Steel's Edge (The Edge 4)

“Charlotte.”

“You sleep now, Charlotte. Don’t worry. You’re safe. You can stay here until you feel better. Nobody will shoot you here, and we’ll have plenty of times to talk about the Broken and helicopters.”

“Thank you,” Charlotte whispered.

“You’re welcome, dear.”

The girl closed her eyes. Her breathing evened out. Éléonore finished dressing the wound.

“Found yourself another bird with a broken wing,” Melanie said. “And you wonder where George gets it.”

“Look at her. How can I turn her away?”

Her friend shook her head. “Oh, Éléonore. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

* * *

IT was the evening of the next day. Éléonore sat on the porch of her house, drinking iced tea from the Weird glass and watching the Edge swallows glide back and forth, snacking on mosquitoes.

The screen door swung open behind her. Charlotte stepped out onto the porch, wrapped in the blanket. Her hair was a mess, and her face was still pale, but her eyes were clear.

“Feeling better?” Éléonore asked.

“Yes.”

“Come sit by me.”

The girl lowered herself in the chair carefully. That wound must’ve still hurt.

“How’s that leg?”

“It’s just a graze,” the girl said. “I’m sorry I went all to pieces. It was shock and dehydration more than anything.”

“Here.” Éléonore pushed the platter of cookies toward her. “You look like it’s been a while since you ate.”

Charlotte took a cookie. “Thank you for helping me. I don’t know how to repay you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Éléonore said. “Where are you from? In the Weird, I mean. What country?”

Charlotte paused for a second. “Adrianglia.”

“My granddaughter married a man from Adrianglia,” Éléonore told her. “Earl Camarine.”

“The Marshall of the Southern Provinces,” Charlotte said.

Maybe she knew Rose. “Exactly. Do you know him?”

“I’ve never met him,” Charlotte said. “I do know the family by reputation.”

She looked at the woods. Exhaustion showed on her face in a weary, slack mouth and dark circles under the sad eyes. There was clearly a “past” there, Éléonore reflected. The girl didn’t seem like an escaped criminal. More like she was a victim, running from something, alone but determined. She’d seen that precise look on her granddaughter’s face when Rose ran out of money or the boys came up with some unexpected emergency. It was a “Life kicked me again, but I’ll make it work” look.

“So where are you headed?” Éléonore asked.

“Nowhere in particular,” Charlotte said.

“Well, you’re in no shape to go anywhere.”

Charlotte opened her mouth.

“No shape,” Éléonore said. “My granddaughter left a house behind. I meant to rent it out but never found anyone trustworthy enough not to destroy the place. It’s full of cobwebs now, but if you’re not scared of soapy water and a broom, you should be able to put it back together. You can stay there for a while. And if you want to practice healing, we can do that, too. You just need a proper introduction to people. Things are done a certain way here.”

Charlotte was looking at her, her eyes wide, looking stunned. “Why? You don’t even know me. I could be a criminal.”

Éléonore sipped her tea. “When Earl Camarine first showed up in the Edge, I wasn’t happy with his arrival. My granddaughter is special, Charlotte. All grandmothers think their grandchildren are special, but Rose truly is. She is kind, smart, and determined. She practiced for years and taught herself to flash white, just like the best of the bluebloods. And she is beautiful. Her mother died, and her father . . .”

Éléonore grimaced.

“I didn’t make good choices during my life. I didn’t marry wisely, and I’ve managed to raise a son who ran out on his own children. John left Rose and her two brothers without a dollar to their name. At eighteen, Rose was a mother to two toddlers. She was stuck here in the Edge, working a dreadful job in the Broken and trying to raise her brothers. I wanted so many wonderful things for her, and instead I watched her wither slowly, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. And then Declan Camarine came, and he promised her everything: that he would love her, and care for her, and take care of George and Jack. I warned her it was too good to be true, but she went with him anyway. Turned out that I was wrong. She lives like a princess now. Her husband loves her. They are talking about children, when the boys get older.”

A brief flash of pain reflected on Charlotte’s face. So that was it. She was running from a broken marriage or a dead child. You poor girl.

Éléonore smiled. “My granddaughter is happy, Charlotte. She has everything I ever wanted for her. When she first left, I worried about her fitting in with the bluebloods, but her mother-in-law stepped right in and took her under her wing. I’m no duchess, but now I have an opportunity to do the same. I want to pay Providence back for the blessings of our family. We Draytons are many things: pirates, witches, rogues . . . but nobody ever accused us of being ungrateful. A family has to have standards. Even in the Edge. You’re welcome to stay as long as you need.”

