Chapter 22 | Sephania
Sephania
Something overcame me in that wretched fucking place. Something terrifying and . . . exulting.
It was not our intent to create a mass casualty event in the first area we searched. But seeing those scared girls shivering and trembling—fearing us as much as anyone else—broke something inside me.
It doesn’t hurt that having Vallan and Garroway at my side makes me feel invincible, like I have personal sentries and can do no wrong.
I want to believe Garro. Those men deserved it.
Telling the nightladies that flesh-trading is disallowed in Nuhav was an impromptu idea that sounded good in my head.
The longer I sit in the carriage, with Vallan leading us deeper south toward the rooster-gabled brothel, the more I believe in what I said.
Those weren’t just words. That is how I will exact change.
Killing every cursed slavetrader who dares show their face in my city.
This, I realize, is how I will begin the revolution that is sorely needed in this place.
“Perhaps we can use this to our advantage,” Garro murmurs, stroking his chin. Clearly he’s thinking along the same lines I am.
I’m curious about his plans. “How?”
“No fucking idea. That’s Skartovius’ purview. Disrupting the status quo will not sit well with many, however.”
I lift my brow. “I thought we weren’t telling Skar.”
“You said you’re not telling Skar. As you also said, he’s my master. He’ll know soon enough when he reads my frazzled thoughts.”
I pout, nodding. We probably shouldn’t keep it from Skar anyway, what we’re doing down here. “Skartovius Ashfen may be the brain of this operation, the cunning tactician, but we’re not stupid, Garro. We can come up with our own schemes, you know.”
The dhampir laughs, sitting back and spreading his arms wide. “Oh, certainly, lass. I’ve been making schemes my whole life. I only mean to say Skar is more successful at it than I am.”
I smile sharply. “Two can say that.”
We fall into companionable silence. I listen to the creaking of the wheels beneath us, and it doesn’t take long for a plan to formulate in my mind.
“Skar said he wanted a distraction in Nuhav,” I murmur, tapping my leg and staring out the window at the houses whirring by. “Something to divert the Five Ministries’ attention from our coup against the overlords.”
“Right.” Garro scratches his smooth cheek. “I don’t think he meant—”
“What say we don’t kill every flesh-trader we find? At least to start.”
“We’d be hard-pressed to anyway with so many of the damned vermin crawling around these streets.”
I pull at my chin. “So, say we leave some alive to spread the word. Make the slavers second-guess themselves. Make them uneasy.”
“What would be the point of that, lass?”
“Panic.” I smile roguishly at my dhampir. “The Nuhav slavers are the main broodstock exporters to Olhav. The fullbloods won’t take kindly to losing their cattle and breeding mares. They’ll be forced to investigate.”
He matches my smile, catching on. “Diverting their attention away from the uprising we’re planning in Olhav. Brilliant, badger.” He barks a laugh. “I say Master Skar will be proud of how duplicitous you’ve become.”
We step off our reaper’s carriage and heard toward the bright white rooster sign stationed above the murky brothel ahead.
“Let’s not waste time,” I say. “Find the fucker on the list, hopefully locate the other one, and finish it for Cyprilis. I’d like to be back in Olhav before sunrise.”
“You and me both, lass,” Garro mutters.
Vallan grunts, “You’ve been the one doing most the killing, silverblood, ‘wasting time,’ as you call it.”
I squint at the mammoth. “Excuse me? By my count, you’ve killed four, to my two.”
He frowns and scratches his beard. “Not sure that first one died. I tossed him far, not hard.”
Garro lifts a finger. “The man yelling downstairs said his neck broke.”
“Oh.” Vallan shrugs. “I thought he was talking about the one you punched in the throat.”
“Regardless,” I say, feeling oddly satisfied with this morbid conversation, “it’s not a competition. Let’s just do our job.”
We enter the brothel and immediately get hit with the cloying stench of sex and redcloud. A few decrepit drunkards sit at the bar at the end of the room, four of them in an untidy row. Tables are filled with naked women sitting on laps, and crude men getting lulled with sweet words.
Scanning the room through the dim haze, I find the staircase leading upstairs, where I’m sure the master of the manor resides.
I nudge my chin in that direction and head over, passing the bar and the lounging drunks.
Glancing over at the barman, who has his back turned as he pours a mug, I step onto the first step—
And stop. One of the men slumped at the bar, shoulders sagging, lost in his cups, looks oddly familiar.
I veer away from the stairs, unable to help myself, and Garro sighs with exasperation. “Lass, what did we just say about . . .”
