I blinked at the pale face of the man trying to tug me away. “I know them. I … was here, not two hours ago.”
“They’re dead,” the pale-faced man said. “They’re all dead.”
I yanked my arm free and trudged through the blood-stained snow, passing Agatha’s body as a guard threw a cover over her. Inside, the ripe stench of blood and exposed meat turned over my empty gut. My boots slipped, and I planted my splayed fingers on a patch of sticky wetness on the wall.
Catherine lay among the dead, face down in the kitchen doorway. My feet continued moving, my body pushing on, but inside, I didn’t feel a thing and my thoughts coasted, silent and empty. I drifted through the house, losing count of the dead as I went. The guards ignored my passing, their task too great to bother with me. Room after room, more dead. No music, no chatter, no fake laughter. Just the stomp of boots, the rustle of sheets, and a man vomiting.
The hidden paneled door hung open and bloodied footprints ascended the narrow secret stairs onto the balcony. I followed the steps and found Shaianna’s blood-soaked dress on the roof. I lunged for it, lifting the fabric in my hands. The dress had been discarded. A pair of small footprints led across the balcony. The footprints stopped at the edge.
I leaned against the balcony rail and peered down at the sharp drop to the street below. She could have made a running jump to the opposite roof. I’d seen her perform a similar jump when escaping the mages. Had she jumped to escape whoever had done this?
Unless she did this?
I threw the dress down and glared across the city at the spire glinting its perfection in the winter sun.
Mages, it had to be … Or, if Fallford was right, the queen’s vengeance had returned. And she had only just begun. I couldn’t—wouldn’t believe this slaughter had been Shaianna’s doing. She wouldn’t have hurt these people. Whatever Shaianna was, she wasn’t a monster.
I looked down at the single set of footprints and then headed back through the house. I made it as far as the neighboring street before I dry-heaved.
It wasn’t her…
It wasn’t.
I dug my fingers into the crumbling brick, waiting for the retching to stop.
But what if it was always her?
Chapter Twenty-One
The look on my face must have been dire for Molly to allow me entry into Fallford’s house without so much as an eye roll. She took my cloak and gasped. I’d forgotten about the blood. I wasn’t even sure what I was doing at Fallford’s or how I’d gotten there. I had nowhere else to go.
“It’s not mine,” I mumbled without realizing my admission didn’t help.
“You’d better come with me,” she grumbled, skirts rustling as she marched through a door beneath the staircase. I dutifully followed her through the quiet and apparently empty servants’ quarters and eventually into the kitchen.
Molly barked at me to sit at the table. I peeled off my coat and removed the dagger, placing it on the table in plain sight, not wanting to frighten her.
She tutted and grumbled a few more choice words, and then planted a bowl of soapy water in front of me. “Wash the blood off your face, man.”
I didn’t have the strength to reply.
She turned her back on me and scrubbed at the plates in the sink. “His lordship had a son like you. All trouble and no worth.”
I picked dried blood from under my fingernails and swirled my hands in the warm water. “What happened to him?”
“Got himself killed on some foreign adventure. Took after his father, he did, but didn’t have the smarts to stay alive. Well-to-doers die as easily as thieves.”
I smiled despite my mood. “Why Molly, I thought we were friends. That sounded suspiciously like a threat.”
She turned, brushed her mop of hair out of her face, and planted a hand on her hip. “I don’t need no threats when his lordship will do just the same, but with fancier words. Just know, you bring trouble here, he’ll deal with it—no matter what. Don’t let his smiles and welcoming manner fool you. Lord Fallford has ways.”
“Duly noted,” I replied, then smiled at her back as she busied herself with kitchen duties. “I didn’t come here to bring trouble.”
“That’s what them’s all say.”
A bell chimed. Molly spat a rich curse and eyed me warily. “I’ve counted the silverware. If there’s anything missing when I return, I’ll take your thumbs.”
She left before I could defend myself. Although she was right. I might have considered pocketing some of the silver knives. I didn’t have a gem to my name, and the kitchen housed a few treasures that would fetch a few gem fragments in the market.
