Chapter 15 Ransom

Chapter 15 Ransom

Ransom stirred on and off until the early afternoon, when Lark and Nadia came banging on his bedroom door.

‘Oh, good. You're still alive,' said Lark, striding inside.

‘Barely,' croaked Ransom.

‘It was touch-and-go there for a while,' said Nadia, peering down at him.

Ransom reached for the pitcher of water on his nightstand and drained it. ‘Don't tell me,' he said, taking in the hesitant looks on his friends' faces. ‘Dufort wants to see me.'

Lark nodded. ‘Lisette overheard the commotion in here last night.'

‘I really hate that snitch,' muttered Nadia.

Ransom rolled out of bed and flinched as pain flared all along his right side. Lark lunged to steady him.

Last night, after getting him home, Lark and Nadia had fetched a local physician and long-time ally of the Order. In the privacy of his bedchamber, she had seen to the wound in his side, treating it with alcohol and then a tincture of herbs, before sewing the skin back together. Thirty-six stitches of tough black thread, to match the whorls around it.

An inch to the left, and this would have been fatal , she'd told Lark and Nadia as Ransom bit down on his pillow to keep from screaming. It was an effort not to arch his back, to endure the stab and pull of the needle as it plunged deep, over and over again. But the fever is still working on him. You need to get it to break.

‘Do you want Shade for the pain?' Lark asked him now, his voice laced with worry.

Ransom shook his head. Last night he had been in such agony he hadn't thought about anything else, but Lark had kept vigil at his bedside, counting his breaths as he slept, urging him to drink water every time he stirred and administering special tinctures every couple of hours. When his fever broke just after dawn, Ransom heard his best friend humming, gently guiding him through the fog of his nightmares.

Nadia had taken over from Lark at sunrise, laying a cool cloth on Ransom's brow and holding his hand in hers, chatting softy to him as he slept, as if they were two old friends taking a stroll along the Verne.

Ransom had survived the night, but he had not slept off his rage or humiliation. Although the scope of his feelings had since broadened to include a simmering relief at being alive, and a fierce gratitude for his two best friends. He didn't have the words to properly convey just how much they both meant to him, and when he tried, Nadia flinched.

‘Ugh, no deathbed speeches,' she warned. ‘You'll smudge my eyeliner.'

Lark helped him dress as quickly as his wound allowed, then knelt to lace up his boots. ‘Have you decided what to tell Dufort?'

Ransom ground his teeth. He didn't know whether to admit his failure and suffer the consequences or say nothing of Villa Roman and redouble his efforts to pin down the girl.

‘Are you going to mention Seraphine?' Nadia pressed.

Ransom bristled. ‘Don't say that name.'

Lark raised his eyebrows. ‘It won't make her magically appear.'

‘No, but it still pisses me off.' Ransom knew he was being dramatic, petulant even, but that name conjured other things – visions of those dancing blue eyes, memories of the irritating smugness in her voice. Bleeding swan. And then there was the memory of the bead that had burned around her neck. The flame that had burned him. If he thought about it for too long it would drive him to violence and he couldn't afford to lose his composure in front of Dufort. Not after losing his mark.

Lark said no more. Ransom was glad of the silence as they walked to the Cavern, which was bustling with Daggers chatting over lunch. Dufort was in his usual spot at the back, with Lisette, the sharp-tongued, ambitious Dagger who was always clamouring for a shot at that gaudy ring on his left hand. At twenty-one, she was a couple of years older than Ransom, and possessed a hostile, feline beauty that matched her personality: that of a ruthless killer. She tossed her ice-blonde hair now, her grey eyes raking over him as he approached.

‘You're limping,' she said, by way of greeting.

Dufort looked Ransom up and down. His eyes were clear today, his scowl deep. ‘What happened last night?'

Lisette's red lips curled. ‘Don't tell me your little farmgirl stuck you with her pitchfork.' She was teasing, but there was a note of hunger in her voice. Ransom's failure would bring her one step closer to claiming his role as Dufort's Second, the heir to the Order and all its riches, which included the favour of the king himself.

