Chapter 12 Ransom
The dead scholars didn’t surprise Ransom.
After a decade of assassinations, he had seen – and caused – more than his fair share of dead bodies. Waded through endless pools of blood, washed pitchers of it off his hands. Downed hundreds of vials of Shade, and after, had come home to sleep amidst skeletons.
Murder never rattled him.
But occasionally it found a novel way to enrage him.
Seraphine retched, clapping a hand over her mouth, while Val cycled through a litany of swear words. The carriage trembled from the awakening of Anouk’s rage, while Versini went dangerously silent.
The implication was as unsettling as the bodies hanging over them. Andreas Mondragon Rayere was burning the books of the Appoline, and hanging their keepers by their necks.
He was destroying the very history of the kingdom so he could rewrite his own.
‘He’s not content with addling the minds of his people. He has to screw with our heritage too,’ hissed Seraphine.
The carriage shook.
‘No,’ groaned Anouk, squeezing her eyes shut.
The gravel of the driveway split as his sister’s magic burst from her like a sneeze.
‘Easy,’ said Ransom, grabbing her hand. ‘Breathe, Anouk. Remember what we practised.’
She inhaled through her teeth. ‘It’s so awful. I hate him. I hate him. I hate—’
The carriage jolted. The coachmen cried out.
‘Easy, stone-slinger!’ said Val, grabbing her by the shoulders. ‘If you put a hole in the driveway, we’ll never get inside.’
‘I’m t-t-trying,’ Anouk eked out.
The shaking was getting worse.
‘Let’s get out,’ said Sera, urgently gathering the skirts of her dress.
‘Don’t look up,’ warned Ransom.
They slipped out of the carriage and into the night’s shadows. They would have to tread carefully now. No more accidental outbursts or golden gleaming eyes to give them away.
Breathing steadily through her nose, Anouk did her best to ignore the bodies as they passed under the trees.
Once through the gates, the pyres were harder to ignore, the fires banking both sides of the outer courtyard. All those burning books, all that wasted knowledge … This was murder of a darker, more insidious kind. And yet, they were the only ones who seemed appalled by it.
Andreas’s guests glided through the gates in their finery, smiling and chatting among themselves, as though the fires were simply there to gild their costumes.
‘This is strange,’ said Seraphine uneasily.
‘That man over there is warming his hands on a stack of encyclopaedias,’ fumed Val. ‘I should shove him into the flames.’
‘Good thing you’re not the Stone Maiden,’ muttered Anouk, clenching her jaw so tightly she was beginning to sweat.
Gone were the revered gatekeepers of the Appoline, who once carried donated weapons from Saint Cadel himself. They had been replaced by stiff-backed Rose-bearers, who marched up and down like wind-up toys.
It was impossible to know which revellers had come from Urnica. Costumed as they were for the ball, even the keenest of eyes would struggle to divine the faces in their midst. As they swept through the courtyard, Ransom spotted a myriad of costumes, including jackals and foxes and stags and bears.
The halls of the Appoline thrummed with merry music, the air thick with the scent of mead. They discarded their cloaks in a dark corner before following the crowd to the library.
His heart thundered as Seraphine reached for his hand. She was always the most beautiful creature in any room, but tonight she was a vision. The kind he used to dream about in the catacombs.
Despite his own finery, he felt like a devil beside her. Unworthy of the warmth that filled her eyes as she turned to look up at him. ‘You seem pained, Ransom.’
He caressed a feather at the edge of her mask. ‘Why is it that whenever I look at you, I am always acutely aware of the weight of my heart?’
She delighted him by laughing. ‘Why does imminent murder always bring out the poet in you?’
‘I suppose it makes me philosophical.’
That, and he was never far from his next kill.
Barely a month had passed since they’d come here looking for Andreas. The library had felt like a shrine then, a pocket of the world untouched by time and greed.
Gone were the towering wooden shelves and the tomes therein, the scent of parchment and ink, and even the oil paintings on the walls. The armchairs had been removed, along with the tables and rugs, transforming the venerated library into a grand ballroom.
Servers milled about, carrying trays of goblets and finger food, while Rose-bearers stood stiffly along the walls, watching the evening unfold.
Once inside the ballroom, they followed the plan they’d devised yesterday, and split into two groups.
‘A bag of gold for whoever finds the prince first,’ crooned Anouk.
‘And three more for whoever stabs him in the neck,’ said Ransom, ghosting his hand against the steelfire in his waistband. ‘Don’t forget the signal.’
‘Watch out for the exploding chandelier.’ Anouk tapped the side of her nose as she followed Val and Versini towards the left side of the ballroom.
