The Reader (32 page)

“I don't get it.” Reed laughed. “Why're you lyin' to yourselves like this? You ain't special. You ain't gonna be remembered. Why in all the blue world would you sit here makin' up stories when you could be out there
makin'
stories?”

The others stared at him. They were tense, their faces
peaked, their eyes narrowed. Beside him, Jules sipped her drink and rolled her eyes at his speechifying.

“Who are you to talk to us like that?” the wispy-haired man demanded, starting forward. “You're in here with the rest of us.”

Clarian came out from behind the bar, his arms crossed, his gaze stony.

Their anger roiled like a thundercloud. Reed could feel it rumbling inside them, threatening to burst from their clenched fists and teeth.

“I'm Captain Cannek Reed,” he drawled. He drew back the folds of his coat, exposing the revolvers holstered at his thighs: one ivory grip, one black. There was a collective gasp.

“Listen,” he continued. “We work hard for our stories. They're what
we
leave behind when we're gone. They ain't for some nobodies in a back-alley bar to twist however they so please. So go on. Get outta here. Go do something worth tellin' people about, instead of stealin' from folks like me.”

He turned, and the impostor-Reed leapt forward and struck him square across the jaw.

The real Captain Reed came up grinning. “That's right. Come on!”

The little room erupted. Marmalade kicked the chair out from one of the beggars at the big table and he toppled over. Reed laughed. Someone hit him in the head with a mug. Glass and ale poured around his ears. Jules was trading blows with the impostor-hermit. Reed laughed again. A brawl! He just needed to keep them busy. Fighting him. Fighting each other.
The whole tavern was a mess of blood and curses, broken chairs and fists and faces. Clarian punched him in the gut. He doubled over, wheezing and chuckling at the same time. The old woman pretending to be the Lonely King slapped the bartender across the face when he turned around.

Out of the corner of his eye, Reed saw Marmalade wrench the clapper off the wall, tuck it into her coat, and dash for the door. She was so small and quick that no one noticed her in the melee.

Captain Reed let out a shrill whistle.

“Cap?” Jules's voice rang across the room.

“Let's skedaddle!”

She was at his side in an instant, grinning, a bruise coming up red and purple on her cheek. He tossed his coin purse behind the bar and they left, trading a few more blows on the way, bursting out of the door into the night.

Inside the tavern the brawl continued. Glass shattering. Tables breaking. People hollering and cheering. Their wild laughter wafted through the broken windows and steamed in the cool air.

A few docks down, Marmalade was waiting for them, perched on the rail of a houseboat and kicking her legs over the water. As they approached, she popped to her feet and brandished the clapper like a wand. “Ta-da!”

Jules clapped her warmly on the shoulder. “Fast fingers, Marmalade. I wasn't sure you could do it, after the drinks you had.”

The ship's girl grinned impishly. “Cap was buyin'. I couldn't
help myself.” She passed the clapper to Reed, who traced the engraving of the rising sun with his fingernail. According to legend, if they were close enough, any sound the clapper made would be echoed by the bell, still lost in the Ephygian Bay with the
Desert Gold
. He swung it hard into a wooden piling. The post dented, but the clapper let out a dull resounding hum.

Jules touched it with the tip of her finger, absorbing the sound into her skin. “That the right clapper?”

“Oughta be.” He tucked it inside his jacket.

They began trotting down the dock, back toward the
Current
, Marmalade chuckling every so often under her breath. “Did you see their faces when the Cap started whoopin' and hollerin' about stories?”

Reed grinned. He could smell the sea, hear it washing against the docks and the faraway shores, calling him to wilder waters, to bigger monsters, and to stories yet to be earned. He chuckled. “Guess they have somethin' to talk about now.”

S
efia stood at the edge of the stone pit, still reeling from the touch of Archer's arms on her arms, his chest on her chest. Her heart beat madly inside her like a trapped bird, feathers flying, wings breaking against the bars, but inside the ring Archer was as still as he had ever been. Waiting, ready.

The roar of the crowd swelled up to the ceiling—a terrible thunder of shouting and stomping and mad laughter—and then it broke across the room like a flood. Men and women swarmed around her, hot and sweaty and howling like animals. The bloodlust was ripe in their eyes and in their teeth. The chute doors swung open. The fighters were loose.

Archer and the boy with the spear reached each other first. Like jaguars battling in the undergrowth, all teeth and muscle and razor-sharp claws, they fought. Fists and the flashing tip of the blade, clouds of dust rising beneath their feet. They were
so quick Sefia only caught glimpses of it: Archer grabbing the spear shaft; the other boy, Gregor, sprawled on the ground; craters of sawdust beneath him.

