21
Felix paced the suite as a slow storm brewed inside him. Electric flickers danced across his mind and spurred his feet to motion.
Outside, the thunder crashed, and lightning shook in great white sheets across the dark.
The sky roiled mulberry black. Somewhere out there, Myria took dinner with the man who’d betrayed her.
If she survived it, she was to report to the centurion that night.
Until she returned, the rest of them could only wait.
Well, he could only wait. Leo was absorbed with scribing papers that looked too legitimate to be honest, and Cassia had disappeared to work on the stolen phaeton. Lysander stood before the storm-lit window, spinning arcana with a look of diamond-cutting focus.
The sight beckoned Felix to his side. The man weaved wire-thin streaks of magic into knots and plaits with surgical precision. They formed a living tapestry three feet wide, flickering with layered shades of blue.
“Is that an arcanic imprint?” he asked.
“For Myria,” Lysander said, his gaze not shifting by an inch. “If Vixius makes an arcanic search of her, and finds she doesn’t have one . . .”
“He’ll know it’s her.” His memory returned to that grim ledger, and an ache woke in his chest. “I can still scarcely believe it.”
“That she survived the excision? Yes. Remarkable, given the methods they used,” Lysander murmured, weaving on. “Slash them open and cut the faculties out raw. It killed most of them on the table.”
“No, I mean . . . that they did it at all. Snatching children off the street. Harvesting their memories, their bones . . . it’s foul.”
“It is.”
“But it hardly seems to trouble her.”
“She’s known nothing else,” said Lysander. “Did the conquests trouble you?”
For a breath, the question silenced him. The image of that firelit battlefield splashed like blood across his mind’s eye. This time, far-off screams rang in his head. Were they his imagination, or his memory?
“That’s . . . not the same,” he managed to say. “We went to war to protect the Pax Carintheus. Break that, and the continent returns to anarchy.”
“I’d venture to say it’s not so simple,” the thericist replied, “but in any case, that isn’t what I meant. To her, that kind of suffering’s the course of nature. To you, the conquests are. Fish don’t tend to philosophize about the waters they swim in.”
Felix set his teeth and said nothing. War had taught him not to let his mind go wandering down certain paths.
Then, Lysander frowned. “How did you know she was harvested, by the way? She didn’t tell you, did she?”
“No. I found the records. Long story.”
“So are you, by the looks of it,” the thericist remarked, pausing in his weaving. “Battle wound?”
“My shields took a blow from a couple of Eversor cannons. It shattered my faculties.”
“I say.”
Lysander flicked his hand in midair. Felix flinched as the image of his arcanic faculties rippled into the space between them. Lysander let out a low whistle, and Leo glanced up from his papers.
“Looks like the Fifth Cavalry rode over them,” the thericist remarked. “Beautiful conformation, though. Perfect natural horseshoe arch. And that mirroring . . . I’d wager you could amplify twentyfold without gauntlets.”
“I could,” said Felix. Faded pride mingled with a kind of pleasant pain at the memory.
“And they give you fellows incandaeum for those battles, don’t they? You’d have been reflecting arcana like a mirror next to the sun.”
“Yes. Quite a feeling.”
Lysander nodded, still studying the golden webwork on the air . . . but no, not just studying. Calculating, as though he were reading something writ in code amid the ruins.
“Are you a therical surgeon?” Felix asked after a moment. Lysander seemed to realize that he’d been staring, and swept away the image.
“I was, before Haideum,” he said. “Beg pardon. Can’t help but admire a work of art when I see it. Must be . . . hard to let them go. Couldn’t bear to have them excised?”
Felix drew breath to answer, but his voice betrayed him. Lysander nodded, eyes far away.
“Of course not,” he said softly. “Part of the soul, isn’t it? Even if it kills you.”
“You’re the first therical surgeon who hasn’t told me to be rid of them,” Felix murmured. Lysander gave a gentle laugh, and something in it set his nerves at ease.
