Chapter 23
Our hansom passed through the heights of New Harrow, a lattice of meticulously patterned streets below the palace hill.
The roads were broad, built for motor cars with walks for pedestrians and room for intermittent trees.
The latter were a burnished plum, the first of their fallen leaves scattered across broad paving stones.
The houses were adorned with bold, square columns and geometric patterns to their pale bricks, along rooflines, mantels, and lintels.
Electric streetlanterns shone bright, not a single one in disrepair.
As we exited, a troop of drunken young well-to-dos clattered by, surrounding one fellow on horseback, bedecked as a god of the sea.
One grabbed my hands and spun me around, heading for an inebriated kiss—he was rank with the smell of wine—but before I could deliver him a well-deserved knee to the groin, Mr. Wake grabbed him by the back of the neck and thrust him on up the street.
The fellow flailed, just managed to keep his feet, and threw an obscene gesture back at Wake.
Wake returned it twofold.
I cleared my throat, patting a few stray hairs back into line. “If you are finished?”
Wake ignored me and pulled me onwards, not towards one of the grand houses, but into an alleyway behind them. As the miscreants trooped off in pursuit of debauchery we strode into the darkness, away from the light.
We travelled a great deal further than I expected, and by the time Wake knocked at a back door, I was thoroughly turned about.
“Lord Stillwell has rented a town home?” I observed.
Wake nodded. The door opened. He exchanged quiet words with a bleary-looking scullery maid, then led me through the innards of Lord Stillwell’s manor until, through a cramped servants’ stair, we emerged into a dark study.
“We will wait here,” Wake said, turning on a desk lamp. For an instant, I might have sworn there was something strange about the way the light chased the shadows from his face. But my eyes were burning with fatigue, and I discarded the notion.
I moved further into the room, scanning the walls. There was a large painting in an unexpectedly lavish golden frame—the rest of the space was spare, with clean lines, no clutter, and not a book out of line.
The painting depicted the open green of the South Quarter, with the river in the background and the Old Citadel burning on the horizon. Armies of humans and Entwined clashed in a romanticized motif of flashing sabers, lines of pluming rifles, and a carpet of the dead and dying.
In the center of it all, a rendition of the young General Baffin held Queen Alessandra by her long black hair and looked at the stormy sky, as if in thanks, or in prayer.
In his other hand he held his sword, the very one I had seen at the museum.
The sword that had beheaded the last Entwined Empress.
Unease stirred in my belly. Stillwell, despite his station, had never struck me as a particularly passionate participant in the rivalry between humans and Entwined.
He had flirted outrageously with my mother, back in the day, and even if he had not been an ally, he certainly had not been a devout foe.
I cast the rest of the office a second, more lingering look. Stillwell was obsessed with antiquities, but everything in this room, aside from the painting, was notably modern.
Slowly, I looked at Mr. Wake. He had situated himself in a comfortable chair and, as our eyes met, he cocked the pistol in his hand.
“This is not Stillwell’s house,” I determined.
“No.” He grinned and, with that expression, the thug I had known vanished. The smile was mindless in its malice, the smile of a madman on the gallows, and it sent a chill down my spine. “Sit down. The Grand General will be home soon.”
I charged him. The gun went off and I twisted, barely evading the path of the bullet before I seized his wrist in one hand and slammed his elbow with the other.
I heard, and felt, the joint crack. A shock of victory shot through me.
It died as quickly as it came. I looked down at where my hand still clutched his exposed wrist, where our skin connected, and saw my fingers had gone grey.
“You’re Entwined.” The words stuttered from my lips as all my strength, all my energy, fled my body. Leeching. A Silver’s Leeching. With it went my shock, and any wonderment I might have had at the alliance of a mage with General Baffin.
Wake only grunted in reply, prying off my locked fingers and shaking out his supposedly broken arm. Another crack and it refitted itself, leaving Wake whole and uninjured.
I, however, could not move. My blood was too slow, my vision blurred. The amount of energy—my stolen energy—required to heal a break was not small, and this, dear reader, is my excuse for what happened next.
I fainted, quite dramatically, onto the floor of Grand General Baffin’s study.
* * *
I awoke with a start and a shriek; my mind still embedded in the moment before I collapsed. But I was drowning now, drowning in the taste of oak, smoke, and spirits. It burned in my eyes and nose and sent me into a fit of coughing.
“A waste of good whiskey,” a male voice muttered.
I swiped at my eyes and discovered my hands had been bound in front of me. I stared at them, my breathing ragged, my eyes blurry and burning, then registered the men standing over me.
Grand General Baffin was dressed in his opera garb, though he had shed his coat and hat. He stood with an empty bottle in hand, the last few drops pattering onto the rug beside my ear.
“General,” I managed. Despite the raspiness of my voice, I sounded unruffled. I might have been proud of myself on any other occasion. But just then I could feel no victory, no confidence, and certainly no hope.
No, Mr. Wake did not work for Lord Stillwell. I had been deceived and had bargained myself right into the hands of my kin’s greatest enemy. Worse, I had convinced Wake I knew where the artifact was.
Yet Wake himself was Entwined. A Silver, given his Leeching abilities. A Silver working for General Baffin.
Mr. Stoke’s dead face flashed through my mind, his shattered jaw and the clawed, deadly bruise. Then I recalled the mad smile on Wake’s face, and a chill raced over my skin.
I knew it was him. He had killed Mr. Stoke. I knew it like I knew my mother’s face and the swift, graceful characters of Lewis’s writing.
