A Matter of Blood Read online

  Copyright © 2020 by Kendra Merritt

  Blue Fyre Press: [email protected]

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First Edition

  Cover Design: Kim Killion

  Created with Vellum

  This one’s for Arielle, who manages to be both sister and best friend.

  I’m sure she’s forgiven me for all the scars I gave her when we were kids. Thank you for the unconditional love that inspired both Eira and Karina.

  Contents

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Part Two

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Thanks for Reading

  Also by Kendra Merritt

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Nothing terrified the people of Ballaslav more than the sight of a crimson cloak. The day’s brightness faded and colors muted until the only thing visible was the splash of red moving down the sidewalk. Crowds parted around the woman in red, some of the shoppers leaping into the slush to avoid her. Even the mud seemed to slide back as the edge of her cloak swept over the ruts in the street.

  I stared as the woman moved away from the caravansary in a world of isolation, her only human contact the widened eyes and curled lips of those who judged her.

  One day, that would be me. I couldn’t keep my secrets forever, and the red cloak waited for me at the end of my uncertain freedom. O’in, I prayed. Let Mabushka be long past caring by then. Let Eira’s sharp tongue be dulled by the time she finds out. I’d keep the truth from my grandmother and sister as long as I could, but that meant I couldn’t get caught here in a city, miles from home.

  I pulled my plain brown cloak closer as I turned away from the gray sky and stepped into the dark caravansary. If I didn’t find a job by the end of the workday, I would spend the night in the freezing street. I’d already been turned away from five different caravans too poor to warrant a place in the massive caravansary.

  Several stalls stood across the wide central space, barring the way to the actual caravans. If you wanted a job with one of the traveling villages, you needed to go through the gatekeepers first. I stood in line, hands bunched in my skirt as the man at the counter filled out paperwork and sent the hopefuls in front of me either further into the building or back into the cold.

  When it was finally my turn, I stepped up to the stall and raised my chin. The man straightened his papers and glanced up at me.

  “Name?”

  “Reyna Daryadoch.”

  “Trader or traveler?” he said.

  I swallowed. “Trader.”

  “Goods or services?”

  “Services, I’m a healer.”

  The man raised his eyebrows. “There’s always a place or three for a good healer. Are you looking for a temporary or a permanent contract, lubonitsva?”

  I hid my flinch when he gave me the honorific I hadn’t earned. Lubonitsva and maktep belonged to those who had actually finished their training. Not to those who’d fled their mistakes. But this was not the place to argue that difference.

  “Temporary,” I said instead.

  He rubbed his bulbous nose. “Ah. Where are you trying to get to?”

  Apparently, I wasn’t the only one looking for a job that would take me home. “As close to Darayevo as I can manage.”

  He chewed his lip and nodded. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

  My shoulders relaxed, and I allowed myself a breath of relief. “Great. Do you need me to sign anything?”

  “Right here.” He pulled a sheet of paper from his stack and slid it across the counter. But he didn’t let go when I reached for it. “I’ll need to see your wrists, lubonitsva.”

  I’d heard the same words too many times that day. I pulled myself up and tried to look down my nose at him. Mabushka had always managed that look well, so why did I feel like I was going cross-eyed? “Surely that isn’t necessary.”

  He shrugged. “It’s a condition of the contract.”

  My fingers gripped the ragged ends of my long sleeves as if he would leap across and rip the fabric from my arms to reveal my shame. I needed words to guard me. Words to convince him to give me the job anyway. I put my hand down on the counter. “I don’t need to stand here and take such insults.”

  He raised a skeptical eyebrow and pulled the paper back so it brushed my fingertips. “No?” he said. “Then I suggest you go elsewhere for employment. May I suggest the laundries? Or the dung merchants? They’re less picky about hiring blood mages.”

  Da’ermo, he’d actually said it out loud. “Wait,” I whispered, leaning closer. “Please, I’m not…Can’t you make an exception?”

  He sat back as far as he could, avoiding the air I breathed.

  I jerked back as his lips pulled tight in disgust.

  “Blagoy,” a voice called behind him. A young woman stepped out of the shadows between the great columns. The handle of a weapon rose over her shoulder, but in the dark, I couldn’t tell what she wielded. “Are you sending us a healer sometime this century or what?”

  She was young—only a year or two older than me at eighteen—and she wore her blonde hair braided and out of her way. She stopped beside the caravan director and crossed her arms. Two ax hafts rose over her shoulders.

  The director, Blagoy, tried to glare at her and at me at the same time. The result made him look like he’d been mule-kicked in the head.

  “What was wrong with the last three I sent you?” he said.

