Chapter Thirteen Samuel

Chapter Thirteen

Samuel

S amuel did not recognize his life.

He had spent the last week locked away in his new townhouse, receiving letters and information from both the Eternal King and Shan—things that he needed to learn, accounts to familiarize himself with, an entire city's worth of history and rumors spread out on the desk before him. He was to be isolated, kept safe away from the rest of the country until the proper moment of introduction. One could not simply say the King had found another Aberforth; no, it needed to be a spectacle. So for now he was to stay put in his gilded, extravagant cage.

He hated every last moment of it.

From the moment he awoke, in a bed too big and too soft to be comfortable, a serving girl slipping into his rooms to light the candles. His daily outfits were picked from the wardrobe bought by Shan, which had arrived on his doorstep the day after he moved in, the very wrapping paper it had been packaged in worth more than the clothes he was used to wearing. He was served breakfast—a damned feast—in the dining room under the portraits of the Aberforths who came before, then shuffled off to the study where he was supposed to learn. He stayed there till dinner—not able to bear three meals of such extravagance in a single day—then he was supposed to do it all again.

And again.

And again.

He had a task. To prepare. To educate himself for a life he did not want, all for the murky goals Shan had whispered in his ear. The promises she had made felt distant when he was living a life of luxury he did not deserve while so many others still starved.

He pulled the cufflinks from his suit, turning them over in his hands. They were real gold, and though he did not know precisely how much they were worth, he knew they could feed a whole family for months. Inspiration struck him, like a bolt of lightning, and he knew what he had to do.

Clenching his fist around the cufflinks, he made a decision—and damn anyone who tried to stop him. Feeling alive for the first time since he had stepped into this cursed house, he shoved aside the role that had been given to him, seizing a path of his own.

"Jacobs!" he called, throwing open the door to the hallway. Witch light shone down from the sconces above, casting the already uncomfortable home with an eerie glow. "I need your help."

"What is it, my lord?" Jacobs inquired, appearing at his side as if he had simply stepped from the shadows. He kept doing that—appearing seemingly out of nowhere whenever Samuel needed him.

"Hells, man." Samuel took two steps back as he forced his heart to calm. In some way, it made him a perfect servant, there but never seen, but it was starting to make Samuel deeply uncomfortable. No one should move like that. "Can you walk a little louder? Announce yourself? Something?"

"Should I wear a bell, like a cat?" Jacobs asked, deadpan, forcing a reluctant smile from Samuel. "I will try to be more aware of it, my lord. How may I be of assistance?"

"Right." Samuel squeezed the cufflinks in his hands. "I need clothes—proper clothes."

Jacobs looked him up and down, his normally serene expression faltering. "Is there something wrong with your wardrobe, my lord? We can write to the tailor—it would be her duty to replace anything ill-fitting."

"No, no. I mean, like regular clothes." Samuel pulled at his cravat, tugging at it until it came—reluctantly—loose. "Like what an average person wears—not this foppish shit."

"I see." Jacobs seemed to hesitate, the carefully constructed roles of master and servant slowly starting to erode as the foolishness of Samuel's ask started to settle in. Even in this, even though he was the Lord, Jacobs was the one who knew the most—about their roles, about the rules of their society, about the lives they were supposed to lead. But he couldn't—he wouldn't—step out of his place, and it made Samuel want to shake some sense into the old man.

He didn't need a servant. He needed someone who could help him, if only he could make Jacobs understand.

"I need to get out of here," Samuel said, quietly. "Just for an evening. And not like this." He gestured to himself, to the costume he wore—Lord Aberforth. "As myself."

Jacobs sighed, the barriers between them starting to fall. "If I may…"

Samuel nodded. "You don't need to fear speaking your mind to me, Jacobs. I am not my father."

"No, you most certainly are not," Jacobs muttered, casting his eyes to the heavens. "It is my place to do as you ask, Lord Aberforth, but whatever you are planning, I beg you to reconsider."