It was chiefly for this reason that Ransom decided to lie. ‘I never got to the mark. I was on my way across the river when I ran into a monster.' He frowned at the memory. ‘Well. It ran through me.'

Dufort sat up straight, the blood draining from his cheeks. ‘So, the rumours are true.'

Ransom nodded. ‘A beast of Shade. I plunged into a blackness so complete I couldn't remember my own name.' Without meaning to, his hands went to the wound in his side. ‘I didn't think I'd ever wake up.'

The smile died on Lisette's face. ‘Did this monster know you were a Dagger?'

‘If it did, it didn't care.' A pause, then, ‘I was lucky to have that Shade in my system.' Not that it lasted. ‘It would have killed me if it had doubled back.'

Dufort's face tightened, his gaze falling to Ransom's side. Worry flickered there. ‘Looks like it made a good attempt.'

Ransom didn't correct him.

Lark, who had been hovering close behind him, stepped forward. ‘Nadia and I were following a lead down by the Scholars' Quarter when we heard the screams up on Merchant's Way. When we came across Ransom, he was half dead.'

‘Tell me everything,' Dufort growled. ‘Leave nothing out.'

Ransom left a lot of things out, but he gave Dufort what he most wanted: every detail he could recall about the monster; the way it moved, how it looked, even its sulphuric stench. Dufort sat in stony silence, while the other Daggers left their own conversations to listen in.

The story wasn't long – after all, Ransom had left out the first part entirely and he had been unconscious for most of the rest – but before he could finish, young Collette arrived in a clatter of footsteps.

‘Mister Dufort! This just arrived for you.' She waved an envelope sealed with dark green wax. ‘It's from House Armand.'

Dufort leaped to his feet, snatching the letter. Silence rippled through the Cavern as the Daggers watched him read it, Dufort's eyebrows lifting higher with each word. Then he crumpled the parchment with a rasping laugh. ‘Looks like hell has frozen over,' he said, flinging it into the fireplace. ‘Cordelia Mercure wants a meeting.'

Ransom got a proper look at himself when he went to bathe later that afternoon. His dark hair hung in damp tendrils across his forehead and there was a waxy sheen to his olive skin. Even his eyes looked tired. And yet, as he stood shirtless in front of the mirror, tracing the shadow-marks that marred his chest and shoulders, he saw that his right hand was different. He peered at the knuckle where a shadow-mark had once been. His first mark. For nearly ten years, that whorl had curled around his fingers like a branch of inky thorns. It had stung like them, too.

Now, it was gone. The skin there was unblemished, smooth and new, and when he pressed it, there was no pain. Not even the faintest tingle. He stared and stared, his heart swelling in his chest as he examined the hand that had killed so many, including his own father. The hand that had dangled Seraphine like a puppet on a string. The hand she had burned on that balcony. And now it was… clean.

He pressed it to his chest, inhaling deeply as he searched the dark reaches of himself, prodding at the heaviness that lingered there. Was it his imagination or had it lessened? Had some of the darkness inside him been burned away too? He traced his knuckle again, this new marvel before him, and remembered that bright light shining out of Seraphine's necklace. In her desperate haste to free herself had she accidentally healed some old wound of his without even realizing it?

Another question gripped him, so tight he couldn't breathe from the hope of it… Could she burn all the poison away, so that he could crawl out of this cruel place and leave behind the yawning hollow of darkness that would one day swallow him whole?

As Ransom watched himself in the mirror, his eyes grew, the gold inside them hungry and bright, as though another version of himself was peering out of them. What would you give for another chance at freedom? What would you risk to go all the way back?

He dropped his head, caressing that little patch of unblemished skin.

Everything .

The meeting of the Orders took place the following Sunday at the bottom of the Aurore Tower, where the dusky autumn sky flickered with firelight. Dufort chose three Daggers to accompany him – Lisette, Lark and Ransom. By then, the pain in Ransom's side was less of a constant ragged shriek and more of a dull groan. Present but manageable. Still, it wracked him in the night whenever he turned on his side, or when his dreams conjured up that damn spitfire and her wicked little smile.