The third boy, Haku, attacked with a sword, but Archer had the spear now. The sounds of metal striking wood rebounded off the stone walls. Chunks of the spear shaft sheared away beneath the sword.

Archer landed blows again and again, cracking bones, causing bruises. Gregor staggered to his feet and joined Haku's attacks, but Archer's movements were effortless—beautiful and awful in their efficiency. It was like he could see every dodge and feint and parry as if they were individual threads in the violent tapestry of the fight, and he could warp and weave and cut them as he pleased.

Sefia was mesmerized and horrified at the same time, because he made it look
easy
.

Like he had been born doing it.

Like he was born
to
do it.

Archer swung the spear. It whirred through the air, a noise that cut off abruptly when its wooden shaft slammed into Haku's neck.

There was no blood. The blade had missed.

No, Archer had spared him.

Haku crumpled, groaning.

In the roar of the crowd, Lavinia muttered, “That was a perfect opportunity. Why didn't your boy kill him?”

Sefia pressed her hands over her ears.

Grabbing Haku's fallen sword, Gregor struck at Archer. The
spear split in two, showering the floor with splinters. Archer was cut. There was
cheering
. Blood matted his hair, dripped down the side of his face—bright red. Gregor swung the blade back and forth, testing its weight.

Then Archer was attacking, his hands a blur, the broken ends of the spear pummeling Gregor's long arms, his shoulders and legs and head in a broken rhythm of blows and bruises and split skin.
Crack!
Archer shattered the bones in the boy's hand.

The sword dropped.

The crowd cried out.

Another blow. Gregor's feet went out from under him and he hit the ground on his back.

The point of the spear hovered just above his throat.

It had taken less than two minutes for Archer to knock one boy unconscious and pin the other to the ground. He wasn't even breathing hard.

The crowd went berserk, hollering, bloodlust throbbing in their throats and eyes as they called eagerly for the kill.

Gregor cradled his ruined hand to his chest and stared up at Archer from beneath his bloodied mop of hair. On the ground, the boy didn't look afraid. He looked . . . ready.

All around her, men and women were shouting, veins bulging in their necks and foreheads, their eyes wide. Sefia tried to shut out the sound of them but their inarticulate cries engulfed her, rushing under her skin.

Archer hefted the spear. The noise of the crowd surged through him. Thunder in his blood. And suddenly he didn't look like Archer anymore. He looked like the boy in the crate.
An animal with bloodshot eyes. A murderer. The smell of dust and stone and sweat intensified.

The crowd swelled. They were hungry for it. There had to be a kill.

Sefia watched him, willing him to look at her. She blinked, and the room burst into a fine gold powder, spinning and sparkling, with Archer and the spear and the boy at the center—all the lines of their lives culminating in this moment: kill or die. A choice you couldn't unmake. Sefia was afraid to breathe, afraid of disrupting those glimmering currents, but she watched, and she hoped.
Not this. You don't want to do this. You don't want to
be
this. Look up. Please, look up.

Then he did. His eyes lost that feral look. He became Archer again.

He let his arm drop.

He walked away.

The crowd roared. Dismay. Disgust. Blinking, Sefia was shoved and shouted at—hands groping for her, words lashing at her. Then the pitch of their voices changed. They were excited, eager again.

Gregor had lurched to his feet. He had reached the sword. It was clasped in his uninjured hand. He barreled toward Archer with a wild look in his black eyes, lips pulled back from his teeth.

“Archer!” The word ripped out of her.

At the sound of her voice, he twisted out of the way—too late. The sword scored him across the side. He didn't waver; it was as if he hadn't felt it at all. He beat Gregor with the broken
spear: a downpour of blows striking his torso, his kneecaps, his bleeding knuckles. Archer was too fast. The boy couldn't block all of his strikes. They pummeled him. They broke him.

Finally, Archer struck him in the face. Gregor dropped and didn't get up again.

Beside him, Haku stirred and groaned, but couldn't rise.

Both of them were alive.

Archer flung the pieces of the broken spear across the ring and climbed the nearest chute door. As he appeared out of the pit, it seemed as if he were rising out of a well in which he had been lost for a long time, and now all the parts of himself he hated and feared most were flowing off him like water.

Sefia tried to run to him, but a cold hand grabbed her wrist, stopping her. “Not so fast, kitten.” The whale-tooth necklace swung in front of her like a pendulum. “There must be a kill,” Lavinia said.

The crowd roared again.

Sefia's hand went to her belt, but the wand had fallen out. It lay on the ground near Archer's pack.

“We don't win anything if there isn't a kill!”

“He has to do it! Otherwise he doesn't go to Serakeen!”

Archer balled his fists, but no one dared go near him.

“What does the Arbitrator say?” someone asked.

Sefia squirmed, trying to free her wrist, but Lavinia's nails dug into her skin.

