This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews: Chapters 5 and 6 - Reactor

When Maggie wakes up cold, filthy, and naked in a gutter, it doesn’t take her long to recognize Kair Toren, a city she knows intimately from the pages of the famously unfinished dark fantasy series she’s been reading (and re-reading) obsessively…

Join us every Monday through March 30th for an extended preview of This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews, the start of a blockbuster new epic fantasy series publishing March 31st with Tor Books. Find additional excerpts here.

Chapter 5

The bells of the Red Basilica rang a melodious din. The higher-pitched, smaller bells struck a quick rhythm, punctuated by the deeper clang of the larger bells, and finally a single deep chime of the great bell rolled through the city and lingered, reverberating in the air. Noon.

I paused and leaned against a wall of the building to rest my tired feet. Past me, the current of the passersby flowed through Bluestone Square.

Kair Toren was a riot of people, sounds, and color. Most buildings in this part of town had simple lines, sturdy towers, and thick walls, built with a beautiful calico stone, a sandy beige with swirls of cinnamon and white curving through it. And there was a surprising amount of glass. Across the square, the sun glinted on the upper floors’ windows and a beautiful glass sign in red and teal marked an alchemy shop.

Countless people moved against that backdrop, traders, shoppers, city guards, knights… I saw actual knights in armor. I had expected it to be clunky and rigid, but it was sleek and fitted, and they moved in it as if they were wearing sweatpants. People carried swords and maces on their belts, and their long cloaks flared as they walked. Women who weren’t in armor wore dresses and gowns in every color, actual gowns, and their hair was braided and styled with hair jewelry. Men out of armor preferred jerkins and tunics, although I saw a couple in robes.

As I watched, a woman in a pretty cloak, accompanied by four guards, passed me, walking some relative of a Tasmanian tiger on a chain leash. A craftsman with two teenage apprentices followed, lecturing them on the right way to pickle cabbage, and behind them an old man carried a wooden frame on his shoulders with brilliantly colored birds perching on each side.

Across the street, a woman in a wheelchair rolled in the opposite direction, surrounded by a gaggle of young girls. One of them held the door of the alchemy shop open, the second pushed her chair, and the other two scurried into the store, as the woman’s raised voice carried over in the familiar cadence of a teacher giving a lecture, “Remember the rule. Everything is poisonous, everything is hot. Touch nothing and do not put your hands in your mouth…”

I’d read about it over and over, I’d imagined it, and here it was, right there. Right in front of me. All this wonderful magical weirdness. I wanted to just wander about like a toddler at an amusement park, going, “Ooo, look at this.” But there was no time.

I had hightailed it out of the Garden like my butt was on fire. For the first fifteen minutes I just walked, paranoid that they would chase after me. By the time I reached the Bull Gate again, I’d decided I was in the clear and concentrated on the most important thing—putting a roof over my head.

I went to the Inn Quarter. It took me an hour and a half of determined walking to get there. I tried the White Stag, the Squire’s Rest, and the imaginatively named Softer Beds, the three cheapest inns in the quarter. All three required the Rellasian equivalent of a “credit card for incidentals,” meaning they wanted proof of identity.

I offered to prepay. I offered to pay double. That just made them more suspicious. They booted me out the door, and the Softer Beds clerk went a step further, called me a lowlife, and told me to never come back. Apparently, only their beds were softer, not their service. Asshat.

I had to find a private room to rent. The books didn’t deal with real estate in detail. There were references to characters purchasing properties or finding lodging, but none of it was specific enough.

I returned to the signboard in Bluestone Square. I vaguely remembered seeing something about rent, when I was stumbling about in the rain, looking for a date on the official announcements pinned to it. I was right. The front of the sideboard was for official use. The back served as the medieval equivalent of Craigslist, announcing everything from lost dogs to rooms for rent.

I’d gotten to that signboard around ten am. It was two hours later, and I had seen five rentals so far. Three wouldn’t rent to a woman unattached to a guild or a workshop, one was a straight-up hovel with one communal bathroom for seven people, and the landlord of the last one gave me the creeps.

I had about seven or eight hours of daylight left, and I was down to my last available rental. If this one didn’t work out, I would have to move on, and I had no clue where another signboard might be. Maybe this one would work out. I would get to it as soon as my feet stopped hurting.

A whiff of freshly baked bread floated past me. My mouth watered. I turned.

A peddler was coming up the street toward me. He carried a tray with a strap around his neck, and it was full of pastries. Fresh, flaky, golden pastries, with crispy crust. Oh my god.

How was I so hungry? I had breakfast six hours ago… Oh.

The vendor zeroed in on me like a wolf spotting a lame rabbit. “Mushroom handpies, tress?”

Yes, all the handpies. All of them. “How much?”

“A quarter.”

I reached into my cloak, dug two quarters out of my bag of money by feel, and dropped them into his palm. He plucked a little envelope folded from some sort of leaf from the stack on his tray, slid two handpies into it, and handed it to me.

“Thank you, terr. Do you know where Prodoe Street is?”

The peddler pointed over his shoulder. “That way, on the other side of the Kar Crescent. I’d go around if I were you, though.”