What an extraordinary secret she possessed. What life-changing power. It had come to plague his every thought.

When the Daggers arrived at Primrose Square, the rolling gardens within which the tower stood, Cordelia Mercure was already waiting for them. She was wearing a long violet coat, a wide-brimmed black hat and a scowl that could sink a ship. No cloak, but that was the rule. No cloaks, no Shade .

Dufort chuckled under his breath. ‘If looks could kill…'

‘That scowl is nearly as good as mine,' said Lisette, waggling her fingers in greeting.

Mercure stood with her arms folded, pretending not to see the gesture.

Ransom's heart pounded as he scanned the Cloaks on either side of Mercure. There was no sign of the spitfire. He chewed on his lip, unsure if he was relieved or pissed off. It wasn't like he could confront her, with an audience present.

‘Surely you didn't think she'd be here,' whispered Lark, reading his mind like he always could. ‘She's been a Cloak for all of a month.'

Behind Cordelia stood a tall, muscled man with cropped black hair, brown skin and keen brown eyes that assessed them with militant calm. To her right, a young tanned man with slicked-back silver hair and eyes so bright Ransom could see the hatred in them from all the way across the square. On her other side, a pale old woman with a cane, her face so wrinkled, she looked like a walking scowl.

‘Fontaine,' muttered Dufort, voice rippling with disdain. ‘I thought the old bat was dead.'

They came to a stop twenty feet from the Cloaks. High above them, three huge troughs of flames flickered along the stone scaffolds of the Aurore, the light from them melding into a single soaring glow.

‘Beautiful,' murmured Lark, looking up at it. ‘We should come here with Nadia some time.'

Ransom smirked. Sap.

‘Gaspard,' said Cordelia in a cold voice.

‘Cordelia,' he parried, colder still. ‘Always a displeasure.'

Fontaine leaned on her cane. ‘Hateful creature.'

Dufort sneered at her. ‘Good of you to crawl out of your grave to join us.'

‘I'll gladly take you back with me,' she croaked.

‘All that bark and no teeth,' purred Lisette.

‘That's enough,' said Cordelia Mercure sharply. ‘Curb your odiousness, Gaspard. We have a serious matter to discuss.'

‘And I thought this was a date,' he said, with a pout. ‘I regret getting dressed up.'

She glared at him.

‘Monsters,' she said, coming to the point. ‘Have you encountered these beasts?'

Dufort gestured towards Ransom, and the other Cloaks turned to look at him. ‘Ransom had a run-in with one. He barely got away with his life.'

‘What a shame,' muttered Fontaine.

Lisette hissed at her. ‘Play nice, old woman.'

‘Fuck off,' said Fontaine.

Lark barked a laugh.

Dufort shot him a blistering glare.

Cordelia ignored the interruption. ‘I lost a Cloak to one of these monsters.' She didn't elaborate. ‘And three nights ago, another of mine almost met the same fate. She gave a chilling account. Up until then, we believed these indiscriminate killings to be the work of your Order.'

‘You wound me,' said Dufort. ‘I am many things, Cordelia. But sloppy is not one of them.'

She curled her lip. ‘And yet you burned Sylvie Marchant's house to the ground.'

The silver-haired Cloak stiffened. Ransom wondered if he had known Sylvie. Or perhaps his loyalty was to her daughter. The thought made his nostrils flare.

‘That was Dagger business,' said Dufort, evenly.

‘Messy business,' said Fontaine.

He shrugged. ‘Needs must.'

‘The way I see it, you disrupted our trade and now we have monsters seemingly made of Shade stalking through our city, kidnapping and killing at will.' Mercure prowled closer until there was barely a foot between them. Despite their natural enmity, Ransom was impressed by her. There wasn't a hint of fear on her proud face. She must be the only person in Fantome who didn't cower from Dufort. Well, her and the old crone. ‘You and I oversee all the Shade in this city, Gaspard, and these monsters are not my doing.'

