Chapter 14
Ivy
As he studies the sketched diagrams one of Garom’s people passed on to us, Alek rubs his hands like he’s about to dig into his favorite meal. I can’t help smiling at the scholar’s enthusiasm, despite the dangerous mission ahead of us.
It reminds me of way back in my early days at the royal college, when he and I worked together to sneak into the college library’s accounting room so I could steal Ster. Torstem’s financial records. I never would have guessed during our initial meeting that Alek would be the first to join me in a criminal scheme.
But he does love putting his mind to a problem, no matter how legally questionable.
Now, he taps one point on the map where it’s spread on the dining table. “Here’s the access spot closest to this building. You enter there and follow this path…” He draws his finger across the passages marked like a diagram laid over the city streets. “Straight ahead until the third tunnel on the left, then the second on the right, then the first turn to the left. There’s another access spot a short distance down that one. It’ll let you out just a block from the guardhouse.”
Stavros studies the map with a tick of his head to clear his vision. “Are you sure we can open up those access spots without significant difficulty?”
Alek nods. “A jolt of Rheave’s magic should melt off the lock. The openings are covered by a simple grate that’s heavy but not very intensively secured.” The scholar glances up at us with an apologetic wince. “Most people aren’t eager to go down into the sewer system.”
I have to snort. “I don’t think ‘eager’ is the right word in our situation either. At least it’ll get us through the city without having to pass by any scourge sorcerers, as long as we don’t need to go to the outer wards.”
The underground system of drains and channels was built centuries ago before the city had expanded quite so far. The tunnels only extend beneath the inner wards and partway through the middle wards.
But we need the extra subterfuge where we can get it. The new ally Casimir brought into the fold yesterday, an apparent defector from the Order of the Wild, told us that Lothar has assigned more of his followers to patrol the city streets in search of Petra’s allies. A few among them have talents for sensing magic, others for seeking out targets.
If we pass too close to either, even Tinom’s concealment charms won’t keep us hidden.
Stavros straightens up. “If the sewers are our best option, then into the sewers it is. It’s late enough. Let’s get to work.”
Rheave’s eyes flash with a light that actually could be called eager. “I’m ready!”
I give him a teasing nudge as we head for the door. “You won’t be so excited once we’re down in the stench. I just need to get my cloak.”
I expect to simply duck into the bedroom to grab the swath of dark fabric, but Stavros follows behind me. When I tug the cloak over my shoulders, he steps in to fasten it for me.
I hardly need the help, but I release the clasp to his deft grip, his prosthetic managing to hold one side in place while his fingers manipulate the other. His massive frame looms over me, the once intimidating presence now nothing but comforting.
Except I’m not sure why he’s here.
A quiver of doubt pricks at the base of my throat. I keep my voice light. “Giving me a closer look to make sure I’m up to the job?”
Stavros sputters a guffaw. “I have no doubt that you are, Lady Thief. I just—I needed a moment away from the others. If you don’t mind the intrusion.”
His own tone is casual, but not quite enough to disguise a slightly ragged edge that creeps into it. When he lowers his hands, I grasp them between us, both the one of flesh and the one of metal. “Are you all right?”
He gives his head a brief twitch to meet my gaze a little longer before his eyes go distant. A sigh tumbles out of him. “I will be. It’s ridiculous. I’ve felt like a wolf in a cage, cooped up in here, not being able to risk participating in most of the missions we’ve been carrying out—and now that I have the chance…”
I stroke my thumb over the side of his knuckles. “What?”
His mouth pulls into a grimace. “A lot of the men and women killed or taken captive from that guardhouse will have been people I trained with. People I once gave orders to. People who’ve counted on me one way or another. I can barely wrap my head around how many lives the Order of the Wild has destroyed in a matter of weeks, and we’re stuck picking off pockets of strength bit by bit. It doesn’t feel like enough.”
I offer him a tight smile, my chest constricting around my heart. “It doesn’t to me either. But we’ve got to build up to bigger things, right? The more the scourge sorcerers falter, the more support for Petra can grow.”
Stavros’s answering smile slants at a self-deprecating angle. “I know that. It’s just harder to accept it when every part of me is screaming to end them all now.”
I reach up to pat his cheek. “I’m sure you’ll get plenty of chances to end loads of them in the future.”
Another choked laugh escapes him, and then he’s pulling me to him, claiming a kiss so fierce I wish it didn’t have to end.
When he eases back just an inch, his low voice grazes my face with his breath. “The only reason I’ve made it this far is because I had you with me. Don’t you ever let a single one of those fools Tinom pulled together make you feel you haven’t earned their loyalty. You know you have all of mine.”
I bob up on my toes to hug him, even though his words can’t quite penetrate the uneasiness simmering in my gut. “And you have mine. Let’s take back some more of what the scourge sorcerers have stolen from us.”
We rejoin Rheave in the hall and slip down the stairs, donning our concealment charms as we go. Rheave sets his hand lightly on my back, and I hook my fingers around Stavros’s elbow so that we can still see each other fully.
