Chapter 16 #2
But Lady Delarine’s gaze was composed. Unyielding. Liora’s smile was brittle, a crease between her brows.
“Are you…” Sabine’s words froze on her tongue. She had to try again. “Surely, you’re both just… playing with me, right?”
Why would they even do that? It wasn’t funny. People were dead. It was not the time for jokes.
But Lady Delarine and Liora looked at each other, lines of concern etched on their faces.
“Dear…” the Duchess started.
“No.” Sabine cut her off. “No, I don’t believe you. They had marks on their hands, right here.” She waved her hand in the air, drawing the pattern of the Bennetts’ mark on it.
“Perhaps we should leave you to rest some more,” Lady Delarine simply said.
“Yes,” Liora agreed. “Do not worry about the musicale tonight. I shall tell Lady Hemsley you are quite ill.”
Sabine froze. Blood drained from her cheeks, leaving her cold as the grey morning outside.
Her heart set out at a gallop. For once, she welcomed the sharp kind of panic: it cleared the haze, filled her lungs with air instead of water.
Even if it was too much air. Even if it made her vision dance with black spots.
She tried the trusted tactic of counting her breaths, but kept faltering after ten.
The Bennetts bore marks. Sabine was certain.
And something was very, very wrong.
The drawer of her writing desk stuck stubbornly. She jimmied it open with a practiced flick of her wrist and hunted through the contents: a dull letter opener, a stub of sealing wax, odds and ends of ribbon, all tangled together. At last, her hand closed around the folded pamphlet.
She didn’t know how anyone could forget something as monumental as a couple’s mark, but she knew it wasn’t by accident. And right now, this was her best lead for answers.
Sabine perched on the edge of the bed, tucking her knees beneath herself, the lamp’s glow pooling yellow across the pamphlet. The top line blared like a battle cry:
We will return the flames to the people, we will break the chains of blood.
Underneath, a slurry of words, nonsense. She hunched over it, drinking in the ink stains, letting her mind loosen and pick apart the puzzle. She scanned the text for patterns:
Light Ice Cordage, Nature Bells Sunset, Stone Turns.
At first glance, it was nothing but a child’s prank. But it had to mean something. Sabine gnawed over it, twining a lock of hair around her finger, reading it again.
Certainly, it was a cipher of sorts, and the affinities were placeholders. She read the lines slower, tasting each word: Light Ice Cordage, Nature Bells Sunset, Stone Turns . Perhaps the affinities were code for the months of the cycle, since each month bore the name of an affinity.
So she tried it: she replaced Light with three, since Virelune was the third month; Ice with one, as Iverne was the first; and so on.
Three One Cordage, Six Bells Sunset, Ten Turns.
That didn’t seem right.
Perhaps Cordage meant Cordage Lane, down in the Harbor District.
Three One , the address? Six Bells , the hour?
But it mentioned Sunset , so maybe six bells after sunset, which would’ve been midnight.
Yet the last part… Ten Turns ? That did not stand to reason.
It had to be the day of the meeting, of course, but with only seven days in a week…
what could ten turns possibly stand for?
Sabine pressed her fists to her temples, desperate to silence the anxious flutter.
It was a code meant to weed out the careless.
She read it over once more with her governess mind.
Whoever the cloaked man was, he didn’t trust the Registry, and likely not the Empire, either.
If he were using affinities for code, he wouldn’t choose the imperial order.
Of course.
Sabine rummaged for a piece of paper and a quill. It’d been cycles since she’d looked at an affinity wheel, but she remembered it from some of the books her father kept under lock and key in his study—the same ones she’d learned to pick locks for.
“Creation with Destruction… Light with Shadow… Nature with Metal… Stone with Wind…”
She worked quickly, mapping the affinities. She was fairly certain she’d gotten the order right, but it had been a long time. “Only one way to know for certain.”
She attempted the cipher again. Starting at the twelfth hour of the wheel, she replaced the affinities with numbers again:
Two Six Cordage, Three Bells Sunset, Four Turn.
Twenty-six Cordage Lane, nine in the evening, on the fourth day of the week. Which was today.
Her pulse thudded, slow and thick, in her throat. How could she trust the message? She supposed she couldn’t. But the Registry’s claims looked less trustworthy by the day, and the pamphlet suddenly seemed to hold more promise than any official edict.
Sabine curled her fingers around the paper. She would go.
She dressed in darkness, letting the lamp gutter out behind her so her shadow might slip more easily along the walls.
A simple wool gown, threadbare and soft with age, in the bruised-purple shade of dying violets.
Over it, her oldest cloak, hem patched and re-patched, its deep hood large enough to swallow her face whole.
Sabine crept through the halls, careful to avoid creaky boards or slippery rugs. On the service door landing, she waited, listened, counted ten breaths, then twenty. Satisfied, she slipped through and let the night swallow her.
The air bit at her cheeks, damp with the lingering mist of the day’s rain.
Spilling into the streets of Ilvarenne, she kept her head low, weaving between pools of lamplight.
