Gray stormed out of the red door.
He kept his eyes peeled for soldiers or Killian, his hands thrust deep in his pockets as he sidestepped the pools of light from the lamps.
The street was quiet.
No soldiers.
No Killian.
Gray picked up his pace, his mind racing.
Frustrated guilt warred with any of the lingering warm lightness and high confidence in Gray’s chest as he stormed away from the healer’s quarters, past a bakery spilling the smell of fresh bread into the air.
Imposing his personal brand of drama on innocent bystanders was not something he wanted to continue to do.
Gray ducked into a skinny lane made of steps.
The tracking jinx gave a particularly sharp throb under his skin, and Gray paused, standing in a patch of shadow until it passed.
He had to get rid of the jinx.
Now.
He needed to know how it worked.
Gray let out a ribboned breath, his fingertips clutching the strap of his rucksack. Sirentown had the largest library in the known world. He could go there, find whatever book he needed on tracking jinxes.
He’d sort it.
He’d be fine.
Litter swirled past him on the empty street in a cool breeze and caught on his ankles. Gray went to kick it aside and then froze.
His face was on the litter.
Glancing either side of him for any sign of approaching soldiers, Gray stooped to pick it up.
It was a leaflet, so hurriedly printed that the ink was smeared and the cut from the printer’s guillotine was ragged. Gray’s face, with his long hair pulled back as he usually wore it, with his scar through his eyebrow, and the words:
Conor Griffin.
Do Not Approach.
Report Any Sightings to the Sirentown Guard or Army.
And then, in tiny print at the bottom:
Approved by Major General Darcy under the authority of the crown.
His heart should’ve been hammering. Panic should’ve been spiralling within him, threatening to light up Gray’s skin.
The image of Conor Griffin had gone from the sharp-jawed youth who looked so much like Ryan Griffin to ... Gray.
With steady fingers, Gray shredded the leaflet, his jaw tense.
This complicated things.
He watched a group of masked performers rehearsing in a small alcove similar to the one in which he was hiding, his gaze catching on their masks with golden feathers, bright leaves, and flowers, with horns and beasts’ snouts. Soon, the place would be a riot of colour and noise and people. Summer Festival would begin with the rising of the sun, if Gray had the dates right in his head.
If Gray could get rid of the tracking jinx then the guards, the soldiers, hell even Killian, would have trouble finding him through the festival over the next few days.
But, first Gray would need to disguise himself further than he’d already done.
-
Gray’s heart ached as he placed Alistair’s shoes onto the counter of the pawn shop.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
The hairs on the back of his neck were on end. They had been on end for a good ten minutes, ever since he’d entered this neighbourhood that had broken street lamps and pock-marked lanes that stank of sour beer and wet stone. Smoke curled along the alleyway outside the window, swallowing the shingles that hung above the row of all-night pawnshops and dragon puff dens.
The man behind the counter had long fingers, greasy grey hair, and was slowly polishing an old axe blade. Some of the northerners here wore their kohl differently to how they wore it in Krydon, and this man was one such person - it was painted over the entire top half of his face.
Wordlessly the man picked up the shoes and examined them closely.
‘One silver coin,’ he said. ‘Or five store credits.’
Alistair’s shoes were good, worth more than one silver coin.
But, Gray didn’t have time to haggle, so he accepted the store credit, firmly pushing down the memory of Ali getting those shoes for his birthday from Barin, and traded Alistair’s shoes for a cheap pair of boots that fit him better and a rough canvas jacket with a hood.
Gray hightailed it out of the pawnshop.
His boots had a good grip on the bottom, and he splashed through a puddle with an oily sheen without losing his footing, and when he darted to the side of the street and stopped suddenly, the boots were completely silent.
The leaflet with his face and the stark lettering of Conor Griffin was pasted on the wall opposite.
And two soldiers were rapidly walking towards it.
Yanking up his hood, Gray pretended to examine the stonework of the wall, keeping his back firmly to the soldiers and the leaflet.
‘... you need to mark it on the map, you tosser,’ one soldier said in clipped Lismerian. ‘Each one that we take back down.’
There was a grunt and a rip.
Curiosity overcame him. Gray dared to glance back, just in time to see one of the soldiers tearing down the leaflet from the wall.
‘I’m not keen on defying direct orders from Darcy,’ said the other soldier sullenly, his head bent over a map as he marked it with a pencil.
‘I’d rather not defy the Major, you know what I mean?’
‘Yeah,’ replied the other soldier, more sullen than ever, as they moved on. ‘I know what you mean. Major kind of chills your insides when he gets frothing.’
'If someone snatches Conor before Major gets his hands on him, I think I'll ask you to break my leg so I can be out of service until he gets over it.'
'I'm not breaking your leg for free.'
'I ain't going to pay you to do it.' Then, ‘Who do you think would win? Out of a fight between our Major and Darcy, I mean …’
Gray waited until long after their voices faded out before he let himself turn away from the wall.
Confusion curled within him.
The soldiers had conflicting orders? Darcy wanted the leaflets up and Killian wanted them down. Why?
Hunching his shoulders, Gray dove into his rucksack. Pulling out Alistair’s kit and using his faint reflection in the glass of the window beside him, Gray smeared kohl over the entire top face of his face.
Surreptitiously wiping kohl off his fingertips, Gray walked fast with his head down and hood up.
He followed the signs to Sirentown Library. He prayed it wasn’t closed.
-
The standing stone outside the Sirentown Library said - in one of the more ancient northern dialects - that it never closed.
At least, that was what Gray guessed from the engraving carved into the large standing stone, teetering on the edge of a particularly large cut in the mountain, and in front of the biggest and grandest building he’d ever seen in his life. He deciphered the words ‘our doors stand open, no lock, no gate shall bar your way, for wisdom sleeps not …’ and that was enough to spur Gray onwards and up the steps.
Gray’s shoes scuffed over the worn and ancient stone steps. Each step up into the vast shadow of the library was colder and darker.
He should’ve been intimidated.
The library loomed, silhouetted against the pre-dawn sky.
With domed ceilings and rooms built into the rockface of the mountain itself, the library was colossal. Above, overhanging and etched eternally in stone, was the gaze of hundreds of scholars and philosophers.
Gray pressed through the front doors - doors as large as the Sirentown gates - and was hit by the smell of books and incense and the hush of academics studying.
He paused inside, his eyes adjusting.
Bookshelves towered so high that they disappeared into the shadowy domed ceiling.
Gray realised his mouth was hanging open and he quickly shut it.
Tried to look like he belonged.
He’d seen drawings of palaces, he’d explored the ruins of the castles and fortresses on the mountain near Krydon, he’d heard stories of the Sirentown library.
But nothing prepared him for the scale of this.
Scrolls, tomes, tablets, and more were packed into the shelves and on tables. Books, bound in every colour, towered around him, illuminated in the warm light of dozens of lanterns.
And before everything, in front of it all, and as bustling as the city of Sirentown itself, was a huge counter. Librarians of every size, creed, colour, and shape whispered to early morning visitors and academics - or perhaps, very late night, for the sky was barely lightening into dawn yet - in half a dozen different languages.
Gray didn’t have time for queues.
The plan was simple. Get information on the jinx and get out.
Keep moving.
He slipped past the front desk and started searching for the section that would have books about tracking and hunting jinxes.