Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
The Drop is large enough for all of us. It was designed for freight, after all.
I press my palm to the mechanism and brace for the bite.
Nothing happens.
No pain. No snap of magic, only a soft tingle beneath my skin. Perhaps the Drop recognises me differently now. Perhaps I have been hurt so often of late that ordinary magical pain no longer registers.
Unless there is a truly ridiculous amount of it.
When the mechanism lurches into motion, everyone grabs for the walls. One of Cáel’s team turns an impressive shade of green.
I watch with quiet amusement.
The doors open on the other side.
“I want to kiss the ground,” Vivian groans. “That was dreadful. I don’t remember it being like that.”
“It went sideways,” Thea whispers.
“Funny what you’ll tolerate as a teenager,” I say.
Mina shakes herself out from nose to tail, hard enough to rattle her harness, then looks up at me, delighted with the entire experience.
Cáel taps one of the droplets of water suspended beside the fountain’s door and studies it as though he can’t quite believe it is real. His people are already fanning out to secure the fountain chamber and the doors beyond it.
Six of Cáel’s team come through with us.
Two remain behind.
If everything goes wrong, this is our way out, and we can’t risk finding it blocked. They will guard the upper entrance until we return or until Cáel recalls them.
One of them has compatible Zone blood. Cáel’s actions make it clear that he plans for problems I haven’t even imagined yet.
We test her access. Pain tightens her face; one shoulder jerks as though the magic has bitten clean through to the bone. She rides it out, breathing hard, and nods.
She can operate the Drop.
That is what it is supposed to feel like. That is what it felt like at fifteen, and what it felt like days ago, when my jaw locked against a cry.
This morning it barely noticed me.
You are interwoven with it.
It is not letting me through any more. It is not checking, because there is nothing left in me to check against.
I say nothing. Thea has enough to carry.
Two cars and two more guards wait on the road beyond Fountain Square.
Of course they do.
“You left people up here,” I say.
Cáel smiles. “They were already stationed in the Zone,” he explains before I can ask. “I moved them before our credentials became decorative.”
We leave the fountain at an unhurried pace, drawing startled looks from the few diners still lingering around the square. Cáel’s team are visibly armed, and the rest of us—even Vivian and Thea in their immaculate clothes—look like people who have endured a very long few days.
We split between the two vehicles. I clip Mina’s harness to the back seat, and we drive away.
I expect a fight at Preston’s estate, but the front gate opens as we approach.
A man in operational gear identical to Cáel’s nods to us from the guardhouse. Cáel’s people arrived first. I glance sideways at him.
He offers me a small smile and laughs quietly. “You have enough to deal with. You can fight, and your magic is extraordinary. I know that. But if I can clear the path so you don’t have to, I will.” His voice softens. “Protecting you matters.”
“Oh,” I say. “Thank you.”
I twist my hands together in my lap.
He covers them briefly with one of his, gives a gentle squeeze, then returns his attention to the road.
During my last visit, I saw only the kennels. Now the main house stands fully revealed: solid red brick, delicate carving along the roofline, stone finials crowning each peak.
Preston could have gutted it. Replaced the lot with glass and steel, as my parents did.
He has not.
My opinion of him edges upwards half an inch, which is inconvenient, since I came here to despise him.
“Mina,” I say as we park. “Will she be all right? The estate dogs—”
“All secured,” Cáel replies. “The remaining staff are accounted for and unharmed. Most have families in the Districts and have already left. People aren’t staying for money any more.”
I nod. I understand completely.
The garden is impossibly lush for November, which explains the absence of frost I noticed on my last visit.
It is pleasant, for once, to enter through the front door rather than being dragged around the back.
Inside, a mosaic floor spreads beneath a white staircase, and Mina’s claws click across it. She stays beside me, her nose following the skirting boards as she investigates every unfamiliar scent.
“You like this house,” Cáel says, close to my ear.
“It’s beautiful.”
“It is.” He guides me along the corridor.
Behind us, Vivian and Thea murmur to each other.
The office lies at the rear of the house, its French doors overlooking a paved courtyard. Two of Cáel’s team are already inside. The rest arrange themselves around us before we enter, two ahead and two behind.
