The Ragpicker King (Chronicles of Castellane #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

W hen Kel regained consciousness, the red moon had changed positions in the sky. It hung lower now, a coral pendant on an invisible chain, descending toward the horizon.

Gingerly, he pushed himself into a sitting position. His limbs seemed to work again, though his body ached. He wondered how long he had lain here unconscious. Long enough for the moon to change positions, and for his clothes to dry, stiff with salt, against his body.

Kel rose to his feet, the heavy necklace Conor had flung around his throat bumping against his chest. He looked out at the ocean, at the blood-red horizon. He had half thought the Arrow Squadron would be out looking for him, but he knew now it was unlikely. The approaching Castelguards would have seen Conor throw him from the cliffs of Marivent into the ocean, and that was a death sentence. That he had survived it due to the amulet’s magic would not be something they could guess.

Kel turned back toward the city. He was bedraggled and filthy. He had just escaped from the Trick. He could, he guessed, go to the Black Mansion, throw himself on Andreyen’s mercy, but if Jolivet or the Vigilants were to look for him even perfunctorily, that would be the first place they would seek him; they already had people watching Scarlet Square.

There was still, by his accounting, one other place he could go. Even if he didn’t know exactly where it was.

Kel began to walk toward the Key. He could feel every pebble of the beach against his bare feet, but louder than any pain was the sound of Jolivet’s voice in his ears: You are a Sword Catcher, Kellian. Your life belongs to the Palace. But you can never return to what you were.

Kel felt strangely calm. Perhaps this was because if he let the tide of recent events wash over him fully, it would drown him. In thinking of his own mistakes, of the danger to Castellane, of the way he had let down his friends in the Black Mansion. In thinking of Conor and the fact that wherever Kel woke up tomorrow, it would be the first time in more than a decade that he had woken up outside of Marivent, and far from Conor.

But he would wake up. And for the first time, when he did, he would not be playing a part. He was Kel Saren now, and he knew who his friends were. His enemies had removed their masks, so he knew them, too. He knew what to expect from all save one person, and the need to see that person thrummed through his blood, propelling him as he shouldered through the crowds of the Key, taking no heed of whether they stared at him. Though why should they? He might be ragged and damp looking, but that was not unusual, and if his hands were bloody where he had dragged himself up the beach, he kept them at his sides where they would not be seen.

He turned into the Maze, heading down Arsenal Road. It was crowded, as it always was at night, the usual mix of foreign sailors, beggars, and painted prostitutes hooting and calling from the balconies of tumbledown houses. The occasional burst of naphtha light seared Kel’s eyes. He found it at last: the warehouse whose windows had been blacked out with paint.

The front door was not locked, but it seemed stuck in its frame; wood warped often here, so close to the sea and the humid air. Kel shouldered it open and stepped into the long corridor. It was lightless, illuminated only by the street outside.

He made his way to the enormous main room. It was empty, the glass lanterns swaying unlighted over a dusty floor stacked with unmarked wooden boxes.

If he closed his eyes, he could imagine what this place had been like the first time he’d visited it: filled with the sons of nobility gambling and carousing with poppy-juice addicts and masked courtesans. Where there had been music and glowing naphtha torches, now there was a profound silence, the only illumination the pale-red moonlight that spilled through the cracked windows.

“Kel.”

He turned. Standing in the entranceway was a familiar figure in a black cloak. His silver quarter-mask gleamed, as did his boots. His hood was up, drawn close about his face. Kel could not see his expression.

“Jerrod,” Kel said.

“I have to admit,” Jerrod said, “I didn’t think it would work. No one’s ever gotten out of the Trick.”

“I suppose you taught me well,” Kel said. “I Crawled down the side of the tower. Though I can’t brag about it without getting arrested. Unfortunate.”

Jerrod said nothing. His eyes gleamed, brighter than his mask.

