Twenty Four: A Reminder

"What exactly do you pack for this kind of thing?"

Jordan was having a hard time scraping together enough belongings to fill a knapsack for the trip, and very little of it was essential. He had come to Nictaven with the clothes on his back, a sketchbook, and a healthy terror of Listeners, but nothing he'd call particularly valuable. He had all his spare clothes rolled into the bottom of the huge pack, and on top of that was a blank journal and his study books.

Laurel looked up from flicking through one of his older journals. She had appeared that morning, taking him by surprise, to help him get ready. He suspected Nika had something to do with it. She had been much easier company than his sister – a thought he entertained for a second and then put hurriedly away in some dark corner of his brain – and seemed positively cheerful. It was a breath of fresh air after the loaded conversations of the previous day, and while he planned to see Grace again before he left, he was still stinging from her words. Laurel, to his relief, genuinely didn't seem to care that he was Gifted, and he was starting to appreciate just how rare that was.

"Don't rush to fill it up," she said. "You'll probably come back with more than you left with."

"You think?"

She nodded. "Ask Nika. When he came to my dad's inn at the start of the season it looked like he hadn't left a single book in the Guildtown."

Jordan could believe it. There was a stack of books in the corner of Yddris's front room at that moment, all bristling with markers. How the man found the time and energy to read so much between patrols was a mystery.

"I'm not much of a reader," he mumbled doubtfully, staring into the cavernous space left in his bag. He was sure he'd forgotten something; he was probably doomed to remember what it was a week into the journey.

"Doesn't mean I'm wrong. It might not be books." She got up, and Ren immediately commandeered the warm spot on the bed. She wiggled her fingers through the belt loops on his cloak. "I think you're just nervous."

"Maybe." He leaned down and nudged her forehead with his nose. "You don't seem that upset."

She drew back, a wry smile on her face. His cheeks warmed as he realised how it sounded, even if he'd only meant in contrast to Grace.

"How do you know I'm not wrecked inside?" she asked, throwing a hand across her brow and swooning dramatically. It morphed into a warm smile when he only laughed nervously. "Thorne, I know how this works. You're Unspoken. That always comes first. It should be like that." She put up a finger to stall his protests. "If I'm going to be an obstacle, then that has to be addressed. I'm happy with how we are now, for now. And if you are too, then I see no problem. We both went into this knowing it couldn't work the way it does with everyone else, and I've made my peace with it." She peered into the depths of his hood, and he let her. "I'm not sure you have."

He swallowed. "Sometimes I wish I'd just been able to stay and work at your inn."

Her brows drew together. "Oh, Thorne."

"I think that might have been nice, once I got used to it," he said. "It wouldn't have been like going home, but like... I'd have known where I stood. Who I was supposed to be. You know?"

She reached into his hood and cupped his face in her hand without breaking eye contact. "Give this trip a chance, won't you? I really think it'll help."

"Sure." Jordan tried to smile, with the weight of his role with the Devils pressing unsaid against the back of his teeth like vomit. They broke apart, and Laurel returned to the bed, deftly transferring Ren to her lap and retrieving the journal.

The front door opened and then closed. Jordan wandered out into the hall to see who it was, half-hoping for Grace and half-relieved when it wasn't. Yddris, Hap and Koen entered with a gust of cold, arms laden down with bags. A moment later, to Jordan's dismay, Astra also entered. His stomach sank further when he realised she was carrying a knapsack.

"Slight change of plan," "Yddris grunted, spotting Jordan in the doorway. "We've got a merchant willing to pay through the nose for passage across the Barrens before the storms hit, so Hap and Koen are going to come with us now instead of following in a couple of weeks, and Astra's coming too."

"Are you up to that?" Nika said softly to Astra.

"I need a new tutor," she replied in a hard voice. Though no one showed outward signs, a collective wince ran through the auras of everyone in the room.

Jordan let out a breath. If others were coming, that would diffuse some of the awkwardness with Astra. He felt a little ashamed of it, considering her reason for going, but the other apprentice unnerved him, and he still had no idea what he'd done wrong.

"Right," he said. "I think I'm packed."

"Good lad." Yddris clapped him on the shoulder as he passed to get to the cellar door. "I'm fuckin' not."

