PROMISE

CHAPTER 6

Hain didn't lift his eyes he passed through the ringed vagóns.

Anger and regret clung to him with each step, the emotions driving his shoulders toward the ground and making his back feel slight and bowed. Each step was a battle, like wading through a muddy slurry rather than cool night air.

La Doña knew about the Boy. Somehow, despite him clinging to the secret, keeping it shadowed by the mourning in his heart.

But had he kept it so close to his chest as he thought? Had he been as secretive as he believed, or had sips of grain spirits and apple wine loosened his tongue on one of those cold nights around the Viajero camp fire?

That had to be it, he thought. Must be. Because the alternative was, what? That El Todo had actually spoken to her?

No, Hain thought with a sense of finality. Spirits or gods or whatever didn't talk to people, because they didn't exist. They weren't real, no matter how much La Doña swore they were.

Hain turned his thoughts to the remainder of what she'd said–her claim about his purpose. Over and over she'd told him, even after he'd pleaded to stay. She'd pressed the ring in his hand, her thumb swiping at the tears tracing wet tracks in their descent toward the curve of his chin, comforting him, even as she'd told him to leave in a voice so gentle it had been almost motherly.

Almost.

Because a mother wouldn't cast him out. She wouldn't drive him off with nothing more than worn a silver ring and the promise of a plan–a plan that demanded an offering of faith on its altar when he had none to give.

Silence ballooned around him, the night's creatures swallowing their voices on his approach. But Hain didn't notice. He was too distracted, too swamped by pain from La Doña's dismissal. By Rico's accusation. By the eyes in the camp. Each slight stood fixed in his mind, stagnant and sour as bog water.

Hain trod forward absently, turning the night over in his mind like a potter shaping clay. He blunted the edges of those memories, shearing away the warmth La Doña had shown him. Clinging to the pain and the regret at what might have been, until what remained sunk into the core of him, cold and heavy as a gravestone, a dark monument to what he'd lost buried beside the Boy in his memory.

A shiver rolled through him, dragging his thoughts back to the present. He looked around and felt surprised to find Echo appear from the night.

He stopped, putting a hand to a pouch at his waist, feeling the ring press against his palm. Despite La Doña's certainty, he couldn't bring himself to believe the thing had come from his mother. Not really. And even if he did, even if there was a chance she'd been telling the truth, he certainly wasn't about to start wearing it. Not now, at least. The ring felt too sharp, too tangled up in the pain of this night for him to do anything but keep it tucked away and hidden.

In the distance, the River Hoh bent around the haven in a curling, chrome streak. Beyond that he could see the black mass of the Godless Forest blanketing the ground like an oil slick. The sight of the thing made the skin on his back prickle.

Hain turned his attention back to Echo and its vast walls climbing toward the star speckled black overhead. Driftwood bundles burned in sconces flanking the haven's western gate, the salt soaked wood pitching blue and green flames along the wall like conjured demons. Hain's bastard blood might bar him from the Faith, but you couldn't live in a haven of the Faithful without picking up on their symbols. The driftwood torch was a call to prayer–a sign for the Faithful to gather in the Sepulcher to worship, or banish demons, or whatever it was they did in the place. And his self-righteous Holiness, the Bishop, would be holding midnight mass, crying out amongst the other Faithful as they turned their prayers toward a dead sky.

Not that any of it mattered to Hain. His thoughts centered around the practical meaning of a midnight mass. A full Sepulcher meant nearly empty streets and extended curfews. Even more importantly, it meant a haven free from Vrai, their patrols called off for whichever holy night this was.

Hain's mismatched eyes flashed as he took in the scene. Sneaking in the usual way would be easy.

Silence trailed Hain as he neared the haven. To his left, a wide paved plaza spread away from the wall, and scourging posts stabbed into the ground like trees hacked down mid-trunk. The Forest of Screaming Trees, the Vrai called it. A forest built for pain.

Even now, some held victims–lifeless figures sagging into the ropes binding them, the flayed bodies glistening with wet sinew and muscle.

The Masons, he realized. Just as La Doña had said. The haven's Empees might cut them down in the morning if the Vrai allowed it. They might not.

The place stunk of blood, of human suffering at Vrai hands. Crossing the rust-colored cobbles would feel like treading over the fresh turned soil of a grave, and so he kept to the scrub ground further away. In Hain's imagination, each footfall atop the stones brought screams of an unlanguage, its tongue all guttural hate and weariness.

Hain circled the plaza and pressed on toward the storm drain he used for late night entry–a round hole cut into the wall's granite blocks, barely wide enough for one person to wriggle through. Simple for someone small as Hain to slip unnoticed into the haven, but lethal if you thought it was safe.

Being small for his age was a constant point of both irritation and embarrassment, but Hain had to admit that it sometimes had its advantages.

Hain grunted as he squirmed through the stone mouth, making sure to avoid the handholds jutting from the walls. The lightest touch would draw the pin from a counterweighted blade–heavy enough to slice through bone, but dull enough that he'd feel every second of it. Vicious, yes, but markedly effective at discouraging after hours entry into the haven.

Further in, the tunnel walls spread apart as if to welcome him home. Home, he thought ruefully, feeling the cold of the Viajeros' departure in his gut. He had no home. Not here, and not with the Viajeros.

He pushed the thought aside, gathering his feet beneath him and pressing onward into the underhaven–the maze of pipes and sewers crisscrossing below the haven's streets–stopping to take a knee only when the sound of trickling water had faded behind him. The air smelled of cold and damp, and Hain could taste it in the back of his throat with each breath he drew. The smell of the haven, he thought. The smell of Echo.

Hain raised his hands over his head until his fingers came upon the rough circle of a sewer lid, and pushed.

Light popped through the crack, and Hain squinted at the sudden shift from dark to light. Another driftwood torch flickered from somewhere unseen, its blue-green light shining from the glass panes of the stone row houses lining the street. His eyes scanned the scene, looking for signs of Empee patrols.

The street was empty. It was time to go.

Hain pushed hard against the heavy lid, and light poured into the underhaven as he scrambled onto the knobbed cobblestones. In his haste, he lost his grip on the lid, and it dropped into place with a dense clang.

Hain winced, his head whipping back and forth for signs of alarm before he scrambled over the street and into the shadow, pressing his back against the stone wall of the nearest row house.

"Isn't it a little late for you to be out and about, Master Hain?"

Hain's breath caught in his lungs, and it was all he could do not to let out a shout of surprise. A small chuckle escaped a shadowed crevice between two houses on the opposite side of the road. He knew the voice as well as he knew the laugh.

Hain cursed. It was Lilith.