My ears are still ringing with what Mistress Solomon said: ten smugglers were captured. All from the same forge.
Weston. He doesn’t work with anyone else. I know he doesn’t.
But Weston isn’t even his real name. And if that’s not real . . . maybe I don’t really know anything for sure. Maybe the ten of them are people like Wes, who pretend to be working solo with friends in other sectors who don’t know the truth.
I have no way to find him. No way to ask.
I swallow. “Did they read off names?”
“No. Six men, four women. Two of the men died in the capture.”
I feel dizzy. “When—” I have to clear my throat. “When were they captured?”
“They didn’t say. Yesterday, today, does it matter?” She sniffs haughtily. “You’re overgrinding that thistleroot, Tessa.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” She’s wrong, but she won’t like me saying so. She doesn’t like the idea of an impertinent young woman telling her how to run her business—which is how the last girl was let go. I need this job. No one thinks an eighteen-year-old girl from the Wilds could be a real apothecary. My father would have found these tinctures and remedies ridiculous, and he would have told Mistress Solomon to her face—but my father isn’t here to pay my rent, so I obediently drop the pestle on the worktable and scrape out the powder.
When she moves away, Karri is eyeing me. Her voice drops very low. “Is your sweetheart a smuggler?”
“What? No!” I’m sure my face is redder than fire now.
She goes back to her herbs, tossing a small handful into her bowl. “Mother says a lot of them are just trying to feed their own families. She’s heard stories of men who promise the moon, getting women to help them, and really it’s all for a half-dozen mouths to feed at home.”
I scowl into my bowl. My stomach is churning, tying itself into knots. I don’t know what’s worse: Wes dead at the hand of the King’s Justice, or Wes having a family at home.
What a thought. Dead is worse. Of course.
I always thought he was close to my age, but maybe he’s older. I only ever see him in the dark, with kohl-smudged eyes hidden behind a mask. He could easily be twice my age, I suppose.
“Be careful, Tessa,” says Karri.
I glance up. “I’m always careful,” I say. And then I perfectly measure my medicines to prove it.
Once the dinner bells begin ringing through the streets, Karri and I are free to go. She lives at home with her family, while I’ve lived alone in a rented room in a boarding house since my parents died. She watched me all afternoon and invited me to dinner, probably thinking my “sweetheart” must have been one of the captured men. I can’t take her pitying glances for one more moment, so I turn her down and head home.
I stop in at the confectioner’s anyway, deciding it isn’t too much of an indulgence if I can hear any more gossip. As I hand my coins across, I say, “Can you believe they caught so many smugglers?”
The clerk nods sadly and says, “They’ll all be put to death tomorrow, I reason.”
That icy grip on my spine refuses to loosen, especially when she adds, “I understand they’ll be doing it at the gates. You know that will draw a crowd.”
I wish I had a way to find out if Wes is part of it. He can’t be.
But . . . Steel City. A forge. That’s too close.
I try to bide the time in my room, but the air is too stifling and my nerves are too jangled. I’ll never sleep. I head for our workshop hours before we’re supposed to be there and light the fire. I thought this would be better, to sit somewhere and wait, but it’s worse. Every inch of this space is wrapped up in two years’ worth of memories of Wes. That’s where he sits while I measure. That’s the spot where he burned his finger on the woodstove. That’s the window that broke during the winter storms, the one Wes boarded over while the snow swirled in.
I fall asleep in the chair, sitting up, tears on my face. When I sleep, I dream. I dream of my parents, the night they were caught by the night patrol. I remember how I was ready to burst from my hiding place, ready to tackle the patrolmen myself. Wes caught me and kept me out of sight that night—but in my dream, he’s caught, too, his body jerking as arrows pierce his flesh. I dream of Wes’s body hung from the gates or his head on a stake. I see him broken and burning in a pile of bodies, while onlookers yell, though some cheer. I dream of him screaming for me, shouting warnings while they beat him with clubs, smashing his bones.