“I just have one question,” Kel said. “How in gray hell did Conor end up with Gremont’s amulet? Beck must have given it to him, but I’m having a hard time picturing that. ”

“Beck has his reasons for doing what he does—”

“I’m not interested in hearing about Beck from you, Jerrod,” Kel said. “When I think about how long you’ve been lying to me, I just—” He shook his head. “I just need to see Prosper Beck. The real Prosper Beck,” he added, before Jerrod could interrupt. “Not some goon you dress up and sit behind a desk to fool me.”

To Jerrod’s credit, he didn’t try to deny the ruse. “Beck’s done enough for you,” he said. “Keep the amulet. Get out of Castellane. Don’t ask for anything else. I’m telling you this as a friend.”

“Really?” said Kel. “Whose friend? Because I know who Beck is now. Who she really is.”

Jerrod did not move or make a sound; only his expression changed. Even under the shadow of the hood, Kel could see his face harden. He wondered for a moment if he’d picked the wrong strategy. Perhaps the truth would only make Jerrod angry, defensive, more inclined to keep Kel away from his employer.

And then Jerrod smiled. There was little amusement in it, and a great deal of wryness. “I wondered if you’d figure it out someday. She was always a little careless with you.” He beckoned to Kel, indicating he should follow. “Come with me, then.”

They made their way through the narrow curving streets of the Maze, Jerrod silent at Kel’s side, which didn’t bother Kel, as his mind was buzzing. Rather abruptly, as they turned onto a narrow alley that twisted off Arsenal Road, Jerrod said, “Does Merren hate me?”

“No,” Kel said. “He was angry at you. It’s not the same thing. You could go back, you know. And see him. It’s not as if Andreyen would stop you.”

“He hasn’t tried to see me, ” Jerrod said crossly.

“I would point out that he doesn’t know where you are,” said Kel, “but I see you are committed to your own obstinacy.”

Jerrod muttered something that Kel suspected to be uncomplimentary, and then stopped at a tall, battered-looking town house that tipped slightly eastward, as if slowly lurching off its foundations. A scratched plaque by the red-painted front door indicated that this had once been the harbormaster’s house, before shipbuilding had moved to the Arsenale and the Maze had become what it was.

“Wait here,” Jerrod said coldly, and disappeared through the red door.

It was a warm night, but still Kel shivered, standing alone in the alley. It was late—two in the morning, he would guess—and he could not help but wonder what was happening at the Palace. The Castelguards would have seen Conor push him over the cliff; Conor would have told them Kel was dead. They would have no reason to disbelieve him.

He wondered what Jolivet would think. If anyone would mourn him.

The door opened. Jerrod, in the doorway, said, “She’ll see you,” in a tone that indicated that he had advised against that very thing. Kel climbed the front steps, brushed past Jerrod, and found himself in a clean, plaster-walled house, with low ceilings and wooden floors. A stairway disappeared up into shadow. A single lantern hung on the wall, spilling very little light.

“That way,” Jerrod said, pointing down a short corridor to a closed door; a bar of illumination was visible below the frame. “And Kel—”

Kel, halfway down the hall, turned. “Yes?”

“If you hurt her...”

Kel spread his arms wide. “I’m unarmed.”

“I didn’t mean—” Jerrod broke off, shaking his head, half disgusted. “Just go.”

Kel went. Down the narrow hall, through the door, into a room illuminated by a leaping fire in a soot-blackened grate. The greenish tiles of the fireplace surround were cracked, the walls newly painted white, the furniture oddly dainty, as if it had been pilfered from the house of a noblewoman. Kel suspected that, in fact, it had.

She sat on a spindly gilt chair near the fire—if sat was the right word. She was sprawled in the chair, her legs up over one arm, her feet, in knee-high leather boots, dangling over the side, dangerously close to knocking a cut glass decanter off the side table. Tight trousers with a sheen like oilskin were tucked into the boots, and over those she wore a half-buttoned admiral’s coat, dark blue with yellow piping and brass buttons down the front. Her blond curls spilled down her back, over her shoulders, a sharp contrast with the stiff masculinity of her starched collar.

“Antonetta,” Kel said. “It’s good to see you.”

