11
Myria smiled as she watched Aurelias stride out of sight. Quite a sweet fellow, really, which was a pleasant change from . . . well, almost everyone she knew. It’d been jolly, making mischief under his nose.
But now, it was time to work. Myria set her vase on the windowsill, then settled down on her bed with a book she’d filched from the hotel parlor.
It was ten to midnight when a single spark fluttered onto the covers. Lightning flickered to her fingertips. It was time.
“Come in,” she called, leafing to the next page.
An amber line cut through the lamplit darkness, sweeping round into a circle.
Leo stepped out, still clad in his illusory disguise.
He leaned against the edge of his gateway and grinned.
He was dressed like a gentleman, sharp as anything: a black silk coat and waistcoat chased with gold, a matching tricorn hat, a crisp white shirt, and boots polished to a blinding shine.
“Look at thee, lady of leisure,” he said, tossing her a parcel. “Here. You’ll need it, where we’re off to.”
Myria caught it and tugged off the string. She found herself looking at a folded gown, glimmering and black—the kind of Carysium Street camouflage that cost a limb or two and still looked cheap.
“I’m intrigued,” she said, coming upright and shaking out the garment. She’d expected Cassia to be lurking in some kind of unlicensed mechanistry workshop. She’d clearly been wrong.
“It’ll make sense when you see it,” said Leo. “Don armor. If you need help with the corsetry, your gallant knight awaits.”
She tossed her book at him by instinct, and he ducked just as habitually. With that, Myria swept into her washroom and changed.
Leo had always had a good eye for a woman’s figure, and the gown fitted almost to a tee.
The resizing charms did the rest. In moments, she stood before the mirror in a daring black affair that glimmered like the night about her figure.
She painted jet around her eyes and red on her lips, then liberated her hair from its tight pins.
“Much improved,” Leo declared when she emerged, examining her from head to foot. “I wager your guard dog wouldn’t recognize you.”
“If he met a woman in this getup, he’d be looking resolutely elsewhere,” she said, recalling their visit to Carysium Street.
“Poor fool.”
“Be kind. He was a gentleman. Now, shall we?”
“He hasn’t set vigilantus charms?”
“Not inside the room.”
“How small minded,” Leo said, then offered her his arm. She took it and turned to the gateway. Dead ahead, she could feel the air humming and flickering with a power she hadn’t tasted in three years. With a smile, she stepped into the darkness.
The roar of Carysium Street was fit to shake the stars. By day, she’d have called the spirit of the place unbridled. By night, it was outright unhinged.
Phaetons careered down the streets at dangerous speeds, and revelry broke like thunderheads on every side. Smoke and plum wine scented the hot wind. A hundred spells of pleasure and protection battled on the air, lifting fibers from Myria’s gown and leaving an electric tang in her mouth.
“By Mercias, I’ve missed this place!” Leo called over the din. He grinned at the sights like an ill-behaved schoolboy, drinking in the chaos as though it welled from the fountain of youth.
“After all of a week’s absence?”
“I only ever visited during the day! Couldn’t risk an after-dark jaunt, what with all the graysiders about.”
“Then why chance it now?”
“You’re here, old girl! What could go amiss?”
The list would’ve taken half the night, so Myria only smiled and carried on.
Their stroll ended at the Cloak & Dagger.
From the outside, it seemed one of the more sedate offerings of Carysium Street—a cheap gaming house playing second fiddle to the dissolute symphony of its peers.
Nonetheless, once the usher led them down a pitch-black winding stair and into the world beneath, the place threw off its disguise.
Myria wouldn’t have said all hell broke loose, but a good part of it had taken a wrong turn on its way home and ended up in the Cloak & Dagger’s basement.
Flames burned beneath the black glass floor, licking at the surface like spirits demanding release.
An arcanic storm broke in the dome above, where crimson lightning forked through tar-black clouds. The air bent and swam with heat.
A drumbeat throbbed beneath the strains of foreign music, but the din was fiercest in the center of the room.
There, the floor dropped away into a pit ringed with hollering revelers.
Myria raised an eyebrow. She couldn’t help but wonder whether Leo had been searching the place, or just stopped for a pint and had a stroke of luck.
At once, though, she could see why Cassia had sought refuge among that crowd. They were all of them faceless. Every man and woman in the place wore winged arcanic masks that glimmered like night-lit water.
An attendant wordlessly pressed two silver pins into Myria’s glove. She slid them into her hair above each ear and felt the same enchantment rush across her face. Leo followed suit, and together, they set out into the crowd.
