23
Felix watched as Myria and Leo leaned over the table, working a kind of magicless witchcraft on the monogrammed parchment she’d purloined from Evander.
With a flawless hand, Leo had scribed a tailor’s commission seeking new livery for two footmen and a clerk.
They’d melted the praetor’s seal from his card and set it to the foot.
Then, the document complete, they’d changed their faces and struck out for Astrius Lane.
Myria took the lead when they arrived at Delphinium’s Fine Tailoring.
The tailor looked a little taken aback to find a lady marching into the province of men, but her brisk manner and forged papers had him dancing to her tune in minutes.
She put in an order for three new sets of livery on Praetor Evander’s account, quick-smart-if-you-don’t-mind-sir. The tailor was soon dashing to and fro, taking measurements and bringing out wool swatches, while Myria lounged in an armchair drinking coffee.
“We’ll need it within the next two days, Mr. Romanus,” she added, sliding a biscuit from the nearby tray. “Will that trouble you?”
“No, ma’am. Not at all,” the tailor said with a slightly panicked air.
“You’re a hero among men. And I can see no difficulty in putting another fifty lyrin on the account, if needs be,” she said. “Stand up straight, there, Tertius.”
Somehow, Felix found himself obeying.
Within the hour, their measurements were taken, and a sizable sum set down on Evander’s account. Myria gave the tailor a last smile, then clicked the gentlemen to heel and marched away.
He had to admit, he’d begun to admire the duplicitous wretch.
Twenty minutes later, they were back at the Claritas. There, Myria paused to read a note on the table.
“Hmm. Cassia needs to see us,” she said. “Leo, can you take us down there?”
“Best hurry. That blighter’ll have men poking about my office before long.”
He drew his feather and cut a doorway in the air. Felix instinctively recoiled. He had no fond memories of his last trip through one of those.
“It’s quite safe,” said Myria, a smile teasing about her eyes. “Do you trust me?”
“No,” he said at once.
“There’s a pity. Come along.”
With that, she took his arm and pulled him through.
The unnatural pressure of the hidden world closed in around him.
As his eyes adjusted to the silvery gloom, he found himself in a mechanist’s workshop.
Cassia knelt beside Copperchaser’s phaeton, one paintbrush in her hand and another between her teeth.
The vehicle was now dark blue, and both doors shimmered with near-finished replicas of the Evander crest.
“’Ello. Why’d you bring that?” she asked, jerking her thumb at Felix. He managed not to roll his eyes.
“Decorative purposes. What’s the matter?”
“This,” said Cassia, rapping her knuckles against the bonnet. “I took another look at Evander’s phaeton while you lot were swanning about up there. It’s got a chariot-and-four facility.”
“A what?” asked Leo, sparing Felix the trouble.
“Arcanic horses,” she said, gesturing to twin gold attachments near the front wheels. “They’re an option on the stupidly expensive models. Flick a switch, and out come traces and a team of four. Strong, fast and bleedin’ fancy.”
“And Copperchaser didn’t pay for the facility,” Myria surmised, leaning down to examine the attachments. “Do we need them?”
“That’s your judgment, mate, but I expect so. For what you’ve got in mind, I’d wager he’d turn them on. Show ’em who’s boss.”
“Most likely. Can you steal them?”
“Mmm, but it’s a specialist trade. Better to buy ’em off someone who’s already nicked ’em for you.”
“Ah. You know a chap?”
“Yes,” Cassia said grimly. “A graysider. You game for it?”
Myria gave Leo a sidelong glance, then looked to Felix. “Leo’s got to show his face around his office,” she said, “but if he can open a gateway, the rest of us can go.”
Cassia’s expression turned sour.
“Right. Better find some uglier faces,” she said. “This isn’t going to be much fun.”
One back-and-forth trip later, Felix stood at the threshold of another burning amber gateway.
They were each hooded and cloaked in garments that would’ve embarrassed a vagrant scarecrow.
Cassia had buckled on gauntlets, while Myria had two arcanic pistols strapped at her hips beneath a long brown coat. They hadn’t deigned to arm him.
Leo finished cutting the door, then sheathed his feather and turned to Myria.
“Now, be careful,” he said. “It’s not as you remember it. Not since he closed the common gateways.”
“We’ll keep our heads down,” Myria assured him.
He nodded, then reached for a rope that ran to the roof. Amber light raced down to meet his hand, and he vanished in a rush of embers.