His words drown away as I approach the man on the stool at the far end of the bar, nursing his mug. My world flips and my mouth falls open. “Rirth?” I croak.
Ridiculously slowly, my old friend-turned-enemy twists his neck at the sound of his name.
I wonder how long it took my word to reach his addled mind.
He looks pickled, horrible, with a grizzly beard and dull eyes.
Not the sharp orbs from the charming, short king I remember in the Grimsons, fighting alongside him at the shadowgalas we partook in to try and earn our freedom.
He used to be the talk of the town among the Grimdaughters .
. . and Grimsons, once I learned about him and Culiar.
The apple of everyone’s eye, and our best fighter.
And now this. Hunched over a half-empty cup, stinking of the streets, hooded and looking like he’s lost.
“As I live and breathe,” Rirth says in a raspy scoff. “Just can’t escape the past, can I?”
I feel Vallan and Garroway creeping in behind me as they surely recognize the man from Manor Marquin as a slavefighter. Which means he’s dangerous.
I clench my jaw. “What the fuck are you doing in this brothel?”
He blinks wearily at me, eyes half-lidded. “I could ask the same of you, Sephania Lock.”
There’s no point in lying to Rirth. I lower my voice, though no one else is close enough to pay attention to us. “I’m here killing flesh-traders.”
“Ah.” He chuckles humorlessly, returning to his cup and scoffing. “Still killing your own kind, eh?”
“My kind?” Anger swarms me, itching in my blood.
I lean forward and grab his collar, turning him to face me.
I have half a mind to slap the drunken rosiness from his cheeks.
“I may be morally gray, Rirth, but the people I’m ending are pitch fucking black and deserve everything they have coming to them.
I would have thought you’d seen it by now.
There’s no good versus evil in these damned cities. ”
He sits up straighter, seeming to notice me for the first time.
My heart sinks because the look on his face doesn’t get friendlier—it gets more cautious, angrier.
“You’re right,” Rirth claps back, “the only thing that makes us different than the two fuckers behind you, is we die. They don’t.
” His smile is dark, lost. “We’re all swimming in the same cesspool, huh?
Eating shit together. You come to finally finish me off, Seph? Like you killed Cul?”
I bunch his tunic in my hand, squeezing hard.
I can’t keep my rage in check, not at the morose sight of my old friend like this.
“I didn’t kill Culiar, Rirth, and you know that, deep in your heart.
I am sorry for what happened. I regret it every day.
But Culiar made his decision to step into that pit.
I didn’t force him. He wanted to kill Peltos. He simply failed.”
Rirth takes my words in with a slack face, blinking only once I’m finished with my spiel. He loses all color in his cheeks when I mention his dead lover.
Then he surprises me. “I’m nothing now, Sephania. The vampires have won, like always. Don’t you see?”
Abruptly, Palacia’s words from the North Mines ring in my head. “It was Rirth who resumed the shadowgalas, because he saw that as the only way for people to find freedom. He said leaving the Grimsons to wallow in Nuhav wasn’t freedom at all.”
And yet, here he was. Doing exactly that.
“What happened, brother?” My voice softens. I release my hold on his collar, brushing off his shoulder. “Who died now, to break you so badly? Palacia told me you resumed the shadowgalas.”
The bleariness rushes out of his eyes. “P-Palacia?” He sits straighter. “You spoke to her? Where?”
“A place called the—”
“Silverblood,” Vallan grumbles behind me.
I close my mouth. Right. Can’t tell humans of the silver mines. “A place in Olhav.”
Rirth barks a disgusted laugh. “So they took her from me too, did they? Bastards.” He pounds his fist on the counter, drawing some attention from the other drunkards.
“No one died, Sephania,” he hisses. “I left because I saw the futility in trying to fight for our freedom. Antones lost the fight in him. I tried to take the reins from dead Master Lukain but didn’t have the heart for it. No one died, yet everyone died.”
A sigh works its way through me. His sheer shock at learning Palacia is still alive seems odd to me. They were never that close when we lived in the Firehold together.
Palacia’s words come fluttering in again. “I loved them, you know? Rirth, Culiar, Imis, Helget—all of them. But I guess the gang has to split up at some point.”
“I can take you to her,” I say, wondering if Rirth might have found some solace with Pala following Culiar’s death.
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep to this washed-up slave soldier,” Vallan growls.
I scowl at him over my shoulder, urging him to shut his mouth. He’s not deterred by my expression.