Three: A Visit

When Jordan woke, the day was already well underway. The smell of food wafted through the house, creeping under his bedroom door and causing his stomach to pinch. He hadn't had any appetite in the week preceding the robbery, but now it was over he felt the consequences. He probed outward with his senses, using mostly his magic for guidance. Nika was home, but he couldn't find Yddris, which meant his tutor had left for the castle and could return with Grace at any time.

Soft footsteps sounded outside the door. Jordan sat up and made a fruitless attempt at combing his hair with his fingers just as Nika let himself in bearing a tray.

"Oh good, you're awake," the Unspoken said. "I was about to come and get you up."

"They coming back soon?"

"Yddris said he'd be back by midday," Nika replied. He put the tray down in Jordan's lap. "I'm sorry it's so thin on meat, the butchers are charging so much at the moment."

Jordan waved it off, just grateful to see sustenance of any sort. Nika's cooking was much better than Arlen's; if Jordan ever had the misfortune of eating with the assassin, he was usually presented with a nauseatingly thick porridge or a thin, tasteless potato soup. He'd rather go hungry, if he hadn't worried that he'd have his head caved in if he refused. Nika knew his way around herbs and spices well enough to make a good stew out of almost anything. The bowl was gone in a matter of minutes under Nika's vaguely incredulous gaze.

"And here I was getting worried about you being off your food," the man muttered, as Jordan gulped down scorching tea. "You don't look well, though, I have to admit."

"Slept badly," Jordan said. He directed it at his lap so he didn't have to meet Nika's eye. The Unspoken had done a lot for him, and Jordan repaid him by lying.

But it wasn't like he had much of a choice.

"Are you still having nightmares?"

Jordan nodded. That was something he didn't need to lie about. It wasn't the whole truth, but it was the case that Jordan's experience of the Nictavian dark season had left him with regular night terrors, sometimes enough to keep him awake, and other times so vivid that he woke up screaming. No one else seemed to suffer them, which only made it worse; just the soft otherworlder again, the kid who did what he was told and cried about it when he thought no one was looking. He had hoped, after his first meeting with Arlen, that time might harden him to it, but so far it showed no signs of letting up. If anything it was getting worse.

"I suppose you're still going to refuse my help with it."

Jordan set his jaw, tangling his fingers together in his lap and regretting the speed with which he'd eaten as his stomach twisted. Nika had offered many times to brew him some herbs that would help him sleep more deeply, but if Jordan's time with Arlen had given him anything – aside from nightmares – it was a healthy respect for punctuality. If he overslept and arrived late to the dead quarter, Arlen ran him twice as hard.

He also didn't want to be caught spark out if any of the Devils decided to pay a home visit.

"I despair of both of you," Nika muttered as he collected up the tray and left again, and Jordan knew that included Yddris, who consistently landed himself in Nika's bad books.

Despite Grace's imminent arrival, Jordan took his time getting up to avoid any lengthier conversations. It had been a handful of weeks since he had joined the Devils, which was too small a window for his abysmal lying skills to have improved any – and Nika was more sensitive to it than most. Jordan wasn't going to court disaster by putting himself in situations where he might slip up.

He washed in the tin tub in the courtyard. He had to break up a sheet of ice over the surface to reach it – the pump had frozen solid and was no help. He cut his knuckles in the process but barely noticed the sting. Not too far away, a demon cried out. The dark season was lifting, but what passed for daytime was still a dim, cloudy twilight that graced them for a matter of hours. Demons were still abroad in the city at all times, and even as Jordan bent to splash his face a deeper shadow passed overhead – a Marrowhawk, huge birdlike demons that lived on bones. Jordan straightened and watched the dark arrow winging across the sky until it disappeared beyond the roofline. All over his skin, magic pricked and sparked.

He heard Grace's voice inside the house and quickly scrubbed himself dry. He pulled his shirt back on and raked his hair back from his face with damp fingers before hurrying back in. After the night he'd had a few hours of relative normality were an exciting prospect.

His sister sat in Yddris's only chair when he entered. Ren had already found her way into Grace's lap, currently languishing in the cradle of her skirts and receiving a belly rub. The shadow-runner watched Jordan through green eyes narrowed with pleasure, tail flicking, as if she knew that he wasn't going to get all the attention now that she'd taken up position – a challenge to do something about it he knew he'd lose.

"Hey, Grace," he said, and his sister looked up, a smile brightening her face. She shared many of Jordan's features – or features he had had once, before the Gift happened – blonde hair and the occasional freckle, their mother's nose. Jordan had had blue eyes and Grace's were hazel, but they both had their father's eye shape. Only Grace still looked like a normal person, and Jordan probably looked like a wreck.

"You look terrible, Jordan."

"Good to see you, too."

Her smile was gone now, replaced with a very stern expression that made her look upsettingly like their mother. "Nika says you're not sleeping."

Jordan scowled over at the Unspoken, who busied himself over the cooking pot and pretended not to notice.

