Chapter 27
Harden did not look as surprised as I expected. “I have already considered it.”
“Then you will?”
He glanced at his people. “Yesterday, I would have. Today, the Zealots almost killed a Rushforth, the Guild is mobilized, and there are soldiers on the streets. I have obligations, Ottilie.”
This blindsided me—which likely said a great deal about the extent of my self-absorption.
“Stay here, hide here,” he suggested. “You’ll be safe until things settle down. Then, yes, I will help you rescue Lewis. I’ll help you get out of Harrow, too.”
That wouldn’t be much use without funds, but I did not say that. I was grateful for the offer and still might need to accept it.
“Mayfair!” someone shouted, affirming Harden’s words.
Harden stood up, looking at me apologetically. “Consider it? I’ll be back.”
“Sure. Go on.” I watched him hasten away, closing further in upon myself with each step he took.
I could not go after Lewis alone, even if I was sure he had not betrayed me. The Guild was simply too powerful. Pretoria might be able to do it, but convincing her would be no easy task.
My thoughts churned off from there, and I will spare the reader the extent of my ramblings. Suffice it to say that by the end, I had found a course of action that put me back on my feet.
Retrieving the artifact from Baffin was a daunting and highly improbable prospect. But if I moved quickly, I might not have to.
I took a shawl of a nearby chair and wrapped it about my shoulders, silently promising to return it someday. Then I looked for Harden, to say goodbye. But I could not find him.
* * *
I crossed a street, down which I glimpsed smoke in the northern sky, above the slated and tiled roofs, decorous gables, and a slowly turning weathervane.
A cluster of soldiers moved from door to door of the shops along the way, ushering owners inside and checking locks.
Several glanced at me, disheveled in my shawl and opera gown, but only to shout, “The city is in lockdown! Off the streets, order of the Grand General!”
“On my way!” I shouted back as I ducked into another alleyway.
Twists and turns passed me by. I was cold, but my skin prickled with anxious sweat. At one point I crossed a broad, echoing and empty market hall where the dispossessed clustered in dirty corners, conferring and eyeing me as I passed.
“Not safe out there, lass!” a man called, his voice quavering with age and worry.
I only touched my forehead and shouldered open a stiff outer door.
I made it a dozen feet down the next street before gunshots cracked. I threw myself under a cart. Someone called an order to stand down. Another gunshot cracked. Glass shattered.
On my belly, I watched soldiers sprint past. I did not see whoever they pursued, but judging by a smattering of whoops and howls, the perpetrators were enjoying the chase.
Zealots, I surmised. Or looters. Baffin was truly despicable, using Incarnadine and her crusade to tear the city apart and justify his own vendetta. Trying to use me.
The latter may not have come to fruition, but it clung to me. It made what I intended to do next all the sweeter.
The streets around the Hotel Cherron were thick with police and soldiers, coordinating and ordering locals about. I kept my head down and ducked into the alleyway where I had, not two days ago, stashed my stolen bicycle after throwing Guild Mage Howell off Pointer’s Bridge.
The contraption was gone, perhaps taken by another pair of needy hands. But the spot was deserted, and safe to catch my breath.
It took longer than was helpful. I had gotten so little sleep over the last few days, and next to no solid meals. I braced my hands on my knees in the shadow of the wall and stilled a wave of dizziness.
I needed rest. But first I needed to find Pretoria.
I eyed the front door of the hotel. Harassed-looking bellboys stood beside the doors as guards, but no one came in or out. I doubted my sister was still here, but even if she was not, she would have left a note. Or…
“Finally,” Pretoria said. She stepped seemingly from nowhere with a haze of skewed time, and gave me a fixed, low-chinned look. “You have ruined that gown. Where were you?”
I smiled a compulsive, relieved, and guilty smile. “I knew you would find me.”
“That is not an answer, dear.”
I took her in, head to foot. She was dressed in a simple walking ensemble, parasol in hand, and appeared none the worse for wear.
“The Guild did not spot you?” I asked. “Or did a Silver mage call at the hotel?”
She frowned. “Mage? No, though the bellboy warned me someone had been watching the premises, and I secured a new den. The Guild, the opera—that was a near thing. I was recognized by a mage and detained momentarily, but made my escape. Too late to find you, however. Where did you go?”
I closed the space between us and slipped my arm through hers. “I will tell you everything, once we are somewhere safe.”
