32
Felix stood by as Gloriana drove the thieves into her cellar.
It’d been the work of a moment to find them.
Lysander had been drenched in golden traces from the healing, and hadn’t managed to strip half of it before the centurion was on his trail.
She’d dragged them to her manor on arcanic wings and shackled them with prefecture bonds.
Even Leo wouldn’t be making a quick escape from those.
Half an hour later, Felix stood with the centurion in her study, the depraedeon set on a plinth before them.
And still, he knew without a shadow of a doubt who’d won. He’d felt the spell leave Gloriana’s hand, barely clawed back in time. He’d sensed the pulse that ran wild in her arcana. She’d been about to kill him. Myria had been right.
She’s going to be insufferable.
“Perhaps Cadessa had the right idea,” said Gloriana, facing the depraedeon. “Trick Vixius into opening it. If he knows I’ve taken the device, he’ll be after me with a vengeance. He only needs to think he’s got an opportunity.”
Opportunity.
“Perhaps we could use her, ma’am,” Felix said. “Now that we’re free to hurt her crew, she’ll help, no question. Say . . . she runs back to Vixius. Says she never betrayed him, and she’s still willing to strike the deal if he is. He can trust her, and she can prove it.”
He struck out across the room, pacing lengths, as the wild notion came together in his mind.
“She knows where you’re keeping the box, and you’ll be with your brother after the debates. They can break in while you’re there. You’ve left your loyal but . . . fairly useless soldier to work on the device. Easy prey.”
“Ah. But I arrive early,” Gloriana said, opportunity striking flame in her eyes. “He takes the box. Unlocks it in a panic, ready to steal my powers, but he’s caught unawares. We pin him down and take control.”
“You volunteer for that part,” said Felix. Gloriana chuckled.
“Happily,” she said—but then, the amusement faded. “Are you prepared to do it?”
“Of course, ma’am. Whyever not?”
“Miss Cadessa. You seemed . . . sympathetic to her, earlier. I hope you knew that I was bluffing.”
“I know you’d never be so honorless,” he said sincerely, and hoped it stung. “As for Cadessa . . . I’ll admit, I don’t like to imagine her dead, but I know when someone means to manipulate me.”
“Thank you,” she said with a small smile, clearly oblivious to the inverse meaning. “We’ll decide what to do with her later. With the vow undone and her friends in hand, we have more latitude. We might not have to kill her.”
“Of course, ma’am,” he said, fixing his gaze on the depraedeon. “Time we planned the battle.”
Myria leaned against the cellar wall, waiting.
The pain of her healing had faded, and the quiet eased the ache inside her head.
After an hour, her fellow prisoners had muttered themselves into a merciful silence.
Cassia kicked a pebble around the edges of the room, Leo lay flat on the ground with his hands over his face, and Lysander—never without a book, even in arrest—leafed slowly through the pages.
The tenth hour chimed. Across the city, the final round of the debates was opening. It wouldn’t be long before Vixius returned to the silver lining and found his prisoners missing.
“Still can’t believe you let that blighter off the hook,” Cassia said suddenly, giving the pebble a particularly violent kick.
“I can,” Leo muttered. “He’s prettier than us.”
“Oh, now, Leo. Hardly,” said Myria. For once, though, the flattery didn’t mollify him.
“She’s free from the vow, and we’re still bound! Even if we could run, you wouldn’t!”
“Why run? I’m precisely where I need to be.”
Cassia scoffed. “The devil you are. Face it. You traded us for him. You gambled, and you lost.”
“I never trade lives, Cassia, and I never gamble,” she said crisply. “I only invest. And . . . is that the sound of dividends I hear?”
In the silence that fell, there was no mistaking the tap of footfalls on the stairs. Cassia dropped into a fighting stance, and Leo scrambled to his feet. Lysander only smiled and marked the page of his book.
The door swung open, and Felix stepped out of the dark beyond.
Myria looked down at the box in his hands and nodded.
Best not to betray the fireworks bursting in her chest, or the warmth like bottled sunshine that engulfed her.
Certainly not relief. After all, she’d known what she was doing all along.
“Sterling work, Prefect,” she said. “The centurion’s back at the debates?”
“She is,” said Felix. “To cut a convoluted story short, she thinks I’m taking you back to Vixius—”
“Whereupon I’ll tell him that I know where the device is, and he’ll come blundering back here, only for the centurion to leap out from hiding and scupper him once he’s unlocked it?”
“Yes,” said Felix, looking gratified that he hadn’t had to say all that himself.
“Mm. Dreadful plan. Lysander, check she hasn’t damaged the box, will you?”
