The Drowned Woods (4)

It was a face she had not seen in four years.

Renfrew.

Keeping her gaze averted, Mer murmured to the table, “Enjoy the cakes, compliments of the Scythe and Boot.” She set the oat cakes down, and before any of them could comment, she turned so that her back was to the door and hastily made for the stairs. The hayloft had been divided into rooms for rent. She kept a key tied to her wrist and she used it to unlock her door, peering inside.

Her room was empty. No soldiers awaited her. Shoulders sagging with relief, Mer stepped inside and shut the door behind her.

It was a simple room: an old bed frame with a straw mattress suspended on ropes, a single candle, and a sack with the rest of her belongings. She had never unpacked it; unpacking was a luxury Mer could not afford. She swung her pack over one shoulder.

She couldn’t go back downstairs—she would have to leave through the window. She took a steadying breath. Outside was a rain-slick roof and a cloud-heavy sky. The drop from the roof to the ground would be a steep one, but she could make it. The windows weren’t glass—merely a wooden panel that could be opened on sunny days.

Mer unlatched the window and began to push it open.

But it wouldn’t budge.

Mer rammed her shoulder against the wood. It hurt, but the window still wouldn’t open. As if it had been jammed shut from the outside. Which meant—

A clicking sound came from the door behind her. She whirled, heart hammering against her ribs. Renfrew had planned this. He had known she would try to flee out a window, so he must have scaled the roof and jammed every single window shut before he allowed himself to be seen. It was the methodical attention to detail that made the old spymaster so good at his work.

And she’d played right into his hands.

The door swung open and Renfrew stood there, a lockpick’s wrench between his fingers.

“I thought I taught you better than this,” he said, gently chiding. “Always have at least two methods of escape.”

Before he had finished the sentence, Mer’s hand was at the back of her belt. Her fingers found the hilt of a knife—she’d spent months training with them, learning the heft and balance of the steel. She threw it as hard as she could.

The blade sank into the wood of the doorway, only a finger’s width from one of Renfrew’s ears. He did not so much as flinch. He reached over and began to pry the knife free. “You missed.”

Mer didn’t bother to reply. She hadn’t meant for the knife to hit him. A distraction, nothing more.

His heavy leather boots had been doused with rainwater. Her hand reached out—and in the same moment, she closed her eyes and called to her power.

To divine a thing, one must find it within themselves. She remembered those words from an old book in the prince’s library. It was not just rhetoric. To control water, a diviner needed to pull from that ocean within themselves. If she used too much of her magic, it left her parched and with a throbbing headache. All divining had a price, and she’d heard of how others had suffered—metal diviners weak from little iron in their blood; fire diviners chilled to the bone; wind diviners who died for lack of breath.

At least water was simple to replenish. All she had to do was drink it.

She froze Renfrew’s boots to the floor. He tried to lift one of his feet but couldn’t.

“I thought I taught you better,” Mer said coldly. “If you wish to confront me, you’d best dry your boots first.”

She reached down, picking up her pack. She didn’t have much—firesteel, a knife, a few clothes, a water flask, and coin. That was all a person needed, and the rest could be bought or stolen. She would smash her window open.

“Mer,” said Renfrew, and then he did something that made her go still. He laughed. A warm chuckle, the kind that came up through the belly and could not be forced. “I have missed you.”

Gazing into Renfrew’s face made her feel like a child again: torn between a simmering resentment and a yearning for approval. He was the only father she’d known since she was eight. And despite herself, she felt that old tether behind her ribs, a tug of memory that made her want to soften toward him. But she couldn’t afford that. Not if she wanted to keep her freedom.

“I’m not going back,” she told him, even as her heart pounded. Saying the words was a risk; part of her wanted to pretend that Renfrew’s arrival didn’t mean what she knew it did. “I’ll die before I go back to the prince’s service.”

“Will you kill me?” asked Renfrew idly.

Mer hesitated only a moment. “No. But I will hold you in place while I run.”

Renfrew exhaled. “Look at me properly before you make any hasty decisions.”

It felt like a trick, but Mer’s gaze swept over the man. He wore tattered clothing, but that was no surprise. He could not wear his spymaster finery in this small town, not if he wished to go unseen.

And that’s when she saw the missing finger. It was his left index finger, the foremost upon his dominant hand. It had always been the finger that had borne the heavy signet ring, the one that marked him as belonging to Prince Garanhir. The prince’s father had paid a hefty sum to a metal diviner to have his rings welded to the fingers of his inner circle. The only way to remove it would be to—

Remove the finger.

It made her breath catch. That finger had been cut off and cauterized recently—within the last year, at the earliest. Mer knew how slowly burn scars healed.