“Tessa. Tessa.”
I open my eyes and there he is. For a moment, I think this is a new dream, that I’ve been so worried that my imagination has conjured him into this space, and I’ll wake up for real and the workshop will still be empty.
But he’s not. He’s real and solid and his blue eyes are bright as ever behind the mask. My eyes well with relief, and I don’t even bother to stop the tears from running over.
“You’re crying?” he says, and he sounds so startled about the fact that I’m crying over him that I want to punch him right in the face.
Instead I lurch forward and throw my arms around his neck.
“Tessa,” he says. “This is so sudden.”
“Shut up, Wes. I hate you.”
“Ah yes. Quite obviously.”
I giggle through my tears against his shoulder. I should let him go.
I don’t.
He doesn’t either.
I want to ask if he knows about the people who were arrested, but instead, all that comes out of my mouth is, “Do you have a wife and a house full of children to feed?”
“No. Do you?”
I sniff and draw back to stare at him. For all his teasing, his eyes are serious, searching mine.
“You were right,” he says.
“About the children?”
He grins. “No. No children.” He shakes his head at me like I’m addled. “No, you were right that I should see you without your mask.”
I gasp and slap my hands to my bare cheeks.
Weston’s grin turns wolfish. “I regret not taking you up on the offer earlier.”
I sink back into the chair and press my hands over my eyes, but of course it’s too late now—and truly, he was the one who never wanted to see me. “I was . . . upset. I wasn’t thinking. I was so worried.” My voice breaks on the last word.
He drops into the opposite chair. “Tell me all your fears.”
“I thought you were one of the smugglers who got captured.”
His face goes still, and his eyes seem to shutter. “I’m not a smuggler, Tessa.”
“I know. I know you’re not. We’re not.” I have to swipe at my eyes. “I just—they were from Steel City, so I thought maybe—”
“You see every single petal I take from the Royal Sector.” His eyes have gone cold. “I’ve never sold anything that we’ve taken. What we do—”
“Wes! I know.”
“What we do,” he repeats, his tone as sharp as I’ve ever heard it, “is not the same as what the smugglers do. I’m not in this to line my pockets.”
“I know,” I cry. “Wes, I know.” I sniff. “Me too. But it’s all the same to the king and his brother.”
He draws a long breath, then runs a hand down his face. When he looks back at me, his eyes are no longer so hard. “You’re right. Forgive me.”
I press my fingers into my eyes. “And I know you always tell me not to grow attached, but you’re the only true friend I have, especially since—since—” My voice breaks again. “Since my parents—”
Wes takes hold of my wrists, so gently. “Tessa.”
When he pulls me against him, I don’t resist, and he holds me for the longest time. We hold each other. This is so different from the other day, when we were pressed into the shadows beside a house, hiding from the night patrol. Now it’s just me and Wes, in the warmth of the workshop, our workshop, holding on as if we can keep out all the evils of the world.
“They’ll be executed.” His voice is so
quiet. “At midday.”
I nod against him. “I heard.” I draw back and look up. “Do you think they deserve it?”
He hesitates, and his eyes are shuttered again. This isn’t something we ever talk about. Our conversations revolve around how to avoid detection. How effective the medicines are, and whether a little browning on the petals makes a difference. How frivolous and wasteful the elites are. We discuss the people we lose to the fever, and the people who live.
We don’t discuss what could happen, because I’m right. The king wouldn’t care that we’re stealing to help people. If we’re caught, we’ll be executed right next to the smugglers.
“I think . . . ,” he begins, and then he shakes his head. “I think we’re wasting time. Do you have your mask? The patrols have doubled because of—”
“Wes.” I swallow and catch his arm. His voice was so harsh when he said, I’m not a smuggler, Tessa. “Do you think they deserve it?”
“I think that very few people truly deserve what they get, Tessa.” He pauses, and for the briefest moment, sadness flickers through his eyes. “For good or for bad.”
