Venick entered the brothel soaking wet. His slopping footsteps left smears on the hardwood, shining patterns in the dim light. Just water. Not blood. Not a cut reopened and bleeding again.
Believe that.
He refused to look at it. He refused to look at his chest where the elf had sliced him, either. He looked instead into the dim room, through the plume of perfume and smoke that stung his nose and eyes and throat. It was made to be hazy on purpose, he thought. The smoke was bad for guests, but it was safer for the mistress to be able to appraise him first, to size him up, check for weapons, note the quality of his clothing, glean whatever she could from that.
Which she did now, shifting shadow-smooth towards him from across the room. She was his mother's age. His mother's height. But she had light skin, light hair, a white smile that was anything but motherly.
She took in his threadbare clothing drenched in water and blood and did not like what she saw. Venick was prepared for that. "I can pay," he said, and pushed Ellina's coins into her hand. She glanced at the money. Her smile changed.
Next came the women. They were mostly flatlanders with fair eyes and silky hair, but a few were small and dark, from the coast, Venick thought, or the mountains. They were all human. All half-clothed, too, in golden chains and sheer fabric that hid nothing.
Venick cleared his throat and remembered Ellina's words, muttered hastily as they'd darted through alleys to get here. Pick the youngest. The shyest. Someone who looks easily frightened. As if they were discussing which deer to fell, the weakest link. Only, none of these women looked easily frightened. And they were all young.
He pointed at the one he thought most modest and tried to look anywhere else, which got the girls giggling.
"He's shy," the mistress tutted. "Aza will fix that."
The woman named Aza stepped forward. She had long black hair woven in thick coastal-style braids and a smile that looked almost genuine. Her bracelets clinked as she reached for his hand. Venick jerked away without thinking.
Idiot.
Aza gave him a curious look, her eyes lingering on his blood-stained tunic. "You have had a—stressful day," she decided after a breath. "Let's get you out of those wet clothes. Come, I will help you."
This time Venick forced himself steady, forced himself to relax as she slid slender fingers through his. Her skin was velvety smooth, impossibly so. Or had he simply forgotten what a woman's skin felt like? He thought of Ellina, of her hands on him in the forest, then again in the river. He tried to remember what her skin was like.
Enough, Venick.
But he couldn't quite help the burn that crept into his cheeks as Aza led him up the stairs and into a private room. Couldn't quite help his nervousness, either, as she started to undress. She watched him with dark eyes, flashing a lazy smile that had him wondering how he ever thought her modest.
"No," Venick managed as she reached a hand for his belt. "I'm not—I don't—"
Ellina chose that moment to appear. She came through the window, the loose glass panes shuddering in their sockets as she forced it open. Aza and Venick both jumped as Ellina stepped inside, surveying the room and the whore and Venick's half-undone belt in one swift glance. Venick swallowed and stayed silent, feeling as if he had been caught doing something he shouldn't, and never mind that this was the plan all along.
"Say nothing," Ellina ordered Aza. Her hand fell to the weapon at her belt. "If you scream, I will—"
Too late. Aza opened her mouth and sucked in a lungful of air. She would have rattled the walls with that scream had she managed to get it out. She didn't. Ellina was there in an instant, dagger out, ramming the hilt into the girl's temple. The scream was cut short, breaking into something that sounded more like a shriek of delight, and no shortage of those around here.
She crumpled to the floor where she lay motionless.
Venick might have thought her dead, had Ellina been another elf. She would be dead, had Ellina been another elf. But Ellina was not another elf, and so Venick caught the shallow rise and fall of Aza's chest and knew she lived.
It was uncertain how much time they had, then, before she woke and screamed for real. Venick had paid the mistress handsomely, more than enough to cover the room for the night. They would be safe to hide here until nightfall, assuming Aza stayed unconscious. If she did wake, though, and if she did scream, the mistress would surely come to investigate, and then they would have to kill them both, or run.
Venick wondered how far Ellina's charity would stretch if it came to that.
Not far, given her expression as she turned to face him. He expected anger, which he got, a full-on glare that felt like a slap. He expected argument, too, but she said only: "You are bleeding again."
Venick touched a finger to his chest. It came away sticky. "The southerners would have killed you," he said in answer.
"Elves do not—"
"Enough with that. Elves do. I told you already. I've seen it."
She drew a sharp breath in through her nose and her anger deepened, spread and darkened like a bruise. "You are wrong."
"So maybe they won't kill you." Venick heard the way his own anger—sudden, unexpected—graveled his voice. "Maybe they'll just capture you. Torture you. And don't tell me that's against elven laws. I know it isn't."