“Why?”

He shook his head and walked away.

Mysterious. Why would I need to go around?

I bit into a pie. The crispy, buttery pastry practically melted on my tongue.

Mmmm. How could mushrooms and bread be so tasty?

I wolfed down half of the pie. My stomach gave it a standing ovation. It was time to get going.

I started walking. The square ended, flowing into a street, and the city blocks crawled by. Every place I had seen so far was within fifteen minutes of the square, so that signboard only advertised nearby rentals. There had to be other signboards out there. Kair Toren had several markets. Maybe I would go to one of those next.

The street curved slightly to the left, widening. Ah, so that’s why they called it a crescent. I followed it, rounding the bend.

Yes, I hadn’t found a place to rent yet. But the sun was shining, and I had a delicious handpie. Life wasn’t so bad…

The bite of the handpie turned to cement in my mouth.

A man sat in the street in a puddle of half-dried blood. He was young, maybe eighteen, and so thin he looked like a little kid, slumping against the building, thrown there carelessly, like trash. Gore caked his face. Thin streaks stretched from his pale blue eyes where his tears had made a path through the blood. His lips were swollen and split. His arms ended in bloody stumps, partially charred with black. Someone had hung a signboard around his neck and tied his severed hands to it. Two city guardsmen in teal and black tabards with the white towers on them stood by the body talking in low voices, their expressions flat, their eyes haunted.

The signboard said I STOLE FROM BARON HREBAN.

It felt like I had sprinted face-first into a brick wall.

The contemplation. Ulmar Hreban’s special brand of atrocity.

Nausea squirmed through me. I’d read about it over and over in the two books, but never in my life did I think I would actually see it. Common sense told me I needed to walk away, but my feet must’ve sprouted roots, because I couldn’t move.

The thief must’ve broken into Hreban’s mansion. Hreban’s guards had caught him, beat him, cut off his hands, partially cauterized his wounds, and thrown him on the street.

He looked so desperate now, his eyes dead but still full of pain. When they dumped him here, he would’ve known that he was about to die and nobody would save him, so he just sat and stared at the sky, bleeding out and waiting for the end. His life must’ve been hard and brutal for him to risk breaking into Hreban’s mansion, and then it ended in agony on this street.

A city of three hundred thousand people, and nobody lifted a finger to help him. How was that even possible? How could anyone ignore this? Did all of them go blind? Why weren’t the guards moving the body? They were just standing there.

The younger guard on the left raised his head and looked at me. Our stares connected. His eyes were filled with shame and fear. He looked away.

It hit me like a hammer. Hreban had paid the city guards to watch the body. They were standing there to make sure nobody removed it. He had a pet phrase for it, sunup to sundown. He could’ve ordered his private guards to secure the corpse, but he paid off the City Guard instead. He wanted everyone to see his special punishment and know that nobody could stop him, and moreover, that the city condoned it. A preview of what awaited Rellas when he rose to power, and I was the only one who understood.

There was nothing I could do for the dead man. It was too late. And even if it hadn’t been, even if he was still alive and dying, what could I have done? Hreban had everything, the name, the magic, the wealth, the private soldiers, and I couldn’t even rent a room at an inn.

If Hreban ever found out that I had helped Galiene, he would do this to me, and nobody would do anything about it either. The thief probably had people who knew him. Family, friends. I had no one.

I felt so helpless. So angry and scared and helpless.

The young guard raised his gloved hand and motioned to me. Move on.

This was so wrong.

The guard took a step forward and jerked his hand toward an alley branching off the street. Go!

I forced myself to turn and fled into the alley, walking as fast as my feet would carry me.

* * *

I walked into the Three Moons just as the East Tower bells struck, announcing five pm. Historically, medieval taverns were supposed to be filthy places, noisy and dark, with floors covered in layers of rushes or straw and soaked in a lovely mixture of mud, vomit, rotten food, and horse manure brought in on boots.

The Three Moons was the opposite of that. Large windows let in plenty of light, the wooden floor had been scrubbed clean, the tables had actual chairs instead of a wooden plank propped up on a couple of barrels, and the clientele skewed, if not affluent, then at least comfortable. The patrons had good clothes, groomed hair and beards, clean faces, and decent shoes. The sign outside, a carved wooden board with a stylized depiction of the planet’s three moons, had three circles of colored glass hanging from it on thin chains: green, amber, and red, meaning they served green ale, mead, and wine.

This early in the evening the place was only a third full. I walked to an empty table about midway between the bar and the door and sat down.

This was a terrible idea.

A young man with light brown skin and jet-black hair delivered two wooden beer tankards to the neighboring table, stopped by mine, and offered me a smile. “What will it be, tress?”

“Favonian red mead,” I told him. “Cold, please.”

The smile gained a forced quality. “I’m afraid we’re all out.”

“Then I’ll take the Denavi ale. But I want to try it before I order.”

“Yes, tress.”

He turned and walked away, making sure to look casual. I watched him make his way to the bartender, a large man in his mid-thirties with blond hair and a deep tan. The bartender glanced at me. I smiled at him. A hurried discussion occurred in hushed voices, and then my waiter slipped through the door to the right of the bar into the back rooms.

