The Mask of Mirrors, M. Carrick; [best books to read in your 20s .txt] 📗

“Ren.” Surprise scrubbed years from his features, making him young again—as young as they’d ever been. He’d been big for a boy in the rookeries, gangly limbed and rawboned. Whatever grace he’d gained growing into manhood abandoned him now. He lurched to his feet, never taking his gaze from hers. “How… I looked… They said you…”

Left. She and Tess had left—because Sedge was dead. Ren saw his body, broken and unmoving in the half-dry canal where Ondrakja threw him. She never would have abandoned him if—if she’d known—

Her throat closed up as if she were the one struck. Sedge took a half step toward her, then cast a glance over his shoulder.

“Fuck.” Grabbing her shoulders, he force-turned her and pushed her along the path she’d been running. “Get out of here. Don’t be seen. If Vargo hears…” Sedge left the implied threat hanging. His grip slid down to the inside of her wrist. The cuff of her sleeve covered the line there, faded but never quite gone—one of the few physical scars she had. His thumb brushed across the spot, and she wondered if she would even be able to find his matching scar amid the marks hashing his arms. “I’ll find you at the hole as soon as—”

The echo of boots and voices just around the corner broke through that vestige of tenderness. His face hardened into a scowl. “Go.”

Sedge. Alive. For years he’d been her brother, her friend, her shield, and when he said Go, she went.

Ren went.

Lacewater, Old Island: Suilun 24

She was fourteen years old again, wrapped in a filthy shawl and huddling in the meager shelter of a recessed cellar window on the south side of the Tricatium in Lacewater. Never mind that five years in Ganllech had made her taller, so that she didn’t fit very well into her old spot and there was no way Sedge would be able to cram in there with her. The mist had chilled to freezing, she was losing feeling in her fingers, and Sedge was alive. As if the last five years had never happened.

He knew better than to sneak up on her again. She saw him coming over the temple’s retaining wall, dropping more quietly than his size should allow. Ondrakja had been right to fear what would happen when Sedge realized he was big enough to fight back. But they had all been so used to shrinking from her rages, groveling and scraping and taking their punishment, that rebelling seemed unthinkable.

Ren had been able to dilute those rages, sometimes. Sedge protected her and Tess with his fists; she’d protected him and Tess with her wits. And Tess took care of them both.

Sedge took one look at Ren squeezed into the space, sighed, and held out a hand to help her up. “I need beer for this. Copper’s should be quiet at this hour, and Vargo don’t got eyes there.”

With his palm upturned and light coming from the lamps over the temple’s portico, she could see the scar on the inside of his wrist. Sedge was showing it to her on purpose, because he knew how suspicious she was. It really was him: her blood brother, the other half of her family.

Ren clasped his forearm, scar to scar, and let him haul her to her feet.

Copper’s was a seedy ostretta wedged into a five-way intersection. Entering was easy enough, but people coming out had to take care or be plowed down by passing traffic. Sedge’s attention was so fixed on Ren that he nearly knocked over an old woman emerging as they entered. The door shut on her curses.

Ren found an empty gallery alcove while Sedge commandeered spiced millet beer and cups. Closed curtains gave them privacy. Sedge poured for them both; then they sat in silence, staring at each other over steaming mugs, while Ren tried and failed to find a way to say I’m sorry I got you killed.

Almost killed.

Sedge’s breathy chuckle broke the stalemate. “You must’ve changed. Never known you to run out of words.”

Her muddy fingers shook on the cup. “It was my fault.”

“Never marked you for the stupid one, neither,” he said, prying the cup out of her hands and setting it aside before she could spill it. His hands engulfed hers, warming her icy fingers. “Getting knocked in the head was my job. Still is.”

A sob caught in her throat at the reminder; her hands were corpse cold. Like he’d been. Like she’d thought he’d been.

Sedge chafed life back into them. “You been blaming yourself all these years?”

Now the words came spilling out—all the things she couldn’t say to him before, because he was dead and it was too late for apologies. “I’m the one who got greedy, took that coffer because I thought nobody would notice and we could use it to escape. I’m the one who crossed the Cut Ears, got them pissed at Ondrakja. She hurt you to hurt me. I watched her beat you to death and I did nothing, I just stood there, because I was too afraid—”

Sedge’s grip tightened, just short of pain. The thin veneer of tenderness peeled away, but instead of the molten anger she remembered from their childhood, what lay underneath was hardened steel. “Don’t make it worse. That was our rule, remember?” His whisper shook like her hands. “If you’d done anything, said anything, you would have made it worse. And then I would be dead. You did the smart thing, trying to get us out before it got to that. Weren’t your fault you got nicked. And you did the smart thing after, running. I’m glad at least—” The whisper broke. Releasing her, he drained his mug, then refilled it to overflowing. He scowled at the beer trickling over his fingers and pooling on the table. “I’m glad at least one of us did.”

Ren’s heart thudded painfully. He knows not. Of course. From his perspective, they’d vanished like the river fog. “Sedge—Tess is alive.