Felix glanced at the cuffs around the Xanthian’s wrists, then took a key from his pocket and unlocked them.
The silver light turned solid and slid off like a broken chain.
Lysander took the box, his turquoise eyes bright with amusement.
Cassia stared between the device and the prefect for a moment, before she shook herself and held out her hands.
“You made up your mind which bleedin’ side you’re on?” she asked.
Felix raised an eyebrow and undid her cuffs. “The side of keeping that box out of the hands of tyrants who’ll misuse it,” he said, “as I have been all along.”
“I hate to be indelicate, Prefect, but if you help us escape, isn’t that going to, ah . . . kill you?” Lysander put in.
“Myria vowed not to run from me,” he said. “Running with me is quite a different matter.”
“Right into another trap?” Cassia shot back. Felix calmly moved to unlock Leo’s cuffs.
“Vixius took your powers,” he said. “I know what it is to lose something that precious. Something so entirely your own. The pleasure, the pride . . . It’s yours by right, and I’ll be damned if I let him keep it.”
Leo’s jaw tightened, even as the cuffs slid free. Cassia’s face blinked out for a moment. For once, though, neither of them glared at him. He’d chosen his words well.
Then, Felix turned to Myria with intent eyes.
“I trust you have a plan?”
“Trust well-placed,” she said, beckoning the group into a circle. “But I’m going to need all of you. Cass, Leo, I know you’re far from thrilled with recent happenings, but there’s a method to the madness.”
“Got yourself run through on purpose, did you?” Leo muttered.
“Just to see the look on your face,” she said with a quick smile.
Then, the spark of frivolity turned back to ash.
She remembered the look on his face, alright—the terror as she lay bleeding herself scarlet in his arms. Cassia’s face collapsing into formless blackness.
Hadria’s face as she stood gasping through agony, death-bound and betrayed.
Lysander’s face whenever he remembered her.
She hauled in a deep breath and met their eyes, each in turn.
“Vixius bested me once. I should never have let him best me twice. I failed the lot of you. For that, I’m sorry.”
Cassia snorted. Myria forced herself to take the blow. There were things that apologies wouldn’t make right, and that was that.
“I know,” she said quietly. “Words won’t do. But with your help—”
“Oh, shut up, you arse,” Cass interrupted. “Failed us? You near as got yourself murdered trying to get our powers back, you splitwit.”
“If I hadn’t let him take them in the first place . . .”
“Let him?” Lysander said gently. She faltered as he took her hand with a half-pitying look. “Oh, Myria. Please don’t say you’ve somehow decided that was your fault.”
Myria set her teeth, refusing to let her expression shift. No cracks. No bright eyes. Not now.
“I knew what Vixius was.”
“We all knew, Myria,” he said, “and we risked it all the same. I know you’ve been trying to keep us out of the firing line—”
“But it isn’t just your fight,” Cassia cut in. “Stop trying to win it for us. Win it with us.”
Her friend’s glare twisted the blade still sunk into her gut, but she let it. Pain was a fine teacher. Myria set her teeth, kept her countenance and gave a short, sharp nod.
“Good,” she said, “because that was the plan. Are you with me?”
“Always have been,” said Lysander.
Leo drew a deep breath and raised his eyes to the heavens. Then, he mouthed a few silent curses and nodded. “In it for the money. In it for the money.”
“That’s the spirit. Cass?”
“Of course I’m with you, you stupid—”
“Excellent,” she said, fighting down the sunburst in her spirit. No time for all that nonsense now. “In that case, Lysander, could you wire that box to an arcanic generator? It doesn’t have to work. Just needs to look convincing.”
“Making things that don’t work? That, I can do.”
“Sterling. Leo, can you get us back into Vixius’s watchtower? There’s a gateway from there to his Praetorium office.”
“Yes,” he answered warily, “so long as it’s empty. I don’t fancy taking my turn as Vixius’s knife rack.”
“Man after my own heart. And Cassia . . . what are your views on poetic justice?”
“Eh?”
“Well,” Myria said with a smile, “how’d you feel about nicking Evander’s face?”
The debates concluded with a roar of jeers, curses and applause.
Evander made his way back into the Praetorium, where the crowds surged up against him.
Reporters jostled, opponents caterwauled, and a small man kept going back to shake his hand.
It took him fully half an hour to reach the private corridors.
There, at last, the row of bodyguards broke the pursuing tide.
Myria watched her former master striding nearer through the vigilantus charms across his office wall, and smiled. No doubt he’d be delighted to find his dead protégé sitting cross-legged on his desk and playing cards.