They had a dilemma on their hands. I had given them the passphrase, but neither of them recognized me. They would have to run it up their chain of command.

Seeing that dead man had shaken me to the core. By the time I had gotten to the next rental, I was ready to take it no matter what. Anything to find a hole to hide in.

The room belonged to a young family of bakers who had clearly fallen on hard times. The man’s name was Ert, the woman’s name was Hille. They had two kids, a boy and a girl, in clean, worn clothes, about seven and five years old. Ert and Hille baked handpies and bread in their small kitchen, and then Ert would go out to sell them on the street.

Their house was narrow and shoddy. The communal bathroom on the first floor stank like the sewers, and I’d nearly gagged from the reek when they showed it to me. There wasn’t anything to be done about the stench.

The room they wanted to lease was all the way on the third floor, up a rickety old staircase that groaned under my feet. It was cramped, old, and grimy with a coffin-size bed that had no mattress, only a quilt over wooden boards. The flimsy door featured wooden bars on both sides.

Ert and Hille were clearly desperate. They didn’t care about my lack of papers, but they wanted a week’s rent in advance and informed me that they would lock me in at night. As the man of the house had put it, It’s not that we think you’ ll murder us while we sleep. It’s just safer that way.

I paid them seven dens for one week. The room wasn’t worth half of that, but I didn’t have the heart or the will to argue. As soon as the money exchanged hands, the bakers left me to “settle in.” I took my shoes off my hurting feet, lay down on my new, awful bed, wrapped in a threadbare blanket and instant buyer’s regret, and thought about my options.

Saving Galiene and her daughter was an impulsive decision. It was probably a mistake, but I didn’t regret it. The memory of the dead man’s battered face haunted me like a ghost, but if I had a chance to do it over, I would save them again. Even if this world turned out to be just a book and she and her daughter were only characters, I didn’t want them to suffer and die. That asshole Hreban wouldn’t get to kill them. It was in my power to warn her, I did it, and it was done and over with.

But I couldn’t afford any more impulsive decisions. Not dying was great, but could I come back if my killer dismembered my body? Could I regenerate a cut-off head? What if they killed me, weighed my body down, and threw it into the river like that poor corpse whose cloak I took? Would I just keep coming back to life and drowning over and over, unable to swim to the surface?

What if I were buried? If I was buried in loose soil, I could probably dig myself out. I would likely die a few times from suffocation, but eventually I would claw my way to the surface. But what if they buried me in a coffin? How would I get out? Also, Kair Toren cremated their dead. What if I was cremated?

What if my body was fed to pigs? I had watched a movie where the villain went into great detail about feeding corpses to pigs and not trusting a man who kept more than three pigs. Or was it four? Would I resurrect as sentient pig crap?

I didn’t know, and I did not want to find out. If someone like Hreban got ahold of me and discovered that I was unkillable, he would torture me. That old clichéd saying about a fate worse than death was true in my case.

I wanted to vanish into a secure burrow, like a mouse, and get my bearings, and this tiny room failed to deliver that safety. The door was so old and warped, even I could kick my way through it. My biggest security measure wasn’t that door, it was that damn staircase. It would probably collapse if someone in armor tried to climb it.

Being locked in every night wasn’t amazing either. If the house caught fire, I’d be trapped.

The only way to truly get some security would be to buy or lease my own house and hire soldiers to guard me at night. Besides, trading in information required discretion and a private base. I had to get my own place, the sooner, the better.

I lay in bed, stared at the ceiling, and finally came up with a plan. It wasn’t a good plan. It involved a great deal of risk, and risk was exactly what I was trying to avoid. But if I pulled it off, the payoff would be worth it. I ran through my scheme three times, looking for pitfalls until my brain began to overheat. If I hesitated any longer, I would think myself right out of doing it, so I put my shoes back on and came here to the Three Moons.

Now I had to live through the next twenty minutes and exit in one piece.

The waiter emerged from the back room and walked over to my table. “We have a couple varieties for you to try. Would you like to come with me for samples, tress?”

“Yes.”

I got up and followed him through the door into a hallway. He paused to close the door behind me. I turned left, walked to the third door, and waited for him.

The waiter blinked, chased me down, and opened the door for me. A long stone staircase led down to the cellar. The staircase was steep, and more than one person had broken their limbs, and sometimes their neck, after being pushed down those stairs.

“Lead the way,” I told him.

He took a lantern off the wall and started down the stairs without hesitation.

Apparently murder by stairs wasn’t on the agenda today.

We descended the staircase and turned left to a huge, old wooden door. The door opened to a wine cellar. We passed through a dark tunnel formed by beer and wine barrels stacked on their sides almost to the fifteen-foot ceiling, and reached another door, even better reinforced than the last one.

My guide knocked three times, then swung the door open. We went through that doorway and ended up in a well-lit room. A long old table, flanked by two benches, stood in the center, its surface stained and scarred. Today it held a stack of papers at the far end and a map of the city drawn on a four-foot-long, square piece of sturdy parchment. To the left, a small bar, a simple wooden counter with shelves behind it, offered a variety of cups and tankards.

