Chapter 14 Mr. Orley #2
“As you know, Rami’s very talented with a sword,” Leena said.
“Sometimes, to make a few coins, he participates in back-alley fights—fights run by the Black Coats. He told me he had one yesterday and he has not come home since. Even if the match was delayed until today, he should have been home by now. I know something terrible has happened.” Her fists were clenched so hard over the wooden table that her knuckles turned white.
Desperation had led Leena once more to St. Silas’s door, and she was sure he would not miss the irony, or the chance to capitalize on it.
St. Silas put his pen down slowly. “Be that as it may, I’m unsure why you’ve come to see me, madam.”
Leena ground her teeth together in an attempt to bar the insolent words that threatened to explode out of her throat, making a hideous situation between them even more impossible. “You’re unsure why I’ve come to see you, the Saint of Silence, merchant of secrets?”
His expression remained steady and, unlike her, he was clearly in total command of his emotions. “My hand—when it is my own to move—rarely lifts for others. It is how I’ve survived for so long. So, once again, I ask you: What do you want from me?”
“He is my brother—”
“There are many brothers in the world. I cannot help them all.” He looked away dismissively, returning once more to his ledgers. “Let the matter rest. I’m sure he’ll wander in at some point.”
Leena stared at him. “You mistake me, sir. I’ve not come for your help. I’ve come only for information. I would be so very grateful, and in your debt, if you were to tell me where to look first. Then that is where I will go.”
At her words, St. Silas’s eyes drew back to hers, a sudden stillness in his shoulders. “You will go by yourself?”
Leena nodded.
“To the Black Coats?” he amended, as if there had been a miscommunication.
“Yes.”
“One of the most violent gangs in all of Golborne?”
Leena nearly replied that she already worked for the Saint of Silence and who could be worse than that, but kept her mouth shut. “He is my brother,” she repeated staunchly.
His eyes narrowed, as if not quite believing her. “You’re either very brave or very foolish.”
“Likely a bit of both.”
Leena waited for it—his demand for payment. She braced herself, her entire body tense with anxiety. She had nothing left to give him other than the knowledge that she could be possessed by ghosts.
The request did not come.
St. Silas folded his arms. Gone was his habitual sly ease, and a strange tension now rolled from him in waves.
“Orley is the head of the Black Coats. His headquarters are located in Ridgeways. He will know where your brother is.” His voice was a challenge, as if he didn’t quite believe Leena’s intention to go alone.
Leena stood up, swiping a damp palm over her skirt. “Thank you.”
She had barely stepped foot into the hallway when she heard St. Silas move to follow her.
“You will go now? At this unsaintly hour?” There seemed to be an underlying sharpness to his question.
She expected him to forbid her from leaving, as he had done previously. After all, she was his ghost-seer and was valuable to him. If he did forbid her, Leena thought with rising panic, there was little she could do to gainsay his command.
Filled with dread, she quickened her steps toward the door before he could stop her. “I cannot wait until tomorrow morning.”
His voice was hard, an angry tilt to his mouth. “How will you get there?”
“I’ll walk.”
“It’s raining.”
“It won’t kill me.”
She opened the door to the courtyard, but he slammed it shut with his palm.
Leena waited with a held breath. Now his command would drop. Now he would force her back to her chamber.
It did not come.
Instead, he continued, in barely concealed irritation, “Orley is the worst sort of creature. He will want something in return for any information about your damned brother. What will you give him?”
“For my brother, anything.”
His eyes flickered down the length of her body, his eyebrows raised in a silent question. An irate flush rose on Leena’s cheeks, recalling in more detail than she wanted to admit the look he’d given her last night when he’d seen her in her nightgown—his tight throat, his burning eyes.
“Not that,” she croaked, more furious because of how unbalanced he made her feel beneath his gaze.
He stepped forward, looming over her in the narrow hallway. His very presence was a knife. “No, you will merely tell Orley that you can see the dead. The one secret that makes you exceedingly valuable to me.”
Rather than answer, Leena turned away once more.
The words seemed driven out of him. “I will go with you.”
She lurched to face him, gaping. “Why?”
He shrugged his shoulders, an indolent gesture that seemed almost forced. “Protecting my own interests, Miss Al-Sayer. Isn’t it obvious?”
