The Spy in the Silver Palace (Empire of Talents Book 1)

by Jordan Rivet

  He outlined a quick, efficient plan to take control of the warehouse. He clearly had a good mind for strategy, and he wasn’t allowing whatever distress he may be feeling over his uncle’s betrayal to get in the way. Mica was impressed. She’d never seen this side of him before.

  “We may experience opposition from the City Watch,” he said as they wrapped up their discussion. “I need the Shields to hold them until we determine who’s actually in on the scheme and who believes we’re attacking an innocent business. And remember: do not mention Princess Jessamyn’s name.”

  “Done,” Peet said. “See you at dawn!” And the young Blur rushed out, leaving the door swinging behind him.

  Caleb turned to Mica. “You should stay—”

  “Not a chance,” she interrupted. “I’m coming with you.”

  “You can’t be seen,” Caleb said. “Ober knows who you are. We don’t want him connecting this with the princess.”

  Mica contorted her features, turning herself into a mirror image of Caleb himself, if a bit smaller. “Problem solved.”

  Caleb’s mouth opened in surprise as she flashed his own grin at him.

  “Now that’s one of the stranger things I’ve seen.”

  “You get used to it,” Danil said sleepily as he settled back on his pillows. For a moment, Caleb’s square features appeared on his face too.

  Caleb looked between the two Impersonators and threw up his hands. “Have it your way. Let’s go.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The combined forces met at dawn outside the warehouse district. The rain had stopped, and the gray skies were giving way to a deep rose tinged with gold.

  Peet had made short work of his recruitment task. Two dozen local Talents leapt from their beds and tramped through the mud at his call, eager to fight back against those who had threatened their friends and family members. They carried an assortment of humble weapons, from clubs to butchers’ knives, though in many cases their bodies would be weapon enough. Mica spotted Edwina among the volunteers. The squat little Mimic had added a collection of gruesome scars to her face, and she brandished a heavy stick as she awaited the order to move. Mica wondered if the scars were actually part of her real face. Rufus had been an Army Elite, and she was beginning to suspect that Edwina had been one of Master Kiev’s imperial spies, just like Mica.

  Most of Caleb’s men were Talents too, Blurs and Shields who responded to the young lord’s direction with a swiftness and ease that spoke of excellent training. Caleb divided them up so they each led a small force of volunteers and ordered them to approach the warehouse from different directions.

  “Hold as many guards as you can for questioning,” he told them. “We want to keep this clean.”

  “Yes, my lord.” The Shield who had command of Caleb’s retainers snapped off a salute. A few years older than his liege, he had long brown hair and a lanky build, and he wore a coat with the Pebble Islands’ sparrow sigil stitched on the chest. “I’ll take the north approach.”

  “Thank you, Stievson. Did you bring my weapons?”

  “As you commanded.” Stievson held out a fine sword in a polished leather sheath, which Caleb slung around his hips. It suited him, Mica thought, and she remembered how she’d once matched her steps to his and judged him to have a soldier’s stride.

  “We’ll wrap them up right quick, my lord,” Peet called. “Can’t let the bastards get away.”

  “All right then.” Caleb caught Mica’s eye and gave her a brief nod. “Let’s go.”

  Mica fell in beside Caleb as they marched into the warehouse district, clutching curved knives in each of her hands. None of the men commented on their lord’s Impersonator shadow. The warehouse district was suspiciously empty, as if the workers sensed trouble brewing. Their boots squelching through the mud sounded loud in the absence of the morning rush.

  They were still a block from their destination when a messenger from one of the groups rushed back to find Caleb and Mica. Their party had surprised a pair of workers carrying a crate down to the docks. It contained a captured Talent, a Blur who had bolted the moment the crate was opened. The workers had been taken into custody.

  “They didn’t waste any time once they knew they’d been found,” Mica said. “Danil and I made a lot of noise getting out of there.”