A man looked at me from the table. He was tall and lean, with warm, golden skin the cosmetics companies would call sand and tawny light brown hair, cut a bit longish, so it framed his handsome face. He drew the eye in that classically attractive way: a sculpted jaw he kept clean-shaven, strong, angular features with a touch of elegant arrogance, and smart amber eyes. Right now, everything about him was sharp and dangerous, like a well-honed dagger, but when he went about his day job, he was charming, sophisticated, and effortlessly handsome.

In our world he would be in movies and make millions. People would line up to see his films, and they wouldn’t be disappointed, because he was an excellent actor.

He must’ve come directly from a meeting or some formal occasion because his clothes didn’t fit his current expression. He wore a high-collared white shirt left open to display a muscular neck and a narrow golden chain around it. A leather vest embroidered with golden thread caught his narrow waist. His dark brown pants were tucked into soft boots. A leather pauldron shielded his left shoulder. His burgundy cloak, designed to fit over his right shoulder, lay on the bar, casually discarded.

He was thirty years old but looked about five years younger. Solentine Dagarra. The head of the Shears and bastard son of Trihorn Border Margrave Izarn Demarr. Ruthless, dangerous, and deeply paranoid. He was one of my favorite characters. So handsome, so smart, so witty, and yet so deeply fucked up.

Solentine met my gaze.

Wow.

The Rise of Kair Toren had more viewpoint characters than you could shake a stick at, but Solentine was definitely near the top when it came to sheer page numbers, because he delivered both drama and shocking violence. Most people had a circuit breaker that tripped and stopped them because some things were simply not done to fellow human beings. In some people, it malfunctioned, but in Solentine it was either permanently broken or didn’t get installed in the first place. He was infinitely dangerous, and right now he was looking at me like I was an annoying bug he needed to crush.

It sank in: This wasn’t fiction. This was my reality. I was standing in a soundproof room, the servant behind me was likely a trained killer, and I was looking at Solentine Dagarra. In the flesh. I could reach out and boop him on the nose.

Oh god, he would kill me.

Solentine smiled at me. Alarm punched the base of my neck and rolled down my spine in an electric shock. Oh no, that wasn’t good. Not at all. Dying at the hands of the Shears would hurt.

Coming here had been a terrible mistake.

Mistake or not, now I had to survive. I needed to establish my credentials and show I wasn’t afraid. But I was afraid. Very afraid.

I forced the words out. “The head of the Shears. I’m honored.”

“Tell me how you know our password, and I’ll decide what to do with you,” Solentine said in a cultured baritone. Even his voice was off the charts.

“I don’t give away information, I sell it. Right now, I have something you want, so I came here to trade. You’re missing one of your men.”

There was a barely perceptible shift in the way Solentine held himself. A little less relaxation in the line of his shoulders, a little more rigidity in the spine, a harder edge to his gaze. I had his undivided attention.

“I can make you tell me everything you know,” he said. “It won’t be difficult.”

“True. However, if you do that, the Shears will never again profit from my services. I’d like to establish a mutually beneficial business relationship, so I’m willing to make certain concessions. I’ll tell you what happened to Miro, no strings attached. In a week, I’ll come back for my payment. If I like the value you put on saving a life, we can make a deal again in the future. If I don’t, this will be our first and last transaction.”

It was a huge gamble, but Solentine suspected everyone and everything. A week would give him enough time to check out the information I offered him. The delayed payment guaranteed I would stick around, which should make him comfortable enough to let me walk out of here unharmed.

A stupid leg-breaker would torture the information out of me and then kill me. Solentine was a very smart man. He would want to use this week to have me watched and to try to find out everything he could about me. Who sent me? Where did I come from? Did I have a secret agenda? Could I prove to be useful in the future? So many fun questions that would gnaw at his brain.

And if I played my cards right, down the line, he might trust me enough to not only pay me but provide me with a false identity. It would take a lot of work, but it was possible.

He pondered me for a long moment.

My skin felt too tight. I had a powerful urge to scream and run away as fast as I could just to ease the pressure.

Come on. Let the curiosity win.

“Where is he?”

Got him. “He broke into Baron Horost’s estate and was caught. They have him in the dungeon, last cell on the right as you enter.”

The Shears had started a century ago as a crime syndicate specializing in espionage, sabotage, and rumors. Solentine had taken them over eight years ago and continued the policies of his predecessor, forging the former syndicate into a shadow army of informants, thieves, and assassins. The Shears embedded capable and well-trained people all throughout Rellas. They were the tailors, the chefs, the barbers, the embroidery maids. Some simply gathered information and passed it on. Others ran around the rooftops in black outfits, broke into impregnable fortresses, and stabbed people in the back when the occasion demanded.

The Shears still took lucrative contracts and sold information to the highest bidder just like they did decades ago, but now they were dedicated to Solentine, and their actions stemmed from his agenda. Right now, a large part of that hidden agenda revolved around finding out who was supplying iron to the rebel group picking up steam in the north of the kingdom. Miro, one of Solentine’s best black-outfit operatives, followed the trail of breadcrumbs to Horost and got himself nabbed through an epic turn of bad luck.