The Arbitrator sighed. “There's always a kill.”

Sefia wrenched herself out of Lavinia's grasp, dove for Archer's weapons, and flung them at him. He caught the hilt
of his sword in midair, its sheath sliding away, its blade gleaming. The crowd went still. All eyes were drawn to him. Sefia snatched up the mate's wand.

“There must be a kill,” the Arbitrator repeated, his face gray as he sagged against the broom for support. “That's how it works.”

But Archer was no longer listening to him. He advanced through the crowd, which parted for him like grass withering before a fire. They made no move to stop him as he shouldered his things.

When he was done, he stared intently at the Arbitrator, waiting. Blood ran over his left eye and down his jaw, but in that moment his predisposition toward violence was only a part of what made him so formidable. Violence had made the others take notice, but now his very presence gave him control of the room. He seemed to blaze as if he had swallowed the sun and it was shining through his eyes and teeth. To Sefia, he had never seemed taller.

The Arbitrator wilted under Archer's gaze. The muscles twitched in his jaw.

Then he nodded, and Sefia was not surprised.

“I can't pay you if there isn't a kill,” he said weakly.

“We don't want your money. Just tell us where to go next. How to find . . .” The next word tasted foul on her tongue. “Serakeen.”

His eyes flicked nervously toward Archer. “Up the tunnel.”

The room exploded with objections. Raised voices. Threats of violence. Lavinia slipped out her pistol, a wicked-looking thing with a scrimshaw grip.

Goj, the impressor from Everica, took off his blue cap and shook it angrily in front of the Arbitrator's face. “What gives you the right—”

But the Arbitrator's hard voice echoed off the stone walls. “Do as I say, or Serakeen will hear of it.”

Invoking the Scourge of the East silenced them, and for a moment, they peered around uneasily, as if something evil and dark would come seeping out of the cracks in the stones. Then Lavinia spat sideways, and with a little discontented grumbling, the bettors began refunding their wagers, returning bags of coins, counting gold mai and silver angs in their palms.

“The porter will be waiting for you,” the Arbitrator said.

A porter. He'd be able to tell them where Serakeen was. If he'd seen Nin.

Sefia and Archer crept around the edge of the pit to the tunnel, where she took a lantern from the wall. They began to walk, Archer pulling on his clothes, leaving behind the scent of blood and the whimpering of the injured.

When the noise and the smell of the fighting ring had faded, Sefia set the lantern on the floor and flung her arms around Archer. He staggered back slightly at the impact, but then he hugged her to him.

“Thank you,” she said into his shirt.

His hand stroked her hair, just once, and settled against her shoulder.

“I was afraid you would . . .” Her voice trailed off. His heart pattered beneath her cheek, and she remembered the warmth of his skin, the raised ridges of his scars touching her chin and
the corner of her mouth. “But you didn't.” She squeezed him once more and released him.

He nodded, touching the edge of his scar. The boys had been like him.

“It's only going to get more dangerous from here.” She touched the wand. “Should we call them? They said they'd help us.”
And we might need it,
she thought grimly.

He shook his head. He crossed his fingers.

“You're right.” Sefia tucked the wand away. “This is for us to do. We'll scout it out, and if we need help then, we'll ask for it.”

The tunnel seemed to stretch for miles. As they walked, she imagined them passing under the shoemakers, the bakers, the blacksmiths in their forges with the walls stained black. She felt as if she and Archer had disappeared beneath the world—the people, their conflicts, homes, jobs, and streets—and for a moment, they were almost able to steal away from their own lives, from Serakeen, from dead fathers, from books and violence, and when they reappeared aboveground, they would seem to have materialized out of nothing, with no past and no direction.

But when they climbed a wide flight of steps and found a door etched with the
at the top, Sefia understood that they carried their past with them, growing heavier and heavier each day.

Archer reached for her hand.

When she swung open the door, they stepped out onto a little dock cluttered with broken barrels and empty crates. To the east, the dull rumble of nighttime activity rose from the
Central Port, but out here on the edge of the city, the evening was soft and blue, and the lanterns of the night boats glowed like amber fireflies on the black water. Across the Callidian Strait, the smudges of Corabel's skyline were visible, glittering with lamps.

Sefia started as someone stirred on the dock. Wrapped in a long oilcloth coat, the man was perched on one of the pilings like some enormous vulture with old scars crisscrossing his cracked lips. He didn't say anything, but he climbed into the boat, beckoning them aboard.

“Are you the porter?” Sefia whispered.

The man nodded. The valleys of his face shifted in the evening light, and she had a sudden urge to put her hand on his arm, to reassure them both, maybe, that he was real and solid and wouldn't drift apart the moment she touched him.