The Beasts We Bury (The Broken Citadel #1)

12. Silver

12

S ILVER

|5 DAYS UNTIL THE ASSURANCE|

We said we’d meet a few hours before dawn to get the sword, and there’s no reason to change that just because I profoundly insulted a girl who didn’t deserve it and have spent the last few hours berating myself for doing so.

It’s not like stressing about Mance is a new experience. But it feels new, because this time I’m not concerned about losing my job or getting eaten by a jaguar or being shoved off the cliffs, probably because I’ve finally accepted that she was never going to do any of those things in the first place.

What I’m worried about is that I hurt her feelings.

And I don’t know what to do with that. Which is probably why I’ve been standing in front of her door for twenty minutes and I have yet to actually knock. I’ve had to duck into the curtains thrice now to avoid the night guard, and there are only four minutes left before he comes around again.

“Get it together, Silver,” I mutter to myself. “It’s a door, not a guillotine.”

Wincing as though I don’t believe my own statement, I reach forward and, after another tense beat, finally rap on the door with my knuckles.

She flings it open right away, very suddenly in my space, making it clear that she was waiting for me just on the other side of the door.

But for how long?

Did she hear my mumbling?

Does she know it took almost half an hour for me to finally knock?

Obnoxiously panicked, I back up a couple steps, trying to make the action look smooth and casual. Trying not to make it seem like her proximity freaked me out. Because why should it? We’ve stood near each other plenty of times. Like yesterday, when I shoved her into a bush and screamed in her face. We were standing very close then. Or when we were in the cave and she was laid out beneath me, the fire warming our skin.

Nope. That train of thought is not helping.

She blinks up at me like she can hear my disjointed inner monologue, but her own emotions are locked away. She’s combed her hair back from her face and smoothed it into a high ponytail, and her midnight eyes are dark and shadowy again, no sign of vulnerable blue. She seems to be waiting for me to speak first.

So I say, “Hey.” Which is not the best of opening lines, but considering all the other things I’ve shouted at her in recent history, it could certainly be worse. Then I clear my throat. “I’m sorry about—”

“I wore slippers again,” she blurts, cutting me off. I don’t know how to respond to that, so I just raise an eyebrow. She crosses her arms and continues snippily. “I just wanted to ask up front whether you anticipate us scaling a mountain at any point in this outing, since evidently I need to specifically request that information at the outset of our every excursion lest I make inappropriate wardrobe decisions.”

I can’t help it. I laugh. But she doesn’t, so I quickly sober.

“No mountains,” I say.

“Am I at any point going to be lit on fire, plunged underwater, or encountering any other topographical obstacles that I may have to dress differently for?” she asks.

“Not that I’m aware of,” I say. “But you know your dad’s security system better than I do.”

She finally notices what I’m holding—a giant lead pipe, currently propped against my shoulder, and her bristly facade cracks a little as she eyes it curiously.

“What’s that for?” she asks.

“To put the sword in,” I explain. “Pipes are much less suspicious than ceremonial swords.”

“I don’t know about that, since there’s no real reason for you to be hauling a pipe around, either.”

“There is, actually, since the drainpipes on the east side of the castle are in tragic disrepair.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “Since when?”

“Since I took a crowbar to them a few days ago, notified my supervisor of the damage, offered to fix it, and put in an order for a replacement pipe. Which would be this.”

I lean the pipe toward her helpfully, and she purses her lips. She looks like she wants to lecture me, but ultimately she just shakes her head.

“All right, then,” she says. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Sure thing,” I say, glancing behind me. “In about two minutes. But first, back up.”

She furrows her brow, but there’s not much time to explain, so I push her gently back into her room and close the door behind us, as softly as I can.

She opens her mouth to protest, but I hold a finger to her lips as the sound of a full set of armor clanks up the stairs behind us. Understanding flickers in her expression and she doesn’t speak, but she does flick my hand away. I try not to feel stung.

We both hold still, barely breathing as the clanking passes by the door and continues onward. Even when it fades, we stay silent a beat longer, huddled together in the shadows of her doorway. I can smell the honeysuckle soap she used to wash her hair.

Finally, she raises an eyebrow and I swallow and nod.

Without another word, she brushes past me, like she can’t wait to get out of my presence. I heave a sigh and hoist the pipe back up on my shoulder, slinking after her like a dog with his tail between his legs.

