32 #2
“Here he comes,” she said, turning back to her lackluster hand. Already, she could hear paces echoing on the marble floor. Leo paused at the sound, then shrugged, smirked and set down the consul of sabers.
“Cheater,” she muttered, wrinkling her nose.
“If you’re going to accuse me of foul play, madam, best you have some evidence up your sleeve.”
“I suspect you’ve got a bit up yours.”
The paces paused abruptly. The patrium spells flashed. Then, the door flew open and Vixius stepped through, his hand raised with a gathering curse.
But at the sight of her, he stopped. In that unguarded moment, half a dozen things wrote themselves across his face: alarm, chased out by a flash of the strangest relief—the first bloom of a disbelieving smile—then a sudden, awful doubt, followed hard by something that looked for all the world like grief.
Worried you tried to kill the wrong woman, after all? she thought. But it’s too late to matter. Can’t leave her alive now, whatever happens.
A heartbeat later, that stolen countenance went blank. Vixius lowered his casting hand, heeled the door closed, then leaned back against it and folded his arms.
“Well, I hope you’re here to apologize,” said Myria, squinting at her cards. Vixius shook his head with a low laugh.
“The perversity of human nature. You know, Myria, I’m somehow still pleased to see you.”
“Good. Perhaps we can finish the negotiations, this time. Leo, deal him in, won’t you?”
“Thank you. I think I’ll keep my distance,” said Vixius, fingering his dagger. She raised an eyebrow at the weapon.
“What, third time lucky, do you think?” she said. Leo shrugged and flicked out a coin.
“Scepter or gee-gee?”
“Scepter.”
He tossed it and slapped it down on his glove, then glanced at the result. “Horse rampant. You’re done for.”
“Best of three?”
Vixius only watched them as they rattled away, the frivolity spilling off him like water over glass. His predator’s eyes followed them, entirely calm, the panther holding back from the pounce only because he wasn’t hungry yet.
The half hour chimed. Myria sized up her last card, tutted and threw it down.
“All business, tonight, aren’t you, sir?” she said, swinging around on the desk to face him. “Very well. I’m here because you were wrong. I didn’t betray you. I’ve got that blasted box back from Valora. If you’re still prepared to strike the bargain, so am I, for a little added compensation.”
Vixius shook his head with a sad smile.
“No,” he said. She thought she saw the hardness of pain beneath the self-command. Perhaps it was regret.
Perhaps I don’t give a toss.
Myria wrinkled her nose.
“No? That’s it?”
“You know that’s all there is to say. I can’t trust you.”
“Devilish bind, isn’t it? Can’t trust anyone once you’ve stabbed them in the back.”
Leo grinned, but Vixius didn’t. She swore she could see his seams straining with the questions bottling up—how was she alive? Why had she come back, when she had to know what he’d do? And why, of all things, was she sitting there playing cards when he could kill her with a single curse?
It was very pleasant, not answering any of them.
“Where’s the device?” he said instead.
“In the building,” Myria replied, gathering up the cards.
“Then you’ve got some nerve, coming back here.”
“Really, old boy, we weren’t fool enough to visit in our own bones after that uncivil little escapade of yours. Simulacra, you see. No good killing ’em. Still, I suppose you could have a stab at it.”
“Pun—”
“Thoroughly intentional.”
“Well, if he didn’t want to murder you before . . .”
“I know. Time for the backup plan, Leo?”
“Always preferred that one.”
They came to their feet atop the desk. Leo plucked a fountain pen from Vixius’s stash and cut an amber gateway in the air. They were halfway through it when the man started forward, a fresh curse building in his hand.
“I’ll be succinct,” he said. “Tell me where it is, or I’ll kill you.”
“You see, sir, that’s your mistake. You bite the hand that feeds you,” Myria sighed. “Hadria, the grayside . . . me. It’s no damned wonder you’re alone. Me, though, I break the hand that strikes me. Carintheum. And now, I’ve got the means to do it.”
“The depraedeon?” he said, menace dissolving into amusement. “Oh, Myria, you can’t even open it.”
“Hark, ye of little faith,” she said. “You locked that thing against the command of anyone who came after you, but you didn’t bargain on someone getting there first. That night at Elysius . . . a certain thericist might’ve had a fiddle.”
“Arkadios?” said Vixius, arching a skeptical eyebrow. “And he’s told you he can use it to destroy Carintheum?”
“Well, you’re planning on turfing out the grayside. Turning the silver lining the right way round,” said Myria. “But see, I like things the wrong way.” She smiled at him, and made sure it didn’t reach her hollowed-out eyes. “We’re going to turn the world inside out. It’s our turn in the sun.”