We step out into the night. The windows around us have gone dark, the blackness only broken by the glow of the intermittent lanterns along the street.
Somewhere around a corner, a drunken laugh peals out, but no one’s wandering along this road at the moment.
We hurry across the cobblestones, take a turn, and come up on the grate Alek indicated. It’s wide enough that even Stavros should be able to fit without having to squeeze, and only secured by a single, regular padlock.
At the rap of determined footsteps, we pause. A middle-aged man in a thick cloak strides past us down the middle of the street—maybe an Order member on patrol, or maybe an ordinary citizen with some urgent midnight business.
My heart thuds faster with a jolt of my magic coming to attention, but he doesn’t glance our way. I don’t sense any sorcery emanating from him.
As soon as he’s out of view, Rheave kneels by the grate. With a faint crackle, the padlock falls aside.
Stavros hefts up the grate and motions for us to descend.
I find the rungs of a ladder just beyond the opening. Gripping them, I clamber down as quickly as I can manage, wrinkling my nose at the damp grit that sticks to my fingers.
To my relief, the passage below isn’t quite as awful as I imagined. It rained most of last night, which must have swept the worst of the collected refuse away. Still, the stink of urine and feces turns my stomach.
The men climb down behind me, Stavros shutting the grate in his wake so it’s not obvious someone made use of it. More than a few steps beyond the faint glow that seeps through the bars, the blackness is so complete there’s no need for our charms.
“Stay close to the walls,” I murmur, and start forward in the direction Alek indicated.
The sewage flows turgidly along in the wide channel at our right. I set my feet carefully to ensure there’s no chance of slipping into that noxious river.
After a few minutes, Rheave lets out a gagging sound. “Physical bodies do produce some unpleasant substances.”
I guess spirit creatures don’t shit. I glance back in the direction of his voice with an arch of my eyebrow. “That’s the price we pay for getting to eat.”
The daimon-man grunts in acknowledgment. “I suppose that is a fair trade-off.”
If I had a list of places I’d least like to spend time with any of my lovers, this sewer would be right near the top. But as we venture on through the putrid darkness, my spirits buoy me beyond the stench.
Here I am, in the middle of a scheme that all four of my men have set in motion with me. One that doesn’t require any of my unpredictable magic.
Like the old days… except now I’m no longer alone.
In this moment, it doesn’t matter what magic fidgets in my chest or what people like Tinom or the Black Talons’ bosses think of it. I can make a difference without being seen as any kind of monster.
We mark off the turnings with our hands against the stone wall, noting each passage until it’s time to turn. Thankfully the rickety maintenance bridges at the intersections allow us to cross without needing to risk a jump.
Stavros ends up taking the lead, the thud of his boots guiding me onward. Rheave stays close enough to regularly caress my back through my cloak, as if he needs periodic confirmations of my presence to reassure himself.
When we reach our destination, Stavros climbs up to the grate and peers at the street beyond as well as he can from the low vantage point. He swings to the side and motions for Rheave to join him. “I don’t see or hear anyone nearby right now. Give that lock a zap.”
In less than a minute, we’re scrambling out into the fresh if chilly air above. Stavros lowers the grate back into place, and we hustle down the quiet street toward the guardhouse.
It’s one of the largest in Florian, just outside the old city walls on the border between the inner wards and the middle. Stavros visited the Crown’s Watch here more than once in his capacity as general—and then after while investigating the conspiracy at the college.
He directs us around the squat stone building and down a side alley. There, he points up at a tall window on the second floor.
“That serves as an additional exit if the Crown’s Watch needs to move out quickly,” he murmurs. “They can pop it open and make the short jump into the alley while others are heading out the front and back doors. Since it’s up there, they don’t bother guarding it.”
So no one should notice if it briefly opens and closes for our invisible figures to enter.
I give myself a shake in preparation. “All right. I should be able to handle the lock.”
Stavros bends down and boosts me onto his shoulders. Once he’s straightened up, I can easily reach the base of the window.
I pull out the slim metal tool I brought along for this purpose and wiggle it into the narrow gap between the frame and the ledge.
With a little maneuvering, I manage to slide over the deadbolt. I ease the window up an inch, listen, and then push it farther so I can wriggle inside.
My magic jitters with the urge to wrap even more protection around myself, but no figures stir at either end of the hall I lower myself into. Once I’ve set my feet on the ground, I tug the pane even higher.
Rheave scrambles after me with another boost from Stavros. Then the former general hefts himself after us with the two of us grasping his arms.
We huddle together so we can see each other clearly despite the charms. Stavros points in both directions down the hall, his voice the barest whisper. “The sleeping quarters are all up here—almost every room. They won’t be locked. I’ll be heading down to the dungeons in the basement.”
I give his hand a quick squeeze. “Get through this mission as quickly as we can manage it, and then we’ll meet by the grate as planned.”
An ache forms around my heart letting him go, but if anyone can look after himself in a potential combat situation, it’s Stavros.
As he turns toward the stairs, I nudge open the first of the doors to the police force dormitories.
