Chapter 6: Salt and Scars

The dockers closed ranks around the platform before the guards could move.

Two hundred men and women in salt-stiff coats stepped down from the steps and stood shoulder to shoulder.

"Nobody's taking her anywhere," an old woman said.

She had a gutting knife in one hand and a pie in the other.

The wardmasters hesitated.

The dome of silver threads had gone out the moment Oren fell.

Bryn ducked under a guard's arm and grabbed Ilsa by the sleeve.

"My boat's at the south stair," she said.

"Run, you idiot."

They ran.

Oren was a snake again by the time they reached the water.

He lay in Ilsa's cupped hands, grey and limp and light as a leaf, and his green eyes were shut.

The boathouse rocked on its stilts in the dusk, and Bryn lit the stove with shaking hands.

"I'll stay on the pier," she said.

"I'll keep watch, and I'll pretend I can't hear anything."

She hesitated in the doorway.

"I am going to start charging rent, you know."

"Go," said Ilsa.

The door shut.

Ilsa laid the snake on the cot and bent over him.

She touched his head with her thumb, and the mark on her wrist flickered weakly.

"Oren," she said.

"Wake up."

The snake did not move.

Her throat tightened.

A bite would give him an hour, as it had before, and this was worse than before.

He had spent everything in the arena and the Hall's chains had drained the rest.

She put her wrist to his mouth.

He did not bite.

She slid her hands under his small cold body and lifted him against her chest.

"Then I'll give it to you slowly," she whispered.

She lay back on the cot with him pressed to her heart and let the bond open.

Warmth ran down the mark and into the snake, steady as a pulse.

The snake in her hands began to grow.

Oren came back, slow and then all at once.

He lay stretched out on the cot beside her, a tall man with his eyes closed.

She laid her wrist against his mouth, and this time his lips closed on it.

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