Samuel shook his head. "I need this."

Jacobs stared at him, and Samuel felt the pity in his gaze. But the old man relented—he had to, he had said as much, after all—and turned away. "I'll bring what you requested to your rooms, Lord Aberforth. Just… for the sake of this old man, please be careful."

"I will," Samuel said, though he wasn't sure if it was a lie or not. After all, the definition of careful was relative.

It wasn't long before Samuel had shed the trappings of the Lord he was to become, dressing instead like the man he was. He didn't ask where Jacobs had gotten the clothes, but the rough shirt and trousers felt more comfortable on his skin than the fine silks. He pulled his hair back in a loose bun, and though he still felt a little too soft, a little too clean, he was approaching the person he used to be. He filled his pockets with cufflinks and pocket watches and other pieces of finery, and then—at Jacobs' insistence—slipped out through the back door.

It was a different world from what he was used to, this part of Dameral. It was late in the afternoon, before most of the nobility would depart for their parties and their salons, so he was able to slip down the empty streets, just another Unblooded laborer who had been called to work on some menial thing far too below them to notice. He was, with a simple change of clothes, invisible.

Samuel kept his head ducked low as he made his way back home—even now, with the title and the townhouse and the recognition, home was still the slums where he had been raised. Each step closer eased another knot of tension, the fears that had been choking him for days slipping away like water over a stone. Yes, Shan had her plans, and he would help her in them, but there was no reason he couldn't start his own schemes. He had seen his ledgers: the Aberforths had wealth like he never could have imagined. It was more than a single person could spend in a lifetime—so why shouldn't he try? He could afford so much—he could give so much.

Starting with the finery they had forced upon him.

There were hungry children, families who struggled to put day-old bread on the table. With the coin that he could now call truly negligible, he could stop that. He could feed entire families. And just maybe this farce he played would be worthwhile.

Stepping into the slums of Dameral, he breathed freely for the first time in days. He already had decided on the first family he'd help—the neighbors he'd left behind. They were a large family, like so many others. More children meant more mouths to feed, but it also meant that, if they lived long enough, they would become more workers. More coin. It was the worst of all kinds of math, but he understood why they made their choices.

There weren't any other options.

By the time he reached his former lodgings, afternoon had started to slip towards evening. It would probably be a little while yet before the parents returned home from their jobs, but that was all right. Samuel was willing to wait. He had nothing but time.

Rounding the corner, he had to forcibly keep himself from running. For the first time since Shan had found him, he felt like he was achieving something, and his whole being felt lighter. Bubbly. Free.

But the excitement vanished like a punch to the gut as he glanced up at the building he had called home for years. It was boarded up. Closed and shuttered. There was a large piece of parchment nailed to the door, and Samuel didn't need to read it to know what it said. He had seen such things before.

The building had been condemned.

He stood straighter as the tension pulled his muscles taut, confusion spreading through him like the slow, thick drip of wax down a candle. It hadn't been any worse or better than any other building with rooms for rent in Dameral. And it wasn't like such regulations were actually followed. Rules and laws in Dameral were a joke, only enforced when there was some sort of political—

"Hells."

Samuel darted up the steps, pulling the notice from the nail where it had been slammed into the wooden door. The language was formal, rote, nothing out of place to confirm the suspicions that he had. But Samuel was no fool—he knew what this meant, who had been behind it.

His own damned family. The Eternal King. The promise of mercy was a lie after all, and as he crumpled the notice in his hand, that old, familiar, helpless laugh caught in his throat.

It was too late now for him to do anything. The tenants would have been evicted swiftly, kicked to the streets with only what they could carry. Not just the family he had come here to help, but every last soul in this building. And it was all his fault, all to spite the landlord who had evicted him. A slip of the tongue before the Eternal King, a detail he didn't need or mean to share, and the consequences that were not his to bear.

