27
It was, quite possibly, the maddest thing she’d done in all her life.
And that’s up against some fairly stiff competition, thought Myria. All the same, she lounged back in her seat, watching the seconds tick toward the hour.
Evander’s waiting room was designed to intimidate.
Like everything in the Praetorium, it was hewn from marble cut by centuries-dead slaves, built three times as tall and twice as wide as it had any excuse to be.
She knew she looked a sorry figure amid the grandeur, ashen and rail thin, her face hollow and hungry.
She’d even dressed in the shabby white gown she’d worn that last night at Elysius.
Perhaps it was a touch too much, but some things called for a blunt instrument.
She sat there, listening to the scratching of the secretary’s quill and the far-off crash of thunder. That very minute, her friends were drawing up before the Lynxias. Her spirit urged her back to their side. No decent commander sent her troops into battle alone.
Hold fast. You’ve got your own job to do.
One minute left, and no sign of him. Still, she fancied he wouldn’t miss their appointment. She’d taken the precaution of booking it under a very familiar name.
The hour struck.
“Hadria Chrysanthos?” called the clerk. Myria rose and followed the man into the inner corridors. He knocked once on the praetor’s door, then swept away before she could speak a word.
Oh, he knows. Against all sanity, a smile twitched her lips.
The door swung open with a crackle of arcana. Beyond it lay a cloak of shimmering dark. For all she knew, the next thing she’d feel would be a blade to the spine.
She smiled and stepped on through.
The patrium curse ripped away the illusion she’d sprayed across her features. She’d brought no blades, but the spell snatched even the sharpened pin from her hair. She winced and swallowed back the taste of charcoal. Then, she turned to face the fifth lord of the grayside.
Vixius sat behind his desk, an arcanic pistol in his hand. His gaze flicked over her, as though in search of something. Whatever it was, he seemed to find it. A smile stole across that stolen face, and he sat slowly back. The pistol didn’t shift, and nor did she.
For a moment, they faced each other across the room, two duelers waiting to begin.
“Evening, sir,” she said a moment later. “Like what you’ve done with the face.”
Vixius watched her for a moment, lips parted, as though unsure of what he saw. A streak of gray arcana swept across the door, severing all sound of the world beyond. The windows blackened. Myria’s heart made a rapid jolt into her skull.
Then, instead of casting a curse, Vixius swept off the mercuria like spider’s silk. Evander’s face dissolved into colored dust, and there, at last, she saw him.
Those wolf-gray eyes were fixed upon her, their chill cut by the rarest of smiles. The sharp angles of his face were unchanged, and his dark hair just as she’d seen it last—just the first threat of silver at the edges.
The sight should have scourged her with hatred.
That man had killed Hadria, sent Lysander to unending torture, stolen Cassia’s powers and condemned them both to jail.
Instead, perverse relief engulfed her. There was the devil she knew.
She looked at him, and released a breath she’d held for three long years.
“Good evening, Myria,” he said quietly. Her nerves jolted to hear his old voice, instead of those false honeyed tones.
In the silence that followed, she could feel the weight of questions building like storm pressure on the air. Why was she there? How was she still alive?
Then something shifted almost indiscernibly in his countenance, and the air cleared.
“Fine work,” he said. “Audacious. I was rather angry, too, until I saw my afternoon’s appointments.”
“Whereupon you were overcome with delight?” she asked, nodding to the pistol. He cocked his head, regarding her with a kind of calm intensity.
“Warily optimistic,” he said.
“Odd response to having someone pinch thirty thousand lyrin off you.”
“Perhaps,” said Vixius, “but if you’ve come here to kill me, I’ll be disappointed.”
“Pantheon forfend,” said Myria, then gestured to the seat. “May I?”
“Provided you don’t mind having an eviscerating curse trained on you at all times,” he said, those silver eyes still fixed unerringly upon her. Myria answered with a sweeping curtsy, then sat—swinging sideways, just like Leo, and crossing her knees over the arm. Vixius raised an eyebrow.
“Your starch-and-vinegar liaison was that silverwalker of yours, wasn’t he?” he said, a sigh in his voice. Myria smiled. Even with his pistol leveled at her, there was something half surreal about sitting five feet from her turncoat master, talking as though they were taking tea.
“I thought he did a splendid job,” she said. “Not the only one, though! All your ducks in a row to be Magister-General? Didn’t think it’d be your sort of caper. Guardian of Carinth justice?”
“Come now, Myria, don’t be obtuse,” said Vixius. “Speak your mind.”
