Chapter Twenty-Nine

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

It takes more than one cloud to make a storm.

—Kirythean proverb

That…” Lore’s head spun, fitting the information together. “If it was the number of bodies—”

“It means Bellegarde is in on it,” Bastian finished, low and dark.

“We met August in the hallway.” Lore’s mind twisted in a thousand different directions, taking pieces and filling them in where they fit. “He didn’t look at the tapestry where Bellegarde hid the note, but they were talking when I left. Something about groups being processed, about bindings—”

Danielle’s bright voice cut her off. “Bastian! We found the wine. It isn’t sparkling, but I suppose it will suffice.”

“Well, I didn’t know you wanted sparkling.” The Sun Prince flipped from serious to jovial in an instant. Even the way he held himself changed, rigid tension softening into lazy lines as he settled into his still-backward chair. “That’s in one of the second-floor guest rooms.”

“This will do.” Dani wagged the bottle in the air, a slight frown drawing a line between her brows when she looked at Lore. “Are you all right, Lore? You look pale.”

“Just my stomach,” she said, picking up her now-cold tea and taking a long sip.

“I’ll have some of that sent to your rooms,” Brigitte said, nodding to the teacup as she wrapped the cork of the wine bottle in her skirt and tugged. It came off with a pop, and Alie offered quiet applause. Brigitte bowed and poured the wine into the now-empty cups. “It’s the only way I get through the cramps.”

“Thank you,” Lore murmured. Lying to Brigitte felt rotten. Repaying kindness with dishonesty always did.

Bastian stood so the four women could have the chairs—“I will lean fetchingly against the wall instead, and if any of you feel the sudden inspiration to paint me, I won’t even charge a modeling fee”—while Alie and the others sipped their wine and idly gossiped.

Lore sipped her wine and thought about how in the myriad hells she was going to find where August, Anton, and now Bellegarde were hiding seventy-five-plus bodies.

“I’m hoping to see Luc again next week,” Danielle said. Her eyes darted from her teacup to Lore. “He’s on a business trip with his father for a few days.”

Luc. The docks. Lore frowned, putting something together. “You said someone was hiring people from the docks to move cargo?”

For the second time, curious eyes turned Lore’s way, not quite sure what to make of her question. Lore forced a grin, hoping they thought her strangeness was due to social ineptitude bred in country isolation. “I… ah… have an interest in transportation,” she stuttered. “The… the mechanics of it. What are they moving? And how?”

Well done, Lore. Not only will they think you’re socially deficient, they’ll also think you have the most boring interests in all of human history.

An unreadable look flickered over Dani’s face. “Like I said before, I don’t know what it is they’re moving. Just that they’re being paid quite a lot to do it.”

“I’m telling you, it has to be poison.” Brigitte settled back in her chair, holding the slender stem of her wineglass. “What else would someone pay good coin to haul from one place to another?”

Dani waved a dismissive hand. “Luc said it’s far too heavy to be plants. It takes at least three men to push the carts to the drop-off point. That’s the only detail he’d give me.” She grinned. “It’s all very cloak-and-dagger.”

Poison could be pretty damn heavy if you had enough of it, but Lore thought Luc was probably right—poison runners were a secretive bunch, not prone to hiring random help off the docks. “Did he say where that drop-off point was?”

Behind Dani, Bastian leaned against the wall with one booted foot propped up and his arms crossed. His face betrayed nothing, but his eyes were sharp and calculating on hers. He knew what she was thinking.

Dani shook her head. “They’re all sworn to secrecy on the locations. And apparently whoever made them swear was scary enough that no one will think about crossing them.”

Lore glanced up at Bastian, wondering if that meant more to him than it did to her. But the Sun Prince was implacable.

“Interesting,” Lore finished weakly. She took another long drink of wine.

Conversation faltered back into more mundane directions for a few minutes more, until finally Brigitte stood and excused herself, saying she had to meet her parents for dinner. Danielle followed, wanting to take a nap before a party she was to attend that night.

“It was lovely to meet you,” she said to Lore as she stood. “Be on the lookout for me in your mountain of invitations—I’ll host next time, Bastian, unless you want to have us in your rooms every week?”

“Hosting a group of beautiful women is really no hardship,” Bastian said, kissing Dani’s proffered hand. “Invite a wider selection of beautiful people, next time, and I’ll truly be in paradise.”

