Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
Now it is time to let Cáel run things.
I suppress a smile. He must really like me to have let me lead for the past week. The man who quietly deferred to me did so by choice. He is exceptional, and his team responds to him with the ease of people who trust their commander.
I brief everyone on the Gilded Drop beneath the Bounty Hunter Depot.
Somebody asks the obvious question: whether a Velmoran can use it at all.
As far as I know, the Drop does not care who is standing in it. It cares who is working it. It reads the hand on the panel, decides whether that hand carries the right magic, and then carries whatever else happens to be inside. So I open it. Everybody else rides.
My friends and I proved that at fifteen, repeatedly, with a great deal of shrieking.
The Drop gives us the one route Preston can’t easily block, and I had assumed the plan would be for us to slip through quietly.
That is not the plan.
The plan is to take the entire Bounty Hunter Depot, secure the Drop, travel up through it, reach Overseers’ Road and seize Preston’s estate.
All of it before dark. After sunset, Overseers’ Road is lit end to end, and there is nowhere on that street to put a group of people who have no business being there.
Who knew abducting a foreign governor’s protected witness would change the rules of diplomatic etiquette?
Cáel is finished pretending this is a polite visit.
I count them while they load.
Fourteen. Four will hold the perimeter, two the Depot behind us and two the lower entrance, which leaves six going up with us. Our group also includes a surgeon, my sister and a dog.
Against an estate with its own security, its own kennels and a direct line to whatever remains of my parents.
I keep the arithmetic to myself. Training, foreign protection and unsuppressed magic count for a great deal, and in any case nobody in this car park is going to be talked out of anything today.
Vivian and Thea have refused to stay out of the operation. Thea pointed out, correctly, that her Thread magic might be the only thing capable of saving me once we enter the Zone.
She has been bent over Cáel’s encrypted device, reading at speed while his people feed her scanned files from Velmora’s archives.
I see why Vivian adores her.
I adore her too.
Cáel’s team brings an extraordinary amount of equipment. As they combine it with what is already packed into the rescue vehicle, I feel almost overwhelmed.
“Where did you find these people?” I ask.
“I’m a governor,” he casually replies.
“Yes, but—”
Mina sprawls across the back seat. Vivian and Thea occupy the second car. We have split the convoy in case something goes wrong en route, our vehicles sandwiched between two carrying Cáel’s people.
Cáel stretches and turns towards me. “Velmora trains its citizens,” he says simply.
I have watched them work, and I consider what that means. Give people a genuine chance. Magic. Education. Opportunity.
This is the result.
They move as though they know exactly what they are capable of because they do.
In the Districts, generations of suppression have ground people down until bare survival is the ceiling. We are not lesser.
We have never been allowed to discover what we might become.
Perhaps there is still time.
“What happens if this goes wrong?”
Cáel checks the weapon at his wrist with practised calm. “Officially? A diplomatic incident. Professionally? I may lose my post. Personally?” His gaze flicks to me. “Still worth it.”
I do not know what to do with that, so I look out of the window.
We park in the Bounty Hunter Depot car park, politely, as though reporting for an afternoon shift.
The old bathhouse rises above us in the cold, its windows catching the flat white light of a winter midday. Four members of the team peel away to secure the perimeter with wards that allow people to leave but prevent anyone from entering.
Vivian and Thea remain inside the magically fortified vehicle, as agreed.
The rest of us walk through the front door.
Our footsteps vanish into the high ceilings. Off-white tiles gleam dully beneath peeling notices, and arched ironwork casts narrow shadows across the walls.
Normally, the building seems merely tired.
Today, as Cáel’s people move through it—silent, alert and armed—it feels almost alive.
The Depot is half empty, and it has nothing to do with the hour. Half the hunters are on community work near the anchors; the rest are shifting families, minding relatives or chasing the bounties that always multiply when a city begins to panic.
Hunters will always find work.
The Depot manager meets us outside his office. He regards me with the expression he reserves specifically for my existence: somewhere between acute diarrhoea and a dangerous dog.
“What is going on? Who are you?”
Cáel steps forwards with his governor’s smile—open, warm and entirely at odds with the armed people behind him.