The day after tomorrow, Solentine, who sat on the crossroads of several currents of information, would attend a dinner at Horost’s estate to gauge the Baron’s possible involvement in the diverting of the iron ore. During that dinner he would purposefully lose a large sum of money, and a drunk Horost, already flattered by Solentine’s presence, would magnanimously give him a tour of the dungeons so he could boast about his general awesomeness. Solentine would see Miro and rescue him a couple of days later.

I wouldn’t change the plot in any significant way. The sequence of events would remain the same, except that now Solentine would go to Horost’s little rave expecting to find evidence of Miro being held there. If it worked, I would cause a minimal disturbance and net a decent sum of money. Hopefully enough to get me out of the third floor of the bakery.

Solentine leaned forward. His eyes narrowed. “How much do you know?”

Danger, danger. I met his gaze and kept my voice calm. “Any additional information will cost extra.”

“Did he break?”

This was a test. Miro wouldn’t break, even if he was tortured to death, and Solentine knew it.

“No. He’s pretending to be a common thief, and Horost’s men are inexperienced. They’ve beaten him too badly, so they must allow him a couple of days to recuperate before they can torture him again. Do you require a map of the estate?”

“I assume the map will cost me extra?” Solentine asked.

“Yes.”

“It won’t be necessary.” His posture relaxed a fraction. He thought he had my number.

“I will come back here in one week for my payment. Do we have a deal?”

“Yes,” Solentine said.

“It’s been a pleasure.”

I turned. The waiter opened the door for me and then led me all the way to the front room of the tavern. I smiled at him and kept walking, out the door, merging with the foot traffic flowing through the street. I’d walked for almost five minutes when my control finally snapped, and cold sweat drenched my face.

Survived. Somehow. So far so good.

Solentine would have me followed. I didn’t bother glancing behind me. I wouldn’t spot whoever was tailing me anyway. I walked up the street, made a left, then a right, and came to a large building with a wooden bolt of fabric above the entrance. I swung the heavy door open and went in.

The inside of the shop was spacious. On the left, a counter guarded the front door. Rows of tables on both sides offered bolts of fabric. More fabric hung from wooden racks by the walls. At the wall opposite the entrance, two doors led deeper into the shop.

I lingered by the nearest table, pretending to care about linen.

Two women entered, one after another, the first middle-aged, the second barely fifteen. The older woman wore a dress similar to mine and carried a full shopping basket, while the younger had a nicer outfit, almost a gown. A man followed them, young, with a larger shopping basket on his shoulders.

All three went in different directions and started shopping. One of them was likely Solentine’s.

I mulled about a bit more, made my way to the counter, put a den on the wooden surface and slid it to the clerk. “I need to use your other exit.”

He nodded and swiped the coin.

I meandered over to the door on the left, opened it, and slipped into a long hallway.

This shop took up the entire block. The exit at the end of this hallway opened to a different street, which branched into two others. The Shears had frequently used this shop as a getaway. The agent tailing me wouldn’t follow me through the building into the hallway because that would be too obvious. They would leave the store, go around the block, and then quietly trail after me.

One, two, three… five. Long enough for my tail to exit.

I opened the door and stepped back into the main room. Let’s see which of the three worked for Solentine.

The younger woman and the man were still in the store. It was the older lady. Ha!

I crossed the main floor, went out the front door, made a sharp left into an alley, and took off. Nobody followed me.

One very dangerous meeting down, one to go.

Chapter 6

I walked through the doors of the Taryz Teahouse in one piece.

The teahouses had come to Kair Toren almost three hundred years ago, when Dhonir, a small nation on the southern side of the continent, joined Rellas, becoming the Dhonir Duchy to escape the aggression of a nearby warmongering Crimson Empire. The teahouses were a staple of the city now, and drinking tea had become the dominant way to hydrate. Boiling water was the simplest way to disinfect it, and tea leaves made it taste better.

The Taryz Teahouse occupied a large, coveted plot in Golden Leaf, named so for the beautiful trees that grew along the river and turned bright yellow in the fall. The neighborhood straddled the line between the middle-class district of the Fens to the east and the affluent Anchor Drop estates to the west, just across Virka River. The farther north you went, the more dangerous the streets became, but here the cobblestones were clean, and robberies were rare.

The layout of the Taryz Teahouse echoed the Garden, although it was nowhere near that luxurious. It had the same arrangement of the extra tall main floor and the second-floor balcony running the length of the room, followed by two floors of smaller rooms: quiet, elegant, and very private. Many underhanded deals were hammered out in those rooms and people were occasionally murdered here. With the utmost discretion, of course.

The fourth floor consisted of a small room that opened to a large outdoor terrace. That’s where I went, up a very long staircase, following a polite server with a platter supporting a small teapot, a cup, and a little glass dish of honey.

Unlike most of the fandom, I’d never crushed on Solentine. I had spent way too much time in his head and his problem solving would give you nightmares. But I liked him, because I knew what had shaped him and understood why he did what he did. The Bastard of Dagarra knew he was messed up and twisted, and yet his priorities never wavered. It was always about family. He was ruthless and brutal, but to his relatives he was a beloved and loving son, nephew, and cousin.

