22 #3
“Still, let’s not speak of politics,” he went on, smiling.
“Well, we could always speak of something fearfully dull,” she suggested. “Your servants are nicely turned out. Who’s your family tailor?”
“Delphinium’s. Those are exquisite shoes. The maker?”
“Corvin and Daughters.”
“No, you’re right, that’s torture.” He sighed. “Politics it is.”
The ship touched down by late morning. Myria’s heart still ran fast as she crossed the gangway. There’d been a dangerous pleasure in the dance—in tricking that trickster, face-to-face. Only when she stepped into the open air did it strike her how narrowly she’d escaped the predator’s den.
She and Leo took a cab to Carysium Street.
After a short and life-threatening wend through the crowds, the driver deposited them in front of Perilum’s House of Chance.
The curses swept in like a thunderhead as she crossed the threshold.
Myria felt them sniffing over her for danger, before the doorman glanced to his instruments and nodded her through.
Clean, she thought, releasing a short breath. Those high-stakes gaming houses handled vast sums every night, and their shields were strong enough to shred almost any suspicious arcana.
“No tracking spells, then,” Myria said, as she and Leo passed into the rowdy gaming rooms.
“No,” said Leo. “I suppose the wolf doesn’t expect to be hunted. Just as well. You were trying your luck, you raving—”
“Not a bit of it,” she lied with a sly smile. “And fine work on your part. The little double act worked nicely.”
“Seemed to. Still, no doubt he’ll be prying into my imaginary affairs by sunset.”
Then, Myria spied a familiar silhouette in a fireside chair and pulled up short. Lysander. Her pulse kicked. What was he doing there?
She weaved through the pulsing crowd to join him, then took a seat before the indigo flames. Silhouettes of dancing women played across the hearthrug, and the air was hazed thick with tobacco smoke.
“Morning,” he said in a careful undertone. “Before you ask, nothing’s amiss. Did he take the bait?”
“Yes. What’s the matter?”
“First chance I’ve had for a word without Aurelias listening,” he said, leaning forward in his chair with steepled fingers. “He said he broke his faculties protecting the centurion while she turned back a pair of Eversor missiles?”
“Mmm.”
“It wasn’t the centurion who stopped them. It was him.”
“Him?” Myria exclaimed at a whisper. “He told you that?”
“No, but it’s the only thing that’d explain his injuries. His faculties had shattered from the left hand back. He caught something immensely powerful with his right hand, arced it through his body, then cast it out.”
“No. Catching an artillery bolt bare-handed? It would’ve burned right through him!” Leo protested, but Lysander shook his head.
“His faculties had perfect natural amplifying conformation. They could’ve mirrored almost anything. Besides, the speed it would’ve happened, it’s like . . . running your hand through a flame so fast it doesn’t burn. I’d wager it was throwing the arcana back that broke him, not catching it.”
“So why would he say . . .” Myria began. Then, the lyrin dropped, and a grin dashed across her face. “Oh.”
“Bought his rations with the secret, I’d say. He’s well-heeled for a wounded soldier from a common family. Most of his sort are on the street.”
Well, I’ll be dashed, she thought, mind ringing with the new intelligence. Perhaps he’d worked a bargain out of the centurion . . . but that kind of grubby opportunism wasn’t like him.
No, she fancied, it’d been the other way around.
He’d been a wreck in the wake of the battle, and Gloriana had seen her chance.
The chance to take credit for what he’d done.
Among the highborn of Carintheum, reputation was power—and if there was one thing the powerful liked, it was more power.
She should’ve admired the guile of it. Instead, it made her feel strangely sick.
And chances are, he thinks she did him a favor.
Still, there was a part of her mind that ever sniffed for opportunity, and it pricked up. For a centurion with so many victories to her name, stealing credit for one more seemed a curiously unnecessary risk.
“Sad thing is, he thinks it’s irreparable,” Lysander added.
“It isn’t?” asked Myria, sitting up straight.
“Well, if he told the surgeons that the damage came from a blunt arcanic shock, they’d have seen no rhyme or reason to the shattering,” he said, looking faintly uncomfortable.
“If they’d broken backward from his casting hand, though .
. . with a very patient surgeon, I’d wager you could piece them back together. ”
Well, well, thought Myria. Perhaps that was it. The thin end of a wedge that she could drive between Aurelias and the centurion. Perhaps . . .
“Leo, old boy, are you feeling light fingered and morally agile?” she asked.
“As ever.”
“Capital. Lysander, you’d know the therical surgeons who’d consult in a case like his. Are there many?”
“Not more than five or six in all Carintheum. Shall I give the list to Leo?”
She leaned back in her chair and smiled. Those chaps had a marvelous ability to read minds.
“That’d be splendid,” she said. “Take a look through their records, won’t you? See if there’ve been any similar cases. Arcani with broken powers, not long after a certain centurion’s great deeds.”
The hint didn’t miss its target. Leo’s smirk turned wolfish.
“I’d be delighted.”
“Course you would,” she said, then whipped Evander’s signed and sealed calling card from her file. “Now, let’s scurry hence. We’re going shopping.”