27 #3
“I called her to help. Twenty-six and covered in blood . . .” He shook his head with a wolfish laugh. “How would I know what to do with a child?”
“Then . . . she didn’t know?”
“I didn’t say,” he replied, “and she didn’t ask.”
Myria felt a vise unclamp about her spirit. All of a sudden, her throat was tight. Hadria hadn’t lied. She hadn’t told the whole truth, but who ever did?
“Your memories were gone,” Vixius went on, “but your faculties were still there. I took them. Kept them safe.”
The words jolted through her. “You kept—”
“I still have them,” he said, “but I didn’t know how to restore them. I knew Hadria was decent, so I put you in her care and started the fight.”
“Did you do it?” she asked. “Stop the harvesters?”
“Yes,” said Vixius, “but it was too late for you. You’d been without your faculties for too long. Give them back, and they’d have flooded you with a power your body no longer knew how to command.”
Myria sat down on the windowsill, her back turned to the slow destruction beyond the glass.
That was why he’d done it all? His brutal rise through the crimson summer, the V carved to the bone on a hundred corpses, born out of something almost human?
It suddenly took all her force of will to remember that she was acting a part, not hunting for the truth.
Be on your guard.
“But the harvesters are still here,” she said. “You couldn’t stop them for good.”
“No,” he said, his gaze roving out to the fogbound decay beyond the window. “And it’s not just them. There’s a thousand breeds of vileness down there. The same crops grow from the same polluted ground. Cutting the weeds wasn’t enough.”
“So you burn the field. Destroy the grayside,” she said softly; but then, she turned a harder look upon him. “Except you’ve had the power to do that since Elysius. Not going to act until you’re in a position to claim the credit?”
“There are harvesters beyond the grayside, Myria,” he said, “still raking in blood money. They’re commanded from the highest places of Carintheum.”
That tremor of anger when he’d spoken of them at the rally, those promises blazing from his campaign posters . . . Why, that devil, she thought distantly. He really was telling the truth.
“You’ll use the power of the office against them?” she said, painting a bitter smile. “That, I can’t fault. Damn the lot of them. Damn that Valorus, above all.”
She filled the Magister-General’s name with poison, and Vixius didn’t miss it. She could see him studying her altered face, hollowed and half wild. An uncommon hesitance crossed his countenance.
“Where’ve you been these last three years, Myria?” he asked. “They said they’d executed you. What happened?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said shortly. “Carintheum wronged me, and I’m here to settle the score. But you said you kept my faculties. Could that box of yours return them?”
He watched her intently for a moment, but she knew the look behind it—the look of a man with an ace in his hand.
Got you.
“It can,” he said at last. Myria met his gaze, letting the facade of calculations spill across her eyes. Then, she pursed her lips and nodded.
“I see. Well . . . with those in the bargain, perhaps I can persuade my valued comrades that they’d be happier basking in Iseus with a fortune apiece.”
“I’m gratified to hear it,” he said, “but on the note of settling scores, they did steal thirty thousand lyrin from me. Forgiving and forgetting aren’t in my repertoire.”
You don’t say.
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Myria said with a wave of her hand. “You’ll get the money back, and more. Next time I see you, I’ll explain it.”
“I’d rather you explained it now.”
“Yes, well, you can’t always have what you want. So, what say you?”
He strode right up to her, one hand resting on his dagger hilt. With the other, he took hers. That thrill of stolen power sang between them—that draw so strong, so wrong, that her spirit surged toward him even as it rebelled.
“If I know I can trust you, Myria, I’ll gladly have you on my side,” said Vixius. She gave him a thin smile.
“The two of us against the world.”
“As for your friends, I’ll reserve judgment for this grand audition. For your sake, I’ll at least allow them passage to Iseus.”
She raised her chin and nodded. “Can’t say fairer than that.”
“There we have it, then,” said Vixius. “The devil’s bargain.”
Myria paced slowly through the storm-swept city.
Rain drummed in hot, fat bullets off the canopy charm she’d bought at the roadside, and pooled like magic mirrors on the streets.
Lightning flickered across the carpet of damp copperblossom leaves in a dark gold play.
Their perfume hung dizzyingly heavy on the air.
Well, she thought. That was . . . Unexpected? Sickening? Insane? All of them, most likely.
But it was also more. Much more. She scarcely dared to think of all he’d said—of all he claimed he’d done for her. She’d let the lure of the fifth lord’s regard turn her head once, and Hadria had died for it.