She looked at him without expression. “You’re soaking wet.”

“I fell in the ocean,” Kel said dryly. “After escaping from the Trick.”

Her red lips curved into a smile. “And you don’t look the least bit chewed on by crocodiles. It seems that amulet really does work.”

Kel’s heart was pounding, but he’d had years of practice masking his feelings, hiding his physical reactions to stress and shock. “You gave the amulet to Conor,” he said. “How sure were you that he’d use it the way he did?”

“You forget, I know him, too. Not as well as you, but well enough. He never has cared about anything more than he cared about you.” She rose to her feet, the admiral’s coat swirling around her legs. The coat must have been cut to fit her. It skimmed distractingly over her curves. Kel reminded himself that he was furious with her and had been since the Solstice Ball. “You figured it out,” she said, and there was a strange note in her voice, something he couldn’t quite define. “I wondered if you would.”

Because you think I’m a fool. Because you think you can lie to me and I’ll never realize it.

She came toward him. Kel stood still, very conscious that he was barefoot, still wet from the sea, his damp hair stiff with salt. None of that seemed to bother her. She came closer to him—close enough to put her hands against his chest. Close enough that he could smell her perfume, soft and flowery, intriguingly at odds with her masculine attire. She said, “Now you know.” She raised her eyes, wide and clear, her pupils unchanged by posy-drops. “Now you know. Do you hate me?”

“I could never hate you, Antonetta,” Kel said.

She took hold of the lapels of his ragged shirt. Pushing herself up on her toes, she kissed him, not gently, and he could not help himself; he kissed her back. He slanted his mouth against hers and kissed her until his heart was beating like a drum through his body. In the last moment when he still had control, he felt his hands rise to clasp her shoulders. As if in a dream he broke the kiss, pushing her away, setting her back on her heels, her hair tumbling around her flushed face.

“Antonetta,” he said. “ No. ”

She stared at him for a moment with a mixture of shock and hurt. A slow dark-red color stained her cheeks. “But you said—I thought you weren’t angry?”

He thought of Jerrod warning him not to hurt Antonetta. As if Jerrod did not understand that all the power to cause pain was Antonetta’s. That she could hurt him far more than he could hurt her.

“I said I didn’t hate you. And I don’t. I couldn’t hate you. But you lied to me, Ana. You lied to me about who you are, you lied about what you know—”

“You know now,” she said. “You guessed. Isn’t that better than if I’d told you?”

A flash of anger went through him, coupled with the desire to do something, say something, that would make her understand. “It is not,” he said tightly, “ better. I have no reason to think, Ana, that you would ever have told me, no matter what happened between us. You did not just lie by omission. You manipulated me. It was useful to you, and why would I imagine you’d ever stop doing something that was useful to you?”

“I would have told you—”

“No, you wouldn’t. You were enjoying yourself too much, Ana. You like being Prosper Beck. And it’s been years, hasn’t it? To build up a reputation like Beck has—to grow your power in the Maze—”

“You will not make me ashamed of what I’ve done—”

“I would never assume anyone could make you feel shame, Antonetta,” said Kel, and watched the color change in her face as she realized the double meaning in his words. “I don’t even know you. That’s what I’ve realized. I cannot guess at why you became Beck—perhaps because you were bored and spoiled and wanted your life to have some sort of meaning and purpose—”

She took a step back from him, and even through the blinding pain that had made him lash out, he ached to see her pull away. “I became Prosper Beck out of a sense of self-preservation,” she said, almost spitting each word. “I became Prosper Beck because my life was so small, and the choices available to me on the Hill were nothing I wanted. I became Beck because there was a real Beck once—a man I hired to teach me how to use a sword. Because I was spoiled and bored and I wanted to know how to fight, and he was a shoddy, minor sort of criminal, and when he got himself killed, I saw the chance and took his place.”

“There was a real Beck?” Somehow Kel hadn’t expected that.

“I am the real Beck,” she snapped. “He was nothing. Drank himself to death in the Maze. I took his name and made him a legend.”