Vixius regarded her for a moment, and she thought she saw uncertainty shadow his face before impatience erased it.
“Myria, really,” he said, as though she’d disappointed him.
“The silver lining is a snag in the arcanic fabric. Pure ephemera. Leave it a month, and it’d collapse by itself.
This”—he gestured to the starlit world beyond the window—“you’d need enough arcanic power to level the city.
The depraedeon doesn’t have anything close. ”
“Not on its own,” she said, “but this is a jolly safe place, isn’t it? Best-protected building in Carintheum.”
“Still, everything’s therical, these days,” Leo put in gravely.
“The spells that never sleep.”
“The spells that need a mighty lot of fuel to keep running, day and night, all year.”
“The spells hooked up to the arcanic grid, with overriding drawing rights across all Carintheum.”
Myria and Leo swapped looks of the utmost self-satisfaction. She didn’t even need to feign it. The bluff tasted too good not to smile as she spoke it.
“They can call on all that power whenever they need, and no one up at grid control would stop them,” she finished. “They’d drain the whole city to keep you fellows safe. Now, there’s a tasty bite of irony.”
“And Cassia’s very good with wires,” Leo added. “Promised she’d have it all hooked up by half past.”
Vixius stood for a moment, his stolen gold eyes flicking between the two of them. “You’re poor bluffers, the pair of you,” he said. “The generators are under guard at all hours. They’d never admit the likes of you.”
“No,” said Myria, “but they’d admit you. Really, sir, you ought to be more careful about letting mercurials shake your hand.”
She grinned, then nudged a dial on the desk with her shoe.
The vigilantus charm switched channels, and an image of the basement rolled across the wall.
At the center stood something like a therical tree: a trunk of steel tubing, with glass pipes and copper wires winding up its length and spreading out into a canopy overhead.
Cassia and Lysander knelt at the base, hands moving over the brass box. Whatever they’d done, it looked fearfully convincing. Wires hummed, and tubes pumped bright arcana between the device and the power core.
Myria glanced back as the office door slammed.
“Oh,” she said. “I think he’s running for it.”
They followed hot on Vixius’s heels, just far enough behind that he wouldn’t hear. The upper halls of the Praetorium pulsed with crowds, but everything vanished below ground—the grandeur, the warmth and the people alike.
Still, one thing appeared, and it was a welcome sight: Felix Aurelias in full prefecture uniform, with his regimental crest and phoenix sigil. The guards took one look at him and lowered their gauntlets.
“Prefecture business,” said Felix. “Let us pass.”
“Of course, sir,” a bewildered-looking man replied, “but Praetor Evander . . . it sounds quite mad, but I’ve seen him twice, and he didn’t pass back—”
“I’m afraid the praetor’s up to no good,” said Felix, striding past. “Reinforcements ought to follow. Please admit them.”
They rounded the corner and broke back into a run the moment they were out of sight. Another winding staircase, another stretch of echoing dark corridors; then, they plunged into a thunderhead of pure arcanic power, and Myria pushed through into the generator room.
The scene stood frozen before her. Cassia, Lysander and Vixius faced off in a triangle, not ten feet from the box. Lysander’s arcana built in turquoise crackles on the air, and Cassia raised her brass-ribbed fists. Vixius held them in a stalemate, gray power ready to fly loose from his hands.
“Too late, boss,” Cassia said with a vicious grin. “Trigger’s pressed. Still . . . every cloud has a silver lining, eh?”
An arcanic bolt raced up from the box into the power core. A split of panic cracked her master’s face—a sight as rare as diamonds, and far, far better. He threw his curse loose and dived for the device.
The blast of power was barely enough to clear his path, but it was enough to hang him. He slammed his hand down on the box, and his arcana raced into the channels. The device unlocked with a gentle whir.
Then, Vixius froze solid.
His hand clamped to the device. His body convulsed.
Copper light came swarming from the box like ants, up his arm and across his coat, engulfing him.
Vaporous flickers of color began rising from his skin, spun through with glittering veins.
Blue traces fleeted from his clothes as the patrium curses tore like cobwebs.
They twined together and coursed into the box.
Evander’s face shredded away to reveal the man beneath.
Moment by moment, the colors drained away—so many of them, stolen snatches of a hundred souls. At last, deep gray power rose, shimmering, from his skin. He stared at it in mute horror. Then, he stole a breath and began to work his free hand in jerking motions.