Chapter 26 A Dark and Angry Crimson
· · · ·
A Dark and Angry Crimson
“We have a problem.”
Segal burst into the kingpin’s office without knocking.
“What is it?” Levan stood sharply from the wing-backed chair behind his father’s squat mahogany desk, where he’d been sorting through some post delivered to him personally: a collection of three severed loyalty brands, cut from the chests of Bloodmoons unknown.
“Sevir was killed in a pleasurehouse on Broad Row.”
Varosol Sevir. One of their most lucrative loxlure peddlers.
He’d been instrumental in penetrating student halls of residence, getting them all addicted, then ushering them in the direction of the gamehouses.
He was constantly complaining that the higher-ups couldn’t get enough loxlure for him to sell.
As soon as a fresh batch found his hands, it was gone, ten times the ascenite in its place.
“When?”
“Ten days ago.”
“Why am I only just finding out about this now?”
“The Silvercloaks weren’t in a hurry to inform us, believe it or not.”
A sharp needle pressed into Levan’s wrist stump, and he curled his fingers into a fist. “Have there been any arrests?”
“No, but they’re sure it was the Whitewings. Word on the street is that they’re growing more organized—that they’ve named a leader, and said leader has ordered them to pick off scarlets one by one. They’re leaving behind the scattered approach and developing some semblance of structure.”
A new leader, in the wake of Avar Martou’s death.
“How lovely. Perhaps they’ll unionize.”
Segal hooked a single wiry eyebrow. “Did you just crack a joke?”
“No.”
Levan thought of the severed brands he’d been posted, wondering what their end goal was. “An attempt to weaken us further, then, but not destroy us entirely. Just like the compound break-in. They could have burned the place to the ground that night, if they so wanted to.”
Something that had been troubling him ever since.
Why settle for killing servants and carving wings into the marble?
Levan lifted one of the leathery brands between his thumb and forefinger, trying not to gag at the thought this was a dead mage’s skin. “They’ve been having fun with our servants too. Servants, croupiers. Low-rung lox runners.”
Segal visibly paled at the sight of the brand. “Saints.”
“If I were a gambling man, I’d say they want to take over our gamehouses and loxlure operations.
They don’t want the hassle of setting up the infrastructures themselves, finding suppliers and establishing trade routes and staffing it all.
They’d rather steal the whole piece. Drill holes in our ship then plug them with their own people. ”
The rest of the color left Segal’s face. “You think they’ll send people to be intentionally recruited? So that we don’t realize we’ve been taken over until it’s too late?”
“It’s what I’d do.”
“Ah.”
Shoulders stooped, Segal shuffled to the door, then dragged in an unfamiliar figure in a pale blue scholar’s cloak.
The young mage was tall, thin, and petrified.
Dark brown hair fell to his collarbones, and his pale skin was blotchy with terror.
Wide-set chestnut eyes were rimmed with pink, and an eagle earring dangled from one earlobe.
“Relar Zamorin.” Segal folded his arms defensively. “Whitewing scum, but I thought he could be useful if we branded him. Let’s treat him like a pawn. Maybe send him back into the Whitewings, leave them unaware that he’s been burned and turned. Infiltrate them, as they did us.”
Exactly the kind of thing Lyrian Celadon would do—it was how he had eyes everywhere, how he knew everything that happened in this debaucherous city.
And the Whitewings deserved it, did they not?
They had slain Sevir, among many others, would likely murder countless more scarlets if they were left to gather strength, gather momentum.
The Whitewings were the biggest living threat to the Bloodmoons—to his mother’s resurrection. Levan had to wrest back control of the situation.
“Very well,” Levan said, but his throat was suddenly dry. He gestured toward the brass rack of instruments by the fire. “Would you like to do the honors?”
“I have no magic,” Segal replied, a tilt of defiance to the words. And then a pointed expression—one that said I believe you are unfit to lead, but here is a chance to win me around. “The honor is all yours.”
Relar Zamorin staggered back on his heels, waving his hands frantically in front of him.
“No. Please, no.” He was almost choking on his own tears. “I’ll do anything. Anything but this, please—”
“How old are you, boy?” There was an undeniable adolescence to the Whitewing’s face. Patchy facial hair, a constellation of pimples. A luster to the hair and skin.
“Fourteen.”
Something deep inside Levan lurched with horror. He turned to Segal, aghast. “You brought me a fourteen-year-old?”
Segal shrugged ambivalently. “He looked older.”
“How did you get involved in the Whitewings so young?” Levan asked.
“M-my grandmother is an apothecary—they threatened to kill me if she didn’t do as they asked.
The Whitewings had all these rare ingredients they wanted her to source.
” A sharp swallow, the words growing raspy.
“I’ve been traveling, finding ingredients from farther afield. She’s not as mobile as she once was.”
Levan’s mind caught on this. “Rare ingredients. For what tinctures?”
“I didn’t recognize most of their names.” Another wobble of the lower lip, another overflowing of tears. “Please, don’t hurt me.”
Segal seemed to notice Levan’s apprehension. “We can’t very well release him back into the custody of the Whitewings.” A slow, pointed shrug. “Maybe it’s cleaner just to kill him, if you don’t have the stomach for the brand.”
“I have the stomach,” Levan snapped, though said stomach was roiling.
Fourteen was so young.
Older than Levan had been when he was branded, but only by a few years.
It was cruelty, sheer unadulterated cruelty, and if he did this heinous thing, he would cross a line he could never uncross.
For all his wrongs, he had never hurt a child.