“You think a lot of yourself,” Kel said, “for someone who was careless enough to mistakenly reveal their secret to me.”

Antonetta’s eyes flashed. She picked up a blackened fireplace poker and jabbed savagely at the logs in the fireplace, not looking at him. “Fine. Tell me. Tell me how you guessed. Tell me my mistakes. ”

Kel gritted his teeth. He had not expected to be so angry. He had imagined confronting her calmly, ticking off the ways he had guessed who she was, explaining to her how at last he saw through her. Instead he felt as if he were looking at her through a haze of fire.

“It wasn’t one thing,” he said. “It was several. And if it makes you feel better, I thought I might be going mad at first.”

“Go on,” she said.

“When I went to see whoever that was—the man you had playing Prosper Beck—”

“Bron,” she said, a darkness flickering across her face. “He was one of my couriers.”

“He acted well enough,” Kel said. “It was the boxes of wine in his office. Singing Monkey. Not a name you’d forget easily. Then later, at the Roverges’ party, you deliberately got us lost on the way back to the main room.”

She swung on him with the poker in her hand. “Did I? Or was I just being foolish? Maybe I have no sense of direction. Maybe I’m just absentminded—”

“You are none of those things,” Kel said furiously. “That’s a part you’ve been playing all these years, no more real—”

“Than the part you play?” She looked over at him, the firelight dancing across her cheek. “As the Sword Catcher?”

Kel did not react, despite the racing of his pulse. He had wanted her to know at the Shining Gallery party, when she had looked at him as if she saw through his disguise as Conor, saw who he really was. There was nothing more intoxicating than being seen. He had wanted it so badly, and had let the dream go; he had learned long ago that dreams like that only caused pain in the end.

He had wondered again at the Solstice Ball. Her words had seemed so pointed, designed to hurt him. Even as he’d grown more and more sure she was Prosper Beck, he hadn’t been able to decide: Had she known she was talking to him and meant to wound him? Or had she thought it was Conor, and meant to betray him?

“No more real than that,” he said. “For instance, you know the Roverges’ house as well as you know your own. You brought me into the cellar, so I could see there were boxes of the same wine there. I asked Charlon about the bottles later. He said they’d been a gift. I tend to believe him. You knew I was looking for Prosper Beck’s funding on the Hill, and you wanted to throw suspicion on the Roverges.”

“Very good,” she murmured. “But not enough. You didn’t guess, not then.”

“Conor told me about the tunnels under House Alleyne,” he said. “That’s how you’ve always gotten in and out without being noticed, isn’t it? And then there’s the amulet.” He tugged at the gold chain around his throat. “Jerrod stabbed Gremont to death on Tyndaris— Why? He knew that the amulet Gremont was wearing was false; he’d been working with Alys Asper. But not for Alys Asper. Jerrod has always been your right-hand man. Loyal to Beck, which means loyal to you, Antonetta. And you were determined to marry Gremont. Jerrod wouldn’t have raised a hand against him unless he thought you wanted him dead, not when he knew how it would upset Merren. What changed your mind?”

She hesitated before saying, almost reluctantly, “I had not known of Gremont’s association with the Malgasi until it became clear that while he did not know I was Beck, he had somehow learned I knew Beck. He demanded I arrange a meeting.”

“Did you fob him off with the same stand-in you sent to meet me, when I thought I was meeting Prosper Beck?”

“Yes,” she said. Only the one word, leaving Kel a bitter taste in the back of his throat. The bitter knowledge that she had treated him, when it came to Beck, no differently than she had treated Artal Gremont. “But Gremont came to the meeting with the Malgasi Princess. Jerrod was there. It became clear Gremont was under her thumb, completely. He would do anything she wanted. If she demanded he slit my throat in the ballroom at House Alleyne, he would have done it and not worried about exile. It was too dangerous to marry him. I had to abandon that plan.”

“I see. And then—there was the Solstice Ball. When you told Conor I wasn’t to be trusted.”