Several minutes’ struggle saw them to the center of the room. There, she saw what was stoking up the pandemonium.
A pit of pure black glass plunged down before them, its floor ablaze with live coals. Two men circled in the ring, their bloodied bare fists raised. Their boots hissed with each step as the patrium charms flickered against the heat.
Betting slips flicked back and forth, and the spectators bellowed provocations. One of the fighters feinted forward, only to meet a brutal uppercut to the jaw. Blood dashed to the coals and landed with a hiss, evaporating into scarlet smoke.
Cassia’s kind of haunt, indeed.
Leo tapped her arm and jerked his head to the left. She struggled after him, until he came to a halt beside a figure in the Cloak & Dagger’s livery. He leaned back against the railing and tapped his neighbor on the shoulder.
“Evening, there. I’d like to lay a wager.”
The servant turned like a woman making ready to throw a punch. Her face was shimmering blackness, and her hair was bound too tightly to make out, but Myria knew that boisterous stance at once.
“Bookie’s over there. Shove off.”
“Oh, no, friend, it’s a wager concerning you,” Leo shot back, a smirk in his voice. “Specifically, the look on your face when you see who I’ve brought with me. Though I suppose the look on your face is a bit of a delicate subject, these days.”
Cassia’s head moved sharply, her fingers curling, her weight shifting to her toes. Then Leo whipped the feather from his sleeve, and she came up short.
“You?” she exclaimed. “You son of a . . . surprisingly sophisticated woman, rest her soul. And . . .”
“Me,” Myria added with a little wave, leaning out from behind Leo. She couldn’t see her friend’s face, but she still knew the moment that a beaming smile spread across it. The sight threw another log on the fire in her spirit. Her friends, her crew—alive, and slowly, surely, drawing back together.
“You little blighters,” said Cassia in a voice of wonderment. Her head flicked hesitantly between them and the fight, and she jerked her thumb to the edge of the room.
“I’m invigilating. My shift ends at half past. Hate to ask, but . . . can it wait? If I slink off early, the boss’ll kill me.”
“Of course. We’ve all had quite enough of that,” said Myria. “Still, if you’re game for it . . . I’ve a mind to turn the tables on that score.”
“Blimey. They didn’t do a very good job of executing you,” Cassia said half an hour later, throwing herself into a chair.
Myria smiled as she perused the menu. The ruckus from the fight had died away, but the roar of drinking crowds was making good the deficiency. They stood no chance of being overheard.
“Just can’t get the tyrants, these days,” she said. “Is it safe to speak here?”
“’Tis. You don’t get graysiders down here, believe it or not,” said Cassia. “Prefecture don’t give a toss about the place either, so long as the club keeps up with its fees.”
“Sterling stuff.”
“They offered you the bargain, then? Pretend to die so the Magisterium could keep a lid on the mess, then sod off three years later?”
“Quite so. They sent me to Halcyon. You?”
“Haideum,” said Cassia, with no little pride.
“I say. What did you do?”
“Might’ve . . . walloped one or two of the guards before my trial. What about the smirking menace there?”
Leo gave her a saccharine smile.
“Escaped. Not to worry. I’ve already raked him over the coals for it,” said Myria. She settled on a drink and swept her finger across its name. A scarlet glimmer of arcana dashed from the page and dived down the black hole in the center of the table. She flicked a coin after it.
“I’m surprised they let you out early, if you were making yourself so pleasant to all and sundry,” Leo said.
“I wasn’t thick enough to knock the guards at Haideum,” she muttered. “Made myself useful. Free mechanistry jobs. Saved the splitwits so much money, they had their solstice party at Arcadium Hall two years running. And what’s the matter with your voice?”
“Tried to drink myself to death on Tyrant’s Rum,” he said glumly.
“What, and you failed? Rank incompetence.”
“I’m suing the manufacturer. Now, much as I’ve missed the old insulting matches, Myria, perhaps you ought to get to business.”
“Business?” asked Cassia, selecting a drink of her own.
“What, you thought she’d visit you for pleasure?” Leo said. Cassia flicked him a decidedly uncivil gesture.
“That night,” said Myria, “from the moment I left you on the roof, what did you see?”
“Well . . . the two of us went back down to the vault and told ’em he was coming,” said Cassia, her shoulders stiffening. “Hadria told Leo to double back and find you. Lysander started fiddling with that box, and we kept on hauling out the treasure.”
“For how long?”
“Few minutes? Wasn’t really counting. Then Hadria felt some kind of spell run through the building. Thought it might’ve been an alarm.”