And this boy, with his scattered pimples and eleven chin hairs and gangly limbs, was just that.
Yet could he afford to show more weakness in front of Segal, who was already doubting his command, who didn’t respect or fear him the way he ought to? Though Segal didn’t know it yet, the brand on his chest was no longer active—he could betray Levan without retribution, if he so chose.
Control was slipping, and Levan could not abide it. He had to demonstrate his ruthlessness, his willingness to do what needed to be done, no matter how ugly.
“Restrain him,” Levan said, his voice sounding very far away.
As Segal shackled the trembling boy with the same wall manacles Silver had been bound in, Levan tried not to think of her screams as the hot poker met her flesh. The rancid smell of it, the frantic pattering of her unconscious heart as he’d carried her to her chamber.
He tried not to think of his own branding. The way he’d pleaded and begged, promised to do anything they wanted without hesitation, no need for the brand, please, I promise, I will never betray—
Then the agony. The forking, shredding, all-consuming heat, his vision bleached white. An owl hooting in the distance, in another world, perhaps. The shame of the wet patch in his trousers.
Crossing the office to the fireplace—stepping over Rasso’s sleeping body—he lifted the branding poker from the brass rack and held the round stamp over the flames until it glowed orange and then white.
He tossed a colored powder from a small ashtray into the flames, and they turned a dark and angry crimson.
Behind him came the ripping sound of torn fabric. Segal had shredded the boy’s tunic.
“Ver fidan, nis morten,” he uttered, his own brand pulsing with self-loathing. “Ver fidan, nis morten. Ver fidan, nis morten. Medei perpetua.”
Medei perpetua. Not the first time he had uttered those words, but the first time he had used them for ill.
Would it work?
Until now, his magic had bucked and pinwheeled and disobeyed. Now he was asking something so dark of it that he almost prayed it would not respond, but he wouldn’t know until the metal met flesh, until he issued an order and waited to see how the boy responded.
His father had wanted to do this to Alucia—it was one of the conditions of their marriage.
Lyrian would not allow anyone to marry into the family without being wholly certain of her loyalties.
Levan had, of course, refused this, refused to allow her to endure such pain, such humiliation, just to be with him.
They’d been planning to wed in secret, but her treachery had been exposed a week too soon.
And as it turned out, his father’s distrust had been founded all along.
The poker was hot enough now, had been for several moments.
As Levan turned to the boy’s shackled form, the sight of the bare torso almost broke him.
He was so pale, so bony, with purple stretch marks up his belly from growing too tall too fast. His nipples were tiny, and his breathing was so panicked and raw that his diaphragm rose and fell in tremulous gasps.
Tears fell freely from his brown eyes, and his bottom lip quivered uncontrollably.
The black walls of his father’s office were closing in on Levan.
Before the poker could lose too much heat, he crossed the room, round stamp outstretched.
The boy whimpered, tried to pull his body away, to make himself small, but there was nowhere to go.
All at once, Levan was a boy again, flat on his back on the floor of the shack, the pieces of a discarded board game scattered like debris from a great explosion, Perant pinning down his arms with two well-placed knees, Vogolan looming over him with the very same hot poker.
Levan had never known fear like the fear he’d felt in the few moments before heat met skin.
It still woke him in the night all these years later.
Relar Zamorin, an apothecary’s apprentice, an innocent grandson, would be traumatized for the rest of his life.
Shining brown eyes pleaded with him.
Levan lowered the poker to his side, struggling immensely to control his breathing.
“You will inform for us without the brand.”
He uttered the words with the full force of his compelling—though it was impossible to know, yet, whether said compelling would work. Whether his connection with magic was forever broken.
The boy’s eyes flew wide, hardly daring to hope. A cautious, semi-rabid expression, like a blackfox anticipating a trap but wanting the morsel inside it too badly to resist.
“Yes. Y-yes, sir, of course.”
“You will relay every ingredient the Whitewings ask you for, every request no matter how seemingly small and insignificant. And if they demand information on our operation, you will lie. Say you haven’t been able to penetrate our inner circle.”
“Yes.” A gasp, a sob. “Yes, thank you, thank you.”
Segal stepped forward, outraged. “This is a mistake. This is weakness.”
“Actually,” said Levan, forcing a cool confidence into his tone, “I believe mercy is a kind of strength, but perhaps we could leave the philosophical debates until later. Unshackle him.”
“Your father would never—”
“My father is dead. You yourself are without magic, without pain or pleasure. A ghost of a mage, an afterimage. I take orders and opinions from neither of you.”
Segal made a sharp hissing sound. “Your fool’s instincts almost cost us everything with Alucia Martou, and you have learned nothing since. Saffron Killoran is proof of that.”
At the mention of Alucia, Levan saw crimson.
He strode across the room toward Segal, wand outstretched, jamming it beneath Segal’s chin and shoving upward.
“The next time you question me, I’ll have your head.
You will beg for mercy, and there will be none.
Because mercy is a weakness, is it not?” He jerked his head toward Relar Zamorin. “Now, unshackle him.”
In the few beats of ragged breath before he released the hateful-eyed Segal, the tip of his black elm wand crackled.
“Et vocos, Levan Celadon,” came a breathless female voice.
Castian.
Castian, who he’d ordered to follow Saffron.
Levan wrenched his wand away from Segal’s throat.
“Yes? What is it?”
“Silver is hurt. Badly.”
“What—”
“Stabbed, bleeding out. Saints, I…I think she’s going to die.”