Chapter Eighteen

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Children, strive to be above reproach, for forgiveness is not easily earned.

—The Book of Mortal Law, Tract 403

Lore’s tongue felt thick and clumsy in her mouth, her thoughts packed in wool. She couldn’t untangle an excuse from them.

Next to her, nearly invisible in the gloom, Gabriel wasn’t trying for excuses at all. A dagger was in his hand—when had he gotten a dagger?—and it caught the candlelight as he held it to Bastian’s throat.

That broke Lore’s paralysis. “Bleeding God, Gabe, do you want to hang?”

“You know, I think he might.” For having a naked blade at his neck, Bastian seemed incredibly nonchalant. “The final act in his endless personal drama.”

Gabe’s teeth flashed bright as his dagger. “Bold words for someone at the sharp end.”

“Truly, I’m wounded.” Bastian made a show of craning his neck to look over his shoulder at the narrow door. “But not quite so wounded that I’d wake up the guard outside. Not yet, anyway.” His almost-golden eyes glittered in the dark. “I already paid off the Sacred one in the corridor, so he’s probably carousing at some tavern or other. But I’m sure I could find him if I wanted.”

As threats went, it wasn’t exactly subtle. The three of them stared at one another, Gabe still holding the dagger at Bastian’s neck and Bastian looking singularly unbothered by it.

It came to Lore to break the silence, since Gabe and Bastian seemed able to sit in it for hours. She rounded on the Sun Prince. “Do you have someone following us?”

“Of course not. I followed you.” With a flick of his eyes toward Gabe, Bastian reached up and pushed the dagger aside with one finger. Gabe’s knuckles whitened, but he lowered the blade.

“Unlike my father,” Bastian continued, “I prefer to do my own spying.”

A bead of sweat slid down Lore’s back. She’d been a fool to think they could outsmart this man, to think there was a way to stay here unharmed while Bastian knew she was a spy. August’s underestimation of his son was going to be the death of her, and of Gabe, too—

But Bastian didn’t suddenly produce a sword or shackles, didn’t call for guards that would send her to the Burnt Isles before the sun came up. Instead he turned back toward the doorway that led into the Citadel proper, pinching out the flames in the alcoves as he went. He glanced at them over his shoulder, one curling black lock falling over his eye. “You two coming?”

“Absolutely not.” Gabe spoke through clenched teeth. The carefully reined deference he’d shown the prince this afternoon was all gone now, nothing but cold rage in its place.

“Pity.” Bastian shrugged. “And here I was going to get you into the vaults. After we take a detour, anyway.” He leaned a shoulder against the wall, pushed back his artfully mussed hair. The prince wasn’t dressed for bed or debauchery; instead he wore a loose white shirt and dark pants, boots that climbed to his knees. Similar to the clothes people wore out in the Wards. “Think of all the exciting things you’ll have to report to my father and uncle, afterward.”

Lore swallowed. Gabe’s hands tightened to fists.

Bastian grinned. “So, I ask again. You two coming?”

A pause. Then Gabe gave a truncated nod.

“Excellent.” Bastian turned to move down the dark hall, extinguishing the last of the candles as he passed.

They fell into step behind the Sun Prince, Gabe fuming, anxiety chewing at Lore’s stomach. They were caught, decisively so, and she had no idea what Bastian would do with them now. Turn them over to Kirythea, if August’s suspicions were true? Blackmail them into reporting on August and Anton, playing both sides?

She shot a look at Gabe. Going down by herself was bad enough; she hated dragging him along, too.

Warm fingers caught hers. Gabe. He gave her hand a squeeze, gave her a laden look from the corner of his eye. It settled her nerves, squared her shoulders.

Even if the body she’d raised had reanimated, like Horse, there was no one there to give an order. The child might be aware, insofar as something dead could be, but it’d be like he was sleeping, safe inside the vault. As much as she hated to leave him that way, things would hold for however long this detour with Bastian took.

Assuming he kept his word.

