Sword of the Seven Sins by Emily Colin

Author:Emily Colin [Colin, Emily]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781947834477
Publisher: Blue Crow Books

22

Ari

As the door creaks open, I yank my hand free of Eva’s. Our presence here is disadvantage enough without handing this man the ammunition he needs to destroy us.

He is nondescript, the kind of man I could pass on the street a thousand times without taking notice. His hair is short and light brown, his features even. He wears dark pants and a gray shirt. Even his build is average—two or three inches shorter than I am, his shoulders neither narrow nor broad. When his eyes travel over us, though, he smiles—mirthless, anticipatory. His teeth gleam in the dim light.

“Well met, Ari Westergaard,” he says. “Let justice be done, even should the world perish.”

I extend my hand to him, curl my fingers against his palm the way Kilían showed me, feel his index finger hook over mine in response. “Let justice be done, even should the sky fall.”

Beside me, Eva is motionless and silent—the stillness of a predator, determining whether to strike. I hear her breathing, deep and slow, the way the Bellatorum taught us to center ourselves before battle.

She is my weapon, I realize, as I am hers.

She is my weakness.

“We seek passage,” I say for the last time. “Do you grant it, or no?”

The man’s smile fades, his thin lips flattening into inscrutability. He lifts his hand, wipes it clean against the gray cotton of his shirt. And then he steps away from the door, allowing us entry.

“Welcome, Wolf’s Brother,” he says. “And you, Eva Marteinn.”

The scholar’s chamber is a small cavern carved of rock, lined with books that face spine-out from built-in shelves—volumes written before the Fall, perhaps, guarded from unclean fingers and prying eyes. I think, stupidly, that keeping paper copies of precious artifacts down here, where the moisture level is so high, is asking for trouble—but then I notice a small device humming away in the corner, the same kind we keep in the weapons room to protect our blades, designed to suck water from the air. There is a tall ladder that leans up against one of the shelves, a high-backed chair, and a wooden desk. Otherwise, the room is empty.

The man stands aside, gesturing at a door set in the back wall, between shelves. “There,” he says.

I know time is of the essence, that we cannot linger here, but curiosity gets the better of me. “What are these books? Why aren’t they in the library with the others?”

He gives me a beatific smile. “That knowledge is not for you, Ari Westergaard, blade or no blade.”

“If you won’t answer his question, maybe you’ll answer mine,” Eva says, an edge to her voice. “You said you were waiting for me. What were you waiting for?”

The man’s smile doesn’t change, but a sense of menace emanates from him at her words. “Ask me again when you return, assuming you do so. Ask then, and you may receive your answer.”

“What is that supposed to mean—” Eva begins, but I step in front of her, blocking her view.

“Don’t bother.

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