2
Horror seized Myria by the throat. She dropped to her knees at Leo’s side and snatched his wrist. There, a heartbeat—or was that her own pulse in her fingertips?
No time. He’s dead or he isn’t. Find the others.
Fear spurred her to her feet. She dashed into the black glass corridor, counting paces, then skittered to a halt at a hundred. She stopped and pawed along the wall, knowing she risked waking a curse with every touch, until her hand plunged into a cool barrier. She dived through.
“Hadria, we’ve been—”
By the Pantheon.
She threw up her arm against the blaze of blood-rust light that met her. An image burned itself upon her eyelids—the hard black silhouette of Cassia on her knees, something writhing out of her toward a brass box, and the man behind it—
The light died, and the thud of a falling body shook the floor.
Myria blinked against the afterglare. Through the faint red lights that danced around her vision, she saw Vixius lower the box and bow his head.
Lysander lay crumpled on the ground amid a pile of treasures, and Hadria .
. . Gods below, she stood pinned like an insect to the vault door, an iron spar driven clean through her shoulder.
“Oh, Myria . . .” said Vixius, his face turned away. “I told you to wait on the roof.”
His fingers moved. A crushing impact threw her from her feet. Her head rang with a snap like breaking bone, and in a blink, the world was gone.
A crash. A shout. The sound of running feet above, boots heavy on the marble. A gasping voice nearby, fighting to draw breath through agony.
The world was tilting. The room swayed before her, cut through with blades of light. The stench of blood engulfed her.
Myria blinked hard. She lay crumpled in a heap against the wall. Pain blasted red spots through her vision. When she moved, her stomach revolted, driving her to her hands and knees. She reached out blindly, and her hand met something warm.
An image swam into view. A body lay before her. She would have taken it for Cassia, but when her eyes fell on its face, pure horror thrust her back. Its features were gone, and in their place lay surging darkness, collapsing and re-forming like living tar.
A cry ripped her back to the world. Hadria spasmed against the wall, her coat drenched crimson. Deep blue arcana sputtered in her hand as she fought to cut the iron spar that held her there. Blood pooled at her feet in the dying light. The surface shivered to the beat of nearing footsteps.
“No. Hadria. No, no . . .” Myria’s gut plunged. She scrambled up and lurched toward her teacher.
“Break off the end,” Hadria gasped, narrowing the arcanic beam like a cutting torch across the metal. Myria seized the spar and snapped. With an awful sound, Hadria ripped herself free and collapsed into Myria’s hold. She choked back a scream, shuddering and convulsing.
“Vixius,” she rasped. “He betrayed us.”
“We’ve got to find a—”
“They’re coming. The prefecture. There’s no time,” Hadria whispered. She heaved in a breath, clamping one hand to the wound, then locked her eyes with Myria’s. “There’s no way out, but I can give you a chance. By all that’s holy, take it.”
Myria had no time to reply before Hadria thrust one bloodied hand to her chest. A punch of arcana rocked her where she stood.
Her mind turned to a humming blank. She scarcely noticed as her teacher threw another two bolts at the bodies on the floor.
The door crashed open. A rank of prefects stormed inside, and her body moved at someone else’s will. She stepped like an automaton to the attack. The last she saw was a man’s hand rising, arcanic light gathering in his palm. Then it blazed out to consume the world, and everything turned white.
One month later
The ring of the gavel followed her into the depths of Haideum Castle.
Guilty.
The last month blurred in Myria’s memory. Her body had woken before her mind. For weeks, her wits stood mute and motionless, leashed to Hadria’s will by her last curse. She sat and stared into space without a thought of her own.
When at last her mind returned to her, she knew her teacher was gone.
The memories sharpened. There were arcani, lawyers, prefects. A prosecutor watching her through the bars. Thericists arguing in undertones about the traces of a dominius curse in her blood.
There was the marble courtroom of the Magisterium, vast and glorious as some mausoleum of the gods.
The vindictor publius stood and argued for his silent client.
She had not acted of her own will. The mastering mind of the theft—Hadria Chrysanthos, whose infamy spread even now across Carintheum—had controlled her accomplices by means of a dominius curse.
His client remembered nothing of the crime.
The therical expert took the stand. It was impossible to verify that the accused had been under compulsion. The arcanic traces had been faint and scattered. It wasn’t uncommon for thieves to curse themselves when they knew they were about to be caught; she could be one of them.