I admired that loyalty. I grew up as an army brat. We moved so much during my childhood that nothing was permanent. Schools, other kids, sports teams, all of it came and went, “for now” rather than “for always.” I never got a chance to form lasting friendships, but my brother was always there for me. No matter what happened, he was a constant the way Solentine was a constant for his family.

I wanted Solentine to survive, despite all the awful shit he had done, but as much as I rooted for him, I had no illusions. Putting myself on the Shears’ radar was extremely risky. If Solentine wanted to get rid of me, he could simply snap his fingers, and it would be done. In a week I would have to interact with him again to get my payment. I needed some way to lessen the danger of that encounter. I needed a bodyguard. Someone that even he would have a difficult time killing.

At his core, Solentine was an assassin. An exceptional assassin, true, but he relied a great deal on the element of surprise. I needed a warrior. Someone who could stand up to an assassin. Rellas was a place that valued martial skills. Finding a great swordsman wouldn’t be that difficult but convincing them to work with me was a whole other story.

The stairs ended and I followed the server onto a roof terrace.

The Taryz Teahouse had never forgotten its roots, and the echo of its native Dhonir was everywhere—in the ornate stone rail of the terrace with protective symbols carved into the posts; in the metal windchimes shaped like strange animals tinkling gently in the wind; and in the long stretches of beautiful green fabric, draped at an angle over some tables to shield the patrons from the sun. The shading canvas stirred in the wind, as if the teahouse were a ship and these were its emerald sails.

Right now, with the afternoon sky threatening rain again, the terrace was mostly empty, and I saw him right away, a man sitting alone at the table closest to the western rail. He would be drinking Thieves Tea, a strong smoky brew, although he was not a thief.

He wore an old cloak, so faded you could no longer tell its original color. It hid most of his build, but his broad shoulders stretched the fabric, and he leaned in his chair with the kind of effortless, controlled grace particular to very strong men.

He sat under a green sail, half in the shadow and half in the light. The cloak’s thick hood was down, and the morning sun warmed his olive skin, while the wind blowing from the river stirred his dark brown hair. His face was striking. His features were powerful and chiseled, a hard jaw, a strong nose, high cheekbones, a firm mouth… He was looking away from me across the river, and I couldn’t see the color of his eyes, but they should’ve been gray. The trait ran in his family.

His sword rested on the table. A simple wooden sheath, a downcurved guard, a grip of reddish-brown leather, a blade that was about forty inches long, and most importantly, a small white pebble embedded in the round pommel. Location, outfit, features, sword—everything checked out.

Everything except his age. He’d become a professional soldier at seventeen and served in the King’s Army for twenty years, so he was at least thirty-seven. The exact line in the book said, A harsh life of battles and marches added years to his face. He looked like a man who was a decade older.

The man in front of me was in his very early thirties at most. He didn’t look old enough to have a fifteen-year-old son and he didn’t look worn down by life either. He looked tempered by it. Heated to the breaking point by danger, quenched by experience, and hardened like a blade to a sharp, unbreakable edge.

I had about two seconds to decide what to do.

He had the sword. Nobody else would be here, in this teahouse, looking across the river at that house, and carrying that sword. The owner of this weapon wasn’t just a soldier, he was a blademaster, knighted at the age of seventeen for exceptional bravery and skill. I didn’t know if he was the best swordsman in the kingdom, but he was in the top five. The people capable of separating him from his sword could be counted on the fingers of one hand and none of them would be sitting on this terrace.

Don’t screw this up, don’t screw this up.

I walked over to his table and sat down across from him. He looked at me. His eyes, more green than gray, took my measure from under dark eyebrows. No apprehension, no surprise. Only calm, calculating intelligence and invincible will.

He’s real.

He wasn’t a character. He felt more real than anything or anyone in Kair Toren so far. I was looking into the eyes of a living, breathing man, who was infinitely dangerous, and I couldn’t look away, because that connection, that reality, was magnetic. It was the kind of moment when, after being trapped in a confusing nightmare, you realize that you are dreaming, and you have the power to wake up.

The server placed my teapot and my cup in front of me and departed with a soft smile.

I poured a cup of tea. The waters of the Virka flowed past us, on their way to join the Dokkon, the city’s main river, a quarter of a mile to the southeast. Across the river the estates of Anchor Drop hugged the water, some with docks, others without, all wrapped in sturdy walls and sitting on about an acre or so each.

The estate directly across from us abandoned the walls completely. Instead, the entire house was a wall, a large square built with Kair Toren’s trademark swirly stone, three floors high and about sixty feet deep, with a courtyard in the center. A single stubby tower rose at the left corner of it. The first floor had no windows. The second and third floors had a few, but all of them were guarded by thick bars or shutters. No points of access. The only obvious door lay on the opposite side of the estate, facing the street.

The place was a fortress. It took safety to the next level, even by Kair Toren’s standards.

“If human suffering had color, that house would be churning with black and red,” I said.

The man across from me said nothing.