I think of my parents, executed in the street for doing the very thing Wes and I do. I think of Gillis, dying for lack of medicine, and Kendall, killed to leave an example. I think of the executions to come, and what that will mean for the people left behind.
I think of Weston risking his life to save mine, once upon a time, stopping me from falling to the same fate as my parents. I think of how he risks his life every night to bring medicine to people who need it.
“You only deserve good things,” I whisper.
He gives a small laugh without any humor to it and looks away. “Do you think so?”
I catch his face in my palm and turn his gaze back to mine. As usual, his jaw is a little rough and a little warm, the fabric of the mask soft under my fingertips.
“I do,” I say.
I wait for him to pull away, but he doesn’t. Maybe we’re both shaken. Maybe what happened to Kendall and Gillis has left us both reeling. The air between us seems to shift, and his eyes flick to my mouth. He inhales, his lips parting slightly. “Lord, Tessa . . .”
My thumb slips under the edge of his mask, shifting it higher.
Weston hisses a breath, and his hand shoots out to capture my wrist. I give a small yip of surprise at the suddenness of it.
His eyes clench closed. He lets me go. Takes a step back.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. I’m such a fool. He’s always been so clear about where we stand. About where he stands.
“Put your mask on,” he says roughly. “We’ll lose the darkness.”
I swallow and turn away, digging between the books in my apothecary pack until I find it. I tie it into place over my hair with shaking fingers. When I reach for my hat where it hangs on a hook by the window, Wes catches my arm and turns me around.
I suck in a breath, but he puts his hands on my cheeks to lean in close, and I all but melt into a puddle on the floor. My back hits the wall of the workshop, and my head spins.
Then Wes’s mouth hovers above mine, and I lose all rational thought. His thumb traces my lower lip.
“Not never, Tessa,” he says, and his voice is so rich and deep that he could be speaking straight to my heart. “But not like this.”
I stare into his eyes, wide and guileless and pleading.
And ever the fool, I nod.
He pulls me forward and kisses me on the forehead.
I sigh. “I really do hate you.”
“Always for the best.” He takes a step back, puts my hat on my head firmly, then flicks the brim of his own up an inch. “Eight people will die at midday. Let’s see if we can get enough medicine to spare twice as many this morning.”
CHAPTER SIX
Corrick
Harristan never visits the Hold. If he wants to see a prisoner, they’re dragged into the palace in chains and deposited on the floor at his feet. To my knowledge, he’s never set foot inside the prison since the day our parents died. Possibly not even before.
I, however, am well acquainted. I know every guard, every cell, every lock, every brick. When I was fifteen, already drowning in grief so thick I could barely breathe past it, I quickly learned how to block emotion once I stepped past the heavy oak doors. We couldn’t afford one single moment of weakness, and I would not be the one to cause my brother’s downfall. I have heard every manner of scream without flinching. I have listened to promises and threats and curses and lies—and occasionally, the truth.
I have never hesitated in doing what needs to be done.
Today, Allisander has accompanied me to the Hold. After learning of the smuggling operation, he delayed his return home. Both he and Lissa have stated that they will remain in the palace until they can be certain there is no danger to their supply runs.
I’ve often imagined Allisander walking through these halls, but in my imagination, he’s usually in chains, a guard prodding him with a blade, instead of how he looks right now: exasperated and huffy, with a handkerchief pressed over his nose and mouth.
“Is there nothing you can do for the smell?” he says.
“It’s a prison,” I say to him. “The residents aren’t motivated to make it pleasant.”
He sighs, then winces, as if it required more inhaling than he was ready for. “You could have brought them to the palace.”
“The last thing I need is eight martyrs being marched through the Royal Sector.” I glance over. “I told you they’re a sympathetic lot.”
He glances back and seems to be taking shallow breaths through his mouth. I have to force my eyes not to roll.
“Did they reveal the names of any other smugglers?” he says.