  “They probably thought they could clear the warehouse and ship out before you brought help,” Caleb said. He turned back to the messenger. “Tell your team to go straight to the docks and find the ship where the crates are being loaded. I’ll send another group to help commandeer it.”

  “Aye, my lord.”

  “This is good for us,” Caleb said as his men rushed to do his bidding. “They’re spread out. Frantic. We’ll make quick work of them.”

  “Lead the way, my lord,” Mica said.

  Caleb grinned, the first time he’d smiled since he learned what his uncle had done. “It is so strange to hear you speak in my voice.”

  “I can wear a different face, if you like. I have plenty.”

  “No, keep that one,” he said, suddenly serious. “My men will protect you with their lives if I fall.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Mica said. “You’re mostly impervious anyway.”

  “The moment I start relying on that is the moment I take a sword to the gut, remember?” Caleb touched his side, and Mica recalled the feel of the rough scar cutting through warm skin. The flesh of her own skin puckered as she added the mark beneath her shirt as a reminder. She didn’t intend to let anyone stab him today.

  The warehouse was already in chaos when they arrived. Guards, both in City Watch uniforms and in plain clothes, were hurriedly hauling out the crates and dismantling the potioner’s grotesque workshop. If Mica and the others had waited a few hours longer to attack, all the Talents—and all the evidence—would be gone.

  When the first team of local Talents rushed the doors, the guards tried to run, but the others were waiting to intercept them. Caleb had planned the attack well, and once they fell to the task, overwhelming the guards and freeing the remaining Talents was relatively simple. Mica suspected Caleb and his men could have taken control of the warehouse without the help of the Jewel Harbor Talents. Even her soldier brothers would have been impressed with their discipline and skill.

  Caleb himself clearly trained often with his men. Mica had seen him fight with a makeshift weapon before, but he wielded his own sword with calm grace, occasionally interrupted by bursts of unnatural strength and speed. She understood now why he avoided dancing as much as possible. No one could watch him move without seeing that something was different about him. He adapted quickly as his strength and speed shifted, and at least once a sword glanced right off his skin without cutting into it. Still, Mica knew it was only a matter of time before the bursts of Talent stole the last of his strength. She stayed near him through the assault, ready to pull him out of danger if his body gave way. He seemed equally aware of her, moving to block attacks when her knives wouldn’t suffice. It felt right somehow, as if they’d been born to fight side by side.

  As they cut their way down the center aisle, Mica caught sight of Edwina advancing on her husband’s kidnappers, laying into them with her stick like a baker flattening dough. They stood little chance against her fury. Before long, the clash of swords and smack of fists gave way to cries of joy as the last of the guards were captured or sent running. Only one person struggled on in the face of defeat: Haddell the potioner.

  The old man had fought viciously, throwing acid at any who challenged him until a pair of Caleb’s sword-wielding Shields managed to wound him and chase him from his morbid workshop. The potions he tossed at them over his shoulder burned their clothes away in patches, but they eventually cornered him at the back of the warehouse, the last of his poisons spent.

  Caleb ordered the Shields to stand down and advanced on the potioner, backing him up against the redbrick wall. Mica stayed by his side, breathing heavily from the fight. If her
strength was spent, Caleb was sure to fall at any moment. But he could be about to learn why and how he’d been cursed.

  “It’s all over,” Caleb said as he strode toward the potioner. The man’s blue eyes were wild, and he was bleeding from a stab to the gut. He wouldn’t last much longer without help. “There’s no point in fighting. I need to know what you’ve been trying to do here.”

  “Trying?” The old man laughed maniacally. “I have been succeeding!”

  “Tell me more,” Caleb said. “I’ll allow you to save yourself with a healing tonic, if you cooperate.”

  The potioner gave a sticky cough and grinned, his scars stretching. “You don’t even remember me, do you, boy?”

  Caleb didn’t react, his grip on his sword holding steady.

  “I’ve worked with your uncle a long time,” the potioner said, “since he first started developing his theories. You used to visit us in my workshop when you were small.”