The magister’s stern voice rang above the mutterings of the jury. If they accepted her defense, it was three years—a mandatory sentence to deter petty criminals from dominius pleas. If they found against her, she would hang.
The jury murmured. The prosecutor smiled.
Guilty.
Hadria’s final ploy to save her friends had failed.
Myria stared down at the last news scroll she’d ever read. For the first time in her life, she’d merited an entry. Her name was printed beside Cassia’s. There they were, two inconsequential accomplices sentenced to death.
Lysander’s fate was worse. Her gut wrenched to see it. He was bound for the eternity cells of Haideum Castle, where they would harvest his arcana until he was used up like a candle.
And Hadria . . . Myria had known her teacher was dead from the moment the curse lifted. The thought thrust a knife into her breastbone and twisted hard. She had no memory of her mother, but fate had given her a consolation. Now it had taken her back.
There was no word of Vixius. She could barely even think his name.
It pulsed like an infected wound in her mind.
She couldn’t look there, couldn’t bear to retrace her steps through that night and wonder what she might have done to stop him.
She’d leapt at an offer too good to be true, and paid the price.
Grief and guilt gnawed at her like tooth rot. After a month, though, there was little left for them to eat. She had but one solace; there was no mention of Leo. Had he been found dead in the vault, the news scrolls would have said. She hoped to mercy that he was halfway to Iseus by now.
The screech of an iron door announced a visitor to the wing. Moments later, a slightly shabby gentleman appeared outside her cell. She recognized her lawyer’s silhouette in the gloom. If he was there to advise her on the prospects of an appeal, he was wasting his time.
“Good morning, Mr. Marinus,” she said, mechanically civil to the last. “If, indeed, it is morning.”
“It is, miss. May I enter?”
She gestured to the empty cell. The lawyer beckoned in a guard, who undid the arcanic locks with a motion of his warden’s rod.
“Confidential, if you please,” Marinus added, stepping inside. The guard turned a fitting on the rod, and a perplexor spell shivered down the bars. Myria stood to offer her guest the chair, but he waved her down.
“Thank you, Miss Cadessa,” he said. “I . . . scarcely know how to begin. Something’s come to light following your attacker’s execution.”
It wrenched to hear him speak of Hadria that way, but she’d carried the pretense this far. She might as well endure it to the end.
“Indeed?” she said with echoing calm.
“Well . . . for the purposes of the trial, we only had the traces we could draw from you. Weak evidence for a dominius plea, but the prefecture wouldn’t release anything else.”
“And the jury didn’t believe she’d cursed me.”
“No. So I sought an independent examination of her arcanic remains after the morgue released her corpse. The results arrived last night.” He tapped the sheaf of papers in his arms and smiled.
“The evidence is strong. On the night of the theft, Hadria Chrysanthos cast three dominius curses. Curses that match the traces in your blood.”
Something in her gave a dull kick at the news.
“I see,” she said. She knew at once that it meant something—but that something was hope. She had no courage left for that.
“It’s grounds for an appeal,” Marinus went on, “but Pantheon forbid it were straightforward. The Praetorium’s taken a close interest in the case, and the city’s up in arms. They need . . .”
“A culprit,” she said. The lawyer nodded.
“I had an irregular discussion with the Magisterium. In short, an appeal would be . . . most unwelcome. The Praetorium’s already capitalizing on a nicely wrapped-up tale of thwarted villainy.
They won’t want it disturbed. They certainly won’t want anyone asking why the prefecture denied us access to adverse evidence. ”
“And the court daren’t cross the Praetorium.”
“No. Indeed, I fear you’d come upon a fatal accident before you ever reached trial. But . . .”
He slid a page from the sheaf and set it on the table.
Myria frowned at the Magisterium seal at the foot.
It was the record of sentencing for one Donna Rosara, condemning her to a three-year dominius penitence in Halcyon Hall.
She knew that place. The graysiders would snort and pat a girl on the head if they found out she’d been there.
It was a jail for people who didn’t mean business.
“What’s this?”
“A mutually beneficial solution,” said the lawyer. “So far as the public’s concerned, Myria Cadessa walks to her death. Carintheum has its blood sacrifice, and the judgment of the Magisterium stands. Whereas you, Miss Rosara . . .”
He pressed the papers toward her.
“Three years, and you walk free,” he finished. Myria frowned.
“Myria Cadessa dies? Officially?”
