Chapter 14 Mr. Orley #3
Her panicked gaze met St. Silas’s, but there was neither confirmation nor denial in his look.
“Mr. St. Silas? What a pleasure,” said Orley, his voice unnaturally high. He bowed his head while still sitting cross-legged. St. Silas did not return the formality, and neither did she.
It was odd to Leena that any sort of pleasantries could still be exchanged between these two men.
Orley had sent spies after St. Silas, and St. Silas had disposed of those spies.
While they each sidestepped these recent bloody events, they still hung in the air like smoke. “And who is this beautiful young lady?”
“She is under my protection,” St. Silas said. His voice carried an unmistakable warning, and Leena narrowed her eyes at his choice of words. “She has come to ask for a favor.”
“Does the young lady not speak for herself? Or has the…er…good fortune of being under your protection robbed her of that ability?”
“I speak,” Leena interjected. During their exchange, her attention had been momentarily diverted by a ghost that appeared by Orley’s elbow.
A boy wearing a servant’s livery. His eyes were hollow, his movements twitchy—as if he craved something he could not taste in the afterlife.
“I am looking for my brother, Rami Al-Sayer. He is a duelist who competes in fights hosted by your gang. He had one yesterday, but he has not yet returned.”
Orley scratched his arm. “Ah, yes, the cripple?”
“I do not like that word,” Leena snapped, her eyes burning. “He is a sword fighter who has never been beaten.”
Orley’s face once more curved into a wide-toothed smile. He seemed to enjoy her offense.
“That’s his problem, dearie. We instructed him to lose the fight yesterday, but he went against our orders.
One particularly wealthy tradesman was very keen for that match to be fixed against Rami, and he would’ve rewarded us handsomely for it.
Yet your brother decided his legacy mattered more than our profit. A pity.”
Her head jerked. This was the second time loyalty to a legacy would be someone’s undoing. Maybe the destitute Al-Sayers had more in common with the Avons than she’d first thought.
She wanted to throttle Rami, and she would when she saw him next. How dare he compromise their future and her only family for an ideal?
The ghost of the servant-boy jumped from foot to foot, and Leena stared at him longer than she should have, her mind blank with worry. Their eyes met. His mouth fell open and he pointed at his chest as if saying: You can see me?
Leena wondered if he could be a useful asset. Haunting the leader of the Black Coats must mean he overheard important information, so she gave a short nod.
“Will you tell me where he is?” Leena asked, still staring at the boy.
It was Orley who answered. “Unfortunately, my dear, my customers require the strictest of confidentiality—”
She cut him off impatiently. “What is your price?”
He wagged one long finger. “From you, nothing. No offense, but, lovely though you are, you are of little importance to me.”
She knew that this was precisely why St. Silas had elected to come with her, but his demand for caution did not matter.
Her brother’s life lay in her ability to bargain for it—and she would bargain, once again, with whatever she had.
“I do, in fact, have a payment that you’ll never receive from anyone else—”
“I will tell you something, Orley,” St. Silas interrupted smoothly, a hand in his pocket.
Leena’s eyes widened and Orley gasped. The prospect of a secret from the Saint seemed to excite him beyond measure.
Even the ghost of the servant-boy jolted, shrunken eyes widening in shock as he stared intently at St. Silas.
Distantly, Leena wondered if this ghost had been one of the Saint’s confessors in his previous life.
She looked up at St. Silas mutely. Why…?
“Protecting my interests,” he reminded her flatly.
It wasn’t an act of kindness; it was an act of commerce.
Orley began without hesitation, licking his lips as if preparing for a meal. “Tell me something that has wounded you.”
The Saint was still for a long moment, his countenance carefully remote.
Then he tilted his jaw upward, exposing his throat and the thin pink line that ran in the shape of a knife’s blade.
He’d taken the request literally, confessing the history of something that had left a scar on his body, although Leena didn’t think Orley had meant it in that way.
“Courtesy of a mother whose son went mad after confessing to me.”
Orley’s tongue poked out as if tasting the air. “How old were you?”
“A few days past seventeen. I’d only just begun my business.”