  “You must be Haddell,” Caleb said calmly. “I remember. How many other potioners are engaged in this project? Or are you his only one?”

  “His best, his best.” Haddell cackled madly, giving the impression that he was a harmless old loon. But Mica didn’t fall for it. She had heard his gruff, gravelly shout earlier. She knew the madness was an act, an impersonation.

  “Ober knows his stuff, he does,” Haddell went on. “He’s gotten better since his first experiments. But you’d know all about that.”

  Caleb’s shoulders tensed. “What do you mean?”

  “You were one of the first.” The man giggled, and blood bubbled at the edge of his lips.

  Mica got ready. He’d try something as soon as he thought Caleb was distracted. She edged closer, trying not to attract attention. Sure enough, the old potioner’s hand began inching toward his pocket.

  Haddell grinned at Caleb. “I didn’t think he should try it on one so young, not when the formula was so new, so untested. But he wanted to. Yes, he was sure of himself, even then.”

  “Whatever he did, it didn’t work very well,” Caleb said, some of his calm slipping. “You were right.”

  “I was.” The potioner bowed his head, and his fingers closed on something in his pocket.

  There was a glint of glass. A tiny bottle. Mica tensed. She’d only have one chance.

  “He felt guilty about your condition. Oh yes, for years. He did try to make it up to you. I suspect he loves you, if it makes you feel better.”

  “It doesn’t,” Caleb said. “Where are the others he has used to test this formula? Timbral Island?”

  “I’m sure you’d like to know.” The potioner beckoned him with a wrinkled hand, as if about to share a secret. “Maybe you’ll find the others, if you look where you least wish them to be.”

  Caleb frowned, leaning in a little. “Where I—?”

  Haddell threw the tiny bottle at Caleb so fast Mica almost missed it. She leapt forward just in time to swat the bottle aside. It shattered against the brick wall, which immediately began to disintegrate, issuing clouds of acrid smoke. By the time the smoke cleared, the old potioner had slumped to the ground and breathed his last.

  “Mica!” Caleb looked between her and where the brick was being eaten away by the potion. “You could have been—”

  “So could you,” she said.

  “I should have seen it coming. Thank you.”

  They retreated a few paces from the dead potioner and the acrid smoke, Mica feeling slightly giddy from the near miss. She hadn’t been sure if the bottle would break open on her hands when she knocked it aside. She looked up at Caleb. His hair was tousled, and his square face was smudged—and he’d never looked more handsome.

  “I have your back, you know,” she said.

  He stared at her for a minute, looking a little dazed too. Then he barked a laugh.

  “My back. I get it.”

  Abruptly, Mica remembered she was still wearing Caleb’s features. She went red and immediately switched to her freckled city woman form.

  “Don’t ever tell another Mimic I said that,” she muttered. “It’s the worst joke in the book.”

  Caleb chuckled, and she saw a hint of that youth from the hilltop in Gullton, good humored and gallant despite what he’d been through tonight.

  “Anything for the woman who saved my life.”

  They smiled at each other, surrounded by carnage in that grim warehouse, and the moment felt weighty somehow. Significant.

  Feeling suddenly shy, Mica looked away from the young lord to appraise the results of their actions this morning.

  The fighting was done, and the remaining Talents were being freed. Mica saw Edwina order a young Muscle girl to break open a crate, and her husband tumbled out, looking slightly rumpled but whole. Others hadn’t fared as well. Danil wasn’t the only one to lose a limb. Mica wouldn’t soon forget the sight of these battered and broken people who’d been kept in darkness for so long. Worse, she had a feeling this was only part of a larger scheme.

  The Jewel Harbor Talents tended to the wounded while Caleb’s men tied up the captured guards and marched them to the center of the warehouse. Too many wore City Watch uniforms. It would take time to unravel how deep Lord Ober’s influence ran among Jewel Harbor’s defenders. And where had he taken the rest of the Talents? His own island or somewhere less obvious? The fighting may be done, but Mica’s work was only beginning.