Brigitte smiled and rolled her eyes. “I’ll send the tea,” she assured Lore as she followed Danielle out of the room.

“I’ll be off, too.” Alie rose from the table. She smiled at Lore. “Thank you for coming, truly. I know being in the Citadel can be overwhelming, but it’s easier with friends in your corner.” She arched a brow at Bastian. “Am I safe to leave her in your care, or will you require a chaperone?”

“I probably always require a chaperone, but never fear.” Bastian tugged Lore up by the hand and then tucked her fingers into his elbow. “I’ll take Lady Remaut back to her rooms, and I’m sure her pet Presque Mort is there, so we’ll have all the chaperoning we need.”

Alie colored a bit at the mention of Gabe, but Bastian didn’t comment on it. The three of them drifted out of the prince’s palatial apartments and down the stairs. Alie gave Lore’s hand a squeeze before turning down the hallway below Bastian’s, apparently toward her own rooms.

Lore waited a couple more flights before speaking, pitching her voice low. “I think the people being hired at the docks are moving the bodies.”

“Obviously.” A courtier came up the stairs; Lore tensed, but Bastian didn’t, giving them a lazy smile and waiting for them to disappear before speaking again. “So we need to go down there again. Preferably tonight.”

“Tonight? But it was only two weeks ago that—”

“While I’m touched by your concern, I will be just fine.” He looked at her, then, and his smile was so warm she could almost forgive the chill it left in his eyes. “I think I scared the ruffians who found us out last time enough to keep them quiet.”

“Whoever is hiring the dockworkers apparently scares them enough to keep quiet, too.” She didn’t have to draw the parallel. Whoever was hiring had to be someone with considerable power, if they could intimidate a whole crew of cargo haulers into silence.

Maybe someone as powerful as another Arceneaux.

Bastian’s jaw tightened, highlighting the dark stubble on his chin. “I’ve considered that,” he murmured.

Hiding the bodies didn’t necessarily mean that August had something to do with the deaths. But hiding the bodies coupled with his insistence on implicating Kirythea—implicating Bastian, and thus clearing the way to choose another heir—didn’t paint a pretty picture.

Especially now that they knew August was ill. That he was desperately searching for a way to cheat death, whether through poison or through manipulating Spiritum.

And how did Anton fit into it? Clearly, he was looking for ways August could heal himself with Spiritum, too. And he and August had worked together closely to bring her here; they both had to be involved in tampering with the corpses. But did that mean they were complicit in killing the villages, or just being dishonest with what happened afterward?

Either way, they couldn’t trust Anton any more than they could trust August.

Though she knew Gabe would think differently.

Bastian kept quiet as he led her through the front hall, past the great doors that led out of the Citadel, into the shabbier corridors of the southeast turret and up to her and Gabe’s rooms. Lore was glad of it. They were both deep in thought, and the silence was comfortable. Probably more so than it should’ve been.

“Midnight,” Bastian said as they approached the door, rapping smartly on the wood. “Same place as last time. Wear something inconspicuous.”

The door burst open. Gabe looked rumpled, like he’d been trying to catch up on sleep. The hours they’d spent in the library had grown longer and longer as the week wore on, and neither of them counted as well rested.

“Gabriel!” Bastian grinned, putting his hands on Lore’s shoulders to thrust her forward. “See you this evening. Lore will tell you everything.”

Then he was gone, leaving the two of them staring at each other.

The silence grew too heavy to hold without slipping. “Are you all right?” Lore asked quietly.

Gabe rubbed at his eye patch, turned away from her. His shirt had rucked up in sleep, and he did his best to straighten it, though it was hopelessly creased. “Just tired. The last night I remember sleeping well was when you woke up after the Mortem leak.”

As soon as it left his mouth, Gabe froze, and it took Lore a moment to realize why.

The night she woke up, she’d come in here. Slept next to Gabe on the floor. So cold, and seeking warmth, something to cling to.

They’d never talked about it. They’d let it fade into the chaos of everything else, the edges rubbed away until they didn’t catch their thoughts. But now Gabe had brought it forward, pulled it into the light again.

They could talk about it now. Or they could continue pretending it never happened.

Gabe opened his mouth, and she couldn’t tell which path he was going to take. Which one she wanted him to.

