sword sheath when the Arbitrator stopped him. “For this fight, we let the boys have their weapon of choice,” he said, glancing at Archer's gun, “with the exception of firearms.”

Archer stared at the Arbitrator for a full second before he handed his sword to Sefia. He was going to fight, not wildly, but willingly. As himself and on his own terms.

He stood at the edge of the pit, the crowd surging around him, hissing, mocking, their words scathing and dry as coals.

She fumbled with the clothing in her arms. “Archer.” Her lips almost brushed his ear.

He looked down at her, and in his eyes she saw how afraid he was. His fear was a desperate, ragged thing inside him: the boy in the crate, malnourished and laced with scars, a feral creature that couldn't feed or bathe or dress itself, that knew nothing but the fear and the pain and the kill. The thing he had been and was terrified of becoming again.

“Don't do this,” she whispered. “We'll find another way.”

They were so close she could count the freckles on his cheeks. He blinked, his long lashes dipping, and she thought for a second he was going to nod. He was going to agree, and he wasn't really going to do it. He had some other plan in mind.

Instead he pulled her to him and folded her into his arms, and his skin was warm under her cheek, and for the first time since she left the house on the hill overlooking the sea, she felt
settled
 . . . like all the frantic fluttering bits inside her had finally come to rest, here, in his arms. In the sudden stillness she could hear his breath stirring, his heart rustling, and she understood without words or hand signals that he was going to fight—he was going to do it for her, no matter what it turned him into—and nothing she said or did now was going to change his mind.

Catcalls rose up around them like flames—the voices crackled and snapped—and Archer released her. She gasped at the shock of their bodies parting.

He turned away—

She tried to hold on to him, but her hands grabbed uselessly at the air.

“No, wait! Don't!”

He jumped into the pit, kicking up sudden blooms of sawdust and straw.

“Archer!”

Thunder. The crowd roared. The sound of it spun around her like a mad deafening wind.

Lavinia leaned over, her whale-tooth necklace dangling in front of Sefia's face. “He's injured, isn't he, kitten?” Her voice slithered under the noise of the crowd. Lavinia pointed at the black-haired boy with the spear, staring coldly through his door. “Gregor's going to skewer him.”

A sour taste rose in Sefia's throat. The other boy, Haku, rattled his door and slashed at it with his sword.
Bang!—bang!—bang!
The crowd hollered for blood, their voices and the stamping of their feet filling the room with a horrible
drumming. She tried to breathe.
Don't die. Don't die. Don't leave me. Don't die.

Archer drew the piece of quartz from his pocket and stood, rubbing his thumb along its sparkling sides, waiting for the fight to begin.