She bit her lip. “Kel—”

“Don’t,” he said. “At first, I thought you were indeed speaking to someone you believed to be Conor. Until you started listing off all the ways in which you felt I’d endangered myself for Conor’s sake. You said, He tried to pay your debts to Prosper Beck. But there was no way you would know that. No one knew that—except for Beck.”

She half closed her eyes. “Stupid,” she murmured. “So stupid—”

He took a step toward her; she didn’t move. “Do you remember in the cellar at the Roverge party? When I helped bandage your cut?” He put a hand on the swell of her hip, where the cut had been. He could feel the warmth of her through the fabric of her trousers, feel the curve of her under his hand. “You told me you’d been injured learning how to use a sword.”

“No one becomes Prosper Beck without a few injuries on the way,” she said, but her voice was a little unsteady. She looked up at him, the firelight darkening her eyes. “What about the locket?”

“Yes. You sent me to steal your own locket,” he said. “You knew I’d open it and find the grass ring there. You knew I’d torture myself over what it meant.”

She looked up at him, her eyes glittering, a little narrowed. “I never thought you’d be tortured,” she said. “I never wanted to hurt you at all—”

“I don’t believe that,” he said savagely. “I have puzzled over it and puzzled over it. What I could have done to make you so determined to strike at me—with the locket, with what you did to Conor, with the things you said to me at the Solstice Ball? If you had planned for a thousand years, you could not have come up with words that would have crushed me more—”

Antonetta had gone white. “I was trying to get you to lie low, ” she said, her voice rising above the crackle of the fire. “You stupid, stupid man. I knew you were lying to Conor, working with the Ragpicker King, doing favors for the Kutani Princess, acting as if you believed you’d never get caught. I thought if I made it clear how much danger you were really in, you might stop before you got yourself killed. And I knew you’d hate me for saying what I said, but I thought it would be worth it if it meant you’d live—”

She broke off. Kel stared at her. She was flushed with rage. He wanted to believe that she meant it, that she had only been thinking of his safety. But she had lied to him and lied to him, and he felt now the danger of wanting to believe in her—in her, of all people.

Antonetta threw the poker, which clattered into the fireplace. “I told you at the Roverges’ that I wanted the silk Charter,” she said. “I wanted Gremont’s Charter, too. Not for myself—I couldn’t have held it, I know that. But I could have given it to someone.”

“You would have... sold it?” Kel said. “I don’t—”

“No, you don’t,” she said furiously. “I can’t believe you came here thinking you had everything all figured out, Kel Saren. You don’t understand anything. I wanted it for you. ”

Kel caught her by the wrist. She started to twist away before turning to glare at him. “ Why? ” he demanded.

She took a deep breath. Desperately he searched her eyes with his own. For a moment, he thought he could see the truth of her in her eyes, see through the layers of pretense and lies and history, through the defensive wall that he himself had had a part in building up so long ago.

Tell me, Ana, he thought. Tell me the truth. Tell me what you feel.

But her gaze flicked away from his. “So you could be free of being the Sword Catcher,” she said in a flat voice that let him know that whatever her real reason was, she had no intention of revealing it. “I know what it’s like to be trapped by duty and expectation. I suppose I wanted to see power in the right hands for a change.”

Kel’s heart sank. She would never be honest with him. It was more than concealing her identity as Prosper Beck. He could have lived with that. But to know that she would never tell him what she really felt about anything —

“All those years ago,” he said roughly. “You shut me out. It wasn’t just your mother—though Aigon knows I blame her for many things. You are the one who told me we were not of the same class. That there was no point in closing our eyes to reality.”

Almost unconsciously, she put her hand to her throat, where her locket would usually rest. “You remember what I said?”

“Every word,” Kel said. “You put me exactly in my place. I thought you hated me. And then later, just these past months, when I realized what a part you were playing, I thought: Perhaps she is showing her real self, only to me. It made me think I might be different in your eyes. But you have lied to me just like everyone else.”