A collection of voices drifted from behind the kitchen door and boots thumped on the hardwood floors. The visitors climbed the stairs. Doors closed and the quiet returned. The warmth of the kitchen and the smell of soup and something like leather soap—it was nice. Comforting. I hoarded the feel of it and soaked up the warmth. I didn’t want to go back out on the streets. I didn’t want to face the reality of what I’d seen. Agatha, Catherine, and so many others. Had I brought a killer under their roof?
I dried my hands on a towel, wiped my face, and then stared at my reflection in the bowl of dirty water. The laughing woman, the woman I’d seen in the river and dancing at Calwyton, wouldn’t have murdered anyone. But there was another side to Shaianna. The side quick to kill without flinching. It was that woman I feared, and I believed Shaianna feared her too.
“Vance …”
“Lord Fallford. I was just … Molly insisted …” My words trailed off.
He braced his hands on the table and peered at me, barely a smile where there had always been one before. “I’ve already heard the news. Grim business. Agatha, well … a terrible crime. You knew them well?”
I swallowed and pushed the bowl away, hoping I at least resembled a man in control, even if I didn’t feel like one. “Agatha saved my life.”
“Are there any suspects?” he asked.
Clenching my jaw, I couldn’t bring myself to implicate Shaianna. We were bonded, and at some level, I knew she wasn’t responsible. What was done was done, and we had more pressing concerns—and lives to save. “We need to stop the mages. If we blow the tunnel, they can’t get out of the Inner Circle.”
“Besides the front gates?”
“But at least then we’ll see them coming.”
Fallford straightened and nodded firmly. “Some of the colleagues I mentioned are here now. We were discussing the expedition … but I dare say our resources could be better spent.” He held my gaze. “I’d like you to speak with them.”
“Me?” I raked my hand through my hair, and neither of us failed to notice how my fingers shook. “I don’t know what I can say that will help you.”
“You’ve seen the mages. You’ve been to the tomb. You’re at the very heart of everything, Vance. If I’m to move forward, they need to know you.”
I closed my eyes and leaned back in the bench seat with a sigh. “Who are these people?”
“A business man and seafaring trader; he regularly trades in antiquities. It’s how we met. He has a keen mind and some, shall we say, experience with weapons. Another, Lady Porter. She’s the daughter of Lord Jeremy Porter, the landowner. She’s wealthy and has an adventurous soul and a good sense for using her position to help the people where she can. We also have a high-ranking member of the city guard here—”
“No.”
“Vance …”
“No. If I tell them I’m from the Inner Circle, they’ll throw me back in there. I’ve escaped twice. Once by luck, the second time with help. I’m not tempting fate again.”
“They’re not interested in you, man. They want to protect their interests, which means protecting Brea. Where you came from won’t matter to them.”
“You want me to stand in front of a room of well-to-doers and tell them there are magic-addicted monsters in the spire? That’s what you’re asking?”
A muscl
e twitched in Fallford’s jaw. “I may not know you very well, Mister Vance, but I do know you came here for a reason, and it wasn’t to sit in my kitchen and ruminate over the death of your friends.”
“I have nowhere else to go.” I laughed, but it was an ugly, desperate sound. “Everywhere I go, everything I touch, death follows me like a—”
“Shadow?” he finished for me. “All the more reason to get to the heart of this. I can’t galvanize my associates without you.”
I slumped forward and pinched the bridge of my nose. “I just wanted to steal the Eye, sell it, and leave. I didn’t want any of this.”
“Do you think any man has a choice in his fate?” Fallford snapped. “You’re the only Inner Circle citizen to escape, besides the mages. You have a responsibility to help others, or are you truly just the thieving coward?”
I rubbed at my temples. A thieving coward wasn’t the answer he wanted, but it was probably the truth. “In the workhouse, they beat defiance out of you until you’re as numb and dead inside as clockwork machines, going through the motions. I might have been a good man once, or I thought I was, but that man is gone.”