But if I was right, Mr. Wake was the most powerful Silver I had ever encountered, had ever even heard of. How had the Guild misplaced him?
Mr. Moran’s steady stare sifted up in the back of my memory.
You asked Madge what Entwined can kill with the touch of a hand. Why?
My blood began to race.
“Miss Rushforth.” Baffin tilted his head to one side as he considered me, then prodded me with a foot, none too gently. “Get up.”
I fumbled to do so, coaxing my drained muscles into a semblance of life. I made it to my knees, then staggered to my feet as Baffin watched, unimpressed. Wake took up vigil by the window, most of his attention turned to the world below.
“I have had a long day,” Baffin said. Behind him, I could see the portrait of his younger self, holding Empress Alessandra by the hair as he prepared to kill her.
“I am impatient, and tired, and will brook no deceptions. Tell me where the artifact is. Mr. Wake will fetch it. If your word has proved true, I will not kill you. If you lie, I will see you tormented in every way I know, and only after you are wholly broken, I will open your throat from ear to ear.”
I had no quip this time.
Time. If I could buy time, maybe Pretoria could track me down. But with Perry still in the wind, her attention would be divided. And what if the Guild had spotted her last night? Perhaps she was as much a captive as I.
A dozen lies spun through my mind, but none of them would buy me enough opportunity to regain my strength and forge my own escape.
Then, it struck me.
“Emrys Harden. The smuggler,” I said. Guilt, fear, warning battered at me, so forceful I could barely wall it out.
I had to be rational. If anyone could handle Wake, it would be another Silver.
It was the Separatists. Even given my suspicions about the level of Wake’s power, Harden was smart.
And, I assured myself, there was a chance Wake wouldn’t even find him.
“He is a friend,” I said, aware of the irony of that word as I set a killer on his trail. “I left the artifact in his care. Tell him I sent you, and he will comply.”
“Where does he live?”
“I do not know.”
“You do not know where your friend lives?”
“He is a criminal, sir, he does not keep visiting hours.”
Baffin came closer, looming over me and taking in every bit of my expression. I stared back, not bothering to hide my growing fear. It was a stomach-turning, maddening pressure, aggressive and unstoppable.
Abruptly, Baffin looked at Wake. “Put her back to sleep, stow her away and go find this Harden.”
“Stow me away? What does that mean?” I shot a look between the two of them and instinctively raised my hands to ward off Wake. “Honestly, I am very tired, if you would just show me to a guest room, I will not bother trying to escape.”
Wake took my wrist.
* * *
I awoke for the second time to screaming muscles and a pounding of blood in my skull. I tried to turn my head, discovered I could not, and pushed outwards.
I met resistance on all sides. I struggled and made a frustrated cry, only to deafen myself.
I was in a closet. No, that was not right, gravity pulled in the wrong direction. I was in a box. My mind jumped to the chest in Baffin’s office, beneath the painting.
“Baffin, you bastard!” I shrieked.
There was no answer.
I pressed my hands, still bound at the wrists, up against the lid. It did not budge.
I drew a breath, as deep as my contorted body, my opera gown and the limited air would permit, and reached out with my power. Memories began to come to me from the wood of the chest, memories of lingering dark and occasional tumults of light. I was not the first person to suffer this confinement.
The terror and screams and sobbing of those previous occupants went straight to my heart.
I slammed on the end of the chest again and again with my feet, determined to at least make a nuisance of myself.
I had recovered some of my strength (I tried not to think of how long I must have been unconscious to accomplish that) and if I could just force them to open the lid…
Voices entered the room. I kicked all the louder, cursing Baffin with every profanity in my multilingual vocabulary, but was rewarded only with a chuckle and, judging by the movement of chairs, indifference.
I pressed the palms of my hands to my eyes and forced myself to breathe, raking in my own stale air again and again.
As my nerves quietened, the voices of those outside became clearer.
“…bombing in Old Harrow, and there are rumors they will begin to target the bridges.” The voice was a woman’s, practical and deep.
“Have soldiers stationed at each one and set patrols along the riverbanks,” Baffin’s reply came. “Bring all suspected Separatists in and reopen the Old Citadel cells. That will send a message.”
I thought of Harden in a sickening flash. He and the Separatists had enough on their plates, and I had sent Wake after him?
In that moment, I despised myself.
Baffin went on, “Offer leniency for any information that proves helpful. And discreetly place some of our Affinates among them, to keep their ears to the ground. Notify Thera immediately.”
“Very good, sir.” There was a moment of quiet, then, in a lower voice, “If you kill the Rushforth woman, there will be more conflict. The Guild will not stand for it, even if she is Rogue.”
Kill me? Why would Baffin kill me? I was his last living connection to the artifact, and until that artifact was in his hands—which would not happen, as Harden did not have it—he was not stupid enough to dispose of me. Was he?
I listened in growing, horrified bewilderment. “No,” was Baffin’s calm reply. “No, they will not, but my hands will be clean. Reach out to Incarnadine and make the necessary arrangements.”
The Zealot Queen Incarnadine. I realized I was not breathing and forced myself to inhale and exhale.
“Sir,” Baffin’s companion tempered her voice, but I caught the tension in it. “Given the Zealots’ recent escalations, might it not be time to cut ties? If your accord were to come to light now, especially in this matter, the damage may be irreversible.”
I expected Baffin to cut the woman off, to rebuke her, but he did not.
“Soon,” he replied, calm and factual. “My moment of action must be precise, and for the moment, Incarnadine is still useful. Give her the Rushforth woman.”