Bastian pushed open the door, its corner nudging the still-sleeping bloodcoat on the other side. The guard readjusted but didn’t wake, pillowing his head on his bent arms, breathing just this side of a snore.

“You really took him out.” Bastian glanced at Gabe. “You’ll have to teach me that trick.”

“Is that an order?” Gabe growled.

“We’ll see.” Stepping over the bloodcoat, Bastian led them back through the winding halls. He took a different route than they had and passed a few courtiers giggling in corners, skin gilded in candlelight. A handsome man with a crimson-haired woman in his arms beckoned to Bastian, wordlessly asking if he wanted to join in, but the Sun Prince waved a dismissive hand. Neither courtier seemed fazed by his rejection.

Lore tensed when they reached the doors into the back gardens—the ones they’d gone through this morning to reach the North Sanctuary—but the guards barely reacted to Bastian’s presence, and said nothing when he opened the doors to the chill of midnight.

It appeared the Citadel guards were used to the Sun Prince coming and going at all hours. The knowledge did nothing to soothe Lore’s nerves.

Bastian led them silently through the gardens, walking over grass instead of on the cobblestone. They went the opposite direction Lore had wandered earlier, but still ended up in another false forest with manicured paths. A breeze riffled through the trees, spinning green needles and the scent of pine. An Auverrani summer was scorching in the day, but surprisingly cool at night.

Gabe stopped, planted his feet. “Where are we going?”

“Somewhere interesting,” Bastian answered. His hands were in his pockets, his stride almost jaunty. “It will make a great tale for August, since he’s apparently so interested in what I’m doing with my free time. And you both need a bit of fun.”

“What if we don’t want it?” Lore asked.

The prince grinned. He stepped up to her with fluid grace, the night air lifting his dark curls, wafting the scent of red wine and expensive cologne. “I think,” he said softly, “that it’s exactly what you want, Lore. And you strike me as the kind of woman who doesn’t waste time denying the things she wants.”

She’d spent a lifetime denying what she wanted, denying who and what she was. “You don’t know me at all.”

He was too close. So was Gabe, glowering behind her. She felt trapped between the two of them, too warm, too charged, too much.

Bastian’s feral grin widened. “I will, though.”

And that felt too true, somehow, true in a way that made no sense. It plucked at Lore’s chest, made thrumming harp strings of her ribs. The air around the three of them seemed momentarily thicker, as if they’d created their own atmosphere.

Gabe stepped away, out of the pull of their collective gravity, the wind ruffling at his short hair. He crossed his arms over his chest and lifted his chin, stretching the scant few inches he had on the prince for all they were worth. “If we go with you, you’ll get us into the vaults?”

“Of course, old friend.” Bastian turned and started walking again. The wall of the Church dividing the Citadel from the rest of Dellaire loomed out of the dark, casting deep shadows. “I’ll get you into the vaults, you’ll tell me what exactly my father is up to. A win for everyone.”

Another darted glance between Gabe and Lore, another attempt at communicating without words. They weren’t very good at it. Gabe’s glare didn’t tell her anything other than that he was angry enough to kick a hole through one of these perfectly manicured trees, and Lore’s shrug, meant to convey acceptance, only made his jaw clench harder.

A small culvert covered by an iron grate was set into the base of the wall, nearly impossible to see until they were right on it, but big enough for a grown man to climb through. Bastian bent, producing an iron pick from his boot and wiggling it into the lock. It came undone easily, falling to the grass with a soft clunk.

“But before all that,” Bastian announced, lifting aside the iron grate and setting it carefully against the wall. “The two of you could use an adventure.” He ducked into the small tunnel, gesturing for them to follow, and was gone with a slight splash that made Lore wince.

Another fucking tunnel. And this one had water.

“He’s playing with us,” Gabe muttered, barely above a whisper. The heat of him was a beacon against the night air. “This will probably end in both of us bleeding out in an alley after we tell him August’s plans.”

“I think you can take him, if it comes down to that.”

“While I appreciate the sentiment, I don’t see that it helps us.”

