CHAPTER 47 ROHAN
ROHAN
R ohan did not mind sweating—or waiting. Steam had a habit of rising to the ceiling, but when there was enough of it, it also tended to stick to mirrors, fogging them up—except where some kind of invisible coating had been applied.
The kind that was water resistant.
Four mirrored walls surrounded Rohan, and now, on each of those walls, roughly at eye level, was an infinity symbol.
There was some variation in the exact placement of the symbols.
Eye level for different individuals. Rohan stepped up to the mirror that bore the symbol at the level closest to his height.
The infinity symbol was superimposed over his blurred reflection—over his face, its shape now obvious.
A mask over his mask.
“Clever,” Rohan said, his voice echoing through the mirrored room, through steam growing heavier in the air by the moment. Shifting his suit jacket and shirt to his left hand, Rohan lifted his right to his own mask, the one he’d been given at the start of the Grandest Game.
An object with a specific use—just like the sword, just like the key. Rohan turned his metallic, asymmetrical mask over in his hand, then stepped into the hall to inspect the back.
And there it was, engraved in the tiniest scrawl. A hint. Two words, nothing vague or difficult to interpret about them.
Time Signatures
The waltz, the tango, and “Clair de lune.” Three songs, three different time signatures. Three-four, four-four, nine-eight. How could he have played that piano and not seen it?
Not heard or felt it?
As with all puzzles properly constructed, the answer was simple—simpler, in a whole host of ways, than the hint.
Thirty-four, forty-four, ninety-eight. Three numbers. Rohan would have known exactly where to go with that, even if the calla lily in the music box had not been made of white marble, struck through gold—the same stone as a certain vault-like door.
“Not bad,” Rohan said under his breath.
“I’m flattered.” Jameson appeared at the end of the hall. He eyed Rohan’s bare chest as he strolled around the corner. “Get dressed.”
“Not a phrase I hear all that often.” Rohan made no move to put on either his tuxedo jacket or the midnight blue dress shirt he’d worn underneath. “Lyra Kane knows you put me on her,” he told Jameson.
“How would she know that?” Jameson had an excellent poker face.
Rohan shrugged his bare shoulders, like he didn’t have a care in the world. “I told her.”
Jameson stalked down the long hall toward Rohan. “Why the hell—”
“—did you want her out of the game and gone to begin with?” Rohan cut in. “A valid question, I agree.” He looked Jameson up and down, sizing him up as quickly and neatly as he once had in a fighting ring. “Something has you frazzled, Mr. Hawthorne, and it occurs to me that it might be a secret .”
Rohan was walking a very thin line, but he’d spent a lifetime doing exactly that, and if there was one thing that it had taught him, it was that there was never any harm in securing for oneself a backup plan.
He was going to win the Grandest Game and, in doing so, win the Mercy.
But if the worst somehow happened, there was potential in this .
In whatever had Jameson Hawthorne on edge. In his secret.
For that matter, there was potential here even if Rohan won. The Proprietor of the Devil’s Mercy traded in secrets.
“Did you read what I wrote?” Jameson demanded.
You played my game once, Jameson Hawthorne. And to get in, you put up a secret, wrote it down, agreed to forfeit it if you lost. “The Proprietor never would have allowed that,” Rohan assured his mark. “Your secret is safe—from me.”
“I wasn’t in my right mind,” Jameson said. “Back then.”
“Who among us hasn’t gotten a little reckless?
” Rohan replied. He studied Jameson for a moment.
“It looms large in your mind, doesn’t it?
” he asked. “My game. The Mercy.” Rohan reached for the labyrinth, for details stored, if not ever explicitly noted.
“I cannot help but notice certain parallels. A lemniscate, like the one laid into the floor of the atrium of the Devil’s Mercy.
Ledgers bound in leather.” Rohan slipped on his tuxedo jacket without bothering with the shirt.
“This exact shade of purple is the color of the ink in which you wrote that horrible secret of yours that I do not know.”
Even if he had known Jameson’s secret, Rohan couldn’t have used it. That was one of the terms of the challenge that had been laid at his feet. He could not use any information obtained while in the Mercy’s employ. But that Jameson Hawthorne had a secret—well, that was more of a gray area.
After all, everyone had secrets.
“The music box,” Rohan continued, “and keys, of course, both lifted straight from my game to yours.”
“You hardly invented keys,” Jameson retorted, but Rohan had an unerring sense for when he’d gotten to another person. He was fairly certain that until he’d pointed it out, Jameson very likely had not noticed how much of this game could be traced back to the Mercy, to Rohan .
“You have a secret,” Rohan reiterated, letting his upper-crust accent shift to something with a bit more force, “and something has you shaken.” Rohan used his discarded shirt to wipe sweat from his face and neck, his eyes never leaving Jameson’s.
“If you decide you require actual assistance with either of those things once the game is done—there is some possibility that I can be bought.”
And there it was: A net. A backup plan. An offer from one gentleman to another.
“You need money,” Jameson flatly. He did not seem inclined to take Rohan up on his offer. Yet.
“I do,” Rohan confirmed, “and you are running a race against a ticking clock, because by the time this game is over, by the time I win—I won’t.”