by Jodi Meadows
We ran a few more paces and bent over, gasping. Behind us came the cries of Hensley’s people as they drowned in firefly.
I straightened and turned to look. I didn’t want to watch them die, but I needed to know what happened to them.
There were thirteen bodies on the ground, a river of firefly running around them. They were dead.
Another figure washed out through the warehouse door.
I staggered back with the shock.
Hensley had always been big, but now he was half again his normal size. Otherwise, he looked the same as a glowman as he did as a regular man.
If firefly made one feel the way they wanted to feel, and becoming a glowman made them permanently that way, but twisted and grotesque . . . I supposed Hensley had always been confident.
I lifted my sword, still in my left hand, but I shouldn’t have bothered. He wasn’t moving.
“What happened to him?” James sheathed his sword, then took mine and did the same across my back.
“My guess is that he fell into the firefly and ingested so much that he became a glowman. He was using his magic when he died. Maybe that’s why it boiled like that.”
“There are no burns on him.”
I shrugged with my good shoulder. “That’s probably part of his power. Things he heats won’t burn him. But he can drown. And he can die of an overdose.”
James gave Hensley and his people a long stare before he turned to me. “What happened with that knife, by the way. Where did it come from?”
“It must have been Hensley’s.” The words burned in my throat.
He nodded, then broke into a smile. “That was a good move with it. You saved my life.”
The truth was, I would do anything to save James’s life. I was just glad . . .
Another sound caught me. Shouts. Boots on paving stones. “I think the Indigo Order just found the clue you left.”
“Then we’d better run again.”
Just what I’d been hoping to do.
EIGHT
WE DIDN’T HAVE to go far before we were out of any search radius.
The Indigo Order would find the spilled firefly. The dead Nightmares and guards. The manufacturing and storage facilities. Everything would be cleared away and explained without mention of a vigilante and rogue bodyguard.
When we slowed to a limping walk, I took as many painkillers as James would allow.
“Now what?” James asked. “After you recover, I mean. Your shoulder is going to take some time.”
He was definitely right about the shoulder. The rib, too.
“There are a lot more problems in Skyvale than just Hensley,” I said at last. “A lot more than just the Nightmare gang.”
And the Nightmare gang wasn’t even gone, just cut in half. It seemed unlikely we’d ever truly be rid of them, but if I kept pressure on them, maybe they wouldn’t be so powerful anymore.
“Does that mean you have to be the one to do something about it?” James checked around a corner on the border of Greenstone and Thornton, but the way was clear. It was both late and early enough that most people in the market district were sleeping. “You’re going to be king one day. Can’t you take action from that post?”
I shrugged with my good shoulder and stepped into the shadows of rich, well-tended buildings. The scent of baking bread pushed through the streets, warm and normal. “There are so many corrupted officials in the city. I don’t trust them to stop shine-makers and flashers. Not yet. I’ll root out other people who worked for Hensley, and those like him. I’ll make sure I can trust the people policing the streets. But trusting them doesn’t mean I won’t want to keep an eye on them—the kind of eye they wouldn’t expect.”
“You’re going to spy on your own police force?”
“If you want to call it that, yes.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Thank you.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
I grinned. “It was.”
“Shut up. So what are you going to be called?” James eyed me askance. “Right now I’ve heard people refer to you as the black-mask vigilante, which, I’m sorry, is stupid. But it’s better than the Saint Fade Christopher burglar.”
“I didn’t steal anything, either. Technically everything in the palace is mine—or will be, one day.”
James rolled his eyes. “Pick a name. I have a few people in the city I can pass on a little bit of gossip to. If I happen to slip the vigilante’s name . . .”
They’d spread it to everyone else. Instant reputation, if we worked this right.
I paused and lifted my face to the sky, sucking in a deep breath—as deep as I could without aggravating every injury I’d taken on in the last week. I’d very nearly been skewered by the black-handled knife I’d—
Well, the knife was gone now. No sense in brooding over where it had come from. But what Hensley had nearly done to me was important. What I’d survived was important.
But was there a name in there? Something to reclaim, or something to own. Something to remind me why I was doing this. Maybe . . . “What about the Black Knife?”
James cringed. “That’s even stupider than the black-mask vigilante.”
“It’s meaningful. And memorable.”
“Meaningful to you, perhaps. We’ll see about memorable.” James smirked and motioned me onward again. “At least drop the the. You’re a person, not an object.”
That seemed reasonable. “So you’re going to help me do this?”
“Do I have a choice?” He laughed, though, and didn’t notice the way I winced. “You’re going to be a vigilante whether or not I like it.”
“You could join me.”
“And choose a name like Black Knife? No, thanks. I guard a prince; there’s plenty of excitement in that.” He looked at me with a faint smile, though. “But I will help you. We’re going to practice every day. We’ll work out the stories we need to tell to excuse your injuries. And you’ll always tell me your plans for the evening so that if you’re going to go off and do something stupid, I can be there to save your tail, like tonight. No more of this falling off roofs and getting ambushed nonsense. If the prince gets killed on my watch, even if he’s out being a vigilante against pretty much everyone’s better judgment—not to mention against the law—I’m the one who’s going to get in trouble. And I hate getting in trouble.”