Peeling off towards the right, Ransom and Seraphine played their parts well, smiling and dancing as they lost themselves in a sea of revellers.
Every time she tossed her hair or bunched her skirts to take a twirl, he had to remind himself it was all an act.
But as the music slowed to a Valterrian waltz and she melted into his arms, he let himself pretend they were somewhere else entirely.
Dancing for the love of it.
For the love of each other.
He drank her down, committing her staggering beauty to memory, so in the darker times, when his magic finally gnawed through the ribbons of his soul, he could reach for it. And come back to the light.
Time wore thin, the music soaring to the rafters, and still the prince did not appear.
Tension coiled through Seraphine, and she grew rigid in his arms.
‘Where is he?’ Frustration made her falter, and she bumped into another guest. ‘Excuse me,’ she said hastily, but the guest – a tall grey-haired man in a skunk’s mask – seemed not to notice her at all. He danced on.
She stared after him. ‘Odd.’
It was all odd, but if they started to act like they knew it, the Rose-bearers would notice.
He tucked a strand behind her ear. ‘Try and relax. There are eyes everywhere.’
‘But it’s all so strange. No one’s eating or drinking.’
He had made the same unsettling observation. And there was more: the soldiers had begun to patrol the ballroom.
‘Just look at me, Seraphine.’
Turning her face up to his, she whispered, ‘I’m afraid, Ransom.’
‘I know, spitfire.’ He wanted to kiss her fear away, dance with her through this room and outside into the wildness of the night and beyond, to a life past all this uncertainty and terror.
For now, he could only hold her tighter, and remember Saintkiller glimmering beneath his shirt.
Seraphine gritted a smile. ‘Can you see Lark? Or Nadia?’
‘Not yet.’
The music changed to a low keening lament. The hairs on the back of Ransom’s neck rose, his arms tightening around Seraphine as they swayed, mirroring the other couples in their midst.
‘I don’t like this,’ she said, laying her head on his chest.
The thundering of his heart must have given his own unease away, because she snapped her chin up. ‘We should go.’
Too late. ‘The doors are barred.’
The Rose-bearers had moved into position some time ago.
She looked around, quailing.
As the violins wailed, they drifted towards the dais, where the string quartet stared vacantly into the distance.
More puppets.
‘Why do I feel like we’re at a funeral?’ said Seraphine.
Ransom searched the sea of costumes, trying to find the others. If they’d already come upon the target, Anouk would have made a chandelier fall. The fact that they all remained untouched meant Andreas was nowhere to be found.
The Silver-tongue Saint was not at his own ball.
Unease festered.
The music became flat and discordant, like the minstrels had suddenly forgotten how to play their own instruments. Ransom braced himself as a figure appeared from a private chamber behind the dais.
Clad in a long black robe, he removed his hood as he approached the platform.
Too tall to be the prince.
Too old.
And yet, chillingly familiar.
Ransom swore.
Sera lost her footing. ‘Is that—’
With lumbering steps, the provost of the Appoline climbed onto the dais. In the sconce light, the wrongness was impossible to miss. It was in the grey pallor of his skin and the bowls of his eye sockets.
A black handprint stained his mouth, ink spattered like freckles across his cheeks. The quill it had spilled from jutted out of his neck.
It was not quite Provost Ambrose.
It was his corpse.
He was missing his writing hand.
‘This is sick,’ said Seraphine.
This is for us.
Ransom’s magic was wide awake, dark tendrils leaking from his clenched fists. Why on earth would Prince Andreas invite the Urnican delegation to the Appoline just to terrorize them?
Why insult the cousin who had lent him an army and risk the ire of the kingdom’s bloodthirsty neighbours?
Why throw a victory ball at all, when the kingdom had yet to fall?
You know why, whispered the old voice.
The dancers were swaying in time with the music.
He peered closer, dread unfurling in his gut.
The way they moved, the way they danced…
A tug at his arm made him turn. Anouk.
She was breathing so fast she could hardly speak.
‘They’re all villagers, Bastian,’ she said. ‘I recognize a couple from Castellan, where Mama and I used to live. It’s a town in the north-west. Near the border.’
The floor began to tremble.
She scraped her hair back, fighting for control. ‘They were basket weavers, along with their two sons. They’re here too. And the baker. The baker and his wife.’
Sera turned on her heel. ‘They’re all from Castellan?’
‘Puppets,’ said Ransom.
Each one had been dragged here and trussed up by the Silver-tongue. Tonight was nothing more than an elaborate performance.
His magic hissed at him. Fool.
Sera’s eyes widened behind her mask. ‘It’s a trap.’
They had swanned right into it.