"I'm alright," he grunted. He swung himself up onto the window ledge next to her and put his back against the glass. "Let me worry about that. You've got enough on your plate."

"Not as much as you," Grace pressed. "It's surely more dangerous to do this kind of thing without sleep."

"Yddris gets by alright."

His tutor looked up from the corner he'd sandwiched himself into and grunted. "Don't bring me into your little domestic, boy."

"You don't sleep enough, either," Nika muttered, shoving a bowl of stew into Yddris's hands and returning to the book he must have been reading before they'd arrived.

"Demons are nocturnal," Yddris growled back. "If that fact passed you by in the last decade."

"It hadn't, actually. Don't you start with the attitude, I can't bear it."

Jordan met Grace's eye and they both stifled snorts. The fact that the two Unspoken bickered like a pair of old women seemed apparent to everyone but them.

A moment of quiet spread through the room, but it wasn't uncomfortable, not like the quiet that settled on Arlen's rooms when he had a mood on him. Jordan relaxed against the window, savouring the feeling of having slept, of being able to sit still and not having thoughts of an impending robbery invade his mind every few seconds.

"Have you eaten?" Nika asked Grace suddenly, "I'm ever so sorry, I didn't think to ask."

"Oh...yes, I have," Grace replied, cheeks going slightly pink. "Thank you, though."

Jordan nudged her with his foot and smirked. His sister had never quite gotten over her unease around the Unspoken – a lot of people found the lack of a visible face unsettling – but she'd been making an effort. He didn't know how to express his gratitude without making it awkward, but it was a deep relief to have one less thing to worry about.

"How's Nova?" he asked. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Yddris pause in lighting his pipe. Nika hesitated very slightly as he turned the next page of his book.

Grace, on the other hand, just shrugged. "Evasive. As always."

"She's still not told you what she's up to?"

"No. I've given up for now." Grace scratched behind Ren's ears and sighed, before shooting him a wicked grin. "I'll catch her when she's not expecting it."

Though he was glad his sister had someone she could call a friend up in Harkenn's castle, he often caught himself wishing she perhaps hadn't chosen to get attached to his Lordship's personal slave. "You are being careful, aren't you, Grace?"

"Always. Harkenn won't notice anyway, I think he's gone a bit doolally up there."

Jordan glanced at Yddris, who let out a long breath of smoke and said carefully, "He does have a lot on his mind lately."

"Hetty had to change his bedsheets three times in one day last week," Grace said. "He was convinced they were poisoned."

Jordan cocked an eyebrow at his tutor, who had a note of warning in his tone as he grunted, "I did say it was a lot."

"That's encouraging," Jordan muttered.

"At least he's stopped shouting at everyone," Grace replied, in a much flatter voice. Jordan glanced at her, looking for signs she was hiding something. He had made Harkenn promise him once that he would never lay a hand on her, but Jordan didn't trust the lord further than he could throw him.

"I got you something in town the other day," Jordan said, remembering suddenly. He had forgotten in the chaos of the week. He thanked the timing; any stretch of silence could leave Grace an opportunity to ask him what he had been up to, and he'd have to think of something to say that wouldn't upset her. He got up. "Actually, Nika found it. But I thought you might like it."

Her face lit up. "What is it?"

"It's not a surprise, then, is it?"

"I don't like surprises."

"You're a bad liar, Grace." She was practically jumping in the seat, which prompted Ren to roll over, disgruntled, and hold onto her skirts to stay on.

Jordan hurried into his room and dug the package out of the drawer in his desk, which was almost wedged shut with ink bottles and parchment, pencils and sketchbooks and scraps of paper. The shelf above the desk groaned under a pile of textbooks and used journals, and large copies of runes were pinned to the wall at eye-level. He glanced at the mess, at the splatters of ink all over the table and the pen nibs he hadn't cleaned, and wondered if he would ever have a moment free to clear it.

When he returned to the front room, Yddris had swapped places with Grace and there was a crackle in the air that Jordan had come to associate with Yddris and Nika's more heated disagreements. The window was cracked open, and Yddris was almost obscured from view in a cloud of smoke, a bottle hanging loose in his grip. Nika didn't look like he'd moved, but the buzzing air around the man suggested he wasn't as composed as his outward appearance suggested.

Grace caught his eye and mimed smoking, and Jordan nodded, scowling. Nika hated it when Yddris smoked inside the house, and Jordan was annoyed with both of them for making things so uncomfortable while his sister was visiting. The dark season had taken a hard toll on all the Unspoken, Jordan included, but the arguing was wearing thin.

Jordan settled himself cross-legged beside his sister, though he was conscious not to get too close as he knew how unsettling she found his magic. He handed over the package.

"Wrapped and everything," Grace murmured, grinning. "Anyone would think it was my birthday."

"We've probably missed both of ours by now," Jordan replied. "We can pretend."

Their eyes met, Grace's glinting more than usual. Then, to his surprise, she put her head on his shoulder as she unwrapped the brown paper from the package. He pretended not to notice the spots of wetness that splashed down his front, and wrapped his arm around her narrow shoulders. His sister was leaner than he remembered.

