19. NINETEEN #3
She had him.
“I will listen.”
“Nelfindar is a stage set for change, and the Shadewalker is a keynote,” Pinto said. “It is not a matter of if, but when the oligarchy burns. And my bet is that it is the Shadewalker, not the Groundlings, who will rise from the ashes.”
Attilatia remembered Roskaad’s words before he left for the Jiradesh. When Nelfindar changes, I want you fighting on my side. They’d chilled her then. Now they had her on ice. Don’t drink the wine.
She paced the length of the doll shelves, glass eyes following her as she went. This was not the sort of information a man freely shared.
“Why—” She stopped. Sucked at her teeth. Rubbed her fingers together. “Why are you telling me all this?”
Pinto’s gaze buttoned her into place. “Because I want you to trust me when I tell you the truth.”
Truth? What in the unheavenly realms was the truth if not a five-minute monologue about the Shadewalker and his Ghosts? “Out with it.”
“I was inducted into the Shadewalker’s Ghosts by an old friend, Drogus Meinforg.
We first met over a game of stackers in Toboba during the Grey Period.
He was an officer in the Chori Navy long before he found his way into the Shadewalker’s embrace.
He offered me continual updates and information on the Kovathian state in Azadonia, in exchange for me garnering intelligence for the Ghosts. ”
Attilatia’s breath caught. Everything she’d waited for, for sixteen years, and it rested between Pinto’s liver-spotted ears. “The Shadewalker has intelligence on the Kovathians? And Azadonia’s rebels?”
Pinto shifted, with an expression like he was trying to hide a nasty spot on the rug. “Drogus Meinforg, specifically.”
He was leading her to water, but forcing her to find her own fated spoon. “What intelligence have you given him in exchange?”
“My old trade records: sailing routes, the port hubs where I sold, contacts and connections… and one thing more.” Pinto cleared his throat.
Shifted again. “Drogus commanded the southern fleet of the Chori navy to invade Casowhatan on information provided by a deep-rooted alliance with your old acquaintance, Deshpian Thacklore.”
Year: 740 Post Cataclysm: 8 years previously
Location: Chira’na
Green dakura smoke curled in wisps, casting a haze over Deshpian Thacklore’s sitting room. Fankalo sat in a wingbacked chair—more opulent than she’d ever seen—beside her father.
Thacklore set a leatherbound book on his desk between them. “This is the journal of Abiathar Methu’su. You want to understand the Tera’thian scourge? It will tell you everything you need to know.”
Fankalo reached for the journal.
Thacklore placed his hand over it. “It’s not that simple.”
“We’ve paid you what was requested,” her father argued.
“This is worth far more than notes. If I give you this, I need insurance—knowledge travels quickly without restraints—and a favor. An old acquaintance of mine has fallen into my confidence: Drogus Meinforg of the Chori Navy. Politics being what they are, the Nelfinden government would not appreciate my housing him, and the Chori would execute him for his failed assault. Keep his hands busy for a while, and the journal is yours. His expertise alone is worth its weight in gold.”
Thacklore was going to keep a tag on them? And not just any tag: a Chori tag, whom they would technically be smuggling. Fankalo’s father gave her a calculating look. She was sure he would say no. Methu’su’s journal was as good as gone.
Instead he locked eyes with Thacklore. “I am no nationalist. I harbor no prejudice against the Chori. If he’s a good man, and he does good work, I will accept your condition and his services.”
Attilatia’s eyes narrowed. “Deshpian Thacklore?” She still shivered at the taste of that name.
Pinto winced. “And Thacklore, also inducted by Drogus into the Shadewalker’s envoy, made the release of Kovathian intelligence conditional: I am required to keep watch on you.”
As the pieces snapped into place in her mind, Attilatia’s vision constricted down to a singular point. It was Pinto. It was all Pinto.
“Are. You. Fucking. Kidding?!” Those four words escalated from a growl into a screech. Attilatia forgot the dagger at her bodice and reached for the closest weapon: a doll, heavy with porcelain. She shattered its arm against the shelves to create a jagged point.
Pinto raised his hands. “You were so calm when I revealed my Ratka, I—I assumed you would take this as lightly. Take a breath, and let’s talk this out over a cup of tea.”
She shook the doll inches from his throat. “Please explain to me how one takes tea while they’re bleeding out on the floor?”
“Atti, you have to let me—”
“Filthy. Despicable. Old. Man.” To think she’d spent the past four ten-days giggling over her cup with the person who’d sent the Kovathians after her. “Why? Why tell me any of this?”
Tears blurred her eyes as they darted from Pinto’s sorrowful gaze to the severed porcelain limb in her hand and back.
When he didn’t respond, she screamed and chucked the arm at the shelves.
It knocked another doll to the floor. She grabbed it and slammed it into the wall, scattering a half-dozen more.
“I trusted you!” If he’d been acting like a bastard this whole time, this would be so much easier: put a hand to her throat, pull out the dagger she now knew he stowed in his robes. But he only hung his head. “I-I even—”
“Atti, just listen. I am, and I have always been, a patriot.
The moment Thacklore disclosed to me who you were and whom you were guarding, I made a solemn vow to keep you safe.
I was alone—an aging man with no family, no legacy—and I decided that someone needed to play this game on your behalf. Why not me?
“Yes, I entertained Thacklore’s request, but that does not mean I have fed him anything other than carefully crafted truths that would shield my own intentions.”
She paused, chest heaving, a hand over her burning eyes.
“I have been giving Thacklore information on you for five years. And I have put in a lot of work to make the lies I’ve fed him look believable. But they would have seen me for what I was if none of my leads were successful. I stopped a number of them personally. The others…”
Attilatia considered the strangeness of the way Pinto had often invited her to tea, to dinner, to a show, over the years: always with urgency.
At the oddest of hours. His couriers had been so persistent—stopping her in alleyways, loping at her side until she made it home—she’d assumed them to be moss addicts. “You thwarted the attacks?”
Pinto nodded. She dropped the doll.
The next thing she knew, his wiry arms had folded around her again. She wanted to push him away—to scream and hit. Instead, her knees buckled and she clung to him like bark on a tree.
“So let’s talk about that wine. Because we can rule out it having come from Thacklore, and I don’t believe the Shadewalker has placed a fee on your head.”
She chuckled without mirth. “What makes you say we can rule out Thacklore?”
Pinto pushed her to arms’ length. “Haven’t you heard?”
“No, Pinto.” Her sigh was so heavy, her body nearly levitated when it left her. She wiped at the corners of her eyes. “That’s what I force interactions with sun-loving socialites like you for. To hear things.”
“Deshpian Thacklore is dead.”
Her heart thumped steadily in her ears. “Dead?”
“He was murdered—he and his staff in Chira’na. Grisley, gruesome deed. The work of one man, they say. Completely deranged.”
“If I ever have a chance to meet him, I might kiss him.”
Pinto shook her shoulders. “The wine, Atti. Who sent you the wine?”
Roskaad Thyatira, she didn’t say: one of the Shadewalker’s Ghosts, a Kovathian agent, Hashod Gorovich’s private hire, an oligarchal pawn, or some combination of those things. All that, and she was itching to believe that he was on her side.
What was wrong with her?
“If I tell you, promise me you’ll have dinner with us the next time he’s in town?”
Of course, that might depend on what was on the menu.