Chapter 20 #2
I watched a paperboy on a street corner, hawking the last of his newsheets.
“Grand General Baffin summons Cabinet to emergency meeting! Harrow Herald speculates!” The voice was muffled through the glass. “Baffin calls emergency meeting in wake of Separatist bombing! Sorcerers return to Unified Council!”
“Quite the state this city is falling into,” Pretoria said, sitting down across from me. Perry came too, his hair neatly parted and combed and his tall frame clad in trousers, shirt, and suspenders. “Are you ready to let me sweep you away now?”
“Not quite,” I replied, sitting back and looking between the two of them. “First, I need your help.”
I outlined the situation for my sister in broad strokes.
Mr. Stoke had been killed, presumably by a very powerful Silver mage.
Mr. Moran, I suspected, knew something of it.
Madge was even more soulless than we anticipated.
I was still hunted, presumably, by Lord Stillwell’s thug, Wake, and of course the Guild.
I could well imagine a bedraggled Howell stalking the streets as we spoke.
“It sounds as though we ought to leave immediately,” Perry surmised.
We were eating now, feasting off an excessive array of hors d’oeuvres which Pretoria considered a meal. The food was a temporary distraction from my increasing fatigue, and I poured myself a coffee to stave off unconsciousness.
“No,” I said. “I intend to find the artifact first. Stillwell offered a great deal of money for its return, and I need those funds to replace my savings, which the police confiscated. I also would very much like to know who killed Mr. Stoke. But I understand that may be impossible.”
“It may. But, Tillie, I have funds,” Pretoria said. “Let me take care of you. I can break into the station, too.”
That was an idea for a later time, but I still needed Stillwell’s money to buy my future.
“He offered five thousand Harren marks,” I stated, flint-eyed.
Pretoria and Perry both went still. After a heartbeat of processing this information, they glanced from one another, and back to me.
“Where should we begin our search?” Pretoria asked.
And just like that, I had two accomplices. Accomplices I intended to leave behind, but accomplices, nonetheless.
I did not let myself think of Pretoria’s embrace, and how warm, how like home it had felt.
“Our first line of inquiry is thus,” I summarized.
“We must interview Lord Stillwell, who contracted Mr. Stoke to find the artifact to begin with. He may have more information, particularly on other parties who might be after the artifact. He also has the power and finances to, perhaps, hire a Rogue mage like the one who attacked… killed Mr. Stoke. Perry, what class are you?”
“Copper Affinate,” Perry replied without inflection.
I could not suppress a startled glance between the two of them. “You… are not an Adept?”
“Try not to look so astonished.” Perry conjured a winsome smile. “I won your sister despite my inadequacies.”
“I am sure you are more than capable,” I reassured, though in truth, I was unsettled. Here, I suspected I had found Pretoria’s motivation, the blush of rebellion that had taken this man from lover to spouse.
An Adept entering into an official relationship with an Affinate was, in some ways, more appalling to the Guild than if she had taken on a human. He was the most useless of our kind, the weakest. He was their shame and their failure.
So she had married him.
I looked between the two of them, particularly the soft-eyed way Perry beheld my sister, and hoped I was wrong.
“Lord Stillwell,” Pretoria redirected us. “Do we know where he is?”
“The Stillwell ancestral home is out in Bellundin,” I said. “A full day away by train.”
“The trains are not running,” Perry said, crossing one ankle over the opposite knee and leaning back. “Nor are the ships.”
I stared. “Baffin has shut them down?”
“In fear of Separatist bombings, ostensibly,” Pretoria said. “The roads are still open.”
“Yes, but let us consider Stillwell’s position,” Perry cautioned, gathering the pair of us with a gesture.
There was a spark of arrogance in him then that I did not precisely like.
“After losing Sarre Grand to the Seaussen and the rebels, he is battling to regain his power and influence. Baffin has called a meeting of the Council of Lords—this will give him ample opportunity to do so.”
“He will be in Harrow,” I concluded, remembering the newsboy’s shout earlier. “And he will be in the thick of things. But he does not have a house in town, unless he has rented one. Or perhaps he is at one of the upper hotels?”
“He should not be hard to find,” Perry said. “Allow me to do so. I can begin this evening—everyone who is anyone will be about. There is no chance of him recognizing me, and I may be able to learn something without showing our hand. And, forgive me, Ottilie, but you look exhausted.”
I rubbed at my forehead. “You are not wrong.”
“Then rest, and after we can go together. In disguise,” Pretoria suggested.
I considered her dubiously. “Last time I allowed you to ‘disguise’ me, I could not remove my moustache for a week.”
“I have found a better glue, dear.”
I returned my attention to Perry, who watched our exchange with patient expectation.
It crossed my mind that I was granting him a great deal of trust after a very short acquaintance, but he seemed competent.
And if Pretoria trusted him to pursue my best interests—and a great deal of money—I had to, too.
“All right. Perry, please see if you can learn where he is staying,” I said. “And we can visit him together under cover of darkness, once I am capable of standing again.”
“Is that the entirety of our plan?” Pretoria asked. “There is nothing else you wish to tell us?”
I thought of Dr. Maddeson. I ought to at least check in on the philologist—given his obsession with the artifact and its connection to Baffin, he might have learned something new.
But that would bring Pretoria close to his research and its possible value, and I was not sure I wanted to expose my sister to such an interesting quandary just yet.
Not until I was wholly sure I could trust her.
“First, I fear I must sleep,” I admitted. “But then… ah, I must retrieve my cat.”