We steal down the darkened staircase, our steps soundless. She’s better at stealth than I thought she would be, and once again I wonder if her animals lend her some of their attributes. There’s something in the way she moves that reminds me of how her jaguar crept along the dinner table the night we met. Any other time, I might be impressed by it. Tonight it only adds to my unease.

Despite me openly watching her the whole way to the study, Mance doesn’t look at me once.

When we get there, she flicks something on the side of the door before turning the knob. It was a quick, practiced movement that she half shielded with her shoulder. I only saw it because I was scrutinizing her so closely.

She enters the room, but I linger, checking to see what she changed. My fingers find a small clasp tucked into the seam of the doorframe. It’s attached to a cord of metal that goes all the way around the door and, I assume, under the flooring as well.

“Magical barrier?” I ask.

She pulls at her ponytail and clears her throat, clearly annoyed that I noticed. “Yes.”

“And it only works if it’s unbroken?”

She flips her hair over her shoulder and raises her chin without answering.

“Don’t worry about it,” I say. “I was just curious. What Prime makes barrier magic?”

“I’m… not sure, actually,” she admits. “I mean, it isn’t one of the Primes; I know all their powers. But I don’t keep track of all the third sons and second cousins who possess magic. It’s probably one of them.”

Imagine having so many magical artifacts in your life that you can’t even keep track of where they all come from. I shake my head and follow her into the room.

Only to stumble to a stop.

Every inch of every wall is crammed with the mounted heads of Mance’s kills, from the grizzly snarling with two extended paws to the ferret staring down with beady eyes. I let out a low whistle as I take it all in.

“You killed all of these?” I ask.

She shifts from one foot to the other and nods. For the first time tonight, a flash of vulnerability enters her expression before she quickly schools it and turns away from me.

She’s uncomfortable.

And, weirdly, I’m uncomfortable, too. If I had seen this room a few days ago, it would have disgusted me. I would have taken it as further evidence of her brutal and uncaring nature that she not only ripped so many animals apart with her bare hands but also made trophies of them to display.

But I can’t shake the way she looked at me when I called her a monster. And I can’t stop thinking about the act she put on for her father after “killing” Vie. It wasn’t triumph she feigned for him. It was grief. And back in the gardens, she’d told me he forces her to kill. That she’d never wanted to hurt anyone or anything.

I’ve struggled to believe it, but after what happened today, I’m not struggling anymore. I know I was wrong.

Which means the animals on these walls might be trophies to her father, but they represent something else entirely to her. I swallow as I take them in. The sheer multitude .

Then I look back at Mance, whose gaze has been fixed on her shoes since we walked in here.

Gently, without really thinking about what I’m doing, I lean the pipe against the wall and wrap my hand around hers.

She flinches and scrunches her face up, but she doesn’t pull away. She doesn’t move at all.

Staring at her when she’s trying so hard to be invisible feels invasive, so I let my gaze drift to a monkey, mid-howl, imagining what it must have been like for her to feel its life leak out between her fingers. The same fingers currently twined in mine.

“Tell me about one of them,” I say.

Her grip tightens painfully. “I don’t want to. I hate this room. It’s full of memories I’d much rather bury.”

“It’s healthy to let things out sometimes, remember?” I say, half kidding. A reference to our first conversation, the one I botched so badly.

But she’s not in the mood for jokes.

“You go first, then,” she snaps. “Tell me about one of the worst moments in your life.”

I tilt my head back, considering that.

And I shouldn’t, because all I really need to do is get the sword and leave. But she didn’t want to hear my apology, and it bothers me. Having her act so distant and curt bothers me. More than I’d like to admit.

So I speak.

“I was eight when they took my parents,” I say. “The war with the Forest Realm had been going for a couple years already. I don’t really remember anything before it.”

She stills, clearly surprised that I’m obliging, and meets my eyes for the first time since we left her room.

I give her a tight smile. “They dragged my mother out, crying,” I continue. “Ripped me from her arms. And then they knocked my father unconscious, tossing him in the back of their carriage like a sack of flour. I had to watch it all, had to listen to my mother screaming as she clutched my father’s head in her lap. Had to see her reach for me through the windows while the carriage clattered away and multiple hands pulled her back inside. Then they carted me up to the Academy where everyone told me it was just temporary. That I’d only be there until my parents came back, and when they did, it would be as celebrated war heroes. That we’d all be together again and live happily ever after.”