"I can handle the southerners."
"Is that what you were doing? Because from what I saw your sword was barely up. You forget how to use it?"
Her gaze cooled. "You ran into a swordfight with a dagger."
"And I would again."
"You are a fool."
"Next time, you fight back. You defend yourself."
"You are not responsible for me."
Which caught Venick under the ribs, a dagger-sharp twist of pain that felt like hurt and truth all mixed together. It was what she had said from the start. What he had known all along. I will handle any threats. You focus on keeping yourself alive.
He hadn't listened. Hadn't wanted to listen. But here was the truth. He saw it in Ellina's golden eyes, in the animal grace that made her what she was. She was an elf, and he was a human, and whatever debts he felt he owed her were not truly his to pay. Besides, he'd seen her skill with a blade.
The northern legion was known for it. She could have killed her attackers in a few quick moves, could have ended the whole chase in a breath.
Only, she hadn't. Only, she wouldn't. He'd seen the way she clung to law and honor and whatever other ridiculous notions she valued over her own life. But she had to know, didn't she, that not all elves could be trusted to do the same?
She did know. He'd seen the worry on her face in the tavern. He'd seen it again as she fended off the elves by the river. He thought of those elves, how they'd trailed them through the forest, into the city. He imagined Ellina captured, Ellina tortured.
He shouldn't care. But he did.
"I couldn't just leave," he said.
"You would if you had any sense of self-preservation. You would if you understood."
"Enlighten me, then."
He didn't think she would rise to that bait, and she didn't, not at first. She walked back to the window to draw the curtains closed, then to the door, which she cracked open to peer into the hall. A split-second glance, then sliding it shut. The lock was silent when she bolted it.
She turned back to face him. Her eyes shifted to his chest, then to his foot, her gaze narrowing as it had that first day in the forest. "You should sit."
Venick shrugged that away. "It's just a little blood."
"It is not just a little blood. Sit and let me look, and I will answer your questions."
A bargain. He'd made one of those with her before.
Venick looked down at himself. He saw the river mud and soaked clothes and yes, blood. Bright red and fresh, but not so painful. Not like before, which gave him hope. Maybe the cut on his chest wasn't so bad. Maybe the stitches weren't torn.
Maybe you should sit and let the eondghi do her job.
He sat.
She had no supplies this time, no fresh leaves to heal the wound. He sat on the bed and she knelt beside him, examining the swollen flesh. Then, one by one, she began picking out the ruined thread.
Venick made no noise. He clenched the sheets and his breath as Ellina loosened the stitches and the wound reopened. As she pulled a needle from her braid and threaded twine through it, then began at it again.
Needle and thread and a wound sewed tight. They'd done this before, too.
"Do you know why we elves do not kill each other?" Ellina asked after a time. When Venick didn't reply, she said, "It is because our race is dying."
Venick blinked. He drew his gaze back to her. "That's only a rumor."
"Ish nan amas," she replied in elvish. It is no rumor. Then again in his language. "More elves die each year than are born. Elven children are rare. Elven partners are. We live long lives. Elves do not marry like humans do.
To commit to one elf for hundreds of years…" She shook her head. "We do not. And a child? For two elves to form that sort of commitment is… complicated. A child is like a marriage for us. And so elves do not do that either. During the hundred childless years, only a handful of elven fledglings were born. Our queen began to worry, so she made us have children. She forced bonded pairs, arranged births. And she prohibited elves from loving humans."
Venick had gone very still. Ellina paused to look up at him.
"It was easy for elves to love humans," Ellina went on. "With a human, there is no fear of a lifelong commitment, because elves outlive humans.
There is no fear of siring a child, because elves and humans cannot bear children. It became more common for elves to find human partners than elven ones. And so the law was changed."
"I know the law." His voice was like ice. His heart was.
"Then you know it is nearly impossible to enforce. The best chance is to keep humans and elves separate. You understand the border was drawn for that reason. And you understand the danger."
"No. I understand why I'm not allowed east of the border, which I knew already. But you still haven't told me why you were attacked."
"I am a northern soldier. I was caught in southern lands."
"That's hardly a reason."
"Maybe not. Unless we are at war."
"And are you at war?" No sense in pretending he had answers now. She knew he didn't.
"Yes." Ellina didn't smile, not quite, but he heard the irony in her tone.
"This time, though, it is not a political war." And now she definitely wasn't smiling. Her brow knit, face suddenly somber. "The north and south both agree that these laws—the ones that keeps elves and humans separate—are for the best. What we do not agree on is what happens to elves who break them. In the north, if you pursue a relationship with a human, you are banished."
"And in the south?"
"You die."
