Snow Like Ashes(8)
I swing my gaze back to the guards. Two study me, the rest lean lazily against the wall, their breastplates gleaming in the flickering torchlight—silver armor with a black sun on their chests. Angra’s sun. I’m not sure how much tighter I can ball my fists; my nails are already digging into my palms.
“Lots of people coming in for work at this hour. Odd, isn’t it?” One of the guards cocks his head, his Spring-blond hair shorn against his scalp, his green eyes translucent in the combination of firelight and darkness. Exactly what I was counting on.
I finally tip my head back, the hood of my cloak sliding just enough for the firelight to touch my face. The flames will wash out my blue eyes just as it does his, making me look, enough for the guards at least, like a green-eyed Spring citizen. Spring has skin a few shades darker than Winterians, but pale nonetheless, and the yellow light should make me look enough like one of them that they’ll let me pass. I hope. No amount of tricks of the light or playing with shadows could make my white hair look anything but white, so it remains tucked safely under a black cap, which will also make me look more like a boy than a girl. I hope. So many I hopes, and I bite my tongue, keeping my eyes on the guard.
His eyes flash over me, one brow lifting in an expression that makes my blood freeze solid in my veins. “And what kind of work are you meeting this man for, girl?” he sneers.
His comrades perk up. The fact that they know I’m a girl isn’t ideal, but that’s the part of my disguise I’m least worried about—if they knew I’m a Winterian, it would be a hundred kinds of bad.
I draw in a calming breath and pull up the coyest smile I can manage, angling my body slightly toward him. “Work you can’t afford,” I reply, throwing him a wink and strutting past them into the city. I hold my breath, waiting for them to shout at me to stop, waiting for one of them to run after me and try to convince me that actually he can afford it. But all I hear is a roar of laughter, and one of the guards applauds.
“Make our king proud!” he shouts, and I hurry into the city, leaving the jeering soldiers far behind before disgust or fear can creep up on me at what I just did.
I yank my focus back to the task at hand. The port on the northeastern coastal tip of Spring, Lynia is sleepy and calm and lacking any hint of Spring’s usual brutality, mainly because the closest Winterian work camp is a day’s ride inland. Angra can’t have damaged, hollow Winterian slaves sullying Spring’s image when trading ships from other kingdoms dock here. Lynia’s peace is only a mask painted on so the rest of the world can pretend that cracked and withered hands didn’t make the goods they buy.
The streets around the gate aren’t exactly busy, but they aren’t empty either. A few taverns stand in halos of firelight, the ruckus of laughter and music emanating in muffled bursts from within. A handful of drunkards stumbles from tavern to tavern, but that’s it. As if the rest of Lynia would rather stay tucked in their beds than partake in nighttime frivolities.
I’ve been in enough of Primoria’s cities to know this isn’t normal—most cities stay loud and bright even after the sun sets, and sneaking through them is all too easy. But in Spring, everything is quieter and more tense. If I stand still and hold my breath, I can practically feel Angra’s evil. The way he uses his conduit’s magic to pour devotion into his people, so that every Spring citizen responds to every situation like the guard: “Make our king proud.”
Other kingdoms use their conduits as they should be used—to enhance the already existing strengths of their lands and people. To make fields yield a plethora of fruit, to make soldiers strong, to make sick people healthy. But Angra uses his conduit to enhance the bad—to snuff out anything good unless it benefits him. To make every soul in his kingdom an empty shell of servitude.
I duck down a deserted alley, heart pumping adrenaline in thick rivers through my body, but I don’t slow my pace, even as I reach the stack of crates against a wall at the end. In a burst of movement I’m up the crates, scaling the wall, and rolling onto the tiles of the roof next to me, a handful of stories in the air. Spring soldiers may find Lynia’s deserted streets easier to patrol, but spotting enemy soldiers on rooftops is a slightly more difficult task.
Chunks of tile crumble under my boots as I push into a sprint, a breath away from the edge of the roof and three stories of night air. I launch into the void, black cloak fluttering behind me through a smokestack’s bitter cloud. The next roof slides under me like a field beneath a horse’s hooves, nothing but speed and the jolt of running feet meeting solid ground. I drop-roll into the shadow of a chimney and wait a moment, holding my breath. No shouts of alarm. No clanking of armor moving closer.