He could try to track them down, but he had never bothered to learn their names. Given his own situation, the danger in his blood, he had thought mutual anonymity would keep them safer. Ironic, in the end. He had doomed them and then left himself with no resources to help. Like so many others, they were simply gone, swallowed whole by the city that gobbled them up and spat them back out—broken, shattered, or dead.

The crumpled parchment fell from his fingers, caught in the slight breeze that always blew through the street, coming off the sea and smelling of brine. It rolled away in the wind, vanishing into the creeping shadows as the sun sank behind him. "I'm sorry," he whispered, as he tried to impress their faces into his memory. But they were already fading, slipping away.

Gone.

Turning on his heel, he left his home behind. If the Eternal King had taken out his anger on his landlord, then it was likely that his old employer was also a target. He didn't know what he could do, if anything, but he had to get there. At least at work he hadn't been able to isolate himself completely. He had names, contacts, years' worth of memories.

He ran.

It was the time of day when work was starting to let out, the streets filling with the tired and the hungry, but Samuel did not care, ducking and dodging and dancing through the crowds. He ignored every curse that was thrown his way, the looks of confusion and surprise, the attention he was undoubtedly bringing to himself.

In all his years of working there, he had never made it there as quickly as he did then.

The warehouse had just changed shifts, and he scanned the people leaving it—people he had worked with for so long, and yet not a single one glanced his way. He clenched his jaw. Surely he wasn't that unrecognizable? He had shed the Aberforth mask, he was just himself, it shouldn't be so easy to forget—

"Hutchinson?"

He spun around, so startled that someone actually remembered him, let alone came up to speak to him, that all he could do was gape for a long moment. It was a familiar set of dark eyes, and the same soft smile, though there were shadows under his eyes that Samuel didn't recall being there. Of course it was him.

"Markus," he managed, eventually, earning a smile from the man in front of him.

"I didn't expect to see you back here," Markus said, shyly, tucking his hands in his pockets. "After… what happened, we all thought you were gone."

Gone. Always gone, gone like so many others. It was simply the way of things, and Samuel wondered when it had become normal. Or perhaps it always had been, and he was the one who was changing.

"I… am," Samuel said, wincing. "In a way. I just need to know something—Cobb?"

Markus didn't hide his disappointment, and Samuel felt a little bad for using him like this. "A few days after you. Dunno what happened, really, but the bastard they replaced him with is working us like dogs."

"Dammit." Samuel closed his eyes, filled with a sick sense of relief. At least it was only Cobb. The shipping company itself continued on, and Markus and the others still had their jobs. It was wrong of him to feel happy, he knew that.

But it was better than the alternative.

"What happened to him?" He didn't need to clarify.

"He's been drinking himself to death at one of the pubs," Markus said. He dragged the toe of his boot across the cobblestoned street; Samuel noticed because he couldn't dare meet his eyes. "I can show you."

"Please."

"Right." Markus wiped his hand across his face. "This way." He started leading Samuel down the street, the silence between them thick and tense, when suddenly: "Can I ask why?"

Samuel hesitated—then, "Cause it's my fault."

Markus sucked in a harsh breath through his teeth. "Hutchinson, no. Anyone could have gotten caught up with the Guard. It doesn't do to blame yourself like that."

He didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Markus was far too kind, and if he only knew the truth…

Instead, he fell into a bitter, angry silence—one that his companion did not deserve, but it was better than anything else. Samuel didn't know what would happen if he spoke, what danger he might put this man in.

"Here we are," Markus said, coming to a stop in front of a pub that Samuel had never seen before. Though, if he was being honest, he wasn't sure one could call it a pub. It was far too shabby for that.

"Thanks," Samuel muttered, already reaching into his pocket. "Here—"

"No," Markus threw his hands up in front of him. "I don't know what happened to you, but I'd have done this for any friend. I don't need your coppers."

