Chapter 8
EIGHT
The nudge of a steel-toed boot startled me awake.
“Wake up, Nina.”
It felt like no more than fifteen minutes had passed since I’d closed my eyes. But my body had recorded the hours left there on the floor. Every joint ached as I pushed up to a seated position, still hazy from the stupor of sleep.
A guard leaned against the bars as I blinked the world into clarity, a wide hood concealing his identity. I wondered if it was the same one compelled by the outsider or if it was another sent to bring me to the boat.
He was gentle, lifting me from the floor by taking both my hands, binding tight around my wrists. “Keep these on until we make it to the docks,” he said. “Try not to make it obvious.”
It must have been the compelled guard, still at the outsider’s bidding.
The race of my heart eased into a flutter, still not quite relaxed enough to take an easy breath.
The Cursed man was no better than Cassien.
But his sudden interest in keeping me alive was both alarming and alluring.
The mystery of it kept me walking willfully to what would probably be my own undoing.
We descended a short flight of stairs into a room filled with rope, lanterns, and other equipment.
I’d seen the police’s headquarters from afar, though I’d never been inside.
But I knew that there were four towers surrounding the main building, and each of them had a jetty onto the canal that ran through and around the Gatehouse.
We were in the center of the city, in a kind of floating fortress that split both sides of the New and Old City, with the Grand Canal providing swift access to each.
The guard beside me was quiet, glancing around the empty boarding room. More than once, he pressed a hand to my shoulder, shoving me flat against the wall until a patrolling guard passed.
It was still the middle of the night, though I should have been transferred in the morning. Something unsettled in my stomach.
“Does he know they changed the time of my transfer?” I whispered to the guard.
His steps faltered for a moment. “Who?”
“The outsider.”
“What outsider?”
Bile burned my throat. This wasn’t the same guard at all, then. “Where the hell are we going, then?”
He threw open a warped wooden door that banged against the stone exterior wall.
Down a few mossy steps, a vessel waited with three other guards, all hooded like the one beside me.
The shape of the boat told me that whatever was happening here could not be official.
It was narrow enough to slice the water aside, with a metal hull and a single engine that purred idly. Meant for speed and quiet passage.
Above us, an arch of bricks rose from pillars sunken into the canal to form a tunnel. At the sides, there was just enough clearance for the guards to stand on without bending their heads. Gas lamps glowed from perches on the walls, reflecting orange in the brackish water.
The guard holding me put a foot on the boat to steady it, reaching for my hand to help me into the vessel.
“This isn’t right,” I murmured.
His arm remained outstretched to me, and the movement lifted his coat to reveal not the blue and red of a copper’s clothing but the uniform that enforcers wore beneath their relic suits—solid black with gilded accents. “Would you rather the mines?”
The Academy had come for me.
If I got on that boat, there would be no turning back. The outsider wouldn’t find me in the Academy. No one would know who took me from my cell, and who would accuse the Magister of such a thing?
Understanding hit hard, and I took a step back.
“I wasn’t giving you a choice about it,” the guard hissed, snatching my bound hands and pulling me onto the boat between the four men.
The driver hit the throttle and lurched the vessel into motion.
Any sound of my struggle against the disguised enforcer was covered by the low hum of the engine and the froth of the tide—and the slide of a bullet into the chamber of a gun.
We motored past a gate, entering the private dock of the Gatehouse.
The prison was built into the curve of the Grand Canal, on the side of the Old City, and in close proximity to the Fissures.
The bend opened enough to make room for the cold, monolithic structure that loomed over incoming boats and ships from the sea like an ominous warning to those who entered the city.
It was a half-drowned, sullen fortress with the lower levels submerged in dark water that licked the stone.
Two walls wrapped the dock, where police boats passed through a gate to deliver prisoners.
Where the ships to the labor camps arrived to transport them to their final home.
I tried to right myself to see over the hull, but cold steel pressed into the nape of my neck, pushing me back to the deck.
“Stay down,” he whispered. “Stay quiet.”
A full moon drifted low in the western sky, casting the prison’s shadow across the canal.