“I’m also the first therical surgeon who’s served time in the eternity cells,” he said. “Trust me, I know. Some things, you can’t relinquish.”
It was bad form for a prefect to sympathize with a criminal. Nevertheless, for the first time since his injury, Felix had the sense that someone understood—that someone grasped just what he’d had, and what he’d lost.
Then, Lysander turned back to his half-spun arcanic imprint. Felix edged over to watch.
“Beautiful work, by the way,” he said.
“I hope so. Myria’s life might depend on it.”
“Do you suppose she can do it?” Felix asked, looking back out into the thundering night. “If this Vixius is as bad as they say . . .”
“Worse,” Lysander answered, “but don’t fret. He’s going to lose.”
Felix tried not to raise an eyebrow at the calm denial. “Why?” he asked. “Because he’s fighting the laws of Carintheum? That means nothing.”
“No,” the thericist said simply. “Because he’s fighting Myria.”
The moment Myria returned, Felix knew she’d done it. A curious burst of relief ambushed him at the sight. She sauntered in with a look of undisguised self-satisfaction, then flicked a calling card from her glove.
“Make ready, Leo, dearest,” she said, flashing out a summer-bright smile. “Our services are sought at the very highest reaches of society.”
Leo nodded grimly, then cut the air with a flick of his feather and snatched a bottle of Tyrant’s Rum from the gash. Myria patted him on the shoulder as she passed.
“Time we reported to the centurion,” said Felix.
“Would it be an unspeakable tragedy if I forgot?” she asked with a sigh, looking back out at the storm.
“From your perspective, yes, I fear it would.”
“Very well. Demanding blighter,” she muttered, turning for her chamber. “I’ll be there on seraph’s wings. And Leo, gallant darling . . . put the kettle on, would you?”
Myria emerged from her chamber nondescript and mousy brown, and drank her coffee with all the haste of a schoolboy on his way to the headmaster’s office. Nonetheless, they stood before the centurion’s desk by midnight.
The thief delivered her report with perfect sincerity—the kind Felix had begun to realize she only affected when she was having a fine old time at the other party’s expense.
She clasped her hands in girlish penitence as she related the extensive list of crimes they’d committed in the last few days.
Gloriana sat back at the end of it, looking vaguely ill.
“You stole a praetor’s phaeton?”
“If you ask me to make an omelet, madam, you’re in no position to be affronted on the eggs’ behalf,” she pointed out. “I’m meeting Vixius in two days’ time. If he bites, we’re halfway there.”
“And if he recognizes you?”
“Then you’ll be deprived of the pleasure of my company,” she said, “and I, the pleasure of my life.”
“I believe I’ll bear up under the strain.”
“Noble of you. Still, be sure to tell your brother to be evasive if the blighter comes knocking,” Myria went on. “Vixius needs to think the bait’s in danger of being scarfed down by his rival.”
“Do you imagine he’ll ask?”
“Perhaps. He might suspect I’m making it up to spur him into the deal.”
“Has he shown any sign of doubting you so far?”
“No, but he wouldn’t. Still thinks like a graysider, that man. He’d lure me back to his den and turn the tables if he thought it was a trick.”
“Then I suppose you’ll find out soon enough,” said Gloriana, reclining in her chair. “In potentially bloody fashion.”
“Something for the memoirs, eh?”
Or the epitaph, thought Felix.
“He has quite the reputation, after all. All those corpses we used to find in the sewers . . . ribs bent outward, spines severed joint by joint . . .”
Felix shot his commander a quizzical look from behind Myria’s back. She seemed to be enjoying it a little too much.
“Oh, he’d have something more artistic in store for me,” said Myria, apparently unmoved. “On that note, were the reigning powers satisfied with Haideum’s emergency drill procedures?”
“No, the truth hasn’t spread within the Praetorium. Still, I can’t warrant that your old master doesn’t know what really happened.”
“Not to worry,” Myria said breezily, and tapped her nose. “All under control. Now, as for the biscuit rations—”
“Get out.”
The thief smiled, then prudently obeyed.