Leena’s gaze sharpened on him, but the Saint’s attention was on Orley, not a flicker of emotion crossing his face. He was carved from stone, unwavering, dark brows set and firm, corrosive eyes that knew how to conceal every shift of expression.
“What did you do to the mother?” Once more Orley’s eyes seemed to expand, the dark overtaking the white entirely, before constricting suddenly—though Leena told herself shakily that it was likely a trick of the candlelight.
St. Silas’s drawl was bored. “I took the knife from her.”
“And then…?”
Leena held her breath as she waited for his answer.
“It is not relevant.”
Orley edged forward, a frustrated notch puckering his cheeks. “Then you’ve delivered an incomplete payment.” This exchange baffled Leena—why was St. Silas’s own confession important to Orley, and why did he consider it incomplete?
St. Silas’s mouth curled into impatience before he molded his face into indifference once more. “That is all; I merely took the knife from her. Make no mistake—rarely do I forgive any threat against my life.”
Very briefly, the Saint’s eyes pierced Leena.
Yet he’d forgiven her. She’d pointed a pistol at him and he had not punished her for it. Perhaps even the Saint of Silence had rare inclinations to mercy.
Leena wanted to continue to think of him always as a beast. Any shred of kindness attributed to the Saint would discolor the image she’d built of him in her head.
She understood monsters—their selfish wants, their relentless desires.
It was the monsters that flickered in and out of humanity that could never be accounted for.
It was for this reason that the next question burst from her own mouth, even though she knew such interruptions usually brought the wrath of St. Silas down upon her. “How old was the son?”
She imagined a young boy sitting on that wooden seat in the Saint’s confession room, sobbing as his secret was written in the ledgers, the pain ripping through him with jagged cruelty.
His answer surprised her. “Older than me.” Then, as if sensing where Leena’s mind had taken her, he met her gaze again. “I do not take the confessions of children, Miss Al-Sayer.”
She filtered through all the confessions she’d witnessed, and she was shocked to realize that she’d never once seen a child cross the threshold into the Saint’s shop.
Orley continued in a low whisper. “Do you regret reaping the confession from the son? Do you ever feel any shame?”
St. Silas showed his teeth. “If it is shame you want, Orley, you won’t get it from me.”
“Such a waste,” Orley whined. “I cannot get a feel for you at all. Why such a hard shell? The girl might’ve proved to be more delicious.”
“You are likely very right. Unfortunately, you’ve lost your opportunity to find out.” St. Silas’s smirk was obvious, but for the first time since she had entered his employment, he touched her intentionally, laying a warm hand at the base of her back.
Standing in that claustrophobic room, surrounded by Orley’s life trinkets and a young, pained ghost, Leena felt choked. It was almost natural for her to step back into St. Silas’s hold, allowing herself to be grounded by what felt like the only other living, warm thing in the room.
St. Silas flashed a surprised look at her unexpected reaction before once more schooling his features into nonchalance.
Leena could not silence the echo of St. Silas’s secret reverberating throughout her skull. For a wild moment, she wished that he’d never confessed at all.
She cleared her throat. “Tell us about Rami now.”
“Ah, yes,” Orley said in the tone of a child who has lost a game. “He forced our hand, you see. We had to teach him a lesson.”
“What have you done to him?” Leena demanded, taking a panicked step forward.
“Are you asking if my bruisers mean to keep him alive? How should I know? It’s up to the tradesman who asked us to fix the fight,” Orley replied, his attention already slipping away from the conversation. “Frankly, this whole affair has already bored me.”
“Where have they taken him?” Her voice cracked.
“The place we use is an abandoned cottage on the edge of Bromley Forest. It is a few minutes east of Wringer’s Pub.”
“Who was it that wanted the game fixed?” St. Silas was already half turned toward the door.
“Tsk, tsk.” Orley waggled his eyebrows. “For that, I will need another payment.”
St. Silas’s voice was mild. “No matter. I shall soon find out.”
The servant-ghost raised his hand in a farewell and Leena acknowledged him with another nod.
But before leaving the cluttered room, Leena looked back toward the hanging parchment once more.
No Burials for Lambs
Grimly, Leena knew this to be true.