15
—The Prophet’s Modern Translation of the Holy Book
I follow the Warden to the back of the house, eyes fixed on the tattoos climbing the back of his neck: a partial ouroboros, its lower half concealed by his shirt collar, and a pentagon with an eye in the center.
Both are surrounded by a swirling design of thorns.
Images meant to keep people at a distance.
I wonder if he did that on purpose—if his appearance as a whole is intended to counter the natural effect he has on people. It’s what I would have done.
Then again, from what I can glean, he appears to revel in his power.
The kitchen turns out to be at the very rear of the house.
Unlike the other rooms, it’s updated, although equally monochrome.
The counters and appliances are black. Despite the Warden’s claim about making breakfast, the space is spotless.
A window above the sink overlooks an untended backyard that meets the edge of the forest, its long grasses swallowed by the trees.
Gray light filters in, casting everything in the same muted hues as the cloudy sky.
“What?” the Warden asks, catching my scowl.
“Nothing.” I turn away from the window. “You promised me food.”
“Do you have something against my backyard?”
“I don’t like forests.”
“What did trees ever do to you?”
“You ask a lot of questions for someone who hates them so much.”
The Warden shrugs, making his way over to the stove. “I hate you asking me questions.” He retrieves a covered plate that he slides across the counter. “Here. Happy?”
I lift the foil, suspicion flaring. Not only did he make me breakfast, but he endeavored to keep it warm. “Not particularly. What’s the angle?”
“Angle?”
“Don’t tell me you’re just trying to be a good host.”
“Oh, I’m not.” He relaxes against the counter opposite me, infuriatingly at ease. With his pale spill of hair, he might have been hewn from ice. “I do nothing out of simple kindness.”
“So you have expectations.” I’m almost relieved. This is far more in line with what I thought I knew of him.
He straightens, ignoring my furious stare as he rolls up his shirtsleeves to reveal heavily tattooed forearms. I scan them, eyes narrowed.
On one arm is an intricate depiction of a crumbling building—a temple, perhaps?
On the other, a black cuff at the wrist extends into a patchwork of spiked vines that look—aptly and obscenely—like inky veins against the pale flesh.
There’s a clouded crescent moon on the back of his left hand, and some kind of bird on the back of his right, an arrow through its breast.
I let my gaze drift up to where the shirt is unbuttoned at his throat. For the first time, I can start to make out the design there: Skeletal hands, I think, that meet beneath his chin like fingers wrapped around his neck. Equal parts lovely and disturbing.
“You already knew I wanted something, little sinner,” the Warden says, ignoring my scrutiny. “That’s the only reason you’re here. And inconvenient though it may be, you strike me as the type to become less pleasant when you haven’t eaten.”
He isn’t wrong, though I’m irked that he has the audacity to say it aloud. I rip the crust off a piece of toast and pop it into my mouth. “I’ve been told I’m unpleasant regardless.”
“A shocking revelation.” The Warden watches me chew, his attention unyielding. I suddenly understand why animals in the wild feel vulnerable when they eat.
I swallow. “Just tell me what you want.”
“You already know what I want.”
“To make me regret coming to you, presumably.”
Still his gaze doesn’t waver. “Tell me about my brother.”
“Where do you want me to start?” I hedge, my conversation with Gabriel flooding back. I flex my fingers in my lap. This is the perfect opportunity to raise the matter of Felix Astor.
“You say he’ll be in the Reaches the weekend after next, and that security will be minimal. What makes you think as much?”
That’s an easy one. “He told me. That’s when the annual Congregation is.
You know—for Sundbourg’s chaplains. All I know is that the Regiment’s most important players will be there, and regular agents aren’t allowed to attend.
Obviously the Reaches are still crawling with them, but if we can get in…
” I trail off, leaving space for him to interpret my next words.
“Gabriel let it slip that security will be lax. He’ll be a sitting duck. ”
The Warden arches a brow. “Are you trained in combat?”
Combat is a loose interpretation. “I’m trained to do what it takes.”
“By my brother?”
“When I first started working for him, he got a couple of his agents to teach me.” I don’t elaborate, but my mouth thins at the memory.
Two of Gabriel’s men, twice my size and clearly unhappy with their assignment, had been impatient teachers.
They’d taught me to be brutal. To care nothing for fighting fair.