  She made her bottom lip grow and shrink as she considered what to do next in these still moments after the battle.

  “It drives me crazy when you do that.”

  “What?” Mica turned. Caleb had come closer. He was looking at her bottom lip, which she’d been contorting almost without thinking about it. She let it settle into shape—her shape, not the one matching the rest of the face she wore.

  He reached up to touch her lips, brushing them with the pad of his thumb. She stopped breathing.

  “Mica,” he said softly.

  “Yes?”

  He didn’t say anything more, only looked at her, yet she had the feeling that he was looking at her and really seeing her, past the impersonation and her mission and his noble status. A lump formed in her throat. She could hardly express how much she wanted to be seen.

  She slowly changed her eyes back to her own plain hazel.

  Caleb leaned in, as if the strange color had been a barrier holding him back. He took her chin gently in his square hand and kissed her on the mouth. Mica hardly dared to move, afraid one more shift of her features would make him stop.

  The kiss was feather light, almost chaste, as if it were a solemn thing to bring their lips together. Mica’s eyes fluttered closed at the exquisite touch.

  He pulled back far too soon, scanning her face. Clouds were forming in his eyes, as if his uncle’s betrayal was finally catching up to him. Mica wanted to fling her arms around his neck, to kiss him again and promise they’d figure it out together. But before she could move toward him, he released her and walked back to rejoin his men.

  It took a few hours to clean up the warehouse and question the guards. They insisted they had no idea where the ships took the Talents they removed from the city, and not a single one mentioned their lord’s name.

  Caleb promised the gathered Talents that he would bring the perpetrators to justice. They hurried to shake his hand and offer their thanks before dispersing to their homes. He had earned the respect and admiration of many tonight. Rumors about the noble rescuer of captive Talents would spread. There’d be no mention of the Impersonator who’d fought at Caleb’s side or the role she had played in uncovering the plot. Mica recalled Master Kiev’s speech from her Assignment Ceremony. This was how it should be.

  When Caleb’s knees buckled at last, Stievson and the others carried him back to the Silver Palace without comment. Mica hadn’t had a chance to talk with him about what the potioner had said.

  You were one of the first.

  Ober and Haddell must have succeeded in generating multiple Talents in other
s. How many were there, and did they have more control over their abilities than Caleb did? What if Ober already had men who were fast, strong, and impervious, and who wouldn’t be knocked flat after using those skills?

  She would talk it over with Caleb as soon as he recovered. After what they had accomplished tonight, she had little doubt they would work together again. She was already looking forward to it—and to the next time he’d press his lips against hers. She was surprised at how little she cared that he was a fancy lord now.

  It wasn’t until she returned to her rooms and fell into bed that Mica remembered she had forgotten to retrieve Jessamyn’s potions from the rooftop of the second warehouse.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Rumors ran wild about the raid on the mysterious warehouse of horrors over the next few days. No one had connected the incident with Lord Ober, but everyone knew the dashing Lord Caleb had saved dozens of captive Talents from an evil potioner.

  “I hear he stabbed the madman himself,” Lady Elana said when a group of ladies gathered to discuss it in the conservatory. “He fought side by side with his own guards.”

  “Incredible,” said Lady Amanta.

  Mica moved a little closer, pruning shears clutched in her hands. She was impersonating a gardener this afternoon, an easy task after her recent adventures.

  “And remember how he led the charge on the harbor cruise?”

  “It must have been terrifying,” said Lady Amanta.

  “Yes, but he was so brave.” Elana sighed.

  “Caleb has always been the heroic type,” said Lady Ingrid, who was usually loath to agree with Elana on anything. “I’m not at all surprised.”

  “When did he become so attractive, though?” Elana said. “Those waistcoats he wears . . .” She twirled a finger through her red hair, a dreamy smile on her lips.

  “I bet Jessamyn is looking at him differently now.” Lady Amanta gave a bawdy chuckle, and the others tittered in agreement. Mica clipped the leaves off a nearby rosebush a little too aggressively.