Samuel wanted to say that they hadn't been friends, not truly, and that what he had to offer was far more than copper. But there was a resolute pride to Markus, one that Samuel remembered all too well. "I… understand. And for what it's worth, I'm sorry."

For a moment it looked like he was going to ask the question that hung between them for years—the what happened? that Samuel had never been able to answer. Samuel's slip had been so small, so natural, that to this day he didn't think Markus even noticed it. That he had wanted to kiss him.

Yet Samuel would never know if it was true, and he could not risk it.

But Markus just clapped him on the shoulder. "Don't be. Some things don't work out." He jutted his chin towards the door. "Good luck in there. From what I've heard, it hasn't been pretty."

"Great." Samuel steeled himself and approached the door. It groaned as he started to push on it, and he blinked into the small, dimly lit room, illuminated by the candle stubs on every table, rickety wooden things that crowded the floor. A bar—if you could call it that—ran along the back, and a tired, older woman just stared at him.

Ducking his head, he stepped inside. It didn't take him long to find Cobb, slumped against one of the tables along the wall. In front of him was an empty glass, and he was staring blankly at the whorls in the wood.

Samuel didn't give himself a moment to doubt, knowing that his courage was a fragile thing. He crossed the room quickly, grabbing a chair from the next table, and sat down in front of his former boss. Cobb didn't even react, he just kept staring. Up close, Samuel saw that the table was littered with broadsheets. No doubt he was scouring them for help wanted ads. If there even were any to find. Good work was harder and harder to come by with each passing year, and a firing would only make things more difficult.

The barkeep was watching him suspiciously, but she relaxed when he dropped a few coppers on the table, signaling for two more of whatever Cobb had been drinking. Most likely an ale of some sort. He knew better than to ask for tea, and, besides, one glass of it wouldn't hurt—he didn't have to finish it and most places watered it down so much that you had to drink all night to get even the slightest bit drunk.

The barmaid appeared at the table, dropping down the glasses and sweeping the coins away. Cobb at last looked up as Samuel nudged one of the glasses forward, his bleary eyes unfocused and sad. For a long moment he just stared, then he rubbed his hand across his face, a hand that was still stained, the skin having absorbed years of ink. "Hutchinson? What the bleeding hells are you doing here?"

"Can't I check in on you?" Samuel asked, taking a sip of his ale. He nearly spat it back out. It was like rancid water.

"Didn't expect you to. You're not the type," Cobb replied, with a sad honesty that cut at Samuel. "And if you don't like that, don't waste it. Give it here."

Samuel wrapped his hand around the glass, not out of any intention to drink it, but—"How many have you had?"

"Are you my mother now?" He drained half of his glass in one pull. "Enough that one more isn't going to kill me."

Sighing, Samuel slid it across to him, and Cobb eagerly lined it up. "What happened, Cobb?"

"Hells if I know." He sank back in his chair. "All I know is that a few days after… you, a notice came down from on high. No reason, no explanation. And now this." He slammed his hand down on the table, the broadsheets fluttering, and Samuel winced.

"I'm sorry."

"What for?" Cobb blinked at him, awareness starting to cut through his drunken haze. "Looks like we're in the same boat now, friend."

"Not the same, no," Samuel said. He reached into his pocket, sorting through the options he had before him. He pulled the cufflinks out and dropped them on the table. "Here. Take these."

Cobb just stared at them, his eyes going wide, before he clapped his hand over them, hiding them away. "Are you mad?" he whispered. "Trying to start a riot?"

Samuel shook his head, slowly. "No, I—"

"Are these real?" Cobb lifted the edge of his hand to peek at the cufflinks. "Where did you—oh. Hells." He shoved them back towards Samuel. "Not enough to get me fired, eh? Gotta try to get me killed?"

Samuel accepted the cufflinks as they rolled back towards him, but he looked up at Cobb in confusion. "What?"

But Cobb wasn't looking at him, he was digging through the stack of paper in front of him, muttering as he went. Samuel's mind was reeling—what had the man figured out to connect the dots?