My days with them had passed in a haze of aching limbs and burning frustration.
Neither had gone easy on me from the start.
That, in the end, was how I’d learned to fight.
Out of sheer necessity, and the vicious, relentless desire to cause pain to those who inflicted it upon me.
“And they taught you to fight dirty,” the Warden surmises, glancing pointedly down at his torso as if expecting to see two bullet holes and a knife there. “They taught you to do the precise opposite of what their tenets command.”
I know the tenet he’s referring to: You shall not lay a hand upon another. “You could say that.” I stab at my eggs, impatience driving me to ask, “Have you ever been to the Reaches?”
“Not since I was a young child.”
I think of the photograph of him and Gabriel on the desk in his office. I want to inquire further, but I don’t. “There’s a checkpoint at the bridge. One that will be difficult to get through, given your reputation.”
The Warden leans forward on his elbows, interlacing his fingers. “We’ll have to bypass it somehow. That said, there’s still the issue of what to do if we can cross. I doubt many agents will recognize me at this point, but it’s a risk.”
I pretend to think. “What if you were someone else?”
“What if we summoned the devil forth from hell?”
This I ignore, learning closer conspiratorially to mirror him. “There’s a chaplain named Felix Astor who looks just like you. In fact, the first night we crossed paths, I nearly thought you were him. That’s when my plan to turn on Gabriel started coming together.”
The Warden tilts his head to the side, baring the strong line of his neck. “You want me to impersonate this…Astor.”
“Yes. He keeps to himself, so nobody in the Reaches should notice you’re not him unless they look closely.”
“Which they will, at the bridge crossing.”
I can’t exactly reveal that Gabriel has promised to ensure our passage.
“We’ll find a way around that.” As I lay out the plan, however, I have a horrible realization: He doesn’t need me for this.
Not really. I’ve already given him Gabriel’s location, and now I’ve given him Felix Astor.
What’s stopping him from posing as the chaplain and heading to the Reaches to kill Gabriel without me?
Forget pretending to be Astor’s spouse. I need to go one better.
“And,” I tack on hastily, “Felix Astor doesn’t go anywhere without his hired sinner.”
The Warden catches his lower lip between his teeth, considering. Something about the action makes my pulse stutter. Our eyes lock across the countertop as he smirks. “I take it that’s where you come in.”
I’m so going to regret this. “Wouldn’t want to draw any suspicion.”
“You always have a plan, don’t you?”
“Yes.” It’s just not necessarily always a good one. “Do you remember any of the Reaches? From when you were a child, I mean?”
There’s a beat of silence during which I think I made a mistake in circling back to his earlier comment. But the Warden is solemn as he says, “Not really. My mother brought Gabriel and I along just once. She was a Regiment scholar.”
This brings me up short. Until the other night, Gabriel never spoke to me about his family.
It makes even more sense, then, that the Regiment was willing to accept him as their Prophet.
They already had some amount of respect for his mother.
He would have done an excellent job playing the grieving son.
A sympathetic character, forced to be strong in the face of tragedy.
“I didn’t know that.” It comes out accusatory.
“And why would you?”
“I suppose I’m just surprised.”
The Warden’s smirk is back in place, this time with a condescending edge. “That I turned out to be this?” His tone sharpens as he steps back from the counter, spreading his arms wide. “That a respectable family with connections to the Regiment could produce someone so terrible?”
I push my plate away, annoyance digging at the pit of my stomach.
I’m tired of him trying to scare me off.
“I’m not sure you understand the situation.
I don’t give a fuck what the Regiment thinks about you.
I don’t care that you killed your mother.
In fact, your reputation is one of the reasons I came to you.
It was how I knew you’d be capable of killing your own brother.
Let me make myself very clear: Nothing you do or say will frighten me off.
All I want is to be free of Gabriel for good, and if anyone can help me, it’s you.
If anyone has the drive to help me, it’s you. Am I wrong?”
“You’re not,” he clips. “But here’s what I’d like to know: If you want my brother dead so badly, why haven’t you already tried to kill him? Few could get as close as you do on a daily basis.”
“He’s always surrounded by agents. How long would I have been allowed to live, had I laid a single finger on him? Two seconds? Three?” We’re going in circles. The Warden is never going to fully trust me, and I certainly don’t trust him. We just have to trust each other enough.