“The estate to its left is owned by a respected physician. The estate to the right belongs to a minor noble family. They think their neighbor is a trader who has done well for himself. A good businessman, a bit reclusive, but pleasant. Nobody knows.”

He drank his tea. I sipped my brew. The black tea was aromatic and slightly floral, vanilla, lavender, and a hint of citrus. Any other time, I would have savored it.

He was giving no indication whether any of my words were landing.

“A thriving kingdom must always be at war,” I said. “That’s how it justifies and trains a professional army. These wars don’t have to be large. In fact, it’s better if they are not, and it’s best if they’re fought on foreign soil or at the frontier. The kind of conflict that doesn’t affect most of the kingdom and allows the citizens to ignore the fact that every day someone is dying on their behalf, for reasons most of the people involved do not understand or care about.”

No reaction.

“Of course, a professional army creates the problem of veterans. Highly skilled at warfare, great at surviving, and not always fit to reenter civilian life after all the blood and horrors they witness. A professional soldier with twenty years of experience is a living weapon that can be used against the state when hired by a rogue noble as a mercenary or incited to violence. The state must then find a way to anchor these veterans. They need an incentive to not become a destructive force.”

I poured another cup of tea. He hadn’t stabbed me yet. I took it as an encouraging sign.

“When a veteran reaches the eighteenth year of their twenty-year service, they are offered the Last Tour. It is a terrible tour of duty, in a place where the risks are high. If the veteran survives it, they are awarded a parcel of fertile land no less than one gere.”

About eight acres. Typically, near a forest with monsters or a border with a hostile nation, where the veterans could act as a buffer. Praemia militia, invented by Ancient Rome of our world for its legionnaires, never bested, often imitated, and eventually transformed by our modern government into the GI Bill. Instead of rewarding our veterans with a parcel of land, we sent them to college and hoped they would learn to cope.

“In addition to one gere of land, these veteran soldiers are also given the Green Purse, enough money to hire farmhands, obtain seed, purchase two oxen or a single horse, and work the farm for one year. They can become farmers, or sublet the land, or they can cash out. It’s a tempting proposition for a soldier with a family. The promise of a peaceful life.”

He refilled his cup. His face looked like it was carved from stone.

“So, a soldier takes that Last Tour. He survives against all odds and receives all that was promised. He returns to the city with his limbs and mind intact and discovers that the wife he left behind was murdered and his son has gone missing.”

Nothing. Not a hint of emotion. I was on very thin ice, and I could hear it cracking.

“He searches for his son and finds out that he was taken and sold by a slavemonger who lives in an impenetrable fortress. He keeps looking for a way in but can’t find any, so every day he comes to the rooftop terrace of the local teahouse. He drinks the same tea he learned to enjoy during his first campaign, he watches, and he waits for fate to knock on his door.”

“And you would be fate?” he asked.

His voice matched him, confident, powerful, controlled. His eyes turned cold. Yep, he would kill me. I wasn’t getting off this terrace.

“No. I’m just a woman who made a deal with dangerous people. I get my payment in one week, and I need a bodyguard.”

If I got him on my side, no fighter in the kingdom, aside from the members of the Great Families, could touch me.

Don’t babble. Babbling makes you appear nervous. Stay calm. Like an icicle. Think icy thoughts.

“Normally I would offer money.”

I couldn’t afford him. Even if I threw all the money I had at him, it wouldn’t be enough.

“But you don’t want money. You want Derog Olgren.”

He stared at me. “What kind of deal did you make? What is your profession?”

Lying of any sort would get me murdered. I could feel it emanating from him.

“I sell information. I know things. Surprising things, secret things, things I shouldn’t be aware of. Things people think are private and hidden.”

He tilted his head to the side. “Impress me.”

“You were in Gassargand, trying to take the city. You and three others scaled the First Wall and were running across an old aqueduct when the ground gave way. You fell into an underground chamber. It was old, older than the city. The only light came from the hole your bodies made as you tumbled down. There were tunnels leading from the chamber into the darkness.”

I was all out of tea, and my mouth was as dry as the Gassargand desert.

“A creature came out of the tunnels. It walked upright like a man, and it wore armor and carried a battle hammer, but it was covered with gray fur, eight feet tall, and its head was the head of a monster. It smashed Mertio’s skull with a single blow, and you saw his head crack like a broken egg. The three of you fought it until the mortar bombardment resumed, and the sounds of explosions drove it back into the darkness.”

“We used to tell that story at every campfire for years afterward,” he said.

“I’m not finished. Of the four of you, Mertio was the youngest. He was barely into his second year, but he was good with a spear and brave. He reminded you of your younger brother, and you used to look out for him. You ended that day on the Second Wall, and when everyone went down for the night, exhausted and nursing their wounds, you snuck back to the aqueduct to get Mertio’s crest off his body so his family would have something to bury. You tied a rope around an old stone pillar and dropped into that hole without a torch, carrying only your sword. Mertio’s body was gone, so you walked the tunnels in darkness until you found the creature and its siblings eating Mertio’s corpse, and you killed the three of them in a room with a statue of a bronze god with a bloated stomach.”

He stared at me. As far as I knew, he’d never told anyone about that last bit.

“Is it magic?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what is it?”