“In the eyes of the law and the state. Imperial secrets. Suffice it to say, the Magisterium’s eager to ensure that word doesn’t spread. Not even to the Praetorium.”
“Who’s this Rosara girl, then?”
“A convenient fiction. They’ll find a minor crime and pin it to her name.”
A dust-dry laugh escaped her. Good grief, this whole business was Carinth politics all over.
“It’s up to you, Miss Cadessa. If you’re prepared to risk an appeal, I’ll fight it for you. Even so, you may prefer to avail yourself of the offer.”
She looked up and attempted a smile. Marinus seemed a decent fellow—never smug or solicitous, and hardworking for pay that couldn’t even buy him a good coat. He’d done no less than win her a miracle.
A miracle that part of her no longer wanted.
I can give you a chance, Hadria said in her memory. By all that’s holy, take it. But what for?
Myria looked to the tarnished mirror above her washbasin, and a sorry mimic of her face looked back. Her curls had fallen lank for lack of sunlight. Her brown complexion had paled and yellowed, and her dark eyes loomed too large above ashy rings. There seemed little left to save.
A warm gloss blurred her eyes. Myria looked back to the news scroll to avoid the lawyer’s gaze.
She turned the spindle, and the bright arcanic paintings reeled across her mind, driving out thought—the gowns of Lumenia Street, some smiling candidate standing for a Praetorium by-election, the new Cordilon Seraph phaeton—
Wait.
She scrolled back so violently that she almost broke the spindle. As she ran the reel again, the candidate waved from the stage, gold and handsome as a Pantheon statue. Julius Evander, she read.
Unfit for office? said the headline. Praetorium candidate questions why Magister-General Valorus failed to account for Elysius break-in. As the image moved, Evander tossed a fountain pen in his gloved hand—spinning it twice, then catching it by the tip.
“Miss Cadessa?” Marinus prompted, hesitating.
The pen spun again. The man snatched it from midair with hummingbird precision.
Vixius standing in the watchtower, tossing his dagger and catching it over and over again. Vixius in the darkness of the vault, that brass box in his hands as something streamed into it from Cassia’s chest. Her friend’s features caving into formless blackness, as if . . .
As if someone had taken her power to change her face at will. Taken it, and used it.
“This man,” Myria said abruptly, tapping the scroll. “I’ve never seen him before.”
“Oh, no, he’s . . . some new candidate for Upper Palladius,” said Marinus, looking a little taken aback. “The last fellow toppled off the perch a few weeks ago. Heart failure.”
“Heart failure,” she said distantly.
“Can’t say I know much about the new chap, ’cept that he’s after the Magister-General’s office.
Keen on crushing the grayside, so that’ll go down well with the old guard.
” Marinus shot a wry look at the headline.
“He’s certainly been milking the break-in for all it’s worth. His opponent’s taken a battering.”
Magister-General. The praetor in charge of the courts, the prefecture, and the security of the city. There’s change afoot in the grayside, Vixius said in her memory, and in Carintheum.
There damned well was, now.
And he sold you for it. He’d won himself the box, Cassia’s mercuria and a swipe at his opponent, all at once. He’d used Hadria’s corpse as a stepping stone to power.
The spindle cracked between her fingers. Something was stirring like a maelstrom in her chest, churning and widening.
Then it froze solid.
The answer was simple. Divine symmetry. He’d stolen her friend’s powers? His were forfeit. He’d ripped the prize of a lifetime from their hands? She’d take everything he had. He’d as good as murdered Hadria? He’d suffer worse. It didn’t matter how. She’d have three years to decide that.
Myria set aside the scroll and took up the sealed Magisterium sentence. Marinus had given her a miracle, alright. Myria Cadessa would be dead to all Carintheum. Vixius would never see her coming.
“Miss Rosara accepts her fate,” she said. “I wonder, though. My fellow victims . . .”
“I fear the Xanthian gentleman’s too powerful for a jury to accept that a dominius curse could overcome him, even on this new evidence,” he said. “As for the lady . . . client confidentiality forbids.”
Nonetheless, a smile twitched through the gravity of his countenance. Myria nodded.
“Thank you, sir. You’ve been most helpful. Best I prepare myself for execution.”
“Glad to be of assistance, Miss Cadessa,” said Marinus. “I shan’t see you again.”
That night, Myria Cadessa fell from the gallows to oblivion—and then, the game began.