"Here it is!" Cobb said, shoving one of the broadsheets under Samuel's nose.

He took the paper with unsteady hands, his eyes dropping automatically to a headline in bold type.

A NEW ABERFORTH?

Skimming the article, he felt a cold dread settle into his stomach as he read an account of his own life for the past week. Yes, the details were muddy and vague, but the gist of it was there—the Aberforth home was reopened, a strange young man had moved in. It was clear that the Aberforths had returned, and Dameral's rumor mills were already churning.

"It's you," Cobb said. It wasn't even a question, and Samuel could only nod. "Hells, it's a miracle I wasn't arrested for treason."

"You didn't know," Samuel said quickly. " I didn't know. No one knew. I tried to tell him that. I told him to let it go."

Cobb's laugh was a tinge panicked. "You—you tried to command him ?"

It seemed foolish in hindsight, Samuel had to admit. Who was he to make demands of the Eternal King? But this was the very reason why he had tried. He had become a poison to those he had known—mere association with him had proved to be dangerous.

"Let me help you," Samuel begged. "Clearly I have the means to."

"No," Cobb replied, firmly. "Your heart's in the right place, but I can't be caught with those."

"Do you have any idea how much they're worth?"

Cobb snatched one of the cufflinks off the table, turning it so that the head faced Samuel. "What do you see?" Samuel stared down at it, at the large A in elegant script. "If I am caught with this—if it's found that I sold them—I'd be branded a thief. So keep your jewelry. I don't need it."

Samuel deflated. "I just want to help."

"And the best way you can help me—help any of us—is by going back to your new home and staying put." Cobb drained the drinks in front of him. "Thanks for the ale, but I'm afraid that's all I can accept from you."

"Cobb," Samuel said, his voice cracking. "Please."

"I'm sorry, kid," Cobb said, pushing away from the table. "But getting mixed up with your kind is always dangerous."

"But I'm just like you!"

The look Cobb shot him was enough to crush all of Samuel's hopes—his foolish plans just to walk the streets and give out money and finery to those who needed it were just that. Foolish. Who could they sell it to? Every legitimate pawn shop would think the goods stolen, and then Samuel would just be giving them the means and encouragement to enter a life of crime.

And the Blood Workers were not kind to Unblooded criminals.

It had only been a week, but he had already started to lose sight of what it had meant to be Unblooded. Had he been so surrounded by Blood Workers and nobility and money that the very definition of normal had started to shift already?

"I hope I don't see you around here again," Cobb said. It wasn't unkind, but the message was clear. He wasn't welcome anymore.

"You won't." Samuel hung his head.

"Goodbye, kid."

He heard Cobb's footsteps as he left, heavy and steady, but Samuel just sat there, trying to feel normal. The broadsheet with the article on the Aberforths remained in front of him, taunting him, so Samuel grabbed the stack and shoved it into the pile, hiding it away.

As he did, a smaller pamphlet fell to the floor. Reaching down to grab it, Samuel froze as his eyes caught on the headline.

ANOTHER UNBLOODED DEATH,

ANOTHER brEACH OF DUTY

This wasn't a broadsheet—this was something different.

Something dangerous.

Something that spoke of sedition.

He scanned the article quickly, fear sticking in his throat as the pamphlet called out the Guard and the Blood Workers who ruled them for the brutalized dead whose deaths had still to be avenged.

It wasn't the first time he had seen something like this—calls for the Blood Workers and the nobility to expand the rights of the Unblooded. There were pamphlets for everything, from eliminating the Blood Taxes to outright impossible demands like this, asking for the Unblooded to have their own seats in the government. Before, he had been terrified of being caught with anything even remotely radical. But now?

The piece of paper felt strangely heavy in his hand, but his heart felt light. Maybe throwing money at the problem wasn't a solution after all. But maybe there was something else.

He slipped it into his pocket and left the rest of the mess on the table.