“No.” We reach the end of the hallway, which leads to a descending staircase. The guards here snap to attention and salute me. The smell is only going to get worse, but I don’t warn Allisander.
“Nothing?” he demands. “And you questioned them thoroughly? You were convincing?”
“Are you asking if I tortured them?”
He hesitates. Most of the consuls—hell, most of the elites, if not most of Kandala—don’t like what I do, but they say nothing because they believe it keeps them safe. They don’t mind it as long as they don’t have to talk about it. They’ll wrap it up in pretty language and dance around terms like torture and execution by asking if I’m encouraging forthright answers or terminating a risk to the populace.
Allisander is bolder than most, though, and his hesitation only lasts a second. “Yes. That’s precisely what I’m asking.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Because despite all outward appearances, I’m not cruel. I don’t delight in pain. I don’t delight in any of this.
And they’re all sentenced to die. The penalties for theft and smuggling are well known, and each prisoner knew it before they stole the first petals. Half of them are terrified. I only had to question one to discover that they were working together in the loosest sense of the word. One outright fainted when the guards let me into her cell.
Cutting off their fingers or whatever Allisander is imagining feels like overkill.
“In my experience,” I say, “those who are facing execution are not eager to share information that will help their captors.”
He’s frowning behind his handkerchief. “But there could be more. Our supply runs could be at greater risk than we expected.”
“They’re roughshod laborers, Consul, not military strategists. From what I can tell, they’re not very organized.” It’s likely the reason they were all captured so quickly.
We reach the bottom of the staircase. While the palace and many of the homes in the Royal Sector have been wired for electricity, the lowest level of the Hold has not. Outside, it’s morning, but down here, it’s dim and cold, lit by oil lamps hung at odd intervals, with gray walls and black bars. There are twenty cells, but they’re never occupied for long.
“Go
ahead,” I say. “Question whoever you’d like.”
He looks at me like he was expecting . . . more. As if I were going to walk down the line of cells and personally introduce him to each captive.
I lean against the opposite wall, fold my arms, and raise my eyebrows. “You can’t very well do it after they’re dead.”
Allisander starts to sigh, thinks better of it, and turns for the first cell.
This one holds a man named Lochlan. He’s not more than twenty-five, with coal-black hair, pale, heavily freckled skin, and arms bearing a lifetime of burn scars from a forge. When I questioned him, he stared back at me fearlessly and refused to say a word. This is the kind of man Allisander would torture, but I know it wouldn’t make any difference. I’ve seen Lochlan’s type before, men who think they can survive an execution through sheer force of will.
They can’t.
He’s sitting in the back of his cell, glaring darkly at both of us, but when the consul approaches the bars, Lochlan rises to his feet and comes forward. His expression is similar to one I’d wear if I were free to make my feelings for Consul Sallister known.
Allisander clears his throat as if he’s addressing a dinner party. “I would like to know the names of any associates you—”
Lochlan spits right in his face. Some hits the handkerchief, but most hits Allisander right between the eyes.
He sputters and swipes at his face, then takes a step forward, rage transforming his features. “You will pay for that, you stupid—”
“Consul!” I start forward, but I’m too far. Lochlan has already reached through the bars to grab the front of Allisander’s jacket. He jerks him face-first into the steel. Blood blossoms on the consul’s face.
“I know who you are,” Lochlan is snarling. Down the hallway, the other prisoners have been drawn to their own bars by the sound of the commotion, and those who can see begin yelling.
“Kill him!” they scream. “Kill him!”
Lochlan jerks Allisander against the bars again, and it’s clear he needs no encouragement. “You’re the killer. I know what you’re doing to your people.”
The guards are nearly upon us, but Lochlan rallies to jerk Allisander against the bars again. This time might really be a killing blow. I draw back a fist and throw a punch right into Lochlan’s wrist where it extends through the bars. The bones give with a sickening crack. He lets go and drops back, screaming, clutching his arm to his chest.
Defy the Night Page 5