At each cross street, she checked for Registry officials.
Once, she caught the echo of a uniform trailing down a side alley, and she pressed herself flat to a wall until danger passed.
Down the first great staircase, the city shifted.
The Commercial Terraces lost the marble’s cold illusion, warming to lived-in golds and yellows.
Here, the streets grew broader, the facades less ornate—pale limestone blushed with age, plane trees pale and spectral in the lamplight.
She skirted a covered market, where the last vendors shouted above the sound of crates and closing shutters.
The tang of citrus and ripe cheese curled through the air, pushing out the upper city’s old perfume.
She had to hurry. Nine bells was a narrow margin, and she wouldn’t risk being late.
With each tier, the city’s mask peeled back further.
The second staircase jutted down like a broken spine, slick with moss and old water stains.
Now the air reeked of river mud and tar.
Where the canal met the sea, shouts of dockworkers rang out, broken by the clatter of barrels and the curses of men unloading cargo by lanternlight.
Sabine’s nerves frayed in time with the city’s roughening edges.
She counted her breaths, one for every step, forcing herself to keep moving, keep going.
The last bridge was little more than rotted planks, handrail gritty with old paint and salt.
Beyond, Cordage Lane curled away from the riverfront, a dead end lined with the bones of old industry: derelict tanneries, empty warehouses, and lofts sealed with scavenged boards.
She counted addresses. Number twenty-six was an old tannery, flayed stucco peeling from the brick like dead skin, the upper windows blacked out with tar paper. Near the threshold, weeds choked the steps, and the door itself was warped, its iron latches slick with dew.
She could still turn around, slip back to the world of shimmering silks, pretend she’d never cracked the code. But she’d come this far. Fear was pointless now.
So she stepped inside.
At the heart of the factory floor, a gathering had formed.
Sabine crept along the edge, letting broken crates and empty vats shield her.
These people were not Gilt; they wore homespun and oilcloth, boots patched with twine, hands scarred by work.
At the very center stood a couple. One woman wore a simple dress of faded cream linen, its hem frayed but lovingly mended, while the other donned a loose-fitting blue tunic and a rough wool vest, slightly askew.
They stood close, hands entwined. On their necks, matching marks glimmered.
Commoners, with marks?
Sabine had been on the fringes of Gilt society long enough to know the Registry would never spare a dram of effort or concern for people it could not gain anything from. So how had those two women gotten their marks, then?
Before them stood a man. Though he wore a heavy cloak, his hood was down, exposing his scalp shaved bare, a thumbprint of ash pressed to his brow. But it was his gaze that held her: one eye pale and milky, the other obsidian black. Was he the pamphlet man?
They were performing some sort of rite.
Sabine stood too far to catch the women’s words, but they were intent on one another, tears shining in their eyes.
Their marks started to glow, verdant for one, molten for the other.
The man with the strange eyes wove an intricate ribbon of silvery magic, touching one end to each woman’s mark in turn.
The silver hovered for a heartbeat, then drew toward the center, pulling the smallest threads of each woman’s power: one a curling vine, the other a ribbon of metal.
He stepped back, and the women seized their own threads, drawing them outward, knotting them together in a weave that could not break.
They reached for each other’s threads, swapped them, pressed them into their own marks.
It was breathtaking. Sabine barely realized she’d gasped.
A few heads turned. Her heart slammed so hard she thought it might stop. Whatever these people were doing here, it was most certainly illegal. And no matter what she may think of the Registry and its methods, Sabine was Gilt.
And matched to the Empire’s most ruthless enforcer.
In no world would these people see her as anything but a threat.
So she ducked behind a stack of warped boards, then slipped back toward the entrance, careful not to stumble or betray herself with noise.
A whisper behind her was enough to send her sprinting down the corridor, boots skidding across the old tallow and grit. She slammed her shoulder into the door and tumbled out, the alley’s cold air like a slap. She ran.
Down Cordage. Right. Then left. She dipped beneath a weeping arch of bougainvillea, then ducked through a side alley so narrow her shoulders scraped both walls.
In the dark, every sound magnified: the scrape of her boots; the rush of her own pulse; the distant clatter of a gondola pole against wet stone.
She cut across a bridge, nearly slipping on the moss-slicked planks. Behind her, a door slammed. Voices—not close, but enough to make her run harder.
She tallied her turns, retraced her steps, and doubled back to be sure she wasn’t followed. Her breaths were so fast and shallow, she struggled to count them. But she did, and the fear ebbed.
Only when she reached the edge of the Commercial Terraces, when the scent of lavender and orange blossom replaced the tannery’s stink, did she slow. She slipped into a garden, pressed her spine to the stone, and let herself breathe deeper.
She smoothed her dress, steadied her hands, and resumed the walk home.
Between the marks that shouldn’t have been there, the blood vow that wasn’t a blood vow, and the mysterious stranger, she was more confused than she’d been that morning.
Only one thing was clear: she’d tired of hearing other people’s lies. She would claim the truth for herself, whatever the cost.