Some members of the Crown’s Watch go back to family homes when they’re off for the day, but many choose to live in the guardhouse, especially the younger men and women who aren’t married and want to be out of their parents’ homes or those who’ve traveled from outside the city to serve. I guess it must come with a sense of family somewhat like what I’ve found with my men.
Now, the narrow beds set up along the walls of this room are filled with Order members. Lothar took over all of the Crown’s Watch’s properties when his people stormed the city, and he’s using them as bases of operation.
Which means a significant number of the figures sleeping in these beds aren’t people at all but daimon in animated clay bodies.
With one hand on my shoulder so I can see him, Rheave points to three of the beds. Those three are daimon like him.
I set my fingers over his in a quick reassuring touch and move to the first form he indicated.
Casimir picked out the pot of black makeup I retrieve from my pocket. It’s a type that stains the skin semi-permanently rather than simply covering it temporarily.
Ever so gingerly, I use a soft brush to dab a few dark streaks on the side of the man’s neck, just below the edge of his blanket.
By morning, the dye will have set. A mark will remain through at least a week of washes. But it simply looks like a slightly unusual smudge of dirt or soot, not anything purposefully put there.
Only the Black Talons people prowling the streets will know what those marks signify. They’ll kill the captured daimons’ bodies in public places so more and more witnesses will see the proof of the Order’s unnatural magic—and so those daimon can go free rather than serving their slave masters.
When I reach the third sleeping figure, I have to tug her blanket down a little and brush her hair back from her neck. She lets out a sleepy sigh.
I freeze with a lurch of my heart. Only when she remains still for another several seconds do I lower my brush.
In theory, Rheave could have burned these marks. But the jolt of pain would probably have woken the targets. This way, we can mark them all without alerting anyone.
We move from one room to the next, marking neck after neck. Looking down on all the faces relaxed with sleep, my gut starts to twist with the thought of their future deaths.
They aren’t really people, of course. The daimon are trapped inside those bodies, not there through their own will.
But if any of them would have liked to take the bodies as their own like Rheave has, to experience everything mortal life has to offer, they’ll never get the chance.
That’s the scourge sorcerers’ fault, not ours. They set the daimon on this destructive path.
I can’t help feeling a little guilty about it all the same.
Neither of us speaks as we work our way through the rooms. By the time we get to the end of the hall, I’ve marked nearly two dozen sleeping daimon.
I’m not sure whether to be more horrified by how many of the spirits Lothar’s people still hold captive or how large a force they’ve installed in Florian in general. This is only the Order lackeys who didn’t take the night shift, and only one of several guardhouses around the city.
The leader of the scourge sorcerers knew how hard he’d need to fight to keep control over Silana’s capital. But our current forces might not be enough to tackle even one guardhouse, let alone all of the scourge sorcerers in the city.
I reach the last bed Rheave has indicated and draw back the blanket to reveal the sleeping man. My brush smears the inky makeup across the side of his neck?—
And his skin twitches. He startles awake with a grunt.
My power leaps up my throat, but Rheave shoves past me in an instant. As I rein in the frantic call to subdue our target by whatever means necessary, my partner clamps his hands against the man’s mouth and chest.
“We want to help you,” he rasps in a hushed voice. “I used to be like you, but I’m not anymore. Can you take control? This body could be?—”
The man starts to thrash against his blanket. Whether for his own reasons or because of the magic still binding him, he’s not interested in a peaceful resolution.
Rheave lets out a pained noise—and a hiss of his daimon magic.
He hits the struggling form with enough power to reduce the clay statue that should have appeared into black dust. A smoky, earthy smell trickles into the air.
I grasp his shoulder, grimacing in sympathy. “You had to do it.” Another few seconds, and the guard might have woken up the rest of the room.
We both stare down at the shadowed bed with its heap of charred clay dust, a bizarre murder scene. I gather my resolve. “Come on, we’d better clean up the body so no one realizes what happened.”
Rheave nods silently. We gather the remains of the clay body in a bundle of the blanket and sheets, and Rheave carries it with him on our way back to the window we entered through.
Rheave jumps down first and turns so I can use him as a sort of stepping stool. Several buildings over, we shove the bundle of fabric into a refuse bin where no one is likely to notice it. Then we hurry on to the sewer grate.
Stavros is waiting there, standing right on top of the grate so my gaze can easily find him despite the charm trying to divert my attention. His quest was a lot less time-consuming than ours.
I touch his arm to bring him into focus. From one glance at his grim face, I know he didn’t find what he was hoping for.
“One of the captains I’d have counted on has been killed,” he tells us as we step back from the grate so he can open it. “I think another may be still alive but held in one of the forts outside the city—Lothar might have hoped she had information that would be useful as the Order establishes itself in Florian.”
Which means the advisor will be torturing the woman for her loyalties. I offer Stavros a tight smile. “Maybe we can get her out soon.”
He gives a rough chuckle and bends toward the grate. I’m just turning toward Rheave when a sudden blast of magic slams into the side of my head.
The last thing I hear as I topple to my knees is Rheave’s frantic shout.