“And I don’t see a way around it.” Lore ducked down toward the grate, but Gabe’s hand vised around her arm.

She looked up at him, scowling. “What exactly do you think he’ll do if we don’t march to his orders, Gabriel? Just shrug and let us continue on our merry way? Unless you want a one-way ticket to the Isles in less than an hour, we’re following the damn Sun Prince into the gutter.”

They glared at each other for a moment before Gabe let her go, hand flexing outward exaggeratedly. It made the candle inked on his palm stretch to odd proportions. “Fine.”

He dropped through the grate first. Lore followed. A splash, the hem of her dressing gown immediately soaked through. The tunnel was so dark it took her eyes a minute to adjust, and when they did, she made sure not to look down. She really didn’t want to see what kind of garbage she might be marinating in.

“I am curious, though.” Bastian’s voice floated out of the dark right in front of her as if there’d been no lull in their conversation, making Lore jump. A lighter flicked, mother-of-pearl and gleaming, illuminating Bastian’s face as he brought the flame to a thin cigarette in his mouth. “What, exactly, do the vaults have to do with anything?”

“You’ll find out after you get us into them,” Lore said, summoning a bravado she didn’t feel. “We can turn around and go now, if you’re that interested.”

“A negotiator,” Bastian mused. He approached the grate on the opposite wall, the orange glow of gas lamps seeping through the metal lattice. Boosting himself up onto the ledge, he pulled the iron pick from his boot again and went to work. “As interested as I am in whatever you have going on at the vaults, I think it prudent to satisfy my other questions beforehand.”

“Weren’t you going to blackmail all the answers out of us anyway?” Gabe gritted out.

Bastian glanced over his shoulder, a bladed grin tugging up his mouth and coming nowhere near the dark glitter of his eyes. “Don’t underestimate yourself, Gabriel. I’m sure you can find a way to give me only half-truths. You learned from the best, after all.”

Gabe’s scowl deepened.

The Sun Prince gestured to Lore with a courtly hand. “Ladies first.”

His hands clasped her waist before she had a chance to move forward on her own, pulling her close enough for his breath to stir her hair. “This opens on a street that leads straight to the docks,” he said in a whisper, like he was telling a secret. “Don’t stray, there’s all sorts of unsavory types who congregate here. But you know that.”

He didn’t give her a moment to react, boosting her up to the ledge with the grate. The rock was slick enough that she had to grab the iron and pull herself through immediately, if she didn’t want to splash back down into questionable water.

The culvert opened up onto a near-abandoned side street. Brine-scented wind pressed the wet hem of her dressing gown against her legs, making her shiver. She pulled the edges of it tighter, tied the belt again. Blush-pink was decidedly not the right color for sneaking out of the Citadel through a storm drain.

This was a street she recognized. She’d run belladonna here once, sewn into the pockets of an old jacket of Mari’s, one of the first times she was trusted to undertake a mission on her own.

But you know that.

Her stomach twisted and roiled like an underwater current.

Behind her, Bastian emerged from the culvert, looking hardly worse for wear. He pulled three black domino masks from his pocket, and then a length of white linen. “Here, you’ll both need these.”

“Another masquerade?” Gabe sounded like the prospect was almost as appealing as gnawing off a finger.

“Hardly,” Bastian scoffed. “Everyone wears them at the ring. These fights are illegal, technically, and no one wants their identity revealed.” He flashed a grin. “Be thankful I’m not making you wear a sack over your head. Half the nobles do.”

Scowling at Bastian, Lore tied the mask over her eyes as the Sun Prince did the same. Then he took the length of white linen he’d pulled out along with the masks and began wrapping it around his hands.

Like a boxer.

Bleeding God in a bandage.

Gabe’s face was a thundercloud as Bastian handed him his own mask, but he didn’t say anything. He just tied it on, and loomed, and glared. The mask softened him, almost, hiding the eye patch from view. Made him look less like someone whose life was indelibly marked by violence.