“You escaped the workhouse.”
“Because my sister chose to end her life rather than live another day in that nightmare. I was too much the coward to do the same.”
Fallford slammed a hand onto the tabletop. “Open your eyes! You’re not a coward. You are a survivor. And survivors sometimes do what others are afraid to. It doesn’t make you a good man or a bad one. It makes you strong. It makes you brave.”
He made a convincing argument. I could see why Molly spoke so highly of him and why others might follow his lead.
He lifted his chin and straightened his waistcoat. “I understand this city has not been kind to you, but it is your home. Tens of thousands of lives are at risk. Help me to help Brea.”
He was right. Brea hadn’t been kind to me. I owed it little. But I had been a good man once, so perhaps I could be again?
“My assistance doesn’t come cheap.”
One of Fallford’s dark eyebrows rose.
My lips ticked up at one corner. “I’m always the opportunist.”
I found myself standing in Fallford’s library, addressing a small crowd of Brea’s well-to-doers. They regarded my filthy boots, blood-splattered clothes, and unkempt hair with a mixture of surprise, distaste, and curiosity.
One face I knew well: Tassen’s. Since meeting in Calwyton, during our trek back to Brea, and before his apparent “meeting” in the square, he’d neglected to mention he knew Fallford.
Fallford introduced the others and, with some trepidation, said, “You’re already acquainted with Captain Tassen, I believe.”
Tassen tipped his hat and smirked. “Thanks are in order for stopping the mage at Agatha’s, Vance. I guess that makes us even after I saved you back in the tomb.”
Captain Tassen. I narrowed my eyes on him. He looked a great deal better than when I saw him covered in blood at Agatha’s, but his skin held a milky pallor, where before it had been a healthy shade of bronze.
“You’re like a cracked gem,” I told him. Difficult to be rid of.
“I’ve been called worse.” He shifted in his seat and winced, clearly favoring his side.
“You hired him to track me?” I asked Fallford.
“I asked the captain to discover why a well-known thief—who’d had his hands on a revered artifact—and a distinctly foreign woman had taken it upon themselves to venture into the Draynes. You weren’t exactly subtle.”
“You knew I had the cup?”
“I suspected. I was aware of the cup and its mythos, but it was secure at the museum. As soon as it went missing, I assumed you’d stolen it. There are few Brean thieves with the talent to pilfer the museum’s archives. Your unusual expedition confirmed it. And then, of course, there was the woman you travelled with. Oh, she attempted to conceal who she was, but someone like her can’t easily hide. After tales of how fire had torn through the camp of highwaymen, I sent word to Tassen that the woman was to be closely observed and, if necessary, retrieved. The Calwyton fire was … unfortunate.”
I should have known Fallford was Tassen’s client from his parchments and existing infatuation with the mythical. He’d known about the cup, Arach, and the Eye. He had always known—or at least suspected.
“Shaianna had nothing to do with the Calwyton blaze.”
Fallford’s smile ghosted across his lips and then was gone. “Initially, I sent Tassen out to observe, nothing more. I wasn’t sure whether you were heading to Arach or merely being led astray by the woman in your company. Now, of course, I—we know differently.”
“The mages caused Calwyton to burn. Tassen? You saw Shaianna. You saw how she danced among the people. She is not a killer.”
“She was a delight.”
“Why, then, would she set the town ablaze? She adored it.”
“It is a mystery, for sure. But I also recall how she threatened to kill me.”
“As did I. Am I also to blame for the fire?”
“Now Vance,” Tassen scoffed, puffing out his chest. “The woman is a riddle, and a dangerous one at that. You know it just the same as we do.”
“So, what is this?” I gestured at the people quietly observing me. “If you already know of the Eye and its potential, what do you need me for?”
The sting of Fallford’s deception burned. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. I was a thief paid to retrieve goods. The reasons why didn’t mean anything to me—or they hadn’t, until now.