“Mr Ridges, what a pleasure.”
He shakes the manager’s hand before the man has quite decided whether to offer it.
“I’m the Governor of Velmora. We need the use of your building for the remainder of the day. Nothing permanent, and everything will be restored by morning. If you could ask your staff to head home early, we would be most grateful.”
The manager stares at Cáel.
Then at me.
“This is the ‘diplomat’ you’ve been helping?” He turns upon me, affronted. “And you think you can walk into my building—”
“It’s an emergency,” I say.
“It always is with you,” he mutters. “Have you got paperwork?”
Cáel spreads his hands apologetically. “I’m afraid not. But you have my word that everything will be in order. The paperwork will exist by tomorrow morning.”
“I can’t simply—”
One of Cáel’s men—the same man I met in the Iron District—produces a small glowing sphere and tosses it lazily from hand to hand.
Mina whines, eager to chase it. I tap my leg, and she subsides with a disgruntled huff.
I have no idea what the object is, but the manager clearly does. It has the unmistakable air of something expensive, foreign and capable of ruining everyone’s afternoon.
The Depot manager’s expression changes. “Ah. I see.” He nods towards the sphere. “That’s your paperwork.” He glances at his office. “Right. I’ll be off. You don’t need this room?”
“Not at all,” Cáel replies pleasantly.
“Good.” The manager snatches up his coat and keys with remarkable speed. “I’ll ward my office and the records room. Their contents are worth more than my job.”
“Of course. We won’t go near them.”
He points towards an old red alarm button on the wall. “That will trigger an evacuation without anyone getting hurt. Hunters are self-interested. They won’t argue with it.”
With one final, deeply disapproving glare at me, he departs, and one of Cáel’s guards shadows him.
Moments later, the guard returns and nods. “All done, sir.”
Cáel presses the alarm button.
A recorded voice issues evacuation instructions. The words rebound from tile, iron and old stone, turning hollow beneath the echoes.
He triggers it twice more, and we watch the hunters file out.
Collin lifts his chin as he passes. “Having fun?” he calls over the alarm.
“Wonderful time, thanks,” I call back.
“Not only a serial killer, then.” His gaze travels over the assembled team.
I glare.
“Still no date, though.” He flicks a glance towards Cáel, who meets it with something quietly murderous. Collin shrugs amiably. “Worth a try. Have a good afternoon, folks.”
Cáel silences the alarm with one sharp clap. “Right. Where is the Drop entrance?”
“Outside. Around the back, at basement level.”
Once Cáel’s people have warded the building and the staff have cleared out, Vivian and Thea join us behind the Depot, where maintenance never ventures and weeds force their way through every crack.
Cáel leaves two of his people to guard the lower entrance and another pair to secure the Depot behind us.
The same stack of cracked evidence crates slumps beside the broken vending machine and half conceals the old service door.
“I hate this thing,” I mutter. I press my palm to the peeling paint. The handle is bitterly cold beneath my fingers.
Something shifts beneath my skin—old and faint, but familiar now—and the lock clicks open.
“Nobody touch anything,” I warn. “The magic in here is temperamental.”
We enter.
Six of Cáel’s people come through the door with us, moving in a tight formation: me first, Cáel at my shoulder, Vivian and Thea protected in the middle, and the others spread behind us.
Mina, naturally, positions herself wherever she pleases.
Currently, that is beside me.
The passage beyond is lined from floor to ceiling with grimy white subway tiles. The air is damp and cold, carrying the stale mineral smell of old baths, standing water and rusting machinery.
“You used this before?” Thea asks Vivian, studying the corridor as we descend.
“Only twice. The first time felt like an adventure.” Vivian’s voice softens. “The second time, I noticed the children. How grey everyone looked.” She falls silent for a moment. “They weren’t as bad then as they are now.”
“No,” Thea says quietly. “I imagine they weren’t.”
We follow the corridor deeper beneath the Depot.
The Gilded Drop waits exactly where I remember it.
The space around it is unnervingly spotless, its magic still repelling dust while the rest of the basement rots around it. The dark-gold brass doors gleam softly in the torchlight, untouched by age.
Waiting.