So she didn’t let him speak. “Someone is hiring people from the docks to move cargo,” she said, brushing past him and into the room. “We’re going down there tonight to see if we can find out what the cargo is, and who’s doing the hiring.”

“We?” Gabe turned with her, closing the door as he did. The latch caught with a sharp, final sound. “So Bastian is coming, then.”

“Yes, Gabe, Bastian is coming.”

“I don’t think that’s wise.”

“Not this again.” Lore rubbed at her eyes. The lack of sleep was catching up with her, making her head heavy and her temper short. “Why do you hate him so much?”

Gabe was silent for so long, Lore thought he might ignore the question entirely. He stood by the door, still, head craned to watch the dying fire. “I don’t hate him,” he finally murmured.

Numerous acid-tongued retorts went through her head, but Lore remained silent. She knew that whatever lay between the Presque Mort and the Sun Prince, it wasn’t as simple as hatred. Lore sank onto the couch and waited for Gabe to grasp the thread of his thoughts.

“Bastian is careless,” Gabe said. “He always has been, ever since we were children. Careless with his power. Careless with his authority.” He paused, jaw working beneath gingery stubble. “Careless with people.”

There was enough ice in that last statement to make her eyes find her clasped hands, even though Gabriel still wasn’t looking at her.

A minute, hanging. Then Gabe sighed. “I wasn’t supposed to be in Balgia that day. I was supposed to be here.”

That day. The day his father turned the duchy over to Jax and the Kirythean Empire. The day his father died, and Jax pulled out Gabriel’s eye.

“Bastian and I fought. It was over something stupid—I think he cheated at cards. But I was incensed, the way only a ten-year-old child can be. We fought, and I beat the shit out of him.” A wry smile twisted his mouth. “It wasn’t much worse than what we usually did to each other, but for whatever reason, that was the only time he went to his father about it. Ivanna had just died the year before. I think Bastian had exhausted every other way of trying to make August care about him. This was a last resort.” Gabe shrugged. “Didn’t work for getting August’s attention, but it got me banished back to Balgia for the rest of the season, sent there with all the attendants who were supposed to be my surrogate parents. The week after I arrived, my father surrendered to Jax.” His hand rose, rubbed at his eye patch. “My presence wasn’t enough to change his plans.”

Lore knotted her hands in her skirt. “Gabe… I’m…”

But he cut her off, like he was afraid of hearing anything that might be pity. “I’m not stupid enough to think what happened to me is Bastian’s fault. We were children. But I’ll admit that I’m jealous.” He huffed a rueful laugh. “I’m jealous that his actions never seem to have consequences, when I’m carrying the consequences of an entire family. I’m jealous that it would take a miracle for him to be left all alone and with nothing, when everything was taken from me in an instant.”

She’d seen it, all the things he listed, though she’d classify it differently. Bastian’s carelessness was artificial, a fa?ade built to keep anyone from knowing just how much he cared. She still remembered the lightning-quick way he’d changed that night in the alley, how the lazy air of entitlement had fallen away like a discarded cloak. So many layers, so much crafted, careful nonchalance. Bastian was drowning in it, but he didn’t fool her, though the weak points she’d seen were only hairline cracks in the armor he’d forged over years.

It reminded her of herself. How she’d been Night-Sister-Lore and then poison-runner-Lore and now spy-Lore, each a persona she’d eased into, a different shell to wear. When she thought about what might be left when all that artifice was stripped away, she came up blank. Like all the things that made her were window dressings on an empty house.

And though Bastian had never had to run, had been born into his cage instead of molting into different ones over and over, she thought he’d feel the same. That all his careful personas might hide an emptiness the same shape as hers.

He’d weathered Gabe’s anger with what she’d thought was grace, let the other man’s barely leashed rage roll off his back. But maybe it wasn’t grace. Maybe Bastian held this memory just as closely as Gabe did, and maybe he felt like he deserved that anger.

Lore didn’t know how to articulate any of that, though. Not in a way Gabriel would understand. Where Bastian struggled against his cage, Gabe clung to his own, wanting the walls to shape him, shoving himself inside to make boundaries he knew. He’d built himself into something he thought the world wanted, and though it chafed at him, Lore still envied it, just a bit. There was a reassurance in knowing exactly how you were going to be let down.