“And you have lied to me, Sword Catcher,” she said. “You stand there so angry that I never told you I had a second life as Prosper Beck. Yet you have only ever been Kel Anjuman with me, and while I may have hidden my false self, you hid your real one. You are Kel Saren, Sword Catcher, and I had to learn that name from others.”

Kel sucked in his breath. “It was not my secret to tell,” he said. “I took an oath, a vow to protect Conor. A vow never to tell anyone that such a thing as a Sword Catcher even existed.”

She smiled almost sadly. “Jerrod knows,” she said. “Ji-An. Merren Asper. The Ragpicker King. Lin Caster—”

I never told any of them. They already knew, or found out. But did such things matter? Especially now, when he was demanding honesty from her, demanding she strip herself down to the bones of what she really was and show that self to him?

“I think I always knew, Ana,” he said, “that you were hiding some truth of yourself from me, and so I did not trust you with who I really was.”

“And I,” she said, meeting his gaze levelly, “always knew you were hiding some truth of yourself from me, and so I did not trust you with who I really was.”

They were both silent for a moment, the only noise the fire crackling in the grate. At last, Kel said, “Perhaps, then, it is time that we finally introduced ourselves to each other. As we truly are.” As she watched in surprise, he laid a hand over his heart, where it beat under his ragged jacket, and made a bow. When he straightened, he said, “My lady. I am Kellian Saren, born an orphan of Castellane. I have no blood family, but I am the Sword Catcher, the protector of the Prince of Castellane, and though I am exiled from Marivent, I will always be that.”

Her eyes bright, Antonetta crossed the room, picked up the decanter sitting on the table beside the chair, and, with practiced economy of gesture, poured two full glasses. She turned to Kel, offering him one. “Kel Saren,” she said. “I am Antonetta Alleyne, heir to the silk Charter, and I am also Prosper Beck, a criminal of the Maze. I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Accepting the glass, Kel took a drink, letting the harsh tang of the brandewine burn its way down his throat.

“Very well,” Antonetta said, settling herself back into the spindly gilt chair. She looked at him over her drink. “Now we know each other. For the first time, it seems. Which means I must ask you: Why are you here? You could have gone anywhere after you escaped the Trick. I had thought you would flee the city. Why come to me? Just because you were angry?”

Kel thought—he could not be sure—that her voice trembled slightly on that last, rising question. But he could not be sure, and he could not ask. Not now. It is not her fault if you see what you want to see, hear what you want to hear. Somehow, you have fallen in love with a person you do not know, a person who may still be only a dream or a figment. You must come to know her, this new Antonetta; you must know your own heart before you can know hers.

“I came here because you have a storehouse full of weapons we can use against Malgasi,” he said, “and I have a plan.”

If a flicker of disappointment passed across her face, it was too swift for him to be sure of it. “What makes you think I would want to be part of your plan?”

“Because the Malgasi will bleed Castellane dry and kill everyone on the Hill, and whatever your feelings about most of them, I know you don’t want that, either. Because we have a common goal, Antonetta, and I need you on my side.”

She tucked her hair back behind her ear—an old gesture that meant that she was considering what he’d said. Something about the familiarity of it bit at him like teeth. And that’s how this would be, he knew, if she agreed. He had known it would hurt to be away from her, but not how much it would hurt to be close: to be always reminded that he knew her and did not know her at the same time.

But this was the only chance Conor had; the only chance Castellane had. He needed her brilliance, her clever ruthlessness, even as that ruthlessness was part of what held them apart with the force of steel doors.

“Your side means the Black Mansion?” she said. “Andreyen and the others? You’re suggesting we all work together?”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.”

“But do you want me as Beck,” she said, “or Antonetta?”

I am not sure I even know myself, Kel thought. Aloud, he said, “Both. The task ahead is impossibly hard. But if we are to have a chance of success, we need you. I need you. Exactly as you are.”

Her smile was faint but real. She gazed down at her glass, the light from the fire turning the dark liquid within into a burning amber. “Very well, then,” she said. “I’m listening.”