Vow of Thieves (Dance of Thieves, #2)

by Mary E. Pearson

She was right. There was never time for last words.

Slide on your stomachs, Jase had instructed us. Don’t make noise when you land. He made it sound easy. I remembered my bouncing cascade down the canyon face. I had made a lot of noise.

“Away from all the exterior walls, easy to guard, deep underground, impossible to shoot like an icehouse, and it was already empty, waiting to be filled. Like a little pocket in a vest.”

I began to object, but she stopped me cold, pressing her hands to my chest. “Jase, this is the waltzing in the light of day that we talked about. Trust me.” Every muscle in my neck pinched, but I nodded, knowing she wouldn’t back down, and with steady blasting continuing to echo around us, it was no time for arguing.

I stared, barely able to breathe. The guards’ launchers remained aimed at her as she smiled, entertained, and risked everything to save people she barely knew.

It held. The damn vault held. I leaned over, my hands on my knees, and blessed the Ancients and Aaron Ballenger with every prayer inside me.

out the sun. Next to the crater Greycastle still stood, at least part of it.

The main house still stood. It was the first time I had seen the tear through the middle of the house in the light of day, but compared to everything else, it seemed like a miracle it was standing at all. Raehouse, like Riverbend, appeared untouched except for shattered windows.

“They’d been grumbling about payment,” Paxton said. “The explosion at Tor’s Watch may have been the final straw. They cut their losses and ran.”

“You’re a stubborn-ass ambassador,” he grumbled, looking straight ahead as he scanned the street for threats. “I love you too, Patrei.”

When we approached the plaza, we braced ourselves for an ambush, but there was none. Only more of the disquieting silence. The plaza was empty. What game was the king playing now?

My attention darted between the soldiers, the rooftops, and back to Zane. My heart sped. Something was wrong. Very wrong. The vial? Had Montegue found the vial? Jase raised his launcher.

Blink last. Her chin tucked. Watch. Be ready. I got Kazi’s message. I was so focused on Montegue I wouldn’t have looked at Truko at all. But his eyes were locked on mine and then he blinked and I knew. The bastard blinked for the first time in memory.

I stepped toward him. I wanted to kill him, almost more than I had ever wanted anything. Preferably with my bare hands, so I could watch his life seep away as he looked at me, choking it from him breath by breath as he had done to so many I loved. I wanted to watch him suffer. But I remembered the papers I had signed. If circumstances allow, you must offer the enemy the chance to surrender.

Banques glanced away, only for a split second, but it was enough for me to knock his sword off-center before I plunged mine into his chest. His eyes were on me again, disbelieving. “I warned you,” I said, as I pulled my sword free, “that one day he would kill you.”

“You?” I rasped. “Prepare to meet them, Montegue. That’s all they’ve ordained. You’re through terrorizing my wife, my family, my town. You’re done.”

pushed forward again, his hand still clutched beneath mine, using all of my weight to swiftly force the dagger down. It crunched past bone, through his chest, and into his heart. He gasped, surprised, his eyes wide. I pulled my hand away but his fingers remained grasped around the hilt. Blood pulsed from the wound in rapid bursts. He looked at me, the fire in his eyes receding. I sat back on my heels, staring at him. A grimace creased his mouth. Kazi came and stood at my side, her hand on my shoulder, the battle over. His eyes moved between us as if he was uncertain where to look. “They love me,” he whispered. “You loved me. They will remember. I was a great—” His last word lay frozen on his tongue.

Our wounded were being treated. Paxton ripped rags to wrap Priya’s arm. He stumbled over his words as he told her to hold still, and I was sure he was consciously trying not to spit on her.

Truko nodded, blinking, his mouth twisting. The new dynamic between him and Jase was unfurling as awkwardly as a newborn lamb rising on shaky legs.

Come out, I wanted to say. Where are you? I wanted him to know I was the one coming for him this time. But I remained silent, a ghost floating across the floor, the shadow I had become, because of him.

He glanced from my dagger to the bag, his eyes doing a slight nervous circle in their sockets. Yes, that is where they are.

I looked at his hand jabbing the air, the hair on his knuckles, the mole on his wrist, his face distorted in the shadows, his voice thick with smugness and threat, all of it like it was eleven years ago. Except I wasn’t six years old anymore.

“A brief illness, but the old cook said it was really a broken heart that took her. She knew the girl was fiercely unhappy, but she didn’t speak the tongue of the land and no one on the farm spoke hers. She had fits of tears and rage. It wasn’t until years later, after the girl had died, that the cook learned the king had procured his new wife from a Previzi driver.” “New wife?” Jase said. “That’s why she was brought here. The old king was an awkward, quiet man, but he wanted more sons. He believed a farmer needed sons. His wife had died, and he was disappointed with the son he had.”

turned and looked out over the valley, the view from her final resting place. It was beautiful. Something she would have liked. “But you never rested, did you, Mama?” I whispered to the wind.

“Did you make a bargain with Death? Rage against him? Twist his arm? Make him watch over me? Make him push me to stay alive?”

Like this, Kazi, one strand over another. She leaned over me. Let’s weave a wish stalk in too. Do wishes really come true, Mama? Of course they do. Make a wish now, Kazi, one for tomorrow, the next day, and the next. One will always come true. I tied off the grass, shaping it into a crown, and laid it on her grave. “I wish you rest, Mama.” When Jase came back with the brush and dye, I marked her gravestone. Mama My chiadrah My beloved

Not because a Vendan ceremony wasn’t good enough, but because a celebration was due. We had a ribbon. We had a priest. We had a town full of witnesses.