Gabe mistook her silence for condemnation. “I know it isn’t fair of me,” he said, almost accusingly, like he could turn the finger he imagined she pointed. “I blamed him, before. I don’t now, at least not in the same way. But that jealousy is still there.”

“I understand,” Lore said. And she did.

That was all. They sat in silence, the only sound the hiss of the fire in the grate.

Finally, Gabe sighed, itching at his eye patch, straightening his shoulders. “Right,” he said decisively. “What harebrained plan are we following now?”

No moon, weak stars, and the gardens were dark as pitch. Lore crept along behind Gabriel, keeping close enough to his back that she felt the heat of him through his shirt. It was distracting, to say the least.

“I don’t like this,” he said, for the third time in ten minutes. Probably the fifteenth time overall. He’d started the litany when she told him the plan, there in that lull of vulnerability after talking about Bastian, and had kept it up intermittently since. If Lore hadn’t been so insistent that the two of them at least try to get some sleep before night fell, it would probably be the thirtieth time she’d heard the sentiment.

“Noted,” she muttered at his back. “Again.”

He huffed, the breath of it visible in the cool air. “It’s not safe. This could have nothing to do with the villages; we might be inserting ourselves into some poison runner feud for no reason.”

“We don’t know that, though, and this is the only lead we have.” Lore glared at his back. “Again.”

No retort but a low growl. They clattered over the cobblestones of the garden in their boots, slipped between the trees of the manicured forest. When they exited the woods, Bastian was alone at the culvert. Dressed dark, like they were, leaning against the stone and having a smoke, hair tied back and booted foot on the wall. He butted out the cigarette before tossing it into the culvert—it still hadn’t rained, and the grass was dry; the last thing they needed was to start a fire—and pushed off when they approached, beckoning them into the shadows. He didn’t speak until they were ensconced in stone walls and the roar of dirty water.

Bastian passed out the same plain black masks they’d worn before, sloshing through the storm drain as he tied his own over his eyes. “The primary plan is to lie low. We’re there to spectate. See if we can spot someone talking to people, recruiting. But if all else fails, we start asking around, like we’re looking to get hired.”

“What about those men who saw us a few nights ago?” Lore asked. “If they spilled about who you are, and you start acting like you want work moving mysterious cargo, whoever is doing the hiring will know immediately that they’re caught.”

“That’s why I’m not asking.” Bastian glanced over his shoulder. “You are.”

Next to her, Gabe stiffened.

“I can’t,” Lore stuttered, steps faltering until she stood still in the shallow rush. “People there might know me—”

“Which works out in our favor.” Bastian continued forward, waving a hand as if her protestations were just so much noise. “If they ask why you’re looking for a new job, you can say something went south with the team you were running for. You switched jobs quite a lot, didn’t you? That’s how a spy does their spying.”

Lore pressed her lips together and didn’t protest further.

They splashed through to the end of the tunnel, to the slick stone platform jutting from the wall and the crossbars of the culvert, replaced since they last used this route. Bastian climbed up and loosened the screws, then offered a hand to Lore.

She reached for him, and at the moment his fingers closed around her arms, Gabe’s hands gripped her waist. The two of them hauled her over, and being caught between their bodies made heat flame across her cheekbones.

Lore scrambled through the open culvert and onto the street beyond, not turning around as she listened to Gabe and Bastian make their way out behind her. Bastian grunted; Gabe made a sound like a swallowed snort. When they walked into her field of vision, Bastian was shaking out his fingers like they’d been stepped on.

They walked in silence down the nearly deserted street, the orange glow of the harbor lights and the distant sounds of shouting heralding when they grew close to the boxing ring. “Eyes peeled,” Bastian said, then they were in the crowd.

It was thicker tonight than it had been before, far more bodies pressed together around the hay bales, and they all seemed more intent on getting closer. The night Bastian fought Michal, the boxing ring had seemed more like a convenient meeting place than a draw in and of itself, with spectators lurking on the fringes in groups, talking and laughing and barely paying attention. Not so tonight. Tonight every eye was fixed on the fighters, and the stares were intense.

When the crowd parted, Lore saw why.

Two femme-appearing figures fought viciously in the center of the hay ring, hair braided back and breasts tightly bound. Blood dyed one’s pale hair nearly pink, and the other wiped at a split lip with the back of one linen-wrapped hand.