‘Careful with your conclusions, Cordelia,' he snarled. ‘You don't want to make an enemy tonight.'

‘You've been my enemy for nearly twenty years,' she scoffed. ‘You murdered one of my best smugglers on what appears to have been a mindless whim and now everything is going awry. Disruption is growing across Fantome, a chaos that worsens with each passing day. If we don't find a way to contain it, the king's eye will soon fall on us. If we can't control this city, the underworld and the protection both our orders have enjoyed for centuries will fall away, and our power will be lost.'

Dufort appeared unmoved. ‘If I wanted a lecture, I would have brought my Daggers to the Appoline.'

She glowered at him. ‘Dagger or not, even you are not above reproach from the King of Valterre. A predator is only unassailable when they're at the top of the food chain. By the sound of it, you and your Daggers are no longer at the top. Which makes you as vulnerable as the rest of this city.' She raised a finger in warning. ‘You would do well to remember that.'

Dufort caught her wrist.

Fontaine hissed in warning. The muscular Cloak lunged forward but Mercure raised her free hand, bringing him to a halt. ‘It's all right, Albert. I clearly touched a nerve.'

Dufort's nostrils flared, but he did not deny it. She was right. The Daggers were ceding control of the underworld to something they did not understand. And no one here wanted the king breathing down their neck. ‘Now that you've scrabbled your way to higher ground, Cordelia, why don't we set aside the threats and discuss a solution to our problem?'

She shook him off. ‘I'm all ears.'

‘We need to catch one of these monsters,' said Dufort, as if it was as simple as that. ‘Only then can we figure out where they're coming from. And more importantly, how to kill them.' He cocked his head. ‘Since you and your little pickpockets are averse to murder, if you get your nimble hands on one before me, I'll do the grisly part.'

‘And then what?'

‘And then your Cloaks can kiss my ring.'

She recoiled.

He stepped back, splaying his hands. ‘And then we can go back to our much-enjoyed mutual enmity. Relatively unscathed.'

‘What makes you think I trust you enough to work with you?'

‘Because you have no alternative, Cordelia. For the first time in our lives, we face an enemy far greater than either of us.'

Cordelia crooked an eyebrow, her suspicion simmering. ‘That depends on where these monsters are coming from. Mark my words, Gaspard, I intend to find out.'

‘As you like,' said Dufort.

While Dufort and Mercure traded veiled threats, Ransom let his gaze wander. Something flickered up ahead. He blinked, sure he had imagined it, but then it happened again. Not a light, like the flames along the Aurore, but a shadow beneath it. A ribbon of darkness darted along the bottom of the tower, there and gone in a heartbeat.

He watched the shadows bend, and almost laughed. Of course there were other Cloaks here, hiding in plain sight. Cordelia Mercure was no fool. Three soldiers were not enough for a showdown with Gaspard Dufort, if it came to that.

But the question was: who else had come?

Ransom slipped a hand into his pocket and retrieved his vial of Shade. This was against the rules of the meeting, but he was standing so far behind Dufort, they'd hardly notice. No one was even looking at him. And he only needed a taste. A minute of sight to scour the shadows. To know if she was here, watching him. Gloating.

He turned away, tipping a morsel onto his tongue. He swallowed it down, stowing the vial before anyone noticed. The Shade shivered through him, quick and cold. It was almost as blistering as Fontaine's sharpening gaze. Had she seen what he'd done? Either way, he ignored her entirely. He tugged his sleeves down, hiding the whorls that moved across his hands. The world lit up, the shadows under the Aurore falling away like a curtain.

And there she was. His spitfire.

She was peering around a stone pillar in her long black cloak, staring right at him.

Ransom gave her a slow, lethal smirk.

She hugged the column, the shock on her face quickly blooming into horror. He almost felt sorry for her. But this was war, and she had drawn first blood. He had thirty-six stitches in his side to prove it.

So he dragged a finger across his neck, and mouthed, I'm going to fucking kill you.