ONE

THREE YEARS LATER

RICHARD Mar ran through the woods. The wound in his side wept dark blood, almost black. A bad sign. His liver was likely lacerated. Congratulations, he told himself. You’ve finally managed to get yourself killed and by an amateur, no less. Your family would be so proud if they knew.

In his defense, it hadn’t occurred to him that a man would conceive, conspire, and execute a plan that involved having his own sister raped by a scumbag just to lay a trap for him. Despite everything Richard had seen, that depth of human depravity had eluded him thus far. He’d thanked Jackal Tuline for correcting that oversight by separating his head from his body. Unfortunately Tuline had six accomplices, and while overall they demonstrated a remarkable lack of proper training, one of them had managed to run him through.

Tree trunks flashed by him, the huge Adrianglian pines straight like masts. His breath came in ragged, painful gasps. Hot pain chewed on his side, biting at the wound with every step.

A distant howl rolled through the forest. The slavers had hounds, and he was leaving a bloody trail. He was in quite a jam, and he saw no way out of it.

The trees swayed around him, turning fuzzy, then coming back into focus. His vision was failing. Richard shook himself and pushed forward. He had to get to the boundary. Beyond the boundary lay the Edge. With the Weird’s woods stretching for many miles in every direction, the Edge was his only chance. Not that the Edgers would help him out of the goodness of their hearts. He had been born in the Edge and knew better than most that in the space between the worlds, it was every man for himself. But the Edgers, a paranoid and suspicious lot, owned guns and had itchy trigger fingers. They would see a group of armed slavers ride through their land and shoot at them as a matter of principle.

Dizziness seized him, tossing him against a tree trunk. Richard grabbed the fragrant bark to steady himself, his fingers sticking to the sap, and willed the trees to stop spinning. Come on, get a grip. This is no way to die. At least he could go out in a flash of glory instead of bleeding out under some pine.

The forest melted into a gray, rain-drenched swamp. Richard smelled the pungent aroma of the Mire’s herbs mixing with the stench of stagnant water. He’d know this scent anywhere—he’d grown up cloaked in it. He ran across the sluice of muddy soil to the clearing buttressed by the cypresses. Wide holes gaped in the ground like dark mouths. He checked the first one and saw the body of a child, a pale, thin form, floating facedown in two feet of brown water . . .

Richard shook his head, flinging the memory away. The woods reappeared. He was hallucinating. Splendid. He pushed from the trunk and kept moving.

In the distance, another dog howl rolled, more to the west. They must’ve broken into two groups. They were a cowardly lot, but they had a lot of practice chasing runaway slaves and were distressingly good at it.

The brush ended abruptly. He saw the ravine, but too late. The carpet of needles shifted under his feet, the edge of the hill collapsed, and Richard rolled down the slope and crashed into a tree. His ribs crunched, and the pain clawed at his side.

The swamp mud squelched under his feet. A man rushed him, weaving between the holes, sword in hand, mouth gaping wide in a scream, his wet hair plastered to his skull by the rain. Richard slashed. The body fell apart before him. Another slaver charged from the left. A second sweep of Richard’s sword, and the slaver’s head rolled off his shoulders and tumbled into the nearest hole. Red blood gushed from the stump of the neck and splashed onto the sludge . . .

Reality slammed into Richard in a rush of agony. He gritted his teeth, rolled to all fours, clumsy like a baby learning how to walk, and forced himself upright. A familiar dull pressure pushed at his skin and insides. He took a step forward, and the wall of magic ground against his senses. The boundary. He couldn’t see it or smell it, but it pushed on him, as if an invisible hand pressed against his insides. He’d reached the Edge. Finally.

A big furry body sailed over the edge of the ravine. Richard spun about, unsheathing his sword. The sun caught the long, slender blade. The wolfripper dog landed on the slope and sprinted forward, 170 pounds of muscle sheathed in short, dense black fur. Richard leaned forward, closing his left hand on the small ultrasonic emitter in the sword’s pommel. A gift from his brother. Kaldar had bought or probably stolen the gadget on one of his excursions to the Broken, and it worked in the Weird. The slavers’ dogs hated it, and Richard used it often. He’d never been much for killing dogs. They only did what their masters told them to do.