  The girl shrugged. “I’m not the boss,” she said. “But we’ve been stuck here three days past our leave date. We’ll take anything at this point.” For one brief moment, her eyes met mine.

  “Maybe I could find you someone if you left me alone long enough to do my job.” He gestured at the line wending away behind me.

  She huffed and turned on her heel.

  He spun back to me, muttering. “I’ll find you someone. I’ll find you someone with a stick as big as yours up their—”

  He caught my interested gaze as my eyes followed the girl’s back. “Not you, ublyduk,” he said, cutting off that train of thought. “There’s no place in Elisaveta for mages who won’t bare their arms.”

  I’d gone from honored healer to dirty mongrel in three minutes flat. A new personal best.

  He snapped and a couple of big men detached themselves from the shadows and stalked toward me. They wore dull red uniforms, trimmed with black, and they carried clubs and hammers. Weapons designed to hurt and kill without drawing blood. Viona krovaya. Blood swords, trained to hunt and capture blood mages.

  I staggered back, holding up my hands, careful not to let my sleeves fall down my forearms. My heart thudded in my chest. Could they hear it?

  I ducked around the carved post beside the wide doorway and waited, mouth dry, to see if they followed. Stupid. I could have blown everything by refusing to show my arms.

  My fingers dug into the elongated stag carved into the woodwork.

  I had to get home to Mabushka and Eira. I’d made it from Valeria and across the mountains, but I’d only be able to get across Ballaslav if no one succeeded in rolling up my sleeves. My homeland had always struggled with blood magic—we had the ancient Rites to prove it—but I’d had no idea it had gotten this bad. No one was hired without being checked for the two telltale scars of an initiate because no one trusted all blood mages to declare themselves with the red cloak.

  Shame swept through me, leaving me hot, then cold. They wouldn’t find the two scars under my sleeves, but who knew what they’d make of the mess on my arms. At this point, I’d settle for a caravan heading in any direction, so long as it was away from here.

  I glanced over my shoulder. The viona krovaya whispered to each other, casting looks my way.

  Far behind the director’s stall, the blonde, ax-wielding woman spoke with a farrier in a leather apron. How desperate was her caravan?

  How desperate was I?

  The viona krovaya straightened, their faces set in hard, unforgiving lines, and they stepped toward me.

  A group of drivers, complete with dusty knee boots and whips at their belts, passed me and he
aded toward the back of the caravansary.

  I held my breath and trusted my instincts. Then I slipped in around them as they passed my hiding spot. I moved with them, keeping one of the drivers between me and the viona krovaya.

  The blood swords kept moving down the steps toward the street.

  As soon as the dark closed around us and my eyes adjusted, I blew out my breath and slipped away from the group. The blonde girl with the axes had finished her conversation with the farrier and moved deeper into the caravansary.

  I followed.

  The building resembled a massive, well-built stable. Caravans pulled up to the outside walls, where big double doors allowed them access to the farriers and blacksmiths and horse doctors that plied their trade inside. Pillars the size of trees rose into the rafters where carved hammer beams held up the roof. Expensive mage globes illuminated everything because no one would risk an open flame.

  The young woman strode to the back corner. Halfway there, she glanced over her shoulder, and I ducked behind a pillar. She didn’t need to guess that I was following her.

  Waist-high walls divided each caravan’s space from the next, and she disappeared behind the last partition on the left. An older man and woman stood talking. Behind them, a wide doorway let out on the gray day where a wagon was pulled in close to the building.

  I clenched my fists and strode up to them before I could lose my nerve. “Ser. Sudinya,” I said as my grandmother had taught me. “I hear you’re looking for a healer.”

  The woman surveyed me, her sharp blue eyes a strange contrast with the fading hair just visible under the edge of her kerchief. Once she might have been blonde but now the color blended seamlessly with the gray.

  “We are,” she said. “Did Blagoy send you?”

  I made a noncommittal noise as the man turned to look me up and down. I flushed. There was no way to hide my threadbare skirt and bodice, but I wished I’d stopped to pin up the straggling ends of my dark hair.

  “You from the university?” he asked. He had no hair to tell his age, but the lines around his eyes indicated many years of laughing.

  “I, uh, did a couple semesters,” I said.

  The man frowned, but the woman gave me a sympathetic smile. “That’s more training than our last healer had,” she said to the man.

  I returned her smile. “My grandmother taught me everything she knew before I went to Valeria.”

  The man tilted his head. “Do you speak the language at all?”

  That seemed a little random, but it was an easy question to answer. “My father was Valerian,” I said. “I’m fluent.”

  The man nodded. “Might be useful on this trip. We have a traveler from down there. Karina has enough Valerian to ask for the outhouse, but Eva and I can’t tell his words from his farts.”

