“They will,” Caden said, pitching his voice over the noises of the afternoon. “They’ve a vow to kill all Cartorrans on sight, which is why we won’t be speaking in Cartorran—and why we won’t be staying long.”

Staying long where? Safi wanted to press. And why bring me at all? But she didn’t get the chance, for they were approaching a massive archway, where men waited, armed with more blades than they had teeth.

The men watched Safi and Caden saunter past. Bad men. Wrong men. The shivers against her witchery told Safi all she needed to know. At least none made a move to follow Safi and Caden into the world of torpid swamp that was the Red Sails’ territory.

The Baedyeds might have cleared the land and established a proper city on their claim of the peninsula, but the Red Sails had left the jungle to its own devices. Theirs was a world like Safi had imagined, a world like Habim had described. Dilapidated huts sank against massive roots or nestled beside vine-covered ruins. Haphazard. No organization. And almost all of it built on stilts, as if this soggy earth flooded during storms.

Rope bridges were slung between buildings, and as often as Safi saw laundry dangling from a crooked window she saw corpses hanging as well. Some were bloated, fresh; others were decomposed all the way to gleaming skull.

This was what complete freedom allowed. This was what men did in the absence of rules or an imperial yoke.

Cartorra has its flaws, Heretic, but it also has safety. Food too, as well as wealth, roads, education. I could keep going, for the list is long.

Curse the Hell-Bard, for there was no denying the truth in his words. They sang, deep in Safi’s witchery, a soothing, golden pulse beneath the erratic scritch of wrong that surrounded her.

Caden guided Safi up a narrow street that cut between ruins and trees. Muffled music, conversation, and sounds heard only in a whorehouse preceded a blossom-shaped sign that squeaked on the marshy breeze: THE GILDED ROSE.

Caden towed Safi to a stop outside the clapboard building. “There’s an admiral inside whom I need to … interview. And you, Heretic, will be there to ensure she remains truthful.”

“Over my grandmother’s rotting corpse.” Safi snorted. “I will never let you use my magic, Hell-Bard.”

“You have little choice.” He wiggled his dagger. Sunlight bounced off the steel.

“Oh, but you can’t force me.” She batted her lashes, hooking her arms behind her back. “As I believe I’ve mentioned before, I can smile at even the ugliest toad, and not once will he sense a lie.”

Now it was Caden’s turn to snort. “Oh, Heretic, you don’t even know it, do you?” He eased his knife into a hip scabbard. “It wasn’t my Hell-Bard protection that gave you away in Veñaza City. It was you.”

Safi stiffened. Then against her better judgment, she took the bait. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he said, closing the space between them, “that you have a tell.”

“I do not.”

“Oh, yes, you do.” He smiled now. A Chiseled Cheater smile that made Safi’s gut boil. Made her heels bounce. “So no matter what this admiral might say to me, I’ll know just by looking at you whether she speaks the truth or not. Now…” He placed his hands calmly on Safi’s shoulders, then twirled her around to face the Gilded Rose’s dilapidated door. “Let’s go inside and get this over with before we join those corpses hanging out to dry.”

TWENTY-ONE

“It’s not right,” Merik muttered as he and Cam journeyed deeper underground by the light of an old torch. Two damp levels below the Cisterns’ entrance, and still the squatters showed no sign of thinning out—nor did the rats, whose eyes glowed. “A man needs to see the sky.”

“Didn’t expect you to be scared, sir.” Cam flung a mischievous smile across her shoulder.

“I’m not scared.” Merik glowered. “There’s no wind here, boy. No air. I feel … suffocated.”

“Well, we’ve barely left the surface, so get used to it. Shite Street is much lower—and much smellier.”

The girl wasn’t exaggerating, and after circling six levels deeper, a stench began gathering in the air. Even as the ceilings lifted higher and the passages spread wider, the smell was soon thick enough to choke and sharp enough to burn.

It sent Cam doubling over, coughing, gagging, and spraying torchlight in all directions. “Shit,” she said, and Merik couldn’t tell if the girl swore at the stench or simply named its source. Either way, he agreed.

Three turns later in the tunnel, they reached the infamous Shite Street. Cam clapped a hand to her mouth, hefting the torch high. Light glistened over a lumpy expanse of bodily fluids (and bodily solids). There was also something oily and dark dripping from a crack between ceiling bricks.

Worse than the sight of it, though, was the ploop! ploop! that each droplet made in the pool—and the bubbles that gurgled to life right after.

“Can’t you fly us across, sir?”

Merik considered this, breathing through the edge of his hood as he did so.

But then he shook his head. “I need to summon winds to fly us. And though I could try, there’s just not enough air to carry us far.”

“S’better to fly halfway than walk through all of it,” Cam pointed out. “The tunnel is almost full, sir! That line”—she pointed to the opposite wall—“is as high as the sewage gets before the floods come through to clean it out. That’s as deep as our knees, sir!”