•
The den must have been a meeting point, because Murtaugh found them there an hour later. The madam had brought them to her private office, and they’d been forced to pin Ren to the worn couch as she—with surprising adeptness—disinfected, stitched, and bound up his nasty wound. He would survive, she said, but the blood loss and injury would keep him incapacitated for a while. Murtaugh paced the entire time, until Ren collapsed into a deep sleep, courtesy of some tonic the woman made him choke down.
Chaol and Aedion sat at the small table crammed in amongst the crates upon crates of opium stacked against the walls. He didn’t want to know what was in the tonic Ren had ingested.
Aedion was watching the locked door, head cocked as if listening to the sounds of the den, as he said to Murtaugh, “Why were you being followed, and who were those men?”
The old man kept pacing. “I don’t know. But they knew where Ren and I would be. Ren has a network of informants throughout the city. Any one of them could have betrayed us.”
Aedion’s attention remained on the door, a hand on one of his fighting knives. “They wore uniforms with the royal sigil—even the captain didn’t recognize them. You need to lay low for a while.”
Murtaugh’s silence was too heavy. Chaol asked quietly, “Where do we bring him when he can be moved?”
Murtaugh paused his pacing, his eyes full of grief. “There is no place. We have no home.”
Aedion looked sharply at him. “Where the hell have you been staying all this time?”
“Here and there, squatting in abandoned buildings. When we are able to take work, we stay in boardinghouses, but these days . . .”
They would not have access to the Allsbrook coffers, Chaol realized. Not if they had been in hiding for so many years. But to be homeless . . .
Aedion’s face was a mask of disinterest. “And you have no place in Rifthold safe enough to hold him—to see to his mending.” Not a question, but Murtaugh nodded all the same. Aedion examined Ren, sprawled on the dark sofa against the far wall. His throat bobbed once, but then he said, “Tell the captain your theory about magic.”
•
In the long hours that passed as Ren regained his strength enough to be moved, Murtaugh explained everything he knew. His entire story came out, the old man almost whispering at times—of the horrors they’d fled, and how Ren had gotten each and every scar. Chaol understood why the young man had been so close-lipped until now. Secrecy had kept them alive.
All together, Murtaugh and Ren had learned, the various waves the day magic had vanished formed a rough triangle across the continent. The first line went right from Rifthold to the Frozen Wastes. The second went down from the Frozen Wastes to the edge of the Deserted Peninsula. The third line went from there back to Rifthold. A spell, they believed, had been the cause of it.
Standing around the map Aedion had produced, the general traced a finger over the lines again and again, as if sorting out a battle strategy. “A spell sent from specific points, like a beacon.”
Chaol thumped his knuckles on the table. “Is there some way of undoing it?”
Murtaugh sighed. “Our work was interrupted by the disturbance with Archer, and our sources vanished from the city for fear of their lives. But there has to be a way.”
“So where do we start looking?” Aedion asked. “There’s no chance in hell the king would leave clues lying around.”
Murtaugh nodded. “We need eyewitnesses to confirm what we suspect, but the places we think the spell originated are occupied by the king’s forces. We’ve been waiting for an in.”
Aedion gave him a lazy grin. “No wonder you kept telling Ren to be nice to me.”
As if in response, Ren groaned, struggling to rise to consciousness. Had the young lord ever felt safe or at peace at any point in the past ten years? It would explain that anger—the reckless anger that coursed through all the young, shattered hearts of Terrasen, including Celaena’s.
Chaol said, “There is an apartment hidden in a warehouse in the slums. It’s secure, and has all the amenities you need. You’re welcome to stay there for however long you require.”
He felt Aedion watching him carefully. But Murtaugh frowned. “However generous, I cannot accept the offer to stay in your house.”
“It’s not my house,” Chaol said. “And believe me, the owner won’t mind one bit.”
31
“Eat it,” Manon said, holding out the raw leg of mutton to Abraxos. The day was bright, but the wind off the snowy peaks of the Fangs still carried a brutal chill. They’d been going outside the mountain for little spurts to stretch his legs, using the back door that opened onto a narrow road leading into the mountains. She’d guided him by the giant chain—as if it would do anything to stop him from taking off—up a sharp incline, and then onto the meadow atop a plateau.
“Eat it,” she said, shaking the freezing meat at Abraxos, who was now lying on his belly in the meadow, huffing at the first grasses and flowers to poke through the melting ice. “It’s your reward,” she said through her teeth. “You earned it.”
Abraxos sniffed at a cluster of purple flowers, then flicked his eyes to her. No meat, he seemed to say.
“It’s good for you,” she said, and he went right back to sniffing the violets or whatever they were. If a plant wasn’t good for poisoning or healing or keeping her alive if she were starving, she’d never bothered to learn its name—especially not wildflowers.
She tossed the leg right in front of his massive mouth and tucked her hands into the folds of her red cloak. He snuffed at it, his new iron teeth glinting in the radiant light, then stretched out one massive, claw-tipped wing and—
Shoved it aside.
Manon rubbed her eyes. “Is it not fresh enough?”
He moved to sniff some white-and-yellow flowers.
A nightmare. This was a nightmare. “You can’t really like flowers.”
Again those dark eyes shifted to her. Blinked once. I most certainly do, he seemed to say.
She splayed her arms. “You never even smelled a flower until yesterday. What’s wrong with the meat now?” He needed to eat tons and tons of meat to put on the muscle he was lacking.
When he went back to sniffing the flowers rather delicately—the insufferable, useless worm—she stalked to the leg of mutton and hauled it up. “If you won’t eat it,” she snarled at him, hoisting it up with both hands to her mouth and popping her iron teeth down, “then I will.”