Chapter Nineteen After #3
She scanned the crowd, looking for the beacon of a silk brocade vest. But the red lantern light turned everyone a similar shade of scarlet, until so many varied faces and bodies seemed the same.
Cat was quietly glad she had not sampled any of the drinks circulating through the Quarter, lest she lose her head entirely.
Then she finally spotted him. Not exactly where she left Fell an hour ago, but close enough.
He sat beneath the gnarled branches of a flowering tree, fuchsia petals half obscuring him from the people milling around.
But it did not hide him from a particularly valiant young woman, her white-blonde hair adorned with red flowers, as she tried to pry some attention out of him.
Cat smirked, watching him give one-word answers and sip tightly at a half-empty glass of spiced rum. His face pulled at the flavor. She had never known him to favor rum, but supposed the wine was too poor for his refined tastes.
He leapt to his feet when she approached, passing the glass off to the hopeful woman without so much as a glance. It finally did the trick, and she flitted away with a roll of her eyes, quick to find another customer.
“Am I interrupting?” Cat said with a raised brow.
Fell shot her a withering stare.
“Very well,” Cat laughed. “I’m sorry you were so tortured by the company. Did you at least hear anything of use?”
Fell sneered over his shoulder to an officer in green uniform, holding court amongst a gaggle of eager, beflowered men and women.
“I didn’t fight that Esperese officer,” he said. “Though the pompous ass certainly deserved it.”
Cat rolled her eyes and pushed him towards the street, away from his more violent urges.
“I suppose that’s a triumph,” she said dryly. “You would’ve been dead before I returned.”
“You think I couldn’t have bested him?” Fell snapped, his words slower and sliding together.
Cat had to fight her grin. He had clearly drunk far more than she realized in their time apart. At least it made him manageable; she was easily able to steer him out into the street, past the taverns and musicians towards the docks, the Fledge, and some much-needed sleep.
“I think you would have bested one man only to be subdued by an entire battalion of Esperese sailors,” she offered.
Fell smiled dreamily. “At least a battalion.”
“At least,” Cat echoed.
“What of you?” he said, leaning heavily on her arm. “Do you have any idea where to look next? Or do you have more terrible things to put me through, Cat?”
He said her name quietly, his voice thicker.
As many terrible things as I can, Cat thought, her mind trailing back to Ana, still ensconced in her tower. How she would have liked to feed Fell to the Seawolf. But Ana was not her ally, not anymore. Just like the man next to her.
He never truly was.
“You put me in a cell with a warrant of execution hanging over my head,” she replied.
He rolled his eyes. “Not really—”
“I could do many terrible things to you before we break even again, Jasper.”
“Even?” His playful manner disappeared in an instant. Though drunk, his gaze was piercing. It made Cat think of Ana and the dagger at her neck, the cut still healing. “We have not been even since the day we met, Catrine Rose.”
She stopped short, letting Fell stumble on a few paces. He lost his balance but never fell, righting himself against a dockside rail. When he turned back to face her, Cat was already glaring.
“What is that supposed to mean, Captain?”
Her blood blazed beneath her skin. Not even, she thought, raging inside her mind. It was ten years ago, but she still remembered the day they met, when Jasper Fell was a lieutenant outside the bars of her crumbling cage. When he smirked at her as if she were just another stupid woman to charm.
She expected him to wilt or wave her off, but the rum made him bold.
“You know exactly what I mean, Lady Rose. Don’t pretend like you were some lowly indentured flung into the Lyrian Sea.” He stalked back towards her, closing the distance between them. “You are a noblewoman, no matter how poor or unlucky you claimed to be.”
“Claimed?” Cat snarled back, never giving ground. “You remember Rosby. You remember Ryman. You know what I came from.”
“And you know the same of me.” He did not relent. In the dim light of the evening, the torches of the dock burning odd reflections in the water, he seemed young again. But the scar through his left eyebrow remained, testament to the Venerable, and all that came after.
“You know how hard I had to fight, and how much higher I had to climb,” Fell growled.
He still smelled of his expensive oil beneath the rum, and Cat knew why.
It was a shield as much as his medals, as much as his neatly combed hair and freshly shaved cheeks.
He clung to the appearance of perfection, of wealth, of higher standing.
“You know how much further I have to fall, Cat.”
“It is not the height of the fall, but how sudden the stop,” Cat replied, raising a hand to her neck for good measure.
Her fingers curled and for a moment she felt rope instead of her skin.
“Don’t pretend we’re even, Captain Fell.
I don’t care what class you were born to.
You are still a man in this world. And I still have a noose around my neck. ”
The torchlight turned his silver eyes to hellish red.
“Let us hope you found something to loosen it,” he said, leaning closer. Between the folds of his shirt, his chest rose and fell with heavy breaths. “What did you learn tonight?”
Cat did not flinch. Neither moved, each staring at the other, the city beyond little more than shadows.
In the silence, Cat weighed her options, counting the islands of the Lyrian Sea.
She could say any name, choose any point on the map.
Drag Fell deeper and deeper, farther and farther.
Push him until he could be pushed no more.
Let him chase his own tail, keeping him as far from Valerian as the sea allowed.
But his eyes gleamed, what care he carried for her eclipsed by a desperation Cat knew all too well.
The need to survive.
The balance, if there ever was one, threatened to tip.
Her lips parted and she chose the truth, even though it tasted like blood.
“Our heading,” Cat finally said. “Arcayo.”