Don’t be a fool, her mind lashed back. Come the end, he’s in it for himself. Hadria died for you. He threw you to the dogs. What more proof do you need?
Oh, he said he’d sold out the crew so the prefecture couldn’t keep the theft quiet .
. . but all of a sudden, that tasted like a lie.
There were other ways he could’ve done that.
No. Her friends had been her anchor to her old life.
A life he couldn’t have her clinging to, if she was to be his instrument.
But he rescued you, said a weak voice. She stamped it down, stoking up anger in its place. He’d as good as put her on that corpse pile. One momentary flash of conscience didn’t set his sins at nought.
He kept your power safe, the voice insisted.
She strode faster, hardening her spirit against it.
Vixius wasn’t some sentimental splitwit, preserving a memory of her like a doll on a shelf.
At best, he’d been keeping a bone for a dog.
At worst . . . leverage. Well, bad luck.
That devil wasn’t going to find a lever long enough to move her.
Yet another breed of temptation still beckoned her. Wild scenes flickered through her head. She, at the heights of Carintheum, a criminal among the mighty. She, with her powers restored. She was dangerous without them, but with them, oh, she’d be—
Insufferable, Cassia interrupted in her head. It snatched her back to her senses, and she shook herself. She was going to ruin Vixius, not join him. Why imagine any other end?
Myria stopped and breathed in hard, thrusting her mind back to the world. Far off, the kites circled and shrieked above the mountain. Horns blared down the lines of traffic, and thunder battled the distant screech of industry. The scene was well matched to the chaos in her head.
Amid it all, though, burned one ember of relief. That pull toward her master, that draw that had endured long past the day it should’ve died . . . it wasn’t her own foolishness. It was arcana. Just arcana.
And arcana, as she knew too well, could be destroyed.
“Blimey. You survived!” said Cassia, hauling her into a hug fit to bend the bones of her corset. The pain was a curiously welcome relief from all the other feelings assaulting her.
“What were the odds?”
“Four to one,” said Leo.
Which way?
“Shut up, you arse,” Cassia muttered, releasing her. “You’re clean?”
“Had a bath this morning.”
“She’s clean,” said Lysander, squinting at her through a tinted lens.
“If he could follow me back here after the number of tricks I played, he deserves to find me. Now, old sports, can we speak freely?”
“As birds atwitter,” Leo said. “The golden boy’s off spreading rumors through Carintheum.”
“The grayside ought to know by nightfall that their master’s lost his touch,” Lysander added. “I’m afraid Valora’s demanding a report tomorrow evening, though.”
“Not to worry. Now, don’t leave me in agony. It worked?”
“Like a charm,” Leo said with a wink. “It’s all in the workshop. Come.”
Ten steps later, they were in the silver lining.
The brass box sat on the workbench, with Lysander’s therical tools and Cassia’s mechanical ones protruding from it at all angles: silver needles and glass tubes, copper spires haloed with electric violet bolts, and twists of emberyn linking makeshift valves.
Strange, she thought. Three years of planning to get her hands on the blasted thing, and there it was. She didn’t quite know what to feel.
“It’s as you thought. It’s arcanically locked to Vixius,” said Lysander. “The master’s imprint can’t be changed until it’s open, and it won’t open unless he unlocks it voluntarily.”
“How voluntarily?” asked Myria, eyeing up Cassia’s brass-ribbed gloves.
“It’s set up to detect dominius curses, mementori manipulation, torture .
. . even intoxication, for all that’s likely.
We can’t break the lock ourselves, but”—he leaned over and peered into what looked like a cannibalized barometer, spinning wildly—“on account of Cassia being a first-rate genius, and me being a tolerable sort of fellow, we’ve managed to make the adjustments you asked for. ”
A thrill went through her chest. The moment Vixius unlocked that box, he was in for a pleasant surprise. Well . . . pleasant for her.
“Excellent. Knew there was a reason you went to Haideum. Do you suppose he’ll notice the sabotage?”
“If he gives it a proper going-over, yes,” said Lysander, adjusting his spectacles. “It all comes down to how closely he’s inclined to look. Speaking of which . . .”
“It worked,” she said. “He’ll play. More willingly than we’d imagined.”
“Vixius decided to trust you after you nicked thirty thousand lyrin off him?” Leo asked with a look of skeptical amusement.
“You’d be surprised,” said Myria. “Gather round. There’s . . . something you ought to know.”