* * *
We did not speak again until the door of Pretoria’s new safehouse was closed.
The place was in the worst part of Old Harrow, right beside the docks and stinking of fish and river. The room had faded wallpaper and threadbare rugs, but it was quiet, and the room itself smelled of freshly laundered sheets.
Perry glanced from his station at the cracked window and gave me a tense greeting. Beyond, the docks spread out to the flow of the river, and one could see a narrow view of the street and front door.
“You live,” I observed.
“As do you,” he returned. “We’ve been worried.”
“Ottilie?” My sister’s worried tones drew my attention back to her. “What happened?”
I had prepared for this moment during my walk, but still, I took a moment to reply. What had not happened to me, in the last six days? I had been abducted and arrested, threatened and attacked, glimpsed my erstwhile fiancé, kissed a Separatist, thrown a Guild mage off a bridge, and lost my cat.
I had suffered the upending of my entire life and future.
“I want to trust you,” I said to Pretoria. My eyes burned, but otherwise, I was composed. “I want to tell you everything. But first, I need some assurances. Perry, do you mind giving my sister and I the room?”
Perry glanced at Pretoria. I could not read the look they exchanged but he touched her arm and left, as requested. The door clicked, and my sister and I were alone.
Pretoria sat on the opposite bed with a soft creak. The moment stretched long and I sensed her struggling to find something to say. I, too, found myself reluctant to begin.
Finally, she spoke. Her voice was stripped of pomp and bravado, so much so she might have been another person entirely. “You do not have to trust me, or tell me anything. Other than what you would like me to do.”
I weighed this. It was quite the gesture on her part, and I sensed it was genuine. But it was not enough.
“I require you to swear you will not take me out of Harrow against my will,” I replied.
The words came from somewhere deep inside of me, whole and full.
“Swear to me you will not manipulate me or corral me into going anywhere with you. Swear to me that you will leave me to do as I please, as soon as I tell you to. Swear to me that you will accept that my choices are my own.”
“Ottilie—” She cut herself off, clearly swallowing offense at my words. Then, slowly, she nodded and said with sincerity, validated and verified by the pain and frustration in her eyes, “All right. I swear.”
Those two words had such weight to them. They hung in the room until I could bear them no longer.
“Now,” I said, erasing them with my voice. “There is a great deal more to the artifact than I initially understood. Grand General Baffin believes it is the key to learning how to turn humans into Entwined, and he now has it in his possession.”
Whatever Pretoria had anticipated me saying, this was not it. Her eyes grew wide. But she did not interrupt.
“However, there is a chance it is not properly in his possession, as it were, at this moment. He has been funding the research of a professor at the university, a philologist, and I believe he will take the artifact to him for translation.”
“Or bring the professor to the artifact,” Pretoria pointed out. Her expression grew keen, a challenge-hungry edge that I recognized well.
“That may be,” I conceded. “And if it is, we will have to adjust. But we must start somewhere. If I was Dr. Maddeson and I had just been handed the artifact—and I had a choice in the matter—I would be in my office, with my books and research.”
“Then we go to the university,” Pretoria surmised. “But if Baffin wants the artifact, will Lord Stillwell still pay for it? Perry?”
There was a moment of quiet, then the door slowly opened and Perry stepped back into the room. There was not a scrap of shame on his face at being caught eavesdropping, just a winsome Copper’s smile.
“Lord Stillwell was still very much in want of the artifact when I spoke with him yesterday,” the man said.
“He did mention that someone had come to him, making inquiries about it and offering to purchase it from him, but he seemed to consider the matter innocent enough. He also told me that his valet had gone missing. It seems he sent him to meet with Mr. Stoke, the night of the bombing.”
“Mr. Wake likely killed him, so he could impersonate him,” I surmised. I felt a flicker of regret for the faceless stranger, but the chill I felt when I thought of Wake was stronger. “Even if Stillwell is not willing to pay, could you find another buyer?”
“One who would not yield to Baffin?” Pretoria mused. “Certainly.”
Reassured, I nearly smiled. “Good. Then let us proceed.”
From there, we began to lay out plans. I did not, however, speak of Lewis or the following phases of my plan—to rescue him and flee to Ilandrume.
I did not tell my sister that, once the dust from all this had settled, I would take every penny of the reward and leave her behind.
I would leave her as I had intended to leave Mr. Stoke.
I would turn my back on her, her love and her meddling, and walk away.
A second time.