Bastian clapped his wrapped hands together. “Now then. Nothing like a refreshing trip through a storm drain. Onward.” He started down the alleyway. Sharing a pointed look through their masks, Lore and Gabe followed.

“You saw his hands, right?” Lore pitched her voice so it wouldn’t carry. “Wrapped. He’s taking us to the fighting rings, and it looks like he’s participating.”

“Splendid. The very last thing I want to do this evening is save the Sun Prince’s ass.”

“You seem certain he’ll lose.” Lore shrugged. “He looks like he could be a good boxer.”

“Oh, does he?” Gabe’s voice was low and pointed.

Lore scowled at him.

“Hopefully you’re wrong,” Gabe muttered. “If he gets knocked out in a boxing match, maybe he’ll forget the last hour.”

“He also won’t be able to get us into the vaults.”

“We could ask Anton—”

“No.” The very thought made her fingers curl to fists, some cell-deep instinct recoiling. “If something went wrong with that body, I don’t want them to know.”

If something went wrong, Anton and August might stop thinking of her power as an asset. They might start thinking of it as something too dangerous to keep outside a cell.

Maybe too dangerous to keep alive at all.

Gabe’s lips pressed together, his blue eye assessing. Then he nodded.

Bastian ambled easily down the street ahead of them, showing no sign of apprehension. Clearly, this was a regular activity for him. Lore wondered whether he really was a good fighter—people who lost boxing matches on the docks weren’t generally eager to return, and tended to carry physical proof of their failure.

And what if she saw someone she recognized? What if her very fine, albeit out-of-fashion, dressing gown, scrubbed face, and clean, brushed hair weren’t enough to hide who she was? She didn’t look that different, even in an aristocrat’s nightclothes, and more than one acquaintance of hers spent time at the fighting rings.

She’d just have to lie low. Keep close to Gabriel and Bastian, not make eye contact, hope she didn’t attract too much attention.

They exited the mouth of the alley like a reluctant parade, Bastian jaunty in front, Gabe glowering in the back, Lore listlessly caught in the middle. The alley spit them out between two derelict buildings near the harbor front, gas lamps slicking orange light on dark water. A collection of lamps illuminated a shipless dock, the gathering crowd already smelling of beer and sweat. Every one of them wore a mask, some more comprehensive than others. Lore found herself looking at them closely, wondering if she’d passed them in the North Sanctuary.

“Stay close,” Gabe muttered, coming up behind her as Bastian went ahead.

She did. The mass of the Mort next to her was comforting.

The crowd parted for Bastian as he approached the hay-bale-lined ring, but not with any reverence that suggested they knew who he was. They wouldn’t—beyond the walls, the royal family was an abstraction, something that existed but had little day-to-day bearing, regarded with ambivalence bordering on lazy hostility. There was no reason for them to know what Bastian looked like, and in his simple clothes and wrapped fists, stubble on his jaw beneath his simple black mask, he looked just like them.

Now, if there were any nobles in the crowd, they’d be able to spot their prince. But no one spoke up, and Bastian moved with the surety of someone who’d done this many times before. The Sun Prince did what he wanted, and if what he wanted was to get beat up by commoners, no one was going to stop him or blow his cover.

Bastian peeled off his shirt as he walked, handing it to a rather eager-looking man near the edge of the ring with a wink. The prince was as well muscled as Gabriel, slight scars discoloring his skin, half-healed bruises tinted yellow and faded purple.

Gabe and Lore stayed to the back of the crowd, who paid little attention to them. Thankfully, she didn’t see anyone she recognized, and breathed a sigh of relief.

Until she saw Bastian’s opponent.

He stood on the opposite edge of the ring, shaking out bound fists. Already shirtless, familiar bunching muscles, familiar rumpled hair.

Michal.

Lore made a strangled sound as she ducked behind Gabe’s back.

“What?” He looked around, as if there was some threat he hadn’t marked. “Lore, what?”