—
The smog from the factories that lined Ridgeways touched everything, smothering lungs and blackening hearts.
Shops were shuttered, debris piled on the pavement, and rough sleepers warmed their hands on makeshift fires contained in steel cans.
So many of these people, Leena thought, were not Algaraan refugees, but native Mors who did not even have enough coins to house themselves. Little wonder revolution brewed.
Further along the road were the laundry factories, and Leena’s hands burned just thinking about the harsh lyes stored there. She credited St. Silas for one thing: She would never have to lean over those steaming vats of water again for as long as she lived.
The carriage stopped at the only establishment that seemed to be thriving at this time of night.
Welcoming lights blazed through the windows, and three heavyset men stood guard.
A few spirits mingled among the downtrodden, but they were only hazy specters, filtering in and out of existence like dying candlelight.
Once she stepped out from the carriage, a thickly perfumed smell wafted in the air, triggering a memory: Margery sitting in a lonely house as the sugary smoke coiling from her hookah masked the scent of neglect.
Tar.
Apprehension filled her stomach at the realization that Orley’s was a place that dealt the drug. Leena pulled Margery’s timepiece from her bodice and held it in her hand now as a reminder of her friend.
St. Silas nodded at one of the mean brutes who stood over the entrance, and he let them pass with a bow of deference.
St. Silas then led her through a hallway and into a large circular room thick with smoke.
Leena froze at the threshold. Tulle curtains hung from the ceiling for privacy, but did little to hide the various men and women lying on beds.
Tiny fires burned in hookahs all through the room, small lighthouses leading the blank travelers home.
St. Silas turned to urge her through, but his gaze caught the glint of gold within Leena’s clenched fingers. He inclined his head to look closer, but when he saw the name engraved on the cover—Fray, in bold cursive letters—he wrenched himself back.
“Where did you get this?” he hissed, startling her from her thoughts.
“It was given to me,” Leena replied, astonished, looking down at the timepiece.
“By who?”
Leena held it possessively in her hands. It was her one gift from her friend, the old woman’s last possession that she had entrusted to Leena. She had often wondered how Margery had got hold of this precious object. Likely, Leena tried to reassure herself, it was a family heirloom.
There was a small part of her, however, that did worry that the timepiece had been stolen, and that part reared its head now, for how could Margery own something so valuable that the Saint of Silence would recognize it?
At Leena’s first opportunity, the moment St. Silas gave her leave again, she would go back and ask Margery more about the origins of this gift.
Leena quickly hid the timepiece in her pocket and took a step back from him. “Why does it matter who gave it to me? It is mine now and I have not stolen it.”
The suspicion on Leena’s face caused St. Silas to recollect himself. With a last searching look, he spun away from her. “Then let us not delay any further.”
Fray. She also made a note of that name.
Every trivial secret can lead to ruin.
They weaved their way through the multitude of stray limbs and smoking pipes to the other end of the room, then down a long narrow hallway and up several flights of stairs.
The door to the room was unlocked and St. Silas entered without knocking. Taking a deep breath, Leena followed.
She had never seen a more claustrophobic room.
It was a magpie’s nest of trinkets. By her feet, large wooden blocks with brightly painted letters and pictures lay scattered—the kind used by children learning to read.
Vases with decaying flowers cluttered a writing desk.
Oddly shaped perfume bottles rested on the windowsill.
Above the desk hung a parchment within a gilded frame, only four inky words drawn on the aged sheet:
No Burials for Lambs
Leena’s gaze stayed there for a moment—what an odd turn of phrase—but she knew, without knowing how she knew, its exact meaning: Only lions are mourned.
On the floor, in the middle of this madness, sat a ridiculous-looking man on a cushion.
He was small of stature with hair sprouting from his scalp like weeds, but the bones in his face stood out too far, and the fingers on his hands were unnaturally stretched, curling like a spider’s legs.
And…the pupils of his eyes—fathomless dark holes, expanding, the whites no longer visible…
Yet within seconds, the man’s eyes were back to normal, leaving Leena to wonder if her mind was playing tricks on her in this drug-filled den.
Then she thought of Mrs. Van. She and this man shared the same look, the same abnormally curling hands. A wave of nausea unsettled her.
Orley is the worst sort of creature.