The enforcers used no lantern to light the way, remaining in stealthy silence as engine smoke joined the late evening mist. Every sense in my body was screaming that this was wrong.
They wouldn’t shoot me—I was too valuable to the Magister. He’d made that clear this evening.
“Listen to him, Nina. Stay down.”
I jolted at the voice in my head. Luckily, my captors weren’t even looking at me, their attention on the canal ahead and behind, watching for anyone approaching.
Something heavy hit the bow, and the gun at my neck disappeared. There was a wet crack of bone, a gasp of air that was suddenly cut off, then a quiet splash.
I peered over the empty bench my guard had been sitting on and saw a figure moving between the remaining enforcers.
In one fell swoop, he disarmed the stunned enforcer with a kick of his boot while wielding an unseen power that had the enforcer clawing at his throat.
The boat lurched as the visitor flipped him into the canal to deal with the remaining guards.
While he dealt with the first two, one of the enforcers slapped a cuff on their wrist, the metal glowing green.
The other reached for a gun at his hip, but the figure was on him in a blink, lashing at his neck and ripping open his airway.
The last guard sent a fist swinging, catching the visitor on the jaw with a powerful swing reinforced by the relics that glowed on his forearms. The impact shifted the boat, sending them both teetering off balance.
The newcomer clutched his cheek for a heartbeat before rolling his shoulders back into a broad wall.
The enforcer was dwarfed by this man when he stood to his full height.
The enforcer went for his gun, but his opponent lunged.
The pair wrestled for control, and I ducked behind the bench again as the barrel lowered toward me.
The visitor glanced my way, realizing who the guard was aiming for.
His gaze found mine for only a moment, but I knew him immediately.
The outsider.
He snapped the enforcer’s arm into an unnatural angle. The gun now aimed toward the stars.
The enforcer screamed in agony, and his opponent pulled the trigger six times, emptying the cylinder so there was nothing left.
He pulled the weapon free from the guard, hitting him once on the temple with the handle and knocking him out.
The guard went limp, falling over the side into the canal—and disappearing quickly beneath the murk with the others.
The visitor finally turned around to face me.
The outsider stood at the bow with his boot on the gunwale, his coat snapping in the night breeze. Moonlight dulled the flames in his eyes to amber, like metal cooling from a forge.
“You—”
He gracefully lunged across the vessel, lowering to the bench. “You’re hurt. He didn’t tell me you were hurt.”
“Who?” I asked, pushing to my knees.
With a light brush of his fingers, the irons fell away, leaving behind the dull ache of their weight. “Not important. Is it just your face or…” His gaze swept over me, lingering over the bruises I was sure were blackening my eye sockets.
“Or what?”
“Or do I need to go back into that Gatehouse and kill someone else?”
I shook my head, startled by the question. I glanced around at the empty vessel, now idling down the canal. “I think you’ve killed enough people for one night.”
He reached for my face with a bloody hand, pausing when I flinched. When he noticed there was blood on his palm, he dipped it into the water to clean it before resuming what he’d intended before.
“Enforcers only work for one man, Nina.” He pulled a die from his pocket, studying my face for a brief eternity before dragging a thumb across the hinge of my jaw. “Do you know what they do at the Academy?”
“Not really,” I replied. He applied the healing magic of his Vitalis die over the bruising around my eye before tenderly brushing a calloused fingertip across the split in my lip.
I thought I felt his pulse race as his thumb crested my chin, or maybe it was my own.
Either way, I was certain neither of us took a full breath until his hand moved away.
Silver hair slipped from his hood, falling into his right eye. “Pray that you never find out,” he said, letting his hands wrap around my wrists. The stiffness from the cuffs eased at once. He was nothing if not thorough.
“You say that like you’re a better option.”
His gaze fell to his thumb, now stained with a bead of blood from my lip.
He turned his hand over, studying the smear.
I watched in mortification as he brought it to his lips and dragged it across his tongue, rolling it across every side like he was savoring a fine wine. A soft sigh split his mouth apart.
“I’m your only option right now, Ace.”