“One day, if we become friends, I might explain.”

And I had no idea how I would do that. Hi, in my world, you are a character in a book wouldn’t exactly fly. He would think I was mentally ill.

The intensity in his eyes made his gaze difficult to hold. “Do you know where my son is?”

I frowned. “No. I have a guess.”

“Tell me.” His voice was almost a growl.

“There is a boy in the Knight Order of the Redeemer with the gift of farseeing. He is the right age, and he has blue-black hair like your wife and your light eyes. He was rescued by a group of knights from slave traders in the wilderness. But the boy lost his memory. They call him Syllind, the Redeemer’s chosen. He answers to Lin.”

It was the oldest literary device in existence—surprise amnesia. The books never confirmed Lin’s parentage, but it would have to be a cosmic coincidence for him not to be Reynald’s son. The gift of farseeing was very rare.

I had many favorite characters. Solentine was one, Galiene, Pelegrin… But I always felt for Reynald the most. He’d spent his life serving the country. In return, his wife was murdered, and his son was stolen by slavers. Despite all of it, Reynald tried to do the right thing till the very end. He fought with all his strength and skill for it, and no matter how hard it tried, Kair Toren couldn’t crush his will, so it killed him instead. It was a horrible death.

The blademaster stood up and leaned on the stone rail, his palms planted on it, his gaze fixed on the house.

“Redeemer’s chosen,” Reynald said. His voice was suffused with menace. I almost scooted back in my chair.

Rellas had many knightages, groups of knights affiliated for various reasons. If a knightage pledged itself to one of the Aspects and met certain requirements, like number of members and paying all the proper religious dues, it became a knight order.

There were three prominent knight orders in the kingdom. All of them pledged themselves to the Aspect of the Warrior, but in different forms. The Defenders worshiped the protective Warrior, concerned with guarding and securing their domain, while the Conquerors favored a more aggressive approach.

Of the three orders, the Order of the Redeemer was the newest and the smallest. They were big on renouncing your old, wretched existence and seeking redemption through a life of service, specifically martial service. The best comparison would be the Foreign Legion, but wrapped in religion, with a big chip on their shoulder, and actual magic powers.

“Getting into the Redeemer Tower will be very difficult,” I warned. “They guard their squires, especially the ones with magic, with extreme prejudice. It will take someone with a great deal of influence to get you in.”

The Redeemers overreacted to any perceived slight, and trying to take away one of their squires wouldn’t go over well. Even Reynald, with all his skill, would not make it out of the Tower alive.

“As of now, I don’t see any opportunity to reach your son. Instead, I can give you Derog Olgren. I can’t guarantee a reunion, but I can help you with your revenge.”

He turned to me. “What’s your name?”

“Maggie.”

He didn’t look impressed. I felt the need to add something more. The pressure of his stare was overwhelming.

“Maggie what?”

Maggie Haley would mean nothing to him. Despite everything I had told him, he was ready to get up and leave. I could see it in his eyes. I was about to lose my only chance at keeping myself safe. I had to say something to make him stay. Something, anything…

“Maggie the Undying.”

Reynald gave me a look. He was clearly skeptical. “Really now? Undying in what way exactly?”

Showing how desperate I was would only make him leave faster. I shrugged. “Stick with me and you’ll find out.”

“Fine, Maggie the Undying. Get me into that house, and I will protect you.”

I’d got him. Oh wow. “It’s a deal.”

Reynald looked back at Derog’s fortress. “There are at least eight guards in the house at all times. One door leading from the street to the courtyard, one door leading from the courtyard inside. Both are reinforced and guarded.”

“Three,” I said.

His eyebrows crept up.

“There is a basement-level escape passage with a hidden door that comes out near the dock. Derog uses it to ship the slaves by river when his usual route is compromised. The passage branches off into two hallways. One corridor leads to the basement, where the kids are held. It’s protected by a door that’s barred from the passageway side. The other corridor leads up the stairs to the kitchen and serves as Derog’s escape route. The slaves never enter that part of the house, and he doesn’t want to be hindered by dealing with additional doors in an emergency, so it’s a straight shot.”

Reynald studied the opposite shore.

“The door is reinforced,” I told him. “You would need a battering ram, so breaking it isn’t an option.”

“Do you have a plan?” His voice told me that he clearly didn’t think I had a plan, and if I did have one, it was probably stupid.

“Yes. You’re going to sell me to Derog, and I’ll take it from there.”

A hint of steel flashed in his eyes. “And you were doing so well up until this point. The answer is no. Out of the question. First, you’re too old. Derog deals in children and adolescents. Second, you will be raped, beaten, and worse.”

“Trust me. He’ll buy me, and I’ll stay safe. I have an asset that Derog is looking for.”

He was looking at me like I had lost my whole bag of marbles. “What asset is that?”

I gave him a big, bright smile.

Buy the Book

This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me

Ilona Andrews

Volume 1 of Maggie the Undying

Buy Book

This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me

Ilona Andrews

Volume 1 of Maggie the Undying

Volume 1 of Maggie the Undying

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Excerpted from This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me, copyright © 2026 by Ilona Andrews.