“Paint your face, Cass,” said Myria, working tangles through her dulled brown hair. Cassia raised her hands to spin a fresh coat of mercuria, her expression oddly pained. A moment later, Felix recognized the elegant black gleam of her gauntlets.
“You took them?” he exclaimed.
“Mmm. Good ’uns, too, though I can’t fathom what half these switches do,” she said, squinting at the face she’d painted in midair.
“That’s because they’re tailor-made. For me,” said Felix, struggling to rein in his irritation.
“Want a medal?” Cassia said bluntly. Myria threw her a look, but didn’t intervene.
“By my sister,” he pressed.
“Thank her for me.”
Felix drew a sharp breath. With an effort of will, he smothered his temper.
He’d take the gauntlets back at the end of it.
He supposed it was sheer bloody-mindedness that he’d never much wanted the things until someone had taken them.
Now they snatched Diana to his mind. He’d not seen her since he’d fled her laboratory without a word of explanation. If something went wrong—
“Now, Felix . . . don’t draw attention to us,” said Myria, cutting off the anxious rattle in his head. “Head down, slouch along, scuff your feet. Don’t speak. If anyone pushes past you, let them.”
“What is this place?” Felix asked, gesturing to the gateway.
“It’s . . . more than I can explain to a prefecture boy, I’m afraid,” she said. “We call it the silver lining. Silverwalkers—arcani like Leo—they can cut doors in and out. They mostly use it to hop across the city, but push hard enough, and you can go into the deep end.”
“Is that . . .”
“Where the graysiders live? Yes.”
At once, every prefecture instinct in him came to attention. They were about to step into the senyx’s nest. An absurd thrill shot through his bones.
“Might turn you green on your first few visits,” said Cassia, looking rather pleased at the prospect.
“Silverwalkers used to be able to pass at will, and they’d leave gateways open for the rest of us,” Myria went on. “These days, Vixius controls all passage in and out. The worst villains in Carintheum are stewing down there together, so you can imagine what sort of place it is.”
He couldn’t, but he nodded all the same. Nearby, Cassia finished spinning her mercuria, then stepped into the new face and form.
“And, of course, we’re both dead,” Myria added, “so don’t use our names. Now, follow me.”
With that, she stepped into the gateway. Felix steeled himself and followed.
It was like trying to push through tar. The air resisted him with all its might, and he leaned full against it. With a last effort, he broke through. Amber sparks cascaded off his coat as he stepped down into the most dismal alley he’d ever seen.
It ran away in clouded dimness to the vanishing point.
Cold grayness flooded in like gutter water.
The walls reared high above him, leaning so far over that they almost touched at the top.
Great swaths of rot and plaster crumbled from them as he watched.
They fell as slowly as dead leaves and turned to dust before they touched the alley floor.
Decay. The taste of it plunged right through him.
He took a tentative step forward. The ground crunched and sank beneath his feet, like gravel strewn over a bog. Refuse lay thick on every side: ash, coal chips, sawdust, old news scrolls, even children’s toys weathered beyond use.
“Move,” said Myria, pulling him aside. A brick came tumbling from the sky a moment later. It thudded to the earth where he’d stood, then lost its shape, rotting into compost before his eyes.
“Thank you,” he murmured. “This is . . .”
“Save it for later,” she advised, patting him on the shoulder. “Come.”
She led the way out of the alley and into a street scarcely wider.
It was cramped down either side with bent and ancient shops.
Oily green alchemical light flickered behind murky windows, and wood groaned like dying voices.
Tendrils of mulberry gloom seeped out between the planks and up from the gutters.
Indistinct figures skulked in and out of sight.
Felix trailed after Myria, meeting no one’s eyes.
He glimpsed uncanny things through shop windows: dead creatures glowing in preservative, sprites knocking wildly about in bell jars, ancient blades that glinted with bloody rust—even what he took to be vellum scrolls, and realized, too late, were bottled human faces.
Even without his arcanic senses, he could feel it; the fabric of the world was thin and threadbare, and wildly unstable.
The whole place felt as though one good knock would send it tilting on its axis.
Scraps of something fluttered on the wind like ash, falling and rising without rhyme or reason.
The very buildings defied gravity. Their rickety forms leaned against each other like dried-out skeletons, yet somehow held.
Near-human shapes scuttled across rail-thin walkways between the upper levels, trusting their weight to planks that shouldn’t have borne a cat.
Is this where she grew up? he thought, his stomach turning. It was a wonder she smiled half so much as she did.
Cassia took a sharp left turn into a lane so narrow that Felix had to turn sideways to pass. She shouldered her way through a door at the end, and he and Myria followed.