When Gabe twisted to look behind him, opening a gap between torso and arm that Lore could see through, Bastian was gazing at her, eyes narrowed. Like he’d been waiting for Michal to turn around. Like he’d been waiting to see if she recognized him.

Of course the Sun Prince wouldn’t trust a spy to tell him the truth, even under threat. Of course he’d have a layered plan, one that would show him who she really was.

Not just a spy. The girl from the market square. The necromancer who’d raised Horse. Michal knew what she was—her reaction to him would tell Bastian everything he needed to know.

The Sun Prince watched her like a hawk eyeing a mouse, waiting.

Lore bit her lip, made herself straighten. Made herself look right back at the prince like everything was perfectly fine. “Nothing,” she said to Gabe, who was still glancing around to find some unknown threat. “It’s nothing.”

Bastian kept those golden-brown eyes on her, unreadable. Then he smiled, but it wasn’t the playful, irreverent grin he usually wore. This smile was sharp. This smile was a knife that had found its mark, even if she pretended she wasn’t bleeding.

“You just keep coming back for more.” Michal already had his fists up, bouncing back and forth on his feet. There was no real violence in the words; he grinned at Bastian companionably. “Not tired yet?”

“You talk like I haven’t thrashed you the last two rounds.” Bastian made a predatory circle, with none of the fake sweeps of fists Michal used. No theatrics, just prowling.

“Luck, my friend.” Michal’s fist darted toward Bastian’s face. Bastian bent out of the way, laughing.

Michal and Bastian bobbed and weaved around each other, movements vicious but practiced. There wasn’t any malice in the way they fought, just business-like precision. Bastian avoided another swipe of Michal’s hand, ducking beneath his arm to come up behind him and land a choppy blow across the other man’s back. Michal fell to a crouch but rallied quickly, using the lower vantage to punch out at Bastian’s knee. The crowd howled as Bastian almost went down, then regained his balance. He winked at Michal, beckoned him forward with his wrapped and bloodied hands.

“We’re going to be here all night,” Gabe muttered darkly, arms crossed over his chest. “Longer, if neither one of them gets their shit together and knocks the other out.”

Michal circled Bastian, still bouncing on his feet, but his movements had grown more ragged. All his posturing was taking a toll, pointless expenditures of energy. He’d done that in bed, too, Lore remembered. Sometimes acrobatics were just unnecessary.

Bastian, by contrast, looked almost relaxed, dodging punches with ease though he barely threw his own. Still, sweat gleamed on his chest, and there was a tiny cut at the corner of his lip where one of Michal’s blows had landed.

The prince looked back over his shoulder, finding Lore again. In front of him, she vaguely saw the shape of Michal readying himself, cocking a fist. The crowd yelled, the young man still holding Bastian’s shirt practically jumping up and down, but Bastian paid no mind to their warnings. His eyes stayed locked on Lore’s as he reached up, slowly wiped blood from his split lip.

Got you, he mouthed.

Then Michal’s fist crashed into the side of Bastian’s head. The Sun Prince went down.

Silence. Michal looked almost surprised, glancing first at his fist, and then into the crowd, like he was searching for whatever had so distracted his opponent.

And he found it. Those familiar blue eyes widened. “Lore?”

Michal’s mouth kept working, spitting questions, but they were drowned out in the roar of the crowd. The hay-bale ring broke as people rushed forward to congratulate him, and Michal was borne away by well-wishers, shock still stark on his face.

Next to her, Gabe wore nearly the same expression. “Bleeding God and Buried Goddess,” he cursed, whirling from the crowd to face Lore. “Who was—”

“An old friend.” Bastian was next to them, sneaking up soundless as a cat. The side of his face was bleeding, but he was smiling, that new knife-smile that made all Lore’s insides cold. He held his shirt, but instead of putting it on, he used it to wipe up the blood. “If you’ll excuse us.”

He gripped Lore’s arm tight and hauled her forward, and she had no choice but to follow as the Sun Prince led her into the dark, leaving Gabriel behind, shouting and blocked by the crowd.