Preston sits on a brown leather sofa that is more statement than furniture, a low coffee table in front of him and a wide desk standing at the right-hand end of the room.
Cáel’s team withdraw to give us privacy. A conversation like this is strictly need-to-know. Through the French doors, I watch one of them pacing back and forth across the pale stone, his movement steady and almost hypnotic, before I turn my attention to the room.
Vivian and Thea have settled at the far end of the sofa, as distant from Preston as the furniture allows. His back is straight, his suit rumpled, dark stubble shadowing his jaw. He looks like a man who has not slept for several days and resents every minute of it.
“Hello, Preston,” Cáel says pleasantly. “Thank you for seeing us.”
Preston has had no opportunity to refuse.
“I didn’t have a choice,” Preston snarls. “Your thugs have kept me here for hours. I know what you are doing; you’re hiding behind diplomatic immunity. This is not diplomatic behaviour.”
I take the chair behind the desk and turn it until I am facing the sofa across the coffee table. It squeaks beneath me.
Mina folds herself underneath, chin on her paws, and settles her gaze on the unhappy Overseer. She does not blink. From there she can be out and across the rug before he has finished standing up, and I rather think he knows it.
My wrist prickles beneath my sleeve.
The truth mark.
I do not trust the government marks any more, but Cáel has warded the tracker, and the work function still does what it was designed to do. Carefully, lightly, I let the mark wake and settle its attention on Preston.
Warm for a lie. Cool for honesty. It has never been able to tell me whether something is true—only whether the speaker believes it.
“You’re right, and I apologise for the inconvenience. But I needed to bring an urgent matter to your attention.”
“Why didn’t you make an appointment like a normal person?”
Cáel drags the visitor’s chair around to my side of the desk and sits, close enough that our arms almost touch. Mina beneath me, him beside me, and the coffee table between the three of us and the Overseer.
“Time is of the essence. Miss Morris and I were attacked in the Iron District, Preston, on your property by people I recognised from this estate.”
He leans forward and sets Blondie’s key card on the coffee table with a precise click, face up so Preston can see it. “I have photographs. I have identification. I have evidence placing our attackers both here and at the freight site. More than enough to implicate you formally.”
“Implicate me? For what? My people were doing their jobs.” Preston glances at me, then quickly away.
“You were trespassing. I was well within my rights to protect my property. Right after the Ink explosion, my people reported someone shouting about runes and magic. I had this person brought in for questioning.”
He pauses. “My people learnt nothing.”
Cool against my wrist.
His voice takes on a petulant edge. He does not say it outright, but the implication is clear: Cáel ruined his plan.
“So, instead of making a formal request to question Elenora yourself,” Cáel says, “you had her attacked.”
“She was in the Bone and Ink Districts when two major incidents happened. Then she appeared at Iron, on restricted property, where she interfered with infrastructure she had no reason to know existed. I still find sabotage more likely than coincidence.”
Cool. He means every word of it, and the worst of it is that I can follow his reasoning all the way along.
Infrastructure.
Not runes. Not anchors. Not the suppression grid.
Careful words from a man trying to learn what we know without admitting what he does.
“Infrastructure,” Cáel repeats mildly. “Interesting word.”
“The infrastructure,” Preston says, gesturing vaguely. “You know the freight buildings.”
“You think Elenora and I went to the Iron District to blow up a building?” The fake pleasantness in Cáel’s voice is now gone.
Preston looks at his hands. “It is one of many possibilities,” he mumbles.
Vivian leans forward, eyes narrowing. “Did it not occur to you that my sister is a Morris?”
“I knew,” Preston admits, embarrassment flickering beneath the defensiveness, “but the official record says she was disowned, stripped of her magic. She has no formal link to the family. I assumed she was an unstable bounty hunter with an unhealthy interest in matters that didn’t concern her. All the evidence suggested terrorism.”
Cool, the whole way through. Not one flicker.
Which is either the truth, or the most frightening thing I have heard today: that a man can sit at the very centre of this and have no idea what he is holding.