9
Myria spent the next two mornings shedding light about the prisons of Carintheum, her prefect trailing after her. The whole affair clearly had him bored to death—and thank the Low Gods, or she’d never have gathered a month’s worth of intelligence in three days.
Aurelias paid no mind to the chatter of spinsters, widows and night soil men, and it was his loss. Some of them had been visiting Haideum Castle for twenty years or more. They had diamonds to offer, if a girl was prepared to sift through enough coal to find them.
There’d been no sign of Cassia so far, though, and by midday, Myria had reached the final prison. By the time she emerged into the sun an hour later, she was confident that her friend was either dead or free. Knowing Cassia, she’d bank on the latter. That woman didn’t know how to say die.
Blighter. How’d she get out before me? Behaved like a bally seraph, I did.
Myria paused outside, thinking, then turned to Aurelias.
“Well, sir, I think I’ll repair to the Althion for luncheon,” she said. He smiled and took her arm with clockwork courtesy.
If only they behaved that nicely when they weren’t under imperial orders, she thought wistfully.
She kept up a flurry of polite conversation all the way to the hotel, then retreated to her room to dress. She’d barely stepped into her washroom before an amber cinder fluttered from the air.
Anticipation leapt up in her chest. She paused and gave the fraction of a nod.
The mirror shimmered with arcana, and Leo appeared in the world inside the glass. He leaned against the back wall of the washroom, grinning lazily and walking a perfume vial across his fingers. Myria glanced over her shoulder to find the article missing. She turned back and raised an eyebrow.
“I’ll take that look of smug self-satisfaction to mean you found her,” she said.
“Mmm. Didn’t make myself known, though, in case she took the same dim view of my liberty as you did.”
Myria hid a smirk. Just as well. Cassia had an uncivil habit of expressing her dim views with a screwdriver to the privates.
“Excellent. Where was she?”
“Nowhere respectable. Easier to show you,” said Leo, holding out a hand. At once, the fingers of temptation beckoned. It was a wrench to shake her head.
“No. Keep to the plan. Wait until my guard dog’s gone to chase another bone,” she said. “I’ll put a vase on the windowsill when it’s safe to come and fetch me. In the meantime, look for a hideout. Somewhere safe from the grayside and the law.”
“As my imperatrix commands,” said Leo, replacing the stolen perfume vial.
“As for Vixius, not much to tell. Evander’s a well-behaved chap.
No unsavory associations, no naughty habits, and he keeps a careful eye on his money.
He’s at the Divitorium every other day, tenth hour sharp. No sign of a man of business, though.”
“Excellent. Protection?”
“Doubtless, but I couldn’t see it.”
“Not to worry. I’ll take a look for myself tonight.”
“Tonight?” he said, coming upright with alarm.
“Mm. There’s a rally.”
“Yes, I saw the playbills, but . . .”
“Miss Rosara felt inclined to show a little civic interest.”
Leo seemed to spend a moment wrestling with his better judgment. As usual, it was a short fight. He blew out air through his teeth and nodded.
“Shall I buy you some illusions?”
“No. He’ll have protections capable of cutting through them, or I’m a scum-sprite. We’ll be relying on good old-fashioned artifice for the whole game.”
Leo pursed his lips, then pushed off the wall and ambled nearer to the mirror, watching her with frowning dark eyes.
“Are you certain you won’t do something inadvisable, old girl?” he asked in a low voice.
“When do I not?”
For once, the glib words met a solemn reply. Leo stared her down, waiting for a proper answer. Myria hardened her expression and set her hands on either side of the sink, facing him squarely through the mirror.
“Three years, Leo. That’s how long I’ve had to plan this,” she said. “That’s how long I’ve had to learn to hate that man. I’ll leave him regretting what he did to us for a damn sight longer than it takes to bleed to death.”
Leo dropped his gaze and gave a shallow nod. With a tip of his hat, he turned about and vanished.
Myria stepped back from the mirror. Lightning flickers of anticipation woke in her fingertips. Tonight, the wheels would begin to turn in earnest.
Tonight, she’d come face-to-face with Vixius.
Politics. It was Carintheum’s favorite blood sport, and all the hounds had gathered to the fray.
The great mass flooded through the amphitheater at the foot of the Praetorium.
Patricians and plebeians, praetors and candidates all roared and jostled in the pit.
The strings of the crowd thrummed with fervor, and the noise was audible for miles around.