“You aren’t going to go getting all choked up again, are you?” Jase smiled. “Nah. I’m experienced at this now.” But as he began wrapping the ribbon around my wrist and helping me tie it off, he swallowed hard, and when he began speaking, his voice broke just as it had the first time. I squeezed his hand. “We’ve got this, Patrei,” I whispered. “And remember, we have a hundred more times to go.”

“Kazi of Brightmist … you are the love I didn’t know I needed. You are the hand pulling me through the wilderness, The sun warming my face. You make me stronger, smarter, wiser. You are the compass that makes me a better man. With you by my side, no challenge will be too great. I vow to honor you, Kazi, and do all I can to be worthy of your love. I will never stumble in my devotion to you, and I vow to keep you safe always. My family is now your family, and your family, mine. You have not stolen my heart, but I give it freely, And in the presence of these witnesses, I take you to be my wife.”

Were any words enough? But I said the ones closest to my heart, the ones I had said in the wilderness and repeated almost daily when I lay in a dark cell, uncertain where he was but needing to believe I would see him again.

“I love you, Jase Ballenger, and I will for all of my days. You have brought me fullness where there was only hunger, You have given me a universe of stars and stories, Where there was emptiness. You’ve unlocked a part of me I was afraid to believe in, And made the magic of wish stalks come true. I vow to care for you, to protect you and everything that is yours. Your home is now my home, your family, my family. I will stand by you as a partner in all things. With you by my side, I will never lack for joy. I know life is full of twists and turns, and sometimes loss, but whatever paths we go down, I want every step to be with you. I want to grow old with you, Jase. Every one of my tomorrows is yours, And in the presence of these witnesses, I take you to be my husband.”

And then I saw two other witnesses skirting the edge of the crowd, watching, witnesses I was sure no one else could see. The taller one pointed his bony finger at me and said, Not yet. Not today. He turned to the woman whose arm circled his. She wore a crown woven of prairie grass. She smiled, her own last good-bye. I memorized her face, the lines fanning from her amber eyes, her thick lashes, the warmth of her skin, the ease in her expression, rest, but mostly what I saw in her face was love. She nodded, and they both turned and were gone. Good-bye, Mama. Good-bye.

When Fujiko says a prayer to honor my grandfather and his last act as commander—giving up his life to save ours—Emi tries to repeat the prayer but cannot say the long word president, and twists it into something else. She squeezes my hand and says it again. Miandre nods approval, and thereafter, as leader of Tor’s Watch, I am known as Patrei.

The ambassador’s wiry brows twitched. “And what is this?” he grumbled, twirling his finger toward Lukas. “You bring a baby to a meeting?” “My brother needs to learn the business.” “He’s only a pup!” “It’s never too early to learn.”

Are you not your father’s son?” I stared at him, letting the time tick by just as my father would have. Yes, I was, in many ways. And in this way too. The Candorans were good neighbors and customers. “A new barn in the back pasture to accommodate your new dray mares.”

I missed her desperately. I hadn’t seen her in two weeks.

The main house was done, though the interior still needed extensive work—except for Kazi’s and my new suite. I had rushed it along while she was away to surprise her when she returned.

way Kazi liked it, and I had the ceiling painted with constellations so there would always be stars above us.

Priya’s library, on the other hand, the one she had transcribed from the time she was a child, just like me, was entirely gone. She took it hard, but then discovered Jalaine’s library was still all neatly shelved. She took it as her own, and it brought her comfort.

So after Jalaine’s “entombment,” we had another ceremony with just the family at the base of Breda’s Tears. I still didn’t know how Jalaine knew about Sylvey. Kazi said that messages sometimes had a way of finding people, and Jalaine had straddled a line between life and death for weeks before she finally died.

She had recovered, and Trey and Bradach had returned home, but Lukas was a godsend, helping her through her grief, because Uncle Cazwin didn’t make it.

He pulled a shirt from my wardrobe and tossed it to me, trying to hurry me along. “It’s hard to believe she’s finally coming,” he said. “And the king. I wish Father were here to see this.”

and he told them to pay their respects to the Patrei of the newest nation, Tor’s Watch.

Jase knelt, shaking each of their small hands, accepting their well wishes, and whispering to them that treats awaited them at the end of the line. The Patrei was instantly a favorite with them.

“Thank you, Pauline,” I said. “I’m not sure I ever said it. In fact, I’m sure I was horrible most of the time, but I write every day now and actually love it.”

heard the wonder in their voices. So much had been lost, but today so much was regained.

The emotion of the moment swelled in me too. This day was wrapped up in so much history, both old and recent. Make her come.

And now she was here, on Tor’s Watch soil—here not just to break ground on an expanding settlement but to have Jase sign the final papers that would make Tor’s Watch an official new kingdom.

“Honored to meet you, Kerry of Fogswallow,” the king said, shaking his hand. “Keep the Dalbreck army in mind.” Kerry nodded, staring at the king in awe.

The repeating refrain hummed in my veins, and the look in Jase’s eyes, the way he swallowed and nodded, taking it all in, melted something deep inside me.