She only realized he’d been half-smiling all along when the expression faded. He was asking her to level the charges? Well, she wouldn’t deny him.
“To business? If you insist,” she said. In a blink, she hardened her countenance. “You turned coat on the lot of us. Why?”
“I never meant for you to be caught. I think you know that,” he answered. He didn’t drop her gaze, but there was nothing brazen in the eyes that held hers. “I cast a curse. It should have sent you to sleep.”
“And then what? You’d wake me in the silver lining, memories artistically amended?”
“Yes,” he said simply.
“And the others?”
“Some of them had to be caught. If there’d been no one to drag before the Magisterium, they’d have kept the theft quiet.”
“And Praetor Evander would’ve missed his stepping stone to glory.”
“Quite. I’d meant to salvage Hadria, but she fought too hard. Always her way. That much, I did regret.”
Myria kept her countenance porcelain smooth. If something as bitter as wormwood simmered in her stomach, she kept it locked away. The plan. The plan, and nothing else.
“Salvage,” she echoed with a short laugh. “Scrap metal, were we? Even me. Don’t deny it. You sold me, too.”
“I did,” he said, “and I’ve relived that night ever since. Imagined all the ways I could’ve saved you. Still, I failed to see a single one of them when it mattered. Believe me, Myria, I’ve lived with that.”
His words fell soft as snow—a kind of magic, stroking down that vengeful fire in spite of all she knew. There was no penitence, no denial, no attempt at excuse. There was only something that felt strangely like the truth.
“Heh. Burden on your soul, was it?” she said, regarding him through steady eyes.
“You wonder that I could spend your comrades’ lives for my own profit, yet mourn your death?” he answered quietly. “And fairly so. I won’t offer you philosophy, Myria. Only truth. I thought you dead, and it grieved me.”
Her stomach knotted. There was just the shadow of imploring in his gaze, and she thought she saw sincerity there too. Still, she’d thought she’d seen a lot of things in that man, and she’d almost died for it. His sort—her sort—knew how to lie from the heart.
“Well then, perhaps you can put that silly thing away,” she said, gesturing to his pistol. He gave the split-second flash of a smile.
“I’m pleased you’re alive. Almost as pleased as I am to remain alive myself.”
“Oh, pish,” said Myria, leaning back in her chair. “You know full well that I didn’t come here to kill you.”
Vixius watched her steadily, but she thought she saw something in him prick up like a kyrie’s ears. He nodded slowly.
“The theft, then. What was that in aid of?”
“Oh . . . break the ice? It’s hard to know how to start things off again, after a fellow’s stabbed you in the back.”
“Good morning would’ve done.”
“You don’t listen to good mornings,” she said. “You listen to threats, and you listen to opportunities. I fancy I’ve established that I’m both.”
“I imagine you do.”
“Cynic,” she said with a sudden grin. “Let me be direct. You have a power unique in all this city. You wanted me to share in it before. I’ve come to claim the deal.”
His lips parted in a silent ah. The man was still half-smiling, watching her sidelong, as though she were a clockwork trap that might spring closed at any moment.
“What makes you imagine it’s still on offer?”
“I don’t waste my time imagining,” she said. “I know my abilities, and I know you. Lord of justice? You’d be bored to death. Besides”—her look sharpened—“what’s the point in winning when no one knows you’ve won? When no one understands just what a lie you’ve held together?”
“I’m afraid flattery’s not a payment I’d accept,” said Vixius, eyes aglimmer with amusement. “Nor one you’d offer. You’re a good thief, Myria, but what could you give me that the whole of the grayside couldn’t?”
“The same as I could before,” she said, “but let’s not mince words. Once you’ve got what you want, there isn’t going to be a grayside any longer.”
Her heart thudded as she threw the words out like a hook, without the first idea of where they’d land. It was wild speculation—and the only answer she could think of that made sense.
There. The sudden stillness of concealed surprise. The hook caught.
“Go on.”
Damn the man’s ashes. It’s true.
“Your friends on the other side hold the line while you’re poncing about Carintheum, thinking you’ll give them free run of the city once you’re Magister-General,” she said. “For now, it suits you to let them work mischief, making a mockery of poor old Valorus.”
He gave a one-sided smile, gesturing for her to continue. Like a circus creature, she thought, still performing for the master.
“If you let it carry on once you’re in office, though, you’ll be ruined. Voted out, or killed by the very hounds you’re feeding. No. You need to wipe out the grayside, once and for all. In one move, you clear the skeletons from your crypt and make yourself praetor of the century.”