Myria stepped into the chaos with a smile. Sunset inked the sky with blood-red gold, and blazed off the copperblossom leaves that littered the ground like coins. Campaigners ringed the amphitheater, some hollering and rattling papers, others declaiming from the steps with some attempt at dignity.
The flags of a whole continent of conquered nations waved behind them.
Xantheus and Iseus flew like favored pupils at the head.
Aerin and Isra fluttered mutinously beside them, while Hjelvak hung at half-mast like the class dunce.
The rest waved demurely in the hot evening breeze, hoping to mercy that the master wouldn’t notice them.
She wasn’t two steps through the gates before it started. A bespectacled man foisted a pamphlet upon her, a wild-eyed youth with hands dipped in scarlet ink pressed a bloody print around her wrist, a merchant shook a bottle in her face and beckoned for a coin—
“Imperatrix resurgias!” the young man shouted. “Restore the imperators! For too long, Carintheum has dwindled and grown gray under the rule of our so-called republic—”
“Did you know, miss, that the cost of maintaining the colonies has risen to an average annual impost of two hundred lyrin per subject? Terminas Imperia proposes that they be rendered self-governing vassal states subject to—”
“Plebias lex! Plebias lex! Decent pay for the manufactory men!”
“Thank you, thank you,” said Myria, accepting the pamphlets like equinox gifts. “Is it, sir, is it? I say. That’s fascinating. Thank you.”
Aurelias waited beside her with the air of a penned-in racehorse. She’d taken them there seemingly on a whim after spying the crowd on her evening walk. No matter that she wasn’t eligible to vote. She was hardly the only one there for the show.
“No longer will the Caelesti stand for the appalling debasement of the arcanic arts!” proclaimed a man in crimson robes. “These therical industries would take the powers of nature and leash them like a dog! Well, I tell you, nature shall demand its price!”
Myria fought a grin as the prefect paused to listen.
She dallied with him, basking in the chaos.
Some enterprising fellow was selling rotten vegetables near the statue of Deus Jupitas, and seemed to be making a roaring trade out of it.
Insults flew like darts between the speakers.
It would never have passed muster in the civilized old Xanthian republic, but there was no party discipline in Carintheum.
Ever since the last imperator had bid his head farewell, the praetors had fought for their seats and offices alone, with every weapon at their disposal.
Still, she wasn’t there to gawk. She skimmed the crowd for what she sought—and in moments, she saw it.
Praetor Evander stood near the heart of the amphitheater, an audience gathering close around him. He caught her gaze at once and stole it like the thief beneath his skin. Against her will, her heart gave a violent thud.
There was something curiously vivid in that man, as though he were painted in brighter tints and sharper lines than all the rest. His gestures were decided, bold, his bright brown eyes alive, his manner as intense as sunlight narrowed through a lens. He’d chosen his face well.
I wonder what he did with the body.
“I’m going to listen to him,” she declared, gesturing at Evander. Aurelias snapped himself from the Caelesti’s thrall and followed.
After half a minute’s struggle, she claimed a place near the back of Evander’s audience—and there, she caught the first sound of her master’s voice in three long years.
“—but no matter. The greatest empires rarely fall to threats from without. They fragment from within. Already, crime gnaws at your peace. This grayside, as they call it, grows.”
Something jerked in Myria’s breastbone. That was Vixius’s voice, but it was changed, like old wood lacquered to a gleam. It was rich as honey, warm as dancing fire. She could have listened to him reciting logarithmic tables and been content.
“Yet Praetor Valorus slept at his post and let the chaos rise,” said Evander. “Three years past, it well and truly broke its banks.”
Elysius. The whisper slithered around the amphitheater.
“And what has your Magister-General done to stem the tide? Nothing. Soon, it’ll be lapping up our doorsteps. Over the thresholds and into our homes.”
More mutters, hisses, pamphlets rattled in agreement. She had to admire his audacity, given who’d been responsible for ushering that particular tide up the beach.
“Harvesters snatch children from the streets, then drain them dry and throw away their bodies like used parchment,” he pressed on—and dash her if she didn’t hear a crack in his voice.
Her spirit soured. Gods below, he’d made an art form of hypocrisy.
Somehow, though, that voice made it sound right.
Even as she bristled against it, it wound soft tendrils around her nerves and stroked them into submission.