"But you just said—"
"An honor suicide," Ellina interrupted with a hand. Venick drew back.
"An elf will kill herself?"
"Yes, but often under pressure. And that is the issue. Forcing an elf to commit suicide—it is no better than murder. And it makes no sense. Why create laws to protect our race, only to kill elves who disobey them?
The southerners are working against their own goals. Honor suicides help no one, but the south…" Ellina let out a breath. "They are unstable. They have no ruler, no sovereignty. That is why our queen chose to step in. Queen Rishiana does not rule the south, not truly, but she has always had power over the southerners simply because the north is strong. She threatened to act unless the southerners stopped pressuring each other into suicide."
"Which they haven't," Venick guessed.
Ellina nodded. "Reports of these suicides have continued to rise. That was our mission here. To investigate the rumor of another honor suicide in Tarrith-Mour, to spy on the southerners, and to stop them where we can."
Simply. Which it wasn't.
It would be easier to leave it at that. Easier to nod and say I see and go back to not asking. Harder, to imagine what forced honor suicides meant for elves. Harder, to picture Lorana, to see her face in his memory. Terrible, impossible, to remember the way she had died, to know exactly the price of these elven laws.
Venick's anger returned, not bright like before, but dark, serpentine. He hated to remember that night. Hated that no matter how he tried to forget, he couldn't forget this: that Lorana had been a southerner, and she had loved a human, and she was dead because of it. Venick remembered the broken shard of glass she'd held in her hands as the elves surrounded her.
How it cut into the meat of her palm, bled down her wrist. He had always thought that weapon was a last attempt to live, but Ellina's story made him see things differently. Maybe Lorana hadn't intended to fight.
Maybe she'd been forced to make a different choice. Venick closed his eyes. He was unraveling, coming apart at this new and frightening thought. He remembered that night, suddenly, starkly, but also other nights. Lorana on Irek's shore. Lorana handing him a little pressed flower. Lorana in the market, dodging the playful nip of a horse.
Venick couldn't imagine her taking her own life. He was repulsed. He repulsed himself, that he would even consider it.
And yet, the shard of vase. And yet, the law. He remembered the look in her eye, the hopelessness that was too much like resolve. As if she knew she was going to die. As if she accepted it.
Venick opened his eyes, tried to pull himself out of the syrupy web of his own feelings, tried to keep his voice calm as he spoke next. He reminded himself that whatever Lorana intended, she hadn't ended her life. A southern arrow through her heart did that.
"You can't know what the southern elves would do," Venick insisted. Ellina raised a brow. "If they capture you." He closed his eyes again. Opened them.
He saw Ellina's face, which was elven, which wasn't so different from Lorana's. "You said it yourself. You are a northern soldier spying in southern lands. You are their enemy. And the southerners don't honor your queen's laws. You can't know that they won't kill you."
"It is too politically risky. They would not."
"Still." He shook his head. Venick understood that elves did not fight wars like humans did. Their battles were usually political, waged with cunning and compromise over steel and blood.
Regardless, war was war. It could be messy. The rules only worked if both sides chose to obey, and they wouldn't. They weren't.
"Coming to Kenath, exposing yourself to these southern elves who hunt you. It is wrong for you to take that kind of risk."
He met her gaze. "It was wrong for you to take it. For me."
Ellina dropped her eyes, suddenly busy at her task. There was a long stretch of silence. Venick became conscious of her hands on his skin. He noticed that her hands were not like Aza's but like his: hard, callused.
Ellina finished the stitching, then stood. Venick stood too, aware that the air had changed between them. He flexed his foot, needing something to do.
The stitches pulled but held. He looked at his chest next, feeling the cut's edges, the nerve-dead skin. The bleeding seemed less. The cut was long but not deep.
"It will be dark soon," Venick finally said. "I don't think it's safe to return to the market for supplies, but we can search these rooms for food and fresh clothing." And weapons. Ellina had her bow, dagger and sword and he his hunting knife, but Venick was useless with a knife in a fight.
Better to have a sword of his own, or an axe. A hammer, even. Something he could heft and swing.
"We'll hide out here until nightfall."
"The southern elves will not be hindered by nightfall."
"Then we'll search the rooms and leave now."
"They will be watching the gates."
"There is more than one way out of a city." Ask how he knew that. Ask when he'd ever had to escape a city. Well, he had, and with more than a few elves at his back.
But that wasn't why Ellina was hesitating. Venick knew this even before she turned away from him, even before he caught a glimpse of some quiet emotion on her face. "I have told you already," she said. "You owe me no debts."
But Venick smiled. "By my reckoning, I still owe you two."