“We’ll just have to make sure I’m good enough there will never be a need to question you about my nightly activities.”
“Saints,” he breathed. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
I started to jab him with my elbow, but movement caught my eye. A pair of girls on a Thornton rooftop. “Look.”
James followed my gaze. “That’s her? Braid Girl?”
“Nameless girl, I think. What if she cuts her hair short enough it won’t braid?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Have you picked out your children’s names, too?”
I snorted. “I’m confident she thinks I’m a bug. Watch this.” Checking that my mask was firmly in place, I stepped out of the shadows and allowed a mirror to catch my reflection, but only mine. I didn’t need anyone associating James with Black Knife.
Nameless girl touched her friend’s shoulder and they paused. Looked down at me. Then, like she recognized me—my clothes anyway—she leaned toward her friend and said something too soft for me to hear, and both of them twisted their little fingers at me.
“Oh yes,” James said, still hidden in the shadows. “She hates you. I doubt she’ll want your attempts at romantic attention any time soon.”
“You know I’m going to ask Meredith to marry me, don’t you? In the next few months. As part of my plan to pacify my father.” Father finally believed me about Hensley. I had James as my guard. Maybe we could move forward now, even if I never had the chance to go to the Academy and I had to keep secrets about James’s origins.
“Nameless girl will be so sad to hear of your engagement.”
What had I done to deserve this teasing?
It got worse. Nameless girl pulled a familiar gold-handled knife from her belt. It was too hard to see from here, but it seemed like all the gemstones had been popped out. Likely sold to unsavory types around Skyvale. She gave the knife a quick flip before putting it away, then she and her friend were gone, on another roof.
“Wasn’t that your knife?” James strode up next to me, his arms crossed. “The one she stole while she was rescuing you?”
“Pretty sure the rescuing was a happy accident. And yes, that used to be my knife. I suppose it’s hers now. She and her friends earned it. I’d rather be alive than have that knife.”
“You sound so impressed with her.” James grinned. “Are you going to go after them? Arrest them? They’re thieves.”
The Hawksbill clock tower chimed five. Dawn was near, and if I wanted to pull off this vigilante nightlife, I needed to pull off my prince life as well.
“Not right now.” I looked up at the palace, rising over the Hawksbill wall. Mirrors gleamed with starlight, calling me home. “I’ll meet her another time.”
EXCERPT FROM THE MIRROR KING
Prince Tobiah’s adventures, which began in
The Hidden Prince, The Glowing Knight, and
The Burning Hand, continue in The Mirror King,
the sequel to The Orphan Queen.
SEVEN
DEAD QUIET. THE hallway through the Dragon Wing had never known such silence.
Men wearing Indigo Order uniforms lined the walls, their faces hard and drawn. Swords gleamed in the bright light, every blade lifted and angled in a guarded stance. The steel was polished to a mirror finish, and none of the men so much as moved as James, the wraith boy, and I strode down the hall. Sergeant Ferris came behind us.
A canvas sack covered the wraith boy’s pale head, since some of the soldiers were superstitious about his eyes.
They were too unreal, too wraithy.
One look and he could turn you into a wraith beast, or a glowman.
If your eyes met his, you’d go blind.
James had related all the rumors while we prepared the wraith boy for transfer, and now we walked on either side of him, daggers pressed against his throat. Though of course the daggers were just for show because I had no idea if being cut or stabbed would hinder him at all. He wasn’t human.
“One, two, three, four . . .” The numbers were muffled under the wraith boy’s sack.
“Stop it.” I elbowed the wraith boy.
“I’m counting the weapons,” he murmured, as though it were completely natural.
“Do it silently.” It wasn’t as if he could see the weapons through the sack, right?
He sighed, but was quiet as we continued through the hall.
Twenty paces ahead, a pair of guards opened a plain, almost hidden door. They waited with their hands on their swords, expressions stoic.
Seventeen paces to go. A soft, breathy noise came from under the sack, like someone exhaling in quick bursts. Like smothered laughter.
Fourteen paces.
“Not real.” The sack twisted as though the wraith boy was looking at James. “Not real.”
Ten paces.
“Shall I order you to stop speaking?” I asked.
The wraith boy gasped and fell silent again, but a bubble of tension formed around him, an almost physical force.
Six paces.
The wraith boy’s knuckles were white at his sides. Tendons stuck out along his hands and wrists. He was a thing of tightening fury, growing denser before he exploded.
Two paces.
James signaled the soldiers to back away from the door, then glanced at me behind the wraith boy, his eyebrow lifted. I nodded, and he stayed put as I took the last step to the storage room.
It wasn’t much of a space, just a narrow area that used to hold cleaning supplies or linens—something maids or servants might need to fetch quickly for the royal family.
“In you go.” I lowered my dagger and touched one hand to the back of the wraith boy’s jacket, not firmly. Still, the tension in the wraith boy’s hands and shoulders unwound, and he stepped into the room without protest.