“All the while, our rulers live in guarded mansions, safe and sound. They lack the will to act. But we—we—do not. The same will that brought the world to heel can restore our city. It will not fail you. I will not fail you.”
The man knew better than to overstay his welcome. He stepped back, and the crowd broke into a chorus of abuse and adulation. Myria joined them, careful not to be the still point in the mass. Aurelias glanced up at the sudden din, then offered a distracted clap or two.
Evander raised a hand, and servants flocked in, rolling barrels of acra—a commoners’ drink, favored of the skint, of blackberries and watered vinegar.
Music struck up nearby, and flames roared to life beneath rows of spitted sparrows.
With a cheer, the crowd dived into the real purpose of the night.
The revels.
Myria paused to drink it all in, savoring the first sip of a wine long denied to her. Then, she fixed her eyes on Evander.
He was making the rounds, shaking hands and sprinkling words like gold dust. Myria swiped a tankard of acra from a groaning table, then tapped the prefect’s arm.
“I’d like to meet some of the speakers,” she said. “Do you mind keeping your distance? If they think you’re my husband, they won’t address me.”
“Of course,” he said, gaze darting over the amphitheater.
She hid a frown. The whole affair seemed to be winding him up like a clockwork toy.
He was almost trembling with the effort of standing still.
An unexpected hook of pity caught her at the sight.
That wasn’t raw impatience; it looked like something nearer pain.
Nonetheless, he stepped aside, and she cut away into the crowd.
She traced the trajectory of Evander’s smiling, handshaking arc, and marked the interception point. Her pulse came to a fighting pace.
Trust the disguise, she told herself. Trust his expectations.
Myria wended her way into the shelter of a bronze horseman. The reflection in his steed’s flank showed the approaching praetor. She leaned against the sun-warmed metal, sipping her drink and watching.
It was there she spied the first hints of the man beneath the polish. There was something in his pace—the light-footed grace of a thief, not quite cloaked by the ease of the highborn Carinth. His gaze still quartered the room like a man looking for marks. The drink in his hand was untouched.
Something stirred inside her at the flash of Vixius. Corrosive. Cold. Confused.
Moments later, he was upon her. There was no more time to look before she leapt. She stepped out from behind the statue, right in time for a passing cooper to knock her sideways. The tankard tilted in her hand, and she stumbled straight into Praetor Evander.
The splash of acra never touched him. It dashed off the air an inch above his coat sleeve, repelled by some invisible barrier. Her hand, thrown out by instinct, burned as it met his arm. She flinched back, blanched and dropped into a curtsy.
Protections woven right into his clothes. Poxing strong ones. Her palm gave her a smarting proof.
“I do beg your pardon, Praetor!” she exclaimed in a prim and reedy voice.
Already, anonymously dressed men were melting from the crowd. She sized them up in a blink: all clean, well fed, their knuckles unmarked by scuffles. There was a regimented sameness to their movements that smacked of a mercenary firm.
Not graysiders.
“Not at all, dear lady. No harm done,” said Evander. Dash it, that voice made her believe it, too. She looked up.
Something in her revolted at the sight of him.
His face was wrong. A handsome stranger’s features lay plastered like bandages across his own, spun with Cassia’s stolen power.
She felt a wild surge of . . . something.
It should have been hatred—and part of it was, intense as wine—but like wine, it was infused with other flavors that she hadn’t the wit to identify.
Pay attention.
There was no sign that he recognized her, at least. The disguise was working.
“I’m most awfully sorry,” she said, blowing on her palm. “Oh, and your lovely coat . . .”
“I can assure you, madam, I’ve had worse things thrown at me.” With a subtle motion, he waved down the men emerging from the crowd.
“Oh, dear. Did I alarm your guards?”
“They’re overexcited,” he said with a smile. “Paid by the hour, you see, so they’ll lose half their fee if I’m finished off by a tankard of acra before the end of the evening.”
Excellent. One-night hirelings. Not loyal men.
She tittered, curtsied and withdrew.
Myria was halfway across the amphitheater before she realized how close they’d been.
If she’d had a dagger to hand, she could have struck Vixius there and then.
The image rushed to her head like alcohol—her blade sliding between the joints of his spine, working slowly up and down. Sickening. Intoxicating.
But then, Hadria flickered in her memory. A half turn, a silent shake of her head. The bloodlust cooled and hardened. A blade to the spine lasted seconds. So would she, if she tried something half so foolish.
Patience.
There were better ways to undo a man.