"You can go and see your sister tomorrow morning," Hap said, sitting down in Yddris's one chair with a tired sigh. "Give Yddris some time to get ready before we leave. Harkenn's had him running around like a mad demon these last couple of days. You wouldn't think he had a Barrens crossing to get ready for."

"He did provide the food, though," Koen said. He gestured at a bulging sack in the corner of the room. "So he's not exactly been unhelpful."

"True." The old man massaged his leg with one hand. "But he doesn't half run Yddris into the ground sometimes. He needs this break as much as any of us."

"You wouldn't think he had an apprentice, either, the way Harkenn carries on," Nika murmured. He sat down in his habitual corner and heaved a large book into his lap. He was the only one not sitting or standing by a pile of bags and supplies, and not for the first time Jordan wished he was coming. He had never been with Yddris alone for more than a few hours at a time since he'd manifested the Gift, and wasn't certain what to expect from a two-week journey with him. Of course he knew there were going to be others physically present, but Nika shared in the teaching. He was as much a feature of Jordan's training as Yddris had ever been.

"Ah, well." Hap settled deeper into the chair and crossed his hands over his torso. "Can't say the city hasn't got enough going on to warrant it. Do you think you'll come up for the ceremony, Nika?"

"I'll try," Nika replied. It was the first time Jordan had heard of any possibility that Nika would be coming. "But someone has to stay with Harkenn. Like you said, the city is going through it. I did promise I would step in for Yddris. If not, we'll have to celebrate when you get back."

Jordan glanced at Koen, and then quietly removed himself from the room. He felt bad that he had been so absent over the past several weeks when the other apprentice was preparing to take the black cloak, but he had been feeling too sorry for himself to soothe anyone else's nerves. He still couldn't quite squash the niggling resentment, either. He wasn't sure whether what he felt was abandonment –which was unwarranted – or envy, which was even more so.

He found Laurel still on his bed, though she had stretched out and was flipping through his most recent journal on her front, Ren curled up beside her. Her dress had rucked up a little at the bottom, and she'd found one of his shirts and put it on. The resentment flared into a burn as he looked at her, fiercely wishing none of this had happened, that he could have stayed at the inn and given her a real relationship. He was certain Nictaven wouldn't have seemed like such an awful place to him if he didn't have its worst aspects constantly shoved in his face.

"Suits you," he said, hoping his voice didn't sound stilted with this fresh wave of self-loathing. "I will need to pack that, though."

She pouted. "I can't keep this one?" Her eyes glinted playfully. "But it smells like you, so I won't miss you as much when you're gone."

He laughed despite himself. "You go days without seeing me and you're just fine."

"I'd like to see you more," she said, rolling over onto her back and grinning. "You can come and see me any time you like."

"I would," he said. "Training, though."

"Do you use that excuse with all your women?" She cocked a flirtatious eyebrow, and Jordan scoffed.

"Uh huh. All those women I keep around with my dashing good looks." He gestured at his hood.

"Ladies like mysterious men."

"I don't think as many ladies like mysterious men who have glowing eyes and make the air crackle."

"Perhaps." She giggled. She turned the journal around to an open page. "Who's this? It looks familiar."

She turned the journal around, and Jordan balked when he realised he'd drawn Arlen again – only the nose and eyes, and he hadn't been so absent while doing it that he'd included the Devil tattoo, but Arlen's eyes were distinctive enough on their own. He blinked, trying to remember when he'd done it, but it must have been in one of those many drawing sessions where he'd been half-conscious with exhaustion.

"Was just...scribbling," he said, hoping to high heaven that he sounded nonchalant. "Didn't finish it. Well, obviously I didn't."

To his immense relief, she accepted his explanation and flipped to the next page. "This is Harkenn's slave, right?"

It was just a gesture drawing, but the features were clear enough; the long dark hair, the position she sat in, the thick collar trailing a chain into her lap. He'd been hoping to exorcise the memory of her dark gaze drilling into him from the study corner, always making him wonder what she was thinking.

"She's always there when I go up with Yddris," Jordan mumbled. He shrugged. "I like drawing what I see."

"I can tell," Laurel said, smiling. "I notice you haven't drawn me yet."

"Do you want me to?"

Her smile widened into a grin. "What's my best angle?"

