Dusk was already underway when Fontana’s outskirts gave way to plainland. The sky was a deep hunter green as he passed the last Fontana-field roadhouse. He slowed the horse’s canter, then sped up again. He’d sleep on the road. He was fine at that. And he wanted to be as far as he could from her and from whoever was looking for him and from everything and everyone and all of it.
In the burnt-sage dark he listened to the rattle and the billow of the wind outside his tent—he’d kept the tent. He had a sorcerous weapon, now, and a new hexentat, and a horse, and a newfound aptitude for swordwork. He had money and he hadn’t even counted it. This he now did, by feel, turning every solitar and brace and score over in his fingers, and by the time he’d piled them up he was worth two hundred score in jade and nickel. More money than he’d ever had.
In a
month, he’d gotten all of this. The luckiest month of his life. His creditors dead, his future wide, his pockets full. The dream of all thieves. A genuine blessing from St. Procas.
His hands itched. His hands itched so hard they burned. He scratched until they hurt, and they still itched.
There’s something fucking excellent waiting to come out of you, Seth il Gutierre, she’d said.
Hot tears cut their way down his face. He wept himself to sleep.
~ ~ ~
He woke up in a moment of delirious elation. It had been a dream. He knew it—it had just been a bad dream.
But it hadn’t been. It had all happened. The best night of his life, and then the worst, and he was waking up alone.
His fingers were raw from last night’s clawing. Something had happened to them. He frowned in confusion—he’d thought the itching was just on his brain, but his skin was—
Gray. Gray and discolored. His toes too, he realized, as he took them out from the blanket. A month with the al Ydrises and one evening of lush touch with Lisa, and now the pads of his fingers would show it forever.
Fine. He could cover these with gloves when he needed, or a bit of skin paint, or really it didn’t matter. Nobody’d notice at a glance.
You really dodged a bullet, he told himself.
But he didn’t feel like he’d dodged. He felt the hole in him.
He saddled his stolen horse. “You’re wondering about your name, maybe,” he said.
She blew air out between her floppy horse lips. Her ear twitched.
“I’ll call you Annalise al Equis,” he decided. “Because I’m never gonna see the other one again. And at least this way I finally get a ride.”
He scoffed dryly at his own stupid asshole joke and clambered into his saddle.
The morning was spent in riding. He let the rhythm of it take him out of his body, let the hours roll onto and over him like a substance, and did his best not to think about anything at all. Briefly he allowed himself to speculate about something as innocent as lunch, and then a memory came to him, of sitting atop the carriage splitting a roast chicken with Annalise and Tiago and Ofelia, and laughing and bullshitting. And so he tightened the border of his brain, and beat any thought that dared to raise its head into submission.
He waited to hear something from the Fox. But it said nothing.
![[+]](/images/collapse_collapsed.png "[+]")
Annalise al Equis