Chapter 20 Zaria
ZARIA
ZARIA STARED AT KANE. HER THOUGHTS WERE ALL A JUMBLE—she didn’t know if she was waiting for more information, for her feet to start moving, or for Kane to tell her he was joking.
She knew he wasn’t joking, though. It was Kane.
She supposed this was just another evening for him.
That he did illegal things all the time covered by the shroud of night.
Whenever Zaria looked at him, it was an effort to remember what she wanted.
The primateria source. The Waterhouse jewels.
His continued trust—or, at the very least, enough of it to keep him from noticing anything was amiss.
She focused on those things. Let strategy quash emotion. Let logic override the way her breath caught when his gaze met hers, always seeming to communicate a challenge. And then, once she was certain she had her head on straight, she followed Kane and Fletcher into the house.
It was the most beautiful home she had ever been inside.
The main entrance had impossibly high ceilings and gleaming surfaces; a wide staircase in the center of the room ascended to the second level.
A glittering crystal chandelier hung above their heads.
The air smelled like polished wood and held all the silence of a place protected from outside noise.
There was very little furniture; it felt less like a place where someone lived and more like an exquisite display.
It was a building that should have held a dozen staff.
Yet tonight, it appeared, not another soul breathed within these walls.
“Whose house is this?” Zaria asked again, keeping her voice low.
Kane took no such precautions. “It belongs to a widowed duchess,” he said, the words echoing through the space. “Or, at least, it did.”
“Where is she now?”
“Dead.”
Zaria whirled from where she had been examining a painted vase. “Did you kill her?”
The question escaped her mouth before she could think better of it, and Fletcher gave a throaty laugh.
Kane merely smirked. “We did not. By happy accident, she died earlier this week.”
“Natural causes,” Fletcher added. “She was elderly.”
Zaria wasn’t prepared to be quite as blasé about a woman’s death as they were. Despite Kane’s and Fletcher’s words, she wasn’t entirely convinced they hadn’t killed her. “And why are we here, snooping through her house? What’s the crime, apart from trespassing?”
Kane didn’t answer right away. He had strolled purposefully into the adjacent room, squinting through the dim as if in search of something. Whatever it was, he must not have seen it, because he re-emerged a moment later into the entryway, brow furrowed.
“We’re stealing something” was his matter-of-fact reply as he made his way to the next room over. His footsteps echoed in his wake, an eerie, hollow sound. Zaria followed on his heels.
“Stealing what, exactly?”
Kane paused, beckoning past her to Fletcher, whose eyes lit up.
He came to join them in what Zaria realized belatedly was a drawing room, dragging those ridiculous wheeled pallets along behind him.
She couldn’t tell quite what they were looking at; everything in here must have been valuable.
Sofas and chairs were arranged around a shiny wooden pianoforte, and the walls were covered with portraits and artwork that, for all Zaria knew, could have been priceless.
An unlit fireplace with an elaborate mantel occupied the far wall, and a beautiful woven tapestry hung above it.
She hated it, this ostentatious display of wealth while so many went hungry in the slums.
“We are stealing that.” Kane pointed, a self-satisfied smile playing across his lips. Zaria felt her jaw slacken.
“You’re joking.”
“I most certainly am not.”
“The pianoforte?”
Kane crossed his arms as Fletcher wheeled the pallets onto the patterned carpet. “Yes, the pianoforte. Keep up, would you?”
The pallets made sense now, Zaria realized, watching Fletcher push them up against the instrument. It was admittedly beautiful: ivory keys unchipped, wood finish gleaming. “But you already have one of these.”
“Yes,” Kane agreed.
“Why do you need another?”
“I don’t, technically speaking.” He strode past Zaria to assist Fletcher, not deigning to provide any more of an explanation. When she didn’t follow, he pivoted to quirk a brow at her. “Are you going to help?”
This was utterly ridiculous. She’d figured Kane wanted her assistance with something dark market related or perhaps within the realm of alchemology. She had not, however, foreseen his wanting her manpower. All at once, Kane’s disappointment over Jules’s not joining them made sense.
I’d have preferred a fourth set of hands, he’d said.
Preposterous.
“We’re not going to be able to lift that,” Zaria said, staring dubiously at the pianoforte. “Even with the three of us, it’ll be far too heavy.”
“Ah.” Kane tapped his temple with a finger. “But that’s why we have Fletcher.”