He stayed right by the door, just on the other side of the threshold, and didn’t move.
“You can take off the sack. Leave your clothes on.”
He reached around and up and plucked the sack off his head, then held it at arm’s length as though it were a filthy thing. The canvas sloughed on the floor where he dropped it.
“You are to remain in this room. If you leave, there will be consequences.”
“There are already consequences.” The wraith boy pulled forward like a cat exploring a new territory: cautious but confident.
“Do you need to eat?”
“My nourishment comes from your affection, my queen.” He knelt at the back of the room, his face just a breath away from the wall. “I found a secret. Oh, I like it.”
What?
No, maybe not knowing was better. As long as he was happy. “There will be guards outside your door. They won’t bother you, but if you yell or bang on the walls or do anything I won’t like, I’ll tie up your hands and put the sack on you, and order you to stillness and silence. Understand?”
The wraith boy looked over his shoulder and smiled. “I understand, my queen. I’ll see you soon.”
I moved out of the way as James shut the door. As soon as it latched and he turned the key to lock it, the anxious air whooshed out of the hall, as though a door and lock could keep the wraith boy contained.
James handed the key to me. “I have a spare, but I don’t anticipate wanting to use it much.”
I put the key in my pocket.
While James dismissed the guards, I strode toward my quarters once again, keeping my shoulders thrown back and my chin high. Sergeant Ferris followed in my wake.
“He didn’t do anything yesterday in His Highness’s parlor. Or on the way to your apartments.” Ferris’s voice was soft under the hum of men talking and moving about, relief in their stances, as though they’d just dodged a hurricane. “Why the fuss?”
“Were you present when all the wraith in the city came together and formed him?”
“No.”
“Or when he grew larger and leapt across the courtyards onto the crown prince’s balcony?”
“No.”
I opened the door to my room. “He’s not a tame animal, Sergeant Ferris.”
“Indeed he’s not.” James hurried up. “Sorry, my lady. My chance to see your famous pen at work will have to wait.”
“Is something wrong?”
He shook his head. “I’m being called away for coronation security. Many of our allies are coming to attend the memorial and coronation following. I have to ensure their safety. But I should have some free time tomorrow morning if you’d like to visit my new office.”
“New office?”
“It came with the promotion.” James grinned.
“Have a big stack of paper waiting. But let’s make it afternoon. I plan on sleeping late.” I inclined my head toward the bag of Black Knife supplies, which still rested on the table in my sitting room.
“I should have guessed.” James gave a deep sigh. “Afternoon it is. But what I said earlier: you shouldn’t.”
We both knew I would.
I spent the rest of the day with the Ospreys.
Their suite was as grand as I’d expected. Four individual bedrooms, all with fireplaces, fully stocked bookcases, and even a sculpture of an osprey made of Aecorian sandstone.
“Wil!” Carl looked up from inspecting a crystal vase. “Have you seen what they just leave lying around here?”
“Mind your manners.” I grinned when he put the vase back on the large central table. “If you’re going to steal, take something that’s not in your room. You don’t want to incriminate yourself, do you?”
“At least wait until we leave the palace before looting it.” Theresa stepped forward
, shaking her head. “Show them a few shiny things and they turn into ferrets.”
“Hey, Rees.” I hugged Theresa, relieved to see that she—and the others—had bathed and eaten; the plates and trays on the table were licked clean. All of their scrapes and cuts had been treated, and they wore clothes that looked as though they’d been borrowed or handed down from other young nobles—a little worn, but still finer than anything they’d had in the last ten years.
“Come to check on us?” Kevin asked, towering over the two younger boys. In the months since Melanie and I had come here, Kevin had grown taller, and now he was all knees and elbows.
“That’s part of it.” I motioned at Carl again as he slipped a fork into his pocket. “Did you not hear what I just said?”
He hung his head and unloaded his pockets onto the table. Silverware, crystals pried from a candlestick, and a jar of ink with gold flecks in it. “That one was for you.” He tapped on the lid.
My heart melted a little. “Actually, I have a job for all of you.” When they took seats at the table, I began. “Crown Prince Tobiah is going to ask me to sign the Wraith Alliance.”
Connor pulled in his shoulders, making himself smaller.
I leaned onto the table, my weight on my palms. “I don’t know why my parents wouldn’t sign, or my grandparents. Even if there’s anyone left in Sandcliff Castle who might know, how could I trust them to be honest or objective?”
“What will you do?” Theresa asked.
I took a steadying breath. “I’m going to sign the Wraith Alliance, but first, we’re going to make some changes.”
“What kind of changes?” Kevin asked.
I drew a folded paper from my pocket and slid it toward him. “These, for now. But I’m sure I will need more than this.”
He snatched the paper and skimmed the list. “So you want us to study the treaty and look for other changes you might need?”
“Exactly.” I’d have to get them a copy, but that wouldn’t be difficult. “Read it. Study it. Ask questions. I want you to become more knowledgeable about the treaty than anyone else in the world.”
Theresa grimaced. “So no big demands, then. Do you want us to run laps around the city wall while carrying packs of rocks?”