The afternoon passed in a daze of calm that Jordan welcomed with open arms. His thoughts about everything faded to a dull murmur in the back of his mind, replaced by the scratch of pencil on paper and Laurel's quiet breathing. Peace flooded in as he sketched out the contours of her face, as they tried to keep from laughing every time he looked up at her. It was almost like the first couple of weeks at the Demon's Brew, sitting cross-legged together on the floor of his bedroom. His strokes picked out the shine of her hair, the glint in her eyes, and he felt lighter again.

"Kiel's teeth." Jordan had been so absorbed in his drawing that he hadn't sensed Koen come up behind him. The resentment no longer smouldered – it was scratched out on the paper in hard lines – but he still found some room to feel a little ashamed of himself. "You're damn good, you know. You should definitely use it in future."

"Nika said that." Jordan glanced down at the sketch and then handed the book to Laurel, who squeaked with delight.

"I know this guy, at the Guildtown," Koen said. "He'd love to meet you, he's always looking for artists."

"I wouldn't say I was..."

"Demonshit." Koen clapped him on the shoulder, and Jordan squashed a shiver of cold at the reminder of Usk. "That's art, that is. I'll introduce you when we get there. Laurel, Nika wants to know if you're staying for dinner."

"Oh, Kiel's beard, is that the time?" Laurel squeaked, scrambling up from the bed. "I need to get back, Pa has a huge booking at the inn tonight."

"I'll walk you," Jordan said. He was reluctant to let go of this little bubble of calm just yet. "And, yes, fine, you can keep the shirt."

He walked Laurel back in the semi-gloom and drizzling rain, but despite the grim weather he greatly enjoyed the journey. The city was showing signs of life again after demon numbers returned to stability – though from any conversations he'd heard, no one knew why there'd been a surge in the first place – and more windows were lit as they passed. He stopped in at a tailor's on the way there to pay ahead for a proper cold-weather cloak for Grace, and then walked arm in arm with Laurel the rest of the way, talking about nothing in particular and everything at once. A conversation that didn't really matter, in the long run; he was making no choices, telling no lies for once. It was freeing, and soothing, and he walked home in a state of near-euphoric calm.

Until he spotted Arlen.

At first he disregarded the figure loitering under the street light ahead as someone who'd been out drinking, since they were leaning at a somewhat alarming angle and propping themselves up on the base of the lamp. At worst it was a mugger, so he cranked his aura up a few notches just as he spotted the false leg poking out of the bottom of the figure's cloak.

"Calm down, kid, Nict's balls." Arlen rubbed at his face, scowling, as Jordan approached. "Not like you've never seen me before."

"What are you doing here?" Jordan hissed, too panicked to be diplomatic. He was too close to freedom to be sent on another errand now. "How are you even here?"

"Trust me, kid, I expected to be here even less than you did. Marick sent me."

Everything the afternoon had done to calm his nerves vanished in a sharp wrench of his gut.

Arlen noticed. "Just go with it. I'm not entirely convinced either of us is off the hook for the warehouse job, so for what my advice is worth, I'd do whatever he tells you to do for a little while."

Jordan rammed his hands in his pockets and swallowed. He could almost see Yddris's street from where they stood – if he had just moved a little faster, if he hadn't stopped at the tailor's, could he have avoided this? "And what's he telling me to do?"

It took Jordan a moment to realise what Arlen's fidgeting and darting gaze meant; the man was uncomfortable. Jordan's stomach sank further. "He worries that your time away might cause you to, ah...forget your duties."

"Right..."

"Can you get away tonight?"

"Ah, fuck." Jordan had to clench his jaw to stop from screaming. "We're leaving tomorrow. I can't be out all night."

"It won't be all night. It isn't a job." Jordan glared, and Arlen matched it with a note of warning. "Do you want to be the one to go and tell Marick you're refusing? Because I ain't stepping in for that one."

He didn't want to be the one to tell Marick; he didn't want to see Marick at all. To that end, he found himself falling into the familiar pattern: make out like nothing was wrong at dinner, and go to bed at his usual time. Wait for whoever was going on patrol to leave, and for everyone else to go quiet. By the time it came to leave, the only people left in the house were Jordan, Astra and Yddris. Astra was upstairs, and he had heard Nika leave a long while before. He couldn't bear the prospect of going out again without someone knowing where he was, especially since it was Marick and not Arlen who ordered the outing.

His tutor sat in the window, smoking his pipe. He glanced round as Jordan shuffled into the room, and they stared at each other for a long moment. Yddris turned away, but the set of his shoulders was stiff now.

"I thought you were done until you got back."

"So did I." Jordan had changed into his Devil blacks and leathers. He didn't entirely trust Arlen not to send him to do anything else while he was there, and if he was going to be running around the city he didn't want to do it as Unspoken. "The...leader. He thinks I'll forget my duties, whatever that means. Arlen wouldn't tell me what it was."

A long cloud of smoke concealed his tutor from view, but even so Jordan could have sworn he saw Yddris's fist clench.

"Do you have any idea?" Jordan asked cautiously.

"No," Yddris replied, but Jordan wasn't convinced. "I'll look out tonight, boy. If there's trouble, you know what to do."

Some of the tight knot of fear in Jordan's chest eased to know that Yddris would at least be looking out for him tonight, whatever it was. The Unspoken didn't sound happy about it, but Jordan was hardly going to refuse the offer.

Arlen waited in the same place Jordan had first seen him, only this time there was a carriage parked in view down the street. It wasn't the same one the assassin used to get around the dead quarter, but it was the same driver. Jordan didn't ask what had happened to the previous owner, but he had seen enough of the Devils to be fairly certain that there had been one and that he didn't want the answer.

He got in, settling into the polished leather seat and tensing as Arlen got in after him. The carriage smelled like polish and new wood; this definitely wasn't Arlen's.

He tried to guess where they were going by watching out of the window, but even with his assisted sight the buildings blurred into each other in the dark. By the time they stopped – much sooner than he had been expecting – he was thoroughly disorientated, though he didn't think they'd left the merchants' quarter.

"Our stop," Arlen muttered. He gestured. "After you."

Jordan got out, and found himself in a narrow cobbled alley. The carriage blocked his view of the street beyond it, so he couldn't see from the architecture whether his guess about their location was correct. Two soot-stained house walls rose on either side of him, and at the end of the alley a wrought-iron railing surrounded some steps down into a cellar, picked out by the rune-warding. Aside from some assorted rubbish and detritus the alley had no other features.

Arlen grunted as he got out right behind him, making Jordan start. The assassin grinned through the dark at him, though it looked more like a pained leer that reminded Jordan of the first time he'd met the man. That had been in an alley like this, what felt like a lifetime ago, and despite the months between the two events he felt just as cornered as ever.

"Downstairs." Arlen gestured with his walking stick. "You'll be an hour at most."

"Aren't you coming in?"

"You want to add another half an hour for getting myself up and down those stairs?" Whatever little of Jordan's eyes was visible must have given something away, because Arlen groaned a moment later. "Nict's balls, kid. You can't have your hand held for everything."

Despite his words, when Jordan crept to the top of the steps, Arlen followed. The cellar below was musty and cold, but a warm glow and a lick of heat reached them from a room down a short passageway. Jordan hesitated when he reached the bottom and got a hard poke in the back for the trouble. He started moving again, the knot in his stomach winding tighter and tighter with each step, until he ducked under a low lintel and found himself in a small room. It had a fire going in the grate, and at a long table sat a huge Varthian man. He was the first Jordan had seen with a shaved head, but the tattoos and yellow eyes were familiar.

Someone moved over in the corner, and bile rose as Marick stepped out of the shadows.

"Good evening, Jordan." He smiled, pleasant enough on the outside, but it hid a dagger strike. "I wasn't going to join you tonight but then thought it would be a bit harsh to do this without warning and not explain it in person."

Jordan's eyes darted to the Varthian, to the object in his hands, to the small dark bottles on his little work-table. He stepped back, but at that moment Arlen ducked inside the room and blocked his exit.

"Where am I putting it?" the Varthian grunted, dipping the needle into one of the ink bottles.

"Back of the neck, I think," Marick said, smile sharpening. "See? I can be reasonable. Though I won't object if you'd like it more prominent."

The Varthian hawked into the corner and gestured. "Shirt off and on the table."

When Jordan hesitated, Marick raised a brow. "Now, please."