“But they never came back?” she asks, voice quiet.

I scoff. “They died in less than a week.”

Her hand flies to her mouth in shock. “I’m so sorry.”

I look at the floor, at the rich carpet that covers it, wondering if the Prime was standing among this brutal luxury when he signed the order that condemned my parents to death. My face twists into a sneer.

“They didn’t even tell me,” I say. “I found out two years later when I broke into the headmaster’s office and discovered a ledger of the deceased in his desk. When I confronted my teachers about it, they told me it was tragic and a risk my parents took, but I now believe it was inevitable. My parents weren’t trained for war. They made candles. If you put them in a battlefield, how could they possibly know what to do?” I clench my fists, annoyed that I can’t keep the anger out of my voice. “So take your pick, that’s three in a row. Watching my parents dragged away, arriving at the Academy, and finding out that they’d been killed and that the rest of my life had only one track forward: serving the very person who killed them until I died in the exact same way.”

I cross the room to sit in the Prime’s chair, kicking my feet up on his desk and jutting my chin at her in challenge. “Your turn.”

She doesn’t react to my anger. In fact, it almost seems to relax her. Probably because she can understand it, if the animals around us are any indication. It suddenly occurs to me that the statements I’ve just made are nearly seditious. Yet she doesn’t appear to mind.

“When did you leave?” she asks. “And why?”

I tilt my head at her. “If I tell you that, you’ll owe me four,” I warn.

“I’ll pay,” she says simply.

Victory buzzes across my skin. I lean the chair back, running my fingers over the arms just because I can. Because with all the Prime has taken from me, it gives me a small amount of pleasure to be sitting in his own personal chair when I know he’d seethe at the thought.

But then I look back at Mance and the anger dims a little bit. I close my eyes, remembering, and when I speak again, my voice is softer.

“It was Vie,” I say. “She was a small kid, even smaller than she is now, so she was always trying to fight everyone to keep them from picking on her. Would go into detail about how she’d cut them up like one of the steaks in her family’s butcher shop. But I heard her crying one night—”

I break off, knowing Vie wouldn’t want me to tell the story. How she sobbed into her knees when she looked up her own parents in the headmaster’s book and got the same news I did, only she lost two older brothers, too. How we were both locked into adjacent rooms for weeks as punishment and almost starved, but we made vows to each other through the walls. Vows that we’d never serve the man who did this to us. That if we ever got the chance, we’d take him down.

How that moment and that promise mean something to us, even now.

“Anyway,” I continue. “We became friends. Three weeks later, we were breaking into the kitchen to steal some knives, hoping to fight our way out or die trying, when we found Rooftop already there.”

“Also stealing knives?” Mance asks.

I quirk a smile. “Nah. Spices. He couldn’t stand how bland the food was. Which sounds silly, but I actually think it was his way of still feeling human. A rebellion of paprika. Anyway, he had better ideas about how to break out than we did. Safer ones with higher chances of success. We ended up hiding in a supply cart and then making a run for it. We’ve been together ever since.”

“It’s nice that you have each other,” she says, a peculiar tone in her voice that I can’t quite place.

My eyes cut to her, but she’s looking at the floor.

“Your turn,” I say again, but gentler this time.

Heaving a resigned sigh, she walks around the room, looking at each animal as though sifting through her memories and deciding which to present to me.

“You were ten when you left, right?” she asks, stopping in the corner to the left of the door.

“Yup,” I say. “Just barely.”

She holds her hand up to the wall, walking along it until she stops just short of the next corner. “That would bring me to about here.”

I take my legs off the desk. It’s almost thirty animals. “You killed all those before you were ten?” I ask.

She walks back to the beginning, to the frogs and lizards and mice. “He didn’t put the bugs up, but those were first,” she says. “If I slapped a fly, he’d give me a cupcake. I loved cupcakes.”

In an instant, the air is teeming with insects, every one she’s ever killed. I sit up straight, clamping my mouth shut and holding my breath so I don’t accidentally inhale a bee or a mosquito. But they’re everywhere, crawling on my skin, burying themselves in my clothes and my hair, burrowing into my ears. Before my throat starts to burn, they disappear and I suck in a relieved breath.

“It was fun,” she says quietly.