“We are collectors,” Fallford explained. “Investors and sometimes traders of antiquities from foreign lands. The cup, the Eye …” He looked at his small group of treasure hunters. “These items were intriguing artifacts and little more. Call it a game, if you will. We did not expect the truth to be so … devastating.”
“The legends may be real, so now you want my help.”
“It makes sense for us to pool our resources,” Lady Porter suggested. She appeared to be a tall, slim woman, even seated at the table as she was. The colorless gray layers of fabric she wore would have drowned out most people, but the splash of pink to her lips brightened an already warm face. I guessed her age to be somewhere around thirty. She spoke with a deep, smooth voice—the type of voice that didn’t need to be raised to be heard.
“Warg attacks outside the city are increasing. Beasts that never venture close to Brea are suddenly within sighting distance, as though they are compelled to come or fleeing something beyond our understanding.”
“Conjecture,” Tiber, the city guard, said.
Until that moment, he had been sitting rigid and silent, barely raising a brow when I glanced his way. He wore the High Guard coat of arms on his shirt sleeve, but no indication of his rank. Heavier than Tassen, but in a muscular way, he looked like the type of man who could end an argument with a word or a fist. I had met his kind—well, mostly ran from them—many times over the years.
“Conjecture, yes,” Fallford agreed, “but not without reason.”
Lady Porter shifted in her seat and fired short, sharp questions at Tiber, apparently unimpressed by his assessment. It was a little like watching a bird flutter around a bull. I had no doubt Porter could easily land one of her pointed questions and challenge Tiber’s arguments, but I was beyond caring.
“The tunnel near the docks is a good way to proceed,” I said, loud enough to break up their heated discussion.
“Agreed,” Tassen replied. “If what Vance says is true and the tunnel leads into the heart of the spire, I could get a look at our enemy without them knowing. With the walls as they are, there is no other way inside, besides months of formal written requests to the High Guard, who are notoriously stubborn when it comes to allowing visitors.”
“If it’s true?” I carefully asked. “Do you doubt me, Tassen?”
The captain lifted his chin. “You’re a decent man, Vance, but you’re also compromised.”
/> “Compromised?”
“You forget. I was the one who pulled you out of that tomb. I know exactly how you feel about our rogue sorceress.”
“Why would I lie about the tunnel?”
“Perhaps to lure me and my crew into an ambush?”
I laughed. “Oh, I am so desperately sorry. I didn’t realize this was about you. But now that you mention it, an ambush is a fantastic idea. Why didn’t I think of that before? I shall mobilize my invisible army of scoundrels and get right on that.”
“Vance,” Fallford warned.
I lifted a single finger, silencing him and the rest of them. “Let me be very clear. This is not about me or you or your hunt for trinkets. Whatever you waste your gems on is none of my concern. What I do care about is stopping the mages, because believe me, I have seen what they can do, and Outer Brea is not prepared. You sit here in your finery and pretend you know exactly what you’re up against. You do not know; you cannot know. They are mindless husks of men that have been bound and imprisoned for generations. The wave that hit Calwyton destroyed the town, and they poured into the Arachian tomb and likely collapsed it behind Tassen and me. Brea does not have an army and the city guard is not equipped to deal with them, but we have an opportunity to stop them now, at the source. So instead of calling me a liar and looking for reasons to discount the thief, perhaps you should put your quick minds to better use.”
The room fell silent.
“And what of the sorceress?” Lady Porter asked.
“I will deal with her. It’s safer for you all that way.”
Tiber glanced at Fallford and then back at me. “It is a risk, venturing into the spire on the word of a thief.”
“The bigger risk is, of course, that we do nothing,” I said, “and your fine businesses turn to dust when the mages are set free. You can’t run businesses without customers.”
“I don’t have Lord Fallford’s faith in you. I see facts, and those facts are not your friend, thief.”
“We start with the tunnel,” Fallford said. “Tassen, take a handful of your best crewmen and see what awaits inside. Are you up to it?”
Legends of the Damned: A Collection of Edgy Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels Page 63