  The woman shoved him. “Watch your language.” Her tone was sharp but the corner of her mouth lifted. “Besides that, we’re looking for a healer with any kind of training. Broken bones, sniffles, we get them all on the road.”

  “Doesn’t sound like anything I can’t handle,” I said.

  She nodded. “We’d like someone permanent, but we’re late and we can’t be picky. Our route usually takes us through Darayevo and all the way up to Post da Konstantin.”

  “That sounds perfect,” I said, a little too quickly. “I’m trying to get home. Just a little outside Darayevo.”

  The man nodded and reached to shake my hand. “I’m Pyotr and that’s Evgenia.”

  “Reyna Daryadoch.”

  He cocked his head at the woman. “You want to draw up the contract?”

  Evgenia winked at me and disappeared out the opening toward the nearest wagon. Its roof glinted with fresh paint.

  Pyotr turned back to me, and my blood went cold when he glanced down at my sleeves. No, no, please let him forget.

  “I just need to see—”

  “Pyotr,” a familiar voice called. The blonde girl I’d followed stood in the broad doorway. “Boris cracked an axle. He wants you to look at it.”

  Pyotr rolled his eyes and made an exasperated noise in the back of his throat. “How could he crack an axle? We haven’t budged in over a week.”

  She shrugged. “Says he just noticed it. Swears it wasn’t there before.”

  “Pohomzhet da ma Baud, the man could sink his wagon in a mud puddle.” He strode away, waving at me over his shoulder. “Sorry, Reyna. Eva will get you settled.”

  The girl gave me a strange look and a nod before following Pyotr.

  My heart gave one last thump before resuming its normal beat behind my ribs. Maybe O’in was looking out for me. They’d already sent the blonde girl as an angel to guide and guard my steps.

  “We travel with four personal wagons and the rest are all cargo,” Evgenia told me as we walked between two wagons.

  “What do you usually carry?” I said, stepping over a puddle.

  “Grain mostly. It’s boring, but it always sells well. And we keep one of the wagons free for travelers. It’ll be two weeks before we get to Darayevo with a couple of stops along the way.”

  Two weeks more. That wasn’t that bad. If Eira was going to get into trouble without me—and let’s face it, she would—then she would have done it in the two years I’d already been gone. But for some reason, the logic didn’t make me feel any better. It didn’t make two weeks feel any shorter or the longing for my sister’s laugh and Mabushka’s sarcasm any less.

  The wagons circled a row of rough-hewn benches and a stone fire-pit just outside the caravansary. The flicker of firelight between the wagons turned other caravans along the wall into gray humps in the rising darkness. Several people dressed in fur-lined cloaks and boots came and went around the circle.

  “You’ll meet everyone in stages, I’m afraid,” Evgenia said. “People come and go while we’re in town. It’s their last chance before we head out.”

  “How many people do you normally travel with?”

  “There are ten drivers, one for each wagon. Five viona uchenye to take care of any bandits. Isov and Nico take care of the animals. And Pyotr and I run things. Or pretend to. Oh, and our son should be traveling with us.” A shadow crossed her face and I almost asked where he was, but she bustled toward the crackling fire and the four people sitting around it.

  Two of the men she introduced as drivers. She stumbled over the third man’s name, Corwin Blythe, the traveler from Valeria. The fourth woman was my angel.

  Evgenia introduced her as Karina. One of the viona uchenye. Sword poets. A slightly different breed of warrior than the ones who hunted blood mages. That explained the axes.

  “On the road, everyone sleeps under the wagons with a partner to stay warm. I’ll pair you up with someone who can show you where the blankets are kept.”

  “I’m free,” Karina said.

  Evgenia’s brow drew down. “Aren’t you with Ivana?”

  Karina shrugged and drew one of her axes to examine the cutting edge. “She said I’m too quiet. Drives her nuts.”

  Evgenia raised her gaze to the sky. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d suspect you of deliberately driving your fellow viona crazy.”

  “Me?” Karina said, gesturing to herself. “Do I look like a trouble-maker to you?”

  Evgenia narrowed her eyes as Karina grinned over her ax. “The worst kind. Just show Reyna around and try not to drive her off before she’s even had a chance to get settled.”

  “Yes, Mamat,” Karina said.

  Evgenia rolled her eyes, but secretly she looked pleased to be called “mama” as she turned to me. “You’re free to roam while we’re still here. Collect your things from whatever hostel you stashed them in last night. But the armies of O’in won’t keep us from leaving at first light tomorrow, so be sure you’re back by then.” She gave me a warm smile. “And I’d better go give the stock a final check if I’m to keep that promise. Take care of her, Karina?”