She turns back to the wall and juts her chin at the smaller creatures. “These were more painful to kill, but it was still like a game. He called me his little hunter and sent me out into the forests and the mountains to see what I could find and bring back to him. I didn’t enjoy squishing them between my palms but he praised me so thoroughly and it was over so quickly and the rewards were so great that I shoved my feelings down.”

I lean forward on the desk, quiet.

Then her hand moves to a bundle of fur on a wooden shelf, curled in on itself like it’s only sleeping peacefully. “Until he brought me the kitten,” she says. I wince, and her mouth pulls down as well, but she keeps going. “I was nine. One of the barn cats had a whole litter and there were too many to keep, so Father thought it would be a good opportunity…” Her voice is distant. The hand at her side is shaking a little.

I wait.

“When he explained what he wanted me to do, I cried so hard I almost passed out. But he talked me through it, step by step, with a gentle voice and one hand rubbing my back in encouragement. I didn’t want to disappoint him. So I…”

Her voice gets thick, like she might start crying. I get up from the desk and cross the room to stand next to her, but she doesn’t look at me. She looks down at her hands, and I take one again, feeling all the rough scars as they rub against my palm. This time, she doesn’t flinch. She just folds her hand around mine.

“What I remember most is how warm and soft the kitten was beneath my fingers,” she says. “How she squirmed and how her little mouth opened wide in what I could swear was a scream. And then she went limp, and… it felt wrong . It felt terrifying. I wanted to undo it, but I couldn’t. She just lay there, limp and wrong and staring at nothing. I was horrified. Sobbing. Scared. But even as I was feeling all those things, there was something else, too. This sinister flicker at the back of my mind from the magic that I hadn’t felt before. And it was… pleased.”

Shivers run up my spine, and she starts talking faster.

“It was thrilled, actually. The magic liked how limp and wrong the kitten looked. It… gloried in it.” She swallows and shakes her head. “I ran to the bathroom and threw up that day’s cupcake, wishing I could purge every other one he’d bribed me with, too.”

She summons the cat onto her shoulder and it looks at me with luminous eyes, a tuft of fur sticking up above its forehead. Goose bumps erupt on my skin.

Then the cat disappears, too, and she moves on, to a tiny fennec fox, with ears bigger than the rest of his body. “This was the first one I refused,” she says.

“I imagine he took that well,” I quip, voice tight.

She gives a humorless laugh. “Oh yes, he was very understanding. Gone were the games, gone were the rewards and the praise. He locked me in the stables with it and told me I couldn’t come out, couldn’t eat, until it was dead.”

“What about your mom?” I ask. “Didn’t anyone try to stop him?”

She goes still, her hand twitching in mine.

“I asked her to,” she says, voice small. “After the cat, I begged her not to let it happen to me again. And she promised she’d step in the next time. But when my father hauled me to the stables, she didn’t come. I waited for her. I was so certain that she would follow through on her word. But she never showed, that time or any other. She never apologized. For all I know, she never even tried.”

I remember the conversation I witnessed before Mance’s battle with Vie, how Lady Wespa seemed as fragile as the glass on her corset.

“And Mara?” I ask. “You guys seem friendly at least. Did she ever stand up for you?”

Mance clicks her tongue. “In her own way, I guess she did. But not in the way I wanted her to. She was always there to comfort me after or prep me before, but she told me she couldn’t fix it for me. I needed to handle it on my own, or I’d never get stronger. I needed to… play the game.”

I hear the same note in her voice that she used earlier, when I talked about my friends, and it makes sense now. No one’s ever had her back like Vie and Rooftop have mine. With sudden, startling clarity, I realize that the future Seconde is lonely.

The thought is unsettling.

“So the fox?” I prompt, rubbing circles on the back of her hand with my thumb.

“Right,” she says, shaking her head as though casting the feelings aside to focus on the narrative. “I was in those stables for two days straight. The first day I just refused, hoping he’d change his mind, hoping my mother would show up after all. But after a cold night sleeping in dirt that smelled like manure, my stomach clenching with hunger I’d never experienced before, I felt that it was him or me, and I relented.” As she talks, the fox appears at her feet, winding around her legs and butting his head against her. “Took me the whole second day to catch him. He wouldn’t come down from the rafters, so I had to shimmy out of my skirts and climb up after him. Then I flung myself across the beams, just hoping to grab him without falling, not really understanding how difficult that was for someone my size.”