“Lightweight Night!” bellowed a man who saw her watching, clearly on the fast dip toward drunk. “Fancy a spar? You’ve a bit too much curve to be a lightweight, but we could find someone about the same size to make it a fair match.”

“I’m fine, thank you.” Lore backed up until she hit another warm form—Bastian. She could recognize the hand that came to rest on her shoulder.

The drunk man shrugged and turned back to the ring. The blond fighter launched at the bruised one, fist curving through the air to connect with a kidney. The other fighter fell to the hay-covered cobblestones.

Lore whirled on Bastian. “Did you know it was Lightweight Night?”

“Truthfully, I didn’t know such a thing existed.” Bastian grinned beneath his mask, craning his neck to see over the crowd. “How marvelous.”

She cursed under her breath and turned away from the ring to scan the masses of people who’d gathered to watch. It was harder to get a feel for the crowd when there were so many of them, but most were focused enough on the match that it should be easy to spot someone slipping off for a whispered conversation. Gabe slumped a few feet away from her and Bastian, facing the fight, but with his one blue eye scanning back and forth through his mask.

The boxer with the bruised lip feinted to the side. The blond one stumbled, a punch overthrown.

“There,” Bastian said.

He didn’t point, but angled his chin toward the shadows on the far edge of the ring, a place between streetlights where the dark was deepest. Three figures huddled, angled away from the match. The one whose face Lore could see looked like he was listening intently to whatever was being said. The figure speaking had their back turned.

Bastian and Gabe exchanged a look. Gabe nodded, then started moving toward the group, pushing through the crowd like a shark through a school of fish.

“Come on.” Bastian took Lore’s arm and tugged her after him. “I don’t think our pet monk will need any backup, but we should stick close, just in case.”

A roar went up from the ring. When Lore looked back, the blond boxer was on the ground.

The group in the shadows broke apart before Gabe could reach them, the figure who’d been speaking fading into the crowd without Lore getting a good look at them.

Gabe approached one of the men who’d been listening, struck up a casual conversation. Bastian and Lore stopped a few feet away; from what she could hear, it sounded like Gabe was talking about sailing weather.

“Bleeding God,” she muttered, and Bastian snorted.

A few more inane words about northwesterly winds, and Gabe nodded in the direction of the now-disappeared speaker. “You all wouldn’t know about any job opportunities opening up around here, would you? I’m looking to make some extra coin.” A pause. “Something that could be done in one night would be ideal.”

“Laying it on a bit thick,” Bastian whispered. Lore dug her elbow into his ribs.

The man Gabe spoke to—very small and slight, if it weren’t for the thick stubble on his jaw, Lore would think his voice still hadn’t cracked—glanced at his companion, then rubbed at his neck. A constellation of bruises bloomed there, deep purple and new. “I might,” he said slowly. “But the details aren’t mine to share.”

Gabe’s jaw tightened, and the slight man stepped back, eyes widening in brief alarm. Lore didn’t blame him. Gabe didn’t look like the kind of person you’d want to anger.

“How could one find someone willing to impart details?” Gabe asked.

The man’s companion—larger than he, but still young looking—let out a harsh laugh. “Lose,” he said, cutting a hand toward the ring.

Lore looked back. The blond fighter was up again, but blood trickled steadily from a cut across her forehead, dripping into her eyes.

“Lose?” Gabe’s confusion drew his brows together, wrinkled the black domino mask.

“Lose a fight,” the slight man mumbled, rubbing at his fresh bruises again. “They only approach people who lose a fight.”

“Why?”

“Gods damn me if I know,” he replied snappishly. “I guess because you have to buy in to fight a match, and those of us who just lost money are more likely not to ask questions.”

Another roar from the crowd. The blond fighter was down, this time for good. A huge man with a tangled black beard stepped over the hay bales, laughing, and lifted the other fighter’s arms over her head. Her eye was blackened, her smile viciously triumphant.

Gabe looked back at Lore and Bastian, then sighed. “Who do I talk to about getting in the ring?”

“You can’t.” The bruised man looked Gabe up and down, then shook his head. “Not tonight, anyway. It’s Lightweight Night.”

Three eyes turned to Lore—Gabe’s one, Bastian’s two, a question in them all.

“Fuck,” Lore muttered.