Fletcher winked, beginning to unbutton his coat.
A moment later, he stood before them in nothing but a white shirt on top, and Zaria felt her cheeks heat.
She’d never seen so many muscles on a person.
The steep taper of his neck to shoulders alone was ridiculous, and frankly, she was surprised that his shirt was enough to contain his biceps.
Everything about this was astonishingly improper, even to someone like Zaria, who had seen more than enough partially clothed men in the slum.
“I don’t want to ruin my coat,” Fletcher said, perhaps misinterpreting her stare as horror. “Sorry.”
She set her jaw, mouth a firm line as Kane came up beside her.
“Ready?”
He had rolled the sleeves of his shirt up to the elbow. He was muscular in his own way but leaner, more sinewy. Even in the relative darkness, she could see dark markings along his forearms. More arrow tattoos? She tilted her head slightly, trying to make them out.
Kane caught her looking and shoved his sleeves back down, scowling.
“What are those?” she couldn’t help asking. “On your arms.”
“Nothing,” he snapped back. “How strong would you say you are?”
Zaria only continued to stare at him. She’d obviously knocked Kane off-kilter, though she couldn’t figure out why. What was he hiding? Had he worked for someone else prior to Ward? Someone with a different way of marking their most trusted men?
But no, that didn’t make sense: Kane said he’d been with Ward for years. He was too young to have had a previous employer.
So Zaria let it go. What difference did it make?
“I’m strong enough,” she said defensively, though it wasn’t like she had much idea either way; women didn’t often do this kind of labor. “That said, I don’t think I’m the lift-a-pianoforte kind of strong.”
“Do your best,” Fletcher said from around the other side. “I’ll be doing most of the work anyway.”
And that was how Zaria ended up shoving the world’s most unwieldy instrument up a makeshift ramp and onto the wheeled pallets Fletcher had supplied.
He hadn’t lied—he was definitely doing most of the work—but sweat beaded on Zaria’s upper lip as she braced a shoulder against the wood.
The pianoforte had three legs—two in the front, one in the back—and at Kane’s direction, they managed to get the front two onto the first pallet, the back one onto the second.
The pedals, Zaria saw, were attached by a harp-shaped bit of wood attached to the underside of the instrument.
Had she known anything at all about music, she might have thought it was beautiful. It certainly had to be expensive.
When they had finished, Zaria slumped against the wall, a dawning horror washing over her.
“Wait. How the hell are we going to get it down the front steps?”
Kane shoved back a handful of sweaty hair. His shirtsleeves had ridden up again, and this time Zaria could see the shape of a tiny black x against the skin of his wrist. She stared at it a moment but didn’t dare wonder aloud what it meant.
“You think we didn’t plan for that?” Kane said. “We’re going to back slang it. There are double doors leading out into the garden. It’ll fit,” he added before Zaria could ask.
Well then. “You’ve been here before.”
“Of course we’ve been here before,” Fletcher cut in, shrugging his coat back on. “We plan ahead. Surely you know that by now.”
Zaria watched them wheel the pianoforte through the entryway and past the staircase, to the rear of the house. Kane didn’t ask for her help, and she didn’t offer it. She wished Jules was here. He’d roll his eyes at these two, equal parts horrified and amused by what they were doing.
She hated that she’d hurt him. Her whole life, her instinct had been to hide her fears and weaknesses.
When you grew up in Devil’s Acre, that was what you learned.
Even those who suffered the most strove to maintain their pride.
Jules, though, was different. He’d always been vulnerable, at least around Zaria.
He told her the truth even when she didn’t want to hear it.
All you’ve done is lose money, just like your father did.
He’d been right, though, hadn’t he? No matter how inadvertently, Zaria was struggling the same way her father had. She was a burden to Jules and George, and she’d potentially endangered both their lives.
“You can stay here if you like,” Kane called back to her, “but I really wouldn’t recommend it.”
Her head snapped up. Kane and Fletcher were already maneuvering the pianoforte through the glass doors, moonlight gilding the bone-white keys.
She followed, pausing amid the shrubbery.
The air smelled like damp leaves, the scent of factory smoke imperceptible for once.
It felt like a fever dream, standing in a well-maintained garden beneath the shroud of night, a rolling pianoforte atop the grass.
It seemed impossible that they wouldn’t get caught.
But then again, who would be keeping an eye out for pianoforte thieves?