“But you managed it?”

“No,” she says. “One out of two. I grabbed him, but not the rafter. The next thing I knew I was plunging toward the ground with this shrieking, clawing creature clutched to my chest. I landed in a pile of hay and broke my arm. But I also managed to break his neck on the way down.” She gives me a wry smile that turns sad. “Then I cried alone in the dirty hay, gripping his body, until one of the guards realized it was over and let me out.”

Something passes over her face and her tone changes to matter-of-fact. The fox disappears and she walks along the wall, passing badgers and raccoons and owls.

“From there the training started,” she goes on. “I ran. I fought. But he has legions of soldiers. They caught me, they subdued me, and they put me in a room with an animal about once every couple months. Then, when he finished stripping the ballroom to make an arena, it became once every few weeks. He pushed the boundaries of my magic to see what it could do. If I summoned a chicken, could we eat it? If I summoned a lamb, could we shear it and use the wool? No to both, by the way. As soon as I call an animal back, everything that was a part of them disappears as well. So then he moved on to creatures that would be useful in and of themselves. He made me kill my horse so I could ride it. A carrier pigeon so I could send messages. Hunting dogs so I could find and kill more and more.”

She turns toward me, rows of animal eyes staring down at me over her shoulders. I feel the hair stand up on the back of my neck, but before I can think of anything to say she rushes on, words tumbling out of her mouth like she’s trying to purge them from her body.

“At twelve I decided I couldn’t take it anymore. I was ready to do anything just to end it. So when they locked me in the arena with a wolf, I didn’t try to take it down. Instead, I provoked it. Then, once it was enraged, I forced myself to lie still, fighting my rising bloodlust even as the wolf tore at my body.

“But they just stitched me up and sent me back. Wolf after wolf. I was bedridden. Mutilated, but determined. Finally, after weeks of that, my father agreed to negotiate. One animal a year, but he could pick any he wanted. I would train the rest of the time, but I wouldn’t be expected to kill. So that’s how we got the wolf at thirteen, the cougar at fourteen, the grizzly bear at fifteen, and…” Her hands stop at an empty plaque on the wall. “The jaguar will go here. They’re stuffing and mounting it now.”

As she names each animal, she summons them beside her, until I’m standing in a room with four apex predators staring me down. But she is calm, so they are, too, sitting on their haunches mildly as she explains how she ripped them all apart.

Despite my instincts screaming at me not to, I reach a hand out and stroke the ear of the bear that so terrified me a few days ago when it roared in my face, teeth snapping mere inches from my nose. He tosses his head, untroubled.

“What about Vie, then?” I ask bitterly. “If we hadn’t snuck her out, would he have put her head up there, too?”

She winces. “Vie was an experiment to him, I think. One that’s done now. Apparently, some increased tension with another realm spooked him and he wants more weapons. Wants to make me as strong as possible before he makes me his heir so that the other realms will be too intimidated to attack. Now that I think about it, it’s probably the same tensions that your organization is worried about. The reason you want the Victory’s Herald out of the way for a little bit?”

I feel a jolt of panic, because I’d made those tensions up and I don’t know what it means that they’re real. Is it possible Guerre actually does want to remove the sword so that he can garner peace?

I remember the coldness in his eyes, and I doubt it.

But then… what does he want the sword for?

Fortunately, Mance doesn’t seem to notice my reaction. She walks to the desk, unlocks a drawer, and takes out a long case, laying it on the wood in front of her. After disengaging the latch, she lifts the sword in its scabbard and draws it, the steel blade glinting in the light. For a wild moment I think she might swing it at me, but she just looks at it, her expression inscrutable.

“I’m choosing to trust you,” she says. “To trust that your secrecy is warranted, that you will return this weapon before the Assurance as you promised, and that your goal truly is peace. From the sounds of it, we’ve both seen far too much of the opposite. And if your organization genuinely thinks they can prevent atrocities like the ones you’ve just described, then…” She sheathes the blade and holds it out, expression determined. “I’m honored to play a part in it.”

My hand wraps around the scabbard reflexively, even as my chest goes cold.

What am I… doing?

I’ve spent the last few hours worried that I’ve hurt Mance’s feelings, but this whole time I’ve been betraying her. Lying to her. Playing on her ideals and the fact that she cares about people.

Just so I can help myself and my friends get ahead.