"Oh, Jordan," Grace breathed, pulling the book free of its wrappings, "Where did you get this?"

"One of the undercover markets," Jordan said. Nika had pointed out the book among a pile of collectables, slung there as if worthless. Jordan had bought it for only a few copper Shils, even though books generally cost a lot in the Reach. It was the only book he had ever seen in Nictaven which was written in an alphabet he recognised.

"This is...German, right?"

"I thought it was Dutch." Jordan eyed the text as Grace turned the pages. Languages had never been his strong suit, a trait that had followed him through the portal into Nictaven and made learning their written language twice as hard. He was picking up runes faster than his reading, and runes failed if there was so much as a line out of place.

"I'm pretty sure it's German." She ran her fingers over an illustration, one that Jordan had seen on his brief inspection and which had finalised his decision to buy it. It was an engraving of several figures standing around a pool of light. "Is that supposed to be a portal?"

"That's what I thought," Jordan said. They looked at each other, and then Grace flicked through to the front pages.

"Published in 1860," she murmured. "That's not that long ago."

"It could just be fiction of some sort," Jordan suggested. Grace's reaction was exactly the confirmation he had been hoping for, but he didn't want to get too excited. They could be misinterpreting it entirely.

"Fiction was serialised then," Grace muttered, flicking back through the pages. "It came out in magazines and papers a chapter at a time. Books were much more likely to be nonfiction."

"When you've started making sense," Yddris grunted from the windowsill, bringing Jordan back to Nictaven with an unpleasant jolt, "I have another meeting this afternoon, boy, so Nika will be taking your lessons. Astra will be joining you."

The bottom fell out of Jordan's stomach. Astra was another of the Unspoken Guild's apprentices, and she didn't like Jordan very much. To make matters worse, they'd had several unpleasant encounters over the dark season, and Astra was still grieving over the death of her tutor. It was a very bad start to a working relationship they'd have for a long time to come.

"Okay," he said, trying not to let his feeling show in his voice even if his tutor would have sensed his reluctance.

"She won't eat you, boy," Yddris said, chuckling. He got to his feet and stretched, several joints popping. "Am I alright to leave you, Nika?"

"Yes," the other Unspoken replied without looking up. "We're going to Astra this time, Jordan, if that's alright. We can drop Grace off on our way there."

"Sure."

Yddris swept out of the house. Jordan caught Grace's eye and inclined his head towards the back of the house, where they could talk without feeling self-conscious.

It was also a better opportunity to grill her on caution.

"I hope you aren't just saying things to make me feel better, Grace," he said, as the back door clacked shut behind him and Grace settled on Yddris's only bench. She clutched the book in one hand and Ren perched on her other shoulder. She glanced at him, uncomprehending, before scowling.

"Is this about Nova again?" she asked. "Look, Joe, she's got enough reservations for both of us. If you don't think I'm being careful, at least accept that Nova's paranoid enough to make up for it."

Jordan chewed on his lip. It wasn't just Harkenn he was worried about, though he could hardly tell Grace that. More than once the Devils had brought his sister's life up as leverage against him, and he trusted them even less than he trusted Harkenn. If there was any chance they didn't know about Grace's ties with Nova yet, he didn't want to make it easy for them.

He felt the familiar wrench in his gut as she rolled her eyes and turned away from him. She had no idea how many people were using her against him. For a moment, he was tempted to lay it all out, to show her that he wasn't just being overbearing, but he couldn't do that to her. At least one of them deserved to sleep soundly every now and then.

"I do wish she wasn't quite so secretive, though." Grace picked at her fingernails. "Does make it quite hard to take things any further."

Jordan kept his mouth shut. He had his doubts about the wisdom of taking things further and suspected Nova felt similarly, but he was hardly in a position to lecture Grace about unwise decisions.

"It never feels like long enough," Grace sighed. "Coming to visit you."

Jordan's throat tightened. He looked away, shoving his hands in his pockets and staring at the distant peaks of the mountains surrounding Shadow's Reach.

"When I'm earning, we can sort something out," he said. He had already begun putting some funds aside from his jobs with the Devils; might as well be useful for something, even if that something was a long way off.

"Wasn't long ago you'd be telling me off for saying something like that," Grace said. Her eyes glittered in the dim light. "Do you not think we'll get home?"

Jordan looked at her. Dark circles ringed her eyes, and her cheekbones stood out more than they ever had before. He crossed the courtyard and sat beside her on the bench, and she accepted his embrace in silence.

More secrets, he thought bitterly. He had so many things he had never told her, and they weighed on him. They'd never discussed the incident during the siege on Harkenn's castle where a mystery attacker had cut off Jordan's link to Nictaven's magic. He'd been careful not to go into too much detail about that night with anyone, but it still haunted him in his sleep, more than anything else had.

He couldn't shake the feeling that Nictaven had hold of him in more ways than one; if they did miraculously find a way back home, he had to wonder if Grace would be going without him.