She’s worried about the whole realm, and meanwhile I haven’t even tried to find out the consequences of my actions. I have no idea what Guerre has done with the seal, and I have no idea what the plans are for this sword, either. She wants peace, and for all I know I’m enabling the opposite.

People could die because of me.

Suddenly, the stories she’s told me, the animals staring down at me, and the easy faith in her eyes are too much.

For a single, ludicrous moment, I almost shove the sword back at her.

But then I remember Vie and Rooftop and how they’re depending on me. I remember the house and the future we’ll be able to build together when this is all over. And I yank the blade out of her hands.

Her brows crease and she shakes out her wrists like I’ve hurt them.

“I… should go,” I say gruffly. “But thank you for upholding your end of the agreement. And I am… sorry. For…” Everything. Everything I thought and everything I’m doing now and everything that might come because of it. I clear my throat. “For what I said. You’re not a monster, Mance. You never have been. And I should’ve seen that earlier.”

Her eyes flick up to mine, and she seems taken aback by my sudden solemnity. But then her expression clears, like the sun dawning in her midnight eyes, and she beams at me.

And it’s the strangest thing, but when she smiles, her face doesn’t look off-balance anymore. The mouth that was so small broadens, and the eyes that were so big crinkle in the corners to make room. She looks so elated, so giddily triumphant, that it knocks the wind out of me for a second.

“Thank you ,” she says back, “for upholding yours. And…” She looks down, shyly, and my heart lurches. “For listening.”

“Anytime,” I choke out.

Then I drop the sword into the pipe, more carelessly than I mean to, and it careens noisily downward before finally hitting the bottom with a hollow, echoing clang.

A few hours later, as the sky turns from velvet darkness to early morning gray, I approach a seedy tavern just a little too low on the cliff to qualify as the nice part of town. I think Vie has probably fought here, in a back storeroom cut deep into the rock. The Victory’s Herald is strapped to my back and hidden under a cloak, but I do my best to walk like I’m not carrying treason. You know, with a law-abiding spring in my step.

But it’s hard when the sword weighs so heavy.

“Silver.”

I spin as Rooftop drops down from an awning. I swear that kid walks on rooftops more than actual roadways. Thus the name, I guess.

“What are you doing here?” I hiss.

He shoves his hands into his pockets as he ambles toward me, face obscured by his dark, springy locks.

“I need to talk to you,” he says.

It’s not like him to be so somber. I look over my shoulder at the tavern door, then the sun barely peeking over the horizon.

“Okay,” I say. “Sure. Just give me a minute. I have to meet—”

“Guerre,” Rooftop says. “I know. That’s why I’m here. I need to talk to you before that.”

A bell chimes, its notes echoing off the cliffside and ringing through the valley.

“I can’t,” I tell him. “I’m about to be late.”

Rooftop fidgets unhappily. “Let me come with you, then?” he asks.

“Fine,” I say, as the fifth and final note fades away. “Come on.”

I duck into the tavern and Rooftop slinks in behind me, gaze swinging wildly from one early-morning patron to the next like he thinks the entire room is a threat.

An elderly woman spills her tea and frowns at it. A drunk who has probably been here since last night slumps across his table, snoring nasally as the server wipes up the spilled drinks around him. Rooftop jumps when the man’s arm knocks into one of the few remaining upright bottles and sends it toppling.

“If you can’t relax, then you can’t be here,” I grouch at Rooftop through the corner of my mouth.

Rooftop’s face sets. “No. I want to stay. Is he here already?” He eyes the drunk suspiciously.

I’d laugh, but Guerre’s definitely worn more elaborate disguises. I squint at the man closely before replying, “No.”

We take a seat.

“So what did you want to talk about, then?” I ask in a low voice. “Seems we’ve got a minute.” I position my back to the wall so I’ll be able to see if anyone comes in.

Rooftop’s green eyes flit to the door as well, but then land back on me. “I… did some digging last night,” he whispers. “About Guerre.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Oh?”

Rooftop nods. “How did you first hear about him, again?”

I adjust the sword on my back so it’s not jabbing into me as much. “I knew some other kids who worked for him. Other Academy runaways who said he was willing to give under-the-table jobs. Smaller ones at first, but then bigger stuff. With bigger rewards.”

“Which kids, specifically?” Rooftop asks, his tone urgent.

“Glib was first,” I say. “And then Lock and Flay.”

Rooftop sits back in his chair. “That’s what I thought,” he says darkly.

“Why?” I ask, finally turning fully toward him.

“Because they’ve disappeared, Silver. All three of them, plus another couple kids besides. All of them were Academy runaways with no family, and all of them started taking odd jobs from someone who sounds a lot like Guerre right before they vanished.”

I let that sit with me, turning it over in my mind. “Well… maybe he just gave them jobs out of town or something.”

“No,” Rooftop whispers. “I knew Glib. He would have told me if he was leaving town for a while, even if he had to lie about where. And with so many disappearing? Everyone who worked for him? It can’t be a coincidence. I think they’re… I think they’re—”

“Can I get you anything?” the server asks cheerfully. We both startle, our heads snapping up. She gives us a bemused smile, like she’s used to such odd behavior.

“Uh. Frosted Earthquake,” I say, giving the name of the drink Guerre told me to order.

“Ah,” she says. “Your companion is in the back room. You can head on in and I’ll bring that Frosted Earthquake when it’s ready.”

She jabs a thumb at a door behind the bar, half hidden by a raggedy curtain.

Rooftop and I exchange a look. He shakes his head, but I stand, so he swallows and stands up, too.

“Sorry,” the server says, holding up one hand at Rooftop. “You’ll have to wait here.”

“Why?” Rooftop asks suspiciously.

She swats at him scoldingly. “Because when someone pays well, and I mean really well, I don’t ask questions about how they want things. That’s why. So sit your butt down and your friend will be back in a minute.” She muscles Rooftop back into his chair with one arm and nods me toward the door again.

Rooftop opens his mouth to protest, but I cut him off. If Guerre really is dangerous, then I’d rather Rooftop wait out here.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” I tell him. “Just like she said.” Then I head behind the bar.

The door opens into a narrow hallway cut into the stone of the cliff. It angles downward, and as I plod forward, the air gets chillier. It reminds me of the marketplace in the Beholding Mountains, only this tunnel was deliberately carved, and there are notches with torches lining the walls. Every few feet there are dark smears on the floor or the walls from fighters who had to drag themselves out. I wonder briefly whether any of the bloodstains are Vie’s.

When the hallway opens up into a stark, bare room, Guerre is already there. This time he’s wearing a traveling cloak, one that an out-of-town patron might sport while grabbing a quick meal on the road. There’s some fake scarring on his face, and his hair is lighter, almost blond, making him look like a completely different person. It’s all very realistic, though. I wonder if it’s some kind of magic or if it’s just dye and clay and paint.

“Do you have it?” he asks, before I’m even fully in the room.

Guess we’re not chitchatting today.

I reach behind me and draw the sword out, feeling the weight of it, noticing the dark stone plating the handle, and the cold band of metal just below the pommel.

Guerre’s ice-blue eyes gleam in the torchlight.

“Well done,” he says. And then he’s snatching it from me, wrenching it out of my grip before I’ve even decided whether I’m going to give it to him. “Just one task left. I’ll be in touch.”

His cape whirls as he spins to move a bookcase, revealing a hidden back staircase. When I realize he’s about to leave, just like that, apprehension closes my throat.

“W-wait!” I cry.

He stops in place, one foot already on the first step, and I hesitate.

Should I ask about the other kids? What happened to them?

Should I ask about his plans for me ?

But as he tucks the glittering blade into his cloak, eying me with impatience, it’s the plot that might affect Mance that moves me to speak. “What are you going to use it for?” I blurt. “The sword, I mean. What are you going to do with it? Are you going to hurt… people?”

His face morphs into a glower, so rapidly that my breath catches in my throat. “That’s none of your concern,” he snarls, and the warning in his voice is clear.

“Tell me something,” I say regardless. “Anything.”

For a couple seconds, his expression stays dark, and I brace myself, not sure what he’ll do. But then suddenly his face clears and he smirks, like he knows why I’m asking and thinks me childish for caring.

“All right,” he says languidly. “I will tell you this. It’s in your best interest to lay low for the next few days. At least until after the Assurance. Things are about to get…” His smirk turns sinister, curling at the edges like smoke curls from a flame. “Ugly.”

And even as sunshine streams